Global Research

Part I

For three years now, it’s been alleged and that Syrian government forces have systematically used helicopters to drop chlorine gas on civilians in rebel-held areas of the country.

Amid repeated efforts to impose new sanctions on Syria over the widely accepted charges, another reminder was dropped on March 25: a direct chlorine attack on an underground hospital in Hama province was said to kill at least two, including a surgeon, Dr. Ali Darwish (photo at right). [1]

But a critical analysis of the evidence contradicts these allegations in myriad ways. Ongoing open-source research by myself and the community at A Closer Look On Syria has followed from the start. I’ve re-packaged the growing body of findings repeatedly for the OPCW, select diplomats, and the public. [2] Here is another attempt to provide a long but readable overview of that, in two parts. Some general problems and observations wrapping around two cases examined in detail, each of which has a family of six dying, suffices to raise the main points.

Together, the findings illustrate that, despite all the declarations of certainty, the Syrian government is almost certainly not dropping chlorine on its people. Instead, as outlandish as it may sound, it’s quite likely that Islamist opposition forces in Syria are behind all of these events. Surprisingly specific and hard-to-deny visual clues suggest rebels are murdering the victims themselves using different methods, and lodging false claims as cover, and to shift the blame.

The evidence behind that is not secret, and plain enough for anyone to see. But, so far, the people in charge just haven’t looked closely enough, and no one in the media has pushed the issue. And so the true chlorine story, at least as we see it, remains unspoken and invisible to the masses, so far.

Some General Problems

Chlorine gas can harm and even kill because it forms corrosive acids on contact with water, causing severe damaging the soft tissues like eyes and lungs. Yet it has many legitimate purposes, is easily synthesized, and remains quite common. It could easily be obtained by opposition forces. In fact, by credible reports, they’ve used it against government forces and civilians, in little-noted attacks from late 2012 onward. [3]

At left is a photo said to show a firefighter called in for rescue work after a chlorine attack in the government-held part of Aleppo’s Old City, on August 2, 2016. It’s said this civil defense worker was one of 13 people who died in the attack, blamed on Harakat Noureddin al-Zenki. [4]

Note the victim’s swollen eyes pouring tears, blood coming from his mouth or nose, skin redness, and mild blue tint to the skin (this is called cyanoisis, and is caused by low blood oxygen). This is a fairly severe case, but some form of these signs should appear with chlorine victims, and so they matter in the case studies below. And it should be noted that Dr. Darwish, as shown above, doesn’t seem to display these signs. [5]

While that Aleppo attack reportedly used surface-fired rockets, the opposition clearly couldn’t be behind anything dropped from an aircraft, as alleged in the Hama hospital bombing, or the other widely-condemned cases blamed on government forces.

But it must be noted that three years on, as far as I’ve seen, there remains no clear visual proof any of these attacks really did involve helicopters. Some videos are clearly edited, or show scenes staged with colored smoke. In other cases, real chlorine is being released, but it may well be done by militants on the ground, to make the government look bad.

Allegedly, these chlorine bombs are almost always aimed at civilians and not rebel fighters, which is strategically illogical. On the other hand, these allegations do serve and have been used for regime-change demands; they violate the chemical weapons convention Damascus is now signatory to, and cross the “red line” set by U.S. president Obama. This leaves little reason for Damascus to launch such attacks, and of course goes towards motive for the opposition to fake them on the government’s behalf.

2015’s deadly chlorine attacks were mostly in Idlib province, after it was almost completely overrun by Islamist militants, supported by Turkey and led by Al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra. At least 13 attacks over exactly two months (March 16 to May 16) allegedly killed a total of 10 civilians, 6 of those in a dramatic first attack we’ll consider below. [6]

The OPCW has accepted the strange allegation that the “barrel bombs” used in these attacks held precursor chemicals rigged to mix upon impact and generate fresh chlorine right there. [7] But the violence of impact after such a long fall would almost surely scatter everything, disrupt the mixing, and produce very little gas, in return for a lot of strange engineering work.

A leaked illustration of the OPCW’s working theory for the 2015 chlorine barrel bombs [8]

This allegation seems aimed at explaining the unusual remnants rebels showed, and the initially mysterious pools of purple-red fluid at some attack sites. The fluid might actually be from on-site mixing of bulk volumes of the chemicals, probably poured by hand from large jugs (clearly not from a passing helicopter if so). These are produced, for example, by Tekkim chemicals of Turkey. This brand was used by Jihadists with a “Destructive Wind chemical brigade” to synthesize chlorine, apparently, for an infamous December, 2012 video. With this, the host killed two rabbits in a plexiglass cage, promising the same fate to Syria’s Alawites. [9]

Finally, it’s worth noting how opposition reports consistently claim that chlorine victims in Syria lose consciousness, faint, or become paralyzed almost instantly, then never move again, and breath too much to survive before they’re rescued.

This running claim raises the very low expected death toll, and has been passed on with little question. But it has no basis in science. In reality, victims should stay awake and move away from the gas, and should usually survive. It’s troubling the way victims reportedly lay still in their homes, waiting for the “White Helmets” to come save them. No one else has noted it yet, but it suggests these aren’t real events they’re reporting, but rather poorly-researched cover stories. [10]

These aren’t all the problems I could list, but perhaps the most important ones to set the stage. Now we turn to a particular case to see if this outside-the-box thinking can explain the specifics of one of these alleged attacks.

Sarmin, 2015, and a Family of Six Killed

While others among the alleged chlorine attack of 2015 raise question, the first-and-worst among them, on the evening of March 16, is important for three reasons: it’s the most highly promoted incident, with emotionally-charged images of babies dying – it has more evidence available than usual – that evidence is especially riddled with problems, and seams of what may be the true story. A book could be written about this incident.

It was on the eastern edge of Sarmin, Idlib province, that a family of six, and no one else, reportedly died in the year’s debut chlorine event. A grandmother, father, mother, and three young children aged about 1-3, their family name was given as al-Taleb. We can’t be sure that’s actually true, but for simplicity let’s call them Taleb and skip the scare quotes. The bizarre and perhaps murderous “life-saving procedures” used on the Taleb children has recently been analyzed and exposed as a fraud by Swedish Doctors for Human Rights here at The Indicter (see: White Helmets Video, Macabre Manipulation of Dead Children and Staged Chemical Weapons Attack to Justify a “No-Fly Zone” in Syria) A Closer Look On Syria’s research can expand on many other questions surrounding this case. [11]

Below is a scene from the damaged basement apartment where it’s claimed the Talebs met their fate. UN investigators accepted the claim that one of those unlikely barrel bombs happened to fall right through a narrow slot for a ventilation shaft, no more than 1.5 meters wide, “improbable as it sounds.” [12] Thus it hit their kitchen wall full force without exploding, knocking down the wall and somehow filling the whole apartment with gallons of red-purple fluid, and thus chlorine gas.

Twisted remnants of outer barrel, cylinder from something else, the Taleb kitchen, Coordinating Sarmin video

It’s not clear how the fluid would spread so widely, why the wrong kind of gas cylinder is also seen atop the rubble, or why the home and twisted barrel casing (but not that extra canister) seem damaged by an explosion. [13] So far, it seems no one, even the OPCW’s investigators, has made full sense of this scene.

At least two strong clues entered below suggest the Taleb family didn’t really live here anyway.

Black Flags and White Helmets

By the logo, that site video was filmed by “Coordinating Sarmin,” local activists affiliated with Al-Qaeda’s Syria franchise Jabhat al-Nusra (see the black flag atop “Sarmin” in gold, shared by JaN). [14] Other aftermath videos are filmed by the newly-minted “White Helmets,” or “Syrian Civil Defense,” Idlib branch. In fact, this incident seems to be the first prominent appearance of the White Helmets anywhere, their debut performance of sorts.

The White Helmets and Coordinating Sarmin each filmed one of the two emergency room videos of the children dying. This apparent team effort is also suggested by the new custom blankets used in the Sarmin field hospital: the “civil defense” logo done up in the gold-and-black colors of their jihadist partners. A further discussion about the associations of symbols/flags in the ‘rebel’ formations in Syria (from al-Qaeda to White Helmets) in Prof Marcello Ferrada de Noli’s article “White Helmets Movie: Updated Evidence From Swedish Doctors Confirm Fake ‘Lifesaving’ and Malpractices on Children“.

Left: Grandma Ayosh and blanket [15]. Right: Same with Sarah atop [16]

Chlorine Did Not Kill Those Babies

As recently noted in The Indicter, dubious “life-saving efforts” failed to save the children. [17] Speculations has been raised elsewhere on whether such procedures may even have killed them. For instance, a crucial injection for the infant, Mohamed, is apparently withheld and swapped for possibly fatal syringe rampage through the boy’s chest.

Further, Mohamed was seen earlier in the triage area, being given respiratory support. But later in the “emergency room,” he was given no useful assistance as he was left on his back, suffocating on his own fluids. [18] It almost seems the medical workers here wanted these children to die, so they could catch it on video, blame “Assad,” and demand protection.

Left: Mohamed Taleb with oxygen mask in triage [19] – right: suffocating in the “emergency room” [20]

While medical malpractice may have finally killed at least the boy, it’s important to consider the poisoning that preceded that and likely killed both girls. The back-story is supposed to make this quite clear, but we must note the children’s clinical signs suggest they were never in that gas-filled apartment. Mohamed as shown, and his older sisters Aysha and Sara, between them show no sign of being exposed to chlorine gas.

The Taleb children were said to soak in it for some 30 minutes, so they should have skin irritation and red, damaged eyes, should probably be conscious, with strained breathing and violent coughing. But they look roughly the opposite of how they should (compare Mohamed above to the firefighter shown at the start). They’re limp and totally unresponsive, with white, rheumy, vacant eyes, and abnormally pale skin. They don’t cough at all, and barely even breathe. In fact they appear dead, but at least the infant Mohamed is alive and breathing, so he’s comatose.

All this suggests the children may have suffered an overdose with a CNS depressant drug (opiates, barbiturates, etc.). [21] That would clearly be done by people on the ground, and not by a passing helicopter. It was apparently done outside the Sarmin field hospital, but perhaps drawing from its supplies anyway. [22] But whatever really killed them, we can see it was almost certainly not the chlorine gas alleged, and we’re left with a false claim covering for a mystery. These crucial details need to be reconsidered by credible experts.

There are More Different Stories Than There Should Be

Serious story discrepancies have emerged as well, suggesting poor coordination between fictitious accounts. The OPCW was told the parents escaped the gas-filled apartment along with Mohamed, and found help for the others passed out inside (with some confusion about the boy’s age). [23] Everyone else was told the Talebs were all found paralyzed but alive at the scene. [24]

The director of the Sarmin field hospital the children died in is Dr. Mohamed Tennari (alt: Tirani, “T.”), who’s also the local director of the interventionist Syrian-American Medical Society. As “Dr T, the director of Sarmin hospital,” he gave an early account to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) which supported his facility, perhaps even with the drugs used to kill the Taleb children. Therein, he claimed that the family (grandmother, parents, and three children) was unknown. He saw them “arriving at the hospital from a neighbouring village,” barely able to speak before they died. [25]

But everyone else says they lived at a known spot in Sarmin, and the given spot does match the video record. [26] Later, Dr. Tennari agreed and added that the father, his “friend” Waref al-Taleb, “ran an electronics repair shop in town,” [27] and even had “recently helped to fix my phone.” [28] Later he told Al-Jazeera Waref “was friendly, quiet, [a] good person,” who “had a nice family. He loved his family.” Tennari says his last visit to the repair shop in Sarmin was actually to fix an internet router, a month or two before the attack. “Taleb did not charge him for the fix,” Al-Jazeera reported, as a gesture between “the two Syrian friends.” [29]

Did he just forget about all that at first, as he imagined they were strangers from another town? Or was the first story closer to the truth?

Finally, the extensive video record shows Dr. Tennari was not present in the “emergency room” during the five filmed minutes when the children die. This might help explain why his later false description of heading the efforts there to save them was full of illogical claims. [30]

Dr. Tennari vs. 6 of the 7 staff seen in either ER video, none of which is him [31]

We’ll come back to the severely unreliable Dr. Tennari at the end of part 2. For now just note he may be illustrative of all such sources phoning in these chlorine attacks to their interventionist sponsors.

Part II

The Case For an Aleppo Chlorine Campaign

The 2016 series of helicopter chlorine attack reports were mostly in rebel-held eastern Aleppo. These started in mid-August but accelerated in November and December, as government forces re-conquered the entirety of Syria’s largest city. The complex 2015 style of bomb was replaced with smaller yellow gas cylinders like those used in the first attacks in 2014, shown distorted at most scenes.

As lamented by Human Rights Watch, at least eight confirmed attacks preceded the government re-conquest of each district, killing a confirmed nine civilians (with 16 reported), and no rebel fighters. Ole Solvang, their deputy director for “emergencies division” is quoted saying the attacks “were coordinated with the overall military strategy for retaking Aleppo, not the work of a few rogue elements.” [32] But apparently it didn’t involve gassing the rebels in charge. He later told Al-Jazeera how chlorine makes basement shelters unsafe for civilians or, as the reporter Dorian Geiger puts it,

“Solvang suspects the regime strategically used chlorine to force a mass exodus of the city.” [33]

As my assessment of HRW’s report explains, there is still no proof helicopters were involved. The alleged goal of mass panic remains unclear, in both utility and in reality. There’s also no clear connection between these alleged attacks and the coming re-conquest by the army forces on the ground. In fact, their interactive map shows the interval between gas and boots, and it seems loose and varied, more like someone predicting government moves and usually guessing early. [34]

At least one faked scene is included, highlighted by HRW as shown below: “green smoke” rises from a blast after a bomb or missile lands. But chlorine is a heavier than-air gas and simply wouldn’t rise the way the video shows it doing. Chlorine is also a more pale, yellowish shade of green than this apparent special effects smoke. [35]

Seemingly genuine chlorine is seen creeping along the ground in at least one other case, on December 8. [36]. How many of these incidents involved real gas is unclear, but in context, it’s most likely rebels released both the genuine and fake kinds themselves, as evidence for their accusations.

Another Family of Six Killed

The fatalities reported with these late-2016 Aleppo attacks were unusually anonymous. Of 16 reported to HRW, two men were fully named, a family name only was given for six others killed early on November 20, and eight were totally unnamed: a 55-year-old woman and seven other unspecified people. [37] HRW left hose seven as unverified, but chances are they really did die, and details are just being withheld. Those identities might be hidden for a reason.

The family of six was named – to a Reuters reporter and to no one else – as al-Baytounji. [38] Most sources don’t name them, but agree they were killed in a midnight attack in the northeastern Sakhour district: a father, a mother (not shown) and four children (two boys and two girls, aged about 2-11, by visual guess).

Still from video provided to HRW of the Baytounji children. [39]

A CNN report mistakes the girl in red for the mother, but translates a local’s explanation from video:

“We were sleeping when a barrel bomb fell near our home,” a man explains on the video. “We went down and discovered it was chlorine gas. The victims weren’t activists or anything … but they were suffocating so much, they turned blue. It was a man, four kids, and his wife. The oldest boy was 10 years old. Why did this happen? May God curse you, Bashar (al-Assad).”

Another man shows coins to the videographer from the Aleppo Media Center, which appear tarnished. The man says he took the coins from the pockets of the dead. “The gas caused them to change color,” he says.[40]

Were the Baytounji Family Abducted Christians?

An internet search with the proper Arabic spelling of that family name ( بيتونجي ) found exactly one other instance anywhere in the world and in time (there must be more, but this is all I could find): in 1933, Mr. Ibrahim Hajjar al-Baytounji of Aleppo was asked for a “share” (donation) to build a new roof for St. George’s church, in the city’s Assyrian district. [41]

Thus he was presumably part of the Christian community, in Aleppo, and other Baytonjis in Aleppo might be Christians as well, even close to a century later. This may prove to be a false name or a confused lead, but it seems to deserve a more informed look to verify if these people match with any missing families, Christian or otherwise.

The witness told CNN they “went down” and found the family, suggesting they were living or sheltering in a basement apartment, like the Taleb family was. That makes some basic sense considering chlorine’s tendency to sink. Precedent says it’s a dubious claim, perhaps lodged for just that reason.

The video suggests after being awakened by the gas tank crashing through the roof, the victims had somehow gotten their clothes on (with change in the pockets, as claimed above). But they didn’t get their shoes on, before they illogically passed out somewhere short of the exit. These clues and some possible signs of bondage and abuse suggest they may have been held as hostages. (These don’t get pajamas to sleep in, and don’t even have to die when and where it’s reported) [42]

If the Baytounji family were hostages, who died shortly before the re-conquest of the Sakhour district, then it’s most likely they were executed by the fighters holding them. These would be liquidating all property they couldn’t take with them, besides killing witnesses to their crimes, before they surrendered and took the offered “green bus” to Idlib.

Just how they may have exterminated this family it is worth some attention, and that winds up raising the possibility of bondage closer to a certainty.

Chlorine Didn’t Kill This Family

Like the Taleb children, the Baytounji children – and their father, if not their unseen mother – suffered a questionable death that does not seem to be caused by chlorine. They weren’t shot or stabbed that we see, so it might seem “chemical” and thus acceptable. But the details matter.

They may have cyanosis, as reported, but this has many causes. They don’t seem to have eye damage, and their clothes don’t seem bleached. This probably isn’t chlorine, but it’s also quite different from what we saw in Sarmin, perhaps involving heat and smoke. The two older children especially (on the right above) have faces that seem baked, with dry, orange-tinted skin pulled tight, and a white, powdery residue around their mouths and eyes. [43] So far, what happened to them is a horrible mystery.

But the heavy dark rings around their eyes may tell a clearer story. All but one of the five seen victims seem to have this, but the father shows it most vividly (cropped view below). This is most likely periorbital ecchymosis, or “raccoon eyes,” Usually following a skull fracture that tears the inner lining, blood between the skull and the cranium pools through the eye sockets into the soft tissue there, swelling the area all around the eyes (“peri-orbital”), before it’s re-absorbed. What we see doesn’t appear appears swollen like in the early stages, but more like a splotchy, healing bruise, especially with the children. Most likely they were each hit in the back of the head, at least two days prior to the alleged chlorine attack. [44]

Rings around the eyes of the father, suggesting skull fracture [45]

In four of five seen victims, this can’t be any kind of accident; the family must have been violently attacked by people with weapons. Like an opiate overdose, this cannot come from any passing helicopter. It would have to be done by locals, who quite likely held the Baytounji family as prisoners. If this finding can be verified by forensic professionals and the alternatives be ruled out, we would have an even clearer case than with the Talebs – solid proof that Aleppo’s fading Islamists abducted and murdered this family and then simply lied about it.

A Big Picture Some Can’t Grasp

Hostages Down the Line?

This disturbing evidence of captivity with raises questions and underlines earlier observations. These five members of the Baytounji family are the only alleged chlorine victims from the late-2016 Aleppo campaign that rebels have provided visuals for. We can’t judge the other ten alleged deaths directly by this precedent. But we can’t yet judge them by anything else either, and the precedent is bad for the broader opposition narrative of 16 killed by Syria’s helicopter chlorine bombs. They might have all been yanked out of their dungeons at the right time to be gassed by whatever was handy.

In Sarmin, 2015, the way the Taleb children were perhaps overdosed on cue suggests they too may have been hostages, though signs of abuse are absent. An unusual number of people apparently related to the grandmother (with the rare name Qaaq) died in the area over the following weeks, suggesting family targeting for unknown reasons was involved. [46]

In the 2014 attacks in Hama and Idlib provinces, the attacks spared locals as well as fighters; the 16 reported fatalities were nearly all civilians listed as displaced from other towns, primarily women and children. [47] This strange coincidence could mean the victims were gender-segregated hostages.

And it’s worth noting all of these cases were within a few kilometers of the Alawite village of Ma’an, which was overrun by Jihadists shortly before the first chlorine report. Dozens were executed on February 9, and some 80 civilians were reportedly abducted – mostly women and children. [48] The chlorine reports started on April 11, and while none of the named towns are Ma’an, these records would be falsified to obscure that if it were true.

Map showing where IDPs were listed as from vs. killed in the 2014 incidents (Ma’an circled) [49]

So it may have been that way the whole time these attacks were being phoned in; ready-held hostages were just killed at the right time, without guns or blades so it could appear vaguely “chemical.” Much evidence says the earlier alleged sarin attacks of 2013 followed a similar basic method, with the infamous Ghouta attack of August 21 playing out on several hundred prisoners of Islamist groups in the Damascus area. [50]

In fact similar signs emerge with most categories of alleged regime crimes from 2011 forward, from “regime” snipers to “Shabiha” massacres to “barrel bombs,” claiming a solid majority of the civilians killed in the conflict. [51] All these suspicions could be wrong, or the truth might be mixed. But enough good reasons remain to hold this bleak possibility open as worth considering in each case. So far, it seems official investigations have never considered it for any cases.

Circular Reasoning in Official Investigations

The official investigations so far, like that of the UN and OPCW, are deeply flawed and may be incapable of reaching the truth of the matter, blinded as they are by an obvious institutional bias against the Syrian government. Consider February 2 report of the UN headquarters Commission of Inquiry (CoI), with the central error among many plainly on display:

Point 52 notes “allegations of improvised chlorine bombs dropped from helicopters.” No reason is given to believe or disbelieve the allegations. They decide attacks did happen, note there’s no evidence implicating Russian forces, and leap straight to this: “Given that the incidents reported were all the result of air-delivered bombs,” (an unsupported premise) “it is concluded that these attacks were carried out by Syrian air forces.” [52] In other words, because they chose to believe the opposition claims, they blamed the government. And while they don’t explain why they made that choice, it almost seems it was simply because they wanted to blame the government.

In case they need another reason, the CoI also notes “the use of chlorine by Syrian forces follows a pattern observed in 2014 and 2015.” [53] But analysis suggests these were based on the same kind of faith-based reasoning; it was said the killer gas came from a helicopter, and that was accepted without proof. [54] Now with this easy “finding” following on the others, it should be easier yet for them to repeat themselves again and pin the blame for another year’s worth of alleged drops in some 2018 report. Clearly, a process like this runs serious risk of becoming meaningless.

Power, Jerking “Tears” for “Justice,” Behind Closed Doors

Having reviewed, in part 1, the devastating evidence from Sarmin in 2015, let’s now reconsider a scene at United Nations using the video of that apparent terrorist crime. Prof Marcello Ferrada de Noli, chairman of Swedish Doctors for Human Rights (SWEDHR), describes this briefing as “theatre of the macabre.” [55] Not to make light of the gruesome reality captured in those videos, but it’s also theater of the absurd.

Human Rights Watch had just called for action by the UNSC over the unfounded chlorine claims on April 13, 2015. [56] In a supposed coincidence, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Samantha Power, called an unannounced closed-door session on April 16, to raise the chlorine charges again on the one-month anniversary of the killing of the Taleb family.

As AP reporter Matt Lee explained, the briefing was held “behind closed doors of the UN Censorship Alliance,” using the special “Arria formula” rules. There was no UN TV coverage, and it was “not be listed in the UN Journal or even on the blue electronic signs outside,” which advertised a meeting about “nutrition.” Lee pointed out that shady information operations have been sneaked into the UN using these rules before, suggesting this one was similar. [57]

For this presentation, ambassador Power had Dr. Mohamed Tennari tell his story again and show the same video footage so thoroughly analyzed recently. Afterwards, ambassador power talked to reporters gathered outside, saying this meeting moved everyone to tears, and underscored how the “long arm of justice” was “taking more time than any of us would wish right now.” In the BBC video she can be seen striking a firm pose, with eyes that are just toughening after the tears, as she channels the gravity of the demands of justice. [57]

Theatrics and presentation matter in achieving such an emotional reaction, but the only real evidence involved was that video. And as we now know, that video excludes the presenter and proves him unreliable, proves chlorine didn’t kill those babies, and suggests secret murder by the Islamists Dr. Tennari insists on covering for. This was the basis for ambassador Power’s triumphant blow to the “regime.” I alerted her to our early findings right away on Twitter, but apparently she didn’t notice, and maintained this pose. [58] It’s quite likely she already knew it was a fraud and just didn’t care.

Whatever was supposed to be so different about the Trump administration, it doesn’t seem to apply in this area. New ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley seems to feel that “to be concerned about chemical weapons use,” one must push further sanctions Syria, as she complained about a blocked resolution to that effect on February 28. [59]

True to form, HRW had just urged Russia not to block the resolution, calling on their slanted findings. [58] But Russia did block it, along with China and Bolivia. As the deputy Russian Ambassador to the UN explained,

“the problem” was a politicized process, with findings based on “dubious information submitted by the armed opposition, international NGOs sympathetic to it, the media and so-called ‘Friends of Syria’.” [60]

That seems to be a correct assessment; so far, the trusted authorities have consistently failed to even begin the process of an honest investigation. Instead, it seems they have spent all their energy reverse-engineering politically expedient reasons to keep on punishing the enemy nation and, hence, the people of Syria.

But that’s still an incomplete picture. The dubious or untrue stories Syria is to be “held to account” over seem to conceal genuine crimes, the authors of which remain free and unindicted by the U.S.-led “world community.” In fact they would have been rewarded for their use of banned chemicals and banned methods, as the crimes are being systematically blamed on the shared enemy in Damascus, maintaining the moral basis of supporting the armed insurgency. And the supposed watchdogs at the UN and OPCW, naturally, seem hard-wired to not receive this big picture and acknowledge the immense crimes they may have been party to all this time. Until something in this picture changes, we’re locked on course for more of the same.

Adam Larson is an independent investigator in Spokane, Washington, United States. He studied history at Eastern Washington University. He has since 2011, on a volunteer basis, studied events in Libya, Syria, and Ukraine following Western-backed regime-change operations, often under the screen name Caustic Logic. Using open sources, with an emphasis on video analysis, Mr. Larson and research associates have often deconstructed or disproved alleged “regime” crimes from shooting protesters to sectarian massacres. He’s the co-founder of Citizen’s Investigation into War crimes in Libya (and Syria, Ukraine, and beyond – CIWCL-SUB – website), a core member of the wiki-format research site A Closer Look On Syria, and runs the site Monitor on Massacre Marketing. He can be contacted at [email protected].

Notes and References

[1] http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2017/03/syria-chlorine-allegations-march-25.html

[2] submission to OPCW, Aug. 24, 2015, via follow-up article a year later: http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2016/08/terrible-flaws-in-opcws-syria-chlorine.html

letter to diplomats March 3, 2017 (PDF, 14 pages) http://ciwclibya.org/reports/achallengetochlorineclaims.html

[3] ACLOS: Dec 22, and Dec Seizures post (Daraya, December 22, 2012, 7 soldiers reported killed by apparent chlorine attack (ACLOS http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Alleged_Chemical_Attack,_December_22,_2012 ), coincidentally not long after Jabhat al-Nusra took over Syria’s only chlorine plant across the country on Dec. 6.

[4] http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Alleged_Chemical_Attack,_August_2,_2016#Fatalities

[5] see 1

[6] all CW incidents table: http://ciwclibya.org/images/Red_Flags_Across_the_Red_Line_final_3-3-17.pdf

[7] the precursors are potassium permanganate and hydrochloric acid – http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2016/738 page 80 – this claim was quite likely lodged by Bristish CW expert Hamish De Bretton-Gordon, whose role in the Syria CW saga is explored here:   http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Talk:British_involvement_in_Syria#British_MI6_operation

[8] http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/File:OPCW-20151029-Barrel-bomb-graph.jpg – http://www.the-trench.org/idlib-chlorine-attacks-2015/

[9] http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Tekkim_Chemical_Test_Video#The_Poison_Used

[10] http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2017/02/does-chlorine-make-you-pass-out.html

[11] http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Alleged_Chemical_Attack,_March_16,_2015 (most material still on talk page)

[12] Un CoI: “A ballistic expert analysis supports the statement of the witnesses, improbable as it sounds, that the device impacted through the ventilation shaft,” after falling from a helicopter. After rolling of a ramp right to the shaft, it might make perfect sense, but the “witnesses” didn’t claim that. http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2016/738

[13] http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Talk:Alleged_Chemical_Attack,_March_16,_2015#Attack_Site_Video and http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Talk:Alleged_Chemical_Attack,_March_16,_2015#Taleb_Home

[14] http://21stcenturywire.com/2017/03/20/white-helmets-are-dead-children-being-used-as-props-for-propaganda-videos/ and note تنسيقية سرمين = tansiqiat saramin = Coordinating Sarmin (youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/SarmeenFree )

[15] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N84aC1z0bjw By the Syrian Civil Defense in Idlib Governorate

[16] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6c6A1Qnbbw By Mohamed Fadel

[17] http://theindicter.com/white-helmets-movie-updated-evidence-from-swedish-doctors-confirm-fake-lifesaving-and-malpractices-on-children/

[18] http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Talk:Alleged_Chemical_Attack,_March_16,_2015#Clinic_Video_Analysis

[19] AJE, 23 March, 2017 http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/03/chlorine-gas-weapon-syria-civil-war-170314110043637.html

[20] see 16

[21] http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Talk:Alleged_Chemical_Attack,_March_16,_2015#Correlating_Symptoms – http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2015/04/what-killed-talebs.html

[22] http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Talk:Alleged_Chemical_Attack,_March_16,_2015#Victims_Before

[23] The OPCW reported in one spot how the parents and the youngest child escaped the house and got help for the others, before they all died from their varying exposure. http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2016/738 page 84) Elsewhere, the parents “and the oldest (male) child managed to escape to the open air” (emphasis mine) while “the interviewees confirmed that the grandmother and the two daughters,” who remained trapped for over 30 minutes, “were dead on arrival at the hospital.” ( http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/s_2015_908.pdf )

[24] for example, Amnesty International: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/03/syria-war-crime-chlorine-gas-attack/

[25] http://www.msf.org.uk/article/syria-chlorine-attack-on-idlib-village

[26] http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2016/09/syria-chlorine-part-6a-site-correlation.html

[27] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/17/world/middleeast/un-security-council-sees-video-evidence-of-a-chemical-attack-in-syria.html?_r=0

[28] http://docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA00/20150617/103638/HHRG-114-FA00-Wstate-TennariM-20150617.pdf

[29] see 19

[30] http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2015/06/syria-chlorine-allegations-where-was-dr.html – (he says chlorine fumes coming off the stripped and washed children made his eyes burn and made a nurse faint – but chlorine is not known to cause secondary exposure, nor, as noted, to cause fainting even in primary exposure)

[31] Ibid.

Adam Larson is an open-source investigator in Spokane, Washington, United States. He studied history at Eastern Washington University. He has since 2011, on a volunteer basis, studied events in Libya, Syria, and Ukraine following Western-backed regime-change operations, often under the screen name Caustic Logic. Using open sources, with an emphasis on video analysis, Mr. Larson and research associates have often deconstructed or disproved alleged “regime” crimes from shooting protesters to sectarian massacres. He’s the co-founder of Citizen’s Investigation into War crimes in Libya (and Syria, Ukraine, and beyond – CIWCL-SUB – website), core member of the wiki-format research site A Closer Look On Syria, and runs the site Monitor on Massacre Marketing. He can be contacted at [email protected].

[32] https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/02/13/syria-coordinated-chemical-attacks-aleppo

[33] http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/03/chlorine-gas-weapon-syria-civil-war-170314110043637.html

[34] http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2017/02/assessing-hrws-latest-chlorine-report.html

[35] ibid.

[36] ibid.

[37] see 32

[38] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-idUSKBN13F0HS

[39] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYykubHIDJU

[40] http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/20/middleeast/syria-aleppo-airstrikes/index.html

[41] Essay (Arabic): http://www.qenshrin.com/details.php?id=32742#.WKhRbX-rH-s – St. George’s Church on Wikimapia, near but not in present Assyrian district: http://wikimapia.org/#lang=en&lat=36.213526&lon=37.154531&z=18&m=b – Further analysis suggests the word Baytounji is used only in and around Syria (meaning concrete mason), so as a name it will be at least as local. http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Talk:Alleged_Chemical_Attacks_in_Aleppo,_November_and_December,_2016#Family_Name

[42] http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2017/02/syria-chlorine-allegations-baytounji.html

[43] Ibid.

[44] Ibid.

[45] https://syrianarchive.org/database/37666/

[46] http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Talk:Alleged_Chemical_Attack,_March_16,_2015#Qaaq

[47] http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2015/07/syria-chlorine-allegations-2014-attacks.html

[48] http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Maan_Massacre,_2014 – http://www.syrianews.cc/happened-maan-two-massacres/

[49] see 47

[50] http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2015/05/syria-ghouta-massacres-visual-evidence.html

[51] No single citation covers this pattern, but see for some good examples of fairly undeniable cases of a reported regime crime seemingly carried out on gender-segregated captives: The 2012 Khalidiya Massacre in Homs, and the 2016 Hayan missile massacre near Aleppo – http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Khalidiya_Massacre – http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Hayan_missile_massacre,_August_12,_2016

[52] A/HRC/34/64, of 2 February, 2017, point 52. https://admin.govexec.com/media/un_aleppo_march1.pdf

[53] Ibid.

[54] http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2016/08/terrible-flaws-in-opcws-syria-chlorine.html

[55] http://theindicter.com/swedish-doctors-for-human-rights-white-helmets-video-macabre-manipulation-of-dead-children-and-staged-chemical-weapons-attack-to-justify-a-no-fly-zone-in-syria/

[56] https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/04/13/syria-chemicals-used-idlib-attacks

[57] http://www.innercitypress.com/syria1misturaunca041615.html

[58] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32346790http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/17/world/middleeast/un-security-council-sees-video-evidence-of-a-chemical-attack-in-syria.html?_r=0

[59] https://twitter.com/CL4Syr/status/589004961628889088

[60] https://usun.state.gov/remarks/7691

[61] Russia: Don’t Veto Sanctions for Syria Chemical Attacks. Human Rights Watch, February 27, 2017 https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/02/27/russia-dont-veto-sanctions-syria-chemical-attacks

[62] https://www.rt.com/news/378930-russia-china-un-veto-syria/

Phil Murphy, the leading Democratic candidate for governor of New Jersey, has made a state-owned bank a centerpiece of his campaign. He says the New Jersey bank would “take money out of Wall Street and put it to work for New Jersey – creating jobs and growing the economy [by] using state deposits to finance local investments … and … support billions of dollars of critical investments in infrastructure, small businesses, and student loans – saving our residents money and returning all profits to the taxpayers.”

A former Wall Street banker himself, Murphy knows how banking works. But in an April 7 op-ed in The New Jersey Spotlight, former New Jersey state treasurer Andrew Sidamon-Eristoff questioned the need for a state-owned bank and raised the issue of risk. This post is in response to those arguments, including a short refresher on the stellar model of the Bank of North Dakota (BND), currently the nation’s only state-owned depository bank.

Which Is Safer, a Public Bank or a Private Bank?

Sidamon-Eristoff warns,

“[W]e need to remember that a public bank would be lending the state’s operating cash balances – we’re not talking about an enormous pool of unused, unencumbered cash – and that any repayment shortfalls or liquidity restrictions could potentially impact the availability of funds for employee salaries and other regular operating expenses.”

As the Bank of England recently confirmed, however, banks do not actually lend their deposits. The deposits at all times remain in the bank, available for withdrawal. They are no less available to the state when deposited in its own bank than in Bank of America. In fact, they are more at risk in Bank of America and other Wall Street banks, which with the repeal of Glass-Steagall are allowed to commingle their funds. That means they can gamble with their deposits in derivatives and other risky ventures, something a transparent and accountable state-owned bank would not be allowed to do.

Today, government deposits are at risk in private banks for another reason. Banks across the country are telling governments of all sizes that they can no longer provide the collateral required to fully protect these deposits while paying a competitive interest rate on them, due to heightened regulatory requirements. FDIC insurance covers only the first $250,000 of these deposits, a sum government revenues far exceed. The bulk of these deposits are thus left insufficiently protected against a banking collapse like that seen in 2008-09—something that is widely predicted to happen again.

In North Dakota, by contrast, state revenues are deposited by law in the state-owned Bank of North Dakota and are guaranteed by the state. The BND pays a competitive interest rate on these deposits that is generally at about the midpoint of rates paid by other banks in the state. The BND, in turn, guarantees municipal government deposits, which are generally reserved for local banks. Unlike in other states, where local banks must back public deposits with collateral to an extent that makes the funds largely unavailable for lending, North Dakota’s community banks are able to use their municipal government deposits to back loans because the BND provides letters of credit guaranteeing them.

The concern that a New Jersey state-owned bank might make risky loans can be obviated by limiting lending, at least initially, to the same sorts of loans the state makes now, using the same underwriting standards. Sidamon-Eristoff observes that

“the state already maintains a comprehensive range of economic development, infrastructure finance, housing finance, and student assistance programs.”

What financing through the state’s own bank would add is leverage. State and local governments routinely make loans through revolving funds, in which the money has to be there before it can be lent out and must come back before it is lent again. Chartered depository banks are allowed to leverage their capital into 10 times that sum (or more) in loans, acquiring the liquidity for withdrawals as needed from the wholesale markets (Fed funds, the repo market or the Federal Home Loan Banks). A bank with adequate capital will lend to any creditworthy borrower, without first checking its deposits or its reserves.  If the bank has insufficient reserves, it can borrow from a variety of cheap sources that are normally the exclusive province of the banking club, but that local governments and communities can tap into by owning their own banks.

That is one of the major benefits to the state of having its own bank: it can borrow very cheaply in the money markets. It can get the sort of Wall Street perks not otherwise available to governments, businesses, or individuals; and it is backstopped by the Federal Reserve system if it runs short of funds. This is the magic that allows banks to be so profitable, and it is what makes a publicly-owned bank exceptionally useful at state and local levels of government.

Cutting the Cost of Infrastructure in Half

Consider the possibilities, for example, for funding infrastructure. Like most states today, New Jersey suffers from serious budget problems, limiting its ability to make needed improvements. By funding infrastructure through its own bank, the state can cut infrastructure costs roughly in half, since 50 percent of the cost of infrastructure, on average, is financing. Again, a state-owned bank can do this by leveraging its capital, with any shortfall covered very cheaply in the wholesale markets. In effect, the state can borrow at bankers’ rates of 1 percent or less, rather than at market rates of 4 to 6 percent for taxable infrastructure bonds (not to mention the roughly 12 percent return expected by private equity investors).  The state can borrow at 1 percent and turn a profit even if it lends for local development at only 2 percent—one-half to two-thirds below bond market rates.

That is the rate at which North Dakota lends for infrastructure. In 2015, the state legislature established a BND Infrastructure Loan Fund program that made $150 million available to local communities for a wide variety of infrastructure needs. These loans have a 2 percent fixed interest rate and a term of up to 30 years; and the 2 percent goes back to the State of North Dakota, so it’s a win-win-win for local residents.

The BND is able to make these cheap loans while still turning a tidy profit because its costs are very low: no exorbitantly-paid executives; no bonuses, fees, or commissions; very low borrowing costs; no need for multiple branch offices; no FDIC insurance premiums; no private shareholders. Profits are recycled back into the bank, the state and the community.

In November 2014, The Wall Street Journal reported that the BND was actually more profitable than the largest Wall Street banks, with a return on equity that was 70 percent greater than for JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs. This remarkable performance was attributed to the state’s oil boom; but the boom has now become an oil bust, yet the BND’s profits continue to climb. In its latest annual report, published in April 2016, the bank boasted its most profitable year ever. The BND has had record profits for the last 12 years, each year outperforming the last. In 2015 it reported $130.7 million in earnings, total assets of $7.4 billion, capital of $749 million, and a return on equity of a whopping 18.1 percent.

The BND Partners, Not Competes, with Local Banks

Sidamon-Eristoff argues that “a new public bank would inevitably compete against New Jersey’s private banks for routine business.” But the BND does not compete with private banks either for municipal deposits or for loans. Rather, it partners with local banks, participating in their loans. The local bank acts as the front office dealing directly with customers. The BND acts more like a “bankers’ bank,” helping with liquidity and capital requirements. By partnering with the BND, local banks can take on projects in which Wall Street has no interest, projects that might otherwise go unfunded, including loans for local infrastructure.

The BND helps local private banks in other ways. It acts as a mini-Fed for the state, providing correspondent banking services to virtually every financial institution in North Dakota. It offers secured and unsecured federal funds lines to over 100 financial institutions, along with check-clearing, cash management and automated clearing house services.  Because it assists local banks with mortgages and guarantees their loans, local banks have been able to keep loans on their books rather than selling them to investors to meet capital requirements, allowing them to avoid the subprime and securitization debacles.

Due to this amicable relationship, the North Dakota Bankers’ Association endorses the BND as a partner rather than a competitor of the state’s private banks.  Indeed, it may be the BND that ultimately saves local North Dakota banks from extinction as the number of banks in the US steadily shrinks. North Dakota has more banks per capita than any other state.

Bolstering the State’s Budget

The BND also helps directly with state government funding as needed. Between 2009 and 2016, the BND retained its profits because the state did not need them and the bank needed the additional capital for its rapidly expanding loan portfolio. But in December 2016, Governor Jack Dalrymple proposed returning $200 million from the bank’s profits to the state’s general fund, to help make up for a budget shortfall caused by collapsing oil and soybean proceeds. Dalrymple commented,

“Our economic advisers have told us there is no similar state in the nation that could have weathered such a collapse in commodity prices without serious impacts on their financial condition.”

The BND also served as a rainy day fund when the state went over-budget in 2001-02 due to the dot-com bust. The bank simply declared an extra dividend for the state, and the next year the budget was back on track: no massive debt accumulation, no Wall Street bid-rigging, no fraudulent interest-rate swaps, no capital appreciation bonds at 300% interest.

Having a cheap and ready credit line with the state’s own bank can have similar benefits for New Jersey and other states. It can reduce the need for wasteful rainy-day funds invested at minimal interest in out-of-state banks; allow the state to leverage its funds, expanding its current credit facilities without adding to the state’s debt burden; cut infrastructure costs nearly in half; and jumpstart the economy with new development,  new employment, and an expanded tax base.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, a Senior Fellow of the Democracy Collaborative., and author of twelve books including Web of Debt and The Public Bank Solution. She also co-hosts a radio program on PRN.FM called “It’s Our Money.” Her 300+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com.

The Gassing Game in Syria: Regime Change and Beyond

By Chandra Muzaffar, April 11, 2017

US-Russia ties are not the only issue adversely impacted by the US’s 7^th April bombardment. If the US escalates its military involvement, it will have far-reaching consequences for the on-going conflict in Syria, politics in WANA and global peace in general.

The “Chemical Attack” and the Khan Sheikoun Show – A New President Proudly Presented By “Trump Productions”

By Moon of Alabama, April 10, 2017

The whole show was designed to let Trump look strong and presidential and to get rid of the “Russia Gate” nonsense the neocons ran against him. The prospect of stopping those attacks was an offer he could not refuse.

Washington’s False Flag: United Nations Confirmed that US Supported Syrian “Rebels” Were Using Chemical Weapons

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 08, 2017

Both Trump and Obama have blood on their hands. The Chemical Weapons Attack is being used as a “False Flag”, a pretext and a justification to wage an illegal war of aggression.

Deleted Daily Mail Online Article: “US Backed Plan for Chemical Weapon Attack in Syria to Be Blamed on Assad”

By truthnewsinternational, April 07, 2017

Yet it’s ironic that Mail Online did not delete their other article where they wrote about the UN’s Carla Del Ponte who claims that Syrian rebels are responsible for “sarin gas attacks, which had been blamed on Assad’s troops.” The same rebels who now receive resources from the EU and the U.S., since the EU is buying oil from those “rebels” and the US is arming them for a proxy war as the Washington Post describes it.

Pentagon Trained Syria’s Al Qaeda “Rebels” in the Use of Chemical Weapons

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 07, 2017

Not only do they confirm that the Pentagon has been training the terrorists in the use of chemical weapons, they also acknowledge the existence of a not so secret “US-backed plan to launch a chemical weapon attack on Syria and blame it on Assad’s regime”.

The Syria Chemical Weapons Saga: The Staging of a US-NATO Sponsored Humanitarian Disaster

               By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 06, 2017

While Washington  continues to point its finger at president Bashar al Assad, a United Nations independent commission of inquiry confirmed as early as May 2013 that the rebels rather than the government have chemical weapons in their possession and were using sarin nerve gas against the civilian population.

Syria: The Truth Behind the Idleb Chemical Attack: Chemical Weapons Were Stored and Possessed by Terrorist Groups

By Fort Russ, April 06, 2017

Yesterday, reports came about a chemical weapons attack in the Syrian village of Khan Sheikhoun, located in Syria’s Idleb province. Almost 60 people, many of them children, were said to have been killed by the poisonous substances that were dropped during air raids on the village. Despite no evidence and the fact that no raids were conducted on Khan Sheikhoun, the Islamist and corporate press accused the Syrian and Russian side to be behind the incident. The two have since denied and debunked the accusations.

The East Ghouta Chemical Attacks (2013): US-Backed False Flag? Killing Syrian Children to Justify a “Humanitarian” Military Intervention

By Julie Lévesque and Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 06, 2017

To date, available evidence indicates that numerous children were killed by “opposition rebels”, their bodies manipulated and filmed with a view to blaming the Syrian government for the attacks, thus sparking outrage and galvanizing worldwide public opinion in favor of another bloody, imperial US-led war.

Reviving the ‘Chemical Weapons’ Lie: New US-UK Calls for Regime Change, Military Attack Against Syria

By Patrick Henningsen, April 05, 2017

As expected, the UN affiliated chemical weapons watchdog, the OPCW, quickly announced they were “seriously concerned” about the alleged chemical attack, and that they were now “gathering and analysing information from all available sources”. One hopes that this will entail more than just looking at ‘activist’ or White Helmets material being circulated on the US and western media.

Hillary Clinton Approved Delivering Libya’s Sarin Gas to Syrian Rebels: Seymour Hersh

By Eric Zuesse, May 01, 2016

Hersh said that a secret agreement in 2012 was reached between the Obama Administration and the leaders of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, to set up a sarin gas attack and blame it on Assad so that the US could invade and overthrow Assad. «By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria».

Dopo l’attacco missilistico Usa alla Siria, il ministro degli esteri Alfano ha dichiarato che l’Italia è preoccupata della «sicurezza e stabilità della regione mediterranea». In che modo vi contribuisce lo dimostrano i fatti.

Le due navi da guerra statunitensi, la USS Porter e la USS Ross, che hanno attaccato la base siriana di Shayrat, fanno parte della Sesta Flotta la cui base principale è a Gaeta in Lazio. La Sesta Flotta dipende dal Comando delle forze navali Usa in Europa, il cui quartier generale è a Napoli-Capodichino. Il Comando, che ha diretto da Napoli l’attacco deciso dal presidente Trump, è agli ordini dell’ammiraglia Michelle Howard, la quale comanda allo stesso tempo la Forza congiunta della Nato con quartier generale a Lago Patria (Napoli). L’operazione bellica è stata appoggiata dalle basi Usa in Sicilia: quella aeronavale di Sigonella e la stazione di Niscemi del sistema Muos di trasmissioni navali, affiancate dalla base di Augusta dove le navi della Sesta Flotta e quelle Nato vengono rifornite di carburante e munizioni, compresi missili da crociera Tomahawk, gli stessi usati contro la Siria.

La USS Porter e la USS Ross sono dotate di lanciatori verticali Aegis con missili intercettori, installati anche nella base terrestre di Deveselu in Romania e in un’altra che si sta costruendo in Polonia. Fanno parte del cosiddetto «scudo antimissili» schierato dagli Usa in Europa in funzione anti-Russia. Ma i lanciatori Aegis – documenta la stessa Lockheed Martin che li costruisce – possono lanciare «missili per tutte le missioni, tra cui missili da crociera Tomahawk». Questi possono essere armati anche di testate nucleari. Le quattro navi lanciamissili Aegis, dislocate nella base spagnola di Rota sull’Atlantico, vengono inviate a rotazione dal Comando di Napoli nel Baltico e Mar Nero a ridosso della Russia. La USS Porter aveva partecipato a una esercitazione nel Mar Nero, prima dell’attacco alla Siria. Il ministro Alfano l’ha definito «azione militare proporzionata nei tempi e nei modi, quale deterrenza verso ulteriori impieghi di armi chimiche da parte di Assad».

Ha quindi convocato oggi a Lucca, collateralmente al G7 esteri, «una riunione speciale per rilanciare il processo politico sulla Siria, allargata ai ministri degli esteri di Arabia Saudita, Emirati Arabi, Qatar, Turchia e Giordania», ossia quei paesi che, nel quadro di una rete internazionale organizzata dalla Cia, hanno fornito miliardi di dollari, armi, basi di addestramento e vie di transito ai gruppi terroristi, compreso l’Isis, che da anni attaccano la Siria dall’interno.

