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Sinclair Broadcast Group’s Stephen Loiaconi (WJLA, 10/13/16) quoted FAIR’s Jim Naureckas on the legitimacy of examining Donald Trump’s treatment of women as a campaign issue:

To a degree, Trump brought the scrutiny he now faces on himself by making Bill Clinton’s infidelity and unproven claims of assault against him part of the campaign, according to Jim Naureckas of Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, a liberal media watchdog group.

“Trump himself made it clear that he thought that Hillary Clinton’s handling of charges of sexual wrongdoing against her husband in the 1990s should be a key, even decisive issue,” Naureckas said.

Later in the article, Naureckas compared the handling of the abuse charges to the coverage of the Clinton campaign emails released by WikiLeaks:

Naureckas said the emails are a legitimate story, and one that provides unique insight into a presidential campaign, but he warned against trying to equate it with the allegations against Trump.

“One should not give readers the impression that a candidate revealed to have crafted public statements for political effect is the same sort of thing as a candidate being accused of sexual assault,” he said.

This is a story about the last few weeks in the life of a man who ended up in Guantanamo where the physical torture was bad enough, and the emotional torture was worse. He was put through the psychological equivalent of a wood chipper.

As they chipped away at his spirit, he chipped away at his own body, with clumsy suicide attempts that only succeeded in creating scars.  One day, he really did kill himself – or so it would seem.

But what really happened to the 31-year-old Yemeni, Mohammed Al Hanashi? And why would anyone question the official version of what happened to him?

In his book — Cover-up at Guantánamo: The NCIS Investigation into the “Suicides” of Mohammed Al Hanashi and Abdul Rahman Al Amri — Dr. Jeffrey Kaye reveals what he found after relentless research. Clear evidence of a cover-up: missing, suppressed material, contradictory testimony, and more. As he wrote in his Preface,

“The possible criminality and compromised nature of the NCIS investigations is especially highlighted in the case of Al Hanashi, where NCIS was forced in the middle of its death query to open a subordinate investigation – reported for the first time here – into why the Guantanamo computerized detainee database system was ordered turned off as soon as Al Hanashi’s body was discovered. Even more suspicious, the order to shut off computer entries apparently was given by an unidentified NCIS agent him or herself!”

What Dr. Kaye had to work with was circumstantial evidence — which is defined as “evidence that proves a fact or event by inference.” This is the most difficult kind of material to work with, for it demands logic, perception, and imagination.

WhoWhatWhy Introduction written by Milicent Cranor

Excerpt from 

Cover-up at Guantánamo: The NCIS Investigation into the “Suicides” of Mohammed Al Hanashi and Abdul Rahman Al Amri,

by Jeffrey Kaye

(Publisher: Jeffrey S. Kaye, PhD, September, 2016).

Chapter 4, “The only solution is death”: Al Hanashi’s Final Days.  

On April 1, 2009, 31-year-old Mohammed Al Hanashi sat in his hospital cell at Guantánamo writing what reads like his last will and testament. The tiny room is nearly all white. There is a sink, a toilet, and a steel door with a slot for food and medications. A light shone at all times, day and night.

Probably unknown to Al Hanashi, in a grotesque coincidence, a USO tour of Guantánamo with both the 2008 winners of the Miss USA and Miss Universe contests had just visited the camp. Dayana Mendoza, the Miss Universe winner from Venezuela, caused some controversy with a blog piece about her visit.

“We visited the Detainees camps and we saw the jails, where they shower, how the [sic] recreate themselves with movies, classes of art, books. It was very interesting,” Ms. Mendoza wrote.

“The water in Guantánamo Bay is soooo beautiful! It was unbelievable, we were able to enjoy it for at least an hour. We went to the glass beach, and realized the name of it comes from the little pieces of broken glass from hundred of years ago. It is pretty to see all the colors shining with the sun….

“I didn’t want to leave, it was such a relaxing place, so calm and beautiful.”

How impossibly distant was the experience of detainee number 078.

“In the name of Allah the merciful the compassionate!” Al Hanashi wrote in Arabic. He had been imprisoned at that point for over seven years. Some may think, well, there are literally thousands of prisoners in US prisons who have been imprisoned as long and longer, who have spent years in isolation. Such prisoners often have been seriously damaged by their experience, but the Guantánamo experience took matters even farther.

The detainee had not been charged with any crime. He had not met with any attorney. The length of his imprisonment remained unknown and indeterminate. He was thousands of miles from home, held by a foreign power, manipulated in a regime that fancied itself a “battle lab in the war on terror.”

The detainee, Yemeni prisoner Mohammad Ahmed Abdullah Saleh Al Hanashi, was one of hundreds still imprisoned at the US Department of Defense “strategic interrogation” prison site at Guantánamo.

He’d been on hunger strike and fed via tube for some time (we don’t know if he was forcibly fed or not, but another detainee has written that he was). Now he pondered his death, probably by suicide. Or perhaps he thought he would die from the hunger strike, or as a victim of torture.

Al Hanashi pondered the “hardness” of life at Guantánamo. “Do not be sad for my death O family!” he wrote. “Allah almighty said ‘every soul will taste death.’”

“Life is no good without honor and a poet put it: ‘I have sworn either to live with honor and dignity or you may taste my bones.’”

From the document, it appears Al Hanashi had considered suicide deeply, and the deprivation of prison life at Guantanámo proved too much for him. “Anyway O family, I am well aware of my situation and of my circumstances,” he wrote. “I have not come to this without having been convinced by legal scholars.

“One has no blessing in life if one is deprived from certain joys.”

The cell of a non-compliant prisoner at Camp Delta, Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Photo credit: US Department of Defense

According to his 2008 JTF-GTMO detainee assessment (one of hundreds released by Wikileaks), Al Hanashi was born in February 1978. He grew up in Yemen and graduated secondary school in 1995 or 1996. “After graduation… [he] worked for his father on the family farm where they raised livestock and grew watermelons, tomatoes, corn and other crops,” though the detainee assessment said he told a Yemeni delegation to Guantánamo that he used to be in the military.

In general, intelligence officials at Guantánamo thought Al Hanashi minimized his role fighting in forces associated with Al Qaeda. As a result, they judged him as “High risk,” a threat to the US and its interests and allies, as well as “A High threat from a detention perspective.” (They would state the same thing about Al Amri.)

According to Guantánamo expert Andy Worthington,

“[Al Hanashi] was one of around 50 prisoners at Guantánamo who had survived a massacre at Qala-i-Janghi, a fort in northern Afghanistan, at the end of November 2001, when, after the surrender of the city of Kunduz, several hundred foreign fighters surrendered to General Rashid Dostum, one of the leaders of the Northern Alliance, in the mistaken belief that they would be allowed to return home. Instead, they were imprisoned in Qala-i-Janghi, a nineteenth century mud fort in Mazar-e-Sharif, and when some of the men started an uprising against their captors, which led to the death of a CIA operative, US Special Forces, working with the Northern Alliance and British Special Forces, called in bombing raids to suppress the uprising, leading to hundreds of deaths. The survivors — who, for the most part, had not taken part in the fighting — took shelter in the basement of the fort, where they endured further bombing, and they emerged only after many more had died when the basement was set on fire and then flooded. “

This was the same prison revolt and subsequent massacre by US, British and Northern Alliance forces where the so-called “American Taliban,” John Walker Lindh, was also captured and later tortured by US operatives.

According to his Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) record, Al Hanashi went to Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban in early 2001. He was 23 years old.

Al Hanashi told Guantánamo officials he never heard about Al Qaeda until he read media reports while on the front lines in Afghanistan. He explained that he fought against the Northern Alliance, but said he never killed anybody.

After surviving Qala-i-Janghi, he was shipped off to Shabraghan Prison, where he spent the next four weeks or so recuperating in the prison hospital. Also in the hospital with Al Hanashi were victims of a transfer of Northern Alliance prisoners from Kunduz, the survivors of a purported war crime by Dostum’s forces (possibly with the knowledge or connivance of US Special Forces), as thousands of prisoners were “stuffed into closed metal shipping containers and given no food or water; many suffocated while being trucked to the prison. Other prisoners were killed when guards shot into the containers,” according to a New York Times story.

Did al Hanashi talk with survivors of the Dostum mass killings? Did he hear tales of US Special Operations soldiers or officers involved? According to his JTF-GTMO detainee assessment, an area of “possible exploitation” in his ongoing incarceration was the “Uprising at Mazar-e-Sharif and detainee’s reported leadership” there. The claims about “leadership” came from the interrogation of John Walker Lindh, who supposedly told interrogators that Al Hanashi had helped negotiate the surrender of prisoners at Qala-i-Janghi.

Appended to a section of the assessment is an “Analyst Note,” which stated, “If detainee was truly in a situation to negotiate for others, he may have been in a more significant leadership position than reported.”

The question of the level of leadership Al Hanashi exerted was brought up both by outside observers (like the former detainee Binyam Mohamed) and, as noted in the released NCIS interviews, by Guantánamo guard and medical personnel. In addition, as we have seen, when Guantánamo officials decided to change the policies for psychiatrically hospitalized detainees, bringing them into alignment with rules for the rest of the camp, top Guantánamo officials came to the Behavioral Health Unit to discuss the situation with Al Hanashi.

Guantanamo Bay prisoners.
Photo credit: Joint Task Force Guantanamo / Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0)

Some of the statements made about Al Hanashi can be taken with a grain of salt. Former Guantánamo inmate, Binyam Mohamed, who knew Al Hanashi, has said he didn’t believe the 31-year-old Yemeni force-fed hunger striker committed suicide. He told the journalist Naomi Wolf that reports that Al Hanashi was “an upbeat person with no mental problems and would never have considered suicide.” The documentary record from Guantánamo doesn’t support that conclusion.

According to a July 30, 2009 news report, “Mohamed refuses to believe that Saleh committed suicide and the US military refuses to say how he allegedly took his life. ‘He was patient and encouraged others to be the same,’ Binyam said.”

Mohamed also had a different tale about how Al Hanashi came to be in the Behavioral Health Unit. He told reporters, “I was asked if I wanted to represent the prisoners on camp issues such as hunger strikes and other contentious issues. I declined, as did most. But poor Wadhah [Al Hanashi] agreed, wanting to help his brothers the best he could. Little did he realize that if they didn’t get their way he would be the one sacrificed.”

Regardless of how accurate Binyam Mohamed’s narrative of events was, he certainly understood the prison’s environmental pressures, and he has held the US military accountable for Al Hanashi’s death, as suicide was so improbable under the conditions of detainee confinement. Mohamed pointed out that “Everything that someone could use to hurt himself has been removed from the cell, and a guard watches each prisoner 24 hours a day, in person and on videotape. In light of this, I am amazed that the US government has the audacity to describe Wadhah’s death categorically as an ‘apparent suicide.’”

Another odd coincidence surrounding Al Hanashi’s death concerns the transfer of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a “high-value” detainee, who has been at Guantánamo since September 2006, to a New York federal court, only a week after Al Hanashi was found not breathing in Guantánamo’s psych ward. Ghailani was facing charges concerning his alleged role in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.

The link between Ghailani and Al Hanashi is significant for at least one reason: According to Andy Worthington, Ghailani, who was tortured in the CIA’s black site prisons, fingered Al Hanashi in 2005 as having been at “the al-Farouq camp [the main training camp for Arabs, associated in the years before 9/11 with Osama bin Laden] in 1998-99 prior to moving on to the front lines in Kabul.”

But according to Al Hanashi and all other sources, Al Hanashi came to Afghanistan only in early 2001. Hence, his possible testimony at a trial in New York City, establishing that Ghailani’s admissions were false, and likely coerced by torture, may have been a hindrance to a government bent on convicting the supposed bomber. Interestingly, as Worthington points out, the other four embassy bombers were not kept in CIA black prisons or tortured, but convicted in a US court for the bombings in May 2001.

(Ghailani himself was acquitted of all but one of 280 counts in the embassy bombings, as the courts refused to admit a witness whose identification came via torture of Ghailani while he was held prisoner in a secret CIA prison. Even so, he was sentenced to life in prison for one count of conspiracy to destroy government buildings and property. Today, he is imprisoned at the ADX Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.)

Al Hanashi’s death, coming only weeks before he was, after seven long years imprisonment, to meet finally with an attorney, brings to mind the untimely death of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, also at first reported as a suicide, in a prison cell in Libya in May 2009, only weeks before Al Hanashi died. Al-Libi, too, was supposed to meet soon with people from the outside, according to a report from Newsweek.

Al-Libi was infamously the source of tortured information that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was gathering weapons of mass destruction, information that Al-Libi later recanted. According to Human Rights Watch, some of their workers met Al-Libi in his prison cell on April 27, 2009, “during a research mission to Libya.” Al-Libi “refused to be interviewed, and would say nothing more than: ‘Where were you when I was being tortured in American jails”?

Jeffrey Kaye, author of Cover-up at Guantanamo: The NCIS Investigation into the “Suicides” of Mohammed Al Hanashi and Abdul Rahman Al Amri.
Photo credit: Jeffrey Kaye (Twitter) and Jeffrey S. Kaye, Ph.D publisher

As is the case with Al-Libi, the Al Hanashi death has a strange feel to it.

On June 1, 2009, three months after writing out his last testament, Al Hanashi was found seemingly lifeless in his cell. He was taken to the prison hospital, where he was pronounced dead less than an hour later by Dr. Enterprise, a prison physician. (Could that be his actual name? Medical officers routinely used pseudonyms at Guantánamo.) Military authorities said Al Hanashi had committed suicide by self-strangulation.

According to NCIS documents, Al Hanashi repeatedly told the Chief of Guantánamo’s Behavioral Health Unit (BHU) that he felt he was being tortured. They argued about it even on the last day of the detainee’s life.

Later that day, only a little over 2 months after writing what NCIS investigators labeled Al Hanashi’s “last will and testament,” Al Hanashi wrote what appeared to be a suicide note, but he was too depressed and disheartened to even finish it. Reportedly in silence and quickly, he strangled himself to death with a piece of elastic supposedly taken from his underwear.

Al Hanashi was haunted by the deaths of three prisoners, supposedly by suicide, on June 10, 2006. While there is evidence that the government’s story about those suicides has real holes — as already noted, former Guantánamo guard, Joe Hickman, wrote a book exposing the suppression of and tampering with evidence by the investigating agency — Al Hanashi told medical personnel in the Behavioral Health Unit at Guantánamo that he was supposed to die with the other three detainees on that day, too.

According to a statement given by the Senior Medical Officer, JTF GTMO, she had heard “at various JTF meetings” that Al Hanashi “was on a directed suicide list authored by [redacted].” But Al Hanashi was described as seeking refuge in the detainee mental hospital as a way to escape other detainees “who might have been pressuring him to commit suicide.”

No evidence of such a suicide list, or of pressures by other detainees on Al Hanashi to kill himself was included in the FOIA release I received in May 2015 on NCIS investigation into his death.

I had made the original FOIA request in January 2012. But little did I know at the time — which was two-and-a-half years after Al Hanashi died — that, as I filed my FOIA request, the NCIS investigation was still underway. Nor did I have any idea the investigation ultimately would take three years to complete.

Reading the documents that were finally released, it did not seem NCIS personnel felt much urgency about closing the case. At times, months went by and no investigative activity took place.

When the investigation was finally closed on June 13, 2012, NCIS had to admit in documented form that key portions of the evidence bearing on the chronology of events surrounding Al Hanashi’s death had gone missing.

As already described, someone — allegedly an investigator from NCIS itself — told Guantánamo personnel to stop entering information on Al Hanashi into a computer database, once his body was discovered. Subsequently, and we don’t know exactly when, the logs for the database the day Al Hanashi died and the following day disappeared entirely.

What happened during Al Hanashi’s final weeks? How did the detainee who had made numerous suicide attempts in the previous months leading up to his death, finally come to take his life? Did he, in fact, kill himself?

It is worth taking an in-depth, closer look at his death, including actions taken in the days leading up to his death by doctors, nurses and guards. But this remains a provisional narrative, as the full story is still pointedly unknown, blocked on one hand by government censorship and the failure to release all documentation. On the other hand, we do not have access to the scene of his death. We do not have access to the witnesses. They cannot be cross-examined. The key witness, Al Hanashi himself, is dead.

Honorbound sign at Joint Task Force Guantanamo’s Camp Delta.
Photo credit: US Army / Flickr

With all the attention of the world upon Guantánamo, the actual events inside the Cuba-based US prison are shrouded in deep mystery, sealed by classification and censorship. Hence the death of one man is barely known, much less remembered, and what happened to him even less known.

For the first time in this book, the circumstances around his death are open to public scrutiny. The record, even as it remains censored in part, shows that perceived violations of trust by doctors, nurses and mental health personnel contributed, at the very least, to Al Hanashi’s decision to take his life. It is possible some person or persons – medical personnel or guards – facilitated his death, or even murdered Al Hanashi. We can only speculate.

“Everything seemed normal”

Al Hanashi had been suffering from depression and suicidal thoughts for some time. A long-time hunger striker, Al Hanashi’s weight had fluctuated dramatically over the years, as detailed above. As a reminder, according to government records, on July 22, 2006 his weight dropped under 80 pounds. Only months before he had weighed just over 140. His weight had dropped by over 60 pounds in just four months.

According to his autopsy report, Al Hanashi had gone on hunger strike again in January 2009. During his last hunger strike, Al Hanashi was fed via tube. At his death, he weighed 120 lbs.

A Medical Record Review by NCIS investigators stated he entered the BHU on Jan. 10 for “making suicidal ideations.” His autopsy report also noted that Al Hanashi had made five suicide attempts in the month before he died.

The NCIS Medical Record Review contradicted that account, stating it was three attempts, all in the presence of prison personnel. By any account, Al Hanashi was deeply depressed and suicidal. Yet despite his history of recent suicide attempts, on the night he supposedly killed himself, Al Hanashi did not appear to be on suicide watch.

The guards reported little of consequence that evening. There were nine guards and a Watch Commander on duty that night, and seven detainees present on the BHU. One guard told NCIS investigators, “The BHU houses detainees that have expressed the desire to harm themselves.”

The procedure on the unit was to have two guards at a time monitor the seven detainees. One African-American guard with the Naval Expeditionary Guard Battalion (NEGB) described the scene:

“Our duties were to look inside each cell and check on the welfare of the detainees. We look inside the cell windows to ensure the detainees are not in possession of contraband or attempting to do harm to themselves. We usually spend approximately thirty seconds to one minute looking inside of each cell window.”

For whatever reason, this guard changed his statement later to reflect the fact that guards only spent “approximately thirty few seconds to one minute” watching the prisoner. The words “thirty” and “to one minute” were crossed out, though not enough that one couldn’t see what was originally written.

“Everything seemed normal,” the Navy guard stated. “I did not notice anything out of the ordinary.”

Al Hanashi was in cell two and “seemed in good spirits.” He had seen Al Hanashi upset in his cell before, pacing, or “praying loudly.” He was not writing anything, the guard said, “or doing anything out of his normal pattern.”

Another guard, who ended his roving tier patrol an hour before Al Hanashi died, told NCIS he too experienced the night as “normal.” On the other hand, he did see Al Hanashi writing something for most of the time he was on his shift.

In addition, Al Hanashi did not seem “in good spirits” to this guard, but rather seemed “down.” Al Hanashi was “a little more quiet than normal.” Al Hanashi reportedly was “usually talkative.” Nearly a full page of this guard’s statement is still redacted and “under classification review” by a Command other than NCIS.

An African-American Navy Airman assigned to the BHU Response Team told NCIS about earlier contact with Al Hanashi.

It was mid-May, only a few weeks before Al Hanashi’s death. He was told before his shift in mid-May 2009 that Al Hanashi had made a suicide attempt earlier that day. He’d rammed his head into a fence, and then tried to hang himself with his t-shirt.

The NCIS review of medical records dates the attempt to May 13, and expanded on the story. Al Hanashi reportedly “slammed his head on an exposed bolt located on a fence in the BHU recreational area.” The same day, he “attempted to strangle himself with a shirt.”

Five days before the May 13 attempt, Al Hanashi had also “tore off pieces of his shirt and attempted to strangle himself in the recreation yard.”

The guard told NCIS what he saw on his shift later that day after the suicidal behaviors, “Due to his suicide attempts, [redacted, but certainly 078, i.e., Al Hanashi] was under constant monitoring by a guard and he was placed in a green self harm suit. During the shift, [redacted, again, certainly 078] had some type of a Code Yellow (urgent medical issue) that required the response team to enter his cell and move him to the padded restraint chair adjacent to the tier.”

The medical issue isn’t known, but the guard thought, “[It] didn’t seem to be serious.” But another guard, in a different context, explained that Code Yellow means a detainee is “unresponsive.”

Another guard, who was on tier duty on the Duty Section One (Nights) shift the day Al Hanashi died, also described his duties. “Our job on the tier is to check every detainee every three minutes,” he told NCIS investigators. A check was only deemed satisfactory if they saw “breathing or some type of movement on each detainee.”

That night, this guard heard Al Hanashi talking from his cell with other prisoners on the BHU. This was not unusual, but as the conversations were in Arabic, he didn’t know what was said. There was nothing else unusual, either. Al Hanashi “seemed to be acting normal.”

“Is he breathing?”

Later that night, around 9:45 pm, Al Hanashi asked the guard to get him the nurse on duty. He called a corpsman, who then called the nurse. The guard observed the nurse talk with Al Hanashi for 5 or 10 minutes. She left and came back shortly with a sleeping pill (though the guard didn’t know what kind of pill it was at the time, he said). The guard watched him take it, swallowing it with water.

This guard heard Hanashi continue to talk to someone. The identity of the person he was speaking with is redacted in the documents, but from internal evidence, it seems to have been the nurse. The last reported contact with Al Hanashi, according to the autopsy narrative, was 10-15 minutes after Al Hanashi spoke to the nurse who gave him the pill. “… [H]e asked the guard to close the ‘bean hole cover,’ a sign that he was ready to go to sleep.”

Three minutes after his last check, “at approximately 2200,” he looked inside the cell and “did not see any movement or breathing.” Al Hanashi was described as lying “in the fetal position on the floor with the top of his head against the door and his feet facing the rear of his cell.” A green blanket covered his body up to his eyes. His hair, hands and feet were sticking out.

“I am not involved in [redacted, likely “078’s”] death,” the guard told NCIS, somewhat defensively it seems.

Yet another guard, a Caucasian male with NEGB, was coming on duty right at the time Al Hanashi was discovered on the floor of his cell. He overheard the two guards who were checking on Al Hanashi’s cell say “something to the effect, ‘is he breathing’ or ‘check to see if he is breathing.’”

This guard looked in the room and Al Hanashi wasn’t moving. He saw a woman, possibly a nurse, “dealing” with another detainee. She told the guard Al Hanashi might not be responding “because he had been given sleep medication by medical personnel.” At the same time, two other detainees “began shouting that [redacted] was sleeping and that we should leave him alone.”

The guard decided to ignore the warnings. He called in through a slot in the door to get Al Hanashi’s attention. Another guard reached in through the lower slot in the door and tried to shake Al Hanashi, who was lying close to the door. But then something caught the guard’s attention…

Jeffrey S. Kaye is a practicing psychologist in San Francisco, California. He is the author of numerous works, including “Isolation, Sensory Deprivation, and Sensory Overload: History, Research, and Interrogation Policy, from the 1950s to the Present Day,” Guild Practitioner, Vol. 66, No. 1, Spring 2009  and “CIA declassifies new portions of Cold War-era interrogation manual,” Muckrock, April 8, 2014.

Yesterday, the Today programme referred to this horror as a ‘forgotten war’ – but it has never been forgotten by investigative journalists like Felicity Arbuthnot, who has written in detail about the savage air strikes carried out carried out by the Saudi led “coalition”, armed by the US and UK and advised by their military specialists. She indicts the collusion and co-operation of both countries which renders them, “equally culpable for the carnage”, writing:

“This heartbreak, fear and destruction has been rained down in commensurate devastation near every twenty-four hours since March 2015, Saudi Arabia is the lead culprit, but in the “coalition” are also Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait”; we note elsewhere news of Britain’s covert assistance in air surveillance of targets and – it is feared – other ‘special operations’, unsanctioned by and undisclosed to parliament”.

Air strikes that targeted a funeral gathering in the capital of Sana’a on 8 October, killing over 140 mourners and injuring 500 others attending the ceremony, have renewed international condemnation of the UK’s controversial weapons trade with Saudi Arabia.

Theresa May defended the arms sales last month, claiming the UK’s relationship with Saudi Arabia,“helped to keep people on the streets of Britain safe”

Conservative ministers have repeatedly rejected calls for a pause in weapons sales amid frequent reports of war crimes and the Government refused to give MPs a vote on the issue.

The British Government now says it will consider the terms of its lucrative arms exports to Saudi Arabia after its ally admitted responsibility for killing more than 140 mourners and injuring 500 others at a funeral in Yemen.

A few facts:

• A United Nations report on children and armed conflict said the Saudi-led coalition was responsible for 60 per cent of all child causalities – 510 deaths and 667 injuries – in the conflict last year. The UN warned that while international attention has focused on Syria, more than 10,000 people have been killed in Yemen, including at least 4,000 civilians in the past 18 months alone.
• Britain sold £3.3bn worth of arms between April 2015 and March 2016 alone – the first year of the Saudi-led coalition’s deadly bombing campaign in Yemen, where it intervened against Houthi rebels at President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi’s request. Tim Farron, Jeremy Corbyn and Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas are among those calling for trade to be suspended.

Military instructors from NATO countries were onboard a combat helicopter, shot down by servicemen of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) on October 13, deputy commander of the Operational Command of the republic, Eduard Basurin, said on Friday.

“According to preliminary information, foreign mercenaries – instructors from the NATO, were in the downed helicopter. The area of the incidence [with the helicopter] is cordoned off for several days, cellular communication is disabled,” the RIA Novosti news agency quoted the words of the representative of the DPR Defense Ministry.

According to head of the DPR Alexander Zakharchenko, UAVs attempted to attack the territory of the republic under the cover of the military helicopter, which was put out of action, but managed to land on the territory of Donbass, occupied by the Kiev Forces. DPR soldiers shot the enemy’s helicopter down, while it was attacking their positions. According to the DPR intelligence, the incapacitated helicopter landed near Krasngotovka.

The use of combat aircraft and drones, with the exception of UAVs of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (SMM), is prohibited along the entire contact line by the Minsk Agreements.

The last time, Kiev used aircraft in Donbass on January 18, 2015. On that day, several the Su-25 fighter jets were noticed in the sky near Gorlovka.

“If one considers how dangerous these chemicals are, one would suppose that it would be government policy to minimize their use by every possible means. However, the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution notes, ‘there is… no such policy in the UK, nor does the possible need for it appear to have been considered, notwithstanding the great increases in the use of these chemicals.’”

He went on to condemn the UK for aerial spraying:

SATIRE: This is how Syrians view the US election campaign:  

Translation of Singing in Arabic:

Trump and Clinton are Dancing: “We love you Bashar, and we will only vote for you, and the Syrian people will rebuild the country with you…”

Trump et Clinton dansent sur l’air : “Nous t’aimons Bachar, nous ne voterons que pour toi et le peuple syrien reconstruira le pays avec toi!…

also available at  (original Syria post on Facebook)

“Once the US has identified its target, it begins searching for the structural vulnerabilities that it will exploit in the coming Hybrid War. Contextually, these aren’t physical objects to be sabotaged such as power plants and roads … but socio-political characteristics that are meant to be manipulated in order to attractively emphasize a certain demographic’s “separateness” from the existing national fabric and thus ‘legitimize’ their forthcoming foreign-managed revolt against the authorities.” -Andrew Korybko [1]

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This isn’t your daddy’s vision for military strategy.

Military operations, for good or for ill, are typically imagined as involving uniformed State actors engaged in violence with the aim of overthrowing a target government.

The aggression by NATO countries against Yugoslavia in 1999, or Afghanistan 15 years ago this month, or the invasion of Iraq in 2003, or the ousting of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 all seem to conform to this portrait of modern warfare.

More astute students of history might also recall engagements under-written by covert mechanisms, such as the CIA instigated coups in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954) and Chile (1973).

There is however a new form of military engagement on the world stage, and is principally practiced by the United States. It is called Hybrid Warfare.

 Andrew Korybko is an American commentator based in Moscow who has written a book and several authoritative articles on this new brand of warfare. Hybrid warfare, as he explains it, involves two pillars. The first is a “coloured revolution” or soft coup triggered by external sources instigating anti-government sentiment within the framework identity politics. The second is unconventional warfare, involving non-state actors executing violence designed to generate chaos and disorder and keep authorities off-balance and vulnerable to overthrow. [2]

Korybko explains that the hybrid war strategy aims “to disrupt multipolar transnational connective projects,” specifically Russia’s Eurasian integration objectives, and China’s Silk Road projects. As he has argued in his writing, the recent insurgencies in Syria and Ukraine represent test cases of a stratagem finding application in the Balkans, East Asia, the Horn of Africa, and even Latin America. [3]

In a special feature length interview for the Global Research News Hour, Korybko elaborates on his thesis, putting it in the post Soviet context, points to flashpoints on the horizon, and outlines how those targeted countries and regions may be able to frustrate the objectives of American war-planners.

Andrew Korybko currently works with the Sputnik news agency. He has also written for Oriental Review and Katehon among other online journals. Much of his work focuses on the tactics of regime change, color revolutions and unconventional warfare used across the world. He is the author of the 2015 book Hybrid Wars: The Indirect Adaptive Approach To Regime Change.

Andrew Korybko currently studies at the Moscow State University of International Relations and is a member of the expert council for the Institute of Strategic Studies and Predictions at the People’s Friendship University of Russia.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca . The show can be heard on the Progressive Radio Network at prn.fm. Listen in every Monday at 3pm ET.

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

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Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the North Shore to the US Border.

It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia Canada. – Tune in every Saturday at 6am.

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Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday Morning from 8:00 to 9:00am. Find more details at www.caperradio.ca 

Notes:

1. http://orientalreview.org/2016/03/04/hybrid-wars-1-the-law-of-hybrid-warfare/
2. Andrew Korybko (2015), “Hybrid Wars: The Indirect Adaptive Approach To Regime Change”; (p.10, 59); http://orientalreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/AK-Hybrid-Wars-updated.pdf
3. http://orientalreview.org/2016/03/04/hybrid-wars-1-the-law-of-hybrid-warfare/

The tribunals of Nuremberg and Tokyo enabled the Allies to expose the crimes committed by the Axis during the Second World War, and also served to justify both the price of their victory and their domination over the world. Based on this model, Washington believed it could judge and condemn 120 Syrian leaders, including President Bachar el-Assad, in order to justify the war and the overthrow of the Syrian Arab Republic. All that was left to do was invent their crimes…

In April 2012 – in other words after the French withdrawal from the war (which it rejoined in July), and before the Russian-US sharing agreement (30 June in Geneva) – the «Friends of Syria» had decided to judge President Bachar el-Assad before an international court of law. The point of this was to stage, a posteriori, the Pax Americana, after the murder of Slobodan Milošević in his prison at The Hague, the hanging of Saddam Hussein and the lynching of Muamar Gaddafi.

In order to do this, the United States had created an association at The Hague, the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC). For two years, lawyers and jurists gathered witness accounts of the alleged «tortures” practised by the regime.

The Office of Global Criminal Justice for the Secretary of State, at that time directed by Ambassador Stephen Rapp, had solicited Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar and Turkey to finance a «UN Special Tribunal for Syria» on the model of the «UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon».

Let us remember that the Lebanon Tribunal, contrary to its denomination, is not a tribunal in the real sense of the term, since it was created by only two executives, the General Secretary of the United Nations and the Prime Minister of Lebanon, without ever being endorsed either by the Security Council or the Lebanese Parliament. This pseudo-tribunal would have been able to ignore the rules of law and condemn the Syrian President without proof.

The principle of the tribunals for Lebanon and for Syria was imagined by Jeffrey Feltman, ex-US Ambassador in Beirut, then Under-Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, and currently Director of Political Affairs for the UN. Mr. Feltman created the Tribunal for Lebanon, after having personally organised the assassination of Rafic Hariri, to judge and condemn Presidents Emile Lahoud and Bachar al-Assad, whom he intended to accuse. We were able to consult an internal document from his office, and learned that after the overthrow of the Syrian Arab Republic, NATO had planned to judge and condemn 120 leaders of the country, 80 of whom were already listed as persons under sanctions established by the United States and/or the European Union.

On 20 January 2014, two days before the opening of the Geneva 2 negotiations, the London-based law firm Carter-Ruck accused Syria of having tortured and killed more than 11,000 of its own citizens during the war. It then published a report by three international lawyers authenticating 55,000 images allegedly taken by a defected military photographer. Although two of the lawyers were seriously called into question for their partiality in previous affairs, and the third had been tasked by the CIA to create the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC), and despite denials by Syria, John Kerry did not miss the opportunity of quoting this document at the opening of the Geneva 2 Conference.

On 31 July 2014, the Commission for Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives interviewed the Syrian photographer. He showed 10 images among the 55,000 in his collection, but only after having blurred them out, rendering them unidentifiable.

And oh my! On 22 September 2014, Russia and China opposed their veto to a French project for a Resolution which referred to the International Criminal Court concerning the crimes committed in Syria. The State Department ruled that the material gathered, although extremely voluminous, had no more value than the false witness statements from the Tribunal for Lebanon. As a result, it ceased to sponsor the preparations for the Syrian Nuremberg.

However, the Secretary of State recently sponsored the Center for Victims of Torture in Minnesota, not only for its actions, but also in order to come to the assistance of «victims of the régime» – if they can find any – but not to help the 80,000 people kidnapped by the United States and tortured by the Navy in Guantánamo and in prison boats in international waters during the two mandates of George W. Bush.

Besides this, the State Department sponsored an exhibition by Qatar at the United Nations in New York, then at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, and finally, last week in Rome – based on the photos from the Carter-Ruck law firm. Of course, there was no question of showing all 55,000 photos, but the same 10 blurred-out photos accompanied by a few others relative to the war.

At the same time, the pro-Israeli representative, Eliot Engel, (already the author of the Syrian Accountability Act) presented the proposition for law H.R.5732, which was aimed at strengthening the sanctions against Syria.

On 6 October 2016, Hollande (whose military is illegally deployed in Syria) organised a meeting at their embassy in Washington in order to relaunch the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC) and finance the project of a Tribunal for Syria.

Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Norway, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Switzerland, and of course the United States, announced that they would participate with a contribution. The project should cost only a few million dollars per year.

For Washington, it is now clear that the Syrian Arab Republic will not fall, and that it will be impossible to judge and condemn President Bachar el-Assad without proof. This set-up is part of the conditioning of the Western public as the «defenders of Good against the cruel Syrians». France, which has been successively spokesperson for the interests of Turkey, then Qatar, then Saudi Arabia, and today, Israël, does not see things this way. It therefore hopes to judge the 120 Syrian leaders (who are already condemned on paper) before the International Criminal Court… in absentia.

On 10 October, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, Jean-Marc Ayrault, announced that he had asked a group of lawyers to find a way of referring to the International Criminal Court, despite the predictable opposition of the Security Council.

It seems that Washington is preparing to accept the end of the unipolar world. In this case, the most ridiculous and terrifying accusations against Syria will serve to darken the image of the Russian camp.

Documents :

 “A Report into the credibility of certain evidence with regard to Torture and Execution of Persons Incarcerated by the current Syrian regime“, Carter-Ruck, January 20, 2014.
 «Report sulla attendibilità delle “Foto di Caesar” che si paventa saranno esposte in mostra al Senato della Repubblica italiana», Sibialiria, Marzo 2016.
 “The Caesar Photo Fraud that Undermined Syrian Negotiations”, Rick Sterling, March 2016.

Thierry Meyssan: French intellectual, founder and chairman of Voltaire Network and the Axis for Peace Conference. His columns specializing in international relations feature in daily newspapers and weekly magazines in Arabic, Spanish and Russian. His last two books published in English : 9/11 the Big Lie and Pentagate.

Four days ago, after reports that Saudi Arabia had bombed a funeral in Yemen killing 140 mourners, America announced it would “review its support” for the Saudi-led coalition.

Three days ago the USS Mason, an American destroyer patrolling the Red Sea, was apparently fired upon from Yemen. It has gone unquestioned in the Western MSM that the Houthis were behind this attack, despite strong denials from the Houthis themselves.

Yesterday, all thoughts of “reviewing support” put aside, the Americans bombed three “radar sites” that they claim were a threat to their assets in the Red Sea.

Just like that, America is now an active player in the war on Yemen, when before they were simply selling weapons to the Saudis et al.

You might consider it strange that the Houthis, who have not fired on American ships ever before in the nearly 2 years of warfare in Yemen, suddenly decided – just as American support for Saudi Arabia was in question – to launch missiles at an American destroyer.

You might be asking yourself, “Why would the Houthis, who struggle to get any coverage in the Western press at all, let alone sympathetic coverage, launch an attack on America?”

You might consider it strange that the Houthis, already fighting a losing battle against a richer and better equipped enemy, might try and drag America into the war.

It’s not strange. Not in the least. It fits so well with the history of American military entanglements that one might even call it predictable, at this point.

There was the USS Maine, for example. In 1898 the Cuban War for Independence was three years old, the revolutionaries (supplied and trained in America) were fighting to free Cuba from Spanish rule. The American press was full of exaggerated or made up stories of Spanish “atrocities”, and many in Washington were calling for war. However, President McKinley favored diplomacy. Then the USS Maine was (allegedly) maliciously and deliberately blown up by the Spanish, killing 258 American sailors. “Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain!” became a battle cry, and America declared war.

There has never been any evidence the Maine was attacked deliberately by the Spanish, and all historical investigations have pointed to an accidental sinking as a result of fire.

Or there was the Gulf of Tonkin incident – the casus belli behind the Vietnam war. When North Vietnamese torpedo boats engaged and attacked American destroyers. This act of aggression from North Vietnam pulled America into a war they would not leave for 10 long years.

Except of course, it literally never happened.

The pattern is set. There are enough articles about “false flags” on the internet to fill a whole library of books, there’s nothing more to add. This is quite clearly another to file in the historical annals between the Reichstag Fire and Operation Northwoods.

That this should happen just as the Western press is waking up to what they now uniformly calling “the forgotten war”, is no coincidence.

In the Telegraph, Con Coughlin – a rather red-faced bombast, unfettered by petty reality, and in favor of starting a war with Russia – writes that the “forgotten war” is all Iran’s fault, and while Saudia Arabia might be killing practically every civilian that has died in the conflict, really it’s all down to Iran’s meddling.

The Guardian takes the tone that we (the West) should “do more”, and again references the mythic American reluctance to get involved. (yes, they are so totally without irony that they can actually claim America doesn’t want to be involved THE SAME DAY they launched missiles into Yemen). Despite some vague chastising of the UK/US, the Guardian agrees that Yemen is almost entirely Iran’s fault, that the Iranians are “exploiting and manipulating” Yemen to their own ends.

The Washington Post echoed that the US “must act” to pull Yemen back from collapse.

The focus, currently, is on the “humanitarian catastrophe”, and all decry the lack of negotiations…but that’s always the way it starts. Emotive language and made up statistics, the declaration that “something must be done”. Then, when the negotiations start the Houthis will either be presented with terms to which they simply cannot agree, or the Saudis will break the truce and the MSM will blame the Houthis and Iran anyway. At that point the “something” which “must be done” becomes a military intervention…in order to stop the war and protect civilians.

The question becomes: Why? Why is the US suddenly committing more resources to a war in Yemen? Why are the press suddenly waking up to their “forgotten war”?

The Houthi rebels in Yemen are reportedly backed by Iran and Hezbollah (there’s no direct evidence this is true, but given the political make up of Yemen, it does seem likely). It’s possible that America sees increased assistance to the Arab coalition, and actual low-key interventions of their own, to be – in effect – the opening of a second front of their proxy war with Iran in Syria. It’s possible they want to encourage Iran and Hezbollah to expend more of their resources in Yemen, and thus weaken their presence in Syria.

Does the Clinton administration want to undo the Obama-backed Iran deal? Will the new President undermine and verbally attack Iran in the hopes of scuppering the treaty? The vague possibility of a Nuclear-armed Iran has been America’s excuse for building missile defense shields in Eastern Europe, being able to refresh this brazenly false alibi would make life a little easier at the Pentagon.

It’s possible that America is seeking to build itself a little hill of highground, having taken a lot of flak recently for their preposterously hypocritical stance of at once denouncing Russia and Syria as “war criminal”, and supporting Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen (including selling them bombs to drop on funerals).

It’s possible that they feel the need to insert themselves into Yemen to head off any Russian involvement there. Former President Ali Abdullah Saleh made general overtures to Russia in a television interview six weeks ago. The last thing America would want is Russia to have access to naval bases on the Red Sea, and a Russian presence in Yemen would hinder any possibility of America putting boots on the ground there (hopefully, anyway).

Of course, it’s also possible that they need to fire off a few bombs so that they have an excuse to buy more. Fifth homes for ex-senators-turned-arms industry lobbyists don’t buy themselves.

When you’re a power-mad, institutionalised sociopath there doesn’t have to be a grand plan, or a big reason. That’s what makes them so dangerous.

In this most bizarre of presidential elections, no one is talking about one of the biggest—if not the biggest—issues of our time. Namely, the global power imbalance between corporations and governments.

Not Donald Trump, as he obsesses over the weight of a long-past Miss Universe. Not Hillary Clinton, despite her many substantive proposals that the media largely ignores. Not even Jill Stein, although she offers many proposals for moving power to the people at the national level.

Earth is dying. A few hundred billionaires are consolidating their control of the Earth’s remaining real wealth. Racism is rampant. And violence devastates millions of lives.

These issues do get mention, though less than they deserve. What is not mentioned, the elephant in the room, is that which blocks serious action on these and other critical threats to the human future: the glaring and growing global power imbalance between corporations that represent purely financial interests and the institutions of government we depend on to represent the interests of people and living communities.

The healthy function of society requires that governments be accountable to the electorate and that corporations in turn be accountable to democratic governments. Our ability to deal with every other issue of our time—from climate disruption to inequality to violence—depends on that accountability.

In a complex modern society, government is the essential and primary institution by which communities set the rules within which they organize. Even markets need rules to function in the community interest, and those rules must be made and enforced by government. Claims that a “free” market—a market free from rules—best serves the common good are an ideological fiction born of the dreams of banksters.

No candidate is addressing the global power imbalance issue—and no corporate media outlet will ever call them on it.

The significance of this issue rests on an analysis of the role and power of money in contemporary society.

Not that long ago, most people lived directly from what they harvested from their land—and might barter for other needs. For example, a country doctor might treat a patient in exchange for a chicken. By these and other means, most people minimized their need for money.

As society urbanized and industrialized, people were, by choice or exclusion, separated from the lands and community relationships that provided their means of living with little need for money.

We now live in a society in which our access to food, water, shelter, energy, transportation, health care, education, communication, and most all the other basic essentials of daily life depends on our ability to pay. No money, no life.

Each time we monetize a relationship—for example, replacing a parental caregiver with a paid child care worker or a backyard garden with a trip to the supermarket—we grow GDP and create new opportunities for corporate profits. At the same time, we weaken the loving bond between child and parent and between humans and Earth. And we become more dependent on money.

So what does this have to do with power? The more dependent we become on money, the more dependent we become on the money masters—bankers and corporations—that control our access to money through their control of paid employment, loans, and investments.

We now live in servitude to money masters, who organize globally beyond the reach of democratic institutions and deny responsibility for or accountability to the people and communities they hold hostage. From their position of separation, power, and privilege, they buy politicians, avoid taxes, and take over the institutions of media, education, health care, agriculture, criminal justice, communications, energy, and more.

Though it is a defining issue of our time, politicians who depend on corporate money and media dare not mention the growing power imbalance between corporations and governments and its sweeping implications. They will face it and address it only when forced to do so by “we the people.” Leadership in the cause of democracy and community will come—can only come—from an organized electorate with a power analysis. (Watch for Part Two in my October 19 column.

David Korten wrote this article for YES! Magazine as part of his column on “A Living Earth Economy.” David is co-founder and board chair of YES! Magazine, president of the Living Economies Forum, co-chair of the New Economy Working Group, a member of the Club of Rome, and the author of influential books, including When Corporations Rule the World and Change the Story, Change the Future: A Living Economy for a Living Earth. His work builds on lessons from the 21 years he and his wife, Fran, lived and worked in Africa, Asia, and Latin America on a quest to end global poverty. Follow him on Twitter @dkorten and Facebook.

The most prestigious newspaper in Peru is no more than another mouthpiece for power. But this shouldn´t surprise anyone familiar with mainstream media and its propagandistic role in our society.

Sadly, most people remain unaware of this reality and still approach this kind of media for understanding on the appalling problems of contemporary life. For them there are real news: you will find no such understanding in El Comercio.

We will consider the Syrian conflict because it’s an ongoing issue with massive coverage to analyze. The fact that mainstream media (MSM) in Peru, as elsewhere, import its articles from Big Media and their agencies around the world does not, of course, release them of the responsibility to verify everything they publish and therefore endorse.

Let´s imagine ourselves taking half an hour of our busy lives to seek information in MSM regarding Syria, in order to learn what’s been happening there for the last five years. What could be better than an article titled: “Seven questions to understand what is happening in Syria”? (elcomercio.pe, 09/24/16).

The answer could easily be anything, because the supposed facts being paraded in this article imported from the BBC are misleading, fallacious or wrong. And any reader searching for truth or an honest interpretation based on facts regarding this conflict may find itself more confused or even worse, completely deceived about its nature. This analysis targets a narrative common to most Western MSM. Its Peruvian counterpart is particularly shallow and disaffected, and rarely redact their own articles on foreign conflicts, importing them, for an even more homogenized massive world coverage.

This sort of articles aimed at understanding something in a set of simple and clear steps are getting more popular as more and more people seem to drift away from questioning and thinking, researching, or going into contemporary subjects with any kind of depth.

The first subtitle in the article reads: (all quotes from El Comercio in light blue)

“What started as a peaceful uprising against the Syrian president, turned into a bloody civil war”.

This is a statement of two of the most important points in the Western narrative regarding not only Syria, but many other past conflicts, as this article will argue.

So let’s proceed and debunk this set of lies repeated by the MSM ad-nauseam to advance the interests of empire.

1. “What was the situation in Syria before the war begun?”

2. “How did the war start?”

This two first questions need a wide and historic point of view that the MSM can´t entertain in its pages and television airwaves because of the simplified nature of its narrative and the limited space they devote to foreign conflicts. The only paragraph dedicated to the situation in Syria before the war (question 1) states:

“Years before the conflict started, many Syrians complained about the high unemployment rates in the country, extensive corruption, lack of political freedom and government repression by Assad…”

The article then jumps right into the events of 2011 that started the uprising. But where should we start if we want to assert the real reasons behind the conflict and its evolution through the last five years?

One of the best places to find political and economic information regarding most countries in the world are their respective US embassies, as the WikiLeaks files or authors as Phillip Agee have shown us in the past. This is especially true when the US have important interests at stake, as in the case of Syria, where in 2006 a private diplomatic email by chargé de affaires William Roebuck shows a clear intention by its officials regarding the regime and its ´vulnerabilities´:

“We believe Bashar´s weaknesses are in how he chooses to react to looming issues, both perceived and real, such as the conflict between economic reform steps (however limited) and entrenched, corrupt forces, the Kurdish question, and the potential threat to the regime from the increasing presence of transiting Islamist extremists. This cable summarizes our assessment of this vulnerabilities and suggests that there may be actions, statements, and signals that the USG can send that will improve the likelihood of such opportunities arising”. (Emphasis added)

As Robert Naiman exposed (WikiLeaks Files):

“In public, the US was opposed to Islamist “extremists” everywhere; but in private it saw the “potential threat to the regime from the increasing presence of transiting Islamist extremist” as an “opportunity” that the US should take action to try to increase”.

Along with other pieces of advice, Roebuck suggests “playing on Sunni fears of Iranian influence… thought often exaggerated”, adding that both the “Egyptian and Saudi missions in Syria are giving increased attention to the matter and we should coordinate more closely with their governments on ways to better publicize and focus regional attention on the issue”. Fanning sectarian tensions is an old one, especially within strategies unconcerned by its effects on civil societies.

But creating division among the Syrian population wasn´t quite enough, as Roebuck also suggests to “Encourage rumors and signals of external plotting” aiming for the regime’s “paranoia and increasing the possibility of a self-defeating over-reaction”.  As we can observe, there was no paranoia at all, but grounded concerns.

Other formerly classified documents also look back into the moments before the 2011 uprising, as this US Defense Intelligence Agency heavily redacted document obtained through a federal lawsuit, states:

“AQI (Al-Qaeda in Iraq) supported the Syrian opposition since the beginning, both ideologically and through the media. AQI declared its opposition to the Assad’s government because it considered it sectarian regime targeting Sunnis”.

This information haven’t seen the light of MSM coverage, as it’s radically opposed to the pro-Western rhetoric, as El Comercio/ BBC repeats:

“The incident (a group of boys allegedly arrested and tortured for graffiti paintings in Daraa) provoked pro-democratic protests, inspired on the Arab Spring… security forces opened fire on the protestors, killing several, which provoked more people into taking the streets. The uprising extended through the country asking for the resignation of Assad…”

Other less publicized testimonies, as that from Jesuit priest Frans Van der Lugt (left), killed by extremists in 2014 in Homs, suggest that the beginning of the conflict was not as simple as MSM states, but rather follow the logic expressed in the formerly classified cables:

”I have seen from the beginning armed protesters in those demonstrations … they were the first to fire on the police. Very often the violence of the security forces comes in response to the brutal violence of the armed insurgents.”

There were indeed anti-Assad protests, sometimes clashing with pro-Assad protests, but they were in many cases infiltrated or even promoted by elements with very different goals, mainly not Syrian in origin, and used for violence against civilians and peaceful protestors, policemen and soldiers.

“Many opposition sympathizers started to arm themselves, first as protection and later to expel government’s forces”. “(The conflict) soon acquired sectarian features… this dragged into the conflict other regional forces…”

Presumably the article refers to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey (among others). But as our research tells us, they were already involved in a more covert fashion before the uprising begun.

As Andrew Cockburn reported for Harper´s magazine in January, 2016:

“Earlier in the Syrian war, US officials had at least maintained the pretense that weapons were being funneled only to so-called moderate opposition groups. But in 2014, in a speech at Harvard, Vice President Joe Biden confirmed that we were arming extremists once again, although he was careful to pin the blame on America´s allies in the region, whom he denounced as ‘our largest problem in Syria.’ In response to a student´s question, he volunteered that our allies

‘…were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad. Except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra and Al Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis (sic) coming from other parts of the world´.

“Biden’s explanation was entirely reminiscent of official excuses for the arming of fundamentalists in Afghanistan during the 1980s, which maintained that the Pakistanis had total control of the distribution of US-supplied weapons and that the CIA was incapable of intervening when most of those weapons ended up with the likes of G. Hekmatyar. Asked why the United States was supposedly powerless to stop nations like Qatar, population 2.19 million, from pouring arms into de arsenals of Nusra and similar groups, a former adviser to one of the Gulf States replied softly: ‘They didn´t want to’”.

Let’s go forward into the third question without having exhausted our rather lengthy arguments regarding the nature of the 2011 uprising.

3. Who is fighting against who now?

The answer starts by stating that “the armed opposition has evolved since its beginnings”. (From what?) The MSM narrative tries to make a clear, but false, separation between terrorists and armed opposition. In the analyzed article the former only arrived to Syria when the conflict was ongoing, to take advantage of the disputed territories and wage a war against the Shia/Alawite ‘infidels’ in power, and are also at war with the supposed “moderates”.

Let’s kill two birds with one stone on this one, by taking as an example the “moderate” rebels from Nour al-Din al-Zenki, one of the groups supported by the CIA, who beheaded a Palestinian boy last July for the cameras and took ‘selfies’ of themselves while doing it. A few months later another incident, this time covered (or produced) by the “Aleppo Media Center”, shown the world a wounded child by the name of Omran (Aylan in other reports), who then became the poster boy for the Syrian conflict by means of media exposition.

The connection between this two apparently dissociated incidents goes by the name of Mahmoud Raslan, one of Omran’s rescuers and photographer, seen in the video footage of the rescue outside the ambulance holding a camera with members of the White Helmets (civilian rescuers). This individual is also in pictures with the “moderate” beheaders of the Nour al-Din al-Zenki mentioned above, posing like friends on a weekend trip, blurring the already thin line between moderates, extremists and even the so-called non-partisan civilian rescuers (USAID-funded) White Helmets.

By the end of the 3rd answer we find another gem:

“And regardless of moderate rebels repeatedly asking Washington for anti-aircraft weaponry to respond to Russian and Syrian devastating attacks, the United States have declined the request, fearing the advanced weaponry could end up in jihadist’s hands”.

This is a particularly deceiving statement. While the US haven´t, to my knowledge, provided anti-air weapons to the rebels, it has delivered all sorts of other weaponry to them, directly by the CIA, or indirectly through its allies in the region. A report by the Washington Post says the CIA was spending 1 billion USD a year in funding this groups, which also includes training and other services. Of course, this weapons are given to the so called “moderates”, but as we argue, and many testimonies by US officials prove, this arms end up in the wrong hands rather often, as another article by the New York Times notes two weeks later: “CIA Arms for Syrian Rebels Supplied Black Market, Officials Say”. Are we supposed to believe this is some kind of mistake, as self-indulgent MSM analysts do?

Throughout the article there’s no mention of who is arming the rebels. In the paragraphs answering the 2nd question it misleadingly states that:

“…opposition sympathizers started to arm themselves…”

4. How did foreign powers got involved?

5. Why is the conflict lasting so long?

As we already mentioned, foreign powers, meaning the US and its allies, were already involved in many ways in a “regime change” scheme since as early as 2006. The answer for question number 4 mentions in one line that:

“The United States, on their part, insist on Assad being responsible for huge atrocities and must resign”.

And that’s the extent of the influence of the US in this conflict according to this wholesale MSM article written for the disoriented masses. But the whitewashing continue in favor of US regional allies:

“Saudi Arabia is another participant in this proxy war. To counter Iran´s influence, its main rival in the region, SA has sent considerable military and financial aid to the rebels, including those with Islamist Ideologies”. (Emphasis added)

Another misleading piece of information on the nature of the conflict reads:

“The divisions between the Sunni majority and the Alawite Shia, have provoked both sides to commit atrocities that have caused not only an enormous loss in lives but the destruction of communities, strengthen positions and reduce hope on a political solution”.

But the majority of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) is Sunni, and has included in the past a few Christian generals. As Kamal Alam writes for The National Interest´s blog:

“The fact remains: The moderate Syrian opposition only exists in fancy suits in Western hotel lobbies. It has little military backing on the ground. If you want to ask why Assad is still the president of Syria, the answer is not simply Russia or Iran, but the fact that his army remains resilient and pluralistic, representing a Syria in which religion alone does not determine who rises to the top”.

Deir-Ezzor, “an entirely Sunni city which has held out against ISIS encirclement for two years—and is commanded by the Druze General Issam Zahreddine”, as Alam continues, was attacked by the US Army, who targeted an SAA base killing 62 soldiers and wounding several more, in the first direct attack from the Pentagon on a Syrian Government facility or its forces. This incident happened on September 17th and ended the ceasefire, and not the alleged Russian attack on a UN aid convoy happened two days later.

In short, the “atrocities” cannot be blamed on sectarian allegiance, since it’s not what drives the main actors involved, although terrorists will often address to religious rhetoric.

A fact not mentioned by the mainstream media: Syria’s President’s wife Asma al-Assad (right) is Sunni.

Taking in consideration the secular character of the Syrian society and its government, all bets on sectarian originated violence should be on the rebel side, also known for establishing Sharia law courts in controlled territories.

6. What has been the impact of this war?

“The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, a monitoring group based in London, indicates that up to September 2016, the number of deaths is 301,000”.

Estimates put the numbers between 250,000 and almost 500,000 victims and several millions displaced and surviving as refugees mainly in neighbor countries and Europe.

But the sources of this information are not without an allegiance either. We already talked about the White Helmets, working hand in glove with the not so “moderate” groups and factions mentioned above, only in rebel-held areas and many times as a sort of PR firm for the jihadists as well, which doesn’t mean they couldn’t at the same time rescue some people from the rubble.

Another, probably massive media´s favorite source of information regarding Syria, would be the above mentioned, ‘Syrian Observatory of Human Rights’, a one man operation located in a suburb in Coventry, England. Also known as Rami Abdulrahman, he is a declared member of the opposition: “I came to Britain the day Hafez al-Assad died, and I’ll return when Bashar al-Assad goes,” as he told Reuters on 2011. It was also revealed by the New York Times that the SOHR is funded by subsidies from the European Union and a certain European country he won’t disclose.

As Tony Cartalucci notes: “it is beyond doubt that it is the United Kingdom itself – as Abdul Rahman has direct access to the Foreign Secretary William Hague, who he has been documented meeting in person on multiple occasions at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London. The NYT in fact reveals that it was the British government that first relocated Abdul Rahman to Coventry, England after he fled Syria over a decade ago because of his anti-government activities…”

By any means the SOHR, the most widely cited source by MSM on Syria, is far from being an impartial one.

Beyond the visible death and destruction of Syrian society lies another untold consequence of this conflict: the fact that thousands of newly armed and trained jihadists will remain to roam around the Middle East and the rest of the world, regardless of the outcome of this war.

A conspiracy theorist would argue that another monster is being created deliberately by Western forces to further military expense, diminish civilian liberties and to excuse uncontested military presence virtually anywhere while fighting its own creation and its many tentacles.

7. What is the international community doing to put an end to the conflict?

Being this question answered above in some extension, we should refer to the diplomatic performance of the different powers struggling for whatever their particular goals are.

John Kerry and Samantha Power (left) have reduced themselves to advocates for terrorism by campaigning against Syria and Russia in their efforts to regain Eastern Aleppo from forces made up of 50% al-Nusra, the Syrian branch to al-Qaeda. Who are also said to dominate any other faction fighting on that side. “Rebel-held Aleppo” is a mainstream media fiction fostering support for terrorism among world public opinion.

We should remember at this point that when Aleppo was not under the spotlight of MSM as it has been in the last months, many news reports covered it as a city swarming with al-Nusra extremists and other al-Qaeda affiliates, as this April 2013 NYT article shows:

In Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, rebels aligned with Al Qaeda control the power plant, run the bakeries and head a court that applies Islamic law. Elsewhere, they have seized government oil fields, put employees back to work and now profit from the crude they produce.

Across Syria, rebel-held areas are dotted with Islamic courts staffed by lawyers and clerics, and by fighting brigades led by extremists. Even the Supreme Military Council, the umbrella rebel organization whose formation the West had hoped would sideline radical groups, is stocked with commanders who want to infuse Islamic law into a future Syrian government.

Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.

Another talking point recently integrated into the discourse is found in the last paragraphs:

“The last partial ceasefire, in mid-September, failed a few days after entering into force when a humanitarian convoy was lethally attacked.”

Although Russia has denied the charges, it’s being treated by the MSM as the obvious culprit. As we already mentioned, the attack on Deir-Ezzor happened two days earlier and the US immediately took responsibility for the “mistake”.

While honest journalism would denounce the audacity of a government whose officials advocate for human rights and point fingers at Russia for alleged war crimes while at the same time supporting terrorism as a manner of proxy army against Syria, MSM instead acts as a sort of PR asset for power. It’s not surprising to find out very recent cases when high ranking diplomats and politicians are caught lying to the public, even about supposed war crimes, to be then whitewashed by media giants as the New York Times or the BBC. This is the kind of journalism available for most people in the world.

Samantha Power also leaves out the bombing on Yemen by its Middle East ‘partner in crime’ Saudi Arabia, with more than a billion in arms sold to them in 2015 by the US, as well as Intelligence and aerial refueling for its jets, which to some accounts (The Yemen Data Project) hit as many civilian targets as military. The UN puts the death toll of the 18-month war at more than 10,000.

Between 2009 and 2015 the US and the Saudis have signed deals for (potentially) 100 billion dollars.

While opinion pieces in MSM tend to offer a deeper, and sometimes even more truthful look into international conflicts, the facts covered only make it into the official narrative if they contribute to the ideas listed below, otherwise they are buried under whatever narrative is repeated non-stop as the truth.

A closer look into MSM coverage on Syria expose some of the specific messages that compose the “civil war/ peaceful protestor” narrative (as mentioned in the first subtitle of the analyzed article) aligned with US interests, many of them are easy to find in this wholesale dumbed-down piece of journalism by the BBC / El Comercio, and have been exposed by independent journalism on a daily basis for the last years:

• The uprising was purely civilian, terrorists groups entered the ongoing conflict later, taking advantage of the situation.

• The regime started the conflict by using violence against peaceful protestors, who then started “arming themselves” to fight back.

• The US got involved in Syria in response to alleged chemical attacks by Assad’s forces (2013).

• The US and allies fund, arm and train rebel “moderates” only.

• Religious sectarianism drives both pro-Assad and anti-Assad forces in what seems to be a Sunni vs Shia/ Opposition vs Government “civil war”, and not a fight to get rid of and international coalition of terrorist factions decimating a secular society.

• With complete disregard for international law and its institutions, the “criminal regime” must be toppled by an international coalition in its “Responsibility to Protect” civilians.

• Rebels and terrorists are visibly separated and sometimes fighting against each other.

Daniel Espinosa Winder (34) lives in Caraz, a very small city in the Andes of Peru. He graduated in Communication Sciences in Lima and started researching mainstream media and more specifically, propaganda. His writings are a critique of the role of massive media in our society.

Notes:

One month before the presidential election of 2008, the giant Wall Street bank Citigroup submitted to the Obama campaign a list of its preferred candidates for cabinet positions in an Obama administration. This list corresponds almost exactly to the eventual composition of Barack Obama’s cabinet.

The memorandum, revealed by WikiLeaks in a recent document release from the email account of John Podesta, who currently serves as Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair, was written by Michael Froman, who was then an executive with Citigroup and currently serves as US trade representative. The email is dated Oct. 6, 2008 and bears the subject line “Lists.” It went to Podesta a month before he was named chairman of President-Elect Obama’s transition team.

The email was sent at the height of the financial meltdown that erupted after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on September 15. Even as Citigroup and its Wall Street counterparts were dragging the US and world economy into its deepest crisis since the 1930s, they remained, as the email shows, the real power behind the façade of American democracy and its electoral process.

Froman’s list proved remarkably prescient. As it proposed, Robert Gates, a Bush holdover, became secretary of Defense; Eric Holder became attorney general; Janet Napolitano, secretary of Homeland Security; Rahm Emanuel, White House chief of staff; Susan Rice, United Nations ambassador; Arne Duncan, secretary of Education; Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services; Peter Orszag, head of the Office of Management and Budget; Eric Shinseki, secretary of Veterans Affairs; and Melody Barnes, chief of the Domestic Policy Council.

For the highly sensitive position of secretary of the Treasury, three possibilities were presented: Robert Rubin and Rubin’s close disciples Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner. Obama chose Geithner, then president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Geithner, along with Bush Treasury Secretary (and former Goldman Sachs CEO) Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, had played the leading role in organizing the Wall Street bailout.

Rubin had served as Treasury secretary in the Bill Clinton administration from 1995 until 1999, when he was succeeded by Summers. In that capacity, Rubin and Summers oversaw the dismantling of the Glass-Steagall Act (1933), which had imposed a legal wall separating commercial banking from investment banking. Immediately after leaving Treasury, Rubin became a top executive at Citigroup, remaining there until 2009.

A notable aspect of the Froman memo is its use of identity politics. Among the Citigroup executive’s lists of proposed hires to Podesta were a “Diversity List” including “African American, Latino and Asian American candidates, broken down by Cabinet/Deputy and Under/Assistant/Deputy Assistant level,” in Froman’s words, and “a similar document on women.” Froman also took diversity into account for his White House cabinet list, “probability-weighting the likelihood of appointing a diverse candidate for each position.” This list concluded with a table breaking down the 31 assignments by race and gender.

Citigroup’s recommendations came just three days after then-President George W. Bush signed into law the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which allocated $700 billion in taxpayer money to rescue the largest Wall Street banks. The single biggest beneficiary was Citigroup, which was given $45 billion in cash in the form of a government stock purchase, plus a $306 billion government guarantee to back up its worthless mortgage-related assets.

Then-presidential candidate Obama played a critical political role in shepherding the massively unpopular bank bailout through Congress. The September financial crash convinced decisive sections of the US corporate-financial elite that the Democratic candidate of “hope” and “change” would be better positioned to contain popular opposition to the bailout than his Republican rival, Senator John McCain of Arizona.

As president, Obama not only funneled trillions of dollars to the banks, he saw to it that not a single leading Wall Street executive faced prosecution for the orgy of speculation and swindling that led to the financial collapse and Great Recession, and he personally intervened to block legislation capping executive pay at bailed-out firms.

The same furtive and corrupt process is underway in relation to a Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump administration. Froman’s email is one of many thousands released by WikiLeaks from the account of Podesta. Those communications, such as the Froman email, which expose who really rules America, have been virtually ignored by the media. The pro-Democratic Party New Republic called attention to it in an article published Friday, but the story has received little if any further coverage.

The media has instead focused on salacious details of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s sexual activities, designed, in part, to divert attention from the substance of the Clinton campaign-related emails being released by WikiLeaks and other sources.

The New Republic drew attention to the Froman memo not because it opposes such machinations, but as a warning to the interests it represents that they must move now to influence the eventual composition of a Hillary Clinton administration.

“If the 2008 Podesta emails are any indication, the next four years of public policy are being hashed out right now, behind closed doors,” wrote New Republic author David Dayen. “And if liberals want to have an impact on that process, waiting until after the election will be too late.”

In this historic victory–arguably the biggest thing to happen in Venezuela since the death of Hugo Chavez–a movement of small farmers took on one of the largest corporations in the world, and won.

“Nature will always prevail,” says Angel Moreno, a campesino and leader in the National Network of Popular Agroecological Schools, as he points to the grass sprouting through the sidewalk in the mountain village of Monte Carmelo in Venezuela. “But if we’re going to fight imperialism, we need seeds.”

It is Oct. 29, 2015, the 10th anniversary of the Day of the Campesino seed, and over a thousand people from around the country and around the world have gathered in this humble village, described by the Agujero Negro media collective as “the ecosocialist capital of Venezuela.”

The people of Monte Carmelo began these gatherings in 2005, and in 2012 they hosted an international gathering from eight countries throughout Latin America. There, over multiple days of discussions and debates, they wrote the Monte Carmelo Declaration and launched the international network of the Guardians of Seeds.

Monte Carmelo has become a center of gravity in Venezuela for the politics and practice of a movement that calls itself ecosocialist, leading a return to the land and the transcendence of the oil economy. Most big decisions in Venezuela are decided in the capital city of Caracas, but the people of Monte Carmelo and the neighboring towns are leading the way in a movement which is all at once local, national and global–to return to the source of ancestral practices of seed saving.

This year the small farmers of Monte Carmelo once again took the lead in a struggle to fight back against the ongoing economic crisis through a program of grassroots action. “We’re in a profound food crisis globally,” said Ximena Gonzalez, an activist academic from the Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Investigations who like many others come to Monte Carmelo to participate and accompany this movement of seed savers. “We should take advantage of this conjuncture to put forward an integral plan of mobilization, legislation, and production.” And over the next several days, that is what happened.

The Guardians of Seeds

We live in a world where one third of all food is wasted, where industrial agriculture accounts for the lion’s share of carbon emissions, and where the genetic diversity of the whole food chain is in free-fall, all presided over by an international regime of biopiracy headed by multinational corporations like Monsanto. But not everyone is taking it sitting down.

The Guardians of the Seeds are the alternative, and in their struggles and celebrations they prefigure a different way of life. As over a thousand people streamed into the small town of Monte Carmelo on the morning of October 29, this vision comes to life. People from around the country bring their seeds to trade, to discuss, to learn and compare. Small children run through the crowds, as eager to trade for a new kind of seed as children in the cities to buy a new plastic toy.

The Guardians of the Seeds don’t see their job as just agriculture or production. There is a profound spiritual consciousness, diverse and deep, which pervades the atmosphere. “Seeds are the beginning, the force of rebirth, and the inspiration to reclaim our cultural and ancestral heritage,” said Cesar David Escalona, a young anthropologist and historian living in and studying the history of Monte Carmelo.

The Guardians are promoting not only another kind of agriculture, but another kind of life. “I used to live by earning money,” Daniel, a campesino from Trujillo told me. “Money puts your mind to sleep. True liberty is in the land, in protecting nature.”

The political framework for this vision is ecosocialism, since 2013 the official policy of the Venezuelan government. The “eco-socialist economic production model” as defined in the current six year plan, written by constituent assemblies and voted into law in 2013, is “based on a harmonious relationship between humanity and nature that guarantees the rational and optimal use of natural resources while preserving the processes and cycles of nature.” While there are ecosocialist organizations on every populated continent, each bringing the theory into unique practices, it is in places like Monte Carmelo that the political philosophy comes to life. Asking attendees what ecosocialism means to them elicits responses as diverse as the seeds themselves.