Proprio mentre stava fallendo tale operazione, cui l’Italia partecipa tramite gli «Amici della Siria», e si stava per aprire un negoziato per mettere fine alla guerra, il governo siriano è stato accusato di aver fatto strage di civili, compresi molti bambini, con un deliberato attacco chimico.

Un’ampia documentazione – riportata dal Prof. Michel Chossudovsky nel sito GlobalResearch – dimostra invece che è stato il Pentagono, a partire dal 2012, a fornire tramite contractor armi chimiche e relativo addestramento a gruppi terroristi in Siria. Questi le hanno usate, come ha provato nel 2013 la Commissione d’inchiesta Onu guidata da Carla Del Ponte.

Prove ignorate dall’Italia che, per «rilanciare il processo politico sulla Siria», convoca coloro che sono più impegnati a demolire lo Stato siriano attaccandolo dall’interno. Mentre l’ammiraglia Howard, dopo aver diretto dal quartier generale di Napoli – ponte di comando della portaerei Italia – l’attacco missilistico alla Siria, lo definisce «esempio della nostra forza e capacità di proiettare potenza in tutto il globo».

Manlio Dinucci

Ms. Yayoi Segi is based in Beirut, Lebanon, and she has worked in Syria for almost 3 years. She is extremely passionate about the country, which she admires and tries to support in her position as an accomplished specialist in national education development.

She agreed to share her collection of personal photos from Damascus, Homs and Aleppo.

I asked about her impressions regarding Syria and its people, and she replied, frankly:

“Syria is not what the mainstream media wants us to believe it is. One has to see it, to understand. Seeing is believing! It is an extraordinarily exceptional country. All that we have been told about Syria and its people is a lie.”

And what is the war doing to the country?

“The war… it is devastating the country. Life is of course tough now, but it never stopped; it definitely goes on. Electricity is cut often and water supplies are limited, but still life goes on. People endure; they even socialize. Syrians are very humble, very caring, warm and gentle people. They like to joke. They believe in their nation, in themselves; they are truly remarkable.”

Yayoi has been literally dedicating her life to the Syrian nation. She is ‘building schools’ there, and she is defending the nation whenever she goes. She is drawn to the Syrian people and she admits that she is philosophically close to them. She says:

“It is extremely important, what goes on in Syria, especially on the ideological front in highly politicized field of education, because ideology shapes education, and vice versa.”

“Even in the time of crises that was implanted from outside, the Syrian people still maintain tremendous sense of solidarity towards those whose lives have been shattered for decades, mainly Palestinians.”

She recounts her practical experience, which clearly illustrates the big heart of the Syrians:

“In Damascus, there is a waiter working in my favorite teashop. He is a Palestinian refugee who has been living in Damascus for a very long time. Every time I meet him, he gives me the most beautiful smile. I ask him how is he doing? And he says, “Alhamdulillah, all is fine”. He has three kids, all have enough to eat, and all are going to school, thanks to the help from the Syrian people.”

All this is happening despite the war.

Ms. Segi is greatly impressed by how educated and confident the nation is:

“Syrians are the most hospitable, gentle people. When we meet, we never talk about the war, the conflict. It is a tremendous civilization… They always talk about their life, the future. They discuss their poets and their thinkers.People in Syria are very well educated. They know what is going on, on our Planet. Despite what some parts of the world have done to them, they are extremely respectful and polite to everybody. I never heard them speaking ill of others. They appreciate that you come and work with them, and they are confident.”

Foreigners, some foreign organizations and certain powerful countries are often bossing around Syria. As if terrible damage done by the outsiders would not be enough. Ms. Segi is enraged about this fact:

“There have been so many seminars, conferences and meetings on Syria, yet the Syrian people are very rarely invited. All these events are ‘about them’ but without even inviting them, and without listening to them.” 

But Syria is standing, and in the field of education, as in the several other fields, it is progressing and even improving, despite the hardship and devastation that is injuring this proud nation. Ms. Segi recalls:

“Once the Minister of Education told me: ‘we are not some nation of beggars. We never beg!’ The Minister and three other top educationalists are true intellectuals, and all of them were educated in the former Soviet Union and the Eastern block countries.”

“On the education front, the system was one of the best in the region, before the crisis began. Now, despite more than 6 years of horrendous war, the system is still standing and strong. Syrians know exactly what they want, and they have the capacity to implement their aspirations. Like in Aleppo; after the victory, the government immediately moved in and began opening schools.”

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All photos by Yayoi Segi

***

Yayoi Segi is a Japanese education policy and planning specialist with close to 20 years of international experience working for a multilateral organization. Since 2014, Yayoi has been involved in education sector humanitarian and development work, in the Arab region with focus on Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.

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. 

With a critical public increasingly turning to social media to scrutinize the claims of the mainstream as well as the credibility of the assertions made by the various NGOs and government-funded human rights organisations, it’s arguably becoming more difficult for the corporate press to pass their propaganda off as legitimate news.

This is particularly the case during periods when the establishment pushes for military conflicts. One salutary lesson from the Iraq debacle, is that the public appear not to be so readily fooled. Or are they?

It’s a measure of the extent to which the mass media barely stray from their paymasters tune, that president Trump, with near-unanimous journalistic support, was able to launch an illegal missile strike on Syria on April 7, 2017. Cathy Newman on yesterday evenings Channel 4 News (April 10, 2017) stated that the attack on the al-Shayrat airbase was in “retaliation” for an alleged sarin gas attack by president Assad. However, for the reasons outlined below, such a scenario seems highly unlikely.

New York Times reporter, Michael B Gordon, who co-authored that papers infamous fake aluminum tube story of September 8, 2002 as part of the media’s propaganda offensive leading up to the 2003 U.S-led Iraq invasion, published (along with co-author Anne Barnard), the latest chemical weapons fake news story intended to fit with the establishment narrative on Syria.

Lack of skepticism

Showing no skepticism that the Syrian military was responsible for intentionally deploying poison gas, the authors cited the widely discredited $100m-funded terrorist-enablers, the White Helmets, as the basis for their story. Meanwhile, the doyen of neocon drum-beating war propaganda in Britain, Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian, wrote a day after the alleged attack:

“We almost certainly know who did it. Every sign points to the regime of Bashar al-Assad.” What these ‘signs’ are were not specified in the article.

Even the usually cautious Guardian journalist George Monbiot appears to be eager for military action. On Twitter (April 7, 2017) Monbiot claimed:

“We can be 99% sure the chemical weapons attack came from Syrian govt.”

Three days later, media analysts Media Lens challenged Monbiot by citing the views of former UN weapons inspectors, Hans Blix and Scott Ritter, both of whom contradicted Monbiot’s assertion.

“What do you know that Hans Blix and Scott Ritter don’t know?”, inquired the analysts. Monbiot failed to reply.

Apparently it hadn’t occurred to these, and practically all the other mainstream journalists (with the notable exception of Peter Oborne and Peter Hitchens), that Assad’s motive for undertaking such an attack was weak. As investigative reporter Robert Parry, who broke many of the Iran-Contra stories, argued:

“Since Assad’s forces have gained a decisive upper-hand over the rebels, why would he risk stirring up international outrage at this juncture? On the other hand, the desperate rebels might view the horrific scenes from the chemical-weapons deployment as a last-minute game-changer.”

A second major inconsistency in the official narrative are the contradictory claims relating to the sarin issue. Charles Shoebridge referred to a Guardian article that claims sarin was used, but he counters the claim by stating: “Yet, a rescuer tells its reporter “we could smell it 500m away”. The intelligence and terrorism expert was quick to point out that sarin is odorless (unless contaminated). As blogger Mark J Doran astutely remarked:

“Now, who is going be stuck with lousy, impure sarin? A nation state or a terrorist group?”

Dodgy ‘doctor’

Then there has been the willingness of the media to cite what is clearly an incredulous source, ‘British doctor’, Shajul Islam. Despite  having been struck off the British medical register for misconduct in March 2016, the media have quoted or shown Islam in their reports where he has been depicted as a key witness to the alleged gas attack and hence helped augment the unsubstantiated media narrative. In 2012 Shajul Islam was charged with terror offences in a British court.

Peter Hitchens takes up the story:

“He was accused of imprisoning John Cantlie, a British photographer, and a Dutchman, Jeroen Oerlemans. Both men were held by a militant group in Syria and both were wounded when they tried to escape. Shajul Islam, it was alleged, was among their captors. Shajul Islam’s trial collapsed in 2013, when it was revealed that Mr Cantlie had been abducted once again, and could not give evidence.

Mr Oerlemans refused to give evidence for fear that it would further endanger Mr Cantlie. Mr Oerlemans has since been killed in Libya. So the supposedly benevolent medical man at the scene of the alleged atrocity turns out to be a struck-off doctor who was once put on trial for kidnapping.”

Fourth, there is the question as to why the U.S would launch a military strike in the knowledge that it would risk further sarin leaks into the atmosphere. As the writer and musician, Gilad Atzmon, argues:

“It doesn’t take a military analyst to grasp that the American attack on a remote Syrian airfield contradicts every possible military rationale. If America really believed that Assad possessed a WMD stockpile and kept it in al-Shayrat airbase, launching a missile attack that could lead to a release of lethal agents into the air would be the last thing it would do. If America was determined to ‘neutralise’ Assad’s alleged ‘WMD ability’ it would deploy special forces or diplomacy. No one defuses WMD with explosives, bombs or cruise missiles. It is simply unheard of.”

Atzmon adds:

“The first concern that comes to mind is why do you need a saxophonist to deliver the truth every military expert understands very well? Can’t the New York Times or the Guardian reach the same obvious conclusion? It’s obvious enough that if Assad didn’t use WMD when he was losing the war, it would make no sense for him to use it now when a victory is within reach.”

Logical explanation

A far more logical explanation, given the location, is that chemicals were released into the air by Salafist terrorists. The location of the alleged attack is an al-Qaeda-affiliated controlled area in Idlib province. It is from here that the Western-funded White Helmets operate. Rather conveniently, they were soon at the scene of the alleged attack without the necessary protective clothing being filmed hosing down victims.

As these are the kinds of people who cut out and eat human organs as well as decapitate heads, they are unlikely to have any compunction in desisting from an opportunity to use Syrian civilians, including children and women, as a form of ‘war porn propaganda’ in order to garner public sympathy as the pretext for Western intervention.

Syrian-based journalist, Tom Dugan, who has been living in the country for the last four years, claims no gas attack happened. Rather, he asserts that the Syrian air force destroyed a terrorist-owned and controlled chemical weapons factory mistaking it for an ammunition dump, and “the chemicals spilled out.” This seems to be the most plausible explanation.

Mr Dugan’s version is markedly similar to the analysis of former DIA colonel, Patrick Lang Donald who, on April 7, 2017 said:

“Trump’s decision to launch cruise missile strikes on a Syrian Air Force Base was based on a lie. In the coming days the American people will learn that the Intelligence Community knew that Syria did not drop a military chemical weapon on innocent civilians in Idlib. Here is what happened:

1. The Russians briefed the United States on the proposed target. This is a process that started more than two months ago. There is a dedicated phone line that is being used to coordinate and deconflict (i.e., prevent US and Russian air assets from shooting at each other) the upcoming operation.

2. The United States was fully briefed on the fact that there was a target in Idlib that the Russians believes was a weapons/explosives depot for Islamic rebels.

3. The Syrian Air Force hit the target with conventional weapons. All involved expected to see a massive secondary explosion. That did not happen. Instead, smoke, chemical smoke, began billowing from the site. It turns out that the Islamic rebels used that site to store chemicals, not sarin, that were deadly. The chemicals included organic phosphates and chlorine and they followed the wind and killed civilians.

4. There was a strong wind blowing that day and the cloud was driven to a nearby village and caused casualties.

5. We know it was not sarin. How? Very simple. The so-called “first responders” handled the victims without gloves. If this had been sarin they would have died. Sarin on the skin will kill you. How do I know? I went through “Live Agent” training at Fort McClellan in Alabama.

The former colonel’s testimony is extremely persuasive and exposes the media’s attempts to take at face value Pentagon propaganda. Another convincing reason to discount the official narrative, is because Assad doesn’t possess any chemical weapons. Even The Wall Street Journal, citing a Hague-based watchdog agency, conceded on June 23, 2014 that “the dangerous substances from Syria’s chemical weapons program, including sulfur mustard and precursors of sarin, have now been removed from the country after a monthlong process.”

Pattern

The alleged attack follows a recent pattern of anti-Assad stories exemplified by four similar controversial events in which the media have attempted to pass fiction off as fact. The first of these on February 13, 2017, relates to the findings of a report by Amnesty International which contends that Assad was responsible for the “execution by mass hangings” of up to 13,000 people. The alleged atrocity that evoked in the press comparisons to Nazi concentration camps, was within days criticised for its unsubstantiated and uncorroborated claims.

It should be recalled that it was Amnesty International who uncritically supported the emergence of a fake news story during the first Gulf War in which Iraqi soldiers were said to have taken scores of babies out of incubators in Kuwait City leaving them to die.

The second press release, three days after the mass-execution story aired, concerned the heart-rending case of a Syrian boy who Anne Barnard of the New York Times reported on twitter as having “his legs…cut because of attacks from Assad and Russia.”

It soon transpired, however, that the organization credited with filming the “attacks” was Revolution Syria, a pro-insurgency media outfit who also provided the videos for the equally fraudulent claim that the Russians bombed a school in Haas in October 2016. Dr Barbara McKenzie provides a detailed background to the story which can be read here.

The third piece of false reporting to have emerged, is in connection with Security Council resolution 2235 which highlights the conclusions of a August, 2015 OPCW-UN report. The said report, aimed at introducing new sanctions against Syria (which Russia and China vetoed), didn’t make the claims subsequently attributed to it in the corporate media, namely that between April, 2014 and August, 2015 the Assad government was definitively responsible for three chemical attacks using chlorine.

Security analyst Charles Shoebridge pointed out on March 1, 2017, that “most media didn’t even seem to bother reading the report”. Shoebridge confirmed that the OPCW-UN investigation contained findings that did not correspond to what the public was being told. Pointing out the reports many caveats and reservations, the analyst said the evidence “wasn’t sufficiently good to declare that Syria had dropped chlorine to a standard that could be considered “strong”, or “overwhelming”, adding that “investigators were largely reliant on reports from the White Helmets.”

Finally, independent journalist Gareth Porter inferred that U.N. investigators increasingly make their conclusions fall in line with Western propaganda after he exposed distortions contained in a March 1, 2017 report by the United Nations’ “Independent International Commission of Inquiry“ which claimed that an airstrike on a humanitarian aid convoy in the west of Aleppo City on Sept. 19, 2016, was undertaken by Syrian government planes. Porter reveals that the reports findings were based on pro-rebel Syrian White Helmets testimonies that were “full of internal contradictions.”

Extraordinarily, in March, 2016 German journalist Dr. Ulfkotte brought the lies of the mainstream out into the open by confessing live on television that he was forced to publish the works of intelligence agents under his own name, adding that noncompliance with these orders would result in him losing his job. Sharing this information in front of millions of people (reminiscent of the film Network), Ulfkotte said:

“I’ve been a journalist for about 25 years, and I was educated to lie, to betray, and not to tell the truth to the public. But seeing right now within the last months how the German and American media tries to bring war to the people in Europe, to bring war to Russia — this is a point of no return and I’m going to stand up and say it is not right what I have done in the past, to manipulate people, to make propaganda against Russia, and it is not right what my colleagues do and have done in the past because they are bribed to betray the people, not only in Germany, all over Europe.”

The inability of mainstream journalists to undertake basic fact-checking illuminated by the examples described, reinforce the veracity of Ulfkotte’s claims that corporate journalists are “educated to lie, to betray, and not to tell the truth to the public.” But more than that, it amounts to a stark admission that the corruption at the heart of the elite media and political establishment is systemic. As Mark Doran on Twitter put it: “Our corrupt politics, our international crime, and our ‘free media’ form a seamless whole.” The goal of this consolidation of power is to secure yet another middle east resource grab.

The use of chemical weapons in Sheikhun, in the Idlib province of Syria on 4^th April 2017  was a heinous act. The world has rightly condemned it.

Because it was so cruel and callous, it is vital that the truth about the attack is established as soon as possible. The United States of America and a number of its allies are certain that the attack was planned and executed by the Syrian government. 86 people, including 27 children, were killed in the carnage. The US Ambassador to the UN has shown some heart-rending images of some of the children who died from the chemical gas attack.

The Syrian authorities have denied categorically that they were responsible for the tragedy. They claim that a warehouse containing toxic materials may have been hit in the course of the Syrian army’s operations in the area thus releasing lethal gas and causing so many deaths.

Given these conflicting accounts, an independent international inquiry should be conducted to determine what really happened on the 4^th of April. The members of the panel should comprise credible experts who are not citizens of any of the five permanent member states of the UN Security Council. The UN Secretary-General should appoint the panel.

It is only after the panel’s findings are made public that action should be taken under the provisions of the UN Charter. By firing a barrage of cruise missiles at a Syrian airbase on the 7^th of April, the US has not only violated international law but has also committed aggression against a sovereign state. The US’s unilateral action has worsened the conflict in Syria.

Establishing the truth about the chemical gas episode is far more important than flexing one’s military muscle. To start with, how could the Syrian army have deployed chemical weapons when a UN affiliated body, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons confirmed in June 2014 that Syria had complied with a Security Council resolution to destroy its entire stockpile of  chemical weapons ?

Besides, it defies logic that the Syrian government that has regained control over almost all the major cities in the country and is clearly winning the war against the militants who are being backed by regional and Western actors should deliberately choose to gas innocent children — an action which it knows would provoke the wrath of the whole world.

A brief survey of gas attacks in Syria in the last five years would convince us that it just does not make sense for the government to consciously planthe 4^th April episode. Take the infamous Ghoutasarin gas attack of August 2013. The centres of power in the West and in WANA opposed to Bashar al-Assad through their media channels immediately labelled the Syrian authorities as the culprit and crucified them. But the highly respected American investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, through meticulous analysis revealed that the attack was actually the work of a militant group carried out with the connivance of elements in the Turkish power structure.

The Houla massacre of 25 May 2012 was another example of a gas attack that finger-pointed the Bashar government. A picture of a large number of dead children “ wrapped in white shrouds with a child jumping over one of them “ was offered as proof of Bashar’s brutality. The picture was actually from the war in Iraq in 2003. The photographer himself, Marco Di Lauro, came out in the open to expose the fabrication. In fact according to the German newspaper, the Frankfurter AllgemeineZeitung (FAZ), the massacre was “committed by anti-Assad Sunni militants, and the bulk of the victims were members of the Alawi and Shia minorities, which have been largely supportive of Assad.”  There was also the case of militants gathering Christian and Alawi hostages in a building in the Khalidya neighbourhood in Homs, blowing it up with dynamite and then putting the blame upon the Syrian army. Numerous other instances of militants committing terrible atrocities but giving the impression that the Syrian army or its allies — Iranian revolutionary guards or Hezbollah fighters or Russian soldiers —were responsible have been documented by journalists and commentators.

Of all the lies and deceptions of this sort in recent memory the most outrageous would the Anglo-American allegation about Saddam Hussein’s “Weapons of Mass Destruction” which was the fig-leaf used to camouflage their invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. The Bolivian Ambassador to the UN, Sacha Llorenti, reminded the Security Council of this monstrous lie at its meeting on the 7^th of April and warned the world that

“After this (Iraqi) invasion there were 1 million deaths and it launched a series of atrocities in that region. Could we talk about ISIS if that invasion had not taken place? Could we be talking about the series of horrendous attacks in various parts of the world had that invasion, this illegal invasion not taken place?”

Lies, manipulation of facts and false-flag operations all serve an overriding goal which is to protect and perpetuate US hegemonic power and the interests of its allies. In Iraq and Syria it is only too obvious that the aim is to secure hegemony through regime-change. Indeed, the US elite, at the behest of Israel, have been seeking to oust Bashar al-Assad for the good part of the last 15 years. For different reasons, the rulers of London and Paris, and those at the helm in Riyadh, Doha and Ankara also want to get rid of Bashar. A convergence of motives explains why these elites have been funding, training, arming and channelling intelligence to militants in Syria from various parts of the world who have sometimes resorted to the most barbaric methods in pursuit of their zealous drive to seize power.

There is perhaps yet another reason — apart from regime change — why some vested interests in Washington have decided to exploit the 4^th April gas attack. These interests in the military, the intelligence community, the media, think-tanks, within lobbies and among legislators, are opposed to any rapprochement between Washington and Moscow. Perpetuating an adversarial relationship between the two is integral to their agenda of ensuring that the US remains the world’s sole dominant power. They sense that the new US President, Donald Trump, may try to build a bridge to Russia’a Vladimir Putin which is why they are manipulating the issue of the latter’s alleged attempt to influence the recent US Presidential Election. The suspicion and distrust engendered by this issue has now been aggravated by the US missile attack

US-Russia ties are not the only issue adversely impacted by the US’s 7^th April bombardment. If the US escalates its military involvement, it will have far-reaching consequences for the on-going conflict in Syria, politics in WANA and global peace in general.

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is the President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST).

Simon Jenkins: “It is a war crime to disable, maim or poison a victim by chemical or biological means, yet it is permissible to blow them to bits. Dropping chlorine evokes howls of horror. Dropping bunker busters does not. Cluster munitions, the most horrible of delayed action weapons, remain in the arsenals of NATO armies”.

Jenkins reflects that not a week passes without some new horror emanating from the vortex of the Middle East:

“So called ‘wars among the peoples’ are, like all civil wars, distinctively terrible. Cities deaden the impact of an infantry advance. Reckless bombing takes over and accidents happen. Saudi Arabia bombs a funeral party in Sanaa. Russia bombs an aid convoy and a hospital in Aleppo. Western planes bomb friendly troops outside Mosul. There is no appetite for British troops on the ground. All talk is of bombing, intervention lite”.

Britain has already contributed too much to Syria’s hell:

• It helped America create a power vacuum in neighbouring Iraq where Isis could form and flourish.
• It then encouraged and gave material support to the rebels against Assad in 2012, ensuring that he would need support from Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.
• American and RAF aircraft killed 80 Syrian soldiers protecting the town of Deir Ezzor from Isis.
• British ‘intelligence’ has given America information, enabling them to kill many civilians alongside their stated targets.

Syria and the cruel farce of ‘humanitarian intervention: “Affecting to save people by bombing them from a great height is not just ineffective but immoral”

Many of us are now applauding this ‘aid to Syria’

Jenkins gave many examples of this immorality and ineffectiveness – just four follow:

”Some 12,000 coalition bombing sorties have been directed at Isis in northern Iraq in the past two years. Tens of thousands of civilians have died in the ‘collateral’ carnage. In Syria, the human rights network estimates that Russian bombs have killed more Syrian civilians than Isis. Last year the Americans bombed an MSF hospital in Afghanistan. Bombs are unreliable. Stuff happens”.

He explains the appeal of airborne weapons to politicians down the ages.

“For rich aggressors against poorly armed foes, they have glamour and immunity to counterattack, and have found new life in so called precision targeting and unmanned drones. In reality they have proved almost useless against fanatical soldiers with mortars and AK 47s. But they look good on television back home. They are ‘something being done’ “.

Jenkins describes the disintegration of the Middle East as a tragedy for Islam, but not the West’s business. Here we disagree, seeing it as a result of Anglo-Saxon West intervention, using soft and hard power.

The Scotsman reports that Alex Salmond, the SNP’s foreign affairs spokesman, joined Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn who is calling for greater effort to achieve a negotiated end to the conflict:

“The British government should urge restraint on the Trump administration and throw its weight behind peace negotiations and a comprehensive political settlement.”

Corbyn: “Reconvene the Geneva peace talks and exert unrelenting international pressure for a negotiated settlement”

The Labour leader said: “Tuesday’s horrific chemical attack was a war crime which requires urgent independent UN investigation and those responsible must be held to account. But unilateral military action without legal authorisation or independent verification risks intensifying a multi-sided conflict that has already killed hundreds of thousands of people.

“What is needed instead is to urgently reconvene the Geneva peace talks and exert unrelenting international pressure for a negotiated settlement of the conflict.”

Jenkins: Nations and peoples do have a humanitarian obligation to aid those afflicted by war, to relieve suffering, not add to it, to aid those trying to comfort war’s victims and offer sanctuary to its refugees, not to take sides, guns blazing, in other people’s civil wars:

“British politicians would do better to spend their time organising relief than shouting adjectives, banging drums and dropping bombs”.

“In a stark admission….” this is how Fox News in the United States presented the statement, by the American General, Tillerson, in command of American occupation forces in Afghanistan, that America was faced with a “stalemate” in its attempt to consolidate its hold on Afghanistan. The note of alarm by the media was designed to create the urgency in the American people to support the demand by the general for thousands of additional American soldiers to be sent to the middle of Asia to shore up their shaky puppet government, for thousands more to die.

The usual attempted justifications for the invasion of the country, for all the countless dead and maimed, were repeated by the good American general like a parrot skilled at learning lies; that the American invasion in 2001 and occupation since were necessary to counter “terrorism”, to eliminate the “remnants of al Qaeda,” to prevent “terrorist attacks on the homeland.” The media and the government committee before which he made this statement accepted it all as a matter of routine, as did the Nazi media and government committees when SS generals demanded more troops to put down the resistance, excuse me, of course I mean the “terrorists,” operating under the noses of the Quisling and Vichy regimes across the Third Reich.

And how many thousands does he want? He didn’t say but admitted that on top of the roughly 9,000 regulars there now, there were also another 17,000 mercenaries making the total number of American forces there 26,000 at least. Alongside them are handfuls or hundreds of others from a number of American satellite nations, all participating in the latest phase of the American devastation of the country, termed Train, Advise, Assist” or TAA. This is their acronym for the placement of American command and control forces at different levels of the Afghan forces and government by which they ensure their puppet forces do the job of protecting American interests in the region. But the Afghans don’t seem to be doing very well and their masters are worried.

In a separate interview a few months ago another American general in Afghanistan stated:

Brigadier-General Cleveland: “Yes, Andrew, so General Nicholson does watch that closely and he is concerned obviously. Any casualty is probably going to be too many. But we do and he does watch the number of casualties, and really the trends that are ongoing as closely as possible. You know, what we saw in 2015 was the Afghans, the ANDSF writ large, did take a tremendous number of casualties.

“But what we also saw was how resilient these forces are. And overall, we think the Afghans took in the neighborhood of about 20,000 casualties, both killed and wounded. And for many militaries, that would break their back. But what we saw with the Afghans is that they were able to be resilient. They were able to continue to regroup and they were now of course able to move out on the offense.”

So, the puppet forces took casualties that would break the back of other armies but, of course it hasn’t, but you see they still need to send in reinforcements because, well, you get the picture. Twenty thousand killed and wounded out of total Afghan ground forces of approximately two hundred thousand, in one year, is a very high attrition rate.

Apparently this must all be due to the Russians and Iranians for the general added some new spice to the recipe of the Afghan war by making the unsupported claim that Russia and Iran were essentially at war with the United States and NATO by “aiding the Taliban” in their recent territorial gains. He said,

“When we look at Russia and Iranian actions in Afghanistan, I believe that, in part, they’re trying to undermine the United States and NATO”.

Though there was no mention made of either country being involved in its Report to Congress of June 2015 by the US Defence Department, on “Enhancing Security and Stability in Afghanistan.” The only other country referred to in that lengthy report is Pakistan and in terms of cooperation on security issues. It is well known that the Russians provided a convenient transportation and logistics route through Russia for the American and NATO forces operating in Afghanistan for several years, a very big favour to the Americans, for which the Russians were thanked with a kick in the teeth, so this claim of Russian interference must originate with a recent Russian initiative to end the war once and for all.

But before we can discuss a peace we must ask what is the war for? In their Report to Congress the US Defence Department the same propaganda is repeated about the reasons for the invasion and occupation using the same language used by General Tillerson. The true reason for the invasion is difficult to find in all the euphemisms and obfuscations but they do reveal themselves. On page 10 the Report states:

“The U.S. strategy leading into 2017 and beyond sets the stage for the responsible transition of the mission that will allow U.S. forces to continue building the capacity of the Afghan government as a reliable defense partner, and to protect U.S. national security interests in the region.”

So there it is, to protect American “national security interests”. And since those interests are not about preventing “terrorist” attacks on the “homeland” those interests must be something else.

One of the reasons has to do with gas pipelines and the Taliban not agreeing to the dictated terms put to them by the Bush regime in 2001, similar to the diktats put to Yugoslavia just two years before, “Do what we tell you, or we will bomb you.” In the case of the Taliban, which the Americans had helped create, along with other reactionary groups, when they used those groups to attack and destroy the socialist government of Afghanistan and the Red Army that came to protect it, the diktat was to make sure that the proposed American gas pipeline projects to Pakistan and the Indian Ocean were secure.

The Americans demanded that the Taliban form a coalition government of all factions, a government of “national unity,” in order to stop the ongoing civil war. The Taliban refused the offer. In Berlin, in July 2001, according to Jean Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquiein the Americans insisted “either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.”

The war was never about Bin Laden. The hunt for Bin Laden was just an excuse for the invasion of Afghanistan, an invasion decided upon several months before the incident in New York City on September 11 of that year, the incident that was used as the cover, first for the invasion of Afghanistan, then for the invasion of Iraq.

Bin Laden himself was a long time American asset whose family had strong links to George Bush through interlocking companies such as the BCCI bank and Bush’s Harken Energy, in which Bin Laden’s half brother Salem Bin Laden was an investor. Osama Bin Laden helped the Americans set up Al Qaeda to fight the socialists in Afghanistan and was seen as recently as 1998-99 in Yugoslavia with his mujahidin, under American Army command, fighting to destroy the socialist government there.

Just a day before the September 11 incident, his brother Shafiq Bin Laden attended a meeting of the Carlyle Group, an American holding company, at the Ritz Carton Hotel in Washington that was also attended by George Bush senior. Both were investors in the company. The claim that Bin Laden attacked the United States is absurd on the face of it to anyone who knows his connections and his family’s connections to the American leadership and intelligence and military services. They tried to make him a patsy but he refused to play the role and denied he was involved in the tragedy in New York. The American government has never presented any proof that he was.

Another primary reason for the American invasion of Afghanistan is its vast mineral wealth, from oil, gas and coal, to gem stones and rare earths such as lithium, to gold and iron ore; some of the richest deposits of minerals in the world. The Americans invaded to take those resources and to keep them. In the meantime, while the war continues and mineral extraction is inhibited, the Americans exploit the huge production of heroin and other opiates that has grown manifold since their invasion. Essentially Afghanistan has been reduced to an American mining and heroin extraction concession, and others can have access only in regard to their contribution to the invasion and occupation to secure that wealth. The Americans, like all the other colonial powers of the past and present, choose to call this racket “foreign policy.”

But minerals are not the only reason. Afghanistan is strategically located between India, Pakistan, China, Iran as well as Russia, through Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to the north, all of which have their own large mineral deposits. It is an important link for the Silk Road routes of the past and present and for China’s development.

For years the war has spilled into Pakistan with the Afghan regime routinely accusing Pakistan of supporting the groups labeled as Taliban while Pakistan states that it is trying to prevent “terrorist attacks from groups in Afghanistan. Everyone is tired of this endless war, everyone, except the Americans, who seem to lose all purpose if they are not at war. But today the Americans and their Afghan puppets are wondering what will transpire next after Russia began a major diplomatic initiative with a meeting held in Moscow in December 2016 between China, Pakistan and Russia to talk about Afghanistan’s “security.”

Russia knows the presence of ISIS fighters fleeing the wars in Syria and Iraq into safe havens in Afghanistan is a threat to its security. The Taliban also have clashed with them so both have a common interest insofar as dealing with ISIS is concerned. Since there is good reason to believe that some elements of ISIS are supported by the United States these clashes are also skirmishes between Russia and the United States, just as they are in Syria.

The Chinese know that the Americans want to stay in Afghanistan to increase American economic and political power in central Asia as part of its unquenchable lust for world power and control and diminish Chinese development along its new Silk Road connecting Beijing to Berlin and beyond.

To the south lies India, further west Turkey. Whoever holds Afghanistan has an advantage in exerting its power in all these spheres. The Americans invaded to get that control and they care nothing for what the people of Afghanistan want.

But they are not getting their way. The war drags on with no victory in sight and now they are ignored at international meetings. The countries of the region are reacting, under Russian leadership, trying to resolve the war once and for all. On February 15, 2017 a second round of talks were held in Moscow between Russia, Pakistan and China but this time Afghanistan and India were invited with the key question discussed of the participation of the Taliban in further talks.

The Americans were not invited and are not happy that the Taliban will be treated as a legitimate party to the conflict and will be a heightened threat to ISIS. The Russians propose to include even more countries from the central Asia region at the next meeting but no NATO or western countries are invited to take part. Russia politely states that it supports the present government of Afghanistan and that contacts with the Taliban are necessary in order to increase the chances of obtaining a peaceful resolution of the war. But it is clear that behind this polite language Russia and the others are hoping to pull the war rug from under the Americans, by coming to an agreement between all factions, declaring the war over and removing any excuse for the American forces to be there.

This will not be easy as the American generals and the American media call for more men to be sent in to secure their position and to destabilize the Russian initiative, the Indians sit at the table willing to take part but wondering what the Russians, Pakistanis and Chinese are up to that can hurt them, while the Afghans state, as they listen carefully to their earpieces, that the American have to be part of the talks, and wonder why no one takes them seriously. But we must hope that this long war can be ended and Afghanistan left to its people, their sovereignty restored, their self-determination assured.

We must hope that the Russians can continue their important initiative and move it forward quickly before the shouts for more arms and men from American generals result in more blood being spilled for absolutely nothing. But with the missile attack on Syria today, Friday April 7 as I write this, it is clear the American madmen and fanatics want war at any price and are willing to push Russia to the wall and risk the destruction of us all in nuclear world war.

Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel “Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

The US military is reportedly concentrating troops and military equipment at the Syrian-Jordanian border. Local sources said that about 20 US Army armoured vehicles (including battle tanks and artillery pieces) carried on trucks were spotted in Al-Mafraq. US troops were allegedly accompanied with the Jordanian Army’s 3rd Division.

The US Special Operation Forces, the UK Special Operation Forces and units from some other countries -have been conducting operations across the Syrian-Jordanian border for a long time. They even had a secret military facility inside Syria where members the so-called New Syrian Army militant group were deployed. However, it was the first time when a notable number of US armoured vehicles was reported there. The US Ro-Ro ship Liberty Passion, loaded with vehicles, had arrived to the Jordanian port of Al-Aqapa few days ago. These moves followed a meeting between the Jordanian King and the US president.

Thus, the US-led coalition could prepare a large-scale military operation in southern Syria. The goal of the operation will likely be to get control over the Syrian-Iraqi border and to reach Deir Ezzor. It will involve militants trained in camps in Jordan and the US-led coalition’s forces. SF forecasted a possibility of this move in the video entitled “New US Strategy Against ISIS And War In Syria. What To Expect?” in March, 2017.

The US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, has announced that the regime change in Syria is one of the top priorities of the US foreign policy and a political solution of the crisis is not going to happen “with Assad at the head of the regime.”

Meanwhile, the alleged command center of Russia, Iran, Syria and their allied forces (Hezbollah and other pro-government factions) allegedly issued a statement condemning the US military strike on Syrian forces.

The statement described the attack that targeted an airbase belonging to the Syrian Arab Army as a flagrant breach of all “red lines.” According to the statement, the allies will respond to any new aggression and will increase support to the Syrian people and the country’s armed forces on all levels.

“What America waged in an aggression on Syria is a crossing of red lines. From now on we will respond with force to any aggressor or any breach of red lines from whoever it is and America knows our ability to respond well,” the text of the statement reads.

The statement also condemned the incident in Khan Sheikhoun and added that the Syrian military was not responsible for the alleged chemical attack.

It’s important to note that the statement was released via “non-official” media channels linked to the Iranian-Syrian-Russian alliance’s forces operating in Syria. So, this is an unofficial warning to the United States and their allies. The Russian Defense Ministry and the Iranian Defense Ministry have not commented on the issue yet.

Many sources suggest that the Iranian-Syrian-Russian alliance could launch a fresh military operation in order to reach Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib’s southern countryside. The control over this village will allow opening a real investigation of the alleged chemical attack in the village.

Intense clashes are ongoing in the Hama countryside where the joint militant forces led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) oppose the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies. Clashes were reported in the areas of Maardes, Helfaya, Mahardeh and Qamhana. Meanwhile, more and more reinforcements from the Syrian Army’s Tiger Forces and the Republican Guard arrive northern Hama ahead of the expected large-scale offensive to retake this area from militants.

The security institutions controlled by Turkey in Jarablus issued an order to close all roads linking the Turkish-controlled part of northern Syria with the Manbij and its countryside controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) Manbij Military Council. The decision is aimed at preventing an economic cooperation with the SDF-controlled territory. The Turkish-controlled forces will also attempt to cut smuggling routes between the Turkish-controlled and Kurdish-controlled areas in northern Syria.

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Thirty years after World War II, Canada reached a consensus including all political parties. It was agreed that the view that individuals and the economy should be left to themselves was no longer desirable. Canadians were to have a market economy but they will not have a market-determined society for two reasons, (1) to favor equity among citizens and (2) for stability. It was recognized that the democratic state needs to play a continuous intervening role in the economy to keep it healthy and prevent another deep depression; without a healthy economy and a focus on fairness “the social rights listed in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights would remain a utopian dream” (Ed Broadbent’s Montreal address a few years ago).    

We have the right to be concerned about whether our country responds to our needs or not. I arrived in Canada in 1977 and experienced the benefits of the welfare state; I was surprised to have access to medical care for a reasonable premium. My children, born at Misericordia Hospital (in Edmonton), received excellent care; as their mother I did too. We visited our public library regularly loaning books that I read to them and later they learned to read for themselves developing a love for books that lasts until today. My children attended elementary and high school but did not have to worry about how much money their parents made. They learned to swim as part of a school program. They were the first generation of Canadian boys and girls playing soccer every spring and fall; it cannot surprise us that today so many Canadians love the game.

The existence of the welfare state facilitated it all lowering stress levels in many young families with limited income like ours and helping them to feel worthy. It played a role in my decision to pursue higher education to attain employment in my field of choice, which benefited my family as I became a better educated and happier mother and partner. Not everybody benefited like I did, I know; but, I learned from this that extending, rather than curtailing, benefits would be the answer to ensure increased inclusion. Over the years, however, as neoliberal ideology became dominant I witnessed relentless attacks on our social welfare system and policies to purposefully erode it. After 40 years of living in Canada, I want to speak about my feelings to encourage reflection. To argue for fairness in a climate of austerity is challenging; and yet, it is the thing to do to end poverty and promote human rights -both essential in challenging corporate craziness and greed, and in finding solutions to real problems in our relationship with the natural world. The erosion of our benefits and rights moved us away from a fair society; it also increased prejudices, unhealthy competition with each other, reckless consumption, loss of purpose and meaning, and unhappiness with the lives we live.

The focus of “Canada After Harper,” a collection of essays published in 2015, is on topics emerging as the neoliberal agenda increased its grip on Canada; its goal seems to be the promotion of more informed discussions, increasing personal reflection and societal engagement towards collective action. The book has twenty chapters. The first four chapters discuss the environment, the following five the economy, the next six social issues and the last five governance and politics.

Environmental concerns are not only the most urgent but the most serious. David Suzuki argues that psychological barriers block the implementation today of solutions that are feasible. Maude Barlow challenges our views regarding the abundance of drinkable water. Joyce Nelson helps us make the connection between Harper’s religious fundamentalism and his disregard for the environment and to this end she quotes Andrew Nikiforuk who says:

“Given this government’s pointed attacks on environmentalists and science of any kind, Harper would seem to take his advice from the Cornwall Alliance, a coalition of right-wing scholars, economists and Evangelicals. The Alliance questions mainstream science, doubts climate change, views environmentalists as ‘native evil,’ champions fossil fuels, and supports libertarian economics.”

The five chapters dedicated to the economy begin with Andrew Jackson asking whose interests are being served; the answer is obvious: the interests of the polluting industries of gas and oil have been setting government environmental agenda. Scott Sinclair and Stuart Trew discuss the role of free trade agreements in imposing a neoliberal paradigm that weakens the state. Lynne Fernandez discusses how the attacks on unions debilitated democracy and prosperity. Linda McQuaig warns us on becoming a plutocracy. Trish Hennessy discusses the role tax cuts have had in debilitating the power and the role of the welfare state; Alex Himelfarb discusses this too, in governance and politics, bringing attention to how government precipitated Canada into the “austerity trap” which undermined democracy, moved forward the neoliberal project and seriously transformed the country.

The six chapters dedicated to social issues, include discussions on rights and equality; from Colleen Fuller on our right to health care to Larry Kuehn on our right to public education (undermined by a global corporate model focused on competition and expensive “testing” that increases corporate profits). Kate McInturff discusses lack of gender equality; Ed Finn focuses on growing child poverty while Nora Loreto discusses youth’s increasing challenges of inclusion. Arthur Manuel focuses on indigenous rights and anti-colonial struggle highlighting aboriginal traditional role in environmental protection of land and water.

What is at stake is the quest for a fair and just society. Professor Himelfarb challenges the view that we no longer care about achieving one. We want the things we always wanted: protecting the environment, building sustainable communities, a just and fair society, greater equality, helping people in need, opportunities for the young, strong social programs; but, we are no longer sure, he says, they are possible anymore; still, to achieve this vision collective action is a must.

“What worries me the most –what is arguably the great paradox of our times- is that while our collective challenges seem more daunting than ever, our collective toolkit has never been weaker. We have seen a profound erosion in trust –in one another and in our institutions- a trust that is a prerequisite for collective action.”

It is time to examine the emergence of our current challenges, the role ideology has played in deciding priorities and to identify what is real and cannot be compromised.

Globalization, the Neo-liberal Agenda, and Canadian Sovereignty

A truly mean-spirited Canada emerged during the Harper years: a country where logging, mining and polluting waterways became acceptable, inequitable distribution of income grew to the benefit of an increasingly privileged few, violence affects one in four women and girls, indigenous peoples are the poorest, least employed and most incarcerated citizens. In Canada a million citizens came to depend on food banks for sustenance, and poverty afflicts one in seven Canadians (more than a million of them children under the age of 18). A Canadian project focused on equality, fairness and justice should be a good answer in ensuring the safety and well being of all Canadians.

Although Harper managed Canada in ways we have not seen since Richard B. Bennett (a 1930 tough-talking millionaire, creator of the exploitative “workers relief camps” and fanatic believer in free enterprise and laissez faire government) we forget that the neoliberal project emerged in Canada with Brian Mulroney. He was the Prime Minister who did more than all his predecessors combined to erode Canadian sovereignty. Still some, like Don Mazankowski, like to portray what could well be a mayor act of treason as Mulroney’s best achievement: “dragging Canada kicking and screaming into the 21^st Century” –the century of corporate rule and greed.

Mulroney himself was well aware of the meaning of the ideology he promoted. During an interview with William Watson in 2000, he said it clearly:

“[I]f you believe in free trade, then you have to believe in open investment, you have to believe I deregulation and privatization. And so these are the changes that we made because it all went together. It was a package of attitudes: free trade, getting rid of FIRA (the Foreign Investment Review Agency), getting rid of the National Energy Program, privatizing Air Canada, privatizing Petro-Canada, and so on, deregulation and all those things…And so what began as a free trade agreement has wound up shaping attitudes, not only of my government and my party and people o the right, but it has forced the Liberals into a completely new set of policies which they adopted from us.”

Once Prime Minister of Canada, Mulroney moved quickly to implement free trade, well aware that it was a well-thought strategy to change citizen attitudes and government policies towards the extreme right and deregulation, privatization and corporate control of government and its agenda. Governments will no longer respond to citizens’ needs or wants but to the needs and wants of multinational corporations and their elite. Government lowers taxes for the wealthy and corporations while it cuts funding to social programs for the rest of us. These agreements also favor the growth of security states -increasing surveillance of its citizens, harsher police actions, increased funding for the military and the demonization of dissent. Recently, President Trump threatened to re-open the terms of NAFTA (North America Free Trade Agreement) to further favor American interests; Prime Minister Trudeau welcomed Brian Mulroney, a friend of Trump, as consultant to his office and the Canadian government. The hope is that re-negotiations do not cause Canada additional damage. The irony is that Trudeau’s government could trust Canadian sovereignty to Mulroney who played such a pivotal role in undermining it.

Sinclair & Trew confirm and expand on Mulroney’s confession about the nature of free trade agreements:

“They are, more accurately, constitution-style documents that substantially weaken democratic institutions in the interest of freeing (from government intervention) the trade –and investment-related activities of multinational corporations. Government interventions of all types (e.g., public health and environmental regulations, the introduction and management of public services, state supports for strategic industries) are severely constrained by international trade and investment agreements –a strategy the Liberals fully bought into after the 1993 election.”  CUSFTA grew into NAFTA but US protectionism persisted, never allowing the promised undisturbed access to the US market that Canadians were promised. “It is a lesson that Canada refuses to learn. Like the Liberals before them, the Conservatives continue to make significant concessions to US policy-makers on trade as well as sensitive security, immigration and privacy issues.”

Neoliberal Ideology and Deception

Murray Dobbin shares how Ursula Franklin was the first to see neoliberal ideology for what it was:

“We are being occupied by the marketers just as the French and Norwegians were occupied by the Germans. We have, as they did, puppet governments who run the country for the benefit of the occupiers. We have, as they did, collaborators. We, like the French and Norwegians of the time, have to protect our families and on many occasions have to work with the occupiers…We are, as they were, threatened by deliberate willfulness, by people who have only contempt for those they occupy and who see their mission to turn over our territory to their masters.”

The occupation forces of multinational corporations disembarked in countries throughout the world including the US. Michael Hudson, an American economist, sees neoliberal economics as “junk” -an excuse for profits and financial take over. They are nothing more than an apology for a rentier class, and the large banks that financialized the economy shifting “consumer spending power” from the purchase of goods and services (driving the real economy) to the payment of interests and fees to banks and the rich. Governments no longer tax incomes on unproductive ventures as they did before; they tax labor and production. Economies have to function with a very heavy overhead to ensure that a parasitic class becomes richer and richer. It is difficult for the “real economy” to compete. Professor Hudson writes n books on the process. Junk economics are a device for ripping off workers and producers alike to benefit a non-productive parasitic class, he says, a predatory device to justify the exorbitant income of the top 1% while blaming the rising debt on the common people, forced as they are into debt-servitude just to make ends meet.

Andrew Jackson says that we face increasing levels of speculation in Canada because

“much of the growth we have experienced over the past decade, especially since the recovery from 2009, has been driven by rising mortgage debt and rising house prices fueled by ultra-low interest rates. Relative to incomes, Canadian house prices are now at more or less the same level as they were in the United States before the collapse of the market there in 2007. Canadian household debt is now at a record high of more than 160% of household disposable income. The IMF, the OECD, and other reputable agencies warn that inflated house prices and high household debt make the recent recovery highly vulnerable to another downturn…the structural reasons for slow grows” he adds “include the problem of reviving household demand when household debt is very high in many countries, including Canada.”

For average people (the non-rich) changing attitudes and policies is responsible for an increasing skewed distribution of resources and extreme inequality were the richest 0.01% of Canadians (85% of them funneling income through private corporations) can see their income almost double from 4.69 to 8 million a year. Canada’s wealthy elite is led by 70 billionaires (the Thomsons, Westons, Irvings, Rogers, Saputos, at the top and close to the 30 billion mark, the Aquilinis and Bombardiers surpassing the bottom range of 1 billion) who are far richer than we are led to believe and farther ahead of us.

What is a stake, says Linda McQuaig, is the social costs of the disenfranchisement of the many for the increasing privileges of the few:

“In a market economy, to have lots of money is to have extraordinary advantages, primarily freedom and control over a wide range of choices in life. Those with lower incomes have less freedom and fewer choices. Large numbers of citizens, including those who are not technically “poor,” are effectively denied entry into many of the crucial activities in our society because they lack the basic ticket of admission: money”.

Overturning the economic agenda of the wealthy will not be easy; a way of doing it is returning to the central role of taxes in ensuring democracy and allowing us to make decisions collectively regarding what kind of society we want. We need to make sure that working people get an appropriate share of the wealth they help create so “our society is a democracy, not a plutocracy.”

Nature the Equalizer: Human Constructs versus the Natural World

In a world were human constructs are increasingly guided by destructive ideologies, Nature can become the equalizer. We face a many challenges (increased inequality, poverty and disenfranchisement) and social issues connected to the privatization of public areas; however, the destruction of our natural world cannot compare to any of the challenges our “human constructs” created.