The people of Monte Carmelo are overwhelmingly in support of the current government of Venezuela, which since the election of Hugo Chavez in 1999 has transformed the country legally, socially and politically. But the vision of ecosocialism which emerges from Monte Carmelo is decidedly and unapologetically grassroots. Like in the Zapatista communities of Chiapas, in Monte Carmelo the people command and the government obeys. “Those who work in institutions don’t follow the lunar calendar,” said Angel Moreno, criticizing politicians, bureaucrats and academics who don’t work the land themselves. “We’re talking about the afro-descendent, Indigenous and campesino seeds, and we have to take care of them ourselves, so that the institutions don’t come and put our seeds in a refrigerator.” This is the Venezuelan revolution at its most radical. And it comes not a moment too soon.

Economic Crisis

Venezuela is currently in a severe economic crisis – so severe that the word that is used in Venezuela today is not crisis, but war. And it’s no exaggeration – the scale of the crisis requires the permanent mobilization of the whole society in order to make ends meet.

But in Monte Carmelo, another picture emerges of this crisis, one which again prompts us to return to the source for answers. “The economic crisis hasn’t effected us very much,” said Abigail Garcia, one of the founders of the Socialist Seedbed of Monte Carmelo: “We grow our own food; we don’t need to wait in line for mayonnaise. Most of all this crisis has provoked a change of consciousness, and that is the most important of all changes.”

All around Venezuela, this sentiment is on the front lines. As prices surge beyond control or comprehension, the economic war has also brought communities together into networks of solidarity and production, where people are rediscovering their roots.

“When a crisis comes, we fall back on our cultural, historical reserves as a people, including the actual geographic sites of exchange and trade routes,” said Livio Rangel from the National Trueke Network: “We’re not talking about anything new. Look in your roots and your ancestors.” Rangel is one of the promoters of the “Trueke” movement. Literally translated as barter, Trueke combines community organizing around basic economic needs with a political and historical education wherein communities design their own currencies and organize themselves in assembly. At a Trueke, people of all ages gather to exchange everything from seeds to books, clothing to cosmetics, and also give workshops in specific skills.

“Trueke is what can save us from this economic war,” Rangel continues: “It can help us to find ourselves within our socio-productive essence…When you go to the supermarket, the Other is the enemy. When you go to Trueke, the Other is a friend, a love…” In Monte Carmelo, at the height of an economic war whose casualties are measured not only by inflation but by real human lives, where people die because medicine is being hoarded, the Trueke movement suddenly seems to have become common sense.

Trueke

The economic crisis has moved Trueke to center stage of the political process, and in Monte Carmelo this common sense is common practice: People were exchanging seeds, plants, food, books, arts and crafts, ideas and practices, all without money. I spoke with Walterio Lanz, a nationally respected figure whose innovative fish-farming practices and political activism over decades have earned him strong ecosocialist credentials. “We have gone a step beyond Jesus; we don’t just teach people how to fish, we teach them how to grow and care for them.”

While the market system is failing, this ancient system of economics is being jump-started again. The economy of Trueke reaches back to ancestral and indigenous traditions where different ethnicities engaged in trade across and throughout bioregions. An initiative from the Ministry of Higher Education has organized workshops around the country, organized by bioegion, to implement community-university Trueke systems in every state of Venezuela. And in the context of economic crisis, Trueke is taking on the character of a street action.

In the town of Lagunillas, a few days before the gathering in Monte Carmelo, I attended a Trueke where seeds were given away in exchange for the commitment to plant them (with names and phone numbers collected to check in), and dozens gathered at a workshop to learn how to make soap out of used cooking oil. “This is the ancient and new call of Trueke,” said Pablo Mayayo, another leader in the national Trueke network: “Against the monotheism of money, which we worship every day, let’s learn to resolve our problems without money. Let’s take a rest from cash, and exchange with solidarity. We are re-learning how to grow food, we are apprentices to small farmers. The return to the small farm is the return to our roots. They want this revolutionary process to fall, but what’s falling is capitalism, because it doesn’t know how to sow seeds, it doesn’t know how to love.”

Trueke is not only grassroots economics, but also grassroots democracy; an assembly at the end of every Trueke determines how to move forward; where the next one will be, who will participate, who will take which responsibilities. While hundreds of people line up in the cities to buy soap, in the countryside a new economics and a new politics are taking place. “I think that’s the most subversive thing you can do,” Livio Rangel told me: “Make your own soap, grow your own food. Make by yourself the things thatthey are hoarding. That’s the counter-model.”

Monsanto Vs. Monte Carmelo

But how does this economy and politics take on a larger scale? How can the experience of Monte Carmelo be spread and shared throughout Venezuela in the context of a rentier petroleum economy that imports the majority of its food? And how can it be mobilized to fight against the spread of corporate industrial agriculture, which has already begun to bring the chemical pesticides, fertilizers and hybrid and genetically modified seeds into the country?

In 2013, a seed law that would have opened a legal loophole for the importation of genetically modified seeds almost passed the Venezuelan legislature. Since the constituent assembly in 1999 when Venezuelans rewrote their constitution, the Venezuelan people have taken an active and leading role in writing and refining new laws to support their movements. So in 2013, the movement was ready – it blocked the passage of this law, and began a three-year process of writing a new seed law. This one would be written from the bottom up, through assemblies and workshops held across the country.

The struggle for a new seed law was the subtext of this year’s gathering in Monte Carmelo. With parliamentary elections coming up that December, it was widely perceived that the movement needed to act quickly to pass the People’s Seed Law, which by October had achieved consensus in assemblies throughout the country.

Tensions were high. One woman in an assembly reminded the crowd: “If the bad seed law is approved, we will all be converted into criminals – everyone who grows and guards ancestral seeds.” As far-fetched as it sounds, laws have criminalized seed saving around the world. The United States is an instructive example, where the federal government has persecuted and shut down seed banks across the country.

So in the midst of debates on October 30, the assembly decided that they would convoke a march to Caracas where they would rally outside the national assembly and demand that the people’s seed law be passed. And so it was. At the end of November, the outgoing national assembly voted into law a revolutionary seed law written by small farmers. It outlaws not only any GMO seeds, but also prohibits all forms of patent and intellectual property rights on seeds. And because small farmers know that laws on paper by themselves don’t necessarily change things, the law also stipulates that the government is responsible for helping to promote an alternative sustainable agro-ecological model throughout the country.

In this historic victory – arguably the biggest thing to happen in Venezuela since the death of Hugo Chavez – a movement of small farmers took on one of the largest corporations in the world, and won. And yet they remain humble. “We’re not at the head or the first of anything, we’re not on the top of a pyramid,” said Alan Soto Lopez, an artisan and activist who accompanies this movement. Walterio Lanz echoed: “We’re just doing what history is pushing us towards.”

“Plan de Siembra”

Even before the passage of the revolutionary seed law, the Guardians of the Seeds were dreaming up plans for how to organize the country along ecosocialist lines. On October 30, after the Day of the Campesino Seed, a coalition of academics and farmers, young activists and veteran organizers gathered in Monte Carmelo to debate a plan to win the economic war by building an ecosocialist mode of production from the bottom up; the “Plan de Siembra,” or the Plan of Sowing.

“Where are we going?” a poster at the front of the room asked at the beginning of a long day of discussion and debate, and pointed towards the answers: “Toward productive and political coherence: the rescue of native varieties, the use of organic fertilizers, and the empowerment of a communal chain of production and distribution.” The plan, which was subsequently illustrated and refined throughout the day, was to sow over 60,000 acres under “the logic of the communes.” Forty thousand would be devoted to corn, to beat the monopoly on pre-cooked corn flour owned by the Polar company, directed by the counter-revolutionary agribusiness tycoon Lorenzo Mendoza.

While Monsanto and other proponents of the Green Revolution propose that societies like Venezuela overcome their food problems by turning to new innovations in agricultural science and technology, the Guardians of the Seeds and their allies in Monte Carmelo are pointing in precisely the opposite direction.

“The ancient things are the most powerful,” Mayayo explained: “They are more trustworthy than the new things, because the ancient things have already proved themselves; they have resisted capitalism for hundreds of years. They’re still here!”

For the whole day, the hundreds of people from around the country divided themselves into rooms organized by type of crop – beans, corn, potatoes, and so on – in order to measure the efforts of all the different communities and integrate them into a coherent whole.

Here in a small mountain village, small farmers were on the cutting edge of history, protagonists in debates concerning the future of the nation and the revolutionary process.

Gabriel Garcia, a small farmer and a leader in Monte Carmelo, emphasized that there should not be a centralized state bureaucracy which manages seeds, and that legislation should not substitute for mobilization: “Seeds can’t be in a museum. They have to be cultivated. Every day is the Day of Seeds, not just October 29. We have to believe in ourselves, or we’ll always depend on technicians from universities, and we’ll end up using heavy machinery and other inappropriate technologies.”

Rangel and Mayayo from the Trueke network voiced concerns that the Plan of Sowing should not devolve into centralized bureaucracies where small farmers would be once again sacrificed on the altar of industrial production. “First they kick the small farmer off the land, then they force them into a city, and now they want to accuse them of not producing enough to feed the city?” Rangel questioned: “The point is not just the seed but the farmer; to defend not just the seed but the person who defends the seed. In counting seeds we get screwed. Take the harvest to the Trueke, not to the state.” Angel Moreno also argued against the quantitative framework: “Here in this seed is our essence. It can’t be measured.” Mayayo continued, “central planning in agriculture never worked in Russia or in China. It worked in health, education, prevention of accidents, but not in economy.” Walter Lanz took it a step further, telling me later: “any solution has to break with the logic of cities. As long as we can’t break from the model of exploiting the country to feed the city, we’ll never resolve our social or ecological problems.”

Such radical and often spiritual perspectives are strong in Monte Carmelo, and the tensions between small farmers who insist that their production could not be measured clashed with those who were concerned that without a quantifiable plan, the movement would not be able to either pass legislation that favored their efforts, or truly coordinate them into a coherent whole capable of providing an alternative to both the current economic crisis or the industrial agriculture of the Green Revolution. The debates were not only between friends and comrades and organizations, but also included deputies and representatives of the government.

And yet what emerged was not a mess of contradictions, but a beautifully complex picture of solidarity and struggle. Relieving some of the high tensions after a day of debates, Moreno reminded everyone that they were together as revolutionaries. “We live conspiring. We have to be insurgents. Next year let’s come with sacks of seeds, not just little bags.”

Conclusion

The Guardians of Seeds in Monte Carmelo are returning to the source, and they are inviting the world to join them. Their program is an integrated plan of action, including mobilization, legislation, and production. It’s an uphill battle in difficult conditions, but their convictions, like their practices, are deeply rooted and not easily discouraged.

An international media and diplomacy war against Venezuela continues to confuse the world about what is really happening in Venezuela – to the extent where one of the more reliable news sources on the country is the corrections section of the New York Times. But the revolutionary process in Venezuela continues to make major strides. While detractors point to long lines for food, people in Venezuela are also pointing to the first anti-GMO seed law in the world, and an ecosocialist Plan of Sowing. While some claim human rights abuses, the National Human Rights Plan launched by the government for 2015-2019 is one of the most comprehensive in the world, also having been written with participation of thousands of people across the country.

For small farmers in Venezuela at the cutting edge of history, the future is now. What is called for both by the grassroots and also by the government, is nothing less than a new geography – where the cities don’t exploit the countryside – and a new calendar – where the seasonal and lunar cycles matter more than the electoral and business cycles.

Monte Carmelo doesn’t rest on its laurels. On October 31st, over fifty people from eight different countries gathered to discuss and debate “the convocation of the First Ecosocialist International.” They invite the world to join them in a return to the source, which takes us beyond the source, like the seed, which unites the soil to the sky.

Britain’s House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee today issued a Report on Antisemitism in the UK that, while correctly identifying the far Right as the source of most hate crime, shows such bias in its sources and assessment of evidence that it calls into question the committee’s reputation and competence.

The Report, from a Tory dominated committee, takes up the weapons that have been used to try to unseat Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader by smearing those he has attracted to the Party with charges of antisemitism. The apparent collusion of Labour committee members reflects the dirty war being waged against Corbyn’s radical leadership by elements within the party.

Britain’s House of Commons Home Affairs Committee Report:                    

• Depends on evidence from almost exclusively pro-Israel, anti-Corbyn sources
• Advocates re-defining antisemitism so as to intimidate and silence pro-Palestinian voices, including making it a punishable offence to use the word Zionist “in an accusatory context”
• Dismisses the Chakrabarti Report’s principled recommendations for fair and transparent disciplinary Labour Party procedures  in cases of alleged antisemitism and other forms of racism, proposing draconian, politically motivated measures instead

Prof Jonathan Rosenhead, from the Jewish-led campaign group Free Speech on Israel (FSOI), said the select committee had aligned itself with extreme pro-Israel advocates, by setting restrictive limits on what may and may not be said, threatening to close down free speech on Israel and Palestine.

“The dire record of antisemitism over the centuries and especially in the last one means that vigilance is essential,” said Prof Rosenhead. “But antisemitism is not, currently, the major racist threat in this country; nor is it a significant problem in the Labour Party. This report loses all sense of proportion. It risks actually weakening the defences against true antisemitism (‘hatred of Jews as Jews’) by trying to extend its meaning to include many legitimate criticisms of Israel.

“For those of us who argue, along with many other Jews and Israelis, that the Zionist project has inflicted intolerable injustice on the Palestinians, the adjective ‘Zionist’ inevitably has an ‘accusatory’ aspect.  But it is directed against the State of Israel and its founding ideology, not against Jews.”

Notes:

1. House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee report on antisemitism http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/home-affairs-committee/inquiries/parliament-2015/inquiry2/publications/
2. Free Speech on Israel is a network of labour, green and trade union activists in the UK, mainly Jewish, who came together in April 2016 to counter attempts by pro-Israel right wingers to brand the campaign for justice for Palestinians as antisemitic. 
3. Prof Jonathan Rosenhead explores the workings of the campaign to discover antisemitism in every corner of Corbyn’s Labour Party https://opendemocracy.net/jonathan-rosenhead/jackie-walker-suspense-mystery
4. Free Speech on Israel submission to the Chakrabarti Inquiry. https://www.scribd.com/doc/315237906/Free-Speech-on-Israel-Submission-to-Chakrabarti-Submission
5. Asa Winstanley exposes the fabrication of many antisemitism allegations https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israel-lobby-manufactured-uk-labour-partys-anti-semitism-crisis/16481

The pro-jihadist “west” is doing its best to define the number of civilians in east-Aleppo up and the number of al-Qaeda fighters in the city down. If the current numbering trend continues there will be a no al-Qaeda fighters left in east-Aleppo even as none have left. They will be redefined into “moderate rebels” who are entitled to the failed ceasefire they had never accepted in the first place.

The terrorists in east-Aleppo are encircled and besieged. The Syrian army nibbles away piece after piece of their territorial hold while the Syrian and Russian air force attack any recognized concentrations of forces or material. It is only a question of time until they are completely defeated.

Most of the fighters in the besieged area are associated with al-Qaeda. They are several thousand strong. Only few civilians remain. The eastern parts once housed some 300,000 people. About 10% of those, likely less, are still there. That are the realistic numbers. The spin differs.

When in 2013 the sectarian rebels had enclosed and completely besieged (map) the government held parts of Aleppo every win of theirs was called a liberation.

They since killed many of the people they “liberated”. Others fled. But the tide has turned. This animated map shows the development from September 2015 to 2016. The now besieged “rebel” held areas in east-Aleppo are shrinking every day. This is today’s situation. Much of the northern parts of the besieged area, including the Palestinian camp Handarat, are back in government hands.

Sooner or later the Syrian army will try to split the “rebel” held part along the east-west road from the airport to the inner (old) city.

The number game is played in front of the United Nations and in the “western media”. The first marks from an October 5 post here:

“It is primarily al-Qaeda that holds Aleppo,” said (vid) the spokesperson of the U.S. led ‘Operation Inherent Resolve’, Colonel Warren. That was back in April and al-Qaeda (aka Jabat al-Nusra) has since strengthen its capacities in the city. The French Syria (military intelligence) expert Fabrice Balanche tells Le Figaro (translated from French):

[Al-Qaeda’s] grip on Aleppo’s east has only increased since the spring of 2016, when it sent 700 reinforcement fighters while moderate brigades fighters began to leave the area before the final exit was closed. The provisional opening of a breach of the siege of Aleppo in August 2016 (Battle of Ramousseh) has further increased its prestige and influence on the rebels.

The UN Special Envoy for Syria De Mistura told (vid, 27:43) the UN Security Council:

We have seen information from other sources that tell us more than half of the fighters present in eastern Aleppo are al-Nusra. We have also seen reports alleging the intentional placement of firing positions close to social infrastructure, inside and aside civilian quarters.

A few days after that speech De Mistura held a press conference in which he offered to escort al-Qaeda fighters out of the besieged area. He alos sharply revised the number of al-Qaeda fighters down to less than 10% of all fighters. From his October 6 press conference:

We have done a much more updated analysis of the al-Nusra reality in eastern Aleppo. I know I was quoted, and is correct, I did refer to a figure which was close to 50%, you must have heard it, I think it was in the context of the Security Council. Well based on a more accurate estimates, which are also more up to date, and which are never completely perfect but are in my opinion, quite reliable, we are talking now about a presence in eastern Aleppo of at maximum 900 people, 900 people. The previous figure probably was also based on the out of date figure, that about 1500 al-Nusra fighters had left Idlib and other locations in order to join the al- Ramousseh battle which you remember took place some time ago when they attempted to re-take al-Ramousseh road. But they, according to our information, did withdraw, once this counter-offensive did not succeed and failed. So this amends, and please take it now as the line, which can always be amended by facts and figures, and more effective analysis, but that amends the so-called 50% thing. 900 al-Nusra fighters in eastern Aleppo.The total number is, the question is of the fighters in general, including the so-called main stream fighters or the AOGs in eastern Aleppo, the maximum figure that is being considered as such is 8000 people, 8000.

So we went from “it is primarily al-Qaeda that holds Aleppo” to some 10% of all fighters there within a few month without any al-Qaeda fighter leaving. This while the siege was partially breached by the “rebels” in August and additional al-Qaeda fighters reportedly used the opening to entered the city.

One gets the feeling that Samantha Power herself, the “wailing banshee” and U.S. Ambassador to the UN, dictated those “more accurate estimates” to De Mistura.

But even those numbers are still too high some “diplomatic sources” now tell Reuters:

The number of Islamist rebels in eastern Aleppo who are not protected by any ceasefire deal, and can therefore be legitimately targeted, is far smaller than an estimate given by the United Nations, diplomatic sources have told Reuters.
…
Several sources independently told Reuters that de Mistura’s figure for JFS fighters was far too high, and the real number was no more than 200, perhaps below 100. One Western diplomat said it possibly had no more than a “symbolic” presence.

Next week we will be down to one or three “symbolic” al-Qaeda fighters in east-Aleppo. When De Mistura finally escorts them out he will need a few helpers to push the wheelchairs of those few, old and disabled people. That then will have “liberated” east-Aleppo from all Jihadi-fighters and only upright, secular and democratic rebels will remain. They will fall under the ceasefire (the one the U.S. and these “rebels” never accepted or immediately broke). They do not deserve to be targeted by Russia and the Syrian government – no matter what they do. That, at least, is what John Kerry and the “western” media will tell the people. It will of course be complete bullshit and no serious analysts will fall for it. But those do not get quoted in the media.

While the number of Jihadis and rebels gets defined down the number of civilians in the now besieged area goes up. The eastern besieged parts of the built-up city originally had some 300-400,000 inhabitants while the government held western parts held nearly 2,000,000. That is, at first sight of the above maps, irritating. But if one studies the satellite pictures underlying the maps in detail one will notice that at least half of the now besieged parts are open country and factory areas. The built-up share is much smaller than in the western parts. Current UN estimates for the western parts vary between 1.3 and 1.5 million. That is consistent with Syrian government claims. The UN has several relief missions and offices in the western parts and those estimates seem therefore reliable.

But for the eastern part the UN has given the abstruse estimates of 250,000-275,000. It has not given any sources for that number. It also has no offices and no missions in the eastern part. It is implausible that only very few people left an area that is ruled by various competing Jihadi groups, has had little electricity and water and has been fought over for years. Until very recently passages to west-Aleppo were open to civilians. The rebels only now blockade them.

An independent estimates of the real population in east-Aleppo comes from Martin Chulov, a journalist for The Guardian who has visited the area ten times since it was occupied by rebels from out of town. After his last visit he estimated the actual number of inhabitants to be down to 40,000:

Those who remain in eastern Aleppo, roughly 40,000 from a prewar population …

Just last week Chulov reconfirmed his observation:

I returned to the city for the last time. Finding residents in the east was difficult. Those who had stayed this long had no plans to leave. Umm Abdu, a wedding dress seamstress turned nurse was one of them.
…
Umm Abdu has left Aleppo, and few of the others I met along the way have stayed behind.

The Syrian government estimates are consistent with Chulov’s observations:

EHSANI2 @EHSANI22
According to well informed senior sources in #Damascus , number of civilians in #Aleppo does not exceed 60k according to their best estimate
11:02 AM – 14 Oct 2016EHSANI2 ‏@EHSANI22
@MoonofA @TPAtticus @CamilleOtrakji “range” of Syrian government estimate of civilians in E.Aleppo is 40k-60k…60k is high of the range
11:48 AM – 14 Oct 2016

In other siege areas where the rebels gave up to the Syrian government the numbers of people coming out of them were much smaller than the original inhabitants. The numbers were also smaller than all prior estimates. Daraya, near Damascus, originally had some 80,000 inhabitants. The numbers of besieged people in Daraya the UN had given were variously between several ten-thousands and down to 8,000. When the evacuation of Daraya started the Syrian army estimated that 800-1,200 fighters and 4,000 civilians would come out. In the end the numbers of leaving fighters was some 600-700 and less than 2,000 civilians turned up to leave. The area was searched and all had left.

Based on the Daraya numbers and those of other sieges in Syria there are probably no more than 4-5,000 fighters and some 3-5 civilians per fighter, i.e. their immediate families, in east-Aleppo. The real total could easily be as low as 20,000.

But even then the al-Qaeda fighters will be still be the majority of the “rebels” in the city. It is implausible that their total number is now less than the number which were earlier announced to enter as reinforcement. The official spinmasters talking to Reuters obviously want the numbers to be very, very low to keep the al-Qaeda fighters unharmed and in place for future operations.

I am confident that neither the Syrian nor the Russian military will be a sucker for such BS.  That role is reserved for “western” journalist and the the usual lobbyist-“analysts” who are employed by Qatar, the U.S. and other Jihadi sponsors.

Theo Patnos, who was held hostage by al-Qaeda in Syria for nearly two years, was interviewed by Vanity Fair (watch the video at that link). Asked what the presidential candidates know about Syria he responds:

They don’t know a thing about Syria. Neither do the journalists, by the way. They’re doing their best, but they don’t know. They’re guessing. They speak with great authority but they really know very little. I don’t criticize them for being incompetent, but I criticize them for not having the up-close knowledge. They’re speaking of a planet they’ve never visited but they speak as though they do know and it’s a little confusing for me.

“It’ll be at a time of our choosing,” says U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, on NBC’’s “Meet the Press,” aired on Sunday, October 16th.

Interviewer Chuck Todd had asked him, “Why would he [Obama] send a message out to Putin?”

Biden (image right) pursed his lips, paused, and said, with a grim look on his face, “We sent him the message.”

Of course that didn’t answer Todd’s question, which was “Why?” Biden and Todd both remained silent for another tense moment.

Then, Biden picked up again: “We have the capacity to do it, and, uh,” and Todd interrupted him there with “He’ll know it?”

Biden replied: “He’ll know it, and it’ll be at a time of our choosing, and under circumstances that have the greatest impact. Uh, the capacity to do, to fundamentally alter the election, is not what people think; and, uh, I tell you what: to the extent that they do [‘do’ presumably meaning: fundamentally alter the election], we will be proportionate in what we do. And, uh,”

Todd again interrupted his interviewee, and said, “So, a message is going to be sent. Will the public know?” Biden replied, “Hope not.”

Full Biden Interview on NBC Meet The Press, October 16, 2016. Relevant section starts at 11′.47″

Of course, that “Hope not” could mean many things. It might mean: A blitz nuclear attack in line with our government’s belief that we now enjoy Nuclear Primacy (an idea that was first published by the Council on Foreign Relations in 2006, and which has never yet been renounced by the U.S. government, during the decade since). That would be very much a public response, which Biden would “hope not” to be ’necessary’. In other words: Biden might have meant, there: “I hope it won’t have to be that.” But, clearly, Biden isn’t wanting the public to understand anything, other than that President Obama has threatened President Putin, with something, and that it will be “proportionate,” and the excuse for it will be — if it will happen — that Putin had done something which Obama thinks caused Hillary Clinton to lose the election to Donald Trump.

Standing behind what Biden is saying there, is the belief that Putin does have in his possession some option that might “fundamentally alter the election.” This is clearly a threat that’s meant to deter Putin from doing something that Putin hasn’t yet done. Obama is telling Putin that either the winner will be the person he wants to be his successor, or else — or else what?

In other words: what Biden is saying, is that, if Trump wins this election, then there is going to be some sudden, unannounced, U.S. government response against Putin, and that only after it is over, will the U.S. government explain to the public why it did.

But, of course, that assumes Americans will still be alive, even if Russians are not; and, so, if the “proportionate” response turns out to be a blitz nuclear attack against Russia, then anyone who is still alive will be wondering: what was it ‘proportionate’ to?

The United States is no longer — at least not in Syria — actually fighting the thing that Trump calls “extremist Islamic terrorism”: we are instead arming Al Qaeda in Syria to overthrow and replace Putin’s ally, Bashar al-Assad, there.

All of the U.S. government’s talk against “ISIL” (the Sauds’ preferred acronym for “ISIS”) is mere distraction from the tens of thousands of other jihadist fighters from other jihadist groups that have also been imported by the U.S. and Saudi governments into Syria as Obama’s and the Sauds’ “boots on the ground” to overthrow Assad there.

The leadership now for all of those jihadist groups (except for ISIS itself) is, in fact, Al Qaeda in Syria, which has gone under the name “al-Nusra.” Nusra is supplying the leadership now to all the jihadist factions that have been sent into Syria; Nusra is the only jihadist group that possesses the long experience and training in jihad and military matters, which is needed in order to be able to overthrow Assad. Al Qaeda is now America’s essential ally, at doing what the U.S. government most wants to do: overthrow and replace Assad.

The U.S. is deadly serious about that intention, as can be seen here from the NBC News preview video of their interview with Biden, from which the above quotations are sourced. Looking at Biden’s face there, one can see that this is deadly serious. This isn’t about sexual aggression — either Donald Trump’s or Bill Clinton’s — it’s about the survival of civilization, or else nuclear war.

There have been many reports in the U.S. press saying that Obama has, ever since at least October 6th, been contemplating an all-out U.S. bombing campaign to bring down Assad. But that would mean war with Russia, which has been actively bombing Nusra and all the other jihadists in Syria.

Hillary Clinton is urging a “no-fly zone” in Syria, so that we can do to Assad what we did to another ally of Moscow, Muammar Gaddafi. However, when that was done to Gaddafi, Putin stood aside and wasn’t supplying military assistance to Gaddafi, which would have enabled Gaddafi to wipe out the fundamentalist Muslims who were trying to overthrow him. Russia is involved actively, this time, to prevent happening in Syria what happened in Libya. A no-fly zone in Syria would thus mean U.S. war against Russia.

These are tense times. Any escalation that the U.S. can do against Russia, can be met by an escalation that Russia can do against the United States.

Consequently, whatever escalation Obama is now threatening against Putin, might be met by an escalation on the other side. Where will it stop, or would it even be able to stop?

Whatever escalation Obama might consider to be ‘proportionate’, could consequently end up ending the world as we know it — and not for the better. Hillary Clinton has threatened Putin with war; now Barack Obama has done likewise.

Whatever Biden’s assignment here actually was from Obama, one thing about it is clear: this President is determined that Hillary Clinton be his successor, and Obama will target anyone who gets in his way if he doesn’t win his way on this. And Obama wants the American public to know that this is how he feels about the matter.

This Biden-interview is really intended, in that sense, to be a threat aimed at America’s voters, telling them, telling each one of us: Vote for Hillary Clinton, or else! He’s not telling us what that “or else!” is going to be — and maybe he himself has no accurate idea of how far it will ultimately cycle and go. Ultimately, whatever he thinks it would be, might not turn out to be the last step in this cycle of escalation — unless it’s going to go directly to a blitz attack against Russia.

Obama is thus coercing us, before he coerces Putin. He’s telling us: If we vote against Hillary Clinton — if she loses this election — then President Obama has something in mind that we won’t like — and he won’t wait until the next President is inaugurated on 20 January 2017 to do it, whatever ‘it’ might be. Obama here is threatenting not only Vladimir Putin, but the American people. Even if Obama truly believes that he alone possesses all the power, he does not, unless he possesses the power to terrorize America’s voters to elect Hillary Clinton, even if we otherwise would not.

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.

Kinder Morgan has been negotiating with landowners in 14 Ohio counties

BOWLING GREEN, OHIO — A Wood County Common Pleas judge ruled today that the company behind the Utopia East pipeline project does not have eminent domain rights, throwing a potentially expensive roadblock into the project’s path.

Judge Robert Pollex ruled that Kinder Morgan’s plan to pipe ethane from the Utica shale region in eastern Ohio to a chemical company in Windsor, Ont., is not necessary and not for a public use, and thus the company cannot use eminent domain to force Wood County landowners to give easements on their property.

Kinder Morgan, North America’s largest energy-infrastructure company, has been negotiating with landowners in 14 Ohio counties to build the 12-inch pipeline, which would transport the ethane — used in the production of plastics — to a pipeline in Michigan that then heads to Canada. The product would solely be used by NOVA Chemicals Corp., a Canadian company.

For property owners who have not been willing to sell, or sell at the price Kinder Morgan proposed, the company has petitioned Ohio courts for the right to appropriate the property at fair value. Some of those cases are in Wood County, including one involving PDB Farms of Wood County, which is south of Pemberville.

Several dozen landowners have been represented by Andrew Mayle of the Fremont law firm Mayle, Ray & Mayle and by Maurice Thompson a lawyer and the founder and director of the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law in Columbus.

Judge Pollex’s ruling involved PDB Farms and several other landowners represented by Mr. Mayle and Mr. Thompson, as the judge consolidated several of the cases.

The product Kinder Morgan wants to transport is a byproduct of hydraulic fracturing of shale to extract oil and natural gas. Mr. Mayle said that pipeline companies are becoming increasingly aggressive, asserting eminent domain rights as they build pipelines across the Midwest.

“It’s probably the most important eminent domain case in the United States right now,” he said.

A Kinder Morgan official said this afternoon the company was reviewing the decision and would have a statement by the end of the day.

Ohio allows some private companies the right to use eminent domain if the project is for the public good. Among those companies are ”common carriers,” which can include pipeline companies transporting petroleum products.

Kinder Morgan has argued that the project is necessary and for the public use because the Utopia East pipeline would help in the development of America’s energy infrastructure, create hundreds of temporary union jobs and several permanent positions, and would amount to a $500 million investment.

However, Judge Pollex ruled that Kinder Morgan’s proposed project is not necessary or for public use, and does not qualify as a common carrier, because only the Canadian company would directly benefit. He also expressed incredulity that state law allows private companies to essentially grant themselves eminent domain rights.

“It is astonishing to this court that Kinder Morgan is able to make its own determination to proceed and not be required to obtain any permit or permission from a governmental entity,” Judge Pollex wrote.

The judge also wrote that, if Ohio’s laws were read to make Kinder Morgan a common carrier, that law would be an ”unconstitutional infringement on the property rights of the defendants.”

Mr. Mayle said he believes other judges in Wood, Lucas, Seneca, Sandusky, and other counties will use the ruling in their decisions in similar cases.

“We think this decision was spot on, and it was the right decision, and we think other courts will be persuaded by it and follow it,” he said.

The inability of Kinder Morgan — potentially other companies seeking to build pipelines — to use eminent domain would give landowners significantly more leverage in negotiations with the companies or force the companies to alter their pipeline routes.

Contact Nolan Rosenkrans at: [email protected] or on Twitter @NolanRosenkrans.

The events in the Middle East, Syria and Aleppo are the focus of global attention. Rarely has a battle been so decisive to the outcome of a war and the fate of hundreds of millions of people around the world

Hillary Clinton in the last presidential debate repeatedly called for the establishment of a no-fly zone (NFZ) in Syria. The concept, reiterated several times, clashes with the revelation contained in her private emails admitting that the implementation of a NFZ would entail the increased deaths of Syrian civilians.

In a recent hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, General Philip Breedlove (image right) was asked what kind of effort would be required for the US armed forces to impose a NFZ over Syrian skies. With obvious embarrassment, the General was forced to admit that such a request would involve hitting Russian and Syrian aircraft and vehicles, opening the door to a direct confrontation between Moscow and Washington, a decision the General was simply not willing to take. The military leadership has always shown a readiness to implement the military option; so this time they must have sniffed the danger of a direct conflict with Moscow.

The Kremlin has publicly admitted to deploying in Syria the S-400 (image below) and S-300V4 advanced anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems respectively. The presence of the defense complex was intentionally announced as a factor of deterrence and is a logical strategy. The message to Washington is clear: any unidentified object in Syrian skies will be shot down.

The United States bases much of its military strength on the constant need to project power, making its opponents believe that it possesses capabilities that others do not hold. Therefore it is very unlikely» that the Pentagon would want to reveal to the world the worth of their stealth systems and their «legendary« American cruise missiles when faced with the S-300V4 or S-400. The Kosovo War serves to remind of the F-117 that was shot down by Soviet systems (S-125) dating from the 1960s.

Hillary Clinton’s threats against Moscow were not the only ones. The present policy makers in Washington continue to make aggressive statements demonstrating their total loss of touch with reality. In recent weeks, hysterical reactions were recorded by the Pentagon, the State Department, top military generals, and even representatives of American diplomacy. To emphasize the unhappiness prevalent in some Washington circles, several articles appeared in The Washington Post and The New York Times calling for the imposition of a US no-fly zone in Syria, ignoring the consequences highlighted by Dunford. There are two hypotheses under consideration: hitting the Syrian army air bases with cruise missiles, or the use of stealth planes to bomb Damascus’s A2/AD installations.

Behind Washington’s frantic reactions and vehement protests is the probability of military defeat. The US does not have any ability to prevent the liberation of Aleppo by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and the Russian Federation. In the last fifteen days, the SAA and Russia have achieved significant progress, and it is this that has led to an escalation of tensions. Some of the most significant episodes reflecting this over the last few days include: jets of the international coalition hitting the SAA, causing 90 deaths; US government officials threatening Russia with the downing of her planes and the bombings of her cities, resulting in Russian civilian deaths; and the blaming of Moscow for an attack on a humanitarian convoy.