David Suzuki highlights the consequences of the Anthropocene Epoch for the environment: the carbon dioxide we produce is so high it cannot be absorbed by photosynthesis and it has lowered the pH of our oceans as it dissolves in them; human debris litters our planet forming islands of plastic in our oceans; our agricultural runoff is creating dead zones in the oceans and our fish stocks are disappearing; toxic chemicals from industrial and agricultural activity are everywhere –in our air, water, soil, and in our bodies and the bodies of other species. Our machines drill holes and remove mountain tops ravaging entire ecosystems. We have become a force of Nature: we need to change. Human activity has killed huge populations of birds, mammals and insects and it threatens our species too.

“We are an infant species in evolutionary terms (around for 150,000 years) but we are undermining the very things that keep us alive and healthy.”

Our story as a species is remarkable:

“We lacked numbers, size, speed, strength… sensory acuity of vision, smell or hearing many other species have…our competitive advantage: a two-kilogram organ buried deep within our skulls. The human brain conferred curiosity, a remarkable memory capacity, and impressive creativity.” Our brain drives us to make sense and understand what happens around us, to seek cause. We construct worldviews in which everything is interconnected and interdependent; we learn “by observation, experience, and trial-and-error, and pass that knowledge on as priceless insights for survival.” Foresight enabled early humans to avoid dangers and exploit opportunities; ironically, today “with all the amplified predictive ability of scientists and supercomputers, we reject or ignore their warnings that we are heading along a dangerous path and so turn our backs on our great survival attribute: foresight.”

We make constructs (capitalism, the economy, markets, property rights, neo-liberalism) and believe in them, treat them as sacred: they are not. These creations of our mind often need to change or be dismissed, so should not be set in stone. Worse: we fail to take the laws of Nature seriously but Nature’s laws are set in stone, cannot be changed. The natural world is powerful: it sets our real constraints. We forget that our planet is the only one in our system with a biosphere, or that without a biosphere we could not survive. It took Nature millions of years to create our biosphere, a miracle; it is taking us only a few hundred years to destroy it. We face challenges of our creation but the biggest challenge is ignoring and discounting the natural world while elevating human constructs above everything. This needs to stop. Why is it so difficult for us to see something so obvious?

Suzuki argues that we have the technological capacity to deal with environmental challenges; our economy should not be a barrier. However, the mindset through which we see the world shapes the way we treat Nature: our challenge is psychological. The natural world seems to awake in us negative feelings, awareness of our limits; we are small, fragile, creatures that, despite being resourceful, could never survive without Nature as we need air, water, land, and sun to live. We are endangering our survival.  As a species we display a strong need to control and controlling can become an obsession; we take things to extremes –abuse, kill or die. In literature we have likened nature with “the other” and often with a need to conquer it. We have also feminized nature: our mistreated mother. We fear nature, love it and hate it, treat it badly. Lately, we live mostly in artificial worlds of our own making (cities); separated from the natural world we relegated it to “reserves.” Nature has become the enclosed environment, a resource, managed, controlled, and sold for profit. Trees, no longer seen as living organisms on which we depend for air and energy, become lumber. Water, no longer seen as the life-giving element without which we would die within days, is bottled and sold in the market to enrich corporations.

Proximity to the things and people we love feeds connection, ease anxiety; while distance breaks links and severs connections. City life is not panacea but it is predictable and makes us feel in control: we turn the faucet and there is water, we open the fridge and there is food. While living in cities: we should not forget that we depend strongly in the natural world, that our dependence is real and can only be ignored at our peril. History is full of examples of huge cities that collapsed because of environmental degradation and destruction. Still, we can be too arrogant to listen or too detached to care but, few among us can ignore that of the challenges we face in the corporate world of the 21^st century our fate may be sealed by the destruction we are causing to our natural world. We have been a resourceful, but very ruthless species who have killed, starved and enslaved our own and others. We may, or may not, be moved by the suffering of our own; but, mistreating nature has consequences, it can be our undoing.

Canada is not outside this reality; our politics are not much different from the politics of the rest. We destroy nature at more or less the same pace others do. In considering the challenges neo-liberalism poses to us, or in identifying particular political leaders for their role in promoting it, we should not forget that the neo-liberal project is global. Indigenous people have understood the sacredness of the natural world, been concerned about environmental destruction well before us and struggled to protect the land and water aware that the planet cannot survive the immense destruction we are causing. True to their mandate they continue to stand against our ravages everywhere. Hope is fundamental to this struggle: let’s hope that foresight, the main quality that has ensured our ascendance as a species, protects us from destroying our world, our life support system, our home.

References

“Canada after Harper. His ideology-fuelled attack on Canadian society and values, and how we can now work to create the country we want.” (2015) Finn, Ed (Editor), James Lorimer & Company Ltd.

Hudson, Michael, “J is for Junk Economics: A Guide to Reality in an Age of Deception.” (2017), ISLET

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._B._Bennett

With Trump’s inauguration, policy in Syria had begun to take a different direction.

After having failed at regime-change, with the insurgency badly defeated, on the defensive, and fighting amongst themselves, it appeared the rebels’ sponsors had realized the futility of their efforts and started to discontinue their support.

The Trump administration also reportedly ended the CIA’s train-and-equip program. This represented a long-standing feud between the Pentagon and the CIA. The Pentagon had vehemently opposed the CIA’s rebel program under grounds that it was empowering radical extremists which would eventually turn their guns towards Americans, and if successful would turn Syria into country of chaos ruled by warring factions of jihadists, similar to Libya.

However, the sectors of power that Obama represented largely centered around the financial institutions and the intelligence apparatus, and therefore the CIA won the tug-of-war and the rebel program continued. Under Trump, the program was ended and the CIA’s control over foreign policy was diminished, while the generals and military officials were largely granted discretion to conduct overseas operations with little oversight from the chief executive. The interests therefore steering foreign policy are largely those of the weapons and defense contractors, and the profit-incentives of the military industrial base as a whole.

Given this, instead of covertly funneling aid to al-Qaeda, Trump began increasing the coalitions’ bombing of the group, and adopted a different regional strategy. This increased bombing only materialized however after al-Qaeda had been routed on the battlefield.

Nevertheless, the strategy became one of overt military occupation and a partitioning of Syrian territory.

The purpose of the US-led “anti-ISIS” campaign had up to this point been to project the image that the US was fighting the group while simultaneously allowing them to prosper and militarily bleed out Iran and Russia. In this way, the presence of ISIS was redirected into a useful pretext to legitimize an illegal military presence in Syria which otherwise would not have been possible. As well, the universally despised attitude toward ISIS could conveniently be transformed into a mandate for annexing and occupying Syrian territory. The strategy could shift from “Assad must go” to “defeating ISIS.”

Signaling this shift, the Trump administration had announced that it “accepts” the “political reality… with respect to Assad,” and that “foremost among its priorities” from here on out would be “the defeat of ISIS.”

Concurrent with this was an agreement reached between Trump and the Saudi king after their meeting in mid-March, where it was decided that the Gulf would re-open supply channels to their proxies and occupy Russia on the battlefield while allowing the US to concentrate on dividing northern Syria and establishing their occupation.

Within this environment it appeared that some kind of negotiated settlement might be able to materialize, wherein Russia would agree to the US annexation in return for some other concession. Powerful factions within the US were vehemently opposed to this course of action howeverand were determined to reverse it.

The chemical weapons incident in Khan Sheikhoun effectively accomplished that and upended all of the previous hopes for a settlement.

After the horrendous attack, killing upwards of 70 people, procedures were underway for a thorough UN investigation to determine culpability. Without having completed that process, and without any evidence presented,the Trump administration launched a barrage of cruise missiles and attacked a Syrian military installation which was being used to fight ISIS. The timing of the attack prevented the investigation from going forward.

This was a clear violation of international law and a blatant act of aggression against another state. According to the Nuremburg tribunals, an unjustified act of aggression represents the “supreme international crime,” high above all the others. The pain and suffering of the victims was cynically exploited as a pretext for such an aggression, unsurprisingly to the high moral acclaim of Western officials and media personalities. The attack, hailed as a “beautiful” display of our weapons, which revealed the “heart” and compassion of President Trump, reportedly murdered half a dozen Syrian soldiers, as well as four children.

Who cares? It was our moral duty to punish Assad for killing children, by killing other children, albeit the justified and morally honorable way, with US bombs.

Even more egregious, the attack was almost certainly carried out by the rebels, dominated by al-Qaeda and a rabble of other sectarian extremists. Washington would have you believe that Assad, having given up all of this chemical weapons in 2013 and barely escaping a Libya-style overthrow, after now having devastated the rebels on the battlefield,securing his greatest military advantage out of the entire conflict, would on the eve of important international congregations aimed at ending the war and directly after those aggressing upon him had declared their acceptance of him staying in power, launch a militarily insignificant attack with the kind of weapons that are literally the one thing that could endanger his rule and lead to a US invasion, all to kill civilians and a relatively insignificant amount of fighters which is even lower than the amount normally killed using conventional weapons. Assad may be a brutal autocrat, but he has never displayed any signs of being insane.

The opposition, however, has everything to gain from this. Desperate, staring at defeat, a reduction in supplies, and a US administration abandoning it’s former “Assad must go” policy, the last recourse they had was for a “red-line” to be crossed which could justify a US invasion. It having been widely reported that they, in fact, have access to chemical weapons and have utilized them in the past.

Not surprisingly then, the US intelligence community largely holds the Russian explanation, that Assad’s forces bombed a rebel storage facility containing chemical weapons, to be true, and the official US line to be false, sources from the CIA stating that it was their belief that “Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was likely not responsible for the lethal poison-gas incident in northern Syria.” One intelligence source said “the most likely scenario” was “a staged event by the rebels intended to force Trump to reverse a policy… that the U.S. government would no longer seek ‘regime change’ in Syria.” Despite all of this,Trump opportunistically seized on the incident and attacked the Syrian army.

In the aftermath of the attack, it has become apparent that the entire motivation behind the Democratic Party’s antagonism towards Trump, along with the CIA, the neocons, and the rest of the liberal interventionists, had absolutely nothing to do with opposition towards Trump’s racism, xenophobia, attacks against civil rights, or even any actual connection with Putin, the accusations of course lacking any foundation in evidence. Instead, these were pretexts used to wage an all-out campaign of manipulation with a single goal in mind: pressuring him to continue carrying out the previous administrations’ strategy of overthrowing the Syrian government and maintaining a war-footing against Russia.

This is why the liberal resentment was solely focused on undermining the one aspect of his platform which was actually worth pursuing, cooperation with Russia and a détente of the increasingly dangerous confrontation that had been festering between the two nuclear powers. By portraying Trump as nothing more than a spy for Putin, the liberal establishment was able to guarantee that business-as-usual against Russia would be resumed, under threat that all their efforts would be directed toward undermining the Presidency if it did not.

Explaining the situation, the Wall Street Journal reported that

“in Washington, probes by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Congress into possible connections between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia have restricted the new administration’s ability to cut deals seen as conciliatory to the Kremlin in the near term without provoking an outcry from both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill.”

Exposing this antagonism for the opportunistic warmongering that it was, following Trump’s attack, in reality a war-crime for which Trump should be impeached and tried, all of his most forceful opponents of only a few days prior are now simply fawning in praise at their “great commander-in-chief.” The pressure has effectively been called off, though Trump will realize why that is and will remember again in the future when it is reapplied. After having found such an effective mechanism for insuring that the proper course is maintained, it will continue to be utilized.

In addition to having mitigated domestic opposition, the attack also remedied the problem of Trump’s approval ratings, which were below that of any comparable president. Nothing more effectively rallies a country around their leader like a war. In this sense, being a celebrity personality who’s foremost concerns are seemingly how others view him, the incident was largely orchestrated around boosting the president’s national image. Trump will now be seen as the “strong” leader who attacked the evil Assad and wasn’t afraid of Russian threats, while Obama was the “weak” president who wouldn’t do the same even without Russia protecting him. It appears that such a reckless attack was largely the result of one man’s ego.

However, it also represents the increased power and influence of the military, Trump having vowed to listen to his generals in the same way that Obama did not. When it comes to military officials, every solution resembles a nail, and are “solved” through military means such as cruise missile strikes. As well, the power of the military industrial base to secure profit-making interests through state policy was also on display. Most notably the defense contractor Raytheon, who manufactures the missiles that were used in the attack, and thereby stands to gain when the government resupplies its arsenal. Their stock also instantly surged following the attack, adding nearly five billion dollars to its overall market value. Even more to the point are the reports which suggest that Trump still holds shares in Raytheon, and therefore will directly profit from this and from other similar decisions in the future. Oil stocks as well have precipitously increased.

History, it seems, is repeating itself, with Smedley Butler’s classic “War is a Racket” coming to mind.

The attack also is related to the Trump administrations’ strong ties with Israel and the AIPAC lobby. Shortly before the chemical incident took place, Israeli jets had interfered on the side of the Islamic State and targeted Syrian army positions. Syria shot at the jets violating their airspace and forced them to retreat. The same airbase that Trump attacked was the one from which the Israeli jets were targeted, Trump giving his friend Bibi a gift in the form of retribution.

In a similar vein, the order was given during Trump’s dinner with the President of China, and comes with a message in mind. The message is that “my threats aren’t hollow,” and carry force behind them, referring to recent bellicose statements directed towards China if it refuses to “solve” the situation in North Korea. This, unsurprisingly, has only further encouraged North Korea and others to continue acquiring nuclear capabilities to deter against American aggression. This is what the North Korean’s nuclear program is all about after all, at least according to US military intelligence.

Nevertheless, Trump now has immense incentives to continue pursuing confrontation with Russia and Syria.

For what it was worth though, the actual attack represents a small-scale and largely symbolic accomplishment. It did not greatly damage Syria’s military capabilities, the airbase reportedly already being back in operation. It does, however, carry with it extraordinarily dangerous and potentially unforeseeable consequences.

The situation in Syria was already extremely precarious. For the first time in the modern periodfighter jets of two nuclear powers were circling each other within the bounds of a single state in defense of opposing ground-forces; one false move could’ve potentially sparked a WWIII scenario. Trump’s careless actions have only further hurdled the world towards possible catastrophe, further strengthening the opinion of the world’s population that the United States is by far the greatest threat to world peace, with constantly-invoked official adversaries trailing far behind.

Directly after the attack, Russia severed the communication channels between itself and the US military. The agreed upon “deconfliction” precautions have been abandoned while the memorandum of understanding used to prevent military confrontations and air accidents has been tabled. US jets are now operating in Syria under constant threat of being targeted by the Russian air force and the Syrian army. Given this, former members of the US-led coalition have suspended their involvement and evacuated their aircraft, saying it is no longer safe to remain. Others are likely to follow. One false move could bring us to the brink of a cataclysmic confrontation. Wasn’t this decision just wonderful?

On top of all this, the maneuver has greatly damaged Russia’s credibility. The US effectively called the Russian narrative a lie and exposed Putin’s “protection” of his allies to be hollow. The Russian military has been discredited and their already strained relations with Syria and Iran have only further been maligned. Unsurprisingly the Russian’s are furious.

However, it seems likely that some kind of an agreement was reached when Trump called Putin to warn them of the attack. Important military equipment and Russian personnel were evacuated from the site. The question however is what concession Russia received in return for allowing Trump to save-face after his “red line” comments and what will be the Russian response. Already a Russian warship is steaming toward the Mediterranean while are being taken to increase Syria’s air defenses.

The other direct consequence was the strengthening of ISIS and al-Qaeda, who unsurprisingly exploited the attack to launch their own offenses. The military installation that was hit was a main base from which attacks against ISIS were carried out. It was instrumental in keeping nearby ISIS militants at bay and protected the surrounding inhabitants from an ISIS attack. Following the incident residents say they now fear an assault, stating that

“women and children have already started to leave Shayrat to go to Homs city. We’re not afraid of airstrikes. Our fear is the [ISIS] attack from the east.”

For the residents, all these airstrikes amount to is “proof that the U.S. helps Daesh.” Perhaps this is what the New York Times meant when they said

“It was hard not to feel some sense of emotional satisfaction, and justice done, when American cruise missiles struck an airfield in Syria on Thursday.”

All of the most reactionary forces on the ground praised and welcomed the strikes, and its main beneficiaries were ISIS and al-Qaeda. How glorious.

Furthermore, the implicit message that Trump has sent to the jihadists is that the international media and the US administration will not attempt to deliberate over evidence and demonstrate factual culpability, but instead will automatically blame Assad for any chemical weapons attacks. This effectively gives them a mechanism by which to call in US airstrikes should they ever need to improve their battlefield positions or gain the support of foreign intervention. Far from deterring dangerous weapon use, this provides an overwhelming incentive for chemical weapons to continue to be deployed, especially in terms of the Gulf monarchies should they ever need to redirect Trump towards an explicit “Assad must go” policy.

Leaked memos from Saudi Arabia say that Assad must be overthrown at all costs, because if he is not then Syria’s primary goal will be “taking revenge on the countries that stood against it, with the Kingdom… coming at the top of the list,” which represents “a high degree of danger for the Kingdom.” The Saudi rulers make clear their view that the main stumbling block in the way of achieving this is the “lack of ‘desire’ and not a lack of ‘capability’… to take firm steps” on the part of the United States, and therefore they “must seek by all means available and all possible ways to overthrow the current regime in Syria.”

Isn’t it wonderful how we taught Assad a lesson?

Given all of this, the pressures leading towards war and destruction will continue, as will the strategy of occupying northern Syria while denying the Syrian government from controlling the totality of its former territories. Rebel jihadi supply lines through Turkey will continue fueling the conflict, and with it the innocent deaths, while the money and weapons from the Gulf will continue in an attempt to sink Russia down into the Syrian quagmire. This course of action, based on motivations of regional dominance, will continue to be the largest stumbling block towards peace that will further prolong the already 6-year long conflict.

Russia still has a fresh memory of the debacle in Afghanistan during the 1980s and desperately fears another repeat in Syria, especially given the newfound influence they have now been able to establish with the buildup of their military presence around the Mediterranean. The conflict in Syria provided them the opportunity to accomplish this. It is therefore within their interests for a quick political settlement to be reached and for a termination of the conflict, along with a cleanup of the Russian-nationals fighting in the ranks of the jihadists, and to further consolidate and exploit its newfound position as an influencer in regional Middle Eastern affairs. This comes into stark conflict with their Iranian and Syrian partners who are urging Russia to continue the offensive and reclaim the totality of Syrian territory.

Because of this, Russia would likely be willing to exert the pressure necessary to force its allies accept a settlement which includes extraordinary concessions. For this reason too, Russia will likely acquiesce to the US-backed balkanization effort in some form in order to freeze the conflict.

At the same time, the Americans and Europeans desperately want to see Russia get bogged down in another Afghanistan scenario, not the least of which because Russia was instrumental in preventing their regime-change efforts. It is for this reason that the US and the EU do not have a coherent plan to end the conflict, but do have a strategy of partitioning Syrian territory which will likely result in an all-out corporate resource-grab afterwards, allowing Western investors access to exploit the area and obtain the rebuilding contracts that will then be signed. This being paramount in their calculations, the reactionary al-Qaeda forces on the ground again become a useful asset rather than an enemy to be destroyed, while the ISIS pretext justifies the annexations.

Following the completion of partition, the strategy will shift directly back toward regime-change, only with newly acquired territories and levers of pressure from which to exert such demands. The eventual goal is a complete eviction of Russia from the Mediterranean and from its ability to frustrate Western ambitions for regional hegemony.

Fueling this is the embedded and institutional nature of an American policy of regime change toward all non-compliant states, euphemistically referred to as the “axis of evil.” These policies are not at all related to the changing personalities which happen to occupy the White House from time to time. This is because government policy is representative of the very narrow class interests of those which dominate the socio-economic hierarchy. That is, the dominant plutocracy made up of the individuals and interests who own the private economy and enjoy control over vast consolidations of wealth and resources. It is from this dominant business-class that the top level positions within the executive are filled, and from these interests that policy is crafted and legislated. This has been shown in prominent political science studies which explain “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.” Or, in other words, “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy,” while decision-making is confined almost exclusively to the top 1%.

This is why prominent political analysts have concluded since the 1950s that

“at every level of the administration of the American state, domestically and internationally, business serves as the fount of critical assumptions or goals and strategically placed personnel.” Policy therefore stemming from “the most powerful class interests” which inform the “nature and objectives of American power at home and abroad.” It is the “ideology and the interest and material power of the physical resources of the ruling class of American capitalism” which determine courses of action, “the latter [the material power of their physical resources] being sufficient should consensus break down.” This “economic ruling elite” being “the final arbiter and beneficiary of the existing structure of American… politics and of United States power in the world.”

This the reason why US policy towards Syria has remained consistent for nearly a century. The CIA has been attempting, since its inception, to overthrow the Syrian government since the middle of the 20^th century, through countless administrations and countless fluctuations between Democrats and Republicans. The core policy remains the same, so it should be no wonder that the current incumbent would opportunistically seize upon an opportunity to attack the Syrian state. These actions cannot solely be laid at the feat of the liberals nor domestic political concerns.

Instead, the overthrow of non-compliant regimes is a staple of US policy because doing so secures the economic and material interests of the dominant ruling class within America. It is within their interests for governments to allow their economies to be penetrated by Western corporations seeking to exploit their markets, and to denationalize state assets and coveted resources for the exploitation of foreign investors. Furthermore, these interests are further secured through regional support for US military aggressions and occupations. This is why so much emphasis was put upon securing control over Iraqi oil and the establishment of US military bases in Iraq, and why similar aggressions are not pursued against client states which comply with these developments. Syria, although it began to allow Western economic penetration, has on the whole frustrated attempts for greater access. In addition, Syria has opposed US military aggression in the region, such as to undermine the occupation of Iraq.

The other major issue is the pipeline war between the US and Russia over the natural gas field which bisects Iranian and Qatari territory, the largest in the world. Qatar’s attempts to connect their holdings directly to European markets was denied by Assad, while an Iranian and Russian-backed pipeline was put into motion. It is only after the ball began rolling for the Russian-Iranian-Syria pipeline that the insurgency was fostered against Assad.

This is why Trump has used this opportunity to further aggress upon the Syrian state, now writing up a new batch of sanctions to apply under the pretext of chemical weapons use. The sanctions, after all, are an economic siege against the entirety of the country, and are fueling much of the suffering and the fleeing of refugees. These new ones will continue a tactic of brutalization of the civilian population with little effect against the government, the strategy being to force massive economic suffering as a means to pressure the current regime. This is also why the US again is demanding Assad’s ouster, saying

“There’s not any sort of option where a political solution is going to happen with Assad at the head of the regime.”

As self-righteous pundits, officials, and intellectuals who should know better wax poetically and bask in their own self-righteousness over how moral and justified this immoral act of aggression was, it is not hard to see why the world considers the US the leading threat to peace and a leading terrorist rogue state.

The US and its clients, who have all hailed Trump’s belligerent attacks on moralistic grounds, are the only states rampaging through the region attacking countries at will while destroying any that stand in their way. The US now, and the British before them, have consistently opposed and overthrown any truly progressive, democratic, and secular movement or government that has emerged in the Middle East while at the same time propping up the forces of extremist-Islam and fueling the spread of violent jihadism throughout the region. This is because the US has, since the 1950s, pursued an agenda of global domination and has insisted on securing its ambitions through tyranny and oppression.

Imagine, for an instance, that Syria manufactured a false claim and said the US military used chemical weapons against them, and used that pretext to launch a cruise missile assault on an American base in American territory, murdering the innocent civilians living nearby, including four children. Now imagine that on top of that, the officials and intellectuals from Syria didn’t apologize, but instead hailed the intolerable injustice as being a display of “justice done,” something that was “beautiful,”which elicited a “sense of emotional satisfaction” and was righteous and good, showing how heartfelt and compassionate they are.

How malicious and sociopathic would we view those officials?

Yet we all carry on, blind and drunk off the desire to dominate and control.

The logic of imperialism, is truly wondrous to behold.

Steven Chovanec is an independent journalist and analyst based in Chicago, IL. He studied International Studies and Sociology at Roosevelt University. His writings can be found at undergroundreports.blogspot.com, follow him on Twitter @stevechovanec.

We’re in the midst of something that’s never happened in human history. Since the birth of the industrial revolution, our planet has been plagued by war. In the midst of it all, what has really transpired behind the scenes — and the true causes of these conflicts — has been hidden behind a screen of misinformation and secrecy.

Some historians estimate that the U.S. government alone classifies 500 million pages of documents every single year. An article written for the Guardian in June of 2013 raised this issue, but failed to mention how national security has become an excuse to keep secrets.

Is the U.S. government really classifying information for the safety of its people? Do they truly keep secrets for the sake of national security, or is there some ulterior motive at play?

Many believe this secrecy represents one way for the global elite to continue puppeteering governments all over the world, to create chaos, and to justify the infiltration of other countries and a heightened national security state, so they can create a New World Order — something that’s been referenced by the global elite for a very long time. Here’s a great example from George Bush Sr.

A few years ago, many global political and academic figures gathered at an International Conference on the New World Order to discuss just that. One of the speakers was prominent author and Canadian economist Dr. Michel Chossudovsky, who is the University of Ottawa’s Emeritus Professor of Economics. He argues that terrorist organizations, including the Islamic State, are “sponsored by the United States and its allies,” showing, as many others have done, that there are documents proving this fact.

“We are dealing with a state-sponsorship of terrorism, the recruitment of mercenaries, the training and financing of terrorism.”

Vladimir Putin even called out “the powers that be” and the “imaginary and mythical” threats they use to control us, at the meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club in October 2016. You can watch it and well as access the transcript here. We also published an article on his speech, which you can read here.

“We are dealing with a criminal undertaking at a global level . . . the global war on terrorism is fake, it’s based on fake premises. It tells us that somehow America and the western world are going after a fictitious enemy, the Islamic state, when in fact the Islamic state is fully supported and financed by the Western military alliance and America’s allies in the Persian Gulf. . . . They say Muslims are terrorists, but it just so happens that terrorists are Made in America. . . . They’re not the product of Muslim society, and that should be abundantly clear to everyone on this floor.”

– Dr. Michel Chossudovsky

Along with the information above, and other sources like Wikileaks and more, we also have something happening within intelligence agencies. It may be difficult to trust these agencies, but that’s not to say that there aren’t good forces within them that want the truth about several different topics to come out.

Within the last few years, in fact, important agencies have been releasing thousands of declassified documents, and one of the latest reveals plans to destabilize Syria that have been in the works for more than two decades.

Syria is another example of manufactured chaos. There is a powerful group of people who are creating these problems and then offering the world a solution while we all follow along and praise them for their heroic efforts.

Syria and the Documents

Titled “Syria: Scenarios of Dramatic Political Change,” this document was written in July of 1986 by the Foreign Subversion and Instability Center, part of the CIA’s Mission Center for Global Issues.

It states its mission to analyze “a number of possible scenarios that could lead to the ouster of President Assad or other dramatic change in Syria.” Though the document is 25 years old, it shows that U.S. plans to influence and infiltrate Syria to create change that would suit their own interests date back well over 30 years.

The document also comes with similar testimony from insiders. One example would be former Four Star General Wesley Clark, who was the Supreme Allied Commander of Europe of NATO from 1997-2000. Clark said, in an interview with Democracy Now, that the U.S. had plans to invade countries in the Middle East, including Syria, for no justified reason at all.  He offered the sentiments of some within the American military, that they have a “good military” and that they can “take down governments.”  He spoke of a memo that described how the U.S. had “plans to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off, Iran” (source).

Wikileaks has also published a number of classified cables. One in particular shows how it was the primary goal of U.S. foreign policy to destabilize the Syrian government (source).

It’s ironic how the CIA has interfered with hundreds of elections, yet when some information comes out exposing elitist secrets, they simply resort to blaming others, like Russia in this case, with absolutely no evidence.

Whitney Webb from Mintpress news sums it up quite well:

The fact that the CIA has a center dedicated to “foreign subversion and instability” – as well as the CIA’s documented penchant for regime change – confirms that the decades-long effort to destabilize Syria parallels the agency’s efforts to destabilize other regimes throughout the world in order to replace them with governments they believe to be more sympathetic to U.S. interests. . . .

These destabilization efforts are often carried out with little, if any, regard to their impact on civilians who are often caught in the crossfire. As the 1986 report and the 2006 cable both note, the Assads brought periods of “unprecedented stability” to Syria.

The CIA and U.S. government have nevertheless chosen to pursue an agenda of destabilization. Nearly seven years later, the death toll in the West’s efforts to oust Assad is set to top half a million and has helped to create the largest refugee crisis since World War II.

Read the full declassified CIA report Syria: scenarios of dramatic political change.

Why Information Like This is Encouraging

Information like this is encouraging because, for so many years, it wasn’t really getting out to the masses at all. Not only information within these realms, but various other subjects as well, in all areas that affect every aspect of our lives, from health to finances and more. Many things are being exposed that need our attention.

As a result of this transparency and questioning, human consciousness is shifting. The way we perceive our world is changing, proving the power of information. Those who conceal this information don’t want it to come out and are immensely threatened by people like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. The faster we expose them, the faster we move along the road to change.

Many can read this information and perceive it to be a dark reality, and feel that ignorance is bliss, but this attitude leaves our world open to even more corruption and problems for future generations to tackle.

We’ve made tremendous progress over the past years, and there are a number of examples. The infiltration of Iraq for supposed “weapons of mass destruction” is a perfect example, as most polls show that the American people don’t really believe what their government told them about 9/11. And genetically modified foods and the pesticides that go with them are now banned from most countries around the world due to the transparency of information.

The desire of the collective consciousness seems to be one of peace, love, unity, and a space where all life can thrive. The great thing about this intention is that it directs us toward creation and manifestation. We are currently living in that time.

So don’t bow your head in despair, but rather look to our future with hope. Our current process is a necessary step in the rebirth of the human experience, and there is a lot of pain involved in the process of birth, but in the end it’s something beautiful.

United States President Donald Trump has pledged to intensify the war against the people of Somalia which has gone on for decades.

This latest manifestation of Washington’s intervention in the oil-rich Horn of Africa state came in the form of an executive order granting the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) greater latitude in carrying out military operations inside the country against the al-Shabaab guerrilla movement. However, the Pentagon is attempting to maintain a semblance of caution in their public remarks about military engagement in Somalia.

AFRICOM Commander Marine Corps General Thomas D. Waldhauser said of the situation in Somalia on March 24:

“It’s very, very important that we have a very, very high degree of certainty in limiting or entirely avoiding civilian casualties. And obviously the cardinal rule in these types of engagements is to not make more enemies than you already have.”

Trump claims that the policy of the previous administration of President Barack Obama hampered the capacity of the Pentagon to defeat al-Shabaab. In reality the Obama White House continued the same routine bombing operations, funding and training of the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM), the maintenance of a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) field station in Mogadishu and a flotilla of Naval warships off the coast of the strategically located country in the Gulf of Aden.

Despite the militarized posture of successive administrations in Washington extending back to President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s, the nation remains a source of instability throughout the region with a worsening situation for its citizens who are facing growing food insecurity and economic crisis. Even though multi-national oil firms have been drilling for petroleum in the country the people have yet to benefit substantially from their presence.

In an article published in the neighboring Kenya Daily Nation on April 10, it says of the U.S. head-of-state:

“His March 29 directive removes a requirement that proposed U.S. strikes on Shabaab be vetted at high levels in Washington. The new policy also ends the Obama condition that U.S. attacks can be launched only when the targeted entity is believed to pose a specific threat to Americans. And U.S. raids will no longer be predicated on high probability that civilians will not die as a result.”

There is really no evidence that these were the parameters that guided Pentagon and CIA military and covert action attacks in Somalia. AFRICOM has often denied that its strikes and commando raids deliberately endanger civilians nevertheless this happens more often than not.

Drone strikes and aerial bombardments have resulted in the deaths and injuries of thousands of Somalians since 2007 when the former administration of President George W. Bush, Jr. sought to undermine the ability of the people to determine their own destiny. Every Somalian administration since this period has been under the political dominance of Washington and Wall Street. As a result corruption and inefficiency is widespread while hundreds of thousands of people face joblessness and starvation.

The same Daily Nation report goes on to say that:

“the Trump order permits attacks when civilian casualties ‘are deemed necessary and proportionate.’ U.S. officials have acknowledged the heightened danger of civilian deaths — and enhanced recruitment opportunities for Shabaab — as a result of this new authorization.”

A newly-elected administration headed by President Mohamed Abdulahi Mohamed, who holds a U.S. passport, declared a renewed war on al-Shabaab after giving its members 60 days to surrender. Nonetheless, the capacity of the Federal Government to maintain security even in the capital of Mogadishu has proven to be extremely limited.

Wave of Attacks Dozens

On April 9 it was reported that at least fifteen people were killed in a car bomb attack aimed at assassinating the newly-appointed military leader of the Somalian Federal Government. This operation took place right in the heart of the capital of Mogadishu in the aftermath of the inauguration of General Ahmed Mohamed Jimale.

A driver attempted to ram a vehicle into the convoy carrying General Jimale. The military official survived the attack yet a minibus carrying commuters was struck causing the bulk of casualties.

In a statement made by the spokesman for the Ministry of Internal Security Abdikamil Moalim Shukri, he noted:

“A Shabab suicide bomber targeted a military convoy left from the ministry of defense compound which was carrying the newly appointed Somali military chief. No officials were hurt in the blast. All the victims were civilians.”

Within 24 hours yet another attack took place when a soldier wearing military gear walked into the training academy and detonated a bomb. The academy is located in the western section of Mogadishu.

A survivor of the bombing which killed two colonels said of the attacker:

“He entered the camp unstopped. We were sitting under a tree when he came and blew himself up among us.”

Also on April 10 a civil servant died when a bomb in his vehicle was detonated apparently through a remote control device in the Hamarweyne district of the capital.

Insecurity in the Gulf of Aden

Just the day before the attempt to assassinate the General Jimale, there was a major effort to seize a commercial cargo ship off the coast of the country by so-called pirates. The ship had 19 Filipino sailors aboard during the attack and was only repelled due to the intervention of a joint Chinese and Indian anti-piracy patrol in the Gulf of Aden.

This incident was only one of five which have been reported over the last several weeks. Pirates recently took control of a Pakistani-owned ship which was transporting food off the coast of central Somalia. Later an Indian-owned vessel was commandeered and redirected to an area for the purpose of seizing its goods.

Somalian Minister of Information Abdirahman Omar Osman told the international press in response to the rash of attacks in the Gulf of Aden:

“Somali federal government is ready to do its part. But due to our limitation in terms of resources and capacity, we urgently require the support.”

U.S. Policy Has Undermined Somalia

Even with 22,000 western-trained and funded AMISOM troops stationed in Somalia, the country still has not been stabilized. Trump’s directive will only create more death and destruction.

The humanitarian crisis in the country is worsening with people fleeing to neighboring war torn Yemen which is also under siege by U.S.-backed forces led by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). A boat filled with Somalian refugees was bombed by the GCC U.S.-manufactured warplanes killing many people on March 17 as they attempted to travel along the Red Sea from Yemen to the Republic of Sudan.

An East African regional bloc of nations known as the Inter-regional Authority on Development (IGAD) has failed to secure a ceasefire in Somalia. IGAD’s response to the recent bombings has been to threaten further military activity directed against al-Shabaab.

A statement issued by the regional group on April 10 said:

“IGAD condemns in the strongest terms possible the Al-Shabab terror attack of Sunday (April 9) that killed innocent citizens and injured others in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. This atrocious terror attack which was targeting Somalia’s new military chief is a failure that once again showed Al-Shabaab terror group’s disrespect for human life and civilians’ protection.”

Yet the regional states in East Africa should condemn U.S. policy in Somalia which has resulted in further militarization of the area, destabilizing the society and enhancing the impoverishment of the people.

“Russia needs to be aware, made aware of its responsibility in the bloody actions last week by the b regime and therefore we are always open to working with our friends, allies and partners allies to send clear messages through sanctions and other means to Russia.” PM Justin Trudeau

Canada’s PM Trudeau displayed all the sycophancy of a stalwart U.S. ally in his response concerning actions towards Russia – or, as with former PM Harper, it could be actually viewed as front-running for the empire in order to create momentum and be part of the team.

He is strongly supported by the media as there has been little if any news recently about the “bloody actions” of the U.S. military actions in Mosul. Hundreds of civilian deaths – including many children, “beautiful babies,” and heavy destruction of infrastructure are occurring as the city is slowly retaken from ISIS. The media could also serve up reminders about Secretary of State Albright’s comments that five hundred thousand dead Iraqi children is worth the price of beating Saddam Hussein. There are many recent reports of severe health related problems – deformities and cancers – with the children of Fallujah, exposed to the toxic effects of depleted uranium munitions used on the city by U.S. forces.

Yes children are precious, “beautiful babies”, but that has yet to stop the U.S. military, assisted by Canada, in killing hundreds of thousands globally since WW II.

After one unverified chemical attack – unverified for who actually did it and how it was done, along with verification of the type of chemical – the U.S. and its puppet governments scream “bloody murder.” Double standards abound.  But hey, you argue, this was a weapon of mass destruction, a chemical weapon.

Hey, Winston!

But then again, as Winston Churchill argued in WW II,

“It is absurd to consider morality on this topic when everybody used it in the last war without a word of complaint from the moralists or the Church. On the other hand, in the last war bombing of open cities was regarded as forbidden. Now everybody does it as a matter of course. It is simply a question of fashion changing as she does between long and short skirts for women.”

I use that quote as both Liberals and Conservatives are fond of quoting Churchill, a man who always enjoyed a good war, “a lot of jolly little wars against barbarous peoples”. As for the ultimate symbol of peaceful resistance and non violence, Gandhi, he said he “ought to be lain bound hand and foot at the gates of Delhi, and then trampled on by an enormous elephant with the new Viceroy seated on its back.” As for the  Indians themselves, “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.”

Going back further Churchill enjoyed the Boer war, writing

“only of his “irritation that Kaffirs should be allowed to fire on white men”. Later, he boasted of his experiences there: “That was before war degenerated. It was great fun galloping about.”

I use Churchill to display all the hypocrisy and double standards that Canada has inherited in its  role as predominantly white nation within the British imperial tradition of ruthlessly bombing the ‘other’ – and as such uses Churchill in many of their pro-war quotations.

As for Russia, that inheritance includes attacks by the British in northern Russia, using poison gas (diphenylchlorarsine) against the Russian revolutionaries after WW I. Which comes around to the current situation again.

What you do speaks so loud I can’t hear what you say.

As usual, Trudeau did his ‘Liberal’ thing, saying “we know there is no military solution,” only that the situation be solved being “thoughtful, diplomatic, firm and multifaceted as we move forward.” Sounds great, but with the U.S. as our ‘firm, diplomatic, thoughtful’ ally, the only actions will be military.

The world need not be fooled – the current Liberal government under Trudeau is about as liberal as the previous Conservative government under Harper, a dynamic duo extolling the virtues of military actions – except that the Liberals use nicer words, and offer common platitudes about dialogue and diplomacy. Finally, where has your campaign rhetoric gone, about looking for the roots of the problem?  Or is the mirror too cracked for you to see yourself?

Yes children are precious, “beautiful babies”, but that has yet to stop the U.S. military, assisted by Canada, in killing hundreds of thousands globally since WW II.  More sanctions – the U.S.’ second favourite form of warfare – and support for the bloodthirsty industrial military complex will not help solve the problems of Syria and the greater Middle East.

Thursday’s US missile attack on Syria must represent the quickest foreign policy U-turn in history. Less than a week after the White House gave Assad permission to stay on as president of his own country, President Trump decided that the US had to attack Syria and demand Assad’s ouster after a chemical attack earlier in the week. Trump blamed Assad for the attack, stated that “something’s going to happen” in retaliation, and less than two days later he launched a volley of 59 Tomahawk missiles (at a cost of $1.5 million each) onto a military airfield near where the chemical attack took place.

President Trump said it is in the “vital national security interest of the United States” to attack Syria over the use of poison gas. That is nonsense. Even if what Trump claims about the gas attack is true – and we’ve seen no evidence that it is – there is nothing about an isolated incident of inhuman cruelty thousands of miles from our borders that is in our “vital national security interest.” Even if Assad gassed his own people last week it hardly means he will launch chemical attacks on the United States even if he had the ability, which he does not.

From the moment the chemical attack was blamed on Assad, however, I expressed my doubts about the claims. It simply makes no sense for Assad to attack civilians with a chemical weapon just as he is winning his war against ISIS and al-Qaeda and has been told by the US that it no longer seeks regime change. On the verge of victory, he commits a suicidal act to no strategic or tactical military advantage? More likely the gas attack was a false flag by the rebels — or perhaps even by our CIA — as a last ditch effort to forestall a rebel defeat in the six year war.

Would the neocons and the mainstream media lie to us about what happened last week in Syria? Of course they would. They lied us into attacking Iraq, they lied us into attacking Gaddafi, they lied us into seeking regime change in Syria in the first place. We should always assume they are lying.

Who benefits from the US attack on Syria? ISIS, which immediately after the attack began a ground offensive. Does President Trump really want the US to act as ISIS’s air force?

“The gas attack, which took some 70 civilian lives, was horrible and must be condemned. But we must also remember that US bombs in Syria have killed hundreds of civilians. Just recently, US bombs killed 300 Iraqi civilians in one strike! Does it really make a difference if you are killed by poison gas or by a US missile?”

What’s next for President Trump in Syria? Russia has not backed down from its claim that the poison gas leaked as a result of a conventional Syrian bomb on an ISIS chemical weapons factory. Moscow claims it is determined to defend its ally, Syria. Will Trump unilaterally declare a no fly zone in parts of Syria and attempt to prevent Russian air traffic? Some suggest this is his next move. It is one that carries a great danger of igniting World War Three.

Donald Trump’s attack on Syria was clearly illegal. However, Congress shows no interest in reining in this out-of-control president. We should fear any US escalation and must demand that our Representatives prohibit it. If there ever was a time to flood the Capitol Hill switchboard demanding an end to US military action in Syria, it is now!

Dr. Ron Paul is a Former Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and Founder, The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

The CIA backed a right-wing coup in Syria in 1949, a mere 3 years after Syria became an independent country.

Clark University History professor Douglas Little notes:

Recently declassified records… confirm that beginning on November 30, 1948, [CIA operative Stephen] Meade met secretly with Colonel Zaim at least six times to discuss the “possibility [of an] army supported dictatorship.” [“Cold War and Covert Action: The United States and Syria, 1945-1958,” Middle East Journal, Winter 1990, p. 55]

***

As early as 1949, this newly independent Arab republic was an important staging ground for the CIA’s earliest experiments in covert action.

The CIA secretly encouraged a right-wing military coup in 1949.

The reason the U.S. initiated the coup? Little explains:

In late 1945, the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO) announced plans to construct the Trans-Arabian Pipe Line (TAPLINE) from Saudi Arabia to the Mediterra- nean. With U.S. help, ARAMCO secured rights-of-way from Lebanon, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The Syrian right-of-way was stalled in parliament.

In other words, Syria was the sole holdout for the lucrative oil pipeline.

(Indeed, the CIA has carried out this type of covert action right from the start.)

In 1957, the American president and British prime minister agreed to launch regime change again in Syria. Historian Little notes that the coup plot was discovered and stopped:

On August 12, 1957, the Syrian army surrounded the U.S. embassy in Damascus. Claiming to have aborted a CIA plot to overthrow neutralist President Shukri Quwatly and install a pro-Western regime, Syrian chief of counterintelligence Abdul Hamid Sarraj expelled three U.S. diplomats ….

Syrian counterintelligence chief Sarraj reacted swiftly on August 12, expelling Stone and other CIA agents, arresting their accomplices and placing the U.S. embassy under surveillance.

***

More importantly, Syria also had control of one of the main oil arteries of the Middle East, the pipeline which connected pro-western Iraq’s oilfields to Turkey.

***

The report said that once the necessary degree of fear had been created, frontier incidents and border clashes would be staged to provide a pretext for Iraqi and Jordanian military intervention. Syria had to be “made to appear as the sponsor of plots, sabotage and violence directed against neighbouring governments,” the report says. “CIA and SIS should use their capabilities in both the psychological and action fields to augment tension.”

***

The plan called for funding of a “Free Syria Committee” [hmmm … sounds vaguely familiar], and the arming of “political factions with paramilitary or other actionist capabilities” within Syria. The CIA and MI6 would instigate internal uprisings, for instance by the Druze [a Shia Muslim sect] in the south, help to free political prisoners held in the Mezze prison, and stir up the Muslim Brotherhood in Damascus.

Newly-declassified CIA documents show that in 1983, the CIA drew up plans to pressure the Syrian government by using Iraq, Israel and Turkey as proxies:

Syria at present has a hammerlock on US interests both in Lebanon and in the Gulf — through closure of Iraq’s pipeline thereby threatening Iraqi internationalization of the [Iran-Iraq] war. The US should consider sharply escalating the pressures against Assad [Sr.] through covertly orchestrating simultaneous military threats against Syria from three border states hostile to Syria: Iraq, Israel and Turkey. Iraq, perceived to be increasingly desperate in the Gulf War, would undertake limited military (air) operations against Syria with the sole goal of opening the pipeline. Although opening war on a second front against Syria poses considerable risk to Iraq, Syria would also face a two-front war since it is already heavily engaged in the Bekaa, on the Golan and in maintaining control over a hostile and restive population inside Syria.

Israel would simultaneously raise tensions along Syria’s Lebanon front without actually going to war. Turkey, angered by Syrian support to Armenian terrorism, to Iraqi Kurds on Turkey’s Kurdish border areas and to Turkish terrorists operating out of northern Syria, has often considered launching  unilateral military operations against terrorist camps in northern Syria. Virtually all Arab states would have sympathy for Iraq.

Faced with three belligerent fronts, Assad would probably be forced to abandon his policy of closure of the pipeline. Such a concession would relieve the economic pressure on Iraq, and perhaps force Iran to reconsider  bringing the war to an end. It would be a sharp blow to Syria’s prestige and  could effect the equation of forces in Lebanon.

***

If Israel were to increase tensions against Syria simultaneously with an Iraqi initiative, the pressures on Assad would escalate rapidly. A Turkish move would psychologically press him further.

Recently-declassified CIA documents show that in 1986, the CIA drew up plans to overthrow Syria by provoking sectarian tensions.

Neoconservatives planned regime change in Syria once again in 1991 and again in 2001.

And as Nafeez Ahmed notes:

According to former French foreign minister Roland Dumas, Britain had planned covert action in Syria as early as 2009: “I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business,” he told French television: “I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria. This was in Britain not in America. Britain was preparing gunmen to invade Syria.”

Leaked emails from the private intelligence firm Stratfor, including notes from a meeting with Pentagon officials, confirmed that as of 2011, US and UK special forces training of Syrian opposition forces was well underway. The goal was to elicit the “collapse” of Assad’s regime “from within.”

Indeed.

A leaked communication shows that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in 2012:

The best way to help Israel deal with Iran’s growing nuclear capability is to help the people of Syria overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad.

***

What Israeli military leaders really worry about — but cannot talk about — is losing their nuclear monopoly.

And high-level American and Turkish officials say that Turkey supplied Sarin gas to Syrian rebels in 2013 in order to frame the Syrian government … to provide an excuse for regime change.

Indeed, the U.S. has carried out regime change in the Middle East and North Africa for six decades.

The Vietnamese perspective is rarely found in English language books about the Vietnam War, especially regarding the CIA’s “liaison” relationship with South Vietnamese police and security officials. Which is why I considered myself very fortunate when I was introduced to Lê Xuân Nhuận.

Nhuận’s Wikipedia bio provides a comprehensive account of his life and accomplishments. He is a noted poet and author of three Vietnamese language books about his experiences as a “Special Police” officer. Two of the books are currently available. The first, The Police Plan (Cảnh-Sát-Hóa) (2002) tells of his service as Director Security and Counter-Intelligence in Region II from 1960 to 1973 and focuses on his corruption investigations within the provinces and capital cities in the region. Nhuận’s second memoir, Biến-Loạn Miền Trung (2012) focuses on his service as Director of Security and Counter-Intelligence in Region I from 1973 to 1975. It reveals more about his personal life, and why he protested the militarist system that doomed democracy in the Republic of Vietnam (RVN).

Captured by the North Vietnamese in 1975, Nhuận spent more than twelve years in a re-education camp and five years under house arrest before emigrating to America in 1992. And yet, despite 20 years of war and 17 years of internment, he remains an optimistic and engaging individual whose extraordinary life and accomplishments have inspired me and advanced my understanding of the war.

Nhuận also has an irreverent streak that is rare among police and military veterans in the Vietnamese exile community. Although a dedicated anti-communist, he was a maverick who opposed all the political regimes in Vietnam: what he describes as “France’s colonialism, Emperor Bảo Đại’s feudalism, President Ngô Đình Diệm’s dictatorship, and President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu’s stratocracy (government by military forces).”

Educated in Huế (the old capital and cultural center of Central Vietnam) where his first poems were published, Nhuận as a young man worked as a journalist for two newspapers. His interests were literary – he created the “Xây-Dựng” group composed of well-known poets and writers – but he was politically active too, and in 1949 he was jailed for writing a novel criticizing the French and Emperor Bảo Đại.

His fated involvement with Americans began in mid-1954 while he was serving in the French-controlled Vietnamese army as a war correspondent, psychological warfare lecturer, and Chief of the Voice of the Army in Central Vietnam. At this critical juncture, which was prior to the partition of Vietnam, he met Thompson A. Grunwald, a young, enthusiastic, crew-cut American.

“Tom was the first American to come to Huế as Director of the US Information Service,” Nhuận recalled.

Grunwald had an office, a library, and a room for showing propaganda films. He organized the first Vietnamese-American Association, and advised and equipped Vietnam’s Information Services. As de facto chief of the US consulate in Central Vietnam, Grunwald also had extensive contacts with most of the top government officials and military officers.

“Tom helped me organize an English course on Radio Huế,” Nhuận continued. “It was the first ever English radio program in Vietnam. He gave me a manual tape-recorder and batteries to use when I went with the commanding generals to the units to record what was said for radio broadcasts and to publish in military magazines and papers. I appeared with him in many public events.”

Nhuận left the military in 1956 and joined the Huế city police force, but he and Grunwald continued to collaborate; they showed propaganda films inside police stations and to the public, taught English to policemen and women, and sent English language lessons to listeners and students across the country. Nhuận introduced Grunwald to influential people and helped him collect information for the Thế Giới Tự Do (Free World) magazine. Grunwald in turn introduced Nhuận to the US military officers who came to his Voice of the Army readings.

“Tom picked up any Americans who happened to be in Huế to participate in my English course,” Nhuận added. The USIS films were showed to the public too, on Saturday evenings, at the square next to the Huế police office.

“Tom left some years later,” Nhuận said, “and became the first Chief of Vietnam Desk at the Radio Voice of America and organized the first VOA’s English course by radio for Vietnamese listeners in Vietnam. Here in California, I met Tom again, and we had family tours and dinners together some years ago.”

The Ubiquitous American

After the partition of Vietnam, the US military assistance advisory group (MAAG) in the capital city of Sài Gòn focused on modernizing the Republic of Vietnam’s Armed Forces (RVNAF). The CIA, meanwhile, dealt with the civilian branches of government, especially the security police and intelligence services.

For example, the CIA organized and trained the Vietnamese Special Forces, the Lực Lượng Đặc Biệt (LLDB) to conduct paramilitary intelligence operations in North Vietnam, Laos, and Kampuchea. The LLDB, notably, reported directly to the Presidential Survey Office, not the RVNAF. In their role as a “palace guard”, they “were always available for special details dreamed up by President Diệm and his brother Nhu.” Those “special” details involved “terrorism against political opponents.”¹

“There was also a presidential intelligence service, the Office of Political and Social Research (SEPES) directed by Dr. Trần Kim Tuyến,” Nhuận recalled, “which was also a hammer used by President Ngô Đình Diệm against his domestic political opponents.”

President Diệm and his brothers Nhu (the political boss in Southern Vietnam) and Cẩn (the boss in Central Vietnam) were obsessed with protecting the Catholic Ngô regime. To that end, they staffed the government and military with loyal members of their Cân Lao (Personalist Labor) Party, which promoted the idea that people owed allegiance to a charismatic leader rather than a party or ideology. To enforce loyalty to President Diệm, SEPES chief Tuyến created a vast intelligence network of Catholic emigres and beholden Can Lao cadres to control and influence all levels of the administration. Tuyến likewise used the Military Security Service (An-Ninh Quân-Đội) to monitor the many unhappy military officers who were plotting coups.

To finance this ubiquitous security apparatus, and thus control the political environment in South Vietnam, Tuyến in 1958 started importing a steady supply of Laotian opium using Corsican airlines and a faction of the South Vietnamese air force. All of this was done with tacit CIA approval.

Indeed, the Americans were determined to protect the Ngô regime at any cost. To that end, the Michigan State University Group (MSUG) was sent to Sài Gòn in 1955 to manage a massive “technical assistance” program that focused on four areas: public information, public administration, finance and economics, and police and security services. Over the ensuing seven years, MSUG’s Police Administration Division would spend 15 million dollars beefing up the Government of Vietnam’s (GVN) array of internal security programs. ²

MSUG recruited primarily from the existing French colonial police forces: the Gendarme (Hiến Binh) which operated in rural areas; and the Sûreté, composed of plainclothesmen handling investigations, customs, immigration, and revenue. MSUG combined the Sûreté with the municipal police (uniformed police in 22 autonomous cities and Sài Gòn) into a General Directorate of Police and Security Services (Tổng Nha Cảnh-Sát Công-An) within the Ministry of the Interior.

The police (Ty Cảnh-Sát) and security services (Ty Công-An) were separate commands and functioned autonomously in the provinces and cities until 1962, when they were combined into the National Police (Cảnh-Sát Quốc-Gia). As Nhuận explained,

“the Tình-Báo (Intelligence), Công-An (Security or Public Safety) and Cảnh-Sát Đặc-Biệt (Special Police) services always existed and were particularly important.”

Most MSUG police advisers were former state troopers or big city detectives, but the five men who trained and advised the plain-clothed Special Police were undercover CIA officers hidden within MSUG’s Internal Security Section. Under Raymond Babineau, this CIA team worked at Special Police headquarters inside the National Police Command headquarters at 258 Võ Tánh Street.

The Võ Tánh facility also housed the infamous National Police/Special Police Interrogation Center, which as author Graham Greene wrote in The Quiet American, “seemed to smell of urine and injustice.”

The Special Police always had a reputation for brutality. General Edward Lansdale, who managed the CIA’s nascent “covert action” programs in South Vietnam, was highly critical of Babineau’s team. In his autobiography, Lansdale recalled that in 1956,

“several families appeared at my house one morning to tell me about the arrest at midnight of their men-folk, all of whom were political figures. The arrests had a strange aspect to them, having come when the city was asleep and being made by heavily armed men who were identified as `special police’.”³

The Americans were aware that the Ngô regime used the Special Police to suppress its domestic political opponents. But they did nothing to stop the abuses, because the Special Police produced the essential “Vietcong order of battle” (Bản Trận Liệt) that mapped out the organizational structure and membership of the burgeoning Communist-led insurgency. Suppressing communism was America’s top priority, and the Special Police were viewed as the best means to accomplish this goal. Consequently, the Special Police received the lion’s share of US technical aid, while the most promising Special Police officers were trained by CIA and FBI personnel at the International Police Academy at Georgetown University.

Doug Valentine is an American journalist and author of one novel, TDY, and five works of historical non-fiction: The Hotel Tacloban, The Phoenix Program, The Strength of the Wolf (winner of the Choice Academic Library Award), The Strength of the Pack, and most recently, The CIA as Organized Crime. His articles have appeared regularly in CounterPunch, ConsortiumNews, and elsewhere. Portions of his research materials are archived at the National Security Archive (both a Vietnam Collection and a separate Drug Enforcement Collection), Texas Tech University’s Vietnam Center, and John Jay College. He provided expert testimony at the King v Jowers trial on the Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination at the request of the King family.

NOTES

1 Keven M. Generous, “Vietnam: The Secret War” (1985), p. 94.

2 Warren Hinckle, Robert Scheer and Sol Stern, “University on the Make”, Ramparts, April 1966.

3 Edward Geary Lansdale, In the Midst of Wars (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), p. 340.

The Vietnamese perspective is rarely found in English language books about the Vietnam War, especially regarding the CIA’s “liaison” relationship with South Vietnamese police and security officials. Which is why I considered myself very fortunate when I was introduced to Lê Xuân Nhuận.

Nhuận’s Wikipedia bio provides a comprehensive account of his life and accomplishments. He is a noted poet and author of three Vietnamese language books about his experiences as a “Special Police” officer. Two of the books are currently available. The first, The Police Plan (Cảnh-Sát-Hóa) (2002) tells of his service as Director Security and Counter-Intelligence in Region II from 1960 to 1973 and focuses on his corruption investigations within the provinces and capital cities in the region. Nhuận’s second memoir, Biến-Loạn Miền Trung (2012) focuses on his service as Director of Security and Counter-Intelligence in Region I from 1973 to 1975. It reveals more about his personal life, and why he protested the militarist system that doomed democracy in the Republic of Vietnam (RVN).

Captured by the North Vietnamese in 1975, Nhuận spent more than twelve years in a re-education camp and five years under house arrest before emigrating to America in 1992. And yet, despite 20 years of war and 17 years of internment, he remains an optimistic and engaging individual whose extraordinary life and accomplishments have inspired me and advanced my understanding of the war.

Nhuận also has an irreverent streak that is rare among police and military veterans in the Vietnamese exile community. Although a dedicated anti-communist, he was a maverick who opposed all the political regimes in Vietnam: what he describes as “France’s colonialism, Emperor Bảo Đại’s feudalism, President Ngô Đình Diệm’s dictatorship, and President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu’s stratocracy (government by military forces).”

Educated in Huế (the old capital and cultural center of Central Vietnam) where his first poems were published, Nhuận as a young man worked as a journalist for two newspapers. His interests were literary – he created the “Xây-Dựng” group composed of well-known poets and writers – but he was politically active too, and in 1949 he was jailed for writing a novel criticizing the French and Emperor Bảo Đại.

His fated involvement with Americans began in mid-1954 while he was serving in the French-controlled Vietnamese army as a war correspondent, psychological warfare lecturer, and Chief of the Voice of the Army in Central Vietnam. At this critical juncture, which was prior to the partition of Vietnam, he met Thompson A. Grunwald, a young, enthusiastic, crew-cut American.

“Tom was the first American to come to Huế as Director of the US Information Service,” Nhuận recalled.

Grunwald had an office, a library, and a room for showing propaganda films. He organized the first Vietnamese-American Association, and advised and equipped Vietnam’s Information Services. As de facto chief of the US consulate in Central Vietnam, Grunwald also had extensive contacts with most of the top government officials and military officers.

“Tom helped me organize an English course on Radio Huế,” Nhuận continued. “It was the first ever English radio program in Vietnam. He gave me a manual tape-recorder and batteries to use when I went with the commanding generals to the units to record what was said for radio broadcasts and to publish in military magazines and papers. I appeared with him in many public events.”

Nhuận left the military in 1956 and joined the Huế city police force, but he and Grunwald continued to collaborate; they showed propaganda films inside police stations and to the public, taught English to policemen and women, and sent English language lessons to listeners and students across the country. Nhuận introduced Grunwald to influential people and helped him collect information for the Thế Giới Tự Do (Free World) magazine. Grunwald in turn introduced Nhuận to the US military officers who came to his Voice of the Army readings.

“Tom picked up any Americans who happened to be in Huế to participate in my English course,” Nhuận added. The USIS films were showed to the public too, on Saturday evenings, at the square next to the Huế police office.

“Tom left some years later,” Nhuận said, “and became the first Chief of Vietnam Desk at the Radio Voice of America and organized the first VOA’s English course by radio for Vietnamese listeners in Vietnam. Here in California, I met Tom again, and we had family tours and dinners together some years ago.”

The Ubiquitous American

After the partition of Vietnam, the US military assistance advisory group (MAAG) in the capital city of Sài Gòn focused on modernizing the Republic of Vietnam’s Armed Forces (RVNAF). The CIA, meanwhile, dealt with the civilian branches of government, especially the security police and intelligence services.

For example, the CIA organized and trained the Vietnamese Special Forces, the Lực Lượng Đặc Biệt (LLDB) to conduct paramilitary intelligence operations in North Vietnam, Laos, and Kampuchea. The LLDB, notably, reported directly to the Presidential Survey Office, not the RVNAF. In their role as a “palace guard”, they “were always available for special details dreamed up by President Diệm and his brother Nhu.” Those “special” details involved “terrorism against political opponents.”¹

“There was also a presidential intelligence service, the Office of Political and Social Research (SEPES) directed by Dr. Trần Kim Tuyến,” Nhuận recalled, “which was also a hammer used by President Ngô Đình Diệm against his domestic political opponents.”

President Diệm and his brothers Nhu (the political boss in Southern Vietnam) and Cẩn (the boss in Central Vietnam) were obsessed with protecting the Catholic Ngô regime. To that end, they staffed the government and military with loyal members of their Cân Lao (Personalist Labor) Party, which promoted the idea that people owed allegiance to a charismatic leader rather than a party or ideology. To enforce loyalty to President Diệm, SEPES chief Tuyến created a vast intelligence network of Catholic emigres and beholden Can Lao cadres to control and influence all levels of the administration. Tuyến likewise used the Military Security Service (An-Ninh Quân-Đội) to monitor the many unhappy military officers who were plotting coups.

To finance this ubiquitous security apparatus, and thus control the political environment in South Vietnam, Tuyến in 1958 started importing a steady supply of Laotian opium using Corsican airlines and a faction of the South Vietnamese air force. All of this was done with tacit CIA approval.

Indeed, the Americans were determined to protect the Ngô regime at any cost. To that end, the Michigan State University Group (MSUG) was sent to Sài Gòn in 1955 to manage a massive “technical assistance” program that focused on four areas: public information, public administration, finance and economics, and police and security services. Over the ensuing seven years, MSUG’s Police Administration Division would spend 15 million dollars beefing up the Government of Vietnam’s (GVN) array of internal security programs. ²

MSUG recruited primarily from the existing French colonial police forces: the Gendarme (Hiến Binh) which operated in rural areas; and the Sûreté, composed of plainclothesmen handling investigations, customs, immigration, and revenue. MSUG combined the Sûreté with the municipal police (uniformed police in 22 autonomous cities and Sài Gòn) into a General Directorate of Police and Security Services (Tổng Nha Cảnh-Sát Công-An) within the Ministry of the Interior.

The police (Ty Cảnh-Sát) and security services (Ty Công-An) were separate commands and functioned autonomously in the provinces and cities until 1962, when they were combined into the National Police (Cảnh-Sát Quốc-Gia). As Nhuận explained,

“the Tình-Báo (Intelligence), Công-An (Security or Public Safety) and Cảnh-Sát Đặc-Biệt (Special Police) services always existed and were particularly important.”

Most MSUG police advisers were former state troopers or big city detectives, but the five men who trained and advised the plain-clothed Special Police were undercover CIA officers hidden within MSUG’s Internal Security Section. Under Raymond Babineau, this CIA team worked at Special Police headquarters inside the National Police Command headquarters at 258 Võ Tánh Street.

The Võ Tánh facility also housed the infamous National Police/Special Police Interrogation Center, which as author Graham Greene wrote in The Quiet American, “seemed to smell of urine and injustice.”

The Special Police always had a reputation for brutality. General Edward Lansdale, who managed the CIA’s nascent “covert action” programs in South Vietnam, was highly critical of Babineau’s team. In his autobiography, Lansdale recalled that in 1956,

“several families appeared at my house one morning to tell me about the arrest at midnight of their men-folk, all of whom were political figures. The arrests had a strange aspect to them, having come when the city was asleep and being made by heavily armed men who were identified as `special police’.”³

The Americans were aware that the Ngô regime used the Special Police to suppress its domestic political opponents. But they did nothing to stop the abuses, because the Special Police produced the essential “Vietcong order of battle” (Bản Trận Liệt) that mapped out the organizational structure and membership of the burgeoning Communist-led insurgency. Suppressing communism was America’s top priority, and the Special Police were viewed as the best means to accomplish this goal. Consequently, the Special Police received the lion’s share of US technical aid, while the most promising Special Police officers were trained by CIA and FBI personnel at the International Police Academy at Georgetown University.

Doug Valentine is an American journalist and author of one novel, TDY, and five works of historical non-fiction: The Hotel Tacloban, The Phoenix Program, The Strength of the Wolf (winner of the Choice Academic Library Award), The Strength of the Pack, and most recently, The CIA as Organized Crime. His articles have appeared regularly in CounterPunch, ConsortiumNews, and elsewhere. Portions of his research materials are archived at the National Security Archive (both a Vietnam Collection and a separate Drug Enforcement Collection), Texas Tech University’s Vietnam Center, and John Jay College. He provided expert testimony at the King v Jowers trial on the Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination at the request of the King family.

NOTES

1 Keven M. Generous, “Vietnam: The Secret War” (1985), p. 94.

2 Warren Hinckle, Robert Scheer and Sol Stern, “University on the Make”, Ramparts, April 1966.

3 Edward Geary Lansdale, In the Midst of Wars (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), p. 340.

“Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions.” –Joseph Conrad, Nostromo (1904).

The following declassified CIA document entitled Scenarios of Dramatic Political Change confirms Washington’s longstanding plan to implement “regime change” in Syria.

The document dated July 1986 pertains to the proposed ouster of President Hafiz Al Assad, the father of Bashar Al Assad.  The document was written towards the end of the Cold War. 

The document was declassified in August 2011 at the outset of the terrorist insurgency against Syria sponsored by US-NATO, with the support of Israel. 

To read the declassified CIA document (pdf) click here

The document was prepared by the Foreign Subversion and Instability Center (FSIC), Office of Global Issues. 

Various scenarios to destabilize a foreign government were analysed. The CIA calls it “subversion”. The analysis is entrusted to the FSIC.

t

This article focusses on Russian military capabilities in a comparative perspective

The USSR’s first genuinely intercontinental bomber, the Tu-95 was practically a contemporary of the US B-52 Stratofortress, having entered operational service in 1956 at which time it acquired its iconic NATO reporting name of “Bear”.

However, since the Tu-95 production continued until 1992, the Russian Bear fleet is considerably younger than the US B-52 fleet, the youngest of which dates back to the 1960s. It is a testament to the power and reliability of these aircraft that, even though their countries’ respective strategic bomber fleets eventually received more advanced aircraft such as the Tu-160, B-1, and B-2, the 1950s-era bombers remain the mainstay of the aerial strategic deterrents thanks to their conversion into nuclear air-launched cruise missile (ALCM) carriers, the Tu-95MS which is easily distinguished from the earlier variants by having a prominent aerial refueling probe and a large radar blister under its nose, as opposed to the glazed nose of the initial versions. 

Unlike the B-52, the Tu-95 was never used as a conventional bomber. Apart from having the Tu-22–series bombers for that task, B-52 losses over North Vietnam proved that large subsonic aircraft have no business mixing it up with supersonic interceptors and long-range missiles.

While over 500 Tu-95 bombers and related aircraft like the Tu-142 maritime patrol and anti-submarine aircraft, were produced, only 60 remain in Russia’s Long-Range Aviation, all of them cruise missile-capable Tu-95MS variants. They are assigned to the 184th Heavy Bomber Aviation Regiment of the 22nd Guards Heavy Bomber Aviation Division based at the Engels Airbase in Saratov Region, and the 182nd and 79th Heavy Bomber Aviation Regiments of the 326th Guards Heavy Bomber Aviation Division, based at the Ukrainka Airbase. Since the Tu-95MS numbers are considerably greater than those of the Tu-160, unsurprisingly the Bears are frequently “hosted” by US, European, and Japanese fighters in the territorial waters off the coasts of the United States, Europe, and Japan.

The Tu-95 fleet currently consists of two sub-types, the Tu-95MS-16, and the Tu-95MSM, and the modernization is intended to bring most of the unmodernized bombers to the upgraded standard. Since the Tu-95 cannot very well be made into a supersonic or a stealthy aircraft, the upgrades necessarily consist of improving the aircraft’s offensive and defensive electronic systems, introducing satellite navigation, and new communications. But the biggest component of the effort to maintain Tu-95 effectiveness is adapting to to carry new weapons the Kh-101 conventional and Kh-102 nuclear ALCM. Designed by the Raduga Design Bureau, the Kh-101/102 offers several improvements over the earlier Kh-55/555 cruise missiles. They include much greater accuracy, significantly reduced radar cross-section, and a more than doubled effective range of at least 5,500km which allows even the subsonic Tu-95 to minimize its exposure to opposing air defenses. On the debit side, the Kh-101-series weapons’ greater weight–about 2.5 tons, as opposed to less than 1.5 ton for the Kh-55, and increased size, some 7.5 meters in length as opposed to less than 6 meters for the Kh-55, means a reduced payload. While the Tu-95MS could carry up to 16 of the earlier missiles thanks to the rotary launchers installed in the bomb bays, the modernized Tu-95MSM payload on an intercontinental mission would not exceed 8 missiles, all on external underwing pylons.

The ongoing modernization program indicates the Bears will remain in service for decades to come, alongside the Tu-160 whose production will resume in a few years. The modernization is most likely intended to maintain the viability of the Tu-95MS fleet until the PAK-DA heavy bomber is ready for operational service. According to the Tupolev Design Bureau, bomber airframes are in sufficiently good condition to permit operation until at least 2040. Though built for the Cold War, ironically enough the first combat use of the Tu-95 was against jihadist high-value targets in Syria, against which the bombers launched cruise missiles. Since world peace does not appear ready to break out in the current unstable multipolar world, the Bears are almost certain to see more action in the remaining decades of their service.

Written and produced by SF Team: J.Hawk, Daniel Deiss, Edwin Watson

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Once upon a time, Donald J. Trump, the New York City businessman-turned-president, berated then-President Barack Obama back in September 2013 about the fallacy of an American military strike against Syria. At that time, the United States was considering the use of force against Syria in response to allegations (since largely disproven) that the regime of President Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons against civilians in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta. Trump, via tweet, declared “to our very foolish leader, do not attack Syria – if you do many very bad things will happen & from that fight the U.S. gets nothing!”

Thus far in his first three months in office, the Trump presidency has been a resounding failure. The hyped promise of an Obamacare replacement promoted and led by Speaker of the House Paul Ryan was a crushing blow. Trump’s travel ban on 7 Muslim nations has been followed by defiant federal judges.

Last week Trump’s unconstitutional missile strike against a Syrian airport resurrected the “Assad must go” mantra (in total contradiction to his stated position just days earlier). Trump’s promise to partner with a Putin ally to “eradicate” ISIS terrorists was yet another boldface campaign lie. Instead in an overt attempt to pander to his critics and to send a grandstanding message to China’s Xi Jinping and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un that “you shouldn’t mess with Trump the tough guy,” our president is recklessly willing to endanger the entire planet risking World War III.

Throughout his 80 day debacle as our president, Trump has been surrounded by a minefield of leftist Democrat moles representing the very establishment swamp he promised to drain, subversive, compromised GOP party faithful, a gluttony of globalist Goldman Sachs bank execs  and military complex war generals. From day one this motley crew’s been at war with each other, viciously backstabbing and competing for Trump’s ear and influence, and leading him asunder. President Trump’s innermost, trusted circle exudes a highly toxic culture of subterfuge, treachery, conflict, deceit, paranoia and mistrust.

In response to Trump’s Syrian airfield attack last week, according to former CIA officer Robert David Steele, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner could even be an Israeli-first Mossad infiltrator, as Robert recommends a counterintelligence task force probe to determine if Mossad profiled Kushner and has made him an asset. Steele reports that the CIA informed Trump that the chemical attack was a false flag. But either Kushner, and/or Trump’s generals in Defense Secretary Mattis and National Security Advisor McMaster may be misleading the president, and that US Syrian aggression was a disastrous Trump blunder.

With insider friends like the above misguiding and sabotaging Trump’s every move, who needs enemies? On top of this inner circle list working against him, Trump is also fighting and losing to an army of entrenched deep state elements, the treasonous Bush-Clinton-Obama dynasty traitors still actively operating both inside and out of the government, and the lying criminal accomplices of the Mockingbird CIA controlled media demonizing Trump’s every single action and predatorily exploiting the Trump administration’s inner tumult, chaos and weakness.

This presentation will examine and dissect this toxic dynamic boiling over at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue that could potentially bring down the Trump presidency very soon. This analysis will attempt to expose the “Et tu Brute” White House coup, subversively brewing in the chaotic, embattled Trump administration.

Note: “Et tu Brute” (Latin) refers to “You Too Brutus” and the Assassination of Julius Cesar

The administration’s overnight switcheroo on Syria from accepting Assad as the Syrian leader to calling for his ouster has everything to do with Stephen Bannon suddenly being demoted and pushed out of the National Security Council (NSC) while the recent ascent of the faction opposing Bannon is being led by both the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump as her father’s “personal” advisor and her husband Jared Kushner as Trump’s “senior advisor.” The 1967 Nepotism Act does not specifically prohibit family members of a POTUS to work in official capacity within the White House, since a precedent was set with Robert Kennedy serving as JFK’s attorney general.

Ivanka’s own personal advisor that she recently brought into the White House was instantly promoted to deputy national security advisor in Dina Habib Powell, another young rising star who happens to be Egyptian American. Another Ivanka-Jared ally is Trump’s chief economic advisor Gary Cohn. Not only is half this New York City foursome unfit for the job, but all four of these Trump team members are ideologically Democrats and part of the same NYC liberal establishment that’s in fact committed to removing Donald Trump from office by any means necessary. Until his father-in-law ran for president, Kushner was a lifelong Democrat and loyal Dem Party donor.

Though Trump’s daughter and son-in-law in all likelihood do not wish him to fail as president, their well-established Democratic roots and elitist Eastern establishment leanings directly conflict with Trump’s populist base that actually made him president, most visibly represented in Trump’s inner circle by Steve Bannon. Though the White House official word downplayed the shift, anonymous insiders reported that Steve Bannon initially was threatening to quit altogether. With Bannon now on the outs, the Ivanka/Jared clique is increasingly gaining Donald’s full attention and support. As the West Wing newbies, let’s look at Jared and Ivanka’s closest friends and associates in the White House. Despite their parents’ bitter political race, Ivanka remains tight with her pal Chelsea Clinton. Ironically, as non-Jews both Chelsea and Ivanka married rich Jewish husbands with felonious fathers, both previously embroiled and convicted in separate political scandals.

As Ivanka’s personal advisor and as of March 15^th the newly appointed deputy security advisor Dina Habib Powell is another Goldman Sachs alum who is actually close friends with Valerie Jarrett who lives in Obama’s opposition war room residence located just two miles from the White House. Dina’s husband Richard Powell is the president of Teneo Holdings, a high end consulting firm that Bill Clinton sits as honorary chairman of a corporation founded by a long time Clinton aide and a campaign financier. Needless to say, Teneo has long been an ardent Clinton Foundation contributor. Last year it was fined for failing to properly handle electronic communications.

Hmm, recall another Clinton had similar troubles over her electronic communications last year also, except she committed a felony breeching national security but was never charged or consequenced. When one spouse in the Powell family is so closely tied to the Clintons, while another occupies a critical role in the Trump administration’s national security council, while maintaining a cordial connection to Obama’s advising guru Jarrett vowing to overthrow Trump, might that conflict of influence causing loyalty to stray from an alleged “populist” president, especially if she’s another globalist bank veteran from Goldman Sachs?

Turning to Gary Cohn, Trump’s chief economic advisor was #2 at Goldman Sachs as its former chief operating officer, granted an unprecedented $285 million buyout to go work for the president to deregulate banks and give huge tax breaks to the rich. As of January this year, Cohn is also Trump’s National Economic Council director. The aggressive, hard driving former investment banker and trader turns out to be another faithful Democrat loyalist as well as a card carrying globalist who worked several years ago on Greece’s budget during its EU debt crisis. A few weeks ago Cohn and Powell met at the Four Seasons Hotel with former boss Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. Whereas Obama chose Citibank banksters, Trump has selected Goldman Sachs, a globalist bank is a globalist bank, and a globalist president is a globalist president.

The elite globalists have obviously won out against the populist nationalist. Additionally, the US Treasury secretary and his number two are also from Goldman Sachs. So let’s face it, the president elected by a populist movement is turning out to be another elitist puppet, fleecing America to assure that the 1% elite get richer at the rest of our “useless eater” expense.

The Donald’s “order out of chaos” brand of leadership has him soliciting differing points of views pitting the disparate competition vying for his favor, and from the cutthroat chaos in the end Trump makes his “best” choice, and he’s clearly chosen family and globalism over his base of populist supporters. We’ve observed a shift in Trump’s policies after the Muslim ban roadblock and humiliating attempt to replace Obamacare, both seen as boldly aggressive Bannon moves to prove that Trump forcefully fulfills his campaign promises. But since they’ve been soundly defeated, Bannon’s lost favor in Trump’s eyes and Kushner has been the benefactor, gaining unprecedented stature by his recent dispatch to the Middle East acting as a secretary of state wannabe. A night and day difference has emerged from the glowing Bannon report extolling Jared’s impressive learning curve just three months ago:

For a guy who was a progressive, he really gets this grassroots populist movement in a huge way.

As a result of this monumental sea change, the embittered old Bannon is increasingly at odds with the “Democratic wing” of young whippersnappers invading the White House, referring to the 35-year old Kushner behind his back as a“globalist” and a “cuck” (as in “cuckservative,” a derogatorily charged variation similar to RINO – Republicans In Name Only). Bannon is convinced that the Jared crowd is actively scheming to drive Bannon out of the White House as the president’s chief strategist. Witnesses claim that in recent weeks the two adversaries are openly feuding in public view and that in private it’s reached venomous cloak and dagger proportions. A senior official shared that the two enemies are battling on virtually every single major issue now – from terrorism, trade, immigration, taxes to healthcare.

Speaking of Obamacare, its credited architect and brother to Obama Chief of Staff and fellow globalist Rahm Emanuel, Zeke Emanuel, was invited by Jared three times to the White House recently, once meeting with the president as the health care policy consultant. Bannon views this as an act of betrayal to the Republican cause. Since 2009 the GOP has called Zeke “Dr Death” for advocating end-of-life rights written into the Obamacare package. So the Donald’s “Svengali” is afraid of fast losing clout with his president and the young Jared’s replacing his power while Bannon’s alt right vision that victoriously guided Trump to presidential glory may soon fade into dust.

It was no accident that less than 24-hours after US backed rebels in Syria launched another alleged chemical weapons attack, only to have the US falsely blame Assad [again], Bannon was kicked out of the private NSC club. It was in part over Steve’s vehement opposition to another false flag attack that would provide the immoral, unjustified excuse to launch unprecedented US military aggression against foremost Russian ally Syria. Steve Bannon is watching Trump’s “America first” pledge get flushed down the toilet by the Jared and Ivanka elitist faction.

Meanwhile, the airport attack came much to the delight of pro-Zionist Israel, pro-ISIS terrorists and all of Trump’s most vociferous enemies like Hillary (who by her tweet was tipped off the night before), John McCain, Elliot Abrams, William Kristol and the rest of the psychopathic neocons who raved that the president was finally stepping up as “the leader of the free world.” Israeli defense and intelligence ministers enjoyed front row seats of the airport fireworks in real time that killed 5 Syrians, with the latter commenting that Trump “restored America’s regional leadership in a big way in the Middle East.”

Fairly fresh off his trip from Israel and Iraq, Kushner was already assigned a new domestic mission to streamline and privatize government prior to heading off with Ivanka and her brother on a ski vacation. This left Trump’s co-opted crusty team of CFR National Security Advisor General McMaster, Defense Secretary General Mattis and Secretary of State Tillerson to coordinate the 59 missile launch so Trump could opportunistically utilize the false flag to Trump’s full political advantage, appeasing all his deep state enemies while coming off as a tough ass just in time for the Chinese president’s Mar-a-Lago arrival and first Trump face-to-face encounter, sending the clear message to both China and North Korea that this wartime American president means business.

It’s clearly an ugly, extremely risky regression that harkens back to the reprehensible Bush-Clinton-Obama policy of unilateral militarized war baiting assaults that escalate global insecurities toward potential nuclear annihilation. Bannon has every reason for both concern and disdain toward the “globalist” invasion afoot inside the West Wing, principally led by insurgent turncoat Kushner into Bannon’s previously unchallenged domain. Even die hard Trump supporters Roger Stone and Alex Jones are beginning to think Jared Kushner is a traitor. Where this kind of dangerous, “game of thrones,” Zionist-applauding intervention might take this country in the future is truly ominously and sickeningly foreboding.

For many decades the Kushner family has maintained deep ties to both the Jewish State and its war criminal prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Kushner-Israeli ties that bind extend to generating enormous real estate profits together with major Israeli banks and investment companies owning joint property holdings in New Jersey as well as shared business interests in Israel. Two of those banks are being investigated by US law enforcement for allegedly assisting wealthy American tax evaders.

Speaking of against the law, Donald Trump as well as Ivanka and her husband are all currently breeching a conflict of interest statute, failing to adequately meet the legal criteria for asset divestment. Last month Trump sent Jared to the disputed region “to broker a Middle East peace deal,” meeting with both Israeli and Palestinian officials. The notion that Kushner can enjoy such an ultra-cozy relationship with Israel yet remain impartial to negotiate a fair and just agreement with a genocidal apartheid state that continues stealing Palestinian land is a hideous joke and insult to earthling intelligence.

Meanwhile MSM will continue depicting the White House calamity in its fullest exploitative form. A recent example comes from the Daily Beast rag that ran an article featuring the White House “witch hunt” out for blood in search of inside leakers, claiming its first victim Katie Walsh (forgotten Flynn already), the deputy White House Chief of Staff under the next likely candidate to go, the GOP prince himself Walsh’s boss Reince Priebus who has made a tacit alliance with the other outsider Bannon.

Especially since it’s come to light that Obama ordered full intel access to Trump administration surveillance, federal employees rightfully believe their conversations at both work and home may be monitored. And with WikiLeaks’ recent Vault 7 release, federal employees are turning off their work-issued smartphones at home and placing them in drawers paranoid they’re being listened to. Fearing leaks to the press, they’re holding back from participating openly in their work meetings. They’re using encrypted apps that once read are self-deleting and leaving their personal cellphones at home fearing their boss will check their calls for press leakage.

The fake-stream media will continue playing up the etiology of the culture of fear and suspicion in the Trump presidency as internally caused by reckless Trump’s incompetence rather than admit it was jumpstarted and promoted by the Clinton-Obama deep state swamp still entrenched in Washington. Trump’s efforts to fire hundreds of federal agency holdovers from the previous administration as suspected moles and replacing them ASAP have been slow coming, with still numerous slots to fill. Career bureaucrats that despise Trump remain embedded and covertly engaging in sabotage warfare. Shadow elements in the CIA, NSA and FBI loyal to the status quo cabal will continue laying booby traps in the minefield.

A Mike Cernovich article has just come out revealing General McMaster’s master plan, his own Dr. Strangelove version. The national security advisor plans sell Trump on sending 150,000 American GI boots on the ground to fight Assad and Putin in Syria, still fixated on finishing that 7 Muslim nation regime change grand plan that the Cheney-Bush neocons dreamt up nearly two decades ago. Syria and Iran are still in Empire’s crosshairs as unfinished business. McMaster is falsifying all the incoming intelligence reports to willfully deceive Trump, convincing him the US needs another big war. Apparently McMaster as one West Point sicko is in cahoots with another West Point sicko whose war crime records are still well known. Convicted of passing top secret classified material to his mistress, the psychopath I went to school with, General David Petraeus, apparently is McMaster’s war crime partner. Beware of the madmen on the loose, still in charge, ready to blow up the world.

The Trump presidency is playing its evil hand, and clearly despite the bluster of this president elected on a promised lie of populism contrasted with the smooth snakeskin operator spin of the last, the totalitarian oligarchy serving the interests of the ruling elite remains the only real constant. But despite the planetary controllers continued pathologically acting out their insanity with more false flags, violence, death and war, the cooler heads of state from the East have prevailed. But they need our collective help to stop the demonic Western madness.

Their diabolical truth is unraveling for all the world to see now how the elite’s endgame is constantly backfiring and thwarted. We see their evil ways and we must act now to stop them. If we are ready for change, humanity’s transformation will come. The old crumbling system will fall, and from the ashes will come opportunity to create a spiritually based new one. Hope and pray for the best, prepare for the worst. Following the light of truth and love, and we can’t go wrong.

Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field with abused youth and adolescents for more than a quarter century. In recent years he has focused on his writing, becoming an alternative media journalist. His blog site is at http://empireexposed.blogspot.co.id/.

A fake news story has been circulating on both mainstream media and alt-media saying that Russia and Iran have issued a joint threat to ‘use force’ in the event of the US targeting Syrian forces again. It was also reported that the issue was quoted as being a ‘red line’, a term generally used by the United States.

This blatantly false story was picked up by the following media outlets

–The Independent

–Haaretz

–Reuters

–Sunday Express

–Zero Hedge 

The Sunday Express and Zero Hedge both cite something called Ilam al Harbi media as the source of information for the story.

A quick English language Google search for ‘Ilam al Harbi’ comes up with several articles from Yemen Press, none of which lead to a story about the Putin/Rouhani phone call or anything else concerning Russia/Iranian responses to the US attack on Syria.

Additionally there is a Saudi based telecom company called al-Harbi whose website can be found here. It is not a news website in any way shape or form.

A report from the usually reliable Al-Masdar news has produced an Arabic language document purportedly from a joint military command centre used by Russia, Iran, Syria and Hezbollah. Although, Iran, Russia and Syria do share intelligence and cooperate in the Syrian war against terrorism, the existence of the specific ‘joint command centre’ in question, seems to be misleading and inaccurate if not entirely fabricated in this context.

No such body as the ‘joint operations room’ in this context appears to exist nor has it ever existed according to any source, dating from the beginning of Russian involvement in the civil war in September of 2015 up until today. The reports mentioning the document in question do not for example cite the formal joint intelligence ventures of the so called 4+1 Coalition of Syria, Russia, Iran, Iraq and Hezbollah.

In all likelihood, the document is a forgery produced by those who seek to spread false stories about the strategy of Russia, Iran, Syria and Hezbollah. The second most likely scenario is that the document was produced by middle or low ranking military personnel who do not speak for any of the aforementioned parties. Such individuals would likely be enthusiastic patriotic members  of the Syria/Russia/Iran/Hezbollah coalition who want to send an unsanctioned and ultimately counterproductive message to the US.

Because the document is in Arabic, it is unlikely to have originated in either Russia or Iran.

The actual content of the well documented phone call between the Russian and Iranian Presidents entirely contradicts the dubious document and is totally in line with official and de-facto Russian and Iranian policy.

Vladimir Putin and Hassan Rouhani pledged to continue support for the Syrian government in its war against terrorism. The two leaders additionally pledged to cooperate further on issues of regional stability.

They also called for an investigation into the chemical attack which America used as the proximate cause of the missile strike on Syria.

Further information on the phone conversation can be found in the original report from The Duran.

It is also unlikely that an inauthentic or totally unsanctioned document was leaked by official sources in order to intimidate the US. With many fearing that the US will indeed push things to the brink of world-war, it is not in the interests of Russia, Syria or Iran to allow such a statement to slip through the crack, no matter who authored it.

Russia, Iran and Syria want to end the conflict, not monumentally expand it as some in the US certainly do.

The geo-political goal of Iran, Russia and Syria are is show a united front and an ability to robustly defend Syria against aggression, but their goal is not to invite a US invasion through the very kind of provocation that America’s trigger-happy deep state would jump at rather than back down from. Instead, Russia, Iran and Syria’s goals are clearly and transparently expressed though official channels.

In this sense the document is of no probative value to the case Syria, Russia and Iran are making before the UN and other official channels: namely that tensions should calm, the US should cease all further aggression and that an international investigation should be conducted to clarify western confusion over the chemical attack in Idlib Governorate.

Whoever has spread this fake news clearly wants to paint Russia and Iran as violent, unhinged and destabilising as the United States.

The reality is in fact almost the complete opposite of what is being reported.

Fake news is being used to try to increase tensions. This is not only irresponsible but it is dangerous, as dangerous as the lies upon which the US attack was based.

“While we all condemn the atrocities in Syria, the United States was not attacked. The President needs congressional authorization for military action as required by the Constitution, and I call on him to come to Congress for a proper debate. Our prior interventions in this region have done nothing to make us safer, and Syria will be no different.” Senator Rand Paul, (R-Kentucky), 7 April 2017

A central concern of the Founding generation, when writing the Constitution, was to ensure that no one man, or one man and his clique, could take the republic to war. To that end, the Constitution delegates the citizenry’s power to declare war solely to its servants in Congress, and, in doing so, uses language that makes it clear that the Congress cannot delegate this power to the executive branch of the government. The ability of a president to order military action was — and is — tightly limited to instances in which the United States is attacked or, perhaps, if a clear threat must be preempted.

Since 1955, however, every president and every Congress have acted in clear and deliberate violation of the Constitution’s allocation of war-making powers. In 1955, the Congress passed a resolution — called  an “Authorization for the Use of Military Force” (AUMF)  — that allowed President Eisenhower to do what he wanted, when he wanted to do it, with U.S. military forces in the defense of Formosa (Taiwan) against Mao’s China. Later, the Vietnam war began with another AUMF, and every other U.S. war since Vietnam has started with one, save for those which the president started off his own hook — the Obama/Clinton Libyan war, for example, — without even bothering to seek an unconstitutional delegation of the war-making power from Congress.

Your 6 April 2017 attack on a Syrian military airfield/chemical-storage depot, Mr. President, is the latest example of this unconstitutional war-making. The barrage of 60 cruise missiles — worth about $5.5 billion — was, as usual for the U.S. military, a feckless exercise in concrete-smashing. As in Bill Clinton’s Serbia war, the national government attacked a state that had not harmed the United States, and in which the republic has no genuine national interests at stake. All of this was done via the decision and then orders of one man — advised by his unelected advisers — for the U.S. military to conduct an unconstitutional act of offensive war, as if the republic is an absolute and so lawless monarchy.

President Trump, was your pledge to install a commonsense, non-interventionist and  America First foreign policy just lying words? I trusted that they were not, but now I wonder. You appear to have been genuinely shaken by the chemical attacks and the deaths that resulted therefrom. Yes, Mr. Trump, war is tough and bloody, and people of all ages get killed, just ask some Gold Star families. But if you truly launched 60 cruise missiles because you were overcome by your personal emotions after seeing the results of the chemical attack, your temperament is worrisome. Indeed, if you attacked because you felt bad about the deaths in Syria, you created a situation in which the Founders’ genius has never been on better display than in their creation of a document that tried to make sure that no single distraught individual could use the republic’s military power to seek revenge for his personal pain.

What have you and the pro-war Americans gained from the attacks, Mr. Trump? Are you and they enjoying soothed sensitivities and weeping less? Well, good on you and them. Other than some smashed-up military facilities, a handful of dead Syrians, and 20 or so destroyed Syrian aircraft, you, your generals, and advisers achieved only a disgrace.

–You ignored constitutional requirements and you attacked a state that did not threaten the republic. These are two distinct and self-inflicted defeats for the rule of law.

–You probably will see he Russians and the Iranians station additional aircraft squadrons of their own in Syria, and more sophisticated anti-aircraft systems, to replace Syrian losses and issue a silent challenge to you to come after them.

–You have certainly focused Syrian and Iranian irregular forces in the Syria and Iraq on the task of killing U.S. Marines and soldiers in response.

–You followed the attack by placing more sanctions on Syria, which appears to mean that, as in Iraq under Clinton and Bush, the killing of civilians  — including kids like those you got all weepy over — by starvation and the lack of medical care is, as Albright said, “worth it”.

So as not to be entirely negative, Mr. Trump, there is some praise flowing in for your attack. The NATO leaders who refuse to defend themselves, and want America to do so and pay for the privilege, have given you a collective thumps up. The Arab tyrants who oppress their peoples, and fund al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, think you are swell. And just look at the hurrahs coming from Israel’s leader, who graciously took time out from extorting U.S.taxpayer money from the congressmen and senators he has suborned to send his congratulations. Needless to say, the leaders of ISIS and al-Qaeda also have sent you their hearty thanks.

Finally, I hope you can revel in the widespread praise of those who are more loyal to Israel and endless war than they are to the United States, and who did all they could to elect Clinton, defame your family, and slander you. The praise of disloyal, Neocon, and interventionist U.S. citizens like John McCain, Bill Kristol and his Weekly Standard, Lindsey Graham, and Marco Rubio, whose speech on FOX this morning must have been written by AIPAC, emanate from men who hate your guts and will never stop seeking to destroy you. Their praise is not even worth what John Nance Garner once described as a “bucket of warm spit.”

You said, Mr. President, that you only wanted to be America’s president, and not the president of the world. Well the only way to be the former is to obey the constitution, and the only way to be the latter is evade it, so as to become the world’s self-funding policeman who gets the title of “Leader of the Free World”, which means you get to bleed the United States white by fighting other peoples’ wars. That title would be sought only by a Globalist, never by an American nationalist.

Your attack on Syria — like the attacks of all your post-1945 predecessors — evaded the constitution, and so damaged the republic by undermining the rule of law. The achievements that the attack achieved are, at best, paltry, Islamist-assisting, and unconscionably expensive. The applause you have won for attacking is both a plague sent by your and the republic’s enemies, and a nightmare for your supporters and advocates.

Surely you must remember the latter, Mr. Trump, they are the people who elected you because they believed you meant what you said about putting America First. Perhaps they were wrong.

Current National Security Adviser Herbert Raymond “H. R.” McMaster is manipulating intelligence reports given to President Donald Trump, Cernovich Media can now report. McMaster is plotting how to sell a massive ground war in Syria to President Trump with the help of former CIA director and convicted David Petraeus, who mishandled classified information. 

As NSA, McMaster’s job is to synthesize intelligence reports from all other agencies. President Trump is being given an inaccurate picture of the situation in Syria, as McMaster is seeking to involve the U.S. in a full scale war in Syria.

The McMaster-Petraeus plan calls for 150,000 American ground troops in Syria.

Many special operations veterans including General Joseph Votel have raised serious concerns about McMaster’s plans for Syria.

Sources also suggest that McMaster is sharing classified information with Petraeus, whose security clearance was revoked.

Petraeus’ influence in the NSC remains strong.

McMaster was called Petraeus’ golden child by some commenters, noting the strong influence Petraeus had over McMaster. Petraeus was considered for the position of NSA, but withdrew his name from consideration once McMaster’s name was included on the short-list. McMaster’s appointment allowed Petraeus to maintain control over the NSC without bringing his considerable baggage to the position.

Derek Harvey, the top Middle East adviser in the NSC, has close ties with Petraeus and is close with McMaster. (Harvey reportedly faces a massive EEO complaint from subordinates, although that investigation remains open.)

Harvey and McMaster have been trying to subvert Joint Chiefs Chairman General Joseph Dunford and Secretary of Defense James Mattis. Mattis and Dunford support working with our allies in the fight against ISIS. Harvey and McMaster are advocating for a massive American-only ground force.

Two men were standing in between another U.S.-led war in the Middle East — General Mike Flynn and Steve Bannon.

Flynn was removed after Susan Rice unmasked classified information concerning him. Bannon’s role within the White House was weakened by McMaster, who demanded Bannon be removed from his advisory position at NSC.

McMaster’s friends in the media, as part of a broader strategy to increase McMaster’s power, have claimed Jared Kushner and Bannon had a major falling out. In fact Kushner and Bannon are united in their opposition to McMaster’s plan.

If McMaster and Petraeus have their way, America will find itself in another massive war in the Middle East.

Mike Cernovich is the journalist who broke the Susan Rice unmasking story.

Vast efforts to portray Donald Trump as Vladimir Putin’s flunky have given Trump huge incentives to prove otherwise. Last Thursday, he began the process in a big way by ordering a missile attack on Russia’s close ally Syria. In the aftermath of the attack, the cheerleading from U.S. mass media was close to unanimous, and the assault won lots of praise on Capitol Hill. Finally, the protracted and fervent depictions of Trump as a Kremlin tool were getting some tangible results.

At this point, the anti-Russia bandwagon has gained so much momentum that a national frenzy is boosting the odds of unfathomable catastrophe. The world’s two nuclear superpowers are in confrontation mode.

It’s urgent to tell ourselves and each other: Wake up!

When America’s “Progressives” Pay Lip Service to Imperialism. The Anti-War Movement is Dead

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 09, 2017

Both Al Qaeda and the Islamic State (ISIS) are creations of US intelligence.

War has become peace. Realities have been turned upside down.

Trump’s illegal punitive airstrikes against Syria are heralded as a humanitarian act against Bashar Al Assad who is “killing his own people”.

Forty-five Times Trump Said: Attacking Syria Is a Bad Idea and Might Start World War III

By Tom McKay, April 10, 2017

In October, Trump blasted then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton‘s position on Syria — that the U.S. military should take out al-Assad’s airfields, the exact type of strike Trump  ordered Thursday — by saying attacking a Russian-backed government could start World War III.