The climax seemed to have been reached at the United Nations where the US representatives prevented a Russian resolution condemning the terrorist attacks on the Russian embassy in Damascus. It is interesting to note that fifteen years after the attacks of September 11, 2001, Washington finds itself defending Al Nusra Front (AKA Al Qaeda) in an official United Nations meeting; something to ponder. But apparently there is no limit to provocations, and a few days after this incredible denouement, the Pentagon was keen to point out that the possibility of a preventive nuclear strike against Russia is still valid.

It therefore seems almost simplistic to emphasize that because of the success of the SAA, Washington, Ankara, Riyadh, Doha and Tel Aviv are showing unprecedented signs of weakness and nervousness. Their commitment to overthrowing the legitimate government of Assad has failed. The combined action of the Syrian and Russian ground, air and sea forces pushed Washington and the corporate media to move from words of condemnation to increasingly open threats.

Last month the situation against the terrorists quickly changed in the north of Syria thanks to the Syrian Arab Army and its allies supported by the West. In Aleppo, the SAA continues to work every day with great success toward the city’s liberation. Neighborhoods and large areas are back under government control. The relentless advances of the troops loyal to Assad are altering the course of the war in Syria in favor of Damascus, eliminating the US attempts to remove the legitimate Syrian government. A victory in Aleppo would mean the near certainty of defeat for the terrorists in the remaining areas of the country. The closing of the border with Turkey would cut the supply lines, with consequences and repercussions throughout Syria.

What would still remain open are a few crossing areas in the south of the country near the border with Jordan that have always been a supply source for terrorists. However, it would be very difficult for this supply line alone to sustain the conflict or adequately replace the one closed north of Aleppo. Especially in the north through Turkey, and to the west through the uncontrolled border with Iraq, the terrorists receive continuous supplies. The liberation of Mosul by the Iraqi army, Aleppo by the SAA, and Der Al-Zur in the near future, will pave the way for the strategic recapture of Raqqa, the last bastion of Daesh, thereby defeating even the Plan B to partition the country.

With the failure of the northern front, the terrorists will be faced with the probable prospect of the complete collapse of their operations nationwide. Some will continue to fight, but most will throw away their weapons knowing that they have lost the war. Once this is achieved, the liberation of the rest of Syria should be a matter of a few months. It should be remembered that the recapture of Aleppo would guarantee a crushing defeat for the regional sponsors of international terrorism (Qatar and Saudi Arabia).

Still, it is not only the advance of Aleppo that is cause for concern for enemies of Syria. Obama and his administration are now irrelevant, also because of one of the most controversial presidential elections in recent history. The uncertain future of Washington’s foreign policy has prompted partners such as Riyadh, Doha, Ankara and Tel Aviv not to hesitate in further adding fuel to the Syrian conflagration, worried about any future inactivity from Washington and eager to advance their own military solution to the conflict.

In the case of Ankara, the invasion of Iraq and Syria is a serious danger that risks plunging the region into further chaos and destruction, with the Iraqi prime minister not hesitating to label the Turkish move reckless and warning of the conflict expanding into a regional conflict. Saudi Arabia’s problems are even greater, as it does not have the ability, in terms of men and means, to intervene directly in Syria because of its disastrous involvement in the war in Yemen. The speed with which confidence in Riyadh is crumbling is unprecedented. Her large currency reserves are dwindling, and it seems it is because tens of billions of dollars have been squandering in financing the military action against Yemen. Another example of independent military action concerns Israel.

Four years into the Syrian conflict, Israel continues its secret war against Hezbollah and Iranian troops, who are engaged in areas bordering Israel in fighting al-Nusra Front and Daesh. For Tel Aviv, there are still two options desirable to the Syrian crisis, both in line with their strategy, namely, the continuation of chaos and disorder, or a balkanization of Syria. In both cases, the objective is to expand Israel’s sphere of influence far beyond the Golan Heights, which were occupied illegally years ago.

The unsuccessful attempts of Turkey, Israel and Saudi Arabia to change events in Syria have highlighted the growing strategic misunderstandings between the United States and regional partners, misunderstandings that often oblige Ankara, Riyadh and Tel Aviv to turn to the Russian Federation for confidential dialogue, since Moscow is the only player able to adjust the delicate Middle East equilibrium.

In the near future, it remains evident to Moscow and Damascus that some risks still exist, despite a well-considered overall strategy. The acceleration in the liberation of Aleppo also has an ancillary purpose that aims to minimize maneuverability for the next American administration. In a certain way, it is a race against time: Aleppo must be liberated in order to chart the way towards the end of the conflict before the next US president comes into office in January 2017. It is yet to be seen whether Clinton or Trump plan to go beyond Obama’s empty threats, but understandably Damascus and Moscow have no intention of being caught off guard, especially with a probable Clinton presidency.

After years of negotiations with the schizophrenic diplomacy of the US, Moscow and Damascus have decided to protect themselves against any sudden decisions that may come from the American «deep state». Deploying the most advanced systems existing in air defense, Moscow has called Washington’s bluff as no one has done in years. The red line for Moscow was crossed by the tragic events of September 17 in Der al-zur. The creation by the Russians of a no-fly zone over Syrian skies has been repeatedly suggested. But incredibly, in the hours immediately after the cowardly attack against Syrian troops, the US Department of Defense and the State Department proposed the creation of a no-fly-zone that would serve to ground Russian and Syrian planes. It was a brazen and provocative proposal for Damascus and Moscow if there ever was one.

Sensing the danger in these words, Moscow acted immediately, deploying cutting-edge systems to protect Syrians skies with equipment that can shoot down cruise missiles, stealth aircraft, and even ballistic missiles (S-300 and S-400). To make sure Washington fully understood the message, the Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD) reiterated what was already publicly announced, namely that any unidentified object would be shot down immediately, as there would not be any sufficient time for Russian operators to verify the original launch, trajectory and final target of any objects detected. It is a clear warning to the US and its long-standing strategy that requires the use of large amounts of cruise missiles to destroy anti-aircraft systems in order to pave the way for a no-fly zone as was seen in Libya.

The Russian MoD has even specified that American fifth-generation stealth aircraft could be easily targeted, alluding to a radius of operation of the S-200 systems, S-300 and S-400 (and all variants) that would surprise many international observers. This statement also seems to indirectly confirm another theory that remains pure speculation, which is that during the September 17 attack by the US on the SAA in Der Al-Zur seem, some jets from the international coalition were targeted by Russian or Syrian air-defense systems (perhaps S-200s or S-400s), forcing the airplanes to retreat before facing the prospect of being shot down.

Whatever the intentions that are hidden behind Washington’s hysterical threats, Moscow has suggested several asymmetrical scenarios in response to a direct attack on its personnel in Syria. In addition to the S-300 and S-400 systems, the MoD has openly declared its knowledge of the exact locations of US special forces in Syria, a clear reference to the Syrian and Russian ability to strike US soldiers operating alongside terrorists or moderate rebels.

All of Major-General Igor Konashenkov’s recent press conferences have clearly shown new systems deployed in Syria for air defense, a more than intentional advertisement. Aside from deterrence continuing to be one preferred instrument adopted by Moscow, the unusually strong, direct and unambiguous words of the Russian MoD easily show how the patience of Moscow and Damascus has been exhausted, especially following the recent sequence of events as well as repeated threats.

In such a scenario, the US can only rely on one weapon: complaints, threats and hysterical crying amplified by the mainstream media, generals and the official spokespeople of dozens of agencies in Washington. Nothing that can actually stop the liberating action of the SAA and its allies.

The United States has no alternatives available to prevent an outcome to the conflict that is undesirable for it.

Whichever route it chooses, there is no way to change the events in Syria. Even American generals had to admit that a no-fly zone in Syria is out of the question. It is easy for US State Department spokesperson Admiral Kirby to launch empty threats, but it is more difficult for the military to act on these threats while avoiding a nuclear apocalypse. Whatever the outcome of the upcoming presidential elections, the war in Syria for the United States and its regional partners is irretrievably lost, and the hysteria and provocations of recent weeks is symptomatic of the frustration and nervousness that has not been common for Americans in recent years.

Kevin Frost, a special forces sergeant in the Australian Army, has done something unusual. He wishes, even demands, to be tried for his role behind the summary execution of an Afghan prisoner in his captivity during a tour of the country.

From Frost came a statement to an inquiry digging through allegations of war crimes by Australian troops that took place after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.  According to Frost, the incident took place on one of three tours of the beleaguered country with the ADF, though details were sketchy as to where, and when, it took place.

“The particular incident that I was involved in resulted in the POW that I captured actually being executed, murdered.  Now, I can’t remember if he [the executioner] cut the cuffs off first or if he cut the cuffs off after he shot him.  That’s one point I can’t remember there, because I wasn’t looking, I didn’t want to look.  I turned around, and the guy was dead.  He’d been shot through the forehead.”

For Frost, investigation and prosecution would be a form of deliverance, a necessary catharsis for his years of depression and onerous guilt.  His statement almost assumed that of a desperate plea: “I believe I should be punished with the full weight of the law, and justly.  I do not believe this should be brushed under the carpet.”

Frost’s case is not unusual.  In May this year, a former lance corporal of the Army’s elite 1^st Commando Regiment, given the name Dave, found keeping a lid on his role in a raid resulting in the deaths of Afghan children, impossible.  He had been charged, along with his sergeant colleague, with manslaughter by former director of military prosecutions, Brigadier Lyn McDade.  “From the moment I realised there were dead children, I was horrified, numb, just struggling to grasp.”[1]

His missions were typical, operating in conditions of killing or capturing Taliban targets.  In the blood lust and fury, there were bound to be casualties, notably against civilians.  The fundamental problem in this approach remains its often unreliable foundation: that of suitable intelligence.

“The intelligence we received,” claimed Corporal Geoff Evans, “was of varying quality.  Sometimes it was very, very good, and other times it felt like they were throwing a dart at a map.” All the travails, in fact, of guerrilla war and insurgency.

In this specific case, the prosecutor’s views, outlined in a memorandum from September 23, 2011, identified the sergeant as the individual giving the order to detonate grenades, “an indiscriminate weapons system, into a very confined space, when they ought to have known, and during the attack knew for certain, that women and children were present.”

According to Brigadier McDade, “the evidence discloses that Sergeant J and Lance Corporal D knew for certain there were women and children in the room.  They both provided statements to the inquiry officer to this effect; specifically that they could hear the women and children screaming from inside the room.”

The lance corporal did have his case dismissed, but the ADF dug in its bureaucratic heels in not formally exonerating him and the sergeant.  The lance corporal also took issue with the brigadier’s assessment of his state of awareness:

“We didn’t believe there would be any women and children in that room for two reasons, that being that we had earlier found who we believed to be the family living in that compound and removed them from an earlier room.  And secondly, that we were now receiving gunfire from that room and we believed that we had found the insurgents that we had been told were staying there.”

Battle field conditions, and the search for the unruly and violent on the ground as convenient scapegoats of armchair ignorance, remain perennial themes.  Controlling what happens in that field is, at best, an overly confident assertion in the face of adversity.

The point of such atrocities is that they are irreversible and immutable. As Lance Corporal “Dave” explained, despite disagreeing with the assessment of alleged criminality, “When you’ve realised you’ve killed children, devastating doesn’t even begin to describe it, and I feel like I can’t fix it and I can’t atone for it.  I can’t do anything to undo the damage that was done.”

Atrocity is axiomatic to the waging of war.  The righteous wars, pursued with misplaced moral outrage, tend to be the worst.  The post-September 11, 2001 conflicts suffer from a brutalised mix of humanitarianism and vengeance, one that has been unsparing to Australia’s soldiers, and their victims.

Instead of putting a brake on enthusiastic deployments to distant, even irrelevant theatres of conflict, Australian governments continue to engage in blind, and damaging deployments.  Where the Stars and Stripes go, the Southern Cross will follow.  When that happens, there will be more Lance Corporal Daves and Sergeant Frosts.

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

Notes

[1]http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-23/soldier’s-story-exposes-serious-flaws-in-deadly-adf-raid/7435548

Now I’ve had the time of my life
No I never felt like this before
Yes I swear it’s the truth

and I owe it all to you

.

‘Cause I’ve had the time of my life

and I owe it all to you

.

I’ve been waiting for so long
Now I’ve finally found someone
To stand by me

.

We saw the writing on the wall
As we felt this magical fantasy

.

.

Satirical Video Production by LuckyTV, Netherlands.

The desert town of Agadez in Niger is currently best known as a stop on the people-smuggling route between West Africa and Europe, but it is about to take its place in the geopolitical stage as the American military has announced it will build a drone base on its outskirts. Reportedly costing U.S. taxpayers as much of $100 million, the base is just the latest American play for military supremacy in Africa — Niger is the only country in that volatile region of the continent prepared to risk allowing Washington a base for its MQ-9 Reapers, the even more lethal successor to the notorious Predator drone.

While the U.S. is strengthening its military capabilities in the region, it is also forging deeper ties with Niger’s repressive government. President Mahamadou Issoufou was re-elected in March with a laughably high 92% of the vote. Suspicions about the legitimacy of the landslide win are warranted, considering the run-up the election was marred by the jailing of a pro-opposition pop singer, the barring of nearly a quarter of voters from the race, and the fact that the opposition coalition withdrew its candidate, Hama Amadou, from the contest. The opposition cited unfair treatment between the two candidates, not least because Amadou was put in jail on spurious charges of “baby trafficking” and forced to campaign from behind bars. Issoufou’s American partners, however, promptly issued a laughable press release congratulating Issoufou on his win and reaffirming the US’s commitment to its “partnership with Niger on security, development, and democratic governance.”

The people of Niger have less to be pleased about. While President Issoufou and his military enjoy the lucrative revenue that comes with inviting the American military to pursue the endless War on Terror on Nigerien soil, everyday Nigerians continue to suffer. As the United Nations Human Development Index makes clear, Niger is one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world. Issoufou, for his part, seems to forget who he is meant to be representing, especially as he continues to grant French energy company Areva tax breaks as it mines uranium in the north of the country. No matter that the local population is affected by radiation without benefiting from the extraction taking place in their midst.

Far from being the exception, Niger is simply the latest in a long line of countries happy to take greenbacks in exchange for allowing the U.S. to pursue its hegemonic designs for Africa. Across the continent in Djibouti, to take just one example, Ismail Omar Guelleh has turned his tiny country – barely bigger than the state of New Jersey – into a massive multi-nation military base, with U.S. and Chinese warships nestled alongside each other. It is, according to American ambassador Thomas Kelly, a modern day equivalent of Casablanca in the 1940s. Specifically, he cites “all the different nationalities elbowing each other” and “all the intrigue”.

Like Niger, Djibouti exploits the “island of stability” narrative to make itself indispensable to international partners. Sadly, the money earned from all the military bases in the country do not trickle down to the population. 42% of Djiboutians live in extreme poverty, and another 48% are unemployed. Meanwhile, the U.S. turns a blind eye to “electoral hold-ups” like Guelleh’s re-election earlier this year. Washington said little in 2010, when President Guelleh amended the constitution to permit himself to seek his third and now fourth term in office. In the U.S. foreign policy calculus, it seems allegiance to autocrats will always trump the democratic commitment to human rights and popular sovereignty from the moment fuzzy words like “terrorism” or “security” come into play.

Sadly, this pattern that goes back decades in Africa. The Reagan administration helped Chad’s former dictator Hissène Habré – dubbed ‘Africa’s Pinochet’ – into power and helped keep him there with millions of dollars in military aid and training for his bloodthirsty secret police. Habré, of course, was put on trial in Senegal in 2015 for crimes against humanity, torture and war crimes, and his historic conviction this year marked one of the rare instances when an African dictator has truly faced justice for their actions. In 2011, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak enjoyed $1.3 billion in aid from American partners and was seen as “an ideal partner for the United States, as long as Washington focused on stability in the present without much thought about long term implications.”

The “long term implications” are where Washington’s one-track mindset ends up burning American policymakers time and time again. Instead of helping to reinforce stability in any part of the world, be it West Africa, Central America, or the Middle East, US-backed dictators eventually fall. Their abuses, combined with the collateral damage wrought by U.S. actions (especially drone strikes), help stoke and perpetuate the grievances that allow the very terrorist groups Washington is targeting to thrive. As American aid and support goes to leaders that crush dissent and subvert the democratic order, as Issoufou is doing in Niger, the invariable result is widespread resentment against the U.S. and the West more generally.

Blaise Compaoré, the former president of Burkina Faso – a “key hub of the U.S. spying network” – is only one of the most recent to fall. Despite the fact that Compaoré’s early years in power were marked by a cozy relationship with Muammar Gaddafi and accusations that he sent mercenaries to fight United Nations peacekeepers in Sierra Leone, the U.S. security community embraced him as a partner. After a popular uprising in the streets of Ouagadougou blocked Compaoré’s attempt to extend his 27 years in power, the onetime army officer fled to Ivory Coast, leaving behind him not only a tumultuous political legacy but also an impoverished country not altogether from terrorist attacks like those conducted by al-Qaeda in January.

By getting into bed with African dictators, the U.S. simply sets up future problems for itself while ensuring life gets no better for the continent’s most vulnerable populations.

Allan Swenson is a Paris-based international development practitioner and social entrepreneur with a focus on African life and society. Read other articles by Allan.

The position I will be defending in this short intervention is that the subjection of Greece to memoranda and its consequent social and economic destruction is not simply a product of the global economic crisis that was initiated in the United States in 2007-2008, with the explosion of subprime loans and the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and then exported from America to Europe. In fact, hidden behind all this was a set of machinations undertaken, on the occasion of the crisis, by the European Directorate, which is mainly controlled by German interests.

At that moment, that is in the late 2008 and early 2009, Greece was run by the conservative government of Costas Karamanlis, who was reassuring the internal audience that Greece’s economy and its banking system were absolutely safe. And this, not only because of the supposed dynamism of the Greek economy, but also because of the fact that the Greek banking system was not exposed to high-risk lawns. At the same time, the Greek government knew very well that it could no longer borrow from the international markets in order to refinance its debt.

Following a common recommendation on behalf of European leaders to both the Prime Minister Caramanlis and the leader of the opposition and head of PASOK George Papandreou, elections were set for the autumn of 2009. In the ensuing electoral campaign, the Prime Minister, well aware of the coming crisis, kept a low profile, while advocating the need for harsh measures to be taken in order to avert the danger. In contrast, PASOK leader George Papandreou was promising generous benefits to all.

Having no idea of the real situation in which the country had entered, the Greek people gave PASOK a smashing victory with a 43% of the vote. The outgoing Prime Minister Karamanlis essentially vanished from the public scene, remaining silent as to what had happened up to then. While his government had announced an economic deficit of 6.9%, the new Papandreou government claimed it had reached 10%. Following new calculations, with the agreement of European officials, the deficit appeared to exceed 15%.

This was due to the introduction of new parameters in its measurement, such as the deficits of Public Organizations, which almost no other country in the European Union takes into account in calculating the national deficit; it was also due, as it later became apparent, to data corruption effected by the Greek Statistical Service and its director Andreas Georgiou, appointed by the new government and favored by both EU and IMF officials.

Let me note that Mr. Georgiou today stands accused of having forged Greek deficit numbers. In 2009, Greece’s borrowing from the markets became impossible on such economic evidence. The bonds of the Greek Public Sector possessed by French and German banks, which then exceeded 70 billion euros, were in danger of terminating without being paid, thus taking down with them the common currency itself (the euro). Obviously, this could not be tolerated by the European elite and its organs, since the euro was the mechanism that guaranteed the transferable securities (bonds etc.) on which it had invested, as well as its further profitability.

As the making of the Euro-system did not include mechanisms for dealing with the crisis, unbearable pressures were exercised on the Greek government, with the threat of immediate bankruptcy, to get it to sign the first memorandum in May 2010, allowing for a 110 billion euros loan to be granted, but also for the IMF to take part in European affairs starting from Greece. Among other things, the Greek government accepted that the new loan would come under British law, and no longer under Greek law – up to then, the latter gave jurisdiction to the Greek courts and consequently ample time to the Greek government, apart from being less burdensome for the borrower.

The loan agreement and the ensuing memorandum, while being presented as a necessary condition in order to save citizens’ wages and pensions, actually hid their true aims, which were, on the one hand, to provide French and German banks with enough time to disinvest themselves from the Greek bonds they possessed –which they achieved within only a year– and, on the other, to assure the manipulation and control of the country through the terms and mechanisms they established. The sum total went to the Greek banks and to the payment of debts, without actually helping the Greek economy.

Greek society did not remain idle, and a considerable strike movement began to manifest itself, undermined of course by the union bureaucracies that have been aligning themselves to government policy and controlling workers’, peasants’ and public sector unions throughout the long period of PASOK’s rule. Massive protests, on a scale unknown since the days of the reestablishment of democracy in 1974, started to materialize, and, while suffering a temporary drawback after the death of five people in a suspect fire in an Athenian bank during a mass demonstration, they soon resurfaced and climaxed in the great “movement of the squares” in the spring and summer of 2011; this witnessed the participation of hundreds of thousands of people and exercised unprecedented pressure on the government and the whole Greek political establishment.

Under such conditions, imposing further memorandum terms and constraints on Greek society required no less than an actual parliamentary coup: the story is well known of how, in the European summit meeting at Cannes, the compliant government of George Papandreou and he himself were pushed (with the French President Sarkozy almost climbing on the conference table and calling him a “fucking psycho”) to refrain from a timidly proposed Greek referendum that would have at least allowed the people to take a stand on European loan agreements. The summit led, on that same night (and on the initiative of Foreign Affairs Minister Evangelos Venizelos), to the replacement of the elected Prime Minister Papandreou by the technocrat Loucas Papademos, a favorite of EU institutions and the markets.

On the following year, after the double elections of May and June 2012, the Greek political system was drawn to the formation of a government coalition between the two major parties, PASOK and New Democracy (together with the small extreme right-wing party or LAOS and the small center-left party of DIMAR). This went on to sign a new loan agreement and a memorandum of 130 billion euros, most of which was allocated to the payment of maturing bonds of the Greek Public Sector and the recapitalization of Greek banks, which were again on the verge of collapse. Once more, despite the excessively binding terms of this agreement and of the concomitant memorandum, the whole funding was directed outside the Greek economy which it was supposed to support so as to overcome the crisis.

While the first memorandum, apart from forging strong ties of dependence for Greece, had aimed at people’s salaries and pensions, the second memorandum mainly targeted public property through the creation of divestment mechanisms such as the ΤΑΙΠΕΔ (Public Sector’s Private Property Valorization / Exploitation Fund). Although social mobilization was still impressive, the rise of the SYRIZA party into the major anti-memorandum force in Greece tended to disempower resistance movements and block anti-memorandum outbursts, locking them into its governmental prospects and limiting them to the role of “assignment”.

That is, SYRIZA and its young leader Alexis Tsipras promised that simply their assumption of power would force Greece’s European partners to forego all memoranda so as to allow for a commonly accepted solution promoting the development of the Greek economy, rather than its destruction through austerity, to come to the fore. The Greek people continued to manifest its rejection of foreign dictates and its evolving political consciousness by moving from the right and center of the political spectrum to what appeared to be a genuine anti-memorandum force of the radical left, and gave SYRIZA a landslide electoral victory in January 2015 and the possibility to form a comfortable governmental majority in coalition with the radical right-wing party of ANEL.

As it soon became evident, SYRIZA had no program of negotiations, nor any plan for defending Greek society against the weapons of economic asphyxiation held by the European Central Bank. Its only assets were the gambling theories of its Minister of Finance Gianis Varoufakis. Its leadership had already abandoned any claim to national sovereignty, substituting the influence of the American factor for popular mobilization in its negotiations with European organs.

After six months of rather pointless such negotiations, and despite the quasi-shutting down of the banks and the imposition of capital controls in July 2016, the Greeks once more reasserted their opposition to foreign occupation by giving a 62% vote against memoranda in the referendum theatrically launched by the SYRIZA government. I say “theatrically” because this referendum was not intended to rally the people in the prospect of deliverance from the shackles of the memoranda, but rather to be used as a simple bargaining chip by an already subordinated government. Indeed, referendum results notwithstanding, the government came to sign a third, even more crushing memorandum, which includes, apart from everything else, the unheard-of condition that lenders are entitled to approve in advance every legislative initiative of the Greek government, thereby giving up any sense of national sovereignty.

Greece is an experiment, according to which, a country belonging to the first world is being violently downgraded to a third world country. We believe that this is a treatment that all European district countries are about to undergo, except of the metropolitan ones.

It is possible that countries such as Italy, due to its strong weight, as well as Portugal and Spain are to be exempted from this procedure due to economical, historical and political reasons. The countries of the European district, such as Greece, will be vanished as states, its public and private assets will be disposed of, in order to become the base in rem of the global financial extension. This last one, without values in rem, is economy to a complete destruction at a global scale. These countries are about to be divided into special economic zones exempted from state laws of any kind, such as labour, administrative, fiscal, or infrastructural, which leads to the destruction of the state both as an entity as well as a rule of law.

Greece is a country already under occupation. This might come as a surprise to some people but let’s get things in the right order. To begin with, a country is being occupied not only military but economically as well. The occupational status is being differentiated both by the colonial domination of a country and the protectorate and its status as well.

During colonial domination, .e.g in India which was under the British control, there was an administration, all over the Indian Territory, responsible for the application of the English law in order to secure the interests of the Metropolis. The case is the same with protectorates, where an administrative mechanism is being established in order to secure foreign interests. In contrast, what happens today in Greece is the termination of both the state and the public administration as well and the non implementation of legal rules.

This is, without a doubt, a regime of domination, which reminds us of the German occupation of Greece, lasted from 1941 to 1944, during which every aspect of the Greek administration was abolished by the Germans. The same thing happens nowadays in Greece and the absence of tanks and foreign military forces is the only thing missing from the real nature of the regime that Greek people are experiencing today.

On Monday October 10, Sudan celebrated the conclusion of the historic National Dialogue intended to give birth to a New Sudan and new constitution. Joining Sudan’s President Omar al Bashir on the dais were the heads of state from Egypt, Uganda, Chad and Mauritania, all who spoke in support of the agreement along with representatives from Russia, China, Ethiopia, and the Islamic Cooperation Organization.

The following day, President Bashir was seen dancing at an outdoor rally in front of cheering crowds. A senior member of the ruling National Congress Party-(NCP) told this author that the significance of this agreement is  second only to the founding of Sudan in 1956 when Sudan liberated itself from British colonialism.

President Bashir also announced extending the cease fire between government forces and military opposition groups in Darfur, Blue Nile, and South Kordorfan until the end of the year. Resolving the long standing internal armed conflict is essential for Sudan to proceed to the vital task of developing its flailing economy improving the living standards of its people.

The lack of attendance and press coverage by the United States and Europe was notable, but not surprising. The US led sanctions against Sudan that are inflicting undue hardships on the population and strangling the Sudan economy remains a critical obstacle for Sudan’s advancement on the path of progress following the remarkable accomplishment of the National Dialogue.

The Monday conference and signing of the National Document in Friendship Hall is the culmination of a more than two year process that began in July 2013. Recognizing the need for the NCP to initiate a transformation of the country after suffering economic and political difficulties following the separation of South Sudan, President Bashir called for a far reaching and transparent National Dialogue in January 2014 to re-examine fundamental concerns of the population. These included issues of peace, unity, the economy, external relations, freedom of speech and press. One of the most important concepts that was addressed is that of citizenship and identity. As one member of the Umma Federal Party participating in the National Dialogue told me that they decided to reaffirm that “we are not Arab nor African, but Sudanese in Africa.”

Seventy-four political parties and thirty-four armed movements joined the dialogue. Three armed rebel groups refused to sign the National Document; the JEM, the SLA, and the SPLM-N, but the opportunity for them to sign will remain open. The political side of the dialogue was conducted in the “seven plus seven plus one” discussions between the NCP and the opposition parties and movements. For the society at large, tribal leaders, religious groups, NGOs, unions, civil society, respected individuals, and citizens were invited to join the dialogue. Women represented a large minority-33% of participants in the process.

Sudanese from all parties and sections of society are hopeful that National Dialogue will finally lead to peace and stability in Sudan, which has been hampered by internal strife for approximately fifty of their sixty years of independence.

A new constitution will be written with new laws to embody the fresh conceptions that have emerged from this multi-year process. Supported by the platform created by the National Dialogue, Sudan has a propitious moment to articulate and implement a visionary national economic program to realize its full economic potential and lift its people out of poverty.

To help unify the nation, which has suffered from years of civil conflict, all parties should coalesce around a program for investment in the most vital categories of infrastructure; electrical power, railroads, water management, roads and finally cultivate Sudan’s huge amount of fertile land that has never been fully exploited. Such an infrastructure led developmental approach will not only increase the productivity of the economy for the benefit of all citizens, but will provide meaningful productive employment that will give the youth hope for the future.

Sudan’s current participation in China’s Maritime Silk Road through Port Sudan provides an advantage for economic growth as China’s “One Belt-One Road” global infrastructure policy is already transforming the world. President, Xi Jinping has announced China’s intention to eliminate poverty in Africa. Let the New Sudan adopt this mission as well.

Lawrence Freeman, Political-Economic Analyst for Africa – contact author [email protected]

Yesterday the U.S. openly attacked Yemen by “firing” cruise missiles against old Yemeni radar stations. This, allegedly, in response to four missiles fired on two days against a U.S. destroyer at the Yemeni coast. The U.S. Navy said the missiles fell short. They were unable to reach the ship. No one but the navy, especially no one in Yemen, has seen or reported any such missile launches – short or long.

The U.S. is in alliance with Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other countries in bombing Yemen for 18 month now. They totally blockade the coast of the country that depends on imports of food and medicines. The actively fighting countries are heavily supported by the U.S. military. This has been widely admitted by U.S. officials and in military reports. The U.S. government even feared of being help legally responsible for the carnage it causes.

But since the launch of the cruise missile U.S. media have totally forgotten all of this. Now the U.S. “has been attacked”, without any recognizable reason, and is only “defending” itself. No legal consequences are to fear now. Anyone who believes that the U.S. is somehow responsible for the at least 10,000 dead and the many starving people in Yemen must somehow believe in a mysterious conspiracy.

Just consider this New York Times headline, from today, after the U.S. attack on Yemen.

Yemen Sees U.S. Strikes as Evidence of Hidden Hand Behind Saudi Air War.

The NYT tweeted the piece with this text:

New York Times World @nytimesworld
For the U.S., it was retaliation; for Yemen’s Houthi rebels, it confirmed a long-held beliefnyti.ms/2e9mKyb
6:30 PM – 13 Oct 2016

Wow. The Houthi rebels “believe” in a “hidden hand”. Must be crazy people. They unreasonably attacked. And they deserve such strikes.

The NYT piece reads:

WASHINGTON — For the United States, it was simple retaliation: Rebels in Yemen had fired missiles at an American warship twice in four days, and so the United States hit back, destroying rebel radar facilities with missiles.But for the rebels and many others in Yemen, the predawn strikes on Thursday were just the first public evidence of what they have long believed: that the United States has been waging an extended campaign in the country, the hidden hand behind Saudi Arabia’s punishing air war.

How could the Houthis come to “believe” of such a “hidden hand”? Was it really because the strike was the “first public evidence”? Or was it because the NYT and all other media reported many times over that the U.S. actively supports the Saudi attacks? Did the Houthi probably read yesterday’s NYT piece on Yemen written by the very same main authors?

Up to now, the Obama administration put limits on its support for the Saudi-led coalition, providing intelligence and Air Force tankers to refuel the coalition’s jets and bombers. The American military has refueled more than 5,700 aircraft involved in the bombing campaign since it began, according to statistics provided by United States Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East.

So the “first evidence” of the “hidden hand” were, unlike the NYT today claims, not yesterdays strikes but official reports on the public CentCom website? Maybe frequent discussions of the war on Yemen the U.S. Congress held since a year ago also count as evidence? Various public reports over the last 18 month detailing the enormous amount of ammunition the U.S. openly sells to the Saudis were also just sightings of “hidden” hands?

Such reporting as in today’s NYT is just laughable. It flies in face of all reports of the last 18 month as well as extensive evidence given by the U.S. and other governments. The strikes on the radar sites were just “retaliation”. They have no larger context. This is a typical reflection of the U.S. myth of “immaculate conception” of U.S. foreign policy. According to that believe the U.S. always only reacts to being “attacked” or “threatened” for completely incomprehensible reasons when it bombs this or that country and kills thousands or even millions of foreign people.

That is even more evident in the reports by CNN and others. These reports only mention the 18 month of extensive U.S. support for the Saudi campaign down in the middle to end of their pieces. For any but a thorough reader the alleged “missile attacks” and all Yemeni enmity against the U.s. has no history at all. It comes from unreasonable and hostile people who willfully misunderstand U.S. well-meaning.

Thus no U.S. attack is ever unjustified or just a cruel continuation of decades of U.S. insidiousness, hostility and greed. It is always the other side that initiates the fight.

It is easy for the U.S. government propaganda to make such false claims. And U.S. media don’t report such but perpetrate anticipatory stenography. They write what the U.S. government wants and U.S. imperialism demands even when not directly ordered to. That is no longer astonishing.

Astonishing is how easy the U.S. public swallows this without any self awareness and protest.

Turkey’s two top leaders have both indicated that, if the U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton becomes elected as the U.S. President on November 8th, then Turkey, which is NATO’s only Muslim-majority member-nation, will have little alternative but to leave NATO and ally itself with Russia, in America’s movement towards war against Russia (which then would mean also war against Turkey).

 Turkey’s Anadolu News Agency headlined on October 12th, “Clinton remarks on arming PYD/PKK unfortunate: Erdogan”, and reported that “President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Wednesday criticized U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s remarks on arming Syrian Kurds as ‘unfortunate.’ Clinton said, ‘We will continue to support the PYD and YPG.’ [Those are Kurdish political organizations, and the YPG is openly fighting to produce a Kurdish nation, which would remove valuable land and resources not only from Turkey, but from Syria, and also from Iraq, and maybe also from Iran.] ‘This is a very unfortunate statement,’ Erdogan said.” This assertion by Erdogan followed an even stronger statement by Turkey’s Prime Minister the day before, as follows:

The Associated Press reported on Tuesday October 11th, that “Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim on Tuesday criticized U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for comments suggesting that she would consider providing arms to support Kurdish fighters in Syria.” CBS News headlined this AP news-report as “Turkey blasts Clinton’s Syria proposal: ‘Isn’t America our ally?’” Military Times headlined it “Turkey slams Clinton for hinting support to Syrian Kurds”. The AP described there the severe concerns that Turkey’s government would have in the event Clinton becomes America’s President.