Trump, Saudi Arabia and the War on Yemen

By Timothy Alexander Guzman, April 10, 2017

The US-Saudi aggression war planes continued heinous strikes against citizens, causing heavy damage to private and public properties in several provinces over the past hours, a military official told Saba on Sunday. The warplanes waged 12 strikes on Haradh district of Hajja province and three other strikes on Serwah district of Mareb province, as well waged six raids on Kamaran island in Hodeida province.

The West and Its Allies Seek to Install the “Black Flag of Terrorism” Over Syria

By Mark Taliano, April 10, 2017

All of this underscores the reality that whereas Syria and its allies are on the front lines in the fight against international terrorism, U.S-led NATO and its allies are on the front lines supporting international terrorism and its manifold causes.

The “Chemical Attack” and the Khan Sheikoun Show – A New President Proudly Presented By “Trump Productions”

By Moon of Alabama, April 10, 2017

The “chemical attack” at Khan Sheikoun was faked and a show; though a number of people were killed or hurt during its production.

The “chemical attack” at Khan Sheikoun was faked and a show; though a number of people were killed or hurt during its production.

This video for example, of doctors and patients in an emergency room was pure theater, taken over a longer time period. The main presenter was a well-known criminal Takfiri but with links to the British secret service. The whole show was perfected, by specialists one would think, to fit for U.S. TV screens.

Click image to view

There were no scenes, zero in all the coverage, that showed casualties in places where they were surprised by gas and died. No basement was searched, no place of work or living was shown – only rescue centers. The male “victims” were clean shaven, despite living in al-Qaeda land. They even had two blond “Syrian” kids in there (vid) to convince the racist constituency that “revenge” was needed and just.  A cut right out of Wag The Dog (vid). It is now racist to object to the war!

Dilbert creator Scott Adams, one of the few who understands Trump‘s persuasion style and predicted his win, remarks:

It is almost as if someone designed this “tragedy” to be camera-ready for President Trump’s consumption. It pushed every one of his buttons. Hard. And right when things in Syria were heading in a positive direction.
…
I’m going to call bullshit on the gas attack. It’s too “on-the-nose,” as Hollywood script-writers sometimes say, meaning a little too perfect to be natural. This has the look of a manufactured event.
…
So how does a Master Persuader respond to a fake war crime?

He does it with a fake response, if he’s smart.

The response by the U.S. was not completely fake but as small as it could be. The base was warned and had been evacuated. All movable and valuable stuff had been taken away. The attack was even smaller than planned. The Russian Defense Ministry says only 23 out of 59 cruise missiles hit the base. The others were shot down by air defense or diverted by the famous Russian Electronic Counter Measures. The Pentagon insists that all 59 hit. But the pictures and video from the base only show damage to 11 aircraft shelters. Additionally one radar, one missile launcher and a fuel depot were hit. That effect is too small for 59 impacts. The base was in use again 12 hours after the strike. The attack on it was not really serious.

Adams makes it look as if Trump did not sign off on the whole stunt before it happened. As if it was made for Trump’s consumption. Why does he think so? Does he believe the CIA bureaucrats would not ask for a direct order and presidential cover before launching such a risky operation?

The pictures and scenes were not constructed for Trump’s consumption. They were constructed by Trump for consumption by the “western” public. Never forget that Trump is also a successful professional TV presenter who knows how to act in front of cameras. The plot followed Trump’s persuasion style. The same style he used during the campaign and that let him win. Trump had several reasons to create such an incident. It was perfectly timed for the visit of the Chinese President Xi. This was a stunt to Trump’s liking. It was his production. The blond children were there to allowed for his “Beautiful babies were cruelly murdered …” punch line. Trump proudly produced and presented to you: “Trump the NEW President”.

The whole show was designed to let Trump look strong and presidential and to get rid of the “Russia Gate” nonsense the neocons ran against him. The prospect of stopping those attacks was an offer he could not refuse. Here a tweet of mine sent on the evening before the attack was launched:

Moon of Alabama‏ @MoonofA

Prediction:
If Trump now commits to war on Syria the anti-Trump “Russia spies” campaign will immediately stop.
Ransom paid, hostage released
8:23 PM – 6 Apr 2017

Those who once warned that Trump would launch a new world war now laud him for nearly doing so:

Editorial boards of NYT, WaPo, WSJ, USAToday, DailyNews, SJ Mercury News, Houston Chon & Chicago Sun Times all endorsed Trumps Syria strikes.

“Russia Gate” is – for now – forgiven and forgotten. The NeverTrump-ers applause the strike and want more of them, ever more war and “regime change” in favor of al-Qaeda’s rule.

More strikes may well come. The precedent has been established. Whenever al-Qaeda in Idleb comes under pressure and needs help we will see another fake “chemical attack”. Will Trump follow up on those? Or will he manage to set aside the outrage that will follow such “attacks” when it does not fit his plans? Was this a one-time show? Or will Trump serialize it?

The open Syrian, Iranian and Russian response will be an intensification of the operations in Idleb. They will smash the “rebels” there by air and push more troops into that direction. The Russian organized flight coordination over Syria has been called off. Belgium already said its airforce will no longer take part in any U.S. “coalition” operation over Syria. Others will follow that example. An asymmetric response elsewhere will follow later. U.S. forces in the wider region better watch their backs.

Some people have wondered why the Chinese criticism of the attack at the UN Security Council or during Xi’s meeting with Trump was rather mild. The Chinese believe that the best that can happen to them is a United States bogged down in further Middle East calamities. If the U.S. is busy in Iraq, Yemen and Syria it will have fewer capacity to mess up North Korea or seek a conflict over this or that atoll in the South China Sea. I can not blame them for that position.

Bonus: A truly journalistic highlight in U.S. news coverage of our time is this recommendation by CNN:

Jake Tapper @jaketapper

For more on Syria follow @AlabedBana
4:59pm · 4 Apr 2017

Do it! Be informed! Follow the 7 year old daughter of a Syrian Takfiri in Turkey. Videos of her show that she can not understand, speak or write English but she knows how to manipulate her audience in perfect tweets:

Bana Alabed @AlabedBana
Putin and Bashar al Asad bombed my school, killed my friends & robbed my childhood. It’s time to punish the killers of children in Syria.
10:09am · 7 Apr 2017

Her producers let her look more intelligent that Tapper will ever be. (For background on that M.I.T./MI-6 “Bana” child exploitation enterprise see here.)

UPDATE: Jake Tapper has since deleted his tweet above, but we took a screenshot before he did so 🙂

Frog-Marching Donald Trump entered military terra incognita on Thursday by launching an illegal Tomahawk missile strike on an air base in eastern Syria. Beyond the clear violation of international law, the practical results are likely to be disastrous, drawing the U.S. deeper into the Syrian quagmire.

But it would be a mistake to focus all the criticism on Trump. Not only are Democrats also at fault, but a good argument could be made that they bear even greater responsibility.

For years, near-total unanimity has reigned on Capitol Hill concerning America’s latest villains du jour, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Congressmen, senators, think-tank strategists, and op-ed analysts all have agreed that Putin and Assad are the prime enemies of “peace,” by which is meant global American hegemony, and that therefore the U.S. must stop at nothing to weaken or neutralize them or force them to exit the world stage.

Until recently, in fact, just about the only politically significant dissenter was Trump. Accusing reporters of twisting the news at a tumultuous press conference in late February, he told them,

“Now tomorrow, you’ll say, ‘Donald Trump wants to get along with Russia, this is terrible.’ It’s not terrible. It’s good.”

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

But since getting along with Russia was terrible for America’s perpetually bellicose foreign-policy establishment, Official Washington declared war on Trump, building on Hillary Clinton’s charge during the last presidential debate that he was Putin’s “puppet.” It became the conventional wisdom that Trump was a “Siberian candidate” being inserted in the White House by a satanic Kremlin determined to bend freedom-loving Americans to its will.

As Inauguration Day approached, President Obama’s intelligence chiefs pulled out all stops to persuade the public that (a) Russian intelligence had engineered Clinton’s defeat by hacking the Democratic National Committee’s computers and placing thousands of embarrassing emails in the hands of WikiLeaks and that (b) Trump was somehow complicit in the effort.

The campaign was highly effective. The alleged Putin-Trump relationship was a major feature at the anti-Trump protests surrounding his inauguration and the major U.S. news media pounded on the Russia “scandal” daily.

On Feb. 13, barely four weeks after taking office, Trump crumbled under a mounting barrage of political abuse and gave National Security Adviser Michael Flynn the boot after it was revealed that he had talked with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the transition, supposedly in violation of the 1799 Logan Act, an absurd piece of ancient legislation that even The New York Times referred to as “a dusty, old law” that should have been repealed generations ago.

Under Media Pressure

A day later, the administration reeled again when the Times charged in a front-page exposé that “members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election.”

The article provided no evidence and no names and said nothing about whether such contacts were knowing or unknowing, i.e., whether they involved a John le Carré-style midnight rendezvous or merely an exchange of pleasantries with someone who may or may not have been connected to the FSB, as Russia’s version of the CIA is known.

In a March 6 article entitled “Pause This Presidency,” Times columnist Charles M. Blow called for little less than a coup d’état:

“The American people must immediately demand a cessation of all consequential actions by this ‘president’ until we can be assured that Russian efforts to hack our election … did not also include collusion with or cover-up by anyone involved in the Trump campaign and now administration.”

How “the American people” would demand such a cessation or who would provide such assurances was not specified.

President Donald Trump delivering his inaugural address on Jan. 20, 2017. (Screen shot from Whitehouse.gov)

On March 31, CNN quoted an unnamed senior administration official saying that Trump’s hopes of a rapprochement with Russia were fading because he “believes in the current atmosphere – with so much media scrutiny and ongoing probes into Trump-Russia ties and election meddling – that it won’t be possible to ‘make a deal.’”

Thus, Trump found himself increasingly boxed in by hostile forces. But he still tried to fulfill his promise to concentrate on defeating terrorists in Syria and Iraq. On March 30, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley announced that the U.S. administration “priority is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out,” but to concentrate on defeating Al Qaeda and ISIS instead.

But the more Trump contemplated his predicament in the following days, the more he realized how untenable it had come. Tuesday’s poison-gas incident in Idlib thus offered a way out regardless of who was actually responsible. The only way for Trump to make peace with the “deep state” in Washington was by waging war on Syria.

Finally, on Thursday, hours before Trump sent a volley of cruise missiles wafting towards Syria, Hillary Clinton taunted him by declaring that

America “should take out his [Assad’s] airfields and prevent him from being able to use them to bomb innocent people.”

The effect was to all but force Trump to show that he was every bit as macho as the former First Lady.

Frog-Marching Trump

Trump is certainly a fool for going ahead with such an attack in clear contravention of international law and entangling the United States more deeply into the complicated Syrian conflict. But the blame also should go to the people who frog-marched him to the precipice and then all but commanded him to step over the edge.

Within hours, all the usual suspects were congratulating one of the most scorned U.S. presidents in history for taking the leap.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said:

“Making sure Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do.” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi described Trump’s missile barrage as “a proportional response to the regime’s use of chemical weapons.”

Republican super-hawks Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, previously as anti-administration as any Democrat, issued a joint statement declaring that Trump “deserves the support of the American people,” while liberal heart-throb Sen. Elizabeth Warren also agreed that “the Syrian regime must be held accountable for this horrific act.”

The Guardian, as fiercely anti-Trump as it is anti-Putin and anti-Assad, conceded that “Donald Trump has made his point” and that the next step would be up to Russia. All in all, Trump had never gotten such good press. It’s clear that Official Washington was pleased with Trump’s handiwork and was eager to encourage him to do more.

But the missile barrage was not just an assault on Syria but on reason and good sense, too. Although the Washington Post’s Adam Taylor tried to make it seem that the only critics of the missile barrage are members of the alt-right “known for espousing racist, anti-Semitic and sexist points of view,” the fact is that criticism flowed in from other quarters.

At Alternet, Vijay Prashad pointed out that there were few independent observers in Khan Shaykhun, the farming town where the April 4 incident occurred, to provide an accurate account. Eyewitnesses “with the densest relationship to the armed opposition,” he wrote, “are the first to claim that this attack was done by the government.”

Consortiumnews’ Robert Parry pointed out that rather than dropping the gas themselves, Syrian or Russian warplanes could well have triggered an outbreak by bombing a facility containing “chemicals that the rebels were planning to use in some future attack.” Parry also noted that Al Qaeda, which controls Idlib province, could have “staged the incident to elicit precisely the international outrage directed at Assad as has occurred.”

[Previously, United Nations investigators have received eyewitness testimony from Syrians about rebels staging an alleged chlorine-bomb attack so it would be pinned on the Assad regime.]

Something similar may well have occurred in August 2013, a sarin-gas missile attack on the outskirts of Damascus that killed hundreds and that appears to have been launched from a rebel-controlled area two kilometers away. The two incidents are curiously parallel.

The August 2013 incident, which horrified the world and brought the Obama administration to the brink of its own attack on the Syrian government, occurred just days after a U.N. team had arrived in Damascus to investigate an alleged chemical attack by rebels against Syrian government troops some four months earlier.

It made little sense for the Assad regime to have invited U.N. investigators in and then launch a more horrific chemical-weapons attack just miles from the investigators’ hotel. It would be a bit like someone inviting a police inspector to dinner and then committing a murder in full view.

Not Making Sense

As one independent analysis noted in 2013, the Assad regime would have to have decided to carry out a large-scale attack “despite (a) making steady gains against rebel positions, (b) receiving a direct threat from the US that the use of chemical weapons would trigger intervention, (c) having constantly assured their Russian allies that they will not use such weapons, (d) prior to the attack, only using non-lethal chemicals and only against military targets.”

The Assad government would also have had to decide “to (a) send forces into rebel-held area, where they are exposed to sniper fire from multiple directions, (b) use locally manufactured short-range rockets, instead of any of the long-range high quality chemical weapons in their arsenal, and (c) use low quality sarin.”

All of which seems supremely unlikely, but much of the mainstream U.S. media still treats the 2013 sarin-gas attack as the undeniable case of Assad crossing Obama’s “red line” against using chemical weapons. And the highly dubious 2013 incident is cited as a key reason to believe that Assad has done it again. [Recently, The New York Times has quietly backed off the 2013 claims although not explicitly retracting its earlier reporting blaming the attack on the Assad regime.]

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Assad would have possibly even stronger reasons not to deploy sarin gas on April 4, 2017. He would have to make a conscious decision to court world opprobrium at a time when the tide of the war was finally turning in his favor with the liberation of Aleppo last December and with most world leaders having concluded that the Assad regime was here to stay.

To have produced and deployed a sarin bomb would have meant deliberately risking military intervention more than three years after Syria reached an agreement with the United Nations to destroy its entire chemical-weapons stockpile so as to avoid … military intervention.

All of which seems supremely unlikely as well. It would be an act of suicide – and after holding off a combined U.S., Saudi, Qatari, and Turkish assault for half a decade or more, one thing that Assad does not appear to be is suicidal.

Although Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said,

“there is no doubt in our mind that the Syrian regime under the leadership of Bashar al-Assad is responsible for this horrific attack,” in reality there is plenty of doubt.

Nevertheless, Trump decided to fire away before the facts were in because the enemy he is most worried about is not the one half a world away in Syria, but the Democratic-neocon alliance in his own backyard. The political warfare in Washington is now generating more agony from real wars in the Middle East.

Daniel Lazare is the author of several books including The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy (Harcourt Brace).

The 48,000+ reader-comments thus far at Stephen Bannon’s Breitbart News, to their announcement on April 6th that Trump had invaded Russia’s ally Syria with missiles, are overwhelmingly along the lines of “This isn’t what I voted for.”

The tweet by the convert to Orthodox Judaism, Ivanka Trump, when she had learned that her father was bombing Syria, was “Proud of my father for refusing to accept these horrendous crimes against humanity.” She was referring to the sarin gas attack that the U.S. government says that it can prove had been perpetrated by Syria’s government, and that the Syrian government says was set up by Al Qaeda so as to appear to have been planned and carried out by the Syrian government in order to draw the U.S. into invading Syria and killing Assad (in the way it killed Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi).

Trump has now been praised by Paul Wolfowitz and virtually all of the many other neoconservatives who had endorsed Hillary Clinton for President and who had supported George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq — including most members of the current U.S. Congress. This is a 180-degree turnabout by Trump, which occurs even before his hundredth day as President. Not many Americans had voted for this type of President — but it’s what we now have. It’s what today’s American political system has offered to its voters: a choice between two neoconservatives, one of whom had successfully hidden his neoconservatism, and the other of whom (Clinton) had not.

The London Times reported on Sunday, April 9th, that U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is carrying a message to Putin that unless Russia abandons the current government of Syria, there will be war between the U.S. and Russia, because Russia is “complicit” in the alleged sarin gas attack that was allegedly intended by Assad (who was, prior to that event, near victory against the jihadists, so that the motive for this crime would have been extreme on the part of Al Qaeda, and non-existent on the part of the Syrian government). 

On Sunday April 9th, CNN reported,

“The US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, has told CNN that removing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power is a priority, cementing an extraordinary U-turn in the Trump administration’s stance on the embattled leader.”

Also on the 9th, Reuters headlined “Syrian President Assad’s allies say U.S. attack crosses ‘red lines’,” and reported that, “A joint command center made up of the forces of Russian, Iran and allied militia alliance supporting Syrian President Bashar al Assad said the U.S. strike on a Syrian air base crossed ‘red lines’ and it would now respond to any new aggression and increase their level of support to their ally.” And Britain’s Independent bannered, “Russia and Iran warn US they will ‘respond with force’ if red lines crossed in Syria again”.

The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on April 9th,

“Previous US officials created ISIS, and the current ones are strengthening ISIS or groups like them; however, the danger these terrorist groups present will backfire on Americans,” and he noted that, “the hypocritical European governments, who today claim chemical weapons have been used in Syria, provided Saddam with an abundance of chemical weapons during his war on Iran, and he used those weapons to attack our battlefields, as well as the cities of Sardasht and Halabja.”

This was an insult to America’s allies, but it applied equally accurately to the United States government as well. Perhaps the reason why he didn’t mention “the Americans” on that, however, was in order to send the U.S. President and Commander-in-Chief a signal that he ought to be leading his vassals in a different direction, no longer toward an east-west conflagration. 

Consequently, what is shaping up till now is a demand by Trump that Putin abandon Assad, and, on the opposite side, a resolute deepening of Russia’s and of Iran’s commitment, long expressed, that only the Syrian public, in an internationally monitored election, should be deciding whom the next President of Syria will be. (At least prior to Trump’s becoming the U.S. President, the Secretary General of the United Nations had likewise insisted upon only the Syrian people, in an internationally monitored election, being allowed to determine the political fate of Syria’s current President.)

So, it appears that either Trump will invade Russia, or else the trajectory for an internationally monitored democratic election in Syria will continue toward its ultimate completion, despite Trump’s demand to the contrary.

Every indication thus far is that Russia will not cave to the demands of the American international dictator, no matter what. It appears that Russia has already made its choice: freedom and national sovereignty, or else the death of the entire world, but preserving up to the very end the dignity and freedom of the Russian people, never becoming yet another American colony, like Ukraine (and see this, and this).

It is this, more than anything else, that the Syrian side, their entire alliance, countering the American alliance’s war against Syria, is standing for, resolutely, at least until the present.

Western polling of Syrians shows that the vast majority of Syrians loathe the jihadists who are trying to overthrow Assad, and they blame the U.S. government as the chief backer for bringing those jihadists into their country. Other polls show that the only person whom the majority of Syrians want to be Syria’s President is Bashar al-Assad. 

Unlike America’s battle for “hearts and minds” in Vietnam when the U.S. was a democracy and John Fitzgerald Kennedy was President, the United States government no longer even cares about winning “hearts and minds”; it wants only to win control of all other governments. And this also explains why, like Obama before him, Trump is demanding that there be no democracy in Syria — and also why Trump wholeheartedly supports Obama’s 2014 coup that violently overthrew the democratically elected President of Ukraine and turned that country also into a failed state, on Russia’s borders. 

Russia has changed a lot since the time of JFK, but so too has the U.S.A. And those changes in the U.S. had started actually the moment when FDR died and was replaced by a Vice President whom he had not chosen: Harry Truman. Perhaps the biggest failure of Roosevelt — one of America’s two greatest Presidents — was that he failed to heed his wife’s advice for him to insist upon retaining the V.P. whom he already had and whom he strongly wanted to retain (and who also polled far better than did the Establishment’s favorite, Truman): Henry Wallace. The entire course of future history is different because of that error, and JFK’s assassination by LBJ was a part of that difference. America’s democracy has become deader than a doornail since Ronald Reagan entered the White House, which ended the FDR era.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

The recent false flag terror attack in Idlib Syria recalls an earlier massacre by NATO forces on September 17, 2016 when Coalition warplanes attacked Syria Arab Army positions at al-Tharda Mountain in the region of Deir ez-Zor.

Each attack was for the benefit of ISIS terrorists. The direct attack on SAA soldiers at al-Tharda Mountain allowed ISIS terrorists to quickly occupy the strategic location, and the recent false flag attack provided a fake pretext for the U.S to launch a (poorly planned and executed) attack on the Shayrat air base — a facility used by the SAA to attack ISIS positions.

In fact, the entire terrorist infrastructure is strengthened with each and every initiative taken by the West and its extremist allies against the legitimate, elected, secular, socially-oriented, Syrian government.

Illegal sanctions, described recently by U.S Congressman Dennis Kucinich at the EuroCSE conference, as “war by other means”, also serve to advance terrorist capabilities.

U.S Congressman Dennis Kucinich

Another conference participant explained in an interview that

In the case of Syria, they (sanctions) have compounded the deteriorating context by strengthening economies of plunder and acting as a bonus for groups such as ISIS, among other Islamists. These groups successfully recruit from unemployed youth, many of whom are from destitute families, where the main breadwinner has been killed or injured. The experience of Syria over the past five years is well documented in a series of reports from the United Nations Development Programme and the Syrian Center for Policy Research (SCPR).

Refugee camps, another direct result of the West’s illegal war on Syria also provide fertile recruiting grounds for terrorists. The Zataari refugee camp in neighbouring Jordan reportedly serves this function.

The legitimate Syrian government, on the other hand, not only opposes terrorism, but also has an effective apparatus of “reconciliation” that addresses and remediates the cancer of Western terrorism.

Dr. Issa Chaer reports in “Syria’s Local Reconciliation and Peace Building” that

(t)he work of reconciliation groups is evident from the many successful treaties secured between the government and armed groups. Although many treaties only resulted in a temporary halt of violence, some secured longer term peace in specific areas, such as the Homs old city and Al-Waar treaties, which were a joint effort between local and national reconciliation groups. Many more treaties were negotiated in Damascus, Daraa, Aleppo and Hama. Overall – More than 8500 deals treaties were discussed during the last 5 years across Syria. – Over 1220 resulted in signed treaties with varied degrees of success! – Some were UN approved! – In the area between Homs and Rastan- more than 20 SMEs returned to work (Tailoring, Sweet and Chocolate factories, metal factories- metal melting factories – 5500 prisoners released – Over 8000 Abducted people have been freed, through facilitated prisoners’ swaps. – humanitarian aid supplies allowed, evacuation of civilians from conflict zones made possible, and disarmament of local fighters peacefully achieved. – An archive for missing people has been established. Approx. 90,000 total missing cases have been recorded for both side.

Dr. Issa Chaer

All of this underscores the reality that whereas Syria and its allies are on the front lines in the fight against international terrorism, U.S-led NATO and its allies are on the front lines supporting international terrorism and its manifold causes.

On April 7, two U.S. Navy battle ships USS Porter (DDG-78) and USS Ross launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at al-Shayrat military airfield in Syria’s Homs province from the Eastern Mediterranean. The U.S. strikes specifically targeted the main landing strip, aircraft, radio locators, air defense system and fuel stations.

The strike was approved by U.S. President Donald Trump, who said that the Syrian Air Force used affiliated al-Shayrat air base to prepare the chemical attack on the city of Khan Shaykhun in Idlib.

“It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons”, Trump said.

Previously on April 4, several European states accused the Syrian Air Force of using warfare poisonous agents while striking Khan Shaykhun. The Syrian government, in turn refuted these accusations, stating that the target of the strike was a position held by the “rebels” where they managed a chemical depot. The strike led to the spread of poisonous agents and dozens of casualties among civilians.

Although the situation in Khan Shaykhun remains  unclear, the U.S., France and Great Britain have already prepared and sent a draft resolution to the U.N. In the draft they casually without evidence attributed responsibility for the death of civilians to the Syrian government.

The tragedy in Khan Shaykhun allowed Washington to renew the scenario developed in 2013 in relation to the chemical attack in Eastern Ghouta. Then the U.S. President Barack Obama also considered launching a possible military strike on Syria, ironically in order to prevent the use of chemical weapons in future.

However in 2013 there were some important factors which interrupted U.S. plans to initiate a large-scale military operation against Syria. The evidence regarding the use of chemical weapons pointed to the involvement of the U.S. and their allied groups,

It turned out to be fake. This provocative act had been carefully planned by military experts. This is confirmed by the hacked correspondence of U.S. Army Colonel Anthony Jamie MacDonald, who was general staff director, operations and plans office of the deputy chief of staff for intelligence the army staff in 2013.

On August 22, the day after the chemical attack, MacDonald received a message from his colleague Eugene Furst with congratulations on the “successful operation” and a link reference to an article on Eastern Ghouta in The Washington Post.

The media leak of MacDonald’s correspondence has become another evidence proving that the Syrian government was not involved in the use of chemical weapons in Eastern Ghouta.

Earlier Damascus has already been blamed for using a poisonous substance, but all these attempts have failed. Similarly in 2013, the UN investigation proved that the militants were responsible for the use of sarin, according to the head of the UN mission Carla Del Ponte. 

Subsequently the chemical weapons in the hands of opposition groups was recorded on video.

Moreover, the American analysts also pointed out to the doubtful nature of the information proving the involvement of Damascus in the chemical weapons attacks. In an open message to Barack Obama former CIA officers blamed  CIA director George Bennett for providing unreliable information to the U.S. authorities regarding to the incident in Eastern Ghouta and the propaganda ploy intended for  members of the U.S. Congress, the media and the public.

Finally, under pressure of the world community, Washington had to join the Russian initiative to eliminate chemical warfare agenda in Syria. This operation was held under the supervision of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and successfully completed in January 2015.

As in the case of Eastern Ghouta, the western media have been biased towards the incident in Khan Shaykhun, accusing the Syrian government for the death of civilians prior to the release of the preliminary results of an investigation. Furthermore not to burden readers with unnecessary doubts, the Daily Mail removed from its website an article confirming a U.S. plan to stage a False Flag chemical attack in 2013 with a view to incriminating the government.

Against this background, the Washington’s decision to fall back upon the East Ghouta scenario raises many questions.

First, it contradicts Donald Trump’s election campaign, when he  promised to stop actions directed against Bashar Assad and focus instead on fighting terrorism.

Second, the accusation directed against Damascus regarding the use of chemical weapons contradicts the statement of OPCW about the successful conclusion of its program in Syria, in which the U.S. also took part.

Third, it is unclear what the White House wants to achieve by escalating the conflict in Syria.

It would appear that the chemical attack in Idlib is another provocation by the U.S., which is trying to justify the need of a US military intervention in Syria.

Mariam al-Hijab is the editor-in-chief of Inside Syria Media Center.

Just two days after news broke of an alleged poison-gas attack in northern Syria, President Trump brushed aside advice from some U.S. intelligence analysts doubting the Syrian regime’s guilt and launched a lethal retaliatory missile strike against a Syrian airfield.

Trump immediately won plaudits from Official Washington, especially from neoconservatives who have been trying to wrestle control of his foreign policy away from his nationalist and personal advisers since the days after his surprise victory on Nov. 8.

There is also an internal dispute over the intelligence. On Thursday night, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. intelligence community assessed with a “high degree of confidence” that the Syrian government had dropped a poison gas bomb on civilians in Idlib province.

But a number of intelligence sources have made contradictory assessments, saying the preponderance of evidence suggests that Al Qaeda-affiliated rebels were at fault, either by orchestrating an intentional release of a chemical agent as a provocation or by possessing containers of poison gas that ruptured during a conventional bombing raid.

The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter conducts strike operations while in the Mediterranean Sea, April 7, 2017. (Navy photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Ford Williams)

One intelligence source told me that the most likely scenario was a staged event by the rebels intended to force Trump to reverse a policy, announced only days earlier, that the U.S. government would no longer seek “regime change” in Syria and would focus on attacking the common enemy, Islamic terror groups that represent the core of the rebel forces.

The source said the Trump national security team split between the President’s close personal advisers, such as nationalist firebrand Steve Bannon and son-in-law Jared Kushner, on one side and old-line neocons who have regrouped under National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, an Army general who was a protégé of neocon favorite Gen. David Petraeus.

White House Infighting

In this telling, the earlier ouster of retired Gen. Michael Flynn as national security adviser and this week’s removal of Bannon from the National Security Council were key steps in the reassertion of neocon influence inside the Trump presidency. The strange personalities and ideological extremism of Flynn and Bannon made their ousters easier, but they were obstacles that the neocons wanted removed.

Though Bannon and Kushner are often presented as rivals, the source said, they shared the belief that Trump should tell the truth about Syria, revealing the Obama administration’s CIA analysis that a fatal sarin gas attack in 2013 was a “false-flag” operation intended to sucker President Obama into fully joining the Syrian war on the side of the rebels — and the intelligence analysts’ similar beliefs about Tuesday’s incident.

Instead, Trump went along with the idea of embracing the initial rush to judgment blaming Assad for the Idlib poison-gas event. The source added that Trump saw Thursday night’s missile assault as a way to change the conversation in Washington, where his administration has been under fierce attack from Democrats claiming that his election resulted from a Russian covert operation.

If changing the narrative was Trump’s goal, it achieved some initial success with several of Trump’s fiercest neocon critics, such as neocon Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, praising the missile strike, as did Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The neocons and Israel have long sought “regime change” in Damascus even if the ouster of Assad might lead to a victory by Islamic extremists associated with Al Qaeda and/or the Islamic State.

Wagging the Dog

Trump employing a “wag the dog” strategy, in which he highlights his leadership on an international crisis to divert attention from domestic political problems, is reminiscent of President Bill Clinton’s decision to attack Serbia in 1999 as impeachment clouds were building around his sexual relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky.

Trump’s advisers, in briefing the press on Thursday night, went to great lengths to highlight Trump’s compassion toward the victims of the poison gas and his decisiveness in bombing Assad’s military in contrast to Obama’s willingness to allow the intelligence community to conduct a serious review of the evidence surrounding the 2013 sarin-gas case.

President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at joint press conference on Feb. 15. 2017. (Screen shot from Whitehouse.gov)

Ultimately, Obama listened to his intelligence advisers who told him there was no “slam-dunk” evidence implicating Assad’s regime and he pulled back from a military strike at the last minute – while publicly maintaining the fiction that the U.S. government was certain of Assad’s guilt.

In both cases – 2013 and 2017 – there were strong reasons to doubt Assad’s responsibility. In 2013, he had just invited United Nations inspectors into Syria to investigate cases of alleged rebel use of chemical weapons and thus it made no sense that he would launch a sarin attack in the Damascus suburbs, guaranteeing that the U.N. inspectors would be diverted to that case.

Similarly, now, Assad’s military has gained a decisive advantage over the rebels and he had just scored a major diplomatic victory with the Trump administration’s announcement that the U.S. was no longer seeking “regime change” in Syria. The savvy Assad would know that a chemical weapon attack now would likely result in U.S. retaliation and jeopardize the gains that his military has achieved with Russian and Iranian help.

The counter-argument to this logic – made by The New York Times and other neocon-oriented news outlets – essentially maintains that Assad is a crazed barbarian who was testing out his newfound position of strength by baiting President Trump. Of course, if that were the case, it would have made sense that Assad would have boasted of his act, rather than deny it.

But logic and respect for facts no longer prevail inside Official Washington, nor inside the mainstream U.S. news media.

Intelligence Uprising

Alarm within the U.S. intelligence community about Trump’s hasty decision to attack Syria reverberated from the Middle East back to Washington, where former CIA officer Philip Giraldi reported hearing from his intelligence contacts in the field that they were shocked at how the new poison-gas story was being distorted by Trump and the mainstream U.S. news media.

Giraldi told Scott Horton’s Webcast:

“I’m hearing from sources on the ground in the Middle East, people who are intimately familiar with the intelligence that is available who are saying that the essential narrative that we’re all hearing about the Syrian government or the Russians using chemical weapons on innocent civilians is a sham.”

Former CIA officer Philip Giradi. (Photo credit: Gage Skidmore)

Giraldi said his sources were more in line with an analysis postulating an accidental release of the poison gas after an Al Qaeda arms depot was hit by a Russian airstrike.

“The intelligence confirms pretty much the account that the Russians have been giving … which is that they hit a warehouse where the rebels – now these are rebels that are, of course, connected with Al Qaeda – where the rebels were storing chemicals of their own and it basically caused an explosion that resulted in the casualties. Apparently the intelligence on this is very clear.”

Giraldi said the anger within the intelligence community over the distortion of intelligence to justify Trump’s military retaliation was so great that some covert officers were considering going public.

“People in both the agency [the CIA] and in the military who are aware of the intelligence are freaking out about this because essentially Trump completely misrepresented what he already should have known – but maybe he didn’t – and they’re afraid that this is moving toward a situation that could easily turn into an armed conflict,” Giraldi said before Thursday night’s missile strike. “They are astonished by how this is being played by the administration and by the U.S. media.”

One-Sided Coverage

The mainstream U.S. media has presented the current crisis with the same profound neocon bias that has infected the coverage of Syria and the larger Middle East for decades. For instance, The New York Times on Friday published a lead story by Michael R. Gordon and Michael D. Shear that treated the Syrian government’s responsibility for the poison-gas incident as flat-fact. The lengthy story did not even deign to include the denials from Syria and Russia that they were responsible for any intentional deployment of poison gas.

The article also fit with Trump’s desire that he be portrayed as a decisive and forceful leader. He is depicted as presiding over intense deliberations of war or peace and displaying a deep humanitarianism regarding the poison-gas victims, one of the rare moments when the Times, which has become a reliable neocon propaganda sheet, has written anything favorable about Trump at all.

According to Syrian reports on Friday, the U.S. attack killed 13 people, including five soldiers at the airbase.

The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Ross fires a tomahawk land attack missile from the Mediterranean Sea, April 7, 2017. (Navy photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Robert S. Price)

Gordon, whose service to the neocon cause is notorious, was the lead author with Judith Miller of the Times’ bogus “aluminum tube” story in 2002 which falsely claimed that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was reconstituting a nuclear-weapons program, an article that was then cited by President George W. Bush’s aides as a key argument for invading Iraq in 2003.

Regarding this week’s events, Trump’s desperation to reverse his negative media coverage and the dubious evidence blaming Assad for the Idlib incident could fit with the “Wag the Dog” movie from 1997 in which an embattled president creates a phony foreign crisis in Albania.

In the movie, the White House operation is a cynical psychological operation to convince the American people that innocent Albanian children, including an attractive girl carrying a cat, are in danger when, In reality, the girl was an actor posing before a green screen that allowed scenes of fiery ruins to be inserted as background.

A fake war scene in the dark 1997 comedy “Wag the Dog,” which showed a girl and her cat fleeing a bombardment in Albania.

Today, because Trump and his administration are now committed to convincing Americans that Assad really was responsible for Tuesday’s poison-gas tragedy, the prospects for a full and open investigation are effectively ended. We may never know if there is truth to those allegations or whether we are being manipulated by another “wag the dog” psyop.

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

On April 2nd, The Yemen News Agency (SABA) reported that US-Saudi war planes struck several targets including private and public properties across several provinces in Yemen:

The US-Saudi aggression war planes continued heinous strikes against citizens, causing heavy damage to private and public properties in several provinces over the past hours, a military official told Saba on Sunday. The warplanes waged 12 strikes on Haradh district of Hajja province and three other strikes on Serwah district of Mareb province, as well waged six raids on Kamaran island in Hodeida province

Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen has created a humanitarian crisis within the poorest country in the Middle East. However, Trump is seeking an even closer relationship with the Saudi Monarchy. The Saudi Monarchy is an important part of Washington’s goal of dominating the Middle East for its natural resources, one that benefits its corporations that range from arms manufacturers to big oil companies. One other important factor to consider is Israel’s security which plays an important part of U.S. foreign policy in the region. Saudi Arabia is a vassal state, one that has a long history of supporting terrorists such as the Islamic state, al-Qaeda and others who have wretched havoc across the Arab world killing innocent men, women and children. Saudi Arabia is also one of the worst human rights violators in the world especially against women.

They are agents of chaos, or one might call “useful idiots” to counter Arab governments and resistance movements (Yemen, Syria, Iran, the Palestinians and Hezbollah) not aligned with U.S. and Israeli interests. So, as expected, US President Donald Trump hosted Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman last month at the White House to discuss economics and Iran’s influence in the Middle East. According to Reuters:

Saudi Arabia hailed a “historical turning point” in U.S.-Saudi relations after a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman highlighted the two leaders’ shared view that Iran posed a regional security threat

During a speech at the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in 2016, Trump mentioned that Iran is a major problem for U.S. allies including Saudi Arabia,

“Iran is a problem in Iraq, a problem in Syria, a problem in Lebanon, a problem in Yemen and will be a very, very major problem for Saudi Arabia.”

A senior advisor to Prince Mohammed said that

“This meeting is considered a historical turning point in relations between both countries and which had passed through a period of divergence of views on many issues.”

A historical turning point according to Mohammed’s advisor is to “form a big change in relations between both countries in political, military, security and economic issues,” What is troublesome about the meeting is that Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States see Trump as a strong leader who will contain Iran’s influence in the region.

Both the Trump administration and the Saudi Monarchy find common ground on Iran’s Nuclear Deal which they both view as dangerous. Both also share the same concerns on “the danger of Iran’s regional expansionist activities.” Although the Obama administration sold arms to Saudi Arabia in the past, Obama suspended the sale of arms including U.S.-made precision-guidance munitions to the Saudi Monarchy last December due to “concerns over widespread civilian casualties” according to a Reuter’s article published in 2016. The Trump administration is considering an arms deal to the Saudis that the State Department has already approved, but the White House has not yet confirmed the deal.

Targeting Yemen to Fight “Iranian Influence”?

The Agence France-Presse (AFP) headlined ‘Trump meets top Saudi prince as Yemen war rages’ said

“Saudi Arabia is likely to welcome Trump’s harder line on its arch-rival Iran and there is likely to be less friction over Riyadh’s war against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.”

However, The Huffington Post reported in 2015 that Obama admitted that Iran “tried to stop” the Houthi rebels from advancing on Sanaa in a report titled ‘Iran Tried To Stop Houthi Rebels In Yemen, Obama Says’:

Iran tried to hold back Shia rebels who were intent on taking the Yemeni capital of Sanaa at the height of the uprising in 2014, President Barack Obama told a group of reporters Wednesday afternoon. The Houthi rebels, however, ignored the advice and marched on, precipitating a much wider war in Yemen. Obama’s observation confirms an earlier Huffington Post report that, contrary to widespread assumptions in the United States, Iran was not the driving force of the crisis in Yemen

In Obama’s own words according to The Huffington Post report:

“We watched as this proceeded. There were moments where Iran was actually urging potential restraint,” he said. ”Now, once the Houthis march in and there’s no there there” — in other words, the government completely collapsed and Houthis expecting resistance found none at all —“are they interested in getting arms to the Houthis and causing problems for the Saudis? Yes. But they weren’t proceeding on the basis of, come hell or high water, we’re moving on a holy war here.”

Despite its malevolent intentions and motivation, displays such this one suggested to him that, in the end, Iran is rational and can be dealt with, Obama said. “It’s on that basis that we entered into the interim agreement,” he said

Wikileaks obtained documents (https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09SANAA2186_a.html) that was published on December 9th, 2009 titled ‘Who Are The Houthis, Part Two: How Are They Fighting?’ detailed where the Houthi rebels obtained their weapons according to various political analysts, a British diplomat and NSB Director Ali Mohammed al-Ansi:

12. (S/NF) contrary to ROYG claims that Iran is arming the Houthis, most local political analysts report that the Houthis obtain their weapons from the Yemeni black market and even from the ROYG military itself. According to a British diplomat, there are numerous credible reports that ROYG military commanders were selling weapons to the Houthis in the run-up to the Sixth War. An ICG report on the Sa’ada conflict from May 2009 quoted NSB director Ali Mohammed al-Ansi saying, “Iranians are not arming the Houthis. The weapons they use are Yemeni. Most actually come from fighters who fought against the socialists during the 1994 war and then sold them.” Mohammed Azzan, presidential advisor for Sa’ada affairs, told PolOff on August 16 that the Houthis easily obtain weapons inside Yemen, either from battlefield captures or by buying them from corrupt military commanders and soldiers. Azzan said that the military “covers up its failure” by saying the weapons come from Iran. According to Jamal Abdullah al-Shami of the Democracy School, there is little external oversight of the military’s large and increasing budget, so it is easy for members of the military to illegally sell weapons.

13. (S/NF) ROYG officials assert that the Houthis’ possession and use of Katyusha rockets is evidence of support from Iran and Hizballah, arguing that these rockets are not available in Yemeni arms markets nor ROYG stockpiles. (Comment: Given Yemen’s robust arms markets, especially in Sa’ada, it is possible that Katyushas are available on the black market even if they are not in ROYG stockpiles. According to sensitive reporting, there is at least one instance of Somali extremists purchasing Katyusha rockets in Yemen in 2007. End Comment.) However, according to sensitive reporting, it may have been the ROYG military who aided the Houthis in obtaining a shipment of 200 Katyusha rockets in late November 2009

Trump’s accusations that Iran is supporting the Houthi rebellion are baseless.  An important note to consider is that Iran is mentioned in the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) report which was produced in 2000 by the Neoconservatives during the George W. Bush Administration. The PNAC report said that “retaining forward-based forces in the region” is essential for U.S. security interests concerning Iran:

Over the long term, Iran may well prove as large a threat to U.S. interests in the Gulf as Iraq has. And even should U.S.-Iranian relations improve, retaining forward-based forces in the region would still be an essential element in U.S. security strategy given the longstanding American interests in the region

Iran’s threat to Washington is that it has an enormous amount of oil and other natural resources. Iran is a sovereign nation that is aligned with the Axis of Resistance within the Middle East namely Syria, Lebanon, Hezbollah and the Palestinians. Iran is also aligned with Washington’s long-time adversaries, Russia and China. The PNAC report specifically states Washington’s long-term goal and that is to dominate the Middle East by isolating Iran with U.S. military bases close to their borders ready to attack on a moment’s notice.

Trump is doing what every administration has done in the past whether Democrat or Republican and that is to support Iran’s long-time adversaries, Saudi Arabia and Israel and isolate Iran that will allow the U.S. to dominate the resource-rich region. The U.S. and its allies have been preparing for a possible war against Iran since the 1979 Iranian revolution that overthrew the U.S. puppet government of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi also known as the Shah of Iran. However, a war scenario is unlikely to play out any time soon since it would lead to a wider war in the Middle East with the Axis of Resistance including Russia and China, a costly war one might add.

Trump wants to Fight ISIS with one of the Main Sponsors of Terror, Saudi Arabia

Regardless of their human rights abuses and their spread of Wahhabi terrorism, the Trump administration will seek closer ties with Saudi Arabia. The Trump Administration is expected to approve the new arms deal to Saudi Arabia to continue its bombardment of Yemen. The Independent, an online news source based in London reported that the State department will continue selling arms to the Saudis. The report ‘Donald Trump’s State Department approves Saudi Arabia weapons sales blocked by Barack Obama’ said the following:

The State Department has approved resuming arms sales to Saudi Arabia previously blocked by Barack Obama. A multi-million dollar technology for Riyadh was blocked by the former President during the final months of his administration over human rights concerns

For Trump, Iran is a major threat in the Middle East, not the dictatorship of the Saudi monarchy that has continuously bombed Yemen causing a humanitarian crisis with more 10,000 civilian casualties and counting. Trump’s policy towards “Islamic militants” in the Middle East is “aggressive” according to an article by www.stripes.com, an online U.S. military news site titled ‘Trump’s ramped up bombing in Yemen signals more aggressive use of military’:

More broadly, the expanded bombing in Yemen signals a more aggressive use of military force by the Trump administration against Islamist militants, from Syria to Afghanistan. The White House already has approved the deployment of Marines and special operations forces to Syria and a large-scale commando raid in Yemen, and on Thursday a top commander suggested more troops are headed to Afghanistan.

President Trump’s readiness to order military action stands in contrast to the previous administration. When Obama’s national security advisor Susan Rice ran the policy making process, “stuff moved like molasses through the National Security Council,” much to the frustration of military planners at U.S. Central Command, a former senior defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told FP. The inter-agency discussions allowed plans to languish for weeks while debates swirled over when and how to act.

Throughout 2016, the Pentagon continually briefed the White House on ways to get more aggressive with al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, as they watched the group gain strength in their Yemeni strongholds. Those strikes didn’t happen, “but just because the clock ran out,” the official said.  

The Obama administration handed over plans for a stepped-up campaign to the incoming Trump team in January, and there has been an immediate change in the tempo of operations, reflecting the new administration’s apparent preference for prompt military action over policy deliberations, and a more dominant role for the military in decision-making

The Yemeni Civil War that began in 2015 between the Houthi forces who are loyal supporters of Ali Abdullah Saleh and government forces allied with the Washington-backed Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi who was based in the Aden and is aligned with Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the Islamic State terrorists. On February 21st, 2012, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi who was the Vice-President under Saleh held a presidential election. The problem was that Hadi was the only candidate in the elections who became Yemen’s president for two years. Washington and Saudi Arabia saw Hadi as the legitimate leader of Yemen despite the fact that he was the only candidate. As for the Houthi forces (who are Shia-led movement from Sa’dah, northern Yemen) began an insurgency against the Hadi government. By January of 2015 Hadi fled to Saudi Arabia and asked the Saudi Monarchy to help counter the Houthi insurgency. On March 26th 2015, the Saudi Kingdom launched operation ‘al-Hazm Storm’ with mainly U.S. puppet states of Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Morocco, Pakistan, Qatar, Sudan and the UAE and collaborating with Somalia that allowed the coalition to use its military bases to invade Yemen. The cause of the Houthi led insurgency was the fact that the Hadi government did not follow-up on their power-sharing proposals that turned Yemen into a dictatorship backed by Washington. Since the war began, the United Nations says that 17 million people in Yemen are facing food shortages and close to 7 million people will become victims of a famine crisis.

Washington and its Close Ties to Saudi Oil

Washington has a long history with Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia was founded in 1901 by King Abdulaziz Al Saud, Bin Saud had a close relationship with the United Kingdom who was the first nation in the world to recognize Saudi Arabia as an independent nation. The British defended Saudi Arabia from the Turkish Empire who sought to expand its territories. Bin Saud also developed a close relationship with the United States. By May 1931, Washington recognized Saudi Arabia by granting it “diplomatic recognition.” During that time, Standard Oil based in California was granted concessions for oil exploration in the Eastern Province area called al-Hasa. By November 1931, a treaty was signed by both the US and Saudi Arabia that included a “favored nation status” within the treaty. By 1933, the California Arabian Oil Company (CASOC) which later became the Arab American Company (ARAMCO) began oil exploration throughout the Saudi kingdom until they got to Dhahran which produced a small amount of oil at the time (42.5 million barrels) between 1941 and 1945. Today, Saudi Arabia is one of the top oil exporters in the world with the U.S. being a major beneficiary.

Trump will build a closer relationship with Saudi Arabia despite the fact that is committing war crimes against Yemen and has supported terrorist organizations committed to overthrowing the Syrian government. Trump has repeatedly claimed that he wants to defeat the Islamic State, but Saudi Arabia is not a good partner to take on the terrorists because historically speaking, they have armed and supported terrorist organizations for a long time.

Washington and Saudi Arabia is a strategic alliance. Besides, Washington does like a good dictatorship that follows its marching orders, after all, the Saudis do have an abundance of oil that feeds the Military-Industrial Complex and provides enormous profits for U.S. oil companies. The Saudis long-time support of terrorism also advances Washington’s agenda to create wars and regime change in the Middle East. Washington has a vested interest in Saudi Arabia and that is why Trump will keep the alliance between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia intact, a move that advances Washington’s agenda and that is something that the establishment (or the swamp) would not disagree with.

You have to love the twisted system of propaganda and moral hypocrisy that reigns in the United States today.

For almost a year the mainstream corporate media have demonized Russia, Putin, and Donald Trump. Putin was the devil and Trump was his sidekick. They operated some secret cabal that had insidiously infiltrated American consciousness through a few hundred alternative news sites that were part of the Russian propaganda apparatus. They operated in cahoots to steal the election from angelic Hillary. They released documents and emails as part of their ruse. Walking beside them and chuckling as they went, was Bashar al-Assad, the third member of this trinity of diabolical tricksters. Trump was going to sell the country down the river to the evil Russians.

He was going to abandon the good fight to overthrow Assad, who had started a “civil war” by attacking innocent Syrians who just wanted freedom and democracy, like in the U.S. He was going to sell out the good neo-Nazi Ukrainians who had risen up on their own initiative to overthrow a despotic Russian-linked government. He was going to build Trump hotels and casinos in Moscow, open a beach resort in Crimea, raking in the dough that he would share with his buddy Putin. They would laugh together as the good old American tradition of foreign aggression was abandoned and Russia annexed the U.S.

In this Obama had been the good guy, the man in the white hat, who had kept the Russians at bay, even if he were not able to defeat them totally in Syria, he had made sure to surround Russia with American military forces. Maybe he should have reacted more forcefully when Assad “used chemical weapons against his own people in 2013,” even though Assad hadn’t.

At least he accused Assad and waged a war. But Obama was a “statesman” and was trying to use American force judiciously. After all, he had won the Nobel Prize for Peace. But he knew Putin was the enemy and never wavered on that. Hillary Clinton would, if she could, follow in his footsteps, but more aggressively. Trump — he was a Russian appeaser and would abandon the good fight for freedom and democracy.

Then a few weeks ago, when the Trump administration was accused of killing 200-300 innocent civilians in Mosul, Iraq, the same media covered for him. So he killed scores of children; let’s move past that accusation since it may be a good sign that the wayward Donald is returning to his senses. The news of the slaughter was buried and forgotten.

Could it be that the prodigal son had returned to his father’s house? What a glorious possibility!

Then the perfectly timed chemical “attacks” in Syria earlier this week. The American killings in Mosul disappeared further, if that were possible. So too did those in Yemen and throughout the region. The mainstream media immediately jumped on the latest tragedy: without any evidence, they immediately knew that “Assad has gassed his own people” and was guilty of crimes against humanity.  The White Hats – I mean, the White Helmets – said so, as did the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, those impartial stalwarts of objective  journalism. Then the good Donald confirmed it. What was happening? Was he turning in his fellow traveler card and abandoning his buddy Putin? What about those Crimean resorts with their golf courses and all the fun to be had there? 

No doubt Raytheon, the number three defense contractor, rejoiced upon awakening to hear that the good Donald had launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles against a Syrian airfield. That’s 94 million up in smoke and the pantry will have to be restocked. Raytheon is probably already hard at work doing that. All the defense contractors will probably be toasting their good fortunes at Happy Hour. The neo-cons should be delighted, as well the many “liberal” demonizers of Russia and cheerleaders for an expanded U.S. attack on Syria – e.g. National Public Radio, The New York Times, the Washington Post, Democracy Now, etc. – who have waged a no-stop propaganda campaign to push Trump to abandon his best friend Vlad.

The New York Times unashamedly headlined the attack as follows:

“The United States fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at an air base in response to the Syrian government’s chemical weapons attack this week that killed more than 80 civilians.” 

Who needs evidence for the paper of record? Why even wait for an investigation? Or the Washington Post:

“Trump administration retaliates for chemical attack in Syria.”

National Public Radio chimes in with a totally self-serving interview with Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia and its usual anti-Russian bias. Kaine has long argued for the U.S. to bomb Syria, but says Trump should have come to Congress for authorization first. He’s glad for the bombing, but please, let’s follow procedures. That’s the Democratic and democratic way of bombing a sovereign country.

Now that Trump has made crystal clear his willingness to risk a much wider war throughout the Middle-East and a more frightening clash with Russia, we can expect a slight easing of the media’s characterization of him as the Bad Don.

After all, hasn’t the anti-Russian propaganda succeeded in its goal of inflaming the new “cold” war? 

Wasn’t the Hate Russia campaign always aimed at bringing the “Russian spy,” Donald Trump, in from the cold?    

Now that he’s come over to our side, his foreign policy belligerence should bring him some praise. If not the Good Don, at least he might now be characterized as the Not-Bad Don.

After all, he has assumed his traditional role as President. We can therefore expect a much wider war. 

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

President Donald Trump‘s administration ordered a missile attack on the Syrian government’s al-Shayrat airbase near Homs on Thursday evening, taking a rapid about-face on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to a military conclusion in the wake of a chemical attack which killed scores and left hundreds injured.

But Trump has repeatedly spoken out against attacking the Syrian government, suggesting U.S. involvement in the conflict could make a bad problem worse and possibly lead to a global war.

In October, Trump blasted then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton‘s position on Syria — that the U.S. military should take out al-Assad’s airfields, the exact type of strike Trump  ordered Thursday — by saying attacking a Russian-backed government could start World War III.

“What we should do is focus on ISIS,” Trump told Reuters. “We should not be focusing on Syria. You’re going to end up in World War III over Syria if we listen to Hillary Clinton.”

“You’re not fighting Syria any more, you’re fighting Syria, Russia and Iran, all right? Russia is a nuclear country, but a country where the nukes work as opposed to other countries that talk.”

In 2015, Trump blasted his GOP rivals with near-identical rhetoric:

“They want to start World War III over Syria. Give me a break. You know Russia wants to get ISIS right. We want to get ISIS. Russia’s in Syria. Maybe we should let them do it?”

“Let them do it,” he added. “What the hell are we, crazy?”

Here’s a sampling of Trump’s tweets about Syria:

However, Trump did suggest several times that were he to attack Syria, he would do so without much buildup.

Tom McKay is a staff writer at Mic, covering national politics, media, policing and the war on drugs. He is based in New York and can be reached at [email protected].

“Neoliberals, Neocons, Corporate media and “Progressives” (collectively, the Deep State) praising Trump for the illegal airstrike against Syria, uniformly calling for more war, and vociferously attacking all those opposing war. Many figures who opposed Bush’s war making have become totally “controlled puppets” who say and do what they are ordered to do—regardless of consistency with past views and actions.” Larry Chin, April 8, 2017

Segments of the anti-war movement which opposed the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq are tacitly supportive of  Trump’s punitive airstrikes directed against the “Assad regime” allegedly involved in “killing their own people”, gassing them to death in a premeditated chemical weapons attack. According to Trump “Assad choked out the lives of helpless men women and children”.

America’s “Progressive Idol” Noam Chomsky in an April 5 interview with “Democracy Now” (aired two days before Trump’s punitive airstrikes) favors “regime change”, intimating that a negotiated “removal” of Bashar Al Assad could lead to a peaceful settlement.

According to Chomsky: “The Assad regime is a moral disgrace. They’re carrying out horrendous acts, the Russians with them.” Strong statement with no supporting evidence and documentation provided. The victims of imperialism are casually blamed for the crimes of imperialism:

…You know, you can’t tell them, “We’re going to murder you. Please negotiate.” That’s not going to work. But some system in which, in the course of negotiations …[with the Russians], … he [Bashar al-Assad] would be removed, and some kind of settlement would be made. The West would not accept it, …  At the time, they believed they could overthrow Assad, so they didn’t want to do this, so the war went on. Could it have worked? You never know for sure. But it could have been pursued. Meanwhile, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are supporting jihadi groups, which are not all that different from ISIS. So you have a horror story on all sides. The Syrian people are being decimated.

(Noam Chomsky on Democracy Now, April 5, 2017, See the video of the Democracy Now interview with Chomsky here

Update, Scan of Chomsky Interview Democracy Now, April 26, 2017

Who was behind the Chemical Weapons Attack?

No research, no investigative reports, no historical review have been conducted by Western governments and the mainstream media to support president Trump’s allegations directed against the Syrian government. (See Trump’s April 6 address below)

Financial Times screenshot. Trump nationwide statement on April 6, announcing the illegal airstrikes against Syria

The “humanitarian airstrikes” ordered by Trump constitute a criminal act which has resulted in civilian deaths including children. The US media applauds. The loss of Syrian lives is “collateral damage”.

While there is no evidence that president Al-Assad ordered the chemical weapons attack, there is ample evidence –including a comprehensive UN report– that the opposition “rebels” (supported by US-NATO) have since 2012 stockpiled and used chemical weapons against Syrian civilians as well as SAA soldiers.

There is also evidence that Washington and its allies had previously planned and supported “False Flag” chemical weapons attacks perpetrated by the “rebels” (including the 2012 East Ghouta attacks) with a view to incriminating the Damascus government.

See:   The East Ghouta Chemical Attacks (2013): US-Backed False Flag? Killing Syrian Children to Justify a “Humanitarian” Military Intervention By Julie Lévesque and Prof Michel Chossudovsky, originally published in 2013.

The UN Mission to Investigate Allegations of the Use of Chemical Weapons (2013)

According to Carla del Ponte on behalf of the UN Mission to Investigate Allegations of the Use Chemical Weapons in the Syrian Arabic Republic:

“evidence from casualties and medical staff indicated that rebel forces in the civil war had used the deadly nerve agent sarin.

‘Our investigators have been in neighbouring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals, and there are strong, concrete suspicions, but not yet incontrovertible proof, of the use of sarin gas,’ said Del Ponte in an interview with Swiss-Italian television.

‘This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities.’

The comments by Ms Del Ponte, a member of the U.N. panel probing alleged war crimes in Syria, contradict claims by Britain and the U.S. that intelligence reports showed Syrian soldiers had used chemical weapons.

She said that the United Nations independent commission of inquiry on Syria has not yet seen evidence of government forces having used chemical weapons, which are banned under international law. (See Daily Mail Online, May 6, 2013))

“We still have to deepen our investigation, verify and confirm (the findings) through new witness testimony, but according to what we have established so far, it is at the moment opponents of the regime who are using sarin gas,” (The Independent, May 6, 2013)

To consult the complete UN Report which has been heavily redacted click here 

The final version of the UN report was watered down: the role of opposition rebels acknowledged by the UN mission of investigators was omitted. The use of chemical weapons against both civilians and Syrian SAA soldiers is nonetheless documented and acknowledged.

On page 19 (para 111) of the UN report:

“Khan al Asal, 19 March 2013: 111. The United Nations Mission collected credible information that corroborates the allegations that chemical weapons were used in Khan al Asal on 19 March 2013 against soldiers and civilians.” [the report is careful not to mention that the attacks were conducted by opposition rebels and the attacks were directed against government forces]

Page 19 (para 111)

“Jobar, 24 August 2013: 113. The United Nations Mission collected evidence consistent with the probable use of chemical weapons in Jobar on 24 August on a relatively small scale against soldiers…” [by opposition rebels]

Page 19 (para 113)

See the official UN report, see also Carla Stea’s review article entitled: UN Mission Report Confirms that “Opposition” Rebels Used Chemical Weapons against Civilians and Government Forces, Global Research, December 31, 2013

The Training of Opposition Rebels in the Use of Chemical Weapons

Moreover, acknowledged by mainstream media reports, Western special forces on contract to the Pentagon were involved in training the Al Qaeda affiliated rebels in the use of chemical weapons.

For details see Michel Chossudovsky, Pentagon Trained Syria’s Al-Qaeda Rebels in the use of Chemical Weapons, Global Research, April 6, 2017.

See also Michel Chossudovsky, The Syria Chemical Weapons Saga: The Staging of a US-NATO Sponsored Humanitarian Disaster, originally published in December 2012

Paying Lip Service to US imperialism?

Whereas US-NATO inflicts death and destruction across the Middle East, not to mention its support of Al Qaeda affiliated terror groups, the victims of US aggression are casually blamed for “carrying out [these] horrendous acts” committed by the US and its allies.

Many “Progressives” view Syria as a “civil war” rather than a US-NATO supported terrorist insurgency. Noam Chomsky is largely supportive of “regime change” in Damascus in derogation of international law.

And anti-war activists concur, American “progressives” tow the line, follow suit in Chomsky’s footsteps.

In an earlier interview with Alternet, Chomsky avoids addressing US foreign policy, casually placing the blame on the “Assad regime”:

EF: To what extent is the US administration responsible for Syria’s implosion?

NC It’s hard to say. The Assad regime is absolutely monstrous and responsible for a large majority of the atrocities. IS [Islamic State] is another monstrosity. The al-Qaida affiliated al-Nusra Front is not much better than IS [Islamic state], while some of the other major groups are closely linked to it. … Noam Chomsky, AlterNet, August 25, 2016. emphasis added)

“…is the US administration responsible? It’s hard to say.”

In response to Emron Feroz (EF), Chomsky conveniently lumps the “Assad regime” together with the terrorists. Moreover, he fails to acknowledge that the Syrian government is fighting both Al Qaeda and the Islamic State and that these terror groups are supported and financed by the Western military alliance.

Both Al Qaeda and the Islamic State (ISIS) are creations of US intelligence.

War has become peace. Realities have been turned upside down.

Trump’s illegal punitive airstrikes against Syria are heralded as a humanitarian act against Bashar Al Assad who is “killing his own people”.

The illegal cruise missile airstrikes have set the stage: “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P).

More airstrikes including direct US military intervention are envisaged.

And “Progressives” applaud. The anti-war movement is dead.

Syria: Trump May Just have Started World War III

By Peter Koenig, April 08, 2017

Syria is a mere square on this murderous chess board, as was Yugoslavia, Libya, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, and many more to come. The purpose is not ‘winning a war’ – that would be too simple. The purpose is creating and leaving behind chaos, eternal chaos. In the case of Syria a balkanization of the country, what Clinton did to Yugoslavia. The old ‘divide to conquer’ – it still works after hundreds of years. People are still blinded to these oldest and most rudimentary of war strategies. They still fall for it; don’t notice; swallow the lies.

History: How African Muslims “Civilized Spain”

By Garikai Chengu, April 08, 2017

Contrary to conventional wisdom, it was ancient Africans that brought civilization to Spain and large parts of Europe and not the other way around.

Washington’s False Flag: United Nations Confirmed that US Supported “Rebels” Were Using Chemical Weapons

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 08, 2017

Both Trump and Obama have blood on their hands. The Chemical Weapons Attack is being used as a “False Flag”, a pretext and a justification to wage an illegal war of aggression.

Liberated Aleppo: Dying To Get Back to School, or “Back in Government Hands”. Silly BBC Report 

By Barbara Nimri Aziz, April 07, 2017

“Back in government hands”; the journalist repeated it twice in the same account of her report from Homs, Syria. Lyse Doucet had returned to the former rebel-occupied (and we know the reputation of those rebel jihadis, don’t we?) Syrian city of Homs last week.

Canada and the Ukraine Powder Keg

By John Helmer, Michael Welch and Roger Annis, April 07, 2017

The Global Research News Hour devotes an hour examining Ukraine, now more than three years after the overthrow of the Yanukovych government, and how Canadian foreign policy is engaging the volatile country.

Image: Russia’s Tartus Naval Base

According to trusted military sources of Inside Syria Media Center source in Syria, after the U.S. Tomahawk strikes on the Shayrat air base on April 7, Russia has taken measures to guarantee more security for its military in case the attack is repeated.

Sources also claimed that two Russian all-purpose jets capable of spotting and intercepting cruise missiles are barraging in the Eastern Mediterranean.

If any attacks on the objects, where the Russian military are located (including the Hmeimim and Tartus bases), take place, the Russians are likely to carry out retaliatory strikes on the ships that launch cruise missiles.

As our source states, Russian military advisors have been stationed at the positions of all of the Syrian antiaircraft defense systems to assist in intercepting cruise missiles.

All bets are off in the latest round of escalation in the Syrian conflict. The attack on al-Shayrat airbase involving 59 cruise missiles launched from the USS Ross and Porter in the Eastern Mediterranean was meant to be a lesson of sorts.

For US President Donald Trump, it was in the “national interest of the United States” to deter the use and spread of chemical weapons, making specific reference to the previous gassing of residents in Khan Sheikhoun that had left over 70 dead.

Sources connected with the Assad regime denied that Russian or government forces had deployed the nerve agent against the civilian population, citing an explosion of an al-Qaeda chemical weapons factory in Khan Sheikhoun as the source of the calamity.

Trump, however, had what he needed, and was hardly going to wait for the dust to settle. Even as he was conducting discussions with China’s President Xi Jinping, he could show that he was not entirely tied down by domestic frustration – the failure of dealing with Obamacare, the legal quagmire over immigration and travel bans, and a Congress which has proven intractable over a range of issues.

A local rush to identify legal sources that might have justified Trump’s sudden use of force took place immediately. The waxing and waning of Article II authority under the constitution was one such identified source. Internationally, however, the problem became instantly murkier, with international lawyers advancing vague assessments as deeming such an act “not illegal” but not particularly legal either. Absent a Security Council resolution on this issue, the US had operated in a side-stepping, cavalier fashion, taking it upon itself to twin obligation and security.

A deconflicting line, which sounded on its description to the press much like a dubious, outdated prophylactic, was used to minimise risk of engagement with Russian forces. (Immediately assume options: would the condom break? The rubber rupture?)

For Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Russia had failed in its role, outlined in the 2013 commitments, as guarantor that such chemical weapons “would no longer be present in Syria…. Either Russia has been complicit or Russia has been simply incompetent in its ability to deliver on its end of that agreement.”

This was a theatrical show of force that was of minimal force; force without noticeable effect; penetration without outcome, a sort of historical coitus irrelevance planned to gain a domestic advantage and remind other powers that the US president can still find a trigger – and use it – if he needs to. The paltry suggestion here was that a lethal wrap over the knuckles was on its way, so ready yourself for it.

But this shadow puppet display is at risk of proving dangerously unconstructive in so far as it places major powers in line of each other, while not necessarily impairing the targets in question with any degree of certitude.

What is left in place is the point of moral outrage salved by a supposedly proportionate strike, not to mention the crude fetishisation of the children in whose name this attack was launched. “This action,” as House speaker Paul Ryan insisted, “was appropriate and just.”

Assessing such appropriateness is nigh impossible. Military strikes orchestrated in the name of humanitarian virtue is always a dangerous proposition, a sense that the zealot has taken over the temple.

If one is to look at the statement made by US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, it is hard to even gauge what humanitarian doctrine the administration is drawing upon, short of conventional military bullying in the face of international obstruction. “When the United States consistently fails in its duty to act collectively, there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action.”

Harold Hongju Koh demonstrates the paucity of reasoning at this level by identifying tests which are, at best, artificial and impossible to measure. Humanitarian intervention would, for instance, be lawful to halt “consequences significantly disruptive to international order – including proliferation of chemical weapons, massive refugee outflows, and events destabilizing to regional peace and stability”.[1]

The grounds for this would be further hardened in the face of an obstructionist UN Security Council, and would pass muster if “limited force for genuinely humanitarian purposes… was necessary and proportionate to address the imminent threat”.

All of this is to the good, until you realise that such strikes can have the habit of weakening one force in favour of another, of bolstering the dog in the fight you want at the expense of one you do not. Now it is made clearer than ever that the Assad regime is to be removed, and if necessary by force, a very dangerous proposition that simply paves the way for a security vacuum as terrifyingly lethal as that left by the Iraq invasion of 2003.

Sunni powers such as Saudi Arabia have already made it clear, not only that they supported the US strikes, but that Washington could well do more to push Assad out, paving the way for their own variant of fundamentalist Islam.

Tillerson, as if caught with his hand in the cookie jar, decided to claim that this punitive measure did not mean a change of any substance in US foreign policy towards Syria.

“I would not in any way attempt to extrapolate that to a change in our policy or posture relative to our military activities in Syria today. There has been no change in that status.”[2]

But Trumpland remains an unpredictable, even dangerous place, where impulse often takes the place of reason.

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

Notes 

The US government continues to lie about everything, not just Russia, Syria, Iran, and China. The US government is incapable of telling the truth about something as straightforward as employment. According to the government, March produced only 98,000 new payroll jobs, an insufficient amount to reduce unemployment, but the unemployment rate fell from 4.7 to 4.5 percent.  

How did that happen? Not because the unemployed found jobs. The unemployment rate fell because the government did not count as unemployed large numbers of unemployed people who did not look for a job during the four week period prior to the survey. The US has a low unemployment rate, because the government does not count the unemployed.  

The government knows the reported unemployment rate is wrong, because other data are inconsistent with the low rate. For example, the labor force participation rate consistent with a 4.5% unemployment rate is 67%, whereas the current participation rate is a low 63%, which implies a much higher rate of unemployment than 4.5%. 

The 4.5% reported unemployment rate is also inconsistent with the Conference Board help wanted data, which has been in a downward trend since 2010 and shows a March 2017 year over year decline of 17%.  

I don’t see the financial press investigating the inconsistencies among the data, asking the government questions, and providing the public with explanations. John Williams at shadowstats.com does, but the economics profession shows no observable interest.

Just as the government doesn’t measure unemployment, it doesn’t measure inflation. The government has created the myth of a growing real GDP since a recovery was declared in June 2009. However, when the implicit price deflator is adjusted for the government’s understatement of inflation, as John Williams does, real GDP growth has been flat since June 2009.

The government uses fake facts in order to create a fake picture of the economy so that the stock market’s rise is perceived to be real and not the result of Federal Reserve manipulation and corporations using their profits and borrowing money in order to buy back their own stocks. The buy-backs drive up the stock prices and executive “performance bonuses.” Stock prices are higher than can be explained by profits and real retail sales. Indeed, stock prices are so high that one would think there would be massive business investment, but there is very little.

One would think that someone in the financial press would be interested in the many inconsistencies in reported data, just as one would think that reporters would be more interested in the inconsistencies in the government’s stories about Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Iran, Russia, China, 9/11, Snowden, Julian Assange, and reformist Latin American heads of state, who Washington always finds reasons to overthrow. But reporters aren’t interested and neither are their editors. 

The facts are inconsistent with the propaganda, so the facts are ignored. In the place of facts, we have fake facts that sustain the propaganda. By controlling explanations, the government maintains The Matrix that serves the One Percent and war and is driving the world to destruction.

The day after US warships rained some 60 Tomahawk missiles on a Syrian government airbase, US officials made it clear that this unilateral and criminal attack against an oppressed former colonial country is merely the first shot in what is to be an escalating and widening campaign of American military aggression.

The governor of Syria’s central Homs province reported Friday that the missiles killed at least 15 people, including nine civilians. Four of the dead were children. Many more civilians were injured by two of the missiles, which struck nearby villages. Six of the dead were Syrian personnel at the al-Shairat airbase.

The missile strike was the first time that Washington has carried out a direct military attack against Syrian government forces since the US and its regional allies orchestrated a war for regime change utilizing Al Qaeda-linked Islamist “rebels” as its proxy ground troops. The attack on the airbase is a direct intervention in that war on the side of the Al Qaeda elements.

Russian Prime Minister Medvedev warned on Friday that the immensely reckless action had brought Washington to “the verge of a military clash” with nuclear-armed Russia, which had an air unit at the base struck by American missiles.

Washington seized on an alleged incident Tuesday involving chemical weapons in the village of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province as the pretext for Thursday night’s attack. Syria has denied any use of such weapons, and Washington and its allies have presented no evidence to support their allegations in relation to the incident, which has all the earmarks of a provocation staged by the CIA and its Islamist proxies.

The Russian government and others have pointed out the obvious fact that the elaborate attack carried out Thursday night from two US destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean had to have been planned well before the alleged incident even happened. The event was staged, with Al Qaeda-linked and US-funded “media activists” conveniently on hand to film it, in order to provide Washington with the propaganda pretext it required for its aggression.

In a heated exchange in the United Nations Security Council Friday, US Ambassador Nikki Haley brushed aside denunciations by other diplomats that the unilateral US action was a gross violation of the UN Charter and international law, instead provocatively insisting that US imperialism is prepared to the do the same thing again and far more.

“The United States took a very measured step last night,” Haley said. “We are prepared to do more, but we hope that will not be necessary.”

Knowing full well that the US attack was imminent, Haley, who is acting as the council’s rotating president for the month of April, postponed a vote on a compromise resolution calling for an objective investigation into the alleged chemical attack that was being drafted Thursday by the 10 non-permanent members of the Security Council.

Washington has no interest in such a probe, which would almost certainly reveal that the source of any chemical weapons incident was not the government of President Bashar al-Assad, but rather the Al Qaeda elements that control that area of Idlib Province. There is also no doubt that the US strike provides the Islamist elements in Syria with every motivation for staging more chemical weapons incidents to provide the pretext for a spiraling escalation of US military aggression.

The UN Security Council session was convened at the request of Bolivia, Russia and Syria. Bolivian Ambassador Sacha Llorenti began the debate with a blistering denunciation of the US attack, declaring that the US officials “believe that they are investigators, they are attorneys, judges and they are the executioners.”

He called the US strike “an extremely serious violation of international law,” while stressing that this was “not the first time.” Llorenti held up a picture of then Secretary of State Colin Powell delivering his February 5, 2003 speech to the same UN council insisting that Washington had irrefutable proof of nonexistent “weapons of mass destruction,” the notorious pretext for the US invasion barely a month later.

This war based upon lies, the Bolivian envoy added, resulted in “a million deaths” and “a series of atrocities” throughout the Middle East.

Llorenti denounced Washington for its “double standard,” invoking “human rights,” “democracy” and “multilateralism” only when it serves its own strategic interests. He recalled the series of military coups orchestrated by the CIA in Latin America and the Pentagon’s training of Latin American security forces in the art of torture.

Russia’s deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, Vladimir Safronkov, similarly condemned the US bombardment as a “flagrant violation of international law,” warning that the “consequences for regional and international stability can be extremely serious.”

Safronkov charged that Washington had acted deliberately to derail any “independent and unbiased investigation” into the alleged April 4 incident in of Khan Sheikhoun.

“You were afraid of it,” he said, “as its results might wreck your anti-regime paradigm.”

The Russian ambassador ridiculed the performance given earlier by US Ambassador Haley in which she held up the photographs of two Syrian children and demanded,

“How many more children have to die before Russia cares?”

“I will not stage a cynical show and hold up photographs,” he said, but asked why there was no such concern for the children of Mosul, where a single US bombing raid killed over 300 civilians, most of them women and children, last month. Thousands more have been killed and injured in US airstrikes carried out in both Iraq and Syria.

Syria’s deputy ambassador to the UN, Munzer Munzer, denounced the US attack as a “barbaric, flagrant act of aggression,” and a continuation of US support to Al Qaeda-linked “terrorists,” who he noted had repeatedly stockpiled and used chemical weapons in attacks inside Syria with the support of their patrons, particularly in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.

All of the representatives of the Western European powers voiced support for the US missile strike in terms that suggested that their governments may carry out their own military actions as part of an imperialist scramble for control of the oil-rich Middle East. Italy’s Ambassador Sebastiano Cardi was perhaps the most explicit along these lines, stressing his country’s “major and direct interests in the Mediterranean.”

The prospect for the US military action provoking a wider and potentially catastrophic world war was made clear on Friday, with Moscow’s announcement that it was suspending a 2015 memorandum of understanding reached with the Pentagon on “deconfliction,” which set up lines of communication between US and Russian military units operating in Syria to avoid clashes between the two countries’ warplanes. Russia also indicated that it would increase its missile defense systems around bases that it jointly uses with the Syrian military.

Meanwhile, senior Pentagon officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters Friday that they were investigating possible Russian “complicity” in the alleged chemical attack, indicating that the US military command is looking to ratchet up the confrontation with Moscow.

In Washington, Trump’s sudden reversal of his previous policy eschewing conflict with the Assad government in Syria in favor of a US military intervention centered on combating the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) drew vocal bipartisan support, particularly from Democrats who had previously demonized the administration for its alleged ties with Russia.

To the extent that leading Democrats qualified their enthusiasm for the act of US military aggression, it was to demand that Trump spell out a proposal for its continuation and escalation.

The US Senate’s Democratic Minority Leader Charles Schumer praised the attack on Syria.

“Making sure that Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do.” He added, however, “It is now incumbent on the Trump administration to come up with a coherent strategy and consult with Congress.”

Similarly, Senator Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee urged Trump,

“Give us your Syria strategy, and come to us if you’re using force, because you need to get authorization.” He added that while Thursday’s attack could be a one-off attack, “circumstances could change.”

“I think it was the right thing to do,” Senator Amy Klobuchar (Democrat, Minnesota) said of the missile strikes Friday. “Going forward I think we should have an Authorization for Use of Military Force, if in fact there are going to be additional actions taken.”

Unstated in the Democrats’ call for a new authorization to use of military force (AUMF) is the fact that both the Trump and the Obama administration had previously invoked the 2001 authorization of military action against those responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

Now, however, the US is intervening militarily in a civil war that the CIA itself orchestrated, providing military support to Al Qaeda, which claimed responsibility for 9/11. The Syrian government reported that, in the immediate aftermath of the US missile strike, both the Al Nusra Front and ISIS launched new attacks.

The Democrats’ rallying around Trump in support of US military aggression in Syria makes clear that the party’s opposition to the new administration was based not on its reactionary attacks on democratic rights, immigrants and the social conditions of the broad mass of the American people, but rather the threat that it would pull back from the longstanding plans of the US military and intelligence apparatus to escalate aggression and provocation against not only Syria, but its principal ally, Russia.

With the military consolidating its control over the Trump administration’s foreign policy through figures like Defense Secretary James “Mad Dog” Mattis, a recently retired Marine general, and H.R. McMaster, the active duty Army general who has taken over as national security adviser, the Democrats are rallying around Trump as the titular “commander-in-chief.”

Washington reabriu o conflito com um ataque com mísseis Tomahawk contra as bases da Força Aérea Síria. Os sistemas de defesa aérea russo / sírio não evitaram o ataque.

__________________________

O establishment de Washington reassumiu o controlo. Primeiro Flynn e agora Bannon. Todos os que restam no governo Trump são os sionistas e os generais enlouquecidos que querem guerra com a Rússia, China, Irão, Síria e Coreia do Norte.

Já não há ninguém na Casa Branca que consiga detê-los.

Um beijo de adeus às relações normalizadas com a Rússia.

Foi dado o tiro de partida para o conflito sírio ser reaberto. Esse é o significado do ataque químico, assacado ao regime sírio por Washington, apesar da ausência de qualquer evidência que tal comprove. É completamente certo que, segundo relatos, o Secretário de Estado dos EUA, Tillerson, advertiu a Rússia de que já estão sendo dados passos para remover do poder o presidente sírio Assad. Trump concorda.

O afastamento de Assad permitirá que os EUA imponham outro fantoche de Washington aos povos muçulmanos, removendo outro governo árabe com uma política independente de Washington, removendo outro governo que se opõe ao roubo da Palestina por Israel e permitindo que Tillerson da Exxon e os hegemonistas neoconservadores interrompam a compra de gás natural russo pela Europa, substituindo-a por um gasoduto controlado pelos EUA, que ligará o Qatar à Europa via Síria.

Ignorando todas essas vantagens dos EUA, o governo russo hesitou em completar a libertação da Síria do Estado Islâmico, que é consabidamente apoiado por Washington. Os russos hesitaram, porque tinham esperanças, totalmente irrealistas, de conseguir uma parceria com Washington através de um reforço da luta conjunta contra o terrorismo.

Essa era uma ideia ridícula, pois o terrorismo é a arma de Washington. Se Washington puder afastar a Rússia do caminho, ou com ameaças ou com mais equívocos dos russos de esperanças de “cooperação” com Washington, o terrorismo será dirigido contra o Irão em grande escala.

E quando o Irão cair, o terrorismo começará a operar na Federação Russa e na província chinesa que faz fronteira com o Cazaquistão. Washington já deu à Rússia uma amostra do poder do terrorismo apoiado pelos EUA na Chechênia. Mais está por vir.

Se o governo russo não tivesse hesitado em limpar o Estado Islâmico da Síria quando a Rússia inesperadamente assumiu a liderança desse combate do Ocidente, a Síria não enfrentaria os riscos de ser retalhada nem a renovada determinação dos EUA de derrubar Assad pelas razões acima expostas. Mas os russos, hipnotizados por sonhos de cooperar com Washington, colocaram a Síria e colocaram-se a si próprios numa posição difícil.

Os russos agarraram a iniciativa e surpreenderam o mundo, aceitando o convite do governo sírio e entrando no conflito. Washington estava desamparado. A intervenção russa de imediato levou o Estado Islâmico a somar derrotas. Só que, de repente, Putin anunciou uma retirada russa, afirmando como Bush no porta-aviões, “Missão Cumprida”.

Mas a missão não estava cumprida, e a Rússia voltou a entrar, mantendo ainda a iniciativa, mas recuou um pouco após a sua retirada irracional. E, se nos recordamos, este entrar e sair no terreno sírio aconteceu um par de vezes. Então, quando a Rússia já tinha a guerra contra o ISIS ganha, é no final que ela recua, na vã crença de que Washington iria finalmente cooperar com a Rússia na eliminação do último baluarte do ISIS. Só que, em vez disso, os EUA enviaram forças militares para bloquear os avanços russos / sírios. O ministro russo dos Negócios Estrangeiros queixou-se, mas a Rússia não usou a sua superioridade militar no terreno para afastar as simbólicas forças militares dos EUA em presença, e pôr fim ao conflito.

Agora, Washington dá “advertências” à Rússia para não se meter no caminho de Washington. Será que o governo russo ainda não aprendeu que a cooperação com Washington tem apenas um significado: assinar como um vassalo?

Agora, a única alternativa da Rússia é dizer a Washington para ir para o inferno, e que a Rússia não irá permitir que Washington afaste Assad. Mas a Quinta Coluna russa, que está aliada com o Ocidente, vai insistir que a Rússia pode finalmente chegar à cooperação com Washington se decidir sacrificar Assad. Naturalmente, a aquiescência da Rússia destruirá a imagem do poder russo e será usada para privar a Rússia das divisas provenientes da venda de gás natural à Europa.

Putin disse que a Rússia não pode confiar em Washington. Esta é uma dedução correta dos fatos, logo por que razão se coloca Rússia num dilema procurando a cooperação com Washington?

“Cooperação com Washington” tem apenas um significado. Significa render-se a Washington.

Putin apenas em parte conseguiu limpar a Rússia. O país continua repleto de agentes secretos americanos. Será que Putin se vergou ao poder do Establishment de Washington exatamente como Trump?

É extraordinário como a imprensa russa parece entender tão mal o perigo que a Rússia está a correr.

Paul Craig Roberts

Artigo em inglês aqui

http://www.globalresearch.ca/trump-has-surrendered-will-putin-be-the-next-to-surrender-the-chemical-attack-is-a-washington-orchestrated-event/5583859

Tradução : Júlio Gomes (Docente na Faculdade de Economia da Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal, atualmente reformado.)

A message from Homs to President Trump: “You suck.”

All day here, in Homs, Syria, been getting the people’s reactions to the US bombing of the nearby airfield and “You suck” sums them all up pretty well. A very dear close friend lost his uncle today, one of the leaders of that airbase. A man who had been fighting ISIS for years in DeirEzzor.

Anger, sadness, frustration, disgust – but not much surprise. While many here were encouraged by Trump’s campaign rhetoric, they know that talk is cheap. They’ve been waiting to see if there might be some slim possibility of an American President who would not have a “shoot first, ask questions never” foreign policy.

Well, now they know. Nothing has changed. The allegations of chemical weapons use by the Syrian government are asinine, stupid.

But not as stupid as our decades-long policy of arming, training, funding, recruiting, and lying for terrorists, packaging and branding them as “moderates” or “freedom fighters” while thinking we can control these demons.

You don’t know America. You just don’t know.

You can’t train a rabid dog because they’ll bite most viciously the hand that feeds them.

Friends and family with the best of intentions are urging me to leave here. I will not. In all the world, this is the place to be.

Walking around the city today and tonight, quiet earlier because its Friday, then coming so alive later in the evening, I’m reminded again and again of repeated sentiments from the people here. They say:

“President Trump, we are Syrians. Our President is our President and only we will decide if he stays or if he goes – not you. Our army is our army and they are protecting us from terrorists you call ‘rebels.’ Our country is our country. We want peace – we are so tired of war – but we will never give up fighting for our Syria.”

I love America, the ideals we were founded upon. But there is only one way to make America great again … and that is to make America good. Integrity, good will, wisdom.

We launched 59 Tomahawk missiles of death and destruction today. For the cost of each one, $1.2 million, we could have built a school here.

Think about it, won’t you?

Donald Trump‘s decision to launch cruise missile strikes on a Syrian Air Force Base was based on a lie.

In the coming days the American people will learn that the Intelligence Community knew that Syria did not drop a military chemical weapon on innocent civilians in Idlib. Here is what happened:

1. The Russians briefed the United States on the proposed target. This is a process that started more than two months ago. [prior to the Chemical Weapons attack] There is a dedicated phone line that is being used to coordinate and deconflict (i.e., prevent US and Russian air assets from shooting at each other) the upcoming operation.
2. The United States was fully briefed on the fact that there was a target in Idlib and that the Russians believed it was a weapons/explosives depot for Islamic rebels.
3. The Syrian Air Force hit the target with conventional weapons. All involved expected to see a massive secondary explosion. That did not happen. Instead, smoke, chemical smoke, began billowing from the site. It turns out that the Islamic rebels used that site to store chemicals, not sarin, that were deadly. The chemicals included organic phosphates and chlorine and they followed the wind and killed civilians.
4. There was a strong wind blowing that day and the cloud was driven to a nearby village and caused casualties.
5. We know it was not sarin. How? Very simple. The so-called “first responders” handled the victims without gloves. If this had been sarin they would have died. Sarin on the skin will kill you. How do I know? I went through “Live Agent” training at Fort McClellan in Alabama.

There are members of the U.S. military who were aware that this strike would occur and it was recorded. There is a film record. At least the Defense Intelligence Agency knows that this was not a chemical weapon attack. In fact, Syrian military chemical weapons were destroyed with the help of Russia.

This is Gulf of Tonkin 2. How ironic. Donald Trump correctly castigated George W. Bush for launching an unprovoked, unjustified attack on Iraq in 2003. Now we have President Donald Trump doing the same damn thing. Worse in fact. Because the intelligence community had information showing that there was no chemical weapon launched by the Syrian Air Force.

Here’s the good news. The Russians and Syrians were informed, or at least were aware, that the [cruise missile] attack was coming. They were able to remove a large number of their assets. The base the United States hit was something of a backwater. Donald Trump gets to pretend that he is a tough guy. He is not. He is a fool.

This attack was violation of international law. Donald Trump authorized an unjustified attack on a sovereign country. What is even more disturbing is that people like Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, CIA Director Mike Pompeo and NSA Director General McMaster went along with this charade. Front line troops know the truth. These facts will eventually come out. Donald Trump will most likely not finish his term as President. He will be impeached, I believe, once Congress is presented with irrefutable proof that he ignored and rejected intelligence that did not support the myth that Syria attacked with chemical weapons.

It should also alarm American taxpayers that we launched $100 million dollars of missiles to blow up sand and camel sh**t. The Russians were aware that a strike was coming. I’m hoping that they and the Syrians withdrew their forces and aircraft from the base. Whatever hope I had that Donald Trump would be a new kind of President, that hope is extinguished. He is a child and a moron. He committed an act of war without justification. But the fault is not his alone. Those who sit atop the NSC, the DOD, the CIA, the Department of State should have resigned in protest. They did not. They are complicit in a war crime.

Colonel W. Patrick Lang is a retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces (The Green Berets). He served in the Department of Defense both as a serving officer and then as a member of the Defense Senior Executive Service for many years. He is a highly decorated veteran of several of America’s overseas conflicts including the war in Vietnam.

Ask anyone on the streets of Kabul about the revolutions that in recent years transformed huge parts of Latin America, and the chances are you’ll encounter a blank stare. Perhaps mentioning Cuba could evoke at least some recognition, but definitely not Venezuela, Ecuador or Bolivia. I know because I tried on several occasions, and I failed.

Ask in the marvelous historic city of Herat, with its huge minarets and Italian military contingent, about Western imperialism, or about NATO and its murderous campaigns all over the world, and chances are that your question won’t even be understood.

“Chances are that those Afghan people who can speak English or other Western languages, are now actually working for the Westerners; either for their military, or for their ‘defense’ contractors… or for the embassies, the United Nations,or perhaps some NGO”, explained an Asian reporter who is based in Afghanistan for more than two decades. “These people are not going to rock the boat, dwelling on crimes committed by the West, here and all over the world.”

That appears to be the case.

After more than 15 years of brutal Western occupation, Afghanistan appears to be thoroughly ruined. Not only in terms of its infrastructure and standards of living, and not only when it comes to all basic indicators like life expectancy (15^th lowest in the world, according to the WHO, 2015) or education: all those things I expected.

But perhaps even more significantly, the country is destroyed morally and intellectually.

The only resistance the West is facing here, comes from extremist groups and movements such as the Taliban and Daesh (ISIS). All intellectual and artistic struggles against the occupation have been destroyed, contained, bought, or frightened into near absolute silence.

In fact, the occupation’ is not even called ‘occupation’, anymore. Pragmatic, opportunistic definitions are increasingly taking over those once mainstream narratives. As I was informed by a wealthy family on an outing in the Panjshir Valley:

“We are fully dependent on the presence of NATO troops in our country. Only foreigners are offering us well-paid and stable jobs. If they leave, we’d have to follow them; to emigrate to the United States or Europe.”

This is far from the once proud and brave Afghanistan, which managed to defeat British invaders, after that delivering a mortal blow to the Soviet Union.

While in the country, I tried to investigate and to analyze;how on earth did Afghanistan end up on its knees? What force, what strategy was applied to break what appeared to be shatterproof?

It was clear that the West has managed to unleash and to uphold a very complex and tremendously successful indoctrination campaign, enslaving the nation by applying various ‘weapons’, which it has used in all corners of the world.

One of those ‘weapons’ is, of course, ‘education’. For instance the American University of Kabul is literally regurgitating thousands of young sons and daughters of the elites, who are set on staying, after the proper dose of indoctrination and colorful diplomas, permanently loyal to the West. The nation’s curriculum, I was told, has been defined during long meetings at the US Embassy and at the offices of the World Bank.

There is virtually an absolute control of information and media. As in all countries occupied by the West, as well as in all client states, the so-called social media plays a vital role, setting tendencies and directing discussion patterns.

There is rigorous grooming of oppressive local governments, military and police, the institutions that are then always ready to suppress any open criticism of the Western occupation, or even the word ‘occupation’ itself.

Then, naturally, as in all neo-colonies, there is that deadly interdependency between the elites and the West.

An academic Prof Jawid Amin from the Academy of Social Sciences of Afghanistan explained to me, bitterly, during our short encounter in Kabul:

“We don’t have anyone openly critical of the US or the West here, because it is simply not allowed by the government. I personally don’t like the Americans, but I can’t tell you anything else… Even I work for the government. My brother and sister, as well as other relatives, are living in the United States. About critical arts: nothing could be exhibited here without permission from the government and since Karzai, the government is controlled by the West…”

*

To discredit the former Soviet Union as well as the present-day Russia, and to smear China by all available indoctrination means, is one of the main goals of the Western propagandists and their local lackeys.

It is because, if unchecked, both China and Russia could steal the hearts and minds of the local people.

China’s impressive plan for virtually all Central Asian countries, called OBOR (“One Belt One Road”), was never allowed to be fully presented for discussion to the local population. It is particularly absurd, even grotesque, considering that China considers Afghanistan to be an extremely important potential partner in the region.

The OBOR puts great accent on supporting local cultures, on true independence of the countries of Central Asia and beyond, and on the massive development of infrastructure, from telecommunication super highways, to real highways, railroads and airports, as well as ‘social infrastructure’, which would include schools, hospitals, public housing and sport facilities.

Implementing OBOR would create millions of new jobs for the local people, something crucial in a country like Afghanistan, where even in the capital Kabul (according to many calculations) the unemployment rate has reached about 50%, and over 80% in many provincial capitals and the countryside.

For the West, smearing China is essential. It has been building huge hospital wings, instead of watchtowers, which means it has been providing the wrong example to Afghan people, raising wrong expectations.

The best example of the toxic anti-Chinese propaganda has been MesAynak. This ancient archaeological site contains many priceless cultural treasures, some over 5.000 years old.

It is also located in the area of arguably the greatest copper deposits in the region.

Several years ago, a Chinese state-owned company (MCC) signed a MOU with the Afghan government. The company paid for the mining rights, but until now has not extracted one single kilogram of copper, despite pressure from the Afghan Ministry of Mines and Petroleum, which has been pushing for an immediate start to the excavation work. Why? Because the Chinese government gave orders to MCC to wait, so the archaeological treasures could be safely excavated and preserved for the sake of Afghanistan and the world.

I was explained by various international experts based in Kabul, that the Chinese President Xi Jinping declared at the Preliminary Session of the UN General Conference in New York, in November 2016, that his idea of OBOR is in fact a New Silk Road, and that it is based on the economic cooperation and on the promotion of the cultural preservation in the countries of the former Silk Road. Again, Afghanistan is clearly one of the most significant countries.

The Afghan Ministry of Mines and Petroleum has for years been locked in a dispute with the hopelessly inept and disorganized (according to several of my sources who prefer to remain anonymous) Ministry of Information and Culture.

Corruption also appears to be a serious issue.

Until now, MCC has absolutely not done anything, except for some preliminary geological surveys conducted in 2008 and 2009. The company is losing a substantial amount of money, annually, but the orders from Beijing are clear: first the preservation of cultural treasures, and only then, economic interests.

A similar approach would of course be unthinkable from any Western mining company, many of which are murdering and displacing the local population, in such places as Papua or South America. That is why the professional propaganda has to be applied, and all good intentions dragged through dirt. This sort of ideological warfare is actually one of the mightiest weapons of Western imperialism, implemented in virtually all corners of the globe.

In March 2017, the Head of the Culture Unit of UNESCO, Mr. Masanori Nagaoka, told me clearly and frankly:

“The Chinese company (MCC) has not yet commenced any copper exploitation activity at the site … It is because they respect the Afghan government’s wish to preserve the cultural artifacts of MesAynak.”

UNESCO is now deeply involved in the process of saving all the valuable finds of the site.

I was shown several up to date photographs, proving that no work has yet begun, and that at MesAynak, absolutely no damage has been done to the cultural heritage of Afghanistan.

However, the more evidence there is proving that nothing sinister has happened, the more toxic the eruption of propaganda against China and its presence in Afghanistan, virtually all coming from Western and West-sponsored outlets. Entire ‘documentary films’ have been produced and broadcast, recounting the non-existent ‘crimes’ which have been, or ‘could soon be’, committed by China against Afghan culture.

The most notorious is a documentary film by Brent E. Huffman, which was broadcast, among others, by Al-Jazeera. To quote from its own site, the film is addressing

“A race against time to save a 5,000-year-old archaeological site in Afghanistan threatened by a Chinese state-owned copper mine.”

Ms. Hiromi Yasui, a Kyodo News reporter who is based in Afghanistan since 1993, confirmed what I already heard from several independent sources:

“At MesAynak, there is no digging whatsoever… The Ministry of Mines and Petroleum wants work to commence soon. Therefore, there is a clash between them and the Ministry of Information and Culture. Lots of money disappeared, too… there is corruption… Regarding China, whenever there is a slightest chance that it could be doing something wrong, an anti-Chinese propaganda gets immediately activated.”

Now several legendary Chinese institutions of learning, including Renmin University and Northwest University in Xi’an, are getting involved, trying to help with the preservation of the site. This news is, however, hardly ever heard in Afghanistan and abroad.

“The propaganda against China or Soviet Union now Russia, is of course nothing new”, explained a renowned Afghan intellectual, Dr. Omara Khan Masoudi, who used to be, among many other things, the former head of the National Museum:

“During the Cold War, the propaganda was truly extreme. Even such publications like ‘Le Monde’; they were writing that some of our greatest treasures were looted and siphoned to Moscow… We knew it was a lie, because we had hidden the treasures ourselves, in the premises of the Presidential Palace, and in the Ministries. And what was our answer to the Western propaganda? We created a small, one-day exhibition of our Afghan treasures, just 50-60 of the most important pieces, displayed for 2-3 hours, demonstrating that they are all still on the territory of our country”.

*

While other countries are trying to build and preserve, the United States and the west could hardly show any coherent strategy for how to help the country they have been persistently ruining for decades and centuries. Despite the huge sums of money spent, almost nothing tangible was constructed here since 2001. That is, if the monstrous air force bases like the one at Bagram do not particularly impress you, or those bizarrely tall concrete walls that could be seen everywhere, or the endless surveillance cameras, towers and drones, as well as the military centers at every corner, stuffed with grotesquely overpaid foreign ‘contractors’.