To state the matter simply here: Turkey’s leaders are viscerally opposed to Clinton’s repeated support for allowing Kurds to break away and to form their own independent nation, which breakaway would constitute a grave threat to Turkey. A previous pan-Kurdish statement by her was at the Council on Foreign Relations, where she urged (as she often has) that a “no-fly zone” be imposed in Syria, and that “we’ve got to work with the Kurds on both sides of the border, we have got to figure out how to, if possible, have a second Arab Awakening” — and she was saying this on 19 November 2015, after Russia had already begun its bombing campaign in Syria on 30 September 2015 and thus most of the warplanes that were bombing in Syria were Russian ones and America’s imposing a “no-fly zone” would thus mean that the U.S. would be shooting down Russian bombers, which would mean World War III. Furthermore, though she was fond of the “Arab Spring” because it had started the jihadists coming into Syria and the war in Syria, which she hoped to win as the U.S. President, most of the people who live in that region aren’t fond of the ‘Arab Spring’ at all.

Apparently, Turkey’s government has already had more than enough of Hillary Clinton.

Ever since the Turkish government defeated the military coup-attempt on 15 July 2016 that was aimed at replacing Turkey’s democratically elected leaders with leaders who would adhere to the U.S.-CIA-supported exiled-in-America Fethullah Gulen, the governments in Washington and Ankara have been having extremely strained relations, but Hillary Clinton would be an even worse U.S. President, from Turkey’s standpoint, than Barack Obama is. Obama and Clinton and the Saudi royals want to break up Turkey (and Syria, and Iraq, etc.), but Erdogan and Yildirim don’t.

As another Anadolu news-report noted on October 12th, “During his speech, the prime minister said the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) ‘is falling for’ the Fetullah Terror Organization (FETO)’s claims of being unjustly treated.”

The existing leadership of Turkey has made clear that they view the recent coup-attempt as a CIA-initiated operation, and don’t like it. As I had reported earlier, on 18 August 2016, headlining “What Was Behind the Turkish Coup-Attempt?” Erdogan and Yildirim not only know the answer to this question — that the U.S. government was behind it — but they almost certainly would be dead by now if Russia’s President Vladimir Putin hadn’t informed Erdogan just ahead of the coup, that it was about to happen. (Russian intelligence is very good even if American intelligence — or else the selective use of it by a traitorous President — produces results such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq.)

So, ever since July 15th, Turkey has greatly increased its defenses against the United States; and Turkey’s leaders understand why creation of a Kurdistan would be terrible for Turkey, as well as for Iraq and Syria; and, that the CIA has wanted it ever since at least 1949. Thus, on July 16th (the day after the Turkish coup), there were “agreements reached, and recent U.S. commitments to provide direct military aid and financing of $415 million” which “is further evidence of the importance of the Kurds”; and, on July 18th, “US to Set Up 5 Military Bases in Iraqi Kurdistan Region”. It’s not because the U.S. aristocracy love Kurds, or love the Turkish public, or love the Iraqis, that America’s aristocracy want the existing Turkish government (not just Syria’s) overthrown; it’s all for oil-and-gas operations that America’s billionaires can then take a chunk of, such as by building the pipelines and marketing the oil and gas into Europe.

The American public might not know these things, but Turkey’s leaders do, and America’s leaders do, and Russia’s leaders do. And so does Hillary Clinton — President Obama’s chosen heir. After all: she is the person that America’s current President wants to be his successor. If she doesn’t become his successor, then his entire historical legacy (his service to America’s oligarchs) will be flushed away, and this is especially true with regard to his foreign policy, including isolating Russia and China, including his TPP and TTIP ‘trade’ treaties for that purpose and for giving control to the international corporations. She is just as determined to conquer Russia and to aid her financial backers as he is.

The loss of Turkey in that conquest-effort is a major setback for the U.S. aristocracy.

America’s Associated Press headlined on October 10th, “Turkey, Russia Sign Gas Pipeline Deal as Ties Improve”, and opened by saying that those two nations were engaging in “efforts to normalize ties,” and, so:

“Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan watched as their countries’ energy ministers sealed an intergovernmental agreement for the ‘Turkish Stream’ project that would bring gas from Russia to Turkey. It would then be distributed to European Union nations.”

Nothing was said there about the U.S. coup-attempt nor about any of the other relevant background for understanding this, such as its being the beginning of the end of the Obama-phase in the CIA’s effort, ever since 1949, to overthrow the secular Syrian government, in order to install a fundamentalist-Sunni, pro-Saudi (Sharia-law), government in Syria, to enable the Sauds’ oil and the Thanis’ (Qatar’s) gas to be pipelined through Syria into Europe, to replace Russian oil and gas there.

If Turkey were to quit NATO, then the entire post-WW-II international order would be reorganized so that the U.S. government would no longer have a stranglehold against other nations. This wouldn’t directly affect the United Nations (FDR’s creation), but it would directly affect practically everything else (it would end Winston Churchill’s creation — which George Herbert Walker Bush and all subsequent U.S. Presidents kept going until now — the Cold War). As to why this is happening at the present moment: the only way that the U.S. aristocracy can continue any further to conquer Russia is by turning America’s Cold War into World War III, and some allied aristocracies are refusing to go that far. Turkey is just one example of this refusal, but, until Putin saved Erdogan’s life on July 15th, Turkey was part of Washington’s plan, not another enemy against it.

The current U.S. Presidential contest is, more than anything else, about whether to continue the Cold War (which, after 1990, has been a one-sided U.S. war against Russia, no longer a two-sided ideological war), into nuclear war. That’s what it’s really all about, though the American public haven’t yet been informed, except about the small issues and the non-‘issues’, which occupy most of the ‘debates’ in America’s ‘election’.

Almost no reporting is published on the real issues, but the real issues will be the important ones in retrospect, if there will be a retrospect. This isn’t to say that the other issues aren’t also significant, but only that they’re far less important than is the question: WW III — yes or no. And, furthermore, the published discussions of the lesser issues are highly deceptive, so that the public is voting largely on the basis of falsehoods anyway.

On 22 November 2015, the pro-Republican “Daily Caller” website headlined “Followers Of A Mysterious Turkish Islamic Cleric Have Donated Heavily To Hillary’s Campaign And Family Charity” and reported that, “A former president of the Gulen-linked Turkish Cultural Center, Ozkan gave between $500,001 and $1,000,000 to the Clinton Foundation in recent months, the charity’s website shows. He also served as a national finance co-chair last year for a pro-Clinton political action committee called Ready PAC.”

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.

On Friday, several thousand Ukrainian ultranationalists descended onto the streets of Kiev to mark Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) day, dedicated to the 74th anniversary of the founding of the WWII-era Nazi collaborationist organization.

Ukrainian media reported that up to 5,000 radicals from organizations including the Azov Regiment, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), Right Sector and the Svoboda Party gathered to celebrate the holiday, which coincides with the Day of Ukrainian Cossacks and Defender of Ukraine Day, the latter holiday invented in 2014 to replace the ‘Defender of the Fatherland Day’, celebrated in most post-Soviet countries on February 23.

The nationalists walked through the streets, holding torches and flares, throwing smoke bombs, chanting nationalist slogans, beating drums and holding the flags of ultranationalist and neo-fascist organizations.

The Nazi-collaborationist Ukrainian Insurgent Army was formed in the autumn of 1942, and fought against the Red Army during and after its offensive to liberate Soviet Ukraine from Nazi occupation. During the war, the UPA, the OUN and other nationalist groups attempted to form an ethnically ‘pure’ Ukrainian state, ethnically cleansing tens of thousands of Poles, and helping Nazi forces to murder Jews, Gypsies, Soviet POWs, and Ukrainian anti-fascists.

In 2015, in spite of the fact that over six million Ukrainians fought in the ranks of the Red Army, compared to the estimated 100,000 who fought for the UPA, the government granted the guerrilla movement the status of ‘fighters for Ukrainian independence’, and named its founder Stepan Bandera a ‘hero of Ukraine’.

The Azov Regiment, a volunteer fighting force formed after the February 2014 Maidan coup that has since been incorporated into Ukraine’s National Guard, has been repeatedly accused of neo-Nazi sympathies. It and other ultranationalist volunteer battalions have been accused of committing war crimes against the civilian population in eastern Ukraine. Since 2014, Russia has repeatedly accused post-Maidan Kiev of collaborating with, coopting and using radical nationalists for political and military purposes, including in the civil war in east Ukraine.

Unfortunately, many Western governments supporting Ukraine have attempted to downplay these forces’ role, or to ignore them altogether.

GR Editor’s Note. This report presents a pro-Russian perspective, which contrasts with Western media reports.

To put Russia’s one year of peacemaking operations in Syria in perspective, one should think back to what the situation was like on the eve of the arrival of the first Russian aircraft, support personnel, military advisors, and military equipment, to Syria. By all accounts, Syrian government forces were in retreat on all fronts, being pushed back in Raqqa, Aleppo, Hama, Idlib, and Latakia provinces.

The Islamic State, the Jabhat al-Nusra, the so-called “Free Syrian Army”, and many other smaller rebel formations were conquering towns and military bases, with their advance triggering a flood of refugees into Turkey, Jordan, and other countries. Syria stood practically alone, with some Iranian assistance for sure, against a seemingly motley group of rebel formations which, however, enjoyed generous financial, military, and even operational support by several outside powers, including the United States, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, with Jordan and Israel maintaining a state of benevolent neutrality toward the rebels. In September of 2015, the days of the Assad government seemed numbered.

In September of 2016, virtually nobody expects the Assad government to fall. Even the US Secretary of State John Kerry, in conversations with Syrian opposition which were made available to US media, acknowledged that the anti-Syrian coalition has been outmaneuvered to the point that the long-standing US/NATO/EU mantra of “Assad must go” has become obsolete. To the extent that nearly everyone recognizes that the world is now multipolar, Russia’s effective use of military power in Syria is the single most important factor behind that shift. How did Russia manage to effect such a dramatic change in spite of seemingly overwhelming odds against it, in what is becoming a classic exercise in the use of military force?

The first secret of its success was the strict adherence to international law.To put it bluntly, US military operations on or over Syria’s territory have no legal justification at all. Similarly, the support of the rebel groups listed above, most of whom allegedly pursue a radical agenda, employ large numbers of mercenaries, and don’t hesitate from committing atrocities to impose alien political dogmas, violates all manner of fundamental international norms, not the least of which are the concept of national sovereignty and self-determination. In contrast, Russian operations are being conducted at the invitation of the sole internationally recognized government of Syria. If the comprehensive campaign of disinformation and propaganda that is intended to shield Western audiences from the reality of the war in Syria is any indication, Western governments are keenly aware of the immorality and illegality of their actions. And so is the rest of the world.

Secondly, and also in stark contrast with the US and NATO uses of military power, Russia’s leadership appears to be aware of both the limits of the country’s power and of what can be accomplished using solely military force. There is no trace of hubris, of “Russian exceptionalist” rhetoric in either the political aims being pursued, or the military means which are used to accomplish them. In military sense, the goal of the operation is a modest one–the denial of victory to the West-backed jihadist coalition. Once that objective is achieved, once every major anti-Syrian actor acknowledges that Syria’s legitimate government or Russia’s military presence in Syria cannot be dislodged by any combination of political and military measures, they will be forced to negotiate a peace settlement that will preserve both the territorial and political integrity of the Syrian state.

To be sure, that modest military objective did require a wide range of measures to accomplish. The most urgent was the refashioning of the crumbling Syrian Arab Army into a military force capable of recovering the lost territories. While in the immediate term that task could be addressed by an aggressive bombing campaign that took the jihadists, unaccustomed to being opposed by a modern air force, by surprise. But the air campaign was not intended to defeat the jihadists by itself, but rather gain time for the re-equipment and re-training efforts to bear fruit, which they began to by the first months of 2016. Moreover, in the event the jihadists were expecting to outlast Syrian and Russian forces, the campaign of aerial interdiction of rebel supply routes and the Islamic State’s oil infrastructure was aimed at undermining the opposition’s long-term ability to sustain the war effort.

However, the jihadists and wild geeze aren’t the most dangerous foes faced by Syria. The Russian military had to minimize the prospect of a direct NATO military operation against the Syrian military and government that, as in the case of Libya, would have been spearheaded by US airpower. The goal of conventional deterrence against both air and land NATO incursions was achieved, though only after the loss of one Su-24 bomber, treacherously shot down over Syria by Turkish fighters, by the deployment of advanced S-400 air defense systems, Su-35 fighters, and Iskander-M tactical ballistic missiles, and the demonstration of the power of Russia’s air- and sea-launched cruise missiles which would have struck US air bases throughout the Middle East in the event of any escalation.

This effort has not been without a cost. 20 Russian servicemembers have lost their lives in Syria in the space of last year. The Russian military has also lost, in addition to the Su-24 bomber, several attack and transport helicopters

The effect, however, has been nothing short of spectacular. Rebel forces are in retreat on nearly every important sector of the front, and even the crucial struggle for Aleppo, which has reached the scale of a general battle that will decide the future of Syria, has decisively swung in Syria’s favor. Outside Syria, both friend and foe have taken note. Russia’s engagement has served as a veritable “seed capital” that drew larger contingents of Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Iraq’s Shia militias, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, into the fray. Turkey has opted for what amounts to a negotiated “separate peace” with Russia and Syria in exchange for a free hand to focus on the Kurdish threat to its own sovereignty. Even the US, whose leaders are perennially invoking “Plan Bs” in an effort to intimidate Russia, is finding itself without viable policy options.

While the war is still far from over, after one year of intervention all the political and military trends in Syria are now in a positive direction.

The production of this video has become possible thanks to your support. With your assistance, we are also planning to produce a detailed overview of changes in the military situation in Syria over the past year. If you’re able, and if you like our content and approach, please support the project. Our work wouldn’t be possible without your help: PayPal: [email protected] or via: http://southfront.org/donate/ or via: https://www.patreon.com/southfront

What has happened is that NATO provides cover for these transgressions of the United States government’s policy. In other words, it absolutely legitimizes what effectively is NATO aggression. Moreover, what one needs to bear in mind and what one needs to be mindful about is the fact that in Western Europe you no longer have rulers with the independence of Charles de Gaulle.

It seems that Washington, and we can use Washington, America and NATO interchangeably because NATO is dominated by the United States. It is a command structure, which ultimately is based on American military power and American military precedence.  Everybody else is effectively a vassal. Or, if the word vassal is too hard, they are certainly juniors in rank to what the Americans do.

America has used NATO and it has used the European Union as the means, in which it can have these designs implemented. By designs, I mean the overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya, the attempt to overthrow Assad in Syria. These are actually illegal. Russia and China were duped when they came to the UN position on Libya. Effectively, now we can see what it was.

It was right from the beginning a deceptive arrangement, based on overthrowing Gaddafi. On these occasions, they have been wholeheartedly supported by European leaders. During that campaign, Italian bases were used to bomb Libya and British Special Forces participated in training these Islamist rebels, who were eventually successful in overthrowing Gaddafi. French planes also were very instrumental in the bombing of Libya, the actual tracking down of Muammar Gaddafi and his lynching.

These are effectively war crimes. There are no two ways about it. Waging an aggressive war and assassinating foreign leaders. Therefore, this lack of spine in the European leadership is particularly regretful in the sense that the Americans are forcing them to do things against their interests.

We saw this after the coup in Kiev, which was sponsored by American intelligence, with the illegal overthrow of the legitimate government of Viktor Yanukovych. That was a situation in which the EU was complicit. In doing that, they have been forced by the United States to impose sanctions against Russia, which are against their economic interests.

So, absolutely, I would agree with that interpretation that NATO and the European Union don’t want Britain to break away from the EU. They have used that sufficient cover to give the validation of legality to what are illegal actions on the part of the United States and NATO.

Five activists shut down all the tar sands pipelines crossing the Canada-U.S. border Tuesday morning, in a bold, coordinated show of climate resistance amid the ongoing fight against the Dakota Access pipeline.

The activists employed manual safety valves to shut down Enbridge’s line 4 and 67 in Leonard, Minnesota; TransCanada’s Keystone pipeline in Walhalla, North Dakota; Spectra Energy’s Express pipeline in Coal Banks Landing, Montana; and Kinder-Morgan’s Trans-Mountain pipeline in Anacortes, Washington.

The activists, who planned the action to coincide with the International Days of Prayer and Action With Standing Rock, expressed feeling “duty bound to halt the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels…in the absence of any political leadership” to address the withering goal of keeping global temperature increase beneath the 2°C climate threshold.

“I have signed hundreds of petitions, testified at dozens of hearings, met with most of my political representatives at every level, to very little avail,” said 64-year-old mother Annette Klapstein of Bainbridge Island, Washington, who was arrested just before publication. “I have come to believe that our current economic and political system is a death sentence to life on earth, and that I must do everything in my power to replace these systems with cooperative, just, equitable and love-centered ways of living together. This is my act of love.”

Fifty-nine-year-old Ken Ward of Corbette, Oregon, who was also arrested, said, “There is no plan of action, policy or strategy being advanced now by any political leader or environmental organization playing by the rules that does anything but acquiesce to ruin. Our only hope is to step outside polite conversation and put our bodies in the way. We must shut it down, starting with the most immediate threats—oil sands fuels and coal.”

The action comes two days after a U.S. federal court of appeals lifted an injunction on the Dakota Access project, to the dismay of the Indigenous water protectors and their supporters across the U.S. and Canada.

“Because of the climate change emergency, because governments and corporations have for decades increased fossil fuel extraction and carbon emissions when instead we must dramatically reduce carbon emissions; I am committed to the moral necessity of participating in nonviolent direct action to protect life,” added activist Leonard Higgins, 64, from Eugene, Oregon.

The activists are all members of the group Climate Direct Action, which is providing live updates on the coordinated shut-downs on its website and Facebook page. Others shared statements in support, as well as images and videos of the actions on social media with the hashtag #shutitdown.

Tim DeChristopher’s Climate Disobedience Action Fund is also supporting the action and has set up a legal fund for the activists’ defense.

Recent allegations of two women coming forward against U.S. Presidential hopeful Donald Trump seems calculated and suspicious. The article published by The New York Times titled ‘Two Women Say Donald Trump Touched Them Inappropriately’ by Megan Twohey and Michael Barbaro reeks of a conspiracy by the establishment media to frame Trump as a sexual predator who cannot keep his hands or his mouth to himself.

First, I want to make it clear that I do not favor any of the two candidates especially Hillary Clinton who in this case is worst than Trump. The New York Times story regarding these two women is propaganda because the accusations are questionable.

The story starts off with Jessica Leeds, a former business woman who worked for a paper company claims that Trump “lifted the armrest and began to touch her” then according to the article “grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt.”

Then Ms. Leeds went on to say that “He was like an octopus,” and that “His hands were everywhere.” Seems like sexual assault or an attempted rape. Why weren’t the flight attendants and the pilots notified of the situation? According to the report “She fled to the back of the plane. “It was an assault,” she said.”

There are several questions about Ms. Leeds story. First, why did it take more than “three decades” for Ms. Leeds to tell her story?

Why wait a few weeks before the U.S. presidential elections? How can Donald Trump defend himself against an accusation that happened more than thirty years ago?

Ms. Leeds could have come forward with her accusations when Trump was on ‘The Apprentice’ or when Trump was in the process of getting a divorce from his ex-wife Ivanka?

Why has Ms. Leeds waited for so long? She told The New York Times “We accepted it for years,” she said of the conduct. “We were taught it was our fault.” It was her fault? Mr. Trump became an octopus and sexually assaulted Ms. Leeds on a first class business trip was enough to alert the airline staff and have the police waiting at the airport. But that did not happen. It does seem calculated and nearly impossible for Trump to defend himself against an accusation of that magnitude. Its Ms. Leeds words against Donald Trump and The New York Times made up its mind on whose words they choose to believe.

Another woman who came forward is a former receptionist by the name of Rachel Crooks who worked for the Bayrock Group, a real estate investment and development company in 2005 that was located in the Trump Tower in Manhattan. Ms. Crooks claims that she was a victim of Donald Trump who was also watching the debate was furious at Trump’s statement that he had not kissed or touched women without permission according to the report:

Mr. Trump’s claim that his crude words had never turned into actions was similarly infuriating to a woman watching on Sunday night in Ohio: Rachel Crooks. Ms. Crooks was a 22-year-old receptionist at Bayrock Group, a real estate investment and development company in Trump Tower in Manhattan, when she encountered Mr. Trump outside an elevator in the building one morning in 2005

Aware that her company did business with Mr. Trump, she turned and introduced herself. They shook hands, but Mr. Trump would not let go, she said. Instead, he began kissing her cheeks. Then, she said, he “kissed me directly on the mouth”

The first question we must ask ourselves is why Trump would start kissing Ms. Crook’s cheeks and then attempt to kiss her on the mouth outside an elevator of his own building? The Trump Towers have security cameras especially after the September 11th attacks, so the question is do you think that Trump is really that stupid to forcibly kiss Ms. Crooks outside an elevator of his own building? According to Ms. Crooks:

It didn’t feel like an accident, she said. It felt like a violation. “It was so inappropriate,” Ms. Crooks recalled in an interview. “I was so upset that he thought I was so insignificant that he could do that.” Shaken, Ms. Crooks returned to her desk and immediately called her sister, Brianne Webb, in the small town in Ohio where they grew up, and told her what had happened.

“She was very worked up about it,” said Ms. Webb, who recalled pressing her sister for details. “Being from a town of 1,600 people, being naïve, I was like ‘Are you sure he didn’t just miss trying to kiss you on the cheek?’ She said, ‘No, he kissed me on the mouth.’ I was like, ‘That is not normal”

Why Ms. Crook’s sister did not tell her to complain to her company or find a lawyer who could sue Mr. Trump for sexual harassment? Ms. Leeds and Ms. Crooks were alleged victims of a sexual assault but they never reported the incidents to the authorities:

Ms. Crooks and Ms. Leeds never reported their accounts to the authorities, but they both shared what happened to them with friends and family. Ms. Crooks did so immediately afterward; Ms. Leeds described the events to those close to her more recently, as Mr. Trump became more visible politically and ran for president

The New York Times is supporting Hillary Clinton despite the fact that Wikileaks has published numerous emails that exposed Clinton’s Wall Street speeches and her involvement in the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi which has destroyed Libya when she was Secretary of State. Wikileaks also released emails that confirmed her commitment to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by supporting and arming the “moderate rebels” (or terrorists). Other crimes committed by Clinton includes the deletion of more than 30,000 emails which most likely had more dirty secrets and don’t forget her collusion with the main-stream media (MSM) including the New York Times.

Hillary Clinton has authorized the murder of countless men, women and children in the Middle East, North Africa and Central America (Honduras). Trump is not perfect by any means and yes his recordings with Billy Bush were “lewd” and disrespectful towards women, but I would bet that Bill Clinton and his friends say worst things about women. Besides, Bill Clinton is actually accused of sexual assault and in some cases, rape by various women before and after he was U.S. President. Hillary Clinton herself defended a child rapist when she was a defense attorney in Arkansas but the New York Times will not mention those cases so close to the presidential election.

The MSM continues to associate Trump as an asset of Russia and now as a sexual predator who cannot keep his hands or mouth to himself. Rest assured more women are going to come forward with new allegations that Trump sexually assaulted them in one way or another. The New York Times is a propaganda mouthpiece for U.S. interventions and occupation (Judith Miller and the WMD story against the Iraqi Government is just one example) and to cover the blatant lies of the establishment. Whether you love or hate Trump, The New York Times is not following the rules of journalistic principles of ‘objectivity’ that includes being fair, reporting the facts and being nonpartisan. What is most important principle for any news organization is to tell the truth to the public and that is something the MSM in the West has lost a long time ago.

When the neo-cons in the UK parliament and the serial warmonger Hillary Clinton call for a “no-fly zone” they actually mean the opposite. They mean that NATO should be given untrammelled access to the airspace to carry out mass bombings – but that nobody else should.

We saw it in Libya. The argument goes like this. NATO aircraft need to enforce the no-fly zone. To do this in safety, they need to attack and destroy any ground to air weapons capabilities on the ground. That does not just include surface to air missiles, both carriage mounted and hand held, but anything that can be pointed upwards and fired. They need to take out by more bombing any stores that may house such weapons. They need to take out any radar installations, including civilian ones, that may pinpoint NATO aircraft. They need to destroy any runways and hangars, including civilian ones. They need to destroy by bombing all military command and control centres, including those in built up areas. They need to destroy the infrastructure on which air defence relies, including electricity generation and water supply, including civilian assets.

This is the result of NATO bombing of Sirte to “enforce the no-fly zone” in Libya.

I am not exaggerating. That really is the doctrine of NATO for enforcing a “no fly zone”, as previously witnessed in Iraq and Libya. It really was NATO aircraft which did to the beautiful Mediterranean town of Sirte the destruction which you see in that picture – in order to enforce a no-fly zone. Enforcement of the no-fly zone was the only authorisation NATO had for the massive bombing campaign on Libya which enabled regime change, which enabled rival jihadist militias to take over the country. They showed their gratitude by murdering the US Ambassador. The failure of central government led to Libya becoming the operating site from which a number now in the hundreds of thousands of boat refugees have crossed to Europe.

Now they wish to do precisely the same again. Make no mistake. Those calling for a “No-fly zone” do indeed want to stop the bombs falling on jihadist-held areas of Aleppo. But they want to replace this with NATO dropping a vastly greater weight of vastly more powerful weaponry on areas held by the Assad regime. They are relentless warmongering bastards, pretending to be motivated by humanitarian concern.

There are no easy answers in Syria. Without Russian and Syrian government air power, Syria might well already have fallen to disparate groups of murdering religious fanatics, who would then have redoubled their existing tendency to also kill each other. The pretence that there is any significant number of pro-western democratic rebels is ludicrous nonsense. But so equally is the pretence that the Assad regime is a decent regime. It is not and never has been. There is always this pathetic reductionism in the western media to conflict as between “good guys” and “bad guys”. They are all killing civilians. They are all bad guys.

If all bombing were to stop, the danger is that jihadists would again gain the upper hand. But in a situation where there are no good options, I think that is still better than the continued bombing of civilian areas held by jihadists. The fact that the West has repeatedly done this massively in Mosul or Fallujah does not make it right for the Russians or Assad to do it now. The moral balance now must be for a halt to all bombing and all military air operations – including by NATO.

A security council resolution could be tabled calling for the end of all military flights, by anybody, over Syrian airspace. The UK and US would oppose that, and so would all those Tories ad Blairites pretending to advocate a no-fly zone in the House of Commons. That would show up the bastards for the evil hypocrites they are.

Britain is fighting at least seven covert wars in the Middle East and North Africa, outside of any democratic oversight or control. Whitehall has in effect gone underground, with neither parliament nor the public being allowed to debate, scrutinise or even know about these wars.

To cover themselves, Ministers are now often resorting to lying about what they are authorising. While Britain has identified Islamic State (among others) as the enemy abroad, it is clear that it sees the British public and parliament as the enemy at home.

Syria

Britain began training Syrian rebel forces from bases in Jordan in 2012. This was also when the SAS was reported to be ‘slipping into Syria on missions’ against Islamic State. Now, British special forces are ‘mounting hit and run raids against IS deep inside eastern Syria dressed as insurgent fighters’ and ‘frequently cross into Syria to assist the New Syrian Army’ from their base in Jordan. British special forces also provide training, weapons and other equipment to the New Syrian Army.

British aircraft began covert strikes against IS targets in Syria in 2015, months before Parliament voted in favour of overt action in December 2015. These strikes were conducted by British pilots embedded with US and Canadian forces.

Britain has also been operating a secret drone warfare programme in Syria. Last year Reaper drones killed British IS fighters in Syria, again before parliament approved military action. As I have previously argued, British covert action and support of the Syrian rebels is, along with horrific Syrian government/Russian violence, helping to prolong a terrible conflict.

Iraq

Hundreds of British troops are officially in Iraq to train local security forces. But they are also engaged in covert combat operations against IS. One recent report suggests that Britain has more than 200 special force soldiers in the country, operating out of a fortified base within a Kurdish Peshmerga camp south of Mosul.

British Reaper drones were first deployed over Iraq in 2014 and are now flown remotely by satellite from an RAF base in Lincolnshire. Britain has conducted over 200 drones strikes in Iraq since November 2014.

Libya

SAS forces have been secretly deployed to Libya since the beginning of this year, working with Jordanian special forces embedded in the British contingent. This follows a mission by MI6 and the RAF in January to gather intelligence on IS and draw up potential targets for air strikes. British commandos are now reportedly fighting and directing assaults on Libyan frontlines and running intelligence, surveillance and logistical support operations from a base in the western city of Misrata.

But a team of 15 British forces are also reported to be based in a French-led multinational military operations centre in Benghazi, eastern Libya, supporting renegade Libyan general Khalifa Haftar. In July 2016, Middle East Eye reported that this British involvement was helping to coordinate air strikes in support of Haftar, whose forces are opposed to the Tripoli-based government that Britain is supposed to be supporting.

Yemen

The government says it has no military personnel based in Yemen. Yet a report by Vice News in April, based on numerous interviews with officials, revealed that British special forces in Yemen, who were seconded to MI6, were training Yemeni troops fighting Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and also had forces infiltrated in AQAP. The same report also found that British military personnel were helping with drone strikes against AQAP. Britain was playing ‘a crucial and sustained role with the CIA in finding and fixing targets, assessing the effect of strikes, and training Yemeni intelligence agencies to locate and identify targets for the US drone program’. In addition, the UK spybase at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire facilitates US drone strikes in Yemen.

Britain has been widely reported (outside the mainstream media) as supporting the brutal Saudi war in Yemen, which has caused thousands of civilian deaths, most of them due to Saudi air strikes. Indeed, Britain is party to the war. The government says there are around 100 UK military personnel based in Saudi Arabia including a ‘small number’ at ‘Saudi MOD and Operational Centres’. One such Centre, in Riyadh, coordinates the Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen and includes British military personnel who are in the command room as air strikes are carried out and who have access to the bombing targets.

The UK is of course arming the Saudi campaign: The British government disclosed on 13 October that the Saudis have used five types of British bombs and missiles in Yemen. On the same day, it lied to Parliament that Britain was ‘not a party’ to the war in Yemen.

A secret ‘memorandum of understanding’ that Britain signed with Saudi Arabia in 2014 has not been made public since it ‘would damage the UK’s bilateral relationship’ with the Kingdom, the government states. It is likely that this pact includes reference to the secret British training of Syrian rebels in Saudi Arabia, which has taken place since mid-2015. Operating from a desert base in the north of the country, British forces have been teaching Syrian forces infantry skills as part of a US-led training programme.

Afghanistan

In Afghanistan, the public was told that British forces withdrew at the end of 2014. However, British forces stayed behind to help create and train an Afghan special forces unit. Despite officially only having ‘advisors’ in Afghanistan, in August 2015 it was reported that British covert forces were fighting IS and Taliban fighters. The SAS and SBS, along with US special forces, were ‘taking part in military operations almost every night’ as the insurgents closed in on the capital Kabul.

In 2014, the government stated that it had ended its drone air strikes programme in Afghanistan, which had begun in 2008 and covered much of the country. Yet last year it was reported that British special forces were calling in air strikes using US drones.

Pakistan and Somalia

Pakistan and Somalia are two other countries where Britain is conducting covert wars. Menwith Hill facilitates US drone strikes against jihadists in both countries, with Britain’s GCHQ providing ‘locational intelligence’ to US forces for use in these attacks.

The government has said that it has 27 military personnel in Somalia who are developing the national army and supporting the African Union Mission. Yet in 2012 it was reported that the SAS was covertly fighting against al-Shabab Islamist terrorists in Somalia, working with Kenyan forces in order to target leaders. This involved up to 60 SAS soldiers, close to a full squadron, including Forward Air Controllers who called in air strikes against al-Shabab targets by the Kenyan air force. In early 2016, it was further reported that Jordan’s King Abdullah, whose troops operate with UK special forces, was saying that his troops were ready with Britain and Kenya to go ‘over the border’ to attack al-Shabaab.

Drones

The RAF’s secret drone war, which involves a fleet of 10 Reaper drones, has been in permanent operation in Afghanistan since October 2007, but covertly began operating outside Afghanistan in 2014. The NGO Reprieve notes that Britain provides communications networks to the CIA ‘without which the US would not be able to operate this programme’. It says that this is a particular matter of concern as the US covert drone programme is illegal.

The Gulf

Even this may not be the sum total of British covert operations in the region. The government stated in 2015 that it had 177 military personnel embedded in other countries’ forces, with 30 personnel working with the US military. It is possible that these forces are also engaged in combat in the region. For example, the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Philip Jones, has said that in the Gulf, British pilots fly US F18s from the decks of US aircraft carriers. This means that ‘US’ air strikes might well be carried out by British pilots.

Britain has many other military and intelligence assets in the region. Files leaked by Edward Snowden show that Britain has a network of three GCHQ spy bases in Oman – codenamed ‘Timpani’, ‘Guitar’ and ‘Clarinet’ – which tap in to various undersea cables passing through the Strait of Hormuz into the Gulf. These bases intercept and process vast quantities of emails, telephone calls and web traffic on behalf of Western intelligence agencies, which information is then shared with the National Security Agency in the US.

The state of Qatar houses the anti-IS coalition’s Combined Air Operations Centre at Al Udeid airbase. The government says it has seven military personnel ‘permanently assigned to Qatar’ and an additional number of ‘temporary personnel’ working at the airbase. These are likely to be covert forces; the government says that ‘we do not discuss specific numbers for reasons of safeguarding operational security’.

Similarly, the government says it has six military personnel ‘permanently assigned’ to the United Arab Emirates and an additional number of ‘temporary personnel’ at the UAE’s Al Minhad airbase. Britain also has military assets at Manama harbour, Bahrain, whose repressive armed forces are also being secretly trained by British commandos.

Kenya and Turkey

Kenya hosts Britain’s Kahawa Garrishon barracks and Laikipia Air Base, from where thousands of troops who carry out military exercises in Kenya’s harsh terrain can be deployed on active operations in the Middle East. Turkey has also offered a base for British military training. In 2015, for example, Britain deployed several military trainers to Turkey as part of the US-led training programme in Syria, providing small arms, infantry tactics and medical training to rebel forces.

The web of deceit

When questioned about these covert activities, Ministers have two responses. One is to not to comment on special forces’ operations. The other is to lie, which has become so routine as to be official government policy. The reasoning is simple – the government believes the public simply has no right to know of these operations, let alone to influence them.

Defence Secretary Michael Fallon told parliament in July that the government is ‘committed to the convention that before troops are committed to combat the House of Commons should have an opportunity to debate the matter’. This is plainly not true, as the extent of British covert operations show.

Similarly, it was first reported in May that British troops were secretly engaged in combat in Libya. This news came two days after Fallon told MPs that Britain was not planning ‘any kind of combat role’ to fight IS in Libya.

There are many other examples of this straightforward web of deceit. In July 2016, the government issued six separate corrections to previous ministerial statements in which they claimed that Saudi Arabia is not targeting civilians or committing war crimes in Yemen. However, little noticed was that these corrections also claimed that ‘the UK is not a party’ to the conflict in Yemen. This claim is defied by various news reports in the public domain.

British foreign policy is in extreme mode, whereby Ministers do not believe they should be accountable to the public. This is the very definition of dictatorship. Although in some of these wars, Britain is combatting terrorist forces that are little short of evil, it is no minor matter that several UK interventions have encouraged these very same forces and prolonged wars, all the while being regularly disastrous for the people of the region. Britain’s absence of democracy needs serious and urgent challenging.

www.markcurtis.info – twitter – @markcurtis30

I heard the news today…. I caught the CBC news this morning (Thursday, October 13, 2016) as the French Prime Minister and Canada’s PM were talking to the media.  From the little bit I caught – a bit that makes for a good sound bite – it appears that Canada, under the guise of ’peacekeeping’  will be sending some 600 military personnel abroad.

I use the word ‘guise’ carefully, as the so called “right to protect” doctrine has been seriously discredited by mostly U.S. actions in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Honduras among the ones that I recall at this moment.   But ‘peacekeeping’ is also a guise, as there is no peace to keep in today’s world, only “terror wars” of various disguises (same root) used to promote U.S./western interests in regions of the world not under their control (yet) nor obligingly sycophantic enough to remain untouched by covert or overt military action.

These announcements this morning  reflect earlier statements from the government wherein “Sajjan himself has said Africa hasn’t gotten “the right amount of attention” in recent years.”  Canada’s representative to the UN, Marc Andre Blanchard, indicated at that time, “while the road ahead might be dangerous for Canadian troops, the country has an obligation to intervene to prevent the violence from reaching our shores.”

But, Blanchard (and thus the Trudeau liberals) have not given up on the discredited “right to protect” (R2P) saying, “The mandates are multifaceted [but] there are things Canada has been a strong proponent of … the right to allow UN forces to protect citizens rather than just maintain peace and the status quo.” [1]

Wonderful, now Canada is taking a stab at the discredited, dishonoured R2P slogan.   Blanchard’s rationale for peacekeeping/R2P is “Peacekeeping is very different than it was 25 years ago. It’s all about mitigating the consequences of conflict.”  It has also adopted the idiotic U.SA. meme that we must stop violence from reaching our shores…as if sending our own troops overseas is not exporting more violence to other countries.  So rather than just maintain the status quo, we are now taking the role of wanting to change things for our own pursuits and interests, much the same as with the U.S. interests, but also with interests with our own corporations mostly involved with mineral exploitation of African resources. [2]

Mitigating consequences

It is correct, peacekeeping is different, as their is no peace to keep, no treaties signed, no truces, nothing like the Treaty of Guarantee in Cyprus for which Canada did play a significant peacekeeping role; or nothing like the armistice in Korea that has been in place until a “final peaceful settlement” can be achieved where Canada has not played a role in the meantime.

 Rather, we have the record of unsuccessful interventions that have not only not prevented “mitigating circumstance” but have always aggravated circumstances, leaving behind hundreds of thousand of dead and injured citizens of the “mitigated” countries as well as wasting a small portion of our own citizens lives.

In Afghanistan, now one third under the control of the Taliban,  with other portions now dealing with ISIS, and the government only able to control Kabul and only parts of that city, Canada essentially wasted 158 military lives for nothing.  For Libya, our  glorious military was honoured by the militant Stephen Harper  in the Senate Chambers (appropriate, given the depraved nature of Senatorial behaviour) for leaving behind a destroyed country, with many civilian deaths, ongoing fighting between different factions, and a hotbed of training and equipping for terrorists.

USA!  USA!!

Canada essentially has no independent foreign policy.  Generally we have followed U.S. interests and actions around the world, understandable as our economy has been seconded to that of the U.S.  The Liberal government, while speaking in gentler terms than the Harper militants, is following the same course.  We are supporting the neonazi/oligarch government in Ukraine, established through a not so covert U.S. series of actions.  Along with that goes all the hubris and rhetoric demonizing Putin as every empire requires an evil ‘other’ to rally the masses against.

We are ostensibly fighting against ISIS in Iraq, but that war represents a summation of U.S. errors and aggravating circumstances, from the mujahideen “freedom fighters” of the Reagan era, through the Taliban sprouting from that, on to the more violent al-Qaeda, which later morphed into the Bush era al-Qaeda in Iraq and the declared Islamic State of Iraq, which with al-Nusra, developed into the Obama era ISIS caliphate that now exists (tentatively) in the Middle East.

World War next anyone?

The U.S. has intervened in 50 countries since WWII to establish their own puppet governments and sycophantic supporters. The results are what we see today:  a world that is increasingly close to a third world war – not because of Russian aggression, but because of the U.S.’ failing empire, its unpayable economic debt policy, its military violence spread over much of the world, and its desire to guard the US$ as the hegemonic global reserve fiat currency.

Our good ally Saudi Arabia, implicated in 9/11, known to support jihadis throughout the world, known to support ISIS in the Middle East, committing war crimes and crimes against civilians in Yemen, with an archaic fundamentalist tribal government, complements our association with the U.S.   The only reason they survive is that they are ‘useful idiots’ for U.S. foreign policy and geostrategic/economic policies and thus our foreign policy.

With all this interplay of forces in the Middle East, with a declining debt ridden violent empire as our neighbour that pits a war-mongering lying chicken hawk against a xenophobic misogynist racist bigot, the future does not look too bright.  For Canada to now step into this increasing maelstrom of violence perpetrated mainly by the U.S./NATO alliance is sheer wilful ignorance and hubris.

Canada has pretensions that do not fit the proposed actions. Instead of peacemaking or peacekeeping, instead of “mitigating consequences”, Canada is simply adding to the violence of the U.S. empire.

Notes

[1] “Canada’s mission in Africa will be focused on ‘peacemaking,’ UN ambassador says”.  Paul Tasker, CBC News/Politics, August 27, 2016.

[2]  Yves Engler: Canada in Africa, and The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy, both Fernwood Publishing, 2015 and 2009 respectively.

On October 12, the President of the Syrian Arab Republic Bashar al-Assad gave an interview to reporter of “Komsomolskaya Pravda” Daria Aslamova.

Below is the complete transcript of the interview

A document (1, pdf) produced last December by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, headed: “ UK Humanitarian Aid in Response to The Syria Conflict”, makes interesting reading.

The British government it states, has spent “over £100 million” since 2012, “working closely with a range of actors” to “find a political solution to the conflict and prepare to rebuild the country in the post Assad era.” (Emphasis added.)

“Our efforts … include providing more than £67 million of support to the Syrian opposition.”

One of the “actors” to benefit from hefty chunks of British taxpayers moneys is the Syrian National Coalition whose website (2) states, under “Mission Statement and Goals”:

“The coalition will do everything in its power to reach the goal of overthrowing the Assad regime …” and to “Establish a transitional government …” (Emphasis added.)

Thus the UK government is overtly supporting the illegal overthrow of yet another sovereign government.

This all reads like a re-run of Ahmed Chalabi’s (image right) Iraq National Congress and Iyad Allawi’s Iraq National Accord, backed by the British and US governments to equally criminally overthrow Saddam Hussein.

Iraq’s football pitches, gardens and back yards turned graveyards, probably three million deaths between the embargo, the 1991 thirty two country assault, the 2003 blitzkrieg and invasion – ongoing – the ruins of the “Cradle of Civilisation” of which Syria is equally custodian, are silent witness to that gargantuan crime against humanity – and history. Will Washington and Whitehall never learn – or is destruction of civil societies, Nazi-like aggression, illegal overthrows and rivers of blood their raison d’être?

Incidentally, Foreign Office accounting farcically includes: “more than £29 Million to reduce the impact of the conflict on the region.” Stopping dropping British bombs would surely be the most practical way to do that – and persuading their US “coalition partners” to do the same. Yet more nauseating, murderous, hypocrisy.

Talking of reducing “the impact of conflict on the region” – here is what the UK is contributing to destroying it – courtesy again the (un-consulted) British taxpayer:

“Each of the RAF’s Tornado GR4 jets costs £9.4 million, and each flight costs around £35,000 per hour.

“Two Tornados are typically used for each flight, and each flight lasts anywhere between four and eight hours. Even at the lowest estimate, each flight costs £140,000.

“Their cargo is four Paveway bombs and two Brimstone missiles, costing £22,000 and £105,000 per unit respectively.

“That’s £298,000 plus the cost of the flight which is £438,000, and that’s an optimistic estimate. If the jets carry Storm Shadow missiles – which cost a cool £800,000 a pop – and conduct an eight-hour mission, the total cost is a hell of a lot higher, and none of this takes into account the cost of fuel.” (3)

The British government document informs that:

“To date, there are over 2,700 volunteers in 110 civil defence stations across northern Syria, trained and equipped with help from UK funding … The ‘White Helmets’ as they are more commonly known … “

The “White Helmets” of course, only work in the areas held by the “moderate” organ eating, child decapitating, human incinerating, crucifying “opposition.”

In Foreign Office parlance, under the heading: “Moderate armed opposition: £4.4 million”, it is explained that this has been devoted to “life saving equipment”, presumably for the head choppers since the “life savers” appear to be their guests. Indeed the “White Helmets” website states that: “They are the largest civil society organisation operating in areas outside of government control …” (Emphasis added.)

Also, near farcically, the Foreign Office informs: “We have also funded Law of Armed Conflict training to help commanders train their fighters to understand their responsibilities and obligations under international human rights and humanitarian law.” Given their track record of near unique, mediaeval barbarity, the “training” is clearly falling on deaf ears.

The UK of course, is in no position to lecture on the law of armed conflict since the newly unelected Prime Minister, Theresa May, has vowed to halt all cases against British service men and women brought by Iraqis who allege torture, murder of relatives, and varying unimaginable abuses. So much for “responsibilities and obligations under human rights and humanitarian law.”

British generosity is seemingly boundless in murderous meddling in other nations. “Media activists” have been given £5.3 million:  “UK funded projects are helping establish a network of independent media outlets across Syria, whose work has included sending out messages about personal safety after the regime’s chemical weapons attack in Ghouta and, more recently, active reporting produced by civil society groups and the likes of the ‘White Helmets’ across Twitter and Facebook accounts.”

The “regime’s chemical weapons attack on Ghouta” has of course, been roundly disproved despite the best efforts of Western propaganda. As Eric Draitser has written (4):

“What makes that incident significant, both politically and historically, is the fact that, despite the evidence of Syrian government involvement being non-existent, the Obama administration nearly began a war with Syria using Ghouta as the pretext.

“As the months have passed however, scientific studies amassing an impressive body of evidence have shown that, not only were Washington’s claims of ‘certainty’ that Assad’s forces had used chemical weapons in their war with extremist fighters utterly baseless, but in fact the reality was quite the opposite – the rebels were the most likely culprits of the attack.”

The cynic might ponder that funding “media activists” and the “The White Helmets” to possibly “actively (mis)report” is blatant propaganda. As the propoganda master, Joseph Goebbels knew: Propaganda is the art of persuasion – persuading others that your ‘side of the story’ is correct – with mega money and resources thrown at the “persuasion.”

The UK’s arguable illegal munificence also extends to: “ … working with other international donors to establish and build up the Free Syrian Police (FSP) a moderate police force in opposition-controlled areas … “

Breathtaking. Another re-run of Iraq:

Disband the police, army, all structures of State – and Iraq is the soul searing, haunting, admonishing ghost, mourning the vibrant, cohesive, civil society (for all its complexities, as most societies) it was prior to the embargo and Iraq Liberation Act (1998) which stated that: “It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq…” and signed into law on 31st October 1998, by President Bill Clinton.

As mentioned previously, there is now of course the Syria Accountability and Liberation Act of 2010 (H.R. 1206.) Spot the parallels.

“The White Helmets” have also benefitted from $23 million from the US, according to State Department spokesman, Mark Toner (27th April 2016) and €4 million from the government of the Netherlands. Last week Germany announced increasing this year’s donation to ‎€7 million. Japan has also chipped in.

A great deal of money, it would seem, is being thrown at insurgents and illegal immigrants in a sovereign country, awarding themselves the title of Syrian Civil Defence. Yet they do not even have an emergency telephone number. As Vanessa Beeley (5) has pointed out in extensive writings on the subject, the real Syria Civil Defence was established in 1953, is a Member of the International Civil Defence Organisation whose partners include the UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs – and as all national emergency services, they have a telephone number: 113.

Among the myriad tasks the “White Helmets” claim to undertake is: “The provision of medical services – including first aid – at the point of injury.” Why then were they trained not by expert first responders, paramedics, civil emergency operatives, but by a mercenary, sorry “private contractor”?

According to Wikipedia: “Founder of Syria’s White Helmets, James Le Mesurier is a British ‘security’ specialist and ‘ex’ British military intelligence officer with an impressive track record in some of the most dubious NATO intervention theatres including Bosnia and Kosovo, as well as Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine. Le Mesurier has also been placed in a series of high-profile posts at the United Nations, European Union, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.”

Equally interesting is Le Mesurier’s own site (6):

“James has spent 20 years working in fragile states as a United Nations staff member, a consultant for private companies and the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and as a British Army Officer. Much of his experience has involved delivering stabilisation activities through security sector and democratisation programmes. Since 2012, James has been working on the Syria crisis where he started the Syrian White Helmets programme in March 2013. In 2014, he founded Mayday Rescue, and is dedicated to strengthening local communities in countries that are entering, enduring or emerging from conflict. (Emphasis again added.)

“Democratisation programmes” eh? George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-four” had a “Re-education Committee”, but let’s not get too carried away.

On Tuesday 11 October 2016, the UK’s arguably combative Andrew Mitchell MP, ex-Royal Tank Regiment, who allegedly called Downing Street Police after an altercation “f ***** g plebs”, was granted an emergency three-hour debate in the House of Commons on Syria after allegations by the ‘White Helmets’ that Russian military jets and Syrian helicopters were bombing civilians in eastern Aleppo.

Mitchell stormed the debate all guns blazing, calling the alleged situation “akin to the attack on Guernica during the Spanish civil war” and suggesting the RAF should be empowered to shoot down Russian and Syrian aircraft. He also pushed for a “no fly zone.” As is known from Libya, that is a Western-only fly zone obliterating all in its sights. Guernica indeed.

Again of course, all but Russian and Syrian aircraft are there illegally, but  Andrew Mitchell is being advised among others by former CIA Director General David Petraeus, who was also former Commander of US Forces in Afghanistan and of Multinational Forces in Iraq. Not really a mini think tank, some might speculate, where the rule of law is going to have highest priority.

Mitchell also called for extra funding for – you guessed it – “The White Helmets.”

Incidentally, there are rigid protocols for first responders, paramount among which is to protect the injured, the traumatized, from publicity and identification, in their vulnerability.

“The White Helmets” are seemingly never without camera crews handy recording a small body, face facing the camera, dust covered, blood spattered, clothes awry, in the arms of the “rescuer.”

“Lights, camera, action”? Heaven forbid.

Notes

1.https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/481277/Syria_UK_Non-Humanitarian_Support_-_Public_Document.pdf

2. http://en.etilaf.org

3. http://metro.co.uk/2015/12/03/whats-the-price-of-air-strikes-5542341/

4. http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-infamous-ghouta-chemical-weapons-attack-two-years-on-all-out-war-on-syria-is-still-the-main-course-for-us/5470828

5. http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-real-syria-civil-defence-exposes-natos-white-helmets-as-terrorist-linked-imposters/5547528

6. http://www.maydayrescue.org/content/james-le-mesurier-0

The Syrian army and the National Defense Forces (NDF) re-launched attempts to seize the Al-Sha’er Gas Fields from ISIS in Homs province. The government forces stormed ISIS positions southwest of the gas fields and reached its gates. Clashes are ongoing in the area.

The pro-government forces have achieved another notable success in northern Aleppo. The army and Liwa al-Quds took control of Talat Bureij, Majbal Al-Zatin, Tal Owayjah, and Tal Al-Asfar. Controlling of these hilltops allows, the government forces are able to easily defend the previous gains in northern Aleppo, overlook areas in the northern part of Haydariyah Neighborhood and prepare a push to set control of the Ba’edin Roundabout. In southern Aleppo, the army and Hezbollah captured the strategic Sheikh Sa’eed hill in the Sheikh Sa’eed Neighborhood.

In Western Ghouta, the army and the NDF seized the Air Battalion Base, located southeast of Der Khabiyah. Now, the government troops are deployed at the western and southern flanks of Deir Khabiyeh controlled by Jabhat Fateh Al-Sham (formerly Al-Nusra Front) and Ahrar Al-Sham.

Yesterday, the army’s Tiger Forces and the NDF took control and defended from terrorist counter-attacks the town of Ma’an in northern Hama. Today, the Tiger Forces and the NDF are advancing west of the nearby village of Kubbariyah in an attempt to reach Suran, located at the highway between Hama and Aleppo. If Suran is re-taken, the militant controlled town of Ma’rades will become next target of the advance.

Next Saturday in Switzerland, Rusisa, the United States and local powers are set to discuss the military and political situation in Syria in order to find the so-called “peaceful solution” of the conflict. Most likely, the Russian-Syrian-Iranian alliance will not be ready to make some concessions to the “American partners”.

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Syria’s “White Helmets”: Fiction and Reality

By Ahmad Salah, October 14 2016

A young man, wearing a white helmet and a distinctive yellow-and-blue badge on his arm, digs for four hours in the rubble of a destroyed building in Idlib Province in northwest Syria. Finally, he sees what he’s looking for: an infant. He takes her to an ambulance like she is his own child. This is how the Western media portray the volunteers of Syria Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets. But what does the reality look like?

Monsanto, the Pentagon’s Soldier and the Colombian “Peace Process”.The Use of Glyphosate Herbicide against the FARC

By Elena Sharoykina, October 14 2016

For decades Colombia has been some kind of battlefield where the USA try to restrain anti-US tendencies in South America. Washington has been fighting the ideas of neo-marxism, guevarism and Liberation theology, which inspire FARC rebels, as well as other left-wing fractions.  However, it’s not widely known that in jungles of Colombia there is another war front – the ecological one.

Kashmir: ‘Pivoting’ Toward War between India and Pakistan?

By Junaid S. Ahmad, October 14 2016

This past summer witnessed yet another people’s uprising in one of the longest running military occupations in modern times: the Indian occupation of Kashmir. The callous indifference to decades-old Indian atrocities against the people of Kashmir, including well-documented incidences of torture, disappearances, ‘encounter killings,’ rapes, and outright massacres, ought to put the international community to shame. This, after all, is a ‘conflict’ – a euphemism for a military occupation – that the UN and international law has clearly adjudicated on many decades ago, but Indian recalcitrance, Pakistani fumbling, and international criminal neglect have let the blood of Kashmiris spill uninterruptedly.

Dr. Walter Rodney: Revolutionary Intellectual, Socialist, Pan-Africanist and Historian

By Dr. Ajamu Nangwaya, October 14 2016

Dr. Walter Rodney was a revolutionary intellectual, socialist, Pan-Africanist and organizer who made a significant contribution to the Caribbean Radical Tradition[2] that seeks to create just, liberated and egalitarian societies in the Caribbean region. October 2016 marks the 48th anniversaries of the expulsion of Rodney from Jamaica and the subsequent Rodney Rebellion that took place as a reaction to his banning and the general exploitation of the African-Jamaican masses by the neocolonial regime.

Hope Moves In Shadowy And Offbeat Places: Bob Dylan, Death, And The Creative Spirit

By Edward Curtin, October 14 2016

Despite the mute despair and apathy that fill the air, hope is needed to carry on and resist these destructive forces.  Sometimes in such a dark time the eye begins to see and the ear hears hope in unexpected places.  Doing so necessitates a bit of a sideways move to discover pockets of resistance hiding in the shadows.  There are torches of illumination in the underworld, but we need to come to our senses to get there.

In a nationwide referendum on the 2nd October 2016 Colombian voters  rejected the government’s peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the biggest extreme-left guerrilla movement (FARC-EP, Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo, FARC).

Negotiations, preceding the sign of the deal, took four years and were seen as a hope to end a half-a-century civil war, that took more than 250 thousands of human lives.

The negative results of the referendum with a narrow margin of 0,5 % were completely unexpected and hit the position of the president  – a peacemaker Juan Manuel Santos Calderón. In the course of the last few years he invested all his political capital in negotiations with rebels, despite the lukewarm attitude of the White House towards this peace agreement.

The landmark handshake between Juan Manuel Santos and Timoshenko, with two helping hands from Cuban President Raul Castro. (Justice for Colombia).

For decades Colombia has been some kind of battlefield where the USA try to restrain anti-US tendencies in South America. Washington has been fighting the ideas of neo-marxism, guevarism and Liberation theology, which inspire FARC rebels, as well as other left-wing fractions.  However, it’s not widely known that in jungles of Colombia there is another war front – the ecological one.

The USA and the Colombian government accuse the rebels of illegal coca production and under cover of so-called «anti-narcotic war» air-spray the jungle with glyphosate herbicide. This pesticide is made by US corporation Monsanto and widely known under the trademark Roundup. Once reached the ground, it destroys not only coca, but all other plants as well.

The use of Glyphosate in the war against partisans has began in 1980s.  And in 1999, after signing anti-drug agreements between Washington and Bogota known as «Plan Colombia», this war method acquired an official status.

According to these agreements, the USA government pledged to fund the purchase of pesticide from Monsanto, to supply the project with specially equipped aircrafts and also to train and arm Colombian commandos in order to protect the aircrafts from possible ground fire.

This is what FARC leader Timoleon Jimenez (his real name is Rodrigo Londoño Echeverria), known as «Timoshenko» among partisans (by the way, he is a graduate of the Peoples’ Friendship University in Russia and is trained as medical doctor), according to his interview with the Colombian newspaper VOZ:

«In the regions, where farm communities live close to coca crops, the government accuses  landowners of illegal coca production and under this excuse constantly air-sprays their fields with glyphosate. This chemical destroys coca randomly along with other agricultural crops, causing irretrievable harm to animals and people, especially to children, seniors and pregnant women.»

The partisans try to shoot down US aircrafts loaded with chemical death. To escape the fire, pilots go higher and the glyphosate air-spraying becomes even less precisely aimed.

The FARC’s war against «Monsanto’s air-spray aviation» was used by US secret services to arrange a provocation against Russian businessman Victor But. He was arrested by the US Drug Enforcement Administration in 2008 in Thailand and accused of attempt to sell portable air defense systems to Colombian rebels.

Colombia is the only country in the world where the use of glyphosate happens in such a barbaric style.  Millions of liters of toxic herbicide are sprayed over «the lungs of the planet», how they often name tropical rain forests in South America. The country holds one of the first places in the world for biodiversity.  It is here almost 10% of all endemic (aboriginal) plant species grow.

More than 6 millions Colombians were forced to leave their homes in the areas affected by glyphosate. It is comparable to the number of refugees from Syrian conflict areas, but Colombia draws considerably less attention of the western mass media.

Number of various diseases, affecting local population, grows progressively, cancer and birth anomalies among them. Soil loses its fertility, forests are being eradicated and water is being polluted.

This makes me think about the Vietnam War, when the Pentagon also widely used the Agent Orange herbicide as a weapon against the Viet Cong, and it was also produced by Monsanto.  Around 3 million have suffered illnesses caused by Agent Orange, half a million of them died. The consequences of Agent Orange will likely emerge in the future generations of Vietnamese affected by various inherited diseases.

The lands abandoned by Colombians, because they can’t be used anymore for traditional agriculture, are now under the control of the biotechnology companies with a view to expanding their genetically-modified crops, resistant to glyphosate.

Monsanto has got a carte-blanche from the Colombian government to sell their GM-seeds in the country. It means that these GM-crops would also be consumed by humans and animals. That’s how the war against the Colombian guerrilla movement has led to the concurrent expansion of GM-technology.

In March 2015 the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) of the World Health Organization assigned glyphosate to the group of major risk agents causing human cancer (group 2A).   The IARC reports that glyphosate is able to penetrate human cells and to damage DNA and chromosomes.

In May 2015 the National Drug Council of Colombia decided to «suspend using glyphosate spraying as a means to combat narcotics». This moratorium was demanded by FARC representatives at the peace talks in Havana.

The IARC report was a nice excuse for president Santos to make a compromise with the rebels.

Despite the president’s support, the glyphosate moratorium was opposed by the Colombian «war fraction» and its US sponsors, including Juan Carlos Pinzón Bueno, the defense minister, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, the former president and Kevin Whitaker, US ambassador in Bogota. They claimed that it was an undeserved concession to the FARC and called for a continuation of the herbicide air-spraying «for the sake of combating the trade in narcotics».

Of course, it’s not only about coca plantations. The US use the anti-narcotic campaign in Colombia as an easy excuse to eradicate FARC. And vice versa, Washington is surprisingly tolerant to drug production, when it brings in profit.

Let’s take Afghanistan as an example. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, this country became the world’s largest heroin producer right after it had been occupied by American forces.

Russia repeatedly suggested to initiate (with the US) a campaign against opium poppy production in Afghanistan. But official US and NATO representatives declined this proposal, because, in their opinion, it might push local peasants to join Muslim fractions and create an additional war threat.

Let’s appraise the situation soberly. Nowadays, the estimated number of active FARC members hardly exceeds 5-6 thousand people. It’s naive to think that several thousand rebels trapped in jungle could retain control of a transnational joint venture known as «the Colombian cocaine industry», worth tens of billions US dollars.

It’s not only left-wing partisans who are involved in the drug-industry, there are also extreme-right «death squadrons» supported by the government, and other militant forces, they all form the core of a powerful drug cartel. Hordes of corrupt bureaucrats, bankers, law enforcement officers are complicit.

It is remarkable, that the FARC leader Timoshenko in his article «About Glyphosate: powerful chemical weapon of transnational power» linked the Pentagon and Monsanto hostilities in the region with «the Colombian money-laundering empire».

«Glyphosate» and «war» became synonyms now in Colombia.   That is why the moratorium on the herbicide air-spraying wouldn’t last long. Already in April 2016 the Colombian government under US pressure and on the pretext of fighting the drug trade resumed the use of glyphosate.

The Monsanto aircrafts came back to the Colombian sky and became the Stormcrows, foreboding trouble to the peace talks. The failed referendum in October 2016, could trigger the onslaught of a new and dramatic crisis in Columbia.

As long as it “rains with glyphosate”  over Colombian forests, there is no peace to be expected in this country.

Translated from Russian

“The song ‘Political World’ could have been triggered by current events.  There was a heated presidential race underway …. But I had no interest in politics as an art form….The political world in the song is more of an underworld….With the song I thought I might have broken through to something.  It was like you wake up from a deep and drugged slumber and somebody strikes a little silver gong and you come to your senses.”   Bob Dylan, Chronicles

We live in dark times when the prison gates of seeming hopelessness clang shut around us.  Endless U.S. led and sponsored wars, a New Cold War, nuclear threats, economic exploitation, oligarchical rule, government spying, drone killings, loss of civil liberties, terrorism, ecological degradation, etc. – the list is long and depressing.

Awareness of a deep state hidden behind the marionette theatre of conventional politics has grown, even as the puppet show of electoral distractions garners the headlines.  Readers of the alternative media learn the truth of government conspiracies involving assassinations – JFK, MLK, RFK, et al. – and countless other evil deeds without cessation. Excellent writers uncover and analyze the machinations of those responsible.  Anger and frustration mount as people listen to a litany of bad news and propaganda spewed out by the mainstream corporate media.  It is easy to be overwhelmed and disheartened.

Despite the mute despair and apathy that fill the air, hope is needed to carry on and resist these destructive forces.  Sometimes in such a dark time the eye begins to see and the ear hears hope in unexpected places.  Doing so necessitates a bit of a sideways move to discover pockets of resistance hiding in the shadows.  There are torches of illumination in the underworld, but we need to come to our senses to get there.

“Emotion is the chief source of all becoming-conscious.  There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion.”  Carl Jung

If you’ve ever played music or basketball, fell dizzyingly in love, or lapsed into a spell writing words or being engrossed in a passionate pursuit, you’ll easily grasp what follows.  But maybe these specific experiences aren’t necessary.  You’ve lived, you’re alive, and you can hear the pitter-patter beat of your dribbling heart.  That’s probably plenty. You know the game can be a roller-coaster ride with all its ups and downs, and when it ends you will have won or lost something, exactly what being of the essence.

Rhythm, melody, and movement: from these life is born and sustained.  They are also integral to sports and art – music, writing, painting, sculpture, dance, etc. – even when they are apparently absent.

If, for example, one looks at Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture, Tall Walking Figure, its immobility implies movement.  Such paradoxical inclusiveness pertains to still-life painting as well.  While seemingly immobile, and defined by some as dead life, such paintings are encompassed by the presence of the absence of movement and change, the essence of all living things.  To grasp the paradoxical nature of art – and life – one must approach them as an artist and see the wholeness in broken pieces.  “Everything is broken,” Bob Dylan sings, “take a deep breath, feel like you’re choking.”

“Life is the best play of all.”   Sophie Michel, a 7 year-old musician

I think it is fair to say that living is the ultimate art and as the artists of our lives our medium is time and space.  And that it is in sound that time and space are epitomized.  Musical sounds carry us through time and space in a reverberating vital impulse.  Music brings us to our senses. Being emotional, it sets us in motion.  We are moved.

Sports, as the etymology of the word suggests (desporter – to divert), is a diversion from something.  Sports involve us in movement through time and space to an unnecessary goal where someone wins and someone losses.  In sports we choose to overcome superfluous obstacles for fun and for deeper reasons we may not realize.  Sports only matter because they don’t.

“What we play is life.”    Louis Armstrong

A few years ago my friends and I were playing in basketball tournaments for men over fifty and we qualified for the Senior Olympics at the University of Pittsburgh.  We acquired a sponsor, a local funeral home that made warm-up jerseys for us.  Being used to dealing with bodies at rest, these comedians knew we were a bunch of aging hoopsters intent on keeping our bodies in motion for as long as we could.  So they had shirts made with that up-beat and adolescent cliché printed on the front, “Basketball is Life.”   Lest we forgot, and being in the trade of taking bodies at rest to the underworld, on the back they had printed “Leave the Rest to Us: Flynn and Dagnoli Funeral Home.”

Most of us found the juxtaposition hilarious (including one funny Irishman who ended up dead at the funeral home), but one teammate found it disturbing, which gave the rest of us additional sardonic laughs.  Sex and death and one’s ongoing vitality are the stuff of uneasy laughter in the locker rooms of aging men.  It’s a place for essentials.

“He was like a great singer with a style all his own, a pacing that was different, a flair for the unusual.”   Chick Hearn, play-by-play announcer for The Los Angeles Lakers about Pete Maravich

I was reminded of this as I was rereading bits of Bob Dylan’s fascinating and poetic memoir, Chronicles: Volume I, and came upon his recounting of hearing of the news of the death of “Pistol” Pete Maravich, the greatest scorer in college basketball history and a magician without par on the court.  It was January 5, 1988.

My aunt was in the kitchen and I sat down with her to

talk and drink coffee.  The radio was playing and morn-

ing news was on.  I was startled to hear that Pete Maravich,

the basketball player, had collapsed on a basketball court in

Pasadena, just fell over and never got up.  I’d seen Maravich

play in New Orleans once, when the Utah Jazz were the New

Orleans Jazz.  He was something to see – mop of brown hair,

floppy socks – the holy terror of the basketball world – high

flyin’ – magician of the court.  The night I saw him he dribbled

the ball with his head, scored a behind the back, no look basket –

dribbled the length of the court, threw the ball up off the glass

and caught his own pass.  He was fantastic.  Scored something

like thirty-eight points.  He could have played blind.  Pistol Pete

hadn’t played professionally for a while, and he was thought of

as forgotten.  I hadn’t forgotten about him, though.  Some people

seem to fade away but then when they are truly gone, it’s like

they didn’t fade away at all.

Dylan has the poet’s touch, of course, a hyperbolic sense of the fantastic that draws you into his magical web in the pursuit of deeper truth.  In ways he’s like the Latin American magical realist writers who move from fact to dream to the fantastic in a puff of wind.

He goes on to write that after hearing the news of Pistol Pete’s sad death playing pickup basketball, he started and completed the song “Dignity” the same day, and in the days that followed song after song flowed from his pen.  The news of one creative spirit’s death gave birth to another creative spirit’s gift to life.  (I am reminded of Shakespeare writing Hamlet after his father’s death.) “It’s like I saw the song up in front of me and overtook it, like I saw all the characters in this song and elected to cast my fortunes with them …. The wind could never blow it out of my head.  This song was a good thing to have.  On a song like this, there’s no end to things.”

One can hear echoes of Hemingway, another artist obsessed with death, in those last few sentences.  Unlike Hemingway, however, Dylan’s focus on death is in the service of life and hope. For him there is no end, while Hemingway is all ending – nada, nada, nada – nothing, nothing, nothing – “it was all a nothing and a man was nothing too,” he writes in his haunting story, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.”  Dylan’s focus on the shadow of death is seen within the light of life – todo – all or everything. The darkness is there but is encompassed by the light.  Nada within todo. As he told the AARP magazine last year in a fascinating interview, he’s been singing about death since he’s been twelve.  And out of that singing – year after year for fifty plus years and counting – he has found and expressed the light of hope.

Dylan is our Emerson.  His artistic philosophy has always been about movement in space and time through song.  Always moving, always restless, always seeking a way back home through song, even when, or perhaps because, there are no directions.  “An artist has got to be careful never to arrive at a place where he thinks he’s at somewhere,” he’s said.  “You always have to realize that you are constantly in a state of becoming and as long as you can stay in that realm you’ll be alright.”

Sounds like living, right.

Sounds like Emerson, also.  “Life only avails, not the having lived.  Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim.  Thus one fact the world hates, that the soul becomes.”

It was about ten years ago when we travelled to that Senior Basketball Olympics at the University of Pittsburgh.  We drew many uneasy smiles as we paraded around with the backs of our shirts announcing the services of the men who take us to the underworld.   We won a few games and lost others; were eliminated and left for home disappointed, some of us more than others, depending on each man’s competitive fire to defeat the foe.  Like all athletes, losing felt like a small death.  Even small deaths are hard to swallow, however, especially when knowing how way leads on to way and you doubt you will ever come back.  As evening was darkening the Amish countryside, we departed east through country roads in silence, each lost in his interior monologue on the journey ahead.  Playing low on the radio, from my back seat I could barely make out Dylan singing, “It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.”

Two years ago there was a short Grantland documentary, “The Finish Line,” about Steve Nash, the latest Pistol Pete.  An uncanny player, Nash was battling injuries and age, and the documentary shows him pondering whether or not to retire or continue his rehabilitation and attempt a comeback.  In the opening scene Nash goes out with his dog into the shadowy pre-dawn where he muses on his dilemma.  His words are hypnotic.  “I feel,” he said, “that there’s something that I can’t quite put my finger on that – I don’t know – I feel that it’s blocking me  or I can see it out of the corner of my mind’s eye, or it’s like this dark presence ….is it the truth that I’m done?”

Hobbled by a nerve injury that severely limited his movement, he played a few more games and retired within a year.  Like Pete Maravich, he had brought an infectious joy to his playing, but he left without fulfilling his dream of winning an NBA championship.  Of his retirement he said, “It’s bittersweet.  I already miss the game deeply, but I’m also really excited to learn to do something else.”  Unlike many athletes, Nash was moving on; his “dark presence” wasn’t a final death but a step on the road to a hard rebirth.  It was a Dylanesque restless farewell: “And though the line is cut/It ain’t quite the end/I‘ll just bid farewell till we meet again.”

“A song is like a dream, and you try to make it come true.  They’re like strange countries that you have to enter.  You can write a song anywhere …. It helps to be moving.  Sometimes people who have the greatest talent for writing songs never write any because they are not moving.”    Bob Dylan, Chronicles

Dylan has long been accused of abandoning his youthful idealism and protest music.  I think this is a bum rap.  He was never a protester, though his songs became anthems of the civil rights and anti-war movements.  There is no doubt that those songs were inspirational and gave people hope to carry on the good fight.  But in turning in a more oblique and circumspect musical direction, following his need to change as the spirit of inspiration moved him, Dylan’s songs have come to inspire in a new way. You know his sympathies lie with the oppressed and downtrodden, but he doesn’t shout it.  A listener has to catch his drift. If you go to the music, and dip into his various stylistic changes over the decades, you will find a consistency of themes.  He deals with essentials like all great poets.  Nothing is excluded.  His work is paradoxical.  Yes, he’s been singing about death since twelve, but it has always been countered by life and rebirth.  There is joy and sadness; faith and doubt; happiness and suffering; injustice and justice; romance and its discontents; despair and hope.  His music possesses a bit of a Taoist quality mixed with a Biblical sensibility conveyed by a hopelessly romantic American.  He has fused his themes into an incantatory delivery that casts a moving spell of hope upon the listener.  He is nothing if not a spiritual spell-binder; similar in many ways to that other quintessential American – the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, whose best work was a poetic quest for an inspired salvific poetry.

If the listener is expecting an argument, a thesis, inductive reasoning, or a didactic approach from Dylan, he is out of luck, and rather than be inspired he will be disappointed.  This is art, not theory, and art of a special kind since Dylan is an artist at war with his art.  His songs demand that the listener’s mind and spirit be moving as the spirit of creative inspiration moved Dylan.  A close listening will force one to jump from verse to verse – to shoot the gulf – since there are no bridges to cross, no connecting links.  The sound carries you over and keeps you moving forward. If you’re not moving, you’ll miss the meaning.

“A bird does not sing because it has an answer.  It sings because it has a song.” Chinese Proverb

So if the world is getting you down and all the news is bad to your ears, don’t lose hope.  Step to the side, out of the glare of the sun, the blare of the headlines where lies and fears shout in our ears and echo down our days like a repetitive nightmare.  Give Dylan a listen.  As he has said of spiritual songs, “They brought me down to earth and they lifted me up all in the same moment.”  His songs have the same paradoxical power because he excludes nothing. That is why they are truthful.

It is fitting that his latest album, “Shadows in the Night,” comprised of ten beloved old ballads sung by Frank Sinatra, from “The Night We Called it a Day” to “Some Enchanted Evening,” has him changing again, going back to go forward.  He is full of surprises, which any child will tell you bring joy because surprises and change are the core of living.  To change this crazed world, we must change and find hope and joy along the way.  Repetition will kill us.  Dylan’s artistic metamorphoses and ingenious song writing offer offbeat sources of hope.  Just listen.

Having been compared to Frank Sinatra with these songs, he’s said, “You must be joking.  To be mentioned in the same breath as him must be some sort of high compliment.  As far as touching him goes, nobody touches him.  Not me or anyone else …. But he never went away.  All those things we thought were here to stay, they did go away.  But he never did.”  Sinatra, like Pistol Pete, didn’t fade away because he too inspired Dylan to inspire us to hope and carry on.  If it feels dark and night-like to you, move sideways into the shadows.  Look away and you’ll see the light.

Or if you like basketball or dancing, like to move to the beat, listen to Dylan singing “Hurricane,” a long narrative song about the framing of the boxer Ruben “Hurricane” Carter.  It will get your blood flowing, your passions riled, and your body moving.  It’s perfect for practicing all the dribbling tricks Pistol Pete performed.  I thought of using it at the Senior Olympics, but the beat seemed a little too rapid and excitable for the over fifty AARP crowd.  The shirts were sending an undertaking message that I didn’t want made real.  Hope is one thing, but traveling too fast is another.  Anyway, one of my teammates was in swift pursuit of a woman there whom he described as a twin of his ideal woman – Pamela Anderson.  He didn’t need any more excitement.

Edward Curtin is a  writer who teaches at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts and has published widely.

It seems to me that the discussion on the EPA that is being pushed by Kenya, especially the flowers lobby, does not understand the changes in the international situation. In 2016, Africans are a long way away from the era when British settler bigwigs in Kenya Michael Blundell and Bruce McKenzie could make decisions about the future of Africa. Then, they built the flowers trade as part of the lift capabilities of the British and European long term plans for Africa. These plans were thwarted by Tanzania and the liberation forces.

In the period 1971-1990, there had been an attempt by the West to isolate Tanzania because Tanzania did not toe the line of the West on the future of Southern Africa. For a short while, especially the days of Nguvu Kazi, Tanzania was alone, yet Nyerere did not blink.

Need for thorough examination of the texts

The present Tanzanian society is in a much better position than it was in 1984. The private sector has come out clearly against this Economic Partnership Agreement.

The Speaker of Parliament has called for debates in Parliament. But Parliament cannot debate unless they have full public disclosure of the EPA texts.

Universities, trade unionists, teachers and students ought to be engaged in this debate in public. The EU is depending on frightening the people that ‘aid’ would be cut off. But, if the figures were examined clearly, then one can see that the goals of the EPA are detrimental to the future of regional or full continental economic cooperation.

The EPA is a legally binding international instrument. It is of indefinite duration. Once in force a party can only withdraw from its obligations and entitlements by ‘denouncing’ the Agreement in its entirety (problematic in light of the goals of 2063).

If the agreement is signed, it endows EPA implementation with a degree of supra-nationality which EAC governance itself does not possess.

Lessons from the past

Older citizens of the East Africa will remember that when the East African Community broke up in 1977, it was not only for trade reasons, but also for reasons of security. The Entebbe raid of 1976 and the use of the East African airlines by the Kenyan security was something that former President Julius Nyerere could not accept silently. Importantly, Nyerere understood that the flowers lobby – Bruce McKenzie and Michael Blundell – was doing the deals with the Europeans and Israelis behind the back of President Jomo Kenyatta.

The most recent book by Saul David, Operation Thunderbolt:Flight 139 and the Raid on Entebbe Airport, the Most Audacious Hostage Rescue Mission in History, should be required reading for all literate East Africans. The Kenyan journalist John Kamau has detailed the duplicity of Charles Njonjo in keeping the Head of State in the dark about such a major military operation on Kenyan soil. (See How Entebbe Raid was plotted in Njonjo’s home.)

In the present period, pan-Africanists and those who are planning for the future integration of Africa are not sure that the current Kenyan leadership fully understands the implications of signing this agreement. Former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa has provided the necessary figures to point out the fact that, “The EPA with Europe is bad news for the entire region, even Kenya.”

There must be a better grasp of the balance of economic forces in Kenya. The section that is pushing the deal has strategic control over the financial base, but such a base can shift within the twinkle of an eye. Kenyans should remember the role of France and the EU in Cote D’Ivoire.

Three months for debate

The good thing for Tanzania is that there are three months for debate. These will be three tumultuous months.

In the first place, the original discussion of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), the collapse of the financial system (2008 crash) and the “printing” of money by the Europeans and the US government under the policy of quantitative easing makes it imperative that Tanzania moves to develop the infrastructure for local industry based on biomass and solar. The 2008 financial crisis is beckoning again and the head of the IMF Christine Lagarde has stated that we are moving to a 1914 situation. It is a warning that we should heed.

There is no excuse for not rallying the people to grasp the threat to the independence of Africa. There are enough financial resources in Tanzania in the financial institutions. This is real money, as compared to the fiat money that will be given as ‘aid.’ This is the money that they are printing since 2011, because of the financial crisis.

Secondly, the fragility of the economic system in Europe has created political uncertainty. Hence, the British have taken the first step to break from the EU. Why should Tanzania sign the EPA at a moment of such great uncertainty?

The combination of the financial crisis (quantitative easing), the uncertainties in Europe over Brexit and the excess capacities from the One Belt One Road (resources for infrastructure- R4I) provide the kind of breathing room that can only be filled by boldness.

If the government of Tanzania and the Governor of the Central Bank follow closely the global economic and financial situation, they will understand that there is deflation in Europe. The situation is one where there is ‘bad money’, meaning that money sitting in financial institutions where the money is earning negative interest rate because the international financial situation is so toxic. Literate East Africans should read this article by the former Minister of Finance for Greece, Yanis Varoufakis.

Tanzanians will have to re-position their economy so that they build strong links with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the economic potential that will come, even before this phase of the crisis is over in the EU and the USA and build up the Mtwara Corridor of Southern Tanzania, Malawi and Mozambique.

Audacity and boldness can only come from a conception of the leadership that will be provided by Tanzania. The Ugandans are so weak and opportunistic that they will break from the flowers and sugar barons once they realize that Tanzania is serious.

Such boldness will come from a proper reading of the international situation and that under no condition should any country be signing up for its future with Europe.

In the short term, the spaces on the question of the EPA should be filled with discussions. Yes, the EU wants governments to sign this agreement without real discussions.

Tanzanians should be discuss why the EU refuses to drop the subsidies that are given to their farmers under the Common Agricultural Policy of the EU.

Tanzanians have been called upon to drop subsidies and to ensure that the market decides prices. Tanzania should demand the same for Europe.

African Union Agenda 2063

The EPA runs counter to the goals of the African Union Agenda of 2063.  Even organs representing billionaires such as Mo Ibrahim grasp the detrimental implications of signing the EPA. According to their calculation:

The EPAs include only sub-Saharan African countries, excluding North African members of AMU. It potentially creates a split between North African and sub-Saharan African countries.

The EPA cements an unequal trading relationship in which sub-Saharan Africa exports raw unprocessed goods and imports EU manufactured goods. A reduction in tariffs will reinforce low value-added activities and reduce manufacturing output.

EPAs will favour trade in the direction of Europe. EPAs have rules of origin that differ from those in the RECs, which are simpler and have lower value-added requirements.

EPAs seek to eliminate export taxes, thus depriving African governments of crucial potential revenue. If East Africans want to see the full implications of signing the Partnership agreement with the EU, then they need only to look at the impact of the West Africa EU/EPA on the future of West African integration. The regional integration process in West Africa is being held back by the active role of France in both (ECOWAS) and the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA). France is working overnight to ensure that there is no move towards harmonizing trade and monetary relations in West Africa.

Tanzanians will have to ask themselves how will Tanzanian and East African firms be developed to the point where they can compete on equal grounds with EU firms?  This agreement is like the Europeans telling the peasants in Sukuma-land that they have to wait for fixed landlines before they can join the information highways.

The EPA is more than just a trade agreement: it commits–or carries the potential of committing—the region to a path of economic retrogression. If this is the path the East African region wishes to follow, then it should do so with full knowledge of the consequences and prepare to deal with them. If not, then it might wish to pause and take stock. But the choice should be a conscious one, and fully informed.

Prof Horace G. Campbell is Kwame Nkrumah Chair, University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana.

“In evaluating Walter Rodney one characteristic stands out. He was a scholar who recognised no distinction between academic concerns and service to society, between science and social commitment. He was concerned about people as well as archives, about the workplace as well as the classroom. He found time to be both a historian and a sensitive social reformer.”[1] -International Scientific Committee, UNESCO General History of Africa

Dr. Walter Rodney was a revolutionary intellectual, socialist, Pan-Africanist and organizer who made a significant contribution to the Caribbean Radical Tradition[2] that seeks to create just, liberated and egalitarian societies in the Caribbean region. October 2016 marks the 48th anniversaries of the expulsion of Rodney from Jamaica and the subsequent Rodney Rebellion that took place as a reaction to his banning and the general exploitation of the African-Jamaican masses by the neocolonial regime.

This commemorative moment is as good a time as any to introduce individuals to Walter Rodney and to hopefully inspire people to explore the relevance of his ideas and praxis to revolution-making in the Caribbean and elsewhere. We are going to highlight some significant periods in Rodney’s life in order to uncover the politics of this revolutionary. Rodney was not an arm-chair revolutionary who sequestered himself on the academic plantation theorizing on what must be done to transform society. He waded into the messy, complicated and threatening world of practice to facilitate resistance to the violent forces of oppression.

Contrary to the robust assertion of one of Rodney’s professors during his undergraduate years that “There is no such thing [a revolutionary intellectual]. One can be an intellectual or one can be a revolutionary. You can’t combine the two….”[3] Rodney has shown the world through his action that the revolutionary intellectual option is a possibility for academics and students who would like to become active agents of social transformation.

That ideologically misguided academic who sought to misinform Rodney would have likely dismissed Marx’s assertion that “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.”[4] The oppressed do not have the luxury of separating radical or revolutionary thought from the requisite transformative practices that are needed to create the just and emancipated society.

There is an evident absence of a critical mass of students and academics who are engaged in radical social movement organizations. Rodney used the platform of the university to engage in the production and dissemination of oppositional ideas and scholarship. He entered the wider society to educate and mobilize the working-class for self-organization. His legacy of principled commitment and activism is something with which activists or organizers should become fully aware. Neoliberal capitalism has established a seemingly unchallenged ideological and political dominance in the current period. It has left many people believing that there is no viable alternative to capitalism. Rodney would have rejected this defeatist tendency that has induced many progressives to abandon their radical politics or commitment to socialism and accept liberal capitalist democracy as the only political game in town. Some former radicals have gone over to social democracy, which is essentially capitalism with a human face.

Rodney’s Origin and Educational Experience

Who was Walter Rodney? On 23 March 1942, Rodney was born in Georgetown, Guyana and he was a product of the Guyanese labouring classes. His mother, Pauline Rodney, was a seamstress and carried out full-time unpaid domestic work in the Rodney household. Rodney’s father, Percival Rodney, was a tailor, an independent operator, but he was forced by economic necessity, on occasions, to engage in wage labour with a big capitalist tailoring firm.[5] Percival Rodney was an active member of the Marxist, multiracial mass-based People’s Progressive Party (PPP).

As a preteen, Walter Rodney distributed the PPP’s literature to households in the community. Rodney was therefore exposed to socialism and the working-class mobilizing across the racial divide in a class-based organization. This political experience was a type of formative, experientially-based political education.[6] He was a firm supporter of Black Power in the Caribbean but it never compromised his commitment to class unity among the racially diverse working-class in the region and close and exacting interrogation of the African petite bourgeoisie and the problematic nature of its relationship with the labouring classes.[7]

Rodney highlights the role of his early exposure to Marxism or socialism and its influence on his later engagement with the doctrine as a young adult:

As distinct from the many writers, poets and artists, who I think ultimately were the more important figures, there was later a small segment that went into the university and came up in an academic environment, like C.Y. Thomas and myself. We took with us, sometimes unknowingly, a willingness to accept at least the concepts of socialism/communism/Marxism/cl ass struggle without any a priori rejection which many of our university colleagues did have. Many of the people with whom I was training at the University of the West Indies, Jamaicans in particular, were technically as skilled as any of us, but they had this fundamental reservation about socialist and Marxist thought which I don’t believe Clive Thomas and I ever shared. That was because the PPP was the only mass party in Guyana and the leadership explicitly said, “we are socialists, we are Marxists”. And they were prepared to talk about creating a new anti-capitalist society based on new and different theory or perception than the one to which we were accustomed. So long before many Guyanese entered into  a serious examination of what was Marxism and communism, at least it seemed to us, from what we heard the leadership of the PPP and the party saying, that whatever Marxism and  socialism and these various concepts meant, they were things that could be taken seriously.[8]

This formative racial and class experience undoubtedly informed the integrated analysis that he took in addressing race and class oppression and avoidance of class or race reductionism. In other words, Rodney did not pander to the use of race or class to explain all social phenomena that occurred in the public and private spheres. The hostility of certain households and even the church to the message and work of the PPP engendered an awareness of class or social differences and their influence on how members of the public responded to his offer of the PPP’s literature and other products. Walter did not frame this alertness as class consciousness but the experience as his “first real introduction to the class question.”[9]

Rodney was a diligent high school student and he attended Queen’s College. He developed an interest in the study of history at Queen’s College under the mentorship of historian Dr. Robert Moore.[10] Rodney went to the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona campus, on an open scholarship in 1960 and he graduated with a first class honours degree in history in 1963. While he was a student at UWI, he was active in student politics and extracurricular activities. He ran twice for the presidency of the undergraduate student union, the Student Guild. According to the late intellectual and economist Norman Girvan, Rodney “was defeated on both tries for the Presidency by persons conservative by temperament and opinion.”[11] Rodney’s second bid for this office was probably not helped by his 1962 visit to Cuba and his enthusiasm in sharing literature acquired during the trip.

This revolutionary intellectual was active in debating competitions for his residential hall and UWI, served on the Guild Council and was an elected representative of the Regional Union of West Indies Students.

Rodney co-authored the article The Negro Slave with a fellow student C. Augustus and was published in UWI’s flagship journal Caribbean Quarterly in 1964. Jamaica’s secret police or the Special Branch opened a file on Rodney and his activism in June 1961 and claimed that he had a radical leftist outlook.[12]

Rodney started his doctoral studies in African history in 1963 at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and successfully completed and received his Ph.D. in 1966 at the age of twenty-four. He published A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545-1800 through the Oxford University Press.

This book was the result of his dissertation work and it launched his career and public profile as a professional historian.[13] Rodney’s book highlights the class interests of the African rulers that informed their participation in the Atlantic slave trade, the nature of political rule with the governed and the negative impact of the alliance between African rulers and European capitalists-cum-slavers on the region’s development.[14]

Rodney was clear about the European capitalists being the economic actors who gained the most benefits from trading in the region and selling and enslaving Africans:

Historically, the initiative came from Europe. It was the European commercial system which expanded to embrace the various levels of African barter economy, and to assign to them specific roles in global production. This meant the accumulation of capital from trading in Africa, and above all from the purchase of slaves and their employment in the New World. It is essential to stress that all changes on the coast occurred without prejudice to this over-all conception. Indeed, the most significant social changes on the Upper Guinea Coast demonstrated how African society became geared to serve the capitalist system.[15]

Rodney was not into the business of being an apologist of the ruling groups in African societies that aided and abetted the dehumanizing and exploitative sale of the people to the capitalist enslavers. Unfortunately, there are still people who would like to absolve African leaders for their role in the capture and sale of Africans.

During his tenure in England, he deepened his study and understanding of Marxism through a study group that was led by C.L.R James and his partner Selma James. In Walter Rodney Speaks: The Making of an African Intellectual, Rodney states that the study group consistently met over a two to three period and it important in assisting him to “acquire a knowledge of Marxism, a more precise of the Russian Revolution and of historical formulation. One of the most important things which I got out of that experience was a certain sense of historical analysis, in the sense that C.L.R. James was really the master of the analysis of historical situations.”[16]

Teaching, Researching and Acting in the World as a Revolutionary Intellectual

He went on to teach at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, from 1967 at the level of a lecturer. Rodney went to work at UWI, Mona, in January 1968 as a lecturer of African history in the Department of History. His political and public education work among Rastas, urban youth and even radicalized members of the petite bourgeoisie earned him the attention of Jamaica’s secret police and the reactionary regime of Prime Minister Hugh Shearer of the Jamaica Labour Party.[17] The urban poor, Rastafari, the progressive intelligentsia could be receptive to what Rodney was offering and the regime knew that it had nothing of substance to serve as an inoculant against the message of empowerment, dignity and justice.

Rodney identified the African labouring classes and the oppressed peasants in Jamaica who are the overwhelming majority in Jamaica as the only force that “can bear the brunt of revolutionary fighting” for the realization of the socialist society, which was unlike the situation in revolutionary Cuba in which Africans were not the majority.[18] This attempt at conscientizing and politicizing Jamaica’s oppressed in the context of the Cold War, the proverbial “backyard” of American imperialism and the capital of the neocolonial regime could have only led to political repression. Rodney appealed to his petite bourgeois or middle-class colleagues and the UWI students in his speech Black Power – Its Relevance to the West Indies to think about which side they would take in the masses’ struggle against capitalism and racism: “Trotsky once wrote that Revolution is the carnival of the masses. When we have that carnival in the West Indies, are people like us at the university going to join the bacchanal?”[19]

The Jamaica Labour Party had an uneasy relationship and even hostile relationship with the academics at the University of the West Indies because they were not acting as mouthpieces and sanctifiers of the government’s policies and programmes.[20] Rodney encouraged and inspired students and faculty members to join the struggle for justice and emancipation. This action was a source of apprehension and fear within the ranks of the government and its imperial patrons. The middle-class elements were not supposed to put their knowledge and skills at the disposal of the working-class’s struggle for justice, dignity and equity.

Rodney’s work among the Rastafari community was seen as a potential source of subversion. Horace Campbell highlights the thrust of Rodney’s political intervention among the Rastas:

In Jamaica, Rodney perceived the Rastafari community as a major force in the efforts towards freeing and mobilizing black minds; and he offered his knowledge and experience to the Rastas and all sections of the black population who wanted to break with the myths of white imperialism. The history lessons on Africa which Rodney took to all sections of the community brought uneasiness and fear to a pretentious leadership which never considered itself black, for Rodney stated simply that “being black was a powerful fact of the society.”[21]

The political directorate had no tolerance for dissent, political dissidents and perceived threats to its rule. It had already used the coercive power of the state to attack and destroy working-class squatter communities in West Kingston, which also had a strong Rastafari presence.[22] The neocolonial state had no reservation about using the power of the law to discipline and neutralize the impact of Rodney’s political education and mobilization. Rodney had the potential to unify the different political groupings with Jamaica’s Black Power Movement and even Jamaica’s secret police or Special Branch feared this real possibility.

The government finally made its move against Rodney. On Rodney’s return from the Congress of Black Writers in Montreal on 15 October 1968, he was declared persona non grata and prevented from leaving the plane. On 16 October 1968, the Student Guild organized a protest march against Rodney’s expulsion from Jamaica. However, the ranks of the students were increased by residents from working-class communities in downtown Kingston and they initiated the Rodney Rebellion (aka the Rodney Riots or Rodney Affair).

The masses used the protest to communicate their solidarity with Rodney and their displeasure with the failure of (in)dependent Jamaica to deliver material benefits to them.[23] Although, this uprising of the unemployed youth, workers and the working poor was spontaneous in nature, it represented the first time since the labour rebellions of 1938 that the African-Jamaican masses had returned to the stage of history in this mass and militant way.[24]

The neocolonial regime in Jamaica apparently had a fellow-traveller that feared Rodney’s presence on its territory. The repressive and illegitimate Forbes Burnham’s regime got the Academic Board of governors at the University of Guyana to reject Rodney’s application for a job in October 1968.[25] This prophet of revolution and self-emancipation of the people received no honour from the state in Jamaica. So it was certainly not unexpected that the same carpet of unwelcome or revulsion would have been offered by this regime to an African-Guyanese intellectual who did not pander to its politics of racial division of the Guyanese working-class.

The African-Caribbean petit bourgeois elements who captured state power after independence were mortally afraid of this revolutionary intellectual who unreservedly fraternized with the working-class and brought a materialist analysis to their experience of anti-African racism, social domination and capitalist exploitation. Racism and capitalism are major targets for Rodney because of the way they impact African lives.

If Rodney’s political activism had taken place in the mid-1980s and beyond, he would have brought an explicit interrogation of patriarchy’s exploitation of women to the centre of his worldview. Based on his belief in situating social analysis and prescription in the objective context of local society, his feminism would have been muscularly Caribbean-accented and relevant to the lives of labouring class women. The preceding comment ought not to be taken as an indicator of Rodney’s lack of awareness of gender differences and the status of African women in the historical record because it was certainly not the case.[26]

The point being made here is that gender, patriarchy and feminism never had the central role that race, white supremacy and Pan-Africanism, and class, capitalism and imperialism did in Rodney’s political analysis. Gender politics was an extra in his drama of revolution-making. Rodney’s political biographer Rupert Lewis offers an explanation for this gendered state of affairs: “In the area of gender the Rastafarians as well as black radicals, including Rodney, in different ways embraced traditional [patriarchal] values.”[27]

Rodney Back at the University of Dar es Salaam

Rodney was fortunate in resuming his academic career at the rank of a Senior Lecturer at the University of Dar es Salaam in 1969. He was an active participant and significant contributor to the theoretical activism at the university, which took place in the context of the Julius Nyerere regime’s Arusha Declaration. This policy document and the Ujamaa developmental programme were attempts at pursuing a path to socialism that the Tanzanian regime claimed was rooted in the values, history and sensibilities of Tanzanian society.

Tanzania was the site of Rodney’s researching and writing of his well-known book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa that deals with Europe’s development and domination of the international trading system, Africa’s contribution to the development of Europe, capitalism’s distortion of Africa’s developmental trajectory, the source of development and underdevelopment, the participation and role of the privileged classes in Europe’s exploitation of Africa and education as a cultural instrument of underdevelopment.[28] Africa and the Caribbean are still entrapped in unfavourable economic and political relations with Western capitalism and imperialism, which facilitate its continued underdevelopment. Rodney did not mince words on the solution to African and Caribbean development, which was grounded in the need to get rid of capitalism and embrace socialism.[29]

Rodney saw the university as a site from which to explore and develop ideas that would advance revolutionary developments in Tanzania. He shares his experience at the university:

That was the situation in Tanzania. Briefly, it meant that we were able to teach and develop scientific socialist ideas, bearing in mind when I say “we,” I mean comrades like myself, people of like mind, because we  were part of a community and that was very important. It’s extremely difficult to develop any ideas in isolation and the kind of work coming out of Dar es Salaam had a certain collective quality about it. There were perhaps only a few individuals, but nevertheless it was a community that was operating. We had a degree of freedom which was greater than that which is accorded academics in most parts of the Third World. That allowed us to pursue scientific socialist ideas within a political framework that was not necessarily supportive of those ideas, but was not repressive in any overt sense.[30]

Rodney was an active participant and foundational contributor to the development of the Dar es Salaam School at the University of Dar es Salaam and its critical and interrogative intellectual and political direction offered a radical outlook on capitalist underdevelopment, the oppression and liberation of the labouring classes, delinking from the international economic system, slavery and Africa, and the process of class development in Africa.[31] Rodney and the Dar es Salaam School were committed to making scholarship and the preparation of students relevant to the goals of achieving socialism and self-reliance – ends which were, in principle, congruent with the Tanzanian state’s Arusha Declaration and Ujamaa developmental programme.

In spite of Rodney’s integration into the Tanzanian academic community, the influence that he exercised among students and his colleagues, and educational contribution off campus, he felt that he would be able to make his best contribution to the struggle for liberation in the Caribbean in general and Guyana in particular. His status as a non-citizen was a political limitation on the level of involvement that he could effect in Tanzanian politics and his Jamaican experience likely influenced his sensibilities on this matter. However, the cultural challenges of not being fully conversant with the language, customs and habits of the masses were the decisive factors. According to Rodney, ‘‘… it’s virtually a lifetime task to master that language and then to master the higher level perception which normally goes into a culture.’’[32] He left Tanzania in 1974 with the expectation to continue his academic career and activism in the land of his birth – Guyana.

 Rodney Back Home in the Caribbean

Political victimization in the area of employment greeted Rodney on his return to Guyana in August 1974. He had applied for the vacant position of Professor of History at the University of Guyana and the academic appointment committee made the decision to offer the job to Rodney. He said that “It is now well-known that my appointment was approved through the regular academic channels and it was disallowed for supposedly political reasons.”[33] The university’s Board of Governors under the influence of the Burnham regime rejected the committee’s decision to offer Rodney the vacant professorial position as well as headship of the Department of History.[34]

The enemies of social transformation do not shy away from imposing economic sanctions such as the denial of jobs as a way to punish social malcontents or revolutionaries. Rodney did not have a stable or reliable source of income from the time of his return in August 1974 and his assassination on 13 June 1980. The repressive Burnham regime fired a shot across the proverbial bow with this action. For all intents and purposes the regime communicated to Rodney that he was now a marked man. Burnham’s People’s National Congress (PNC) was repressive of domestic progressive forces at home, while masquerading as an anti-capitalist regime at home and anti-imperialist abroad. Rodney dubbed this political posturing as ‘pseudosocialism’.[35]

The anti-imperialist rhetoric, the extensive state ownership of the economy and the constitutional declaration and naming of the country as the “Socialist Cooperative Republic of Guyana” by the Burnham regime fooled a lot of people into believing that they were witnessing a progressive or radical governing party that was pursuing a socialist path.[36] However, in 1974 four leftist organizations (the Indian Political Revolutionary Association, Working People’s Vanguard Party (Marxist-Leninist), African Society for Cultural Relations with Independent Africa and Ratoon (formation at the University of Guyana) formally created the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) in order to effectively fight for a that society promotes and protects human rights, the economic interests and participation of the working people, the people’s ownership and control of the productive resources, internationalism and solidarity for the oppressed, and “genuine multiracial power of the working people, expressed in organizational forms which guarantee the nature of this power.”[37]

Rodney carried out his due diligence of the organizations that were operating in Guyana and selected the WPA as the political formation to wage the struggle for social transformation.[38] The WPA carried out a vigorous campaign of opposition and non-cooperation with the authoritarian Burnham regime and engaged in educating and mobilizing the people for political change. The regime used political repression against WPA activists and leaders, including assassinations, economic victimization and trumped up arson charges.

In spite of the WPA’s action in establishing a collective leadership principle and practice, Rodney was seen by the people as the leader “in the struggle against the dictatorship.”[39] The Burnham government viewed the WPA and Rodney as a threat to its stability. Their agitational and mobilizing work for justice and call for unity of the Indian and African working people put the state on the defensive. Rodney did not shy away from doing this oppositional work notwithstanding the danger to himself.[40]Rodney was assassinated on 13 June 1980 and the Burnham regime removed this revolutionary from the stage of history.

Dr. Walter Rodney’s Funeral, June 1980

Concluding Thoughts

Walter Rodney has demonstrated through thought and action that it is not inevitable for intellectuals to join the systems of oppression and use their knowledge and skills to perpetuate exploitation. They have the option of committing “class suicide.” Rodney called on the intelligentsia to use their knowledge and skills to challenge and undermine the lies and prejudices of imperialism and racism that are peddled about the people, extend themselves beyond the disciplinary boundaries and liquidate the ‘social myths’ that officialdom offers on society, and become immersed in the struggle of the people for liberation.[41]

The progressive or radical intellectuals should not confine their contribution to the academic realm. They must become members of social movement organizations and work with the people in building their capacity for self-organization or self-emancipation. It is the oppressed who are responsible for liberating themselves. If liberation is conceived, directed and executed by the usurpers-cum-vanguards of the people and their struggle, the people will end up with new masters on the morning after the “successful” revolution.

Rodney has affirmed the possibility of engaging in intellectual work that is directed at the struggle for emancipation, while taking part in the said process of bringing into being the classless, stateless and self-organized society. The labouring classes across the world are staring at the seemingly impregnable and unchallengeable neoliberal capitalist turn and the tale that there is no alternative to capitalism and imperialism.

However, Rodney would have probably advised political activists to have “confidence that our people [the labouring classes] have the capacity to deal with their own situation.” Therefore, the work of organizing with the people and arming them with the knowledge, skills and attitude for self-emancipation must be prioritized and executed. The oppressed have only one option – create the counterhegemonic programmes, projects and institutions today that represent the embryonic expressions of the liberated society that we intend to create tomorrow.

Notes

Last night was once more a night of terror for the civilian population of the Peoples Republic of Donetsk, and especially for those at the edge of the capital.

“From 18:00 till midnight the Ukrainian side was shelling the localitites of Trudovskiye and Aleksandrovka of the Petrovsky district of Donetsk, and also the territory of the airport and the industrial zone. 127 shells of 82mm and 120mm calibre, and also eight artillery projectiles of 122mm calibre came in on these districts,” said an official of the DPR.

The Gorlovka region wasn’t spared either the night before, as no fewer than 15 mortars landed on the village of Zaitsevo.

The Ukrainian army also used infantry fighting vehicles, grenade launchers and small arms last night. And though the number of victims and the amount of destruction is yet to be confirmed, further south, at Sakhanka, a civilian of 53 years was injured during the bombardment of the area by the Ukrainian army with 82 mm mortars.

The previous night in the same area, two civilians were wounded in the bombing and 15 houses were damaged. And yesterday, a Ukrainian sabotage attack, covered by diversionary fire of mortars and artillery, killed two soldiers of the DPR and kidnapped a third. (The positions of the Ukrainian army are quite near the front line town of Shirokino.)

In violation of its mandate, OSCE refused to register the bombing:

“Yesterday the OSCE observers refused to register the bombing of the southern villages of the Republic and to help restore the cease-fire,” said a spokesman for the operational command of the army of DPR.

Decidedly, the more this goes on, the more we have to wonder what’s the use of OSCE being there, especially when you see its silence with the arrival on the front of new military equipment and foreign snipers on the Ukrainian side: Intelligence services of the People’s Republic of Donetsk have detected the presence of heavy mortars and American snipers near Gorlovka.

“Our intelligence services continue to identify military equipment of the FAU that will be destroyed if the punishers launch an offensive. Thus, near the town of Mayorsk (1.5 km from the contact line) near the bridge, we detected the firing positions of six 120 mm mortars,” said Edward Bassurin, second in command of the DPR Army.

“In addition, our intelligence services have established the presence of snipers who arrived in the area of the ATO from the United States. We are now gathering the facts documenting their criminal activities against the people of Donbass,” said Bassurin.

Despite these flagrant violations of agreements signed in Minsk, the army of the DPR, continues to respect these agreements. Thus following the withdrawal of the armed forces which finally happened in Petrovskoye, deminers of the DPR’s army started demining the area, as agreed in the disengagement agreement.

However, a resumption of hostilities seemed imminent, in the background of growing popular discontent in Ukraine and growing tensions between Ukraine and Poland (yet one of its most fervent supporters), following the launch of the film “Volyn” by director Wojciech Smarzowski. His film exposed the massacre of Volyn Poles by Ukrainian nationalists during World War II — An episode that the current Ukrainian authorities would like to keep hidden from the eyes of the world, because it shows the real face of those “Heroes of Ukraine,” Bandera and his fellow collaborators.

As at the time of the release of Paul Moreira’s documentary “Ukraine: the masks of the revolution,” the film triggered an outcry in Ukraine, with the Ukrainian media literally raging against him.

Yet this film is about historically proven facts and recalls that while millions of Ukrainians fought the Nazis in the Red Army during World War II, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian nationalists, including the Nationalist Organization Ukrainians (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), collaborated with Nazi forces during their occupation of what were the Polish and Ukrainian territories.

In addition to campaigns of mass murder against Jews, Gypsies, Soviet prisoners of war and Ukrainian anti-fascists, the UPA nationalists conducted an extensive campaign of ethnic cleansing of the Polish minority in western Ukraine. According to historians, this genocide (recognized as such recently by Poland) was between 80 000 and 120 000 deaths, mostly women and children,murdered between 1943 and 1945.

An episode that recalls sadly the ongoing genocide in Donbass, and on which Western governments turned a blind eye while they wave the humanitarian cloth before the UN concerning the Syrian civilian population to save their jihadist “investment” in Aleppo .

The two resolutions, Russian and French, on this issue have both been refused, the confrontation between the Western bloc and Russia and its allies now seems inevitable. The only question that remains is when and where will come the spark that will ignite the fire?

Translated from Russian by Fort-Russ

The Great Barrier Reef of Australia passed away in 2016 after a long illness. It was 25 million years old.

For most of its life, the reef was the world’s largest living structure, and the only one visible from space. It was 1,400 miles long, with 2,900 individual reefs and 1,050 islands. In total area, it was larger than the United Kingdom, and it contained more biodiversity than all of Europe combined.

It harbored 1,625 species of fish, 3,000 species of mollusk, 450 species of coral, 220 species of birds, and 30 species of whales and dolphins. Among its many other achievements, the reef was home to one of the world’s largest populations of dugong and the largest breeding ground of green turtles.

The reef was born on the eastern coast of the continent of Australia during the Miocene epoch. Its first 24.99 million years were seemingly happy ones, marked by overall growth. It was formed by corals, which are tiny anemone-like animals that secrete shell to form colonies of millions of individuals. Its complex, sheltered structure came to comprise the most important habitat in the ocean. As sea levels rose and fell through the ages, the reef built itself into a vast labyrinth of shallow-water reefs and atolls extending 140 miles off the Australian coast and ending in an outer wall that plunged half a mile into the abyss. With such extraordinary diversity of life and landscape, it provided some of the most thrilling marine adventures on earth to humans who visited. Its otherworldly colors and patterns will be sorely missed.

To say the reef was an extremely active member of its community is an understatement. The surrounding ecological community wouldn’t have existed without it. Its generous spirit was immediately evident 60,000 years ago, when the first humans reached Australia from Asia during a time of much lower sea levels. At that time, the upper portions of the reef comprised limestone cliffs and innumerable caves lining a resource-rich coast. Charlie Veron, longtime chief scientist for the Australian Institute of Marine Science and the Great Barrier Reef’s most passionate champion (he personally discovered 20 percent of the world’s coral species), called the reef in that era a “Stone Age Utopia.” Aboriginal clans hunted and fished its waters and cays for millennia, and continued to do so right up to its demise.

Worldwide fame touched the reef in 1770, when Captain James Cook became the first European to navigate its deadly maze. Although the reef was beloved by nearly all who knew it, Cook was not a fan. “The sea in all parts conceals shoals that suddenly project from the shore, and rocks that rise abruptly like a pyramid from the bottom,” he wrote in his journal. Cook’s ship foundered on one of those shoals and was nearly sunk, but after several months Cook escaped the reef.

After that, the reef was rarely out of the spotlight. A beacon for explorers, scientists, artists, and tourists, it became Australia’s crown jewel. Yet that didn’t stop the Queensland government from attempting to lease nearly the entire reef to oil and mining companies in the 1960s—a move that gave birth to Australia’s first conservation movement and a decade-long “Save the Reef” campaign that culminated in the 1975 creation of Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, which restricted fishing, shipping, and development in the reef and seemed to ensure its survival. In his 2008 book, A Reef in Time, Veron wrote that back then he might have ended his book about the reef with “a heartwarming bromide: ‘And now we can rest assured that future generations will treasure this great wilderness area for all time.’” But, he continued: “Today, as we are coming to grips with the influence that humans are having on the world’s environments, it will come as no surprise that I am unable to write anything remotely like that ending.”

In 1981, the same year that UNESCO designated the reef a World Heritage Site and called it “the most impressive marine area in the world,” it experienced its first mass-bleaching incident. Corals derive their astonishing colors, and much of their nourishment, from symbiotic algae that live on their surfaces. The algae photosynthesize and make sugars, which the corals feed on. But when temperatures rise too high, the algae produce too much oxygen, which is toxic in high concentrations, and the corals must eject their algae to survive. Without the algae, the corals turn bone white and begin to starve. If water temperatures soon return to normal, the corals can recruit new algae and recover, but if not, they will die in months. In 1981, water temperatures soared, two-thirds of the coral in the inner portions of the reef bleached, and scientists began to suspect that climate change threatened coral reefs in ways that no marine park could prevent.

By the turn of the millennium, mass bleachings were common. The winter of 1997–98 brought the next big one, followed by an even more severe one in 2001–02, and another whopper in 2005–06. By then, it was apparent that warming water was not the only threat brought by climate change. As the oceans absorbed more carbon from the atmosphere, they became more acidic, and that acid was beginning to dissolve the living reef itself.

Concerned for the reef’s health, a number of friends attempted interventions—none more poignant than Veron’s famed 2009 speech to London’s 350-year-old Royal Society titled “Is the Great Barrier Reef on Death Row?” Veron quickly answered his own question in the affirmative: “This is not a fun talk to give, but I’ve never given a more important talk in my life,” he told the premier gathering of scientists, accurately predicting that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations of 450 parts per million (which the world will reach in 2025) would bring about the demise of the reef.

No one knows if a serious effort could have saved the reef, but it is clear that no such effort was made. On the contrary, attempts to call attention to the reef’s plight were thwarted by the government of Australia itself, which in 2016, shortly after approving the largest coal mine in its history, successfully pressured the United Nations to remove a chapter about the reef from a report on the impact of climate change on World Heritage sites. Australia’s Department of the Environment explained the move by saying, “experience had shown that negative comments about the status of World Heritage-listed properties impacted on tourism.” In other words, if you tell people the reef is dying, they might stop coming.

By then, the reef was in the midst of the most catastrophic bleaching event in its history, from which it would never recover. As much as 50 percent of the coral in the warmer, northern part of the reef died. “The whole northern section is trashed,” Veron told Australia’s Saturday Paper. “It looks like a war zone. It’s heartbreaking.” With no force on earth capable of preventing the oceans from continuing to warm and acidify for centuries to come, Veron had no illusions about the future. “I used to have the best job in the world. Now it’s turned sour… I’m 71 years old now, and I think I may outlive the reef.”

The Great Barrier Reef was predeceased by the South Pacific’s Coral Triangle, the Florida Reef off the Florida Keys, and most other coral reefs on earth. It is survived by the remnants of the Belize Barrier Reef and some deepwater corals.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Ocean Ark Alliance.

One week after Hurricane Matthew struck the southern coast of Haiti, the full dimensions of the devastation inflicted on the people of this impoverished Caribbean nation are only beginning to emerge.

The unofficial death toll has risen well past 1,000. Tens of thousands are injured and unable to receive medical aid, with hospitals and clinics badly damaged and lacking basic supplies such as painkillers and antibiotics, not to mention power and clean water. The United Nations estimates that 2.1 million Haitians–more than 20 percent of the country’s population–have been affected by the storm, with 1.4 million in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.

What is still to come will almost certainly be worse. The crops of Haiti’s southern coast have been wiped out and there are warnings of famine. Cholera cases are again on the rise. The disease has already claimed the lives of over 10,000 Haitians after being introduced into the country by United Nations “peace-keeping” troops.

The immense suffering from Hurricane Matthew comes less than seven years after the 2010 earthquake, which killed 230,000 people, injured 300,000 more, and left over 1.5 million people homeless. As we wrote at the time, the people of Haiti were “…victims not merely of a natural catastrophe. The lack of infrastructure, the poor quality of construction in Port-au-Prince and the impotence of the Haitian government to organize any response are determining factors in this tragedy.

“These social conditions are the product of a protracted relationship between Haiti and the United States, which, ever since US Marines occupied the island nation for nearly 20 years beginning in 1915, has treated the country as a de facto colonial protectorate.”

This bitter legacy of imperialist oppression remains the essential factor in the horrific impact of natural disasters like Hurricane Matthew.

In the wake of the 2010 earthquake, international donors pledged $10.4 billion for Haiti, including $3.9 billion from the US. The chief figure overseeing this relief effort was Bill Clinton, whose previous “gift” to the people of Haiti was a trade deal that eliminated tariffs on rice imports from the US subsidized by the American government, bankrupting Haiti’s own rice producers and leaving the country unable to feed itself.

Welcoming the earthquake’s death and destruction as a golden opportunity for further capitalist profit-making, the former Democratic president vowed that the aid money would allow Haiti to “build back better.” Nearly seven years later, the universal question asked by Haitians is “what happened to the money?”

Today, just as in 2010, Haiti remains the poorest and most socially unequal country in the Western Hemisphere. While the masses of Haiti remain mired in poverty, the former US president and his wife Hillary, the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, have seen their own wealth soar, raking in an estimated $230 million in income since Bill Clinton left the White House.

The couple parlayed lives supposedly spent in “public service” into admission into the upper stratosphere of American wealth, with incomes in the top 0.1 percent bracket. The source of this vast wealth was a political machine that might well be dubbed “Clinton, Inc.” This consists essentially of a seedy money-laundering operation to ensure big business support for the Clintons’ political ambitions as well as their personal fortunes. The basic components of the operation are lavishly paid speeches to Wall Street and Fortune 500 audiences, corporate campaign contributions, and donations to the ostensibly philanthropic Clinton Foundation.

It was the foundation that played a prominent role in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. Its most visible legacy is a low-wage garment factory run by a South Korean company known for its use of violence and intimidation to subdue its workers, alongside a pair of luxury hotels catering to businessmen seeking opportunities to extract profit from the oppression of the super-exploited Haitian working class.

In an investigation of the foundation’s activities in Haiti, ABC News wrote that the garment factory “has under-delivered on projected jobs.” It continued: “Haitian workers have accused managers of bullying and sexual harassment. And…after opening its factory in the Haitian industrial park–built with $400 million in global aid–the Korean firm became a Clinton Foundation donor and its owner invested in a startup company owned by Hillary Clinton’s former chief of staff.”

The report made clear that the relief operation did more for the “Friends of Bill” than for the Haitian masses, and that those who coughed up donations to the Clinton Foundation were rewarded with opportunities to mount profitable ventures in Haiti.

In addition to Hillary Clinton’s former chief of staff at the State Department, the Democratic candidate’s younger brother, Tony Rodham, also cashed in on the Clinton connection in Haiti, including through his position on the advisory board of a US company that in 2012 secured the first gold mining permit issued in the country in half a century. The Haitian Senate subsequently put a hold on the controversial permit.

The Clinton Foundation is emblematic of the role played by imperialist “humanitarianism.” In Haiti, it serves as an instrument for shoring up Washington’s semi-colonial domination under conditions in which US imperialist hegemony is being challenged by the growth of Chinese trade and investment elsewhere in the hemisphere. In Syria, it provides the pretext for a proxy war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people.

The real relationship of the Clintons to Haiti was further exposed by the decision of the Department of Homeland Security Secretary to resume the deportation of Haitian refugees. While temporarily suspended because of the hurricane, the deportations are to begin as soon as possible. In the meantime, the refugees are being imprisoned in detention camps.

While the Obama administration claimed the action was warranted because of improved conditions in Haiti, it was driven by proof of the exact opposite, in the form of thousands of Haitian refugees arriving at the US-Mexican border. The decision was taken in large part out of fear that allowing them into the country could undermine Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid.

Anger over the conditions in Haiti is growing. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned Monday, “Tensions are already mounting as people await help.” Among the first moves of the UN has been to extend for six months the mandate of the UN Stabilization Mission (MINUSTAH), which deploys armed “peace-keepers” in Haiti. US Marines have also been deployed to the country and are reportedly operating with the Haitian National Police against “looters.”

Overcoming the legacy of imperialist oppression in Haiti is possible only through the revolutionary struggle of the Haitian workers and oppressed, in unity with the workers in the United States and internationally, to put an end to the capitalist system.

Saida’s brother Ali says all she does is cry. Credit: ITV New

They come from a village of Toheita, a community of fishermen and farmers in one of Yemen’s poorest districts but nothing they have suffered in the past comes close to this.

The United Nations says there are 240 children in this village alone with severe malnutrition. Many have died, starved to death within sight of one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.

They have no way to feed themselves. The Saudi-led coalition is enforcing a naval blockade on Yemen’s Red Sea coast, searching all shipping for weapons. Delays of days, even weeks drive up prices of vital goods like rice, flour and fertiliser far beyond the means of Ali and his family.

One-year-old Younis is also wasting away. Credit: ITV News 

Even in peacetime, Yemen imported 90 percent of it’s food. Now Hodeidah, the north’s main port, has been bombed ships take far longer to unload and capacity is drastically reduced.

The UN brings in aid but in Yemen’s rugged mountainous terrain it is hard to get supplies to those in isolated villages who need it the most.

The crisis in Yemen has not been helped by bridges being bombed. Credit: ITV News

Bridges have been bombed, adding to the crisis. And the blockade affects even humanitarian supplies – Hodeidah’s port manager told us there are 15 ships with all the necessary UN approvals waiting at anchor to be searched.

In the town’s hospital, 15 minutes drive away, chidren are dying of hunger, 15 in the past fortnight alone.

Children are dying of hunger in Toheita’s hospital. Credit: ITV News

Doctors say they lack the supplies to help. Doctor Marwan Mohammed warns of a catastrophe unless aid arrives soon: “They’re going to die. Most of them we cannot do anything for them. They are going to die. It’s very sad.”

Toheita is just one village in one small corner of Yemen. In hospitals across the north, in Sada’a, in Hajjah and even the capital Sanaa, we have seen wards full of malnourished children. The UN have not yet declared this a famine but if aid supplies do not dramatically increase it soon will be.

The fishermen of Toheita can’t work or feed their families.

Troops on the ground in Syria are a strategic necessity and if the UK wants to beat Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), it must be willing to put them there, according to former UK General Richard Shirreff.

To the vast majority of Americans, the Syrian crisis (as well as the state of affairs in Iraq, Libya, Yemen, etc.) is merely a distant blip on a cluttered radar screen. Competing with issues affecting an individual’s daily life like wages, taxes, and free trade, that small portion of the American population who hasn’t completely zoned out of the political and current-events sphere is increasingly overtaken with the necessities of survival. Those who are able to devote enough time to the Syrian crisis are confronted with an unprecedented onslaught of propaganda demonizing the Syrian government and the Syrian president as “killing his own people,” “brutal,” and “genocidal.” The Syrian people are also victims of the propaganda war as being obsessed with religion, divided, and opposed to their government.

As they are presented by the U.S. media, the Syrian people, like most other people across the world are completely dehumanized. In American media, Syrians are not human. They are numbers. 100 died today. 86 died the day before. Syrians are not mothers or sons. They are not fathers or little children, grandparents. They are blips on a screen and data in a spreadsheet. At least, this is how they are presented to an increasingly hardened American public, a nation that is becoming more and more desensitized to death, destruction, and degradation both at home and abroad.

Having recently concluded a trip to the Middle East, I can safely say that the claims made by Western media are the opposite of the truth.

While my visit centered in Lebanon, we had frequent opportunities to talk with ordinary Syrian citizens either visiting Lebanon or fleeing the ravages of the war in their home country. Indeed, Syrians and Syrian refugees were plentiful in Beirut and many would openly speak about the horrors visited upon them by the West’s proxy war and their trials outside Syria.

What is so important about the fact that these Syrians were being interviewed in Lebanon is the unique benefit of talking with someone not living in their home country because one knows with relative certainty that the person speaking has nothing to lose or gain by giving a false perception of the government. After all, one of the frequent accusations leveled by the Western media is that, whenever one speaks to a Syrian actually living in Syria is that they are handicapped by that person’s fear of retribution from the Syrian government. According to this train of thought, if a man criticized Assad in Syria, he might be subject to arrest and then, of course, torture, execution, and “barrel bombs.”

But that is not the case in Lebanon. In Lebanon, even the most vocal anti-Assad Syrian can speak his mind and be safely out of Assad’s reach. Indeed, even out of ear shot by the Syrian government. A Syrian in Lebanon can speak his piece and do so safely in the knowledge that the alleged “brutal dictator” cannot reach him.

That being said, out of all the Syrians I met and spoke to – refugees and visitors, Muslim and Christian, male and female – not one of them supported the “rebels” and all of them – 100% – fully supported their government and Bashar al-Assad. These individuals had nothing but hate for the terrorists and nothing but love for Assad and the Syrian government.

This point needs to be stressed. These individuals were not under threat of a tyrant ready to arrest them if they spoke out against him. They were free of Assad. They could spit on his portrait if they wanted and there is nothing the Syrian government can do to them. Instead, they expressed an incredible amount of pride in their country, their government, and their President.

So, with that in mind, if Assad and the Syrian government are “barrel bombing” their own citizens, committing genocide against the Syrian people, and killing civilians indiscriminately, and if Syrians are free to speak their mind about Assad in Lebanon, why couldn’t I find one Syrian who wanted Assad to “step down” or for terrorists to bring them the “freedom and democracy” the West keeps yapping on about? Perhaps I was looking in the wrong places or perhaps the information coming from Western governments and their media mouthpieces are simply propaganda. Personally, I’ll put my money on the latter.

One striking aspect of Beirut in the context of the Syrian crisis is that one does not necessarily have to seek out the Syrians in order to speak to them. If one only wears a necklace, t-shirt, or bracelet with the Syrian flag, they will come to you. Any indication of solidarity with their country, especially exhibited by a Westerner (even better, an American) and a man who speaks only one word of English will stop whatever he is doing so that he can have a conversation with the foreigner, even if that conversation is done by body language, hand gestures, broken English, interpreters, or Google Translate alone.

Others more skilled in the English language are willing to have long discussions about their experiences, their support for the government, and their hatred for the terrorists infecting their country. They would tell tales of watching people they knew killed in front of them and having lost family or very close friends at the hands of America’s “moderates.” Indeed, in Syria, as well as in the diaspora of the last 5 years, it seems impossible to speak with a single Syrian who has not lost someone close to them.

The sheer magnitude of the crisis is unimaginable in scale, much in the way that the horrors inflicted upon the Syrian people by America’s democracy loving cannibals are beyond the comprehension of most Western audiences. But despite all the bloodshed, loss, and terror perpetrated on Syria by the United States, the Syrian spirit remains and the Syrian people remain some of the kindest, friendliest, and most hospitable people on the face of the earth.

In addition, Syrians remain a seemingly highly informed audience despite the fact that their country has been crippled by warfare for the past five years and that they themselves have been turned into refugees. Knowledge not only of their own situation, but about the players behind it and the developments taking place in Europe and America is common and, while American audiences watch the 24 hours news cycle in utter befuddlement as to the events taking place in Syria, Syrians are profoundly aware of just who is responsible for the crisis their country is facing.

While Americans chalk the crisis up to the “they have been fighting for thousands of years” line or accept the propaganda that Syria is facing a civil war, Syrians know that what they are facing is a proxy war against their government, against their very way of life, and against Russia. Syrians are fully aware of the fact that the terrorists beheading their way across the country are funded by Saudi Arabia, facilitated by Turkey and Israel, and trained by the United States. They are fully aware that there are no “moderates” fighting against the Syrian government and that the United States is responsible for creating the ISIS terror organization it is claiming to fight.

All of this may come as a surprise to Americans but, in Syria, it is well known.

With that in mind, it is an extraordinary thing that Syrians can welcome foreigners visiting their country with such patience and forgiveness. It is truly amazing that Syrian refugees struggling to survive in a foreign country is willing to sit with a citizen of the very country that destroyed his home and killed his family members, smoke hookah with him, and discuss his homeland. It is an unbelievable act of understanding and forgiveness for a man not to judge an American as the enemy and to separate the American people from their government. I was personally struck by the genuine kindness shown to me by people who have been given every legitimate reason to do otherwise.

What the United States is doing to Syria is truly shameful and immoral but, despite the horrors the U.S. and NATO countries have visited upon Syria, the people have refused to give in.

As Mark Twain said,

Damascus has seen all that has ever occurred on earth, and still she lives. She has looked upon the dry bones of a thousand empires, and will see the tombs of a thousand more before she dies.

Judging by the people I met, I am inclined to agree with him.

Brandon Turbeville – article archive here – is the author of seven books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 and volume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria,and The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President. Turbeville has published over 850 articles on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s radio show Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV. His website is BrandonTurbeville.com He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.

This past summer witnessed yet another people’s uprising in one of the longest running military occupations in modern times: the Indian occupation of Kashmir. The callous indifference to decades-old Indian atrocities against the people of Kashmir, including well-documented incidences of torture, disappearances, ‘encounter killings,’ rapes, and outright massacres, ought to put the international community to shame. This, after all, is a ‘conflict’ – a euphemism for a military occupation – that the UN and international law has clearly adjudicated on many decades ago, but Indian recalcitrance, Pakistani fumbling, and international criminal neglect have let the blood of Kashmiris spill uninterruptedly.

What started out in June of this year as yet another outbreak of Kashmir outrage regarding the killing of a prominent Kashmiri freedom fighter very quickly became a pretext for the Indian elite to convert the issue of oppression and occupation of Kashmir into ‘cross-border’ terrorism from its arch-rival, Pakistan. It was a convenient diversion from the root of the conflict, the military occupation, to one of Pakistan up to its old tricks, sponsoring jihadi terrorists.

What enabled the Indian establishment to ratchet up its posture was a militants’ attack on its military occupation base in Kashmir, Uri, on September 18th. Without offering any evidence, blame was placed on Pakistan and for the first time (outside of the context of war) since the partition of the Indian Subcontinent into a Hindu-majority India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan, the Indians publicly declared that they had violated the Line of Control – the unofficial ceasefire line – dividing Pakistani and Indian Kashmir, and had sent special forces and helicopter gunships to attack Pakistani ‘militants’ and soldiers on Sept. 28-29.

The significance of this raid by the Indian military cannot be underestimated. The near unanimity of the Indian political, military, and media establishment to demonstrate Indian military prowess vis-a-vis Pakistan is particularly disturbing and dangerous. Commentators have pointed out the particular hawkishness of the current rightwing BJP regime in regard to such bellicose posturing, but that is misleading.

The Role of Washington

But there is a larger, more dangerous geopolitical chessboard on which all of these developments are unfolding. The Indian establishment has always been frustrated by Pakistani support for groups in Kashmir and beyond. What explains the timing of such flagrant demonstration of potentially catastrophic militarism at this point?

The answer may lie in the reticence of Washington’s response to such a blatant violation of international law by India. Of course, the US and its special forces’ raids and drone strikes in Pakistan are emblematic of the same phenomenon. But this near unanimous endorsement of India’s raids in Pakistani-held Kashmir, from influential individuals associated both with the Bush Jr. and Obama administrations, indicates that the gloves are off now when it comes to targeting, humiliating, isolating, and potentially dismembering Pakistan.

In an unprecedented move, the Indian Prime Minister earlier this year said that India has to give ‘moral support’ to the Baloch insurgency. Though there is a genuine struggle for justice among the Baloch against the excesses of the Pakistani state, this Indian line is consistent with now well-documented Western think tank policy prescriptions to destabilize, undermine, and dismember Pakistan. Conspiracy theories don’t start to look so conspiratorial anymore.

What of course has infuriated the Pentagon and the CIA about Pakistan since the invasion of Afghanistan in the so-called ‘War on Terror’ is the Pakistanis’ inability to ‘do enough’ to curtail the Taliban resistance, or rather, actually, to do the opposite: give it safe havens and perhaps even support it. The Pakistani establishment, like all states, believes in hard and fast realpolitik, knows that US-NATO forces will be forced to withdraw one day and hence, Islamabad has kept it’s horse in the race (i.e., the Taliban) intact.

But that has been low-intensity conflict, if you will. Washington will occasionally launch a drone strike here, a special ops raid there (like killing Osama), or even an air strike once in a while (that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in the Pakistani base of Salala) – just to send a message to the Pakistanis, a message that of course had little effect. At some stage, the US has understood its defeat in Afghanistan as a fait accompli, and the Pakistanis are merely relied upon to facilitate NATO supply lines to allow the US to maintain the fiction that it has control over Afghanistan and its puppet regime there.

All of these crises in West Asia, whether in Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan, compelled Obama to ‘pivot to Asia,’ to focus on containing the rise of the real, formidable competitor, China. While all of the ‘usual suspects’ of the Pacific nations have been mobilized in that objective, including Japan, South Korea, Australia, and so on, there was one power that – if cajoled into this grand alliance – would be a huge prize. That power was India. And that is precisely why the US has entered into all sorts of geopolitical, military, security, and economic arrangements with India that allow the latter to obtain the confidence as an effective sub-imperialist hegemonic power. In short, Washington wants India to move toward being a ‘frontline’ state in American belligerence toward China, and for now, New Dehli seems to be happily playing that game.

If Pakistan was being slapped on the wrist now and then before, now the new ‘partners in crime’ – the US and India – are hell-bent on punishing Islamabad. The reason is that whereas for most of Pakistan’s history it had a close relationship with both Beijing and Washington, now it is much more the former at the expense of the latter. The $48 billion dollar being invested by the Chinese in the Pakistan China Economic Corridor, which would give the Chinese access to the Pakistani port of Gwadar, is anathema to both Washington and Dehli. In case the US tries to blockade China in the South China Sea, Beijing – if this corridor goes through – would still have access to a port in the Indian Ocean, not to mention another formidable nuclear-armed military on its side, that of Pakistan’s.

This is the stuff that makes movies and fictional novels so thrilling. In real life, what these geopolitical developments point to is perhaps the most dangerous moment for human life since the Cuban missile crisis. Two nuclear armed countries, India and Pakistan, are on the brink of war because of Washington’s drive to contain and undermine China, embolden – to reckless levels – its newfound close ally, India, and push the rulers in Islamabad to a point where they feel isolated enough to also act and react in potentially dangerous ways.

Meanwhile, just like the brutal Israeli occupation of Palestine seems to be forgotten amidst the chaos and destruction that Western interventions and machinations have created in West Asia and North Africa (WANA), so it seems that the harsh Indian occupation of Kashmir, and the thousands of Kashmiris who have suffered, is obscured by Western imperial hegemony and the way it has fueled regional conflicts and rivalries. As Noam Chomsky points out, it has been a miracle that nuclear weapons have not been used again since the US deployed them in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. That miracle may no longer be sustained if imperial hegemony and its geopolitical theatrics continue to value domination over the survival of the human race.

Junaid S. Ahmad is the Secretary-General of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST).

On Tuesday, US Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) wrote a remarkable letter to Secretary of State John Kerry. Citing the “civilian carnage caused by the Saudi Arabia-led military coalition in Yemen,” Rep. Lieu expressed concern to Kerry that the US government might be “liable for war crimes in Yemen,” based on continued US material support for the ongoing Saudi attack on its southern neighbor.

According to Rep. Lieu, it seems clear that the Saudis are intentionally targeting civilians in Yemen and for the US to support Saudi Arabia in such an illegal and immoral war would mean Washington shares Riyadh’s guilt. Wrote Lieu:

The repeated and frequent strikes on civilians show that the issue it not the gross incompetence of the Saudi military coalition. Apologists for the Saudi coalition can perhaps defend a few errant bombs, but not over 70 unlawful airstrikes. It appears that either the Saudi coalition is intentionally targeting civilians or they are not distinguishing between civilians and military targets. Both would be war crimes. …

Immediately stopping the aiding and abetting of the Saudi military coalition would not only help reduce the legal risk to US officials, it would send a strong message to the world that the US respects the Law of War and basic human rights.

Last weekend Saudi jets attacked a funeral in Yemen, killing and wounding as many as 1,000 civilians. Reports suggest after the initial strike on the funeral, Saudi planes returned to attack the first responders. Fragments of US-manufactured bombs were photographed at the site.

There is no word on a State Department response to Rep. Lieu’s letter.

Often such letters are sent by a group of Representatives to show solidarity on an issue. The appearance of only Rep. Lieu’s name on the letter could mean that his colleagues refused to join him in his query or perhaps that he did not seek out the support of others.

Last night the U.S. launched cruise missiles against three radar stations along the western Yemeni coast. The area is formally under control of the Sanaa government, an alliance of Houthi tribal groups from north Yemen and parts of the Yemeni army under control of the former president Saleh. But their real control is patchy and especially around Taiz and further south al-Qaeda and local south Yemeni independence fighters are predominant.

The attack comes after U.S. ships were allegedly attacked by missiles fired from the coast. All those missiles “fell into the sea short of the destroyer, which was in international waters in the Red Sea.” (Were these just short range RPG-36 al-Qaeda had received?) The Houthi as well as the Yemeni army (twice) have officially denied that they fired missiles and to have attacked any U.S. asset. Former president Saleh accused the Saudis and their al-Qaeda proxies and asked for an investigation. No one in Yemen had heard rumors of preparations or execution of such attacks. There is no public evidence that any such attack ever happened. All such claims are solely based on the word of the U.S. military. The Houthi/Saleh government in Sanaa demands an official UN investigation into the issue.

Two weeks ago the Houthis had fired on and destroyed a United Arab Emirates fast supply ship. The missile used was decent medium range anti-ship missile of probably Chinese origin. The ship was transporting weapons and anti-Houthi troops between Assab in Eritrea and Aden in south Yemen. They had proudly admitted the attack and published video of it. Earlier smaller Saudi ships which blockaded the coast were attacked by local fishermen and sunk. The UAE has occupied parts of south Yemen (Dubai Port International would like to control the Aden harbor) and the UAE troops and proxy forces are immediate enemy of the Yemeni forces. But it was clear that any attack on a U.S. ship would only increase trouble for the Houthi forces. They had and have no sane reason to commit such an attack.

A recap how we got here. After some tribal upheaval in 2011-12 the President Saleh was pressed to move aside and his vice president Hadi was installed as president with a two year mandate. The installation of a new national government failed when Hadi and his sponsors denied any seat at the table for the large northern Houthi tribes (some 45% of the total population). Those tribes revolted and occupied the capital Sanaa. Hadi, then in the third year of his two year mandate, resigned, retracted and later verbally resigned again. The UN tried to negotiate a settlement but the UN envoy was ousted on behalf of Saudis and the agreed upon unity cabinet was not installed:

Yemen’s warring political factions were on the verge of a power-sharing deal when Saudi-led airstrikes began a month ago, derailing the negotiations, the United Nations envoy who mediated the talks said.

The Saudis, who had fought earlier wars against the Houthis, do not want them to have a role in any power structure. They claim that Houthi are Iranian proxies. There is no evidence for that at all and the claim is simply false. During some 18 month of war no sign of Iranian help, weapons or personal, has been seen. Even the NYT notes today:

American intelligence officials believe that the Houthis receive significantly less support from Iran than the Saudis and other Persian Gulf nations have charged.

The Sauds want their trusted puppet Hadi back in the presidential role with unlimited powers. He can be endlessly manipulated by them. But while the Sauds are much richer their people is not significantly bigger than Yemen. Yemen has some 26 million inhabitants while Saudi Arabia has some 29 million. Every Saudi attack against Yemenis creates new recruits who will attack Saudi Arabia.

The U.S. supports the attacks by the Saudis and the UAE. It delivers planes and ammunition, its aerial tankers refill the Saudi jets taking part – in total over 5,500 times since the bombing began. U.S. intelligence is used by the Saudis to plan their attacks. U.S. officers consult the Saudi planning cells and U.S. special forces are on the ground. It ships help to blockade the Yemeni coast. Despite such massive support the U.S. officially did not consider itself part of the conflict and even tried to negotiated some powersharing agreement as if it were a “neutral” force. That did not deceive anyone in Yemen but the U.S. public was gullible as ever about this.

That ended as more and more atrocities by Saudi attacks on hospitals, schools, markets and important infrastructure became public. After the recent Saudi attack (vid) on a funeral hall filled with people offering condolences the U.S. ran out of stupid excuses. The bombs used were U.S. manufactured. The attack killed over 200 and seriously wounded many more. The local hospitals are overwhelmed and the Saudis block any evacuation. Many of casualties are tribal elites and generals.

Cholera broke out in Yemen and people are dying of hunger. The U.S. has come under pressure over this and the Saudi attacks. The State Department spokesman was hopelessly trying to explain why the funeral attack was in “defense of Saudi Arabia” and different from less severe attacks in Syria which the U.S. condemns. A significant number of senators are pressing for an end to the support of the Saudi campaign. Moveon has started a petitions against the U.S. support and the Obama administration itself feared legal consequences.

An “attack” on U.S. assets that puts the U.S. into a justified “self defense” position against the Houthis makes all such concerns irrelevant. 

Over the last weeks the Saudis have transported sponsored fighters aligned with al-Qaeda in Yemen from south Yemen to Saudi Arabia. These have now started to attack the Houthi areas in the north from the Saudi side of the border. All earlier such attempts miserably failed.

There are rumors that the U.S. attack on the radar stations is in preparation of a massive troop landing by UAE and Saudi mercenary forces currently assembling in the UAE rented and controlled port Assab in Eritrea. That is, in my view, quite possible.

Last night, the United States attacked and destroyed a series of radar stations belonging to the Shi’ite Houthis in Yemen, along the Red Sea coast. This was described as retaliation for the missiles fired sort of near a US destroyer off shore, and presented as preventing future such strikes.

Yet today, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook admitted that the US still hasn’t actually made any determination who fired those missiles in the first place. It is unclear why they retaliated against the Houthis, who denied involvement, apart from Cook saying that the US believes Iran has “been supportive of the Houthi rebels.”

Still, this act in haste and repent at leisure attitude doesn’t appear to be changing, with Cook vowing the US would “be prepared to respond again” if they think ships off the Yemeni coast are threatened, with the implied threat that they’ll