Andrew J. Bacevich wrote for the New York Times on 14 March 2017, trying to define (in the “Opinion” column) the chaos and perplexity of the ‘longest American war’:

“Despite appropriating over three-quarters of a trillion dollars on Afghanistan since 2001, Afghan security forces continue to be plagued by the problem of inflated rolls, with local commanders pocketing American-supplied funds to pay for nonexistent soldiers…”

“Large-scale corruption persists, with Afghanistan third from the bottom in international rankings… Adjusted for inflation, American spending to reconstruct Afghanistan now exceeds the total expended to rebuild all of Western Europe under the Marshall Plan; yet to have any hope of surviving, the Afghan government will for the foreseeable future remain almost completely dependent on outside support.”

“And things are getting worse. Although the United States has invested $70 billion in rebuilding Afghan security forces, only 63 percent of the country’s districts are under government control, with significant territory lost to the Taliban over the past year. Though the United States has spent $8.5 billion to battle narcotics in Afghanistan, opium production there has reached an all-time high.”

After this, Andrew J. Bacevich makes a dramatic conclusion:

”For this, over the past 15 years, nearly 2,400 American soldiers have died, and 20,000 more have been wounded.”

Oh, that bad, terrible Afghanistan – money guzzling, ungrateful and corrupt monster-state!

Of course anyone who has recently visited the country, and who is in possession of at least some ability of thinking objectively, must be rolling on the floor, dying from laughter, after consuming such reports.

Where is ‘over a three-quarters of a trillion dollars’ visible ‘on the ground’? Ask the internally displaced people who are pouring into Kabul from all corners of the country, escaping misery, joblessness and fighting. They have nothing; absolutely nothing!

Let’s do some simple math: three quarters of a trillion is 750 billion. Dollars. Afghanistan has almost 32 million inhabitants (estimate, 2014). Divide 750 billion by 32 million and you get 23,437 dollars and 50 cents, per capita per 15 years. Even a tiny Afghan family of two adults and two children could then count on $93,750! Which would be $6,250 per basic tiny family unit per year, for 15 consecutive years. Lucky, lucky country, Afghanistan!

Just a reminder, that with those mountains of money, since 2001, the United States didn’t build a single mile of a railroad, no large public hospital or a public housing block.

So where did the money go? Could it be possible that the West itself has wasted it on its greatest addiction – a perpetual conflict and chaos? Could it be that the Afghan people are simply being used, even sacrificed–that their nation is sinking into deeper and deeper poverty, their culture changing or disappearing altogether, their hope for recovery and better life now almost gone –just so that this tremendous ‘recycling action’ of three-quarters of a trillion dollars could go on and on?

The Afghanistan war, ‘the longest in the US history’, is yet another ‘secret war’ of the Empire. Everyone knows that it exists, but no one seems to understand what it is all about.

In the meantime, 2,400 American ‘boys and girls’ have already died. If anything, this seems to be the only preoccupation in the West.

I’m wondering how many have Afghans died? How many millions have been forced to become refugees, how many millions are now internally displaced? Do they matter; do they count? Nobody seems to talk about them. How many lives were lost, really; how many were broken, thoroughly ruined?

In the meantime, many Western reports and documentary films are more preoccupied with such issues as a Chinese mining company and the worries that ‘one day it may actually start digging’.

*

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.

Part 1, Part II, Part III

The last chapter of the Hybrid War research, not just for West Africa but the entire continent, deals with its largest country, Nigeria.

This federal republic, as it’s officially called, has the largest population of any African country at over 175 million people, thus bestowing it with limitless economic potential if its human resources were properly managed. Coupled with its large oil and gas reserves, Nigeria should theoretically be a booming success story, but the reality contradicts all expectations and the country is mired in abject poverty in spite of its natural riches. Even worse, it has an extensive history of internal division and bloodshed which continues to plague its present and temper hopes for its future.

If Nigeria could figuratively ‘get its act together’, then it could rise from its knees to become one of Africa’s leading powers and the center of gravity in the West African Core Region (WACR), but doing so is infinitely easier said than done. Nigeria needs to overcome its legacy of identity discord – whether regional, religious, or tribal – and unify its people through an inclusive national vision that accommodates for the country’s diverse differences, leveraging them as a strategic advantage instead of the vulnerability that they’ve been for decades. All the while, Nigeria needs to walk a thin tightrope in avoiding the Hybrid War pitfalls inherent in its historic ethno-political composition, though if it succeeds in this transformational journey, then it will morph into the most reliable African member of the multipolar community and proudly emerge as the robust New Silk Road hub that it’s destined to become.

The research thus begins by analyzing the institutional avenue through which Nigeria can improve its geostrategic leadership prospects in West Africa. Accordingly, the work then progresses to a discussion of the country’s geo-economic role in China’s One Belt One Road (OBOR) project and the grand strategy that Beijing is pursuing in the WACR. Once that’s done, the study seamlessly moves along to addressing the importance of Nigeria’s huge energy deposits as they relate to the larger paradigm at play, before zeroing in on how concerns over the equitable distribution of natural resource revenue are driving the dual devolution trends of Regionalism and Identify Federalism (not to be confused with Nigeria’s extant Federal Republicanism). After that, it’s time to explore how these aforementioned processes contribute to Nigeria’s most likely range of Hybrid War risks, with the research concluding on a positive note about how these intrinsic structural factors could creatively be used for building multipolar bridges between Nigeria and the rest of the WACR.

The Economic Integration Of ECOWAS

The “Eco” vs. The West African Franc:

Nigeria is the geostrategic center of gravity for the West African Core Region (WACR), which the author previously described as also comprising Benin, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon. Nigeria’s destined role is to become powerful enough that it can one day bridge the gap between the Anglophone and Francophone countries of the region and thus link together West Africa (Benin, Niger, and others) with Central Africa (Chad, Cameroon, and others), though the latter goal might be overly ambitious in the medium-term because of just how tarnished the Nigerian core has become. For now, it’s already difficult enough for Nigeria to satisfy the expectations of leadership that its peers have for it in the Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS). This organization institutionally brings together the Anglophone and Francophone countries of West Africa into an integrational format focused on economic cooperation and regional security, though financially divided into the mostly Anglophone West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ) and the mostly Francophone West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA). The UEMOA all use the West African Franc (CFA), while the WAMZ has yet to roll out a single currency, but both constituent parts of ECOWAS did have future plans for one day creating a new currency called the “Eco”.

The details are very scarce and this monetary unit might not enter into circulation at its expected 2020 date, not least because it was ‘officially’ abandoned in 2014 and a new unnamed currency was announced in its place, but the “Eco” (to continue using this moniker until the replacement one is unveiled) holds out the promise of deepening ECOWAS integration and standardizing the economies of the region. The predicted challenges, however, will be immense and might prove to be insurmountable without the proper amount of political will from all sides and the enactment of multisided concessions, which might not be possible in the current international-regional climate.

The greatest uncertainty is the role that France will have over the “Eco”, seeing as how the Paris-controlled CFA is the official currency of over half of ECOWAS’ members, and it would be unrealistic to expect France to cede its hegemonic neo-imperial influence over the region.

The most likely outcome will probably be that the CFA is rebranded as the “Eco” and that the WAMZ states are either progressively integrated into adopting it or are economically shunned for holding out and sticking with Nigeria in the hopes of one day attaining true financial independence, which is basically the reason why the original “Eco” was abandoned in the first place. Therefore, educated conjecture would suggest that ECOWAS’ economic-financial future will essentially come down to a battle between France and Nigeria in getting the member states to either accept a rebranded CFA or for the Paris-controlled economies to ditch the neo-imperialist currency and bravely take up the genuinely independent  “Eco” instead.’

Nigeria vs. France, or China vs. France?:

Nigeria is plainly in no position to compete with France on any of these levels, let alone at the present moment, so it falls to China to help with building the West African state up to the point where it can behave as Beijing’s surrogate and confidently press forward with this monumental task. China can maneuver between the CFA UEMOA and the disjointed currencies of the WAMZ, but it would ideally be best for all actors if ECOWAS could economically interface with China and the rest of the world through a single currency as opposed to several. China, however, would prefer to retain the existing system as opposed to seeing the CFA rebrand itself as the “Eco” and for France to de-facto take over the whole bloc, which would then essentially make all of China’s commercial interactions with West Africa dependent on France to varying degrees.

Moreover, if France succeeded in conquering ECOWAS with a CFA-rebranded “Eco”, then the next logical step would be for it to expand Operation Barkhane to incorporate all of the regional integration bloc’s countries and basically turn ECOWAS into a massive ‘Lead From Behind’ proxy organization for perpetuating Paris’ dominance in West Africa. If Nigeria doesn’t go along with these plans yet isn’t strong enough to stop them, then it’ll end up isolated in its own neighborhood and become subject to economic blackmail by the rest of the French-controlled countries (whether Francophone or Anglophone).  China doesn’t want this to happen since it would amount to the West taking full control over a large swath of Africa and turning it into the structural analogue of what the Eastern European and Balkan backwater economies are to the EU nowadays.

If Brussels wants to continue growing, it will need to acquire more labor and consumer markets, which is precisely the role that a CFA-dominated West Africa could play, especially if the WAMZ countries were tricked into falling for the ruse of the Paris-based currency being rebranded as the “Eco”. On the other hand, China also needs new labor and consumer markets to assure its own continued growth, which is the foundational motivation for pressing forward with OBOR and the construction of New Silk Roads all across the world. At the same time, neither the EU nor China wants their ‘go-to’ market to be under the influence of the other, which thus sets France (the EU’s vanguard in West Africa) up against China in a proxy competition for the region, with China having no choice but to outsource its future leadership in the area to Nigeria, though with the risky bet being that Africa’s most populous country and its second-largest economy can succeed in getting on its feet first and then effectively carrying out the collective multipolar will afterwards.

The Nigerian Node On The New Silk Road

The only way that Nigeria can ever actualize its true potential and approach the position of asymmetrical strength whereby it can realistically take on France’s regional economic influence on China’s behalf is for the country to become the primary West African node on China’s New Silk Road. Being the meticulous and risk-adverse planner that it is, China has three simultaneous projects that it’s pursuing in order to bring this about, with each of them being supplementary to the other but also capable of functioning as successful stand-alone endeavors in the event that the other two are derailed.

The three Nigerian Silk Roads that China is helping to construct are complemented by the $2.5 billion that Beijing has already invested in its host’s economy and the astounding $80 billion in energy infrastructure deals that it committed to in June. This latter aspect of the OBOR strategy will be described in the next section, while the present one will explore the mobility portions more in-depth in illustrating the ingenuity behind China’s connectivity vision and explaining the reason why it was willing to loan Nigeria $6 billion in pursuit of this. It’ll begin by highlighting China’s geostrategic vision and then detailing how each of the three projects contributes to this in their own way, including the means through which they can connect with other actual and forecasted projects in the region.

Since most readers will probably be overwhelmed with the details presented in this section, the last part of it ends with a map that illustrates each of the Silk Road projects that are discussed below and concludes with a few strategic observations about the bigger picture being presented.

Bringing Giants Together

Like it was explained at the very beginning of the African Hybrid War research many chapters ago, natural economic logic suggests that the continent would be best served if its two most populous countries were connected to one another, which would help each of them benefit from the other’s growth as well as encourage more intra-African trade in general. In practice, this means that a transport corridor would have to be constructed between Nigeria and Ethiopia (and its Red Sea maritime outlet of Djibouti), with the quickest route being through the resource-rich states of South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and Cameroon. Unfortunately, as it was also previously extrapolated on in an earlier chapter, the first two of the three transit countries constitute what the author has dubbed the Failed State Belt, purposely destroyed by the US’ meddling intrigue and therefore logistically unreliable and horrendously unsafe.

The CCS Detour:

An alternative route had to be blazed which made the best out of the given circumstances and still endeavored to connect the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, which is why China went ahead with funding the oft-delayed Cameroon-Chad-Sudan (CCS) Silk Road from Douala to Port Sudan (via N’Djamena) that was comprehensively analyzed in the earlier chapters about the former two states. Still, this project doesn’t directly link up with Nigeria, which was supposed to be the main purpose behind the entire endeavor, though it does get very close to doing so in both the Chadian capital and the Cameroonian port, leaving space for northern and southern branch lines (whether rail or highway) to extend into the country whenever the situation is deemed safe enough. Security is an issue in Northeast Nigeria because of Boko Haram, which coincidentally became a major problem right around the time that both South Sudan and the Central African Republic descended into chaos, while Southeastern Nigeria is recently experiencing a surge of violence from criminal gangs and self-proclaimed separatists, thus explaining why the CCS Silk Road isn’t the NCS Silk Road and doesn’t formally include Nigeria.

The Nigerian Silk Roads:

The purpose of the three Nigerian Silk Roads is therefore to connect the country to the CCS Silk Road via the branch lines that were spoken about above, taking care to run through the most important and economically promising areas of the country in order to best utilize this game-changing series of infrastructure investments.

Lagos-Calabar

The first project of significance is the $11 billion Lagos-Calabar Silk Road that was agreed to in July and which plans to run along the entirety of the Nigerian coastline, though dangerously through the oil-rich southeastern region currently beset by low-intensity criminal-separatist violence. Although ending right before the Cameroonian border, a short interconnector could foreseeably be built one day in linking Calabar with Douala and thus joining the Lagos-Calabar Silk Road with the CCS one. Functionally speaking, this would accomplish the goal of connecting the Atlantic Ocean with the Red Sea, and while the CCS Silk Road (which itself isn’t yet built) doesn’t penetrate into Ethiopia, a branch line could be constructed one of these days in finally fulfilling the master plan of bringing the Nigerian and Ethiopian giants together.

Lagos-Kano

The second Nigerian Silk Road route is the one between Lagos and Kano by means of Abuja, which will connect the two largest cities in the country via the capital when it’s finally completed. This is a strategically crucial route because it doesn’t run through any ongoing Hybrid War-afflicted areas, as in it’s not affected by Boko Haram nor any of the Southern separatists. That isn’t to say that its long-term security is inherently guaranteed (which will be discussed later at the end of the research), but that it’s generally the safest of the three Nigerian Silk Roads and the least likely to be destabilized in the short term.

Port Harcourt-Maiduguri

The last branch of the Nigerian Silk Road runs from the southeastern oil capital of Port Harcourt to the capital of Boko Haram’s Borno State, Maiduguri, in the northeast of the country. This corridor is the eastern counterpart of the Lagos-Kano line, but unlike its western analogue, it passes through the doubly destabilized regions of the criminal-separatist Southeast and the Salafist Northeast, making it the most strategically risky of the three routes but also the one which would most directly connect Nigeria with N’Djamena and thenceforth with the rest of the CCS Silk Road up until its Red Sea terminus. It’s for this reason, alongside corruption and other related challenges, that the route’s modernization has been beset by numerous delays and will probably be the last of the three to enter into operation.

Kano-Maiduguri-N’Djamena Interconnector

Just like how the Lagos-Calabar Silk Road need a short interconnector to link it up with the CCS Silk Road terminal of Douala, so too does its perpendicular portions of Lagos-Kano and Port Harcourt-Maiduguri need their own for joining together and reaching N’Djamena. While this isn’t officially in the cards at the moment, it makes complete sense for it to eventually be built, but only after all three lines are up and running first. Additionally, Boko Haram needs to be defeated beforehand and Northeastern Nigeria needs to be pacified in order to ensure this project’s lasting security.

The Sahelian-Saharan Silk Road And The West African Rail Loop:

Nigeria is one of the most crucial countries for China’s New Silk Road strategy in Africa not just because of its own promise as the most populous country on the continent and its second-largest economy, but because of the geographically facilitating role that it plays in extending OBOR all across Africa. Nigeria is approximately midway between Senegal and Sudan, and given the existing infrastructure investments that China is partaking in all throughout the West African Core Region’s main state, it makes sense for any additional projects west of Nigeria to pass through it en route to Sudan (or eventually Ethiopia one day).

The first project of repute is what the author dubbed in the last chapter as the Sahelian-Saharan Silk Road, which is pretty much just Trans-African Highways 5 and 6, the former being from Dakar to N’Djamena and the latter being from the Chadian capital to Sudan. The projected modification to this route is that it has the very real chance of accommodating rail transport as well, since the Dakar-Bamako portion between the Senegalese and Malian capitals is presently being built with Chinese assistance. If this railroad were extended to the Burkinabe capital of Ouagadougou, then it would successfully link up with the West African Rail Loop, which circularly connects to the Nigerien capital of Niamey, Nigeria’s Lagos (and thus to the Lagos-Caladan Silk Road), the largest Beninese city and only seaport of Cotonou, and the Togolese, Ghanaian, and Ivorian capitals of Lomé, Accra, and Abidjan.

Concerning the remaining portion of Trans-African Highway 5 between Niamey and N’Djamena, that too has the chance to be developed into a railroad and all that it takes is yet another short line being built, though this time between the Nigerien capital and the second-largest Nigerian city of Kano. After that, the Kano-Maiduguri-N’Djamena Interconnector written about above would suffice for completing the last part of Trans-African Highway 5. There is, however, a possibility that a workaround could be constructed between Kano and N’Djamena, especially if Northern Nigeria falls deeper into violence and the original direct route to the Chadian capital becomes unviable. In that case, it might be necessary to construct a detour from Niamey and Kano to the second-largest Nigerien city of Zinder, and thenceforth continue along Niger’s densely populated southern border belt all the way to Lake Chad, choosing either to go around it by cutting through the northeastern tip of Nigeria (which might not be feasible amidst the prolonged circumstances of destabilization that gave rise to the rerouting in the first place) or via the longer way around the Chadian section.

Grand Strategy:

In summary, Nigeria forms the irreplaceably crucial juncture of China’s Sahelian-Saharan Silk Road in linking the Atlantic country of Senegal with the Red Sea-bordering state of Sudan. In principle, Nigeria still functions as a very important node on China’s New Silk Road even without its various interconnections to the rest of West Africa or further across the eastern reaches of the continent, in that each of the three Nigerian Silk Roads are economically sound and strategic investments on their own. When all three are taken together as an integrated infrastructural package, the unified project acquires a significance much larger than the sum of its total parts, and this is exponentially multiplied with each of the other Silk Road projects that it ultimately connects to (CCS Silk Road, West African Rail Loop, and the Trans-African Highway/Railway 5).

Red: CCS (Cameroon-Chad-Sudan) Silk Road
Gold: Trans-African Highway 5
Lavender: Ethiopia-Nigeria Silk Road (the most direct projected route through resource-rich territory)
Pink: West African Rail Loop
Blue: Lagos-Calabar Silk Road
Green: Lagos-Kano Silk Road
Yellow: Port Harcourt-Maiduguri Silk Road

Strategic Observations:

Several salient conclusions can be reached from the above map:

* The Sahelian-Saharan Silk Road is pretty much just a slightly modified and rail modernized version of Trans-African Highways 5 and 6 that aims to connect Dakar with Djibouti;

* France’s Operation Barkhane and the US’ ‘anti-terror’ presence along the Sahel almost perfectly overlap with the projected Silk Road route, proving that both Great Powers intend to influence it;

* The Chadian capital of N’Djamena will acquire heightened significance as a crucial juncture and transit point along the Sahelian-Saharan Silk Road due to its geographically central location;

* Boko Haram’s terrorist insurgency in the Lake Chad basin threatens to sabotage China’s transcontinental plans through the formation of a black hole of chaos right in the middle of the route;

* and the West African Rail Loop and Nigerian Silk Roads essentially serve as southern branches of the Sahelian-Saharan Silk Road, and the latter is a means for linking the Gulf of Guinea and Red Sea.

Africa’s Energy Capital

Nigeria’s economic promise isn’t just limited to its future market value as Africa’s largest possible producer and consumer, but it’s also fundamentally tied in with its existing energy wealth and the significance that this has to the rest of the world. The author describes Nigeria as Africa’s energy capital because of its copious supplies of both oil and gas, which combine to give it a competitive advantage over all the other countries in the continent. A report from the US’ Energy Information Agency (EIA) states that Nigeria is Africa’s largest oil producer and the world’s fourth-largest LNG exporter, though a different analysis from elsewhere warns that the country could slide down to tenth place in the global LNG suppliers market if it doesn’t receive enough modernizing investment to keep pace with its many competitors. On a regional level, Nigeria also supplies gas to its Beninese, Togolese, and Ghanaian neighbors through the underwater West African Gas Pipeline, which extends Abuja’s reach along the Gulf of Guinea and coincidentally overlaps with the southern portion of the West African Rail Loop that was discussed in the previous section.

In getting down to business, this section is split into two parts; the first addresses Nigeria’s previous energy partnership with the US, while the second one looks at its Asian energy prospects with India and China.

American Past:

The EIA reported in 2011 that Nigerian oil accounted for 9% of the US’ total crude imports and 40% of the West African country’s total exports, which surprisingly made Nigeria the US’ fourth-largest source of oil behind Canada, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia. While the top-three rankings haven’t changed in the years since, Nigeria’s contribution to the US’ energy consumption dramatically shrank with the advent of fracking, with the White House taking the unprecedented step of declaring in late 2014 that the US had completely stopped importing Nigerian oil. Official EIA statistics and graphs prove that a massive 92% drop-off had indeed taken place, as the US imported 373 million barrels in 2010 but only 30 million by 2015.

Apparently, the US hadn’t in fact totally halted its imports of Nigerian oil between 2014-2015, but had radically decreased them to such a level that there were veritably times where it wasn’t purchasing anything, just as the White House stunningly told the world at the end of 2014. However, the US did announce in spring 2016 that it was going to resume Nigerian imports in order to compensate for the fracking slump that was caused by the energy glut and consequent price drop, but it seems almost impossible for levels to ever return to their 2010 high. The consequence of Nigeria’s diminished energy importance to the US is that America is no longer directly affected by any energy disruptions in the Niger Delta region, and that such events could even cynically serve to advance Washington’s agenda of interfering with the reliability of its competitor’s (China) future supply source or threatening its ally’s (India) access as a means of indirectly influencing it

Asian Future:

The abrupt end of Nigeria’s energy relationship with the US meant that the OPEC-member country had to urgently find new customers to replace it with, which it ended up doing by 2016 with India (21% of imports), Spain (11%), and the Netherlands (10%), all three of which together replaced the amount of exports that Nigeria had previously sent to the US. Indian oil consumption is so important to the Nigerian economy nowadays that India has become Nigeria’s top export destination, and with the South Asian state planning to buy more oil from its top African trading partner in the coming future, this relationship is expected to only strengthen. In the coming years, it can even be expected that the tight energy ties between the two will pioneer diversified commercial engagement. Indian entrepreneurs will logically become attracted to the promising Nigerian economy and fortuitously come to realize that the shared English language legacy between the two makes it relatively easier to conduct business there than elsewhere in Western Africa.

As for China, it just committed the staggering sum of $80 billion to develop and modernize Nigeria’s oil and gas infrastructure, proving that Beijing plans to get in on the country’s energy game and belatedly compete with India. China only imported 11 million barrels of Nigerian oil in 2014 compared to the more than 10x larger amount that India did in 2016 at 157 million barrels, but China did declare its intention in early 2016 to increase that amount in the future. True to its word, China’s $80 billion investment promise came just a few months later in June, but in all actuality, Beijing’s long-term energy interests in Nigeria have more to do with LNG than oil, which is most clearly seen by the fact that its LNG imports experienced a 60% spike in 2015-2016 and China stated its early 2015 desire to import even more of this resource from Nigeria. Again, one sees how China carried through on this intent through its $80 billion commitment in June 2016, which is obviously meant to supplement its Silk Road vision for the country.

Southern Resentment:

In transitioning to the next section about Nigeria’s history of regionalism, federalism, and violent domestic division, it’s relevant to make mention of the fact that all of the country’s oil and gas reserves are concentrated along its southeastern coast. The problem, however, is that the native Igbo majority in this part of Nigeria never felt like they received their due dividends from the natural resource wealth that lies beneath their soil and below their waters, instead accusing their fellow countrymen – particularly politicians from the North – of plundering their riches and leaving them with next to nothing. This has been a recurring historical problem for Nigeria and reinforced the already sharp sense of identity separateness that the Igbo and other Southeastern native populations felt relative to the rest of the country. Once more, concerns about the equitable sharing of natural resource revenue have reemerged as a catalyst for conflict in the Southeast, thus setting the stage for a return to divisive regionalism and possibly prompting a renewed call for federalism sometime down the line.

The Regional-Federal Interplay

Nigeria has a storied history of domestic divisions, and it’s not the intent of this research to comprehensively analyze every facet of them. What’s relevant for the reader to learn in the context of Hybrid War theory is that Nigeria was once a federation of just a handful of states that progressively underwent the seemingly contradictory processes of administrative decentralization and political centralization, interestingly transitioning into a federal republic of 36 separate entities, though not before experiencing a gruesome civil war that was fought in the energy-rich Southeast. It’s not within the scope of this research to investigate each and every reason for why this happened, but the main point of discussing this is to reveal insight into the general trends that have occurred in Nigeria’s administrative-political history, which will in turn provide the reader with an understanding of how the country’s subsequently discussed Hybrid War risks could impact on Nigeria’s fragile nature.

Early Years:

To begin with, Nigeria achieved its independence in 1960 and was at that time composed of only three regions – Northern, Eastern, and Western – that were dominated by a certain ethnic group – Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba, respectively. Northern Nigeria is majority Muslim while both the Eastern and Western regions are majority Christian, the latter two of which used to be their own single colony called the Southern Nigerian Protectorate. This entity was forced to merge with the Northern Nigerian Protectorate in 1914, after which the two civilizationally separate halves became part of the same future independent state, thus explaining why the country has such impressive identity diversity. The three regions existed in an uneasy relationship from 1960-1963, after which the Mid-Western Region was formed out of the Western one in that year and the country formally became a Federal Republic. Lingering mistrust between the Southeastern Igbo and the Northern Hausa continued to afflict the fledgling country and boiled over in 1966, during Nigeria experienced an Igbo-led coup, a Hausa-led counter-coup that reversed it, and retributive killings all across the country against the Igbo.

Civil War:

These rapidly developing events in turn prompted the military leader of the Eastern Region, an Igbo by the name of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, to declare independence for his territory and rechristen it as the Republic of Biafra, thus heralding in the Nigerian Civil War that raged from 1967-1970. It’s not known exactly how many people died during this time, but most estimates place the number of victims at over two million, the majority of which died from starvation. The “Biafrans’” humanitarian plight earned worldwide sympathy and inspired dozens of NGOs to airlift food and other supplies to the region in getting around the Nigerian military’s blockade. The most pertinent domestic administrative-political consequences of the civil war was that a decision was later made to transfer the capital from the country’s largest city of Lagos on the western fringe of Nigeria to the purposely built centrally positioned city of Abuja. Additionally, and in the more immediate term, the Eastern Region was broken up into three separate states after the end of the conflict, while the rest of the country also underwent a similar decentralization, especially in the Northern Region. This process steadily continued until the present day, and Nigeria’s domestic administrative-political makeup is now virtually unrecognizable from the past.

Democratic, Or Divide And Rule Tactic?:

The saliency in this happening is that Nigeria’s leaders expected that the decentralization of the country into a scattering of separate ethno-identity statelets would lead to the diminishment of regionalization in favor of more easily containable localization/tribalization, thereby hopefully preventing a resurgence of separatist conflict in “Biafra” or elsewhere in the future. To put it more bluntly, while being very democratic on one hand and attempting to respond to the perceived governing needs of the country’s various identities, it also cynically helped the central politicians divide and rule the rest of Nigeria. The gigantic West African country is nowadays split into 36 different administrative units, but even these can broadly be categorized into the North, South, and Middle Belt, with the first two remaining mostly (Sharia–law abiding) Muslim and Christian respectively, while the third one is a heterogeneous mix. In this day and age when the “Clash of Civilizations” is regretfully seen as an attractive model for people to follow, Nigeria appears to be set on the path of returning to its old regionalization tensions, albeit this time along civilizational-religious lines that expectedly overlap with the pre-1914 colonial-era division of the now-unified country.

From Civil To Religious Allegiance:

The problem that predictably emerges is that the North is Islamifying at the same time as the South is either secularizing or embracing Christianity, and while both religions are in principle highly compatible with one another, they’re also easily susceptible to being led into violence against the other by devious domestic and/or international influences, such as what has happened several times in the mixed Middle Belt. The elevation of religious identity above that of its civil and tribal counterparts is responsible for the modified reemergence of regionalism in Nigeria and the relative ease with which large masses of people can quickly be gathered together by political organizers, whether it’s to protest, riot, and/or revolt against the state. To an extent, this is one of the partial reasons why Boko Haram was able to rise as quickly as it did and generate such appeal, though Nigerian researcher Aaron D. Chiroma more comprehensively explains the group’s genesis in his article “Boko Haram: A Question For Dominance Or Simply Terrorism On Steroids?”, which the author strongly recommends that the reader check out if they’re interested in learning more about this terrorist group.

“Retro-Federalism”:

Boko Haram will be discussed a bit more in the last section about Nigeria’s Hybrid War threats, but for now what’s important for the reader to recognize in general is that religiously-organized regionalization could one day usher in a return to Identity Federalism, which is what Nigeria practiced from 1960-1963, or some could argue, up until the beginning of the civil war in 1967. Instead of following the oft-described model that the author has elaborated on all throughout his worldwide Hybrid War research and implementing the “Bosnification” of each separate identity group into its own quasi-independent statelet, Nigeria’s ‘retro-federalism’ would see the de-facto restoration of three broadly defined Northern, Eastern, and Western regions concentrated around the Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba ethnicities, respectfully, that endeavor to return the country back to its pre-civil war administrative-political status. For instance, the amalgamation of Northern Nigerians into “Muslims” simultaneously with their Southern counterparts’ unification into “Christians” might be abused by demagogic forces to prompt identity discord across the country and enough violence in the Middle Belt that many common Nigerians come to the conclusion that it would be much better to “Bosnify” than to destructively remain together (though objectively keeping in mind that these potential conflicts are not ‘naturally occurring’ but provoked by agenda-driven forces, whether internal and/or external).

Resource Triggers And Constraints:

The problem, just as it was back in 1967, is that the Eastern Igbos’ natural resource wealth is envied by the rest of the country, thereby making it unlikely that their compatriots would ever allow any substantial form of federalization to occur that would endow “Biafra” with fiscal autonomy over their riches. Relatedly, it would be contrary to the Northerners’ long-term interests to voluntarily want to part with the South’s wealth, no matter what manipulated identity-driven problems they may have with people in that part of the country. Therefore, while federalization might one day return to the forefront of the country’s politics and become an attractive slogan for various forces to use in organizing the masses (even those misled into believing that they are against the other [i.e. Christian-Muslim clashes]), it’s doubtful that it could ever peacefully be implemented to the extent that its agitators would be satisfied. Instead, the comparatively ‘superficial’ federalization that’s currently practiced in Nigeria could deceptively be expanded to include more symbolic political-cultural autonomy, though with the caveat being that fiscal responsibilities are still under the control of the central government in order to preempt the energy-wealthy southeastern states (collectively referred to as “Biafra” for the sake of this research) from effectively seizing/’regaining control’ over most of the country’s budget.

As these sorts of conflicts usually have a penchant for doing, however, the eruption of multisided warfare in Nigeria could inadvertently allow for unexpected scenarios to occur, possibly even leading to the fulfillment of doomed-to-fail Identity/Regional Federalization. While it’s theoretically possible that a return to federalism between the three main regions of the country could be done in a peacefully effective way that ultimately improves Nigeria’s overall situation, there’s plenty that can go wrong during this transitional period and turn the country into a totally failed state. The driving factor in making this and other unpredictable scenarios possible is Hybrid Warfare, which is why it’s now time to turn to the last section of the research in analyzing the most likely sorts of identity conflicts that could break out in the country and bring Africa’s most populous state to the brink of bedlam, whether in pursuit of the aforementioned administrative-political objective or some other type of far-reaching goal.

Back To The Past

Boko Haram And The Backdrop Of Hybrid War:

Nigeria’s Hybrid War scenarios harken back to the country’s past and are essentially a rehash of the ethno-identity structural split that set the backdrop for the country’s civil war. Like it was explained in the previous section, regionalism never fully went away in Nigeria despite the administrative-political decentralization that occurred after the civil war ended, and this historical phenomenon is once more back in focus due to the ‘Clash of Civilizations’ overtones that surround the Boko Haram conflict. The gist is that Boko Haram’s rise produced a diversity of reactions all throughout the country and among its main communities, but the most commonly pervasive one was that Nigerians became fearful that militant Salafism could spread and take over more parts of the Muslim North, basically creating a ‘state within a state’ that would de-facto partition the country into two civilizationally separate zones.

The only response that the government could take by that point would be to reignite another civil war, albeit one in which the central authorities fight against the North and not the South. Understanding the enormity of what’s at stake in this scenario and how disastrous it would be for all Nigerians, the state was compelled to take proactive measures in assembling the regional anti-Boko Haram coalition in trying to wipe out the terrorists. Granted, the systemic corruption and inefficiency of the Nigerian Armed Forces largely served as an enabler for the group in the first place, but the semi-coordinated measures that have been undertaken with the country’s neighbors over the past year have been mildly successful in dislodging the group from its stronghold in the Northeast, though the threat still remains in both physical and ideological terms.

The damage that Boko Haram inflicted on the Nigerian psyche has yet to be thoroughly studied, but it can be reasonably conjectured that it brought the ‘Clash of Civilizations’ to the forefront of the national discussion and stirred the undercurrents of ethno-identity regionalism, which can be seen through the opportunistic re-emergence of Niger Delta criminal-separatists over the past couple of years. Sensing the military’s weakness in the face of Boko Haram’s blitzkrieg and eager to exploit the country’s structural weaknesses at their most vulnerable time in order to further their own interests, armed groups in the former separatist region of “Biafra” returned to their low-scale insurgency/banditry, which in turn forced the military to divide its focus between the Northeast and Southeast in dealing with both concurrent threats.

Although seemingly manageable for the time being, the precedent that this established is startling and could soon become the norm in the country if it’s not adequately dealt with as soon as possible. Even worse, however, is that the indefinite prolongation of simultaneous Northeastern and Southeastern insurgencies could set the country up for a devastating blow to its unity if yet another armed conflict breaks out elsewhere in the country or if self-interested opportunists exploit the occasion to aggressively press their own divisive demands. This is the strategic situation that Nigeria presently finds itself in, and it sets the context for explaining the rest of its Hybrid War vulnerabilities.

The Triangle Of Threats:

Recalling what was written above about how Boko Haram triggered a return to the country’s historic divisions, as well as the earlier elaboration about Nigeria’s predilection to regionalism, the three main ethno-regional identities may ‘defensively’ consolidate their influence in their home areas and thus form the basis for reconceptualizing the country as a political union between its primary Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba, and Igbo peoples, which together account for approximately 70% of the country’s total population. In practice, this broadly splits the country up into the North, Southwest, and Southeast, respectively, with each of these population groups forming the core of their region’s identity, which is not unlike the pre-civil war administrative-political delineation of Nigeria into the Northern, Western, and Eastern Regions. This is what was being referred to in the title of this section, Back To The Past, because it strategically reverts the country back to its immediate post-independence identity divisions, regardless of the fact that each of these are now further subdivided across separate sub-national statelets in their prospective regions.

It might sound overly simplistic and actually be so to an extent, but the general idea is that the reconsolidation of ethno-regional identities around the Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba, and Igbo peoples could set into motion the uncontrollable centrifugal processes of Identity Federalism or separatism. The objective foundation for identifying each of the three potentially problematic actors is former President Goodluck Jonathan’s 2013 declaration that “The Nigerian state faces three fundamental security challenges posed by extremist groups like Boko Haram in the North; the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra in the South-East; and the Oodua People’s Congress in the South-West.” From the reverse strategic standpoint, however, each of the leading ethnic groups behind these movements could also play a positive centripetal role in holding the country together and helping it embrace its geopolitical future in the context of the West African Core Region (WACR). This given sub-section will first deal with the threats that this triangular geo-identity division poses for Nigeria, before ending on a positive note in the last part of the research about the unique ways in which this arrangement could be applied for the benefit of the entire state, provided of course that there’s enough political will and discipline from all parties to do so.

“Hausaland”:

The concept of a politically separate homeland – whether formally independent or broadly autonomous – for the Hausa-Fulani people is one which was first touched upon in the last chapter about Niger, but it’s actually even more relevant for Nigeria. The Federal Republic has many more members of this demographic than its northern neighbor, and the modern-day territory of Northern Nigeria used to contain the Sokoto Caliphate, one of what experts have called the “Fulani jihad states”. There’s a wealth of history behind these entities which is just waiting to be discovered by the reader, but the scope of the present work isn’t to wide enough to get into a detailed review about these entities. Instead, the importance in becoming familiar with these polities is to highlight that this demographic has a precedence of formal independence that predates the brief British-era colony of Northern Nigeria.

Like it was already explained earlier, the North would stand to lose immensely from any independence campaign because it would end up being cut off from the oil-rich Southern coffers and unimpeded access to the maritime trading routes along the Atlantic coast. Still, the sense of identity separateness and precedence of formal independence that the Northern Muslim Hausa-Fulani once enjoyed is a powerfully attractive idea that appeals to the imagination of many and can thus be abused by political agitators in assembling large masses of easily misled people to do their bidding. This is even more so in the present atmosphere of regional-civilizational distrust that’s returned to the forefront of Nigerian society, though it must never be forgotten that it hadn’t ever totally left in the first place despite the cosmetic administrative-political changes implemented after the conclusion of the civil war.

What’s particularly noteworthy about “Hausaland” – or Northern Nigeria in general (which are not interchangeable, though largely overlapping) – is that this region already practices various forms of Sharia law, all with the willing support of the central authorities. This can be taken to mean that Abuja recognizes that it is in the overall interests of Nigeria’s unity to decentralize the justice system in this part of the country so as to stave off any sort of forthcoming unrest modelled off of the above template. No matter how hard the government tried, however, its strategy can only be said to have partially succeeded, since the rise of Boko Haram contradicts the assertion that this move satisfied the desires of all Muslims. It should be recognized that the terrorist group embraces an extreme form of fundamentalist Islam that is outside of mainstream acceptance anywhere in the world, especially in Nigeria, but that the fusion of violent Salafism with the historical memory of the Sokoto Caliphate, coupled with the periphery’s preexisting regional frustrations against the center, came together in such a way as to greatly contribute to Boko Haram’s success over the past few years.

If the terrorists can broaden their appeal to the Hausa community by embracing the concept of “Hausaland”, then even their military defeat at the hands of the anti-Boko Haram coalition wouldn’t be sufficient for eliminating this threat, since the composite ideology of Salafism and geo-identity separateness that the group stands for could lead to it experiencing a ‘second wind’ sometime down the line, albeit in the core of “Hausaland” instead of along the Lake Chad periphery.

“Yorubaland”:

The second of the three regions to be briefly discussed is “Yorubaland”, or in other words, the distinct homeland of the Yoruba people from Southwestern Nigeria. This ethnic group also transcends state borders and stretches into parts of neighboring Benin and Togo, though they have nowhere near the amount of institutional influence there as they do in Nigeria. Their chief strategic advantage is that the country’s largest city and former capital of Lagos is located in their traditional territory, thus giving them a sense of entitlement in feeling that they deserve a leading role in the state (aside from their large demographic numbers that some have estimated to be about 21% of the country’s total). The leading group that’s militantly advocating for the formation of a separate “Yorubaland” is the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC), which as cited above, was grouped together by former President Goodluck Jonathan as constituting one of the three primary militant threats endangering Nigeria.

Non-Nigerians such as the author have difficulty finding reliable information about this group aside from what they’ve officially declared on their website and the scattered reports about their statements and activities which occasionally filter through into the media, but some salient information about their intentions can still be acquired. For starters, the US Justice Department published an informative report about their history, organizational hierarchy, and objectives in 2013, which reaffirms that the group is seeking to promote Yoruba rights to various extents, with there being a split between the “moderates” and “militants”. The document states that the former are willing to work with the authorities in achieving their objectives, unlike the latter, but a surprising twist of events happened over the summer which might indicate that the ‘hardliners’’ position is pragmatically softening. Gani Adams, whom the report indicates is the leader of the “militant” faction, spoke out against the Niger Delta “Avengers” and other related groups in July 2016 and offered to work together with the military in defeating this menace. That’s not exactly the policy of a diehard separatist organization, but of one which is attempting to work ‘within the system’ to a certain extent in order to gain some benefits from the establishment.

Whether or not this indicates a larger shift in the “militant” faction of the OPC remains to be seen, but this move can at least be interpreted as comparatively positive and holding out the prospect of future promise. Moreover, a “moderate” faction of the party, the so-called “Reformed Oodua People’s Congress”, also announced that it would take action against Niger Delta militants that are present in “Yorubaland”, though adhering to a strict policy of peacefulness and non-violence in doing so. Interestingly, while being internally divided into “moderate” and “militant” factions, the OPC appears relatively united in their defense of “Yorubaland” and in opposing the operative expansion of any other armed non-state groups onto what they consider as “their” territory. To follow along and not lose sight of the chain of events, the rise of Boko Haram emboldened the Southeastern separatists-criminals (which will be addressed shortly), who then encroached on Yoruba-populated territory and prompted both OPC factions to stand up and oppose them to differing extents.

What’s important to learn from this is that the OPC is patriotically standing behind the government in pushing back against the Southeastern fighters, instead of taking their side and teaming up to fight against Abuja. In reference to patriotism, the OPC probably isn’t doing this in defense of the Nigerian state per say, but is driven by their duty to protect “Yorubaland”, which they feel is being violated by the out-of-regional militants’ activity on their soil. More pragmatically, the OPC might have calculated that the government’s crackdown on the Southeast’s armed groups might inadvertently lead to clashes in “Yorubaland” as the authorities try to flush out all the fighters that have infiltrated there, which would complicate the strategic situation for the OPC in that their territory would then become a battlefield between two separate actors which they ideally want nothing to do with in the first place. Predictably, the unfolding conflict in their region – fought by two sides which the OPC doesn’t even recognize as being in the area legitimately – could suck the OPC into the warzone and lead the situation along a dangerous and unpredictable scenario branch that neither faction wants or is prepared to handle.

Therefore, the two factions appear to have implicitly reached an understanding amongst themselves in agreeing to side with the authorities and cooperate in flushing the Niger Delta militants out of their territory, hoping that this could both raise their soft power prestige among their constituents and the rest of the country, as well as eventually result in some sort of political concessions from the government further down the line, especially in the event that they can prove themselves invaluable to the authorities or of enough value so as to warrant this. It’s not foreseeable that the government would instantly ‘reward’ the OPC just for the sake of it, but the group’s constructive activity in support of the military’s anti-insurgent campaign could help foster an atmosphere of trust between the two parties that could afterwards make it more likely that the sides could come to some sort of forthcoming agreement, whether in general or during future times of tense discord and sudden crisis. The most militant members of the OPC might even moderate their positions with time and recant their separatist objectives in favor of Identity Federalism or something akin to it, especially if they’re somehow incorporated into the existing power structure and become a stakeholder in its affairs.

“Biafra”:

The last of the three corners of Nigeria’s Triangle of Hybrid War Threats is “Biafra”, the southeastern separatist state which sparked the Nigerian Civil War in the late 1960s. Nowadays there’s a distinct upsurge in ‘neo-Biafra’ militant activity, whether carried out by genuine separatists or criminal bands that have misappropriated the name and cause in order to gain ‘legitimacy’ among the population and the international community. The three most relevant groups are the “Niger Delta Avengers” (simply the Avengers), “Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State Of Biafra” (MASSOB), and the “Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta” (MEND).

MEND reached a deal with the government to lay down arms and renounce violence in exchange for cash payments and amnesty back in 2009, and they’ve since served as intermediaries between the authorities and other militant groups in the delta region. In fact, MEND also publicly came out in opposition to the Avengers in May 2016, indicating that the “Biafra” movement is more divided than ever due to the competing interests of its militant actors. MASSOB, for its part, has sided with the Avengers and supports their policy of bombing pipelines and carrying out other acts of sabotage. The newest of the three main “Biafra” actors, the Avengers only arrived on the scene in March 2016, but have since then morphed into a potent force to be reckoned with. Their spate of bombing attacks, kidnappings, and killings in favor of independence got so bad that the government launched Operation Crocodile Smile in August to bring law and order back to the Southeast. In response, the Avengers declared their own campaign, Operation Crocodile Tears, to fight back against the government.

What’s of particular Hybrid War interest is that there appears to be an ethnic divide between the Avengers  and the other “Biafra” militants, with attempts having been made to link the Ijaw with the new insurgency group. This ethnic group generally lives in the creeks and rivers of the Niger Delta, while the much more populous Igbo inhabit the “Biafran” hinterland north of the Ijaw homeland. Some of the Ijaw have denied that it is only their demographic which takes part in the Avengers’ militancy and others have outright disowned it, though several other Ijaw organizations have publicly proclaimed their support for the group and have defended its general mission of fighting for a separate country. Whether or not it is objectively the case that the Ijaw are the driving actors behind the Avengers, what’s important for observers to conclude is that this is how they’re being portrayed, which can indicate two pertinent things.

Firstly, Operation Crocodile Smile could be interpreted as targeting the Ijaw, thus raising expected claims of ‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘genocide’ if the conflict heats up. Secondly, because of what appears to be a divide between the Ijaw, Igbos, and Itsekiri in the Niger River Delta region (“Biafra”), there’s a chance for the government to exacerbate whatever splits are currently existing in order to isolate the active militants by turning their neighbors against them. From Abuja’s perspective, it might be infinitely more preferable for “Biafrans” to kill one another than for the state to do this instead and be accused of human rights abuses and targeted attacks. Moreover, Operation Crocodile Smile might backfire against the government if it ends up uniting all the disparate ethnic groups and separatist-criminal organizations in the region, but for this to happen, the Igbos have to definitely get on board, which has yet to fully happen.

Despite the Southeast’s lingering destitution which has continued throughout decades of multi-billion-dollar energy deals, the Igbo haven’t returned to their civil war-era militancy and probably might not ever do this owing to the profound trauma that was inflicted on them during the war. Therefore, barring some sort of extraordinary circumstance that pushes the Igbo to the breaking point in throwing caution to the wind and joining the Avengers, it’s doubtful that this insurgency will escalate into anything too serious in the near future, though the risk is ever-present that it suddenly could. There are indeed legitimate local concerns that the inhabitants have about the environmental consequences of unregulated oil extraction in their homeland, which compounds with their perennial frustrations at not receiving what they feel is their legitimate share of the natural resource wealth from below their soil and beneath their sea. The chronic underdevelopment of the Niger Delta region adds credence to locals’ criticisms against the government, so it’s not hard to see how this conflict could easily boil over at any time.

The worst-case scenario for the government would be if the three “Biafran” organizations united in militant opposition to the authorities and implicitly coordinated their attacks with Boko Haram in order to make the best use out of the government’s divided focus. Neither of the two prerequisite developments – the unification of the “Biafran” militants and their coordination with Boko Haram – show any signs of happening in the near future, but it would be irresponsible to disregard either of their eventualities, no matter how far-flung they may appear at present. Another possibility to watch out for is if the “Indigenous People Of Biafra” (IPOB, a small-scale “Biafran” separatist group) teamed up with the “Southern Cameroons National Council” and internationalized each other’s conflict like how International Business Times predicted in February 2016. The author isn’t suggesting that these scenarios will veritably occur, but just that any movement in their direction must be studiously monitored because of the game-changing impact that it would have in totally upsetting the state of affairs in Nigeria.

Building Ethno-Bridges

For as potentially divisive as Nigeria’s three ethno-regional divisions could become in ultimately tearing the country apart, they could also end up functioning as irreplaceable opportunities for building ethno-bridges throughout the region and strengthening the West African core. The ideas that the author will briefly mention definitely deserve to be elaborated on by other researchers and probed for their viability, as they’re indeed very forward-looking and might not necessarily be applicable to the present moment. Instead, they should be seen as provocatively constructive suggestions that are intended to serve as a starting point for creatively contemplating how Nigeria’s objective identify vulnerabilities could be reversed into becoming strategic opportunities for kick starting deeper and more comprehensive regional integration processes. Nigeria can be strengthened, not weakened, by its identity differences if it proactively employs them to build New Silk Road bridges and doesn’t let them slide out of control in fomenting zero-sum domestic divisiveness.

Hausa:

To go through the Triangle of Threats in the order that it was first presented, the Hausa could bridge Nigeria and Niger due to their trans-border nature and the high permeability between the two frontiers. Not forgetting what was written in the last chapter about Niger, there will probably be more Hausa in the Sahelian-Saharan country than in Nigeria itself if the population explosion continues at the pace that the UN predicts it will throughout the course of this century, meaning that there could eventually be a time where Niamey could leverage this against Abuja and not vice-versa. Therefore, it’s in the interests of Nigeria’s leaders to use the demographic opportunity that they presently have in building mutually beneficial inroads with Niger by means of the Hausa community, though taking care that this process both doesn’t get out of control in sparking a separatist “Hausaland” movement and that Nigeria assuages all of Niger’s concerns that Hausa-led regional integration isn’t some sort of insidious Hybrid War Trojan Horse against it.

Yoruba:

This ethno-regional identity group extends into the other West African countries of Benin and Togo, though nowhere near to the proportional and influential demographic extent that they do in Nigeria, but the culture that each of its members share could serve as a powerful factor in uniting them across their politically and linguistically divided realms. It shouldn’t be forgotten that Nigeria’s two neighbors are Francophone, while Nigeria itself is Anglophone, so this and the different historical memory that they experienced from the colonial and post-independence periods could create some challenges to deeper cooperation. Still, the ethno-cultural ties between all of the Yoruba, regardless of their present location and native language, should be powerful enough to at least form a working platform for brainstorming cooperation proposals. In tangible terms, the West African Rail Loop will run through Benin and Togo, and Nigeria’s successful leverage of the Yoruba could help it maintain influence over parts of this project, though of course in conjunction with other inroads and outreaches that it should simultaneously attempt during this time as well.

“Biafra”:

It’s hard to conceptualize how the reconsolidation of Southeastern regionalism could be beneficial for Nigerian unity, especially considering the explosive role that this played in the run-up to the country’s bloody civil war, but there’s no use denying that many of the people in this part of Nigeria have a distinct sense of ethno-regional identity that’s separate from the rest of their compatriots, and that the civil war and its legacy actually played a defining part in crystallizing these differences. So long as the urge for militant separatism can be contained and its contributing factors mitigated (a task admittedly easier said than done), then a stable Southeast would allow for the planned Lagos-Caladan Silk Road to be extended across the border into Cameroon in linking up with the CCS Silk Road. Additionally, a stable situation along Nigeria’s southeastern frontier with its neighbor would make it more difficult for any conflict overspill to ever develop between “Biafra” and “Southern Cameroons”, since the Anglophone Cameroonians could serve as their country’s bridgehead in fostering mutually beneficial commercial cooperation with Nigeria along the conjoined Silk Roads between them.

EXTRA: Northern Muslims:

Although technically being majority Hausa-Fulani, the Northern Muslims most directly afflicted by Boko Haram could serve a unique role in fostering closer integration in the Lake Chad region. Building off of the anti-Boko Haram coalition’s on-the-ground gains and victories, and presuming that they can be maintained, then it’s possible for this group of frontier Muslims to serve as the vanguard in advancing an integrative religious-cultural space between Northeastern Nigeria, Southeastern Niger, Western Chad, and Northern Cameroon. There’s already a very porous border and much interaction between all sides (whether legally conducted through border crossings or illegally done so through areas beyond their control), so instead of allowing this state of affairs to perpetually remain as a strategic vulnerability of divisiveness and potential Hybrid War blitzkrieg, it would be in the best interests of all state-based actors to find a way to turn their non-state counterparts into anchors of stability. In order for this to happen, though, each of the respective governments must pay more attention to their citizens in this region and prioritize development projects here, which translates into immediately setting out to work on and modernize the Sahelian-Saharan Silk Road the moment that Boko Haram is militarily defeated.

Andrew Korybko is the American political commentator currently residing in Moscow. Thew views expressed are his own. He is the author of the monograph “Hybrid Wars: The Indirect Adaptive Approach To Regime Change” (2015). This text will be included into his forthcoming book on the theory of Hybrid Warfare.

PREVIOUS CHAPTERS:

Hybrid Wars 1. The Law Of Hybrid Warfare

Hybrid Wars 2. Testing the Theory – Syria & Ukraine

Hybrid Wars 3. Predicting Next Hybrid Wars

Hybrid Wars 4. In the Greater Heartland

Hybrid Wars 5. Breaking the Balkans

Hybrid Wars 6. Trick To Containing China

Hybrid Wars 7. How The US Could Manufacture A Mess In Myanmar

The newspaper “Izvestia” contacted me for a comment on the terrorist attack perpetrated in Stockholm April 7, 2017. This is my opinion, which I addressed to journalist Anna Khalitova of the newspaper “Izvestia”:

Donald Trump has proven being mistaken about some important issues. The last missile attack he ordered against Syria in retaliation of an unclear (to say the least) event, is the latest of such mistakes in the geopolitical scenario. It is about an alleged gas-attack attributed to the Syrian forces, and where –to the best of my knowledge– no substantial evidence has been put forward. The risk being that, about this particular item, history might end placing President Trump in the same box as Bush’s “weapons of mass destruction”.

But Donald Trump was indeed right about Sweden. Weeks ago he predicted that Sweden would naturally follow the fate of Germany or Belgium, as a target of terrorism. At that time, PM Stefan Löfven, and with him Sweden’s political elite in full choir, made yet another laugh of Trump and also absolutely denied that calm in the ‘Swedish paradise’ (the elite’s paradise) was threatened.

The last attack of today in Stockholm was instead totally expected. And, as being in its operational form just one more repetition of a seemingly standard jihadist-terrorist act (Nice, London, etc.), others of that kind are unfortunately to be expected. This comment analyses possible causes from a problematic integration perspective.

Who, and why in Sweden

The government of Sweden, as well as others in the EU, have uncritically supported the ‘Hillary Clinton doctrine’ which aimed to replace secular governments in the Middle East and replace them with fundamentalist dictatorships. In this way, for instance Sweden participated with air-force support in the bombing of Libya, it has given support to the White Helmets (which represent the ‘rebel’ forces opposing the Syrian government, etc.)

In this fashion, the government of Sweden, and most of the Swedish “opposition” parties (with an even more pronounced right-wing ideology than the one the government has) have welcomed warmly the “refugees which have escaped Assad’s war”.

The Swedish authorities, and of course, the Swedish press and TV – a duck pond of pseudo-reporters which history of journalism will remember as the most docile and less critical ever in any democratic country- worked hard to give to the public the notion that the ‘refugees’ arriving to Sweden during the dramatic migrant-year of 2015 were in the main from Syria, or refugees a cause of “Assad’s war”.

In October that year I published in SWEDHR Research & Reports, “Swedish Doctors for Human Rights propose to EU a redefinition of the concept refugee and of asylum eligibility criteria”.

Excerpt from my text above:

“The current endemic migration towards Europe is characterized by a) a mistaken view of a uniform and selective origin of the migrants – wrongly ascribed as being primarily Syrian [see below]; b) a selective targeting of certain EU countries as immigration destiny; c) a high mobility and/or uncertainty in regards to numerous refugees’ intention on whether or where they would petition asylum.

A common misconception regarding the current “refugee crisis” is that it is mainly caused by the war situation in Syria. Correspondingly, it is assumed that: i) the outright mainstream of the migrant flow is of Syrian origin; ii) hence, migrants are war-refugees; iii) ergo war-related refugees are entitled to asylum “according to the Genève Convention.”

However, the Finish MP, Mr Peter Östman (Chairman of the Christian Democratic Parliamentary Group), declared recently that migrants from Syria constitute less than a third of the 350,000 to 400,000 migrants that have come to Europe so far this year. The remainder, says MP Östman, constitute a mixture of people from Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. [4] Further – as reviewed below – the idea that migrants displaced by own choice (war-related or not) are to be equated with “refugees” according to international covenants is mistaken.”

Who are the migrants on the one hand, and on the other hand who are the terrorists? Who is who in Sweden?

During the critical “migrant crisis” of 2015, Sweden admitted around 160,000 migrants, in the believe that all those migrants were “victims of the atrocities of Assad regime”.

Of these migrants, 80 percent were admitted in Sweden without presenting identification papers.

Who are these 128,000 migrants? From where do they come from? In which organizations were they active?

Certainly, many amongst them, perhaps most of them, are impeccable refugees as defined by the Geneva Convention. I shall continue working this premise until, unless, some one would prove with facts that the assumption is wrong. The facts by now is that nobody really knows. By the way, only in 2015, over 40,000 migrants that had enter Sweden had gone “underground”. The Swedish police has been unable to localize them…

Secondly. Considering that the Syrian government during 2015 and onwards has been defeating the terrorists, the question arises, where those jihadist-combatants retreat? Some reports say that they went to Libya. But many other say that a significant cohort made its way to Europe, via Italy and otherwise. In 2015 I read a dispatch in International Business Times reporting that ISIS cadres were infiltrated among the refugees that eventually tried to make the Balkan route towards Europe.

Again, who knows for sure who is who among 128,000 migrants beyond reliable identification?

What is behind?

Around the tragic incidents in Paris in which terrorists attacked simultaneously a theater and several targets, one of the jihadists that eventually perished under the police anti-terrorist actions managed before his demise to publish a video in YouTube. There he called his fellow Muslims living in Europe to do resistance. His discourse was, basically, that Muslims are living alienated, worthless lives amid their ‘European oppressors’.

Many Muslims in Europe, the majority, I guess, are working hard in trying to live decent lives within the societal norms of the countries that have accepted them. But, on the other hand, xenophobia and cultural racism is endemic in many levels of the European society.

Around the same Paris events, one statement by Barack Obama which I liked to the point I made a tweet about it, it was that [more or less phrased in this fashion, but shorter, I’m sure] “best way of preventing ‘Muslim terrorism’ in Europe is working to better integrate the Muslim minorities in Europe”. No one else I know liked Obama’s statement. And I reckon that, definitely, those jihadist operating in any of the known terrorist formations operating in Syria, the Middle East or Europe hated Obama’s statement.

What the jihadist-terrorists want? That we Europeans discriminate Muslims even more.

Terrorists attacks like this one today in Sweden, yesterday in Belgium or France, will alienate the European public. Which in turn is expected to further alienate the Muslim minorities. What the jihadist-terrorists need badly is recruiting; the replacing of the cohorts decimated by the anti-terrorist military campaign.

The terrorist win when they manage to increase the cultural and civic confrontation in the European society.

Who is behind

At this stage, the Swedish police said they have arrested the terrorist. The press rush to inform that he is a citizen from Uzbekistan (a former republic in the Soviet Union), a 39 years old, and sympathizer of the organization ISIS.  What the government, neither the police nor the media elaborate is whether the arrested suspect is or not a “refugee”; when and how did he come and established in Sweden; if he did have valid identification papers, etc. Information provided by neighbors say that the suspected migrant is the father of four children. Does he live with his family in Stockholm? We would not know from the media at this stage. Meanwhile, the balance of the April 7 terrorist attack in Stockholm is four death and nine people injured. This picture would go against the “happy integration of happy immigrants” that the authorities so willingly give. Particularly after the famous observation of Donald Trump, “look what is happening in Sweden”.

A pattern slowly emerging in these terrorist deeds occurred lately in Europe, is that the perpetrators are migrants living and or working in our countries. The affiliation with ISIS or other jihadist-terrorists operating in Syria or the Middle East does not need to be organic-militant. It seems enough that this association is ideological-militant. It is rather about migrants that feel interpreted by the dark prognostic given in YouTube from the part of the Paris-attack terrorist killed by the French police.

However, the fact [as newly informed by DN, sourcing in SvT] that a bag with explosives was found in the truck [truck seen in the picture above] would indicate the operative participation by terrorist/s trained cadres.

From our part is important to remark that I use here the term “ideological-militant”, and not “religious-militant”, as does extreme right formations in Sweden.

PM Löfven, in first declarations to the press (about 16.00 PM, April 7), either he is very careful in his expressions, or does not want to admit straightforwardly that this is a terrorist attack. He said instead,

“everything points to that this is terrorist attack.”

The press has published pictures of the suspected here.

Finally, something that has not deserve proper coverage in the media, domestic or international, is that this terrorist attack coincided with the initiation of the national congress of the ruling Social democratic party to be celebrated in Gothenburg. PM Löfven had to cancelled his traveling to Gothenburg; where he was due to participate in the said congress.

*

Professor Dr med Marcello Ferrada de Noli, formerly at the Karoilinska Institute and ex Research Fellow Harvard Medical School, is the founder and chairman of Swedish Professors and Doctors for Human Rights and editor-in-chief of The Indicter. Also publisher of The Professors’ Blog, and CEO of Libertarian Books – Sweden. Author of “Sweden VS. Assange – Human Rights Issues.” Apart of research works published in scientific journals,  his op-ed articles have been published in Dagens Nyheter (DN), Svenska Dagbladet (Svd), Aftonbladet, Västerbotten Kuriren, Dagens Medicin,  Läkartidningen and other Swedish media. He also has had exclusive interviews in DN, Expressen, SvD and Aftonbladet, and in Swedish TV channels (Svt 2, TV4, TV5) as well as international TV and media (e.g. Norway, Italy TG, Cuba, Chile, DW, Sputnik, RT, Izvestia etc.).

On the evening of April 6 the U.S. military fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at an airbase in Syria. The bombing was a “response” to the alleged chemical weapons attack by the Assad government, which critics of the American deep state and the US imperial agenda have called a false flag attack.

The U.S. assault, which was done without congressional approval, marks a complete reversal of Trump’s campaign trail anti-interventionist claims as well as his condemnation of previous US presidents’—Bush and Obama’s –military actions in countries like Syria and Iraq.

As Think Progress reports, this action marks a “dramatic reversal from Trump’s position when Obama considered military action against Syria” after Assad allegedly used chemical weapons in 2013. “Trump repeatedly derided the idea of striking Syria, characterizing it as a foolish and expensive waste of time.” At the time, Trump released a series of quotes urging Obama not to bomb Syria. Some of Trump’s tweets stated:

“Don’t attack Syria – an attack that will bring nothing but trouble for the U.S. Focus on making our country strong and great again!”

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 9, 2013

***

“We should stay the hell out of Syria, the “rebels” are just as bad as the current regime. WHAT WILL WE GET FOR OUR LIVES AND $ BILLIONS?ZERO”

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 16, 2013

***

“AGAIN, TO OUR VERY FOOLISH LEADER, DO NOT ATTACK SYRIA – IF YOU DO MANY VERY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN & FROM THAT FIGHT THE U.S. GETS NOTHING!”

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 5, 2013

***

“What I am saying is stay out of Syria.”

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 4, 2013

Given Trump’s dogged resistance to and criticism of Obama’s involvement in Syria and his campaign rhetoric about focusing less on other nations as well as his numerous overtures about improving relations with Russia, many commentators—myself included—were guardedly optimistic about potential changes to US foreign policy under Trump and a movement towards less intervention aboard. This was compounded by the fact that the mainstream media was and remains staunchly opposed to Trump. [1]

But it appears that the opposite is true. With this bombing, Trump has joined the neo-con/neoliberal humanitarian imperialism band- wagon, which uses so-called “concern for human rights” as a pretext for imperial wars, ‘regime change,’ and invasions abroad. That Trump got on board with this meme indicates that he is as beholden to the deep state as any president before him.

Despite his condemnation of Obama’s involvement in Syria and despite his claims and allusions about making American less interventionist, it took less than three months for him to expand the US imperial war machine. With this move Trump is likely to lose much of his support base, including among the “alt right”, which is far less war mongering than the neo-con right, and is indeed often anti-war.

Syrian Chemical Attack a Ploy?

Many are calling Assad’s supposed chemical attack an obvious false flag attack, not least because it came just days after the U.S. Ambassador to the UN and the U.S. Secretary of State overtly maintained that it is up to the people of Syria to decide their leadership and the country’s future.

Former Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) has denounced the chemical attack as a false flag attack and believes that there is zero change Assad is behind it:

 “Before this episode of possible gas exposure and who did what, things were going along reasonably well for the conditions…Trump said let the Syrians decide who should run their country, and peace talks were making out, and Al Qaeda and ISIS were on the run….“It looks like, maybe, somebody didn’t like that so there had to be an episode, and the blame now is we can’t let that happen because it looks like it might benefit Assad.”

The timing of the chemical attack is just too convenient and too suspect. Though, it takes much longer than two days to plan such an attack; and one can surmise that it may have been in the works for a while. What it took to get Trump to diametrically change his tune is anyone’s guess.

It will be interesting to see if mainstream “progressives” and “liberals”—i.e., the fake left—will applaud Trump’s bombing of Syria. This group has supported the imperial agenda to oust Bashar Al Assad (for so-called humanitarian reasons) from the outset. Now that Trump seems to have gotten on board with this agenda, liberals may have some strange common ground with the man they call public enemy number one.

Final Thoughts

Just when I thought that U.S. foreign policy might become just a bit less belligerent and less interventionist, things get even more belligerent and far stranger. It took less than three months for my guarded optimism to be dashed. I suspect I’m not the only one feeling this way at present.

This goes to show that the deep state is stronger and more entrenched than ever.

Notes

[1] Though the war mongering, mainstream media backed his bombing of Syria. Little surprise there.

The United States finds its increasingly clumsy, circular foreign policy looping back once again to accusations of “weapons of mass destruction” being inexplicably used against a civilian population, this time in Syria’s northern city of Idlib currently serving as the de facto capital of terrorist organizations including various Al Qaeda affiliates, most notably the US State Department designated foreign terrorist organization, al-Nusrah Front.

The allegations have already been used for a rushed US attack on Syrian forces, without any formal investigation or approval from the United Nations.

There are several serious factors being intentionally omitted from this quickly evolving US-driven narrative, including:

• While the eastern Syrian city of Raqqa serves as the defacto capital of the Islamic State, the northern city of Idlib serves as the defacto capital for all remaining Al Qaeda affiliates in the country;
• The Syrian government is already winning nationwide using much more effective, conventional tactics and weapon systems. Syria is also under immense scrutiny, thus using chemical weapons would be an egregious tactical, strategic, political and military blunder, serving no purpose besides to incriminate the government and invite US-led foreign intervention;
• The US has already prepositioned troops in Syria, increasing their number recently and expanding the scope of their operations. It is not a coincidence that they were placed there to exert greater military force against Damascus, and now suddenly have a pretext to do so;
• The US has a long and sordid history of arraying false accusations against targeted states, specifically regarding the possession or use of chemical weapons and;
• Militant groups the US and its allies are currently arming, funding, training and providing aid to, have been caught staging serial chemical weapon attacks or fabricating evidence regarding alleged attacks that never took place.
  

US-Backed Groups Already Implicated in Chemical Attacks in Syria

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, who exposed plans to use militant groups associated with Al Qaeda to overthrow the Syrian government as early as 2007, would publish another report in 2014 titled, “The Red Line and the Rat Line,” which would explain:

In 2011 Barack Obama led an allied military intervention in Libya without consulting the US Congress. Last August, after the sarin attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, he was ready to launch an allied air strike, this time to punish the Syrian government for allegedly crossing the ‘red line’ he had set in 2012 on the use of chemical weapons.​ Then with less than two days to go before the planned strike, he announced that he would seek congressional approval for the intervention. The strike was postponed as Congress prepared for hearings, and subsequently cancelled when Obama accepted Assad’s offer to relinquish his chemical arsenal in a deal brokered by Russia. Why did Obama delay and then relent on Syria when he was not shy about rushing into Libya? The answer lies in a clash between those in the administration who were committed to enforcing the red line, and military leaders who thought that going to war was both unjustified and potentially disastrous.

Hersh would continue by explaining:

Obama’s change of mind had its origins at Porton Down, the defence laboratory in Wiltshire. British intelligence had obtained a sample of the sarin used in the 21 August attack and analysis demonstrated that the gas used didn’t match the batches known to exist in the Syrian army’s chemical weapons arsenal. The message that the case against Syria wouldn’t hold up was quickly relayed to the US joint chiefs of staff. The British report heightened doubts inside the Pentagon; the joint chiefs were already preparing to warn Obama that his plans for a far-reaching bomb and missile attack on Syria’s infrastructure could lead to a wider war in the Middle East. As a consequence the American officers delivered a last-minute caution to the president, which, in their view, eventually led to his cancelling the attack.

Hersh would also reveal that intelligence assessments from within the US itself noted that militant groups, not the Syrian government, were the most likely culprits behind serial chemical attacks unfolding across Syrian territory:

The DIA paper went on: ‘Previous IC [intelligence community] focus had been almost entirely on Syrian CW [chemical weapons] stockpiles; now we see ANF attempting to make its own CW … Al-Nusrah Front’s relative freedom of operation within Syria leads us to assess the group’s CW aspirations will be difficult to disrupt in the future.’ The paper drew on classified intelligence from numerous agencies: ‘Turkey and Saudi-based chemical facilitators,’ it said, ‘were attempting to obtain sarin precursors in bulk, tens of kilograms, likely for the anticipated large scale production effort in Syria.’

The Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons, when its efforts to restore order across the nation are already successfully being executed using far more effective conventional means, and as it does so under the scrutiny of an “international order” led by the US eager to justify the direct use of US military might against Damascus would be absolutely inexplicable.

Omitted Evidence, Familiar Lies

The US-European media sources attempting to ratchet up the narrative implicating the Syrian government have conveniently left out whatever motive would have been behind this pointless, ineffective, and provocative use of chemical weapons the UN itself has already confirmed the government turned over years ago.

And if Hersh’s narrative regarding former US President Barack Obama attempting to rush to war based on falsified information sounds familiar, it is because his predecessor, former US President George Bush did likewise in regards to the invasion and protracted occupation of Iraq.

A million would perish due to America’s war with Iraq, based on what is now verified as intentionally falsified intelligence built upon the same collection of US-European backed organizations, fronts and media platforms now being used against Syria.

Playing the part of Bush-Obama, is current US President Donald Trump, who, like Bush-Obama ran on a platform of reversing dangerous and unpopular US foreign interventions, but who is now entirely backtracking on campaign promises and has become merely the latest to take up the regime change torch.

Trump’s Turn to Carry the Regime-Change Torch

The Associated Press in an article titled, “Trump has strong words after Syria attack — but what next?,” would attempt to claim:

Eager to show strength after a major provocation, President Donald Trump is forcefully denouncing a chemical attack he blames on Syrian President Bashar Assad but staying coy about how, if at all, the U.S. may respond. 

Trump split the blame Tuesday between Syria’s embattled leader and former President Barack Obama for the country’s worst chemical weapons attack in years. While calling the attack “reprehensible” and intolerable, Trump reserved some of his harshest critique for his predecessor, who he said “did nothing” after Assad in 2013 crossed Obama’s own “red line.”

With US troops already prepositioned in Syria, Russia reeling from US-organized mobs in the streets and US-Persian Gulf sponsored terrorism unfolding beneath them in its metro systems, the latest alleged “sarin attack” is most certainly yet another staged event, just as was exposed and described by Seymour Hersh in 2014.

Trump, like Obama and Bush before him, has omitted any substantial evidence implicating the Syrian government, and like his predecessors, he is attempting to rush the nation and its allies into a course of action before evidence and reason can be applied to unraveling the events surrounding this latest incident.

Also omitted from the Trump administration’s rhetoric, as well as that of voices across US-European media, is the fact that Idlib is the defacto capital of Al Qaeda affiliates. In other words, the US is attempting to rush into action in defense of one of the last remaining, and now endangered bastions of Al Qaeda in Syria.

With US missiles already sailing into Syrian military targets and as the US attempts to stampede the world into further action, even notoriously dishonest propagators of US propaganda, including the Associated Press, have aired doubts about the latest attack. In AP’s aforementioned article, it also states:

U.S. officials said there were some indications nerve gas had been used, though they suggested it could also be another in a series of chlorine gas attacks by Assad’s military. Chlorine isn’t a banned chemical substance, though it cannot be used as a weapon of war.

AP also claims that “witnesses” saw Syrian and Russian jets engaged in the alleged attacks. Russia’s motivation for deploying chemical weapons across a battlefield it has utterly frustrated America’s agenda upon defies logic and reason.

A US-sponsored, staged attack, however, makes perfect sense and fits well into a pattern of deceit, murder and mayhem that has punctuated virtually all aspects of modern American foreign policy. Even as the repercussions of American deceit versus Iraq continue to unfold in cities like Mosul, the US appears poised to predicate another entire war and the destruction of another entire nation on tales of “weapons of mass destruction.”

Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

It is apparent given the timelines and the lack of time given to verifying the validity of accusations concerning the gas attack in Homs, Syria, that plans had already been coordinated for such an attack. Watching the mainstream media the viewer receives the impression from the wording of the announcers reports and questions for the “experts” that the matter was already decided in favour of the U.S. military strike on the airbase. I see pictures of Colin Powell at the UN holding up glossy photos of supposed chemical weapons manufacturing plants.

It demonstrates to a high degree how easily manipulated Trump is and how there is not an iota of critical thinking occurring in Trump’s prefrontal cortex. He has become a complete puppet to the military industrial complex regardless of his bold rhetoric during the election. Now that he is doing Hillary Clinton’s work for her, his approval ratings are sure to improve. Trump likes to win, and if winning, or being perceived as a “winner” means doing as others say without any concerns for logic or rationality, so be it – of course he is incapable of the latter anyway.

As Trump was dining with Xi Jinping at the moment of the attack, the generals in the background probably offered this up as something that could happen to North Korea as well. Admittedly China is not happy with North Korea, but they would be whole lot less happier with U.S. nuclear missiles stationed in North Korea. China is capable of looking long term, unlike politicians and businesses in the west, and is also capable of destroying the US$, not without harm to itself, but there is certainly a point where that would be an acceptable asymmetric counter to U.S. hegemonic desires.

Who benefits?

As for the chemical attacks, if one does use some rationality, meaning who benefits from it, the answer is definitely not Assad, and Assad should not be mistaken for either stupid or irrational. The beneficiaries are ISIS and al-Nusra (al-Qaeda in Syria). One of the side line winners as always with U.S. military mayhem in the region, is Israel, a country all our politicians seem to fawn over in spite of their terrible human rights and international law record. Israel would love to have all the rest of the Middle East broken up into fighting little fragments of tribal groups in order that their tribe can dominate the region, its resources, and perhaps find a ‘final solution’ to the Palestinian demographic problem.

Another favourite ally, Saudi Arabia, also benefits. Canada is also enamoured of the Saudis, perhaps because they are the ones keeping the US fiat petrodollar afloat through its use as the reserve currency. Canada of course needs that as well as Canada’s economy is very highly dependent on the U.S. economy and the US$. Canada also enjoys a degree of manufacturing trade with Israel and Saudi Arabia, mostly in the field of armaments and ‘security’.

In Turkey, Erdogan may benefit as he claims he wants more of the same, but he is playing a very dangerous double game. Being allied to the U.S. through NATO has some benefits, but it also has some drawbacks  – obedience and subservience to empire in order to maintain its integrity geographically. The drawbacks concern the same item, geographic integrity, as the Kurdish people are at the cusp of establishing their own autonomous/independent zones, assisted by Canada and the U.S.  The U.S. has supported then rescinded support for the Kurds, a people seemingly of ‘convenience’ for U.S./Israeli efforts at control of the Middle East.

Being tied into Russia’s economy, especially for agriculture,  trade, and petroleum resources, another set of problems could occur.

Domestic Reaction; Canada

The Canadian public is generally ignorant of the complexities of foreign policy – well really they are not that complex when the baseline is U.S. desires to be global hegemon, supported by its ever favourite lap poodle, Canada. As mentioned above the MSM provide no real insights into this kind of overall picture as they are fully supportive of U.S. war efforts regardless of legality or intention.

Trudeau’s response was that of a very much junior partner seeking to avoid abrading Trumps tender ego. He supported the action, a quick turnabout from his days earlier pronouncements about verifying the source, means, and accuracy of the attack (anytime I see ”white helmets” now something fake must be going on). His thinking is fickle, a weather vane turning to avoid any harsh winds that might blow our way from criticising Trump or the U.S.in its imperial drive – and with NAFTA perhaps up for significant changes.

Of course Pierre Poilievre, the House Conservative opposition leader of the day, pronounced his support as well, but at least the Conservatives are consistent in their hard right support of all things USA! USA! USA! Given that several of their candidates for leadership have imitated certain Trump traits it would be surprising if they did otherwise.

Today marks the anniversary of the end of nearly 700 years of African Muslim rule over Spain, Portugal and Southern France.

Four hundred and eight years ago today King Phillip III of Spain signed an order, which was one of the earliest examples of ethnic cleansing. At the height of the Spanish inquisition, King Phillip III ordered the expulsion of 300,000 Muslim Moriscos, which initiated one of the most brutal and tragic episodes in the history of Spain.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, it was ancient Africans that brought civilization to Spain and large parts of Europe and not the other way around.

The first civilization of Europe was established on the Greek island of Crete in 1700 BC and the Greeks were primarily civilized by the Black Africans of the Nile Valley. The Greeks then passed on this acquired culture to the Romans who ultimately lost it; thus, initiating the Dark Ages that lasted for five centuries. Civilization was once again reintroduced to Europe when another group of Black Africans, The Moors, brought the Dark Ages to an end.

When history is taught in the West, the period called the “Middle Ages” is generally referred to as the “Dark Ages,” and depicted as the period during which civilization in general, including the arts and sciences, laid somewhat idle. This was certainly true for Europeans, but not for Africans.

Renowned historian, Cheikh Anta Diop, explains how during the Middle Ages, the great empires of the world were Black empires, and the educational and cultural centers of the world were predominately African. Moreover, during that period, it was the Europeans who were the lawless barbarians.

After the collapse of the Roman Empire multitudes of white warring tribes from the Caucasus were pushed into Western Europe by the invading Huns. The Moors invaded Spanish shores in 711 AD and African Muslims literally civilized the wild, white tribes from the Caucus. The Moors eventually ruled over Spain, Portugal, North Africa and southern France for over seven hundred years.

Although generations of Spanish rulers have tried to expunge this era from the historical record, recent archaeology and scholarship now sheds new light on how Moorish advances in mathematics, astronomy, art, and philosophy helped propel Europe out of the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance.

One the most famous British historians Basil Davidson, noted that during the eighth century there was no land “more admired by its neighbours, or more comfortable to live in, than a rich African civilization which took shape in Spain”.

The Moors were unquestionably Black and the 16th century English playwright William Shakespeare used the word Moor as a synonym for African.

Education was universal in Muslim Spain, while in Christian Europe, 99 percent of the population was illiterate, and even kings could neither read nor write. The Moors boasted a remarkably high literacy rate for a pre-modern society. During an era when Europe had only two universities, the Moors had seventeen. The founders of Oxford University were inspired to form the institution after visiting universities in Spain. According to the United Nations’ Education body, the oldest university operating in the world today, is the University of Al-Karaouine of Morocco founded during the height of the Moorish Empire in 859 A.D. by a Black woman named Fatima al-Fihri.

In the realm of mathematics, the number zero (0), the Arabic numerals, and the decimal system were all introduced to Europe by Muslims, assisting them to solve problems far more quickly and accurately and laying the foundation for the Scientific Revolution.

The Moors’ scientific curiosity extended to flight and polymath, Ibn Firnas, made the world’s first scientific attempt to fly in a controlled manner, in 875 A.D. Historical archives suggest that his attempt worked, but his landing was somewhat less successful. Africans took to the skies some six centuries before the Italian Leonardo Da Vinci developed a hang glider.

Clearly, the Moors helped to lift the general European populace out of the Dark Ages, and paved the way for the Renaissance period. In fact, a large number of the traits on which modern Europe prides itself came to it from Muslim Spain, namely, free trade, diplomacy, open borders, etiquette, advanced seafaring, research methods, and key advances in chemistry.

At a time when the Moors built 600 public baths and the rulers lived in sumptuous palaces, the monarchs of Germany, France, and England convinced their subjects that cleanliness was a sin and European kings dwelt in big barns, with no windows and no chimneys, often with only a hole in the roof for the exit of smoke.

In the 10th century, Cordoba was not just the capital of Moorish Spain but also the most important  and modern city in Europe. Cordoba boasted a population of half a million and had street lighting, fifty hospitals with running water, five hundred mosques and seventy libraries, one of which held over 500,000 books.

All of these achievements occurred at a time when London had a predominantly illiterate population of around 20,000 and had largely forgotten the technical advances of the Romans some six hundred years before. Street lamps and paved streets did not appear in London or Paris until hundreds of years later.

The Catholic Church forbade money lending which severely hampered any efforts at economic progress. Medieval Christian Europe was a miserable lot, which was riffe with squalor, barbarism, illiteracy, and mysticism.

In Europe’s great Age of Exploration, Spain and Portugal were the leaders in global seafaring. It was the Moorish advances in navigational technology such as the astrolabe and sextant, as well as their improvements in cartography and shipbuilding, that paved the way for the Age of Exploration. Thus, the era of Western global dominance of the past half-millennium originated from the African Moorish sailors of the Iberian Peninsula during the 1300s.

Long before Spanish Monarchs commissioned Columbus’ search for land to the West, African Muslims, amongst others, had long since established significant contact with the Americas and left a lasting impression on Native culture.

One can only wonder how Columbus could have discovered America when a highly civilised and sophisticated people were watching him arrive from America’s shores?

An overwhelming body of new evidence is emerging which proves that Africans had frequently sailed across the Atlantic to the Americas, many years before Columbus and indeed before Christ. Dr. Barry Fell of Harvard University highlights an array of evidence of Muslims in America before Columbus from sculptures, oral traditions, coins, eye-witness reports, ancient artifacts, Arabic documents and inscriptions.

The strongest evidence of African presence in America before Columbus comes from the pen of Columbus himself. In 1920, a renowned American historian and linguist, Leo Weiner of Harvard University, in his book, Africa and the Discovery of America, explained how Columbus noted in his journal that Native Americans had confirmed that,

“black skinned people had come from the south-east in boats, trading in gold-tipped spears.”

Muslim Spain not only collected and perpetuated the intellectual advances of Ancient Egypt, Greece and Roman civilisation, it also expanded on that civilisation and made its own vital contributions in fields ranging from astronomy, pharmacology, maritime navigation, architecture and law.

The centuries old impression given by some Western scholars that the African continent made little or no contributions to civilization, and that its people are naturally primitive has, unfortunately, became the basis of racial prejudice, slavery, colonialism and the ongoing economic oppression of Africa. If Africans re-write their true history, they will reveal a glory that they will inevitably seek to recapture. After all, the greatest threat towards Africa having a glorious future is her people’s ignorance of Africa’s glorious past.

Garikai Chengu is a scholar at Harvard University. Contact him on [email protected].

President Trump just ordered an US attack of at least 59 Tomahawk missiles from US warships in the Mediterranean Sea on Syria’s al-Shayrat airbase near Homs.

Mr. Talal Barazi, governor of Homs province, reports several deaths but at this time does not offer further details. This Tomahawk assault was supposedly in response to Bachar al-Assad’s alleged nerve gas attack on 4 April, targeting the civilian population in Idlib Province that killed in excess of 60 people, among them many children.

It reeks all over of False Flag – Gladio 2 – level ‘world’. But nobody smells it, nobody wants to see it, nobody wants to hear it – and especially, nobody wants to talk about it. The truth cannot be spoken. The attack has to be launched immediately, before any investigation could reveal the truth. That’s the way it’s always been. Kill the witnesses. That’s what Washington and its Zionist masters know best.

The Pentagon says Moscow was informed about the attack. There was no reaction from the Russian Government yet.

Earlier Mr. Putin stated that

“it was unacceptable to bring accusations against anyone until a thorough and impartial international investigation was conducted.”

Philip Giraldi, former CIA officer and Director of the Council for the National Interest, says that “military and intelligence personnel,” “intimately familiar” with the intelligence, say that the narrative that Assad or Russia did it is a “sham”. 

This is a classical case of a false flag, instigated by the CIA and carried out by Saudi-Turkish planes to blame Assad. Western presstitute media propagated and hammered into westerners indoctrinated brains the same lie as in 2013, when the East Ghouta Chemical attacks were killing children to justify US “Humanitarian” Military intervention. Then as today, the Washington assault was to follow quickly before the lie could be discovered, but Mr. Putin intervened by warning Washington not to attack – or else – and insisting on an investigation. Russian naval facility in Tartus and airbase in Khmeimim, Syria, were ready to counter a US attack.

Later it was proven beyond any doubt that the attack did not come from Syria’s army, nor was it ordered by Mr. Assad, that it was indeed, once more, a false flag carried out by the Syrian opposition, the so-called rebels, but in truth the western paid terrorists, with the purpose to blame Mr. Assad and to justify the ‘regime change’ – planned since 2009, since well before the CIA instigated start of the 2011 ‘civil war’.

(http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-ghouta-chemical-attacks-us-backed-false-flag-killing-children-to-justify-a-humanitarian-military-intervention/5351363 ).

It is depressing to see how the world – the corrupted-to-the-bone western world – swallows these lies and actually openly calls for war against Syria, for the removal of Mr. Assad, Syria’s only legitimate and sovereign President, elected by the Syrians and still enjoying more than 80% support of the people. Renown socialists’, so-called peace seekers’ eyes are blurred by the western corporate lie-machine. It is sad to see. They believe the western criminal media. It is too hard even for them to admit to themselves that they have been duped, perhaps all their lives, and that they must now seek out and see reality. They can’t. But instead to look inside themselves – to ask themselves, what interest would Mr. Assad have to kill his own people, the children of his nation, the future of Syria – and God help Syria to have a future again – these shabby ‘progressives’ are too noble to admit to reality – and instead they join the blinded and call for ‘regime change’. That’s exactly what Washington – and the Zionist murderers behind that foul inner-beltway monument of assassins, called the White House, want.

We are living a higher level of ‘Operation Gladio’ again – where evil reigns, where the most horrendous of what was once called human beings are in power, killing mercilessly innocent people for their BIG PURPOSE, for world hegemony. This Judo-Christian ‘civilization’ (sic-sic) has a history of more than 1000 years of Crusade killings, followed by colonial killing and raping and exploitation of countries and their people around the globe, from Asia to Africa to Latin America – and there is no end. Our western ‘culture’ is sold to Lucifer and his banking clan – continuing killing for greed and power.

People wake up! – If you don’t, you may be next.

We all have this little spark left somewhere in our brains – that tells you that something is not right – that those who call the shots are liars, that the world’s justice is not with evil – that justice is seeking peace not subjugation, power and material gains, but solidarity and harmony among us, brothers and sisters of the human kind.

But also, be aware that this monstrous beast knows no scruples. It has one goal – Full Spectrum Dominance – and will not let go, under no circumstances, until this goal is fully achieved or itself, the monster, the exceptional nation, is subjugated and disabled.

People stand up and become disabler of the empire!

Syria is a mere square on this murderous chess board, as was Yugoslavia, Libya, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, and many more to come. The purpose is not ‘winning a war’ – that would be too simple. The purpose is creating and leaving behind chaos, eternal chaos. In the case of Syria a balkanization of the country, what Clinton did to Yugoslavia. The old ‘divide to conquer’ – it still works after hundreds of years. People are still blinded to these oldest and most rudimentary of war strategies. They still fall for it; don’t notice; swallow the lies.

In Syria, the stakes are high. In addition to the insane profits of the war and weapons industry – there is the little talked about Qatar-Turkey-Syria pipeline that was to bring oil and gas from the Gulf to Europe to demolish the Russian gas market in Europe – and to make trillions for US petro-giants; a pipeline Mr. Assad rejected in 2009. Instead he approved and promoted the Iran pipeline through Syria to Europe. Iranian hydrocarbons would complement, rather than compete with, gas and oil from Russia for Europe. That’s when Obama decided that Bachar al-Assad had to go. It also fitted the bigger picture – a balkanized Middle East, with steady conflicts fueling the war industry – but eventually leading to a Greater Israel, stretching from the Euphrates to the Nile, absorbing, parts of Saudi Arabi, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt.  

“It’s barbarism. I see it coming masqueraded under lawless alliances and predetermined enslavements. It may not be about Hitler’s furnaces, but about the methodical and quasi-scientific subjugation of Man. His absolute humiliation. His disgrace.” – Odysseas Elytis, Greek poet, in a press conference on the occasion of receiving the Nobel Prize (1979).

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.

Apparently, having forgotten his campaign promises, Donald Trump has recently toughened his foreign policy, especially in Syria, where he went much further than his predecessor, Barack Obama. Instead of re-establishing relationships with all sides of the Syrian conflict to fight against terrorism, he managed to make the situation in Syria even worse.

On April 7, destroyers USS Porter (DDG-78) and USS Ross launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at al-Shayrat military airfield in Syria’s Homs province from the Eastern Mediterranean. The US strikes particularly targeted the main landing strip, aircraft and fuel stations.

According to Reuters, at a two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump confirmed that he had ordered a targeted military strike on the Syrian airfield. He claimed that the strike came as a “response” to the suspected chemical attack in Idlib. In addition, the U.S. President called on all “civilized nations” to join efforts in seeking “to end slaughter and bloodshed” in Syria.

However, not everyone has supported this barbarous attack carried out by the U.S. Navy. It should be mentioned that the order of US President has been seriously criticized.

Marine Le Pen, French National Front (FN) political party leader and a candidate for French 2017 presidential election, has savaged Trump over the strikes that resulted in civilian and military casualties. According to Le Pen,

“it was necessary to wait for the results of an independent international investigation of the suspected chemical attack in Syria’s Khan Sheikhun before carrying out a strike like this.”

The Iranian Foreign Ministry has also criticized Washington. Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Bahram Ghasemi, claimed that Tehran was against any unilateral action in Syria.

Moreover, Trump’s order wasn’t supported even inside the United States. According to CNN, a former U.S. State Department spokeswoman, Jennifer Psaki, stated that Syria is a sovereign state and stressed that the U.S. military involvement could be ‘a slippery slope’. Psaki added that Trump had acted without consulting Congress, without clear legal authority and without any coordinated military action by the U.S. partners and allies. She has also criticized Trump for not announcing his plans. According to Psaki, the American people deserved to know what they were signing up for.

On Thursday, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) ripped the Trump administration’s decision to launch an attack on the Syrian airfield. She said that the escalation would empower the terrorists and would likely result in more dead civilians and more refugees.

Her concerns are well-justified. According to Heavy, right after the U.S. massive strikes, ISIS terrorists launched an attack on the positions of the Syrian Army targeting several checkpoints, which were located in a strategic town of Al Furqlus.

Homs Governor Talal Barazi has also confirmed that the U.S. missile strike on the airbase near the Syrian city of Homs killed six people and wounded seven. According to Barazi, the U.S. missiles also fell on a village near the airfield.

So, what is the actual goal of Trump policy in Syria? Contrary to numerous statements, it is most likely that Washington hasn’t rejected the idea of ousting the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power and intends to return to the ‘great game’ in Syria. It is the only way to explain that Trump hasn’t fulfilled any of his promises after having won the elections.

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

“Fool me once, shame on you; but fool me twice, shame on me.” Ancient proverb, (sometimes attributed to an Italian, Russian or Chinese proverb)

 “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius, and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.” Ernst F. Schumacher (1911-1977) (in ‘Small is Beautiful’, an essay, in The Radical Humanist, Aug. 1973, p. 22)

 “The powers-that-be understand that to create the appropriate atmosphere for war, it’s necessary to create within the general populace a hatred, fear or mistrust of others regardless of whether those others belong to a certain group of people or to a religion or a nation.” James Morcan (1978- ) (in ‘The Orphan Conspiracies: 29 Conspiracy Theories from The Orphan Trilogy’, 2014).

 “Almost all wars begin with false flag operations.” Larry Chin, (in ‘False Flagging the World towards War. The CIA Weaponizes Hollywood’, Global Research, Dec. 27, 2014)

Another terrible war crime against Syrian civilians has taken place in Syria, on top of multiple war crimes committed in that country torn apart by six years of a civil war marked by foreign interventions. On Tuesday, April 4, 2017, a chemical attack killed more than 70 people, including women and children. No neutral official investigation has yet taken place, but two versions of events have surfaced.

The first version, advanced by the American Trump administration and other Western governments, and seemingly the only version retained by most Western media, points to a bombing by the Syrian government at Khan Cheikhoun, in the Idlib province, as the culprit. The fact that a Syrian plane was seemingly involved would support this version. However, what benefit would the Assad regime gain from such a crime is less than obvious.

The second version, advanced by the Russian Putin government and by other analysts is that a bomb launched by a Syrian plane would have accidentally hit a depot of chemical weapons in the rebel-held territory and caused the carnage. Islamist rebels would have exploited the accident to stage a very effective mediated coup against the Assad regime. In the absence of conclusive physical evidence, the ‘Cui Bono’ argument (‘who benefits’) could be used to support that version.

It is good to recall that a similar war crime, among many others, took place at Ghouta, in the Damascus suburb, on August 31, 2013. In that case, it was strongly suspected that the horrific chemical attacks, which killed hundreds of people, including many children, was likely a criminal ‘false flag operation’, staged by Al Qaeda rebels anxious to provoke U.S. President Barack Obama to intervene militarily on their side in the Syrian conflict. A ‘false flag operation’ is defined as “a horrific, staged event, — blamed on a political enemy — and used as pretext to start a war or to enact draconian laws in the name of national security.”

International law is being more and more discarded in favor of international anarchy

It is a sad fact that in totalitarian states, but also in our so-called democracies, it seems that wars of aggression are now based and sold with official lies and fraudulent fabrications in order to fool the people. Warmongers in government know that people do not like wars, especially illegal wars of aggression, against countries that have not attacked them. That is why their first choice is to attempt to drag the people along with lies and false pretexts for war, and by dehumanizing any potential enemy through crude propaganda.

Historically, there have been numerous instances when a ‘false flag operation’ was used to justify a “humanitarian” military intervention against a country or a regime. (Let us also remember that under the United Nations Charter, which is the foundation of international law, no country has a right to attack another one, no matter the pretext used, except in self-defense.)

Suffice here to recall two famous cases.

Case No. 1
Indeed, there are many historical precedents. Of course, the most recent one is George W. Bush administration’s use of a pretext to launch a so-called “pre-emptive” war of aggression against Iraq, pretending that there were chemical “weapons of mass destruction” in that country. It asserted that such WMDs posed a threat to neighboring countries and to the U.S. — It turned out that not only this act of international military aggression was illegal, but also that it was a lie, a pure fabrication, since no such weapons were discovered after the U.S.-led military invasion of Iraq.

Case No. 2
On February 15, 1898, the battleship USS Maine, on a friendly visit to Cuba, caught fire and sank in the Havana Harbor, seemingly because of an internal explosion of one of its torpedoes aboard. A purely American-run investigation concluded, however, that the explosion was not a terrible internal accident, but was caused externally by a naval mine in the harbor.

Republican President William McKinley (1843-1901), pushed by influential New York newspapers, (the Hearst and Pulitzer newspapers), accused the colonial government of Spain, in Cuba, of being responsible for the explosion and used that pretext to issue an ultimatum to Spain. The U.S Congress declared war against Spain on April 20, 1898. — That was the beginning of the Spanish-American War, which ended up with the U.S. occupying Cuba, Porto Rico, the Island of Guam and the Philippines.

Donald Trump’s new conversion to war

Politicians in disfavor can also find in foreign wars a way to improve their domestic political status. Indeed, if circumstances permit, what does an ambitious politician do, when facing a falling popularity at home? Chances are that he may be tempted to find a pretext to start a war, any war, and without any regard to international law.

It might seem bizarre that President Donald Trump has completely reversed his position regarding U.S. involvement in the Syrian conflict. But he is languishing in the polls, and even the Republican-controlled Congress is distancing itself from the White House. What better way, especially in the United States where wars abroad are a rallying point, to move the attention from domestic affairs to foreign affairs?

Whatever the motive behind the move, President Trump’s hasty decision to resort to an act of war in bombing the country of Syria, on Friday morning, April 7, has been met with hurrahs by many members of Congress. The American people may be more divided on the issue, but it can reasonably be expected that in the coming weeks Trump’s popularity, presently around 35 percent, will rise under the general approval that he will surely receive from the concentrated American media. He also is likely to receive a more positive collaboration from Congress for his more controversial domestic agenda.

It may be sad to say, but in the United States, the quickest road to popularity for a politician in difficulty, at least initially, is to launch a war abroad. For example, President George W. Bush’s popularity went from around 50 percent to more than 90 percent when he initiated his war against Iraq in 2002-2003. At the end of his second term, however, his approval rating had fallen below 30 percent. [For a description of the period, see my book The New American Empire, 2004.]

Conclusion

The unfolding of events in the Middle East would seem to reinforce my personal assessment of last February that an unpredictable President Donald Trump risks becoming “a threat to American Democracy and an agent of chaos in the world”, and even more so now that Congressional Democrats seem ready to jump on his war bandwagon (as they did with President George W. Bush).

Economist Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is the author of the book “The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles”, and of “The New American Empire”.

Please visit Dr. Tremblay’s site:

http://www.thenewamericanempire.com.

Please visit his multi-language international blog at:

http://www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.htm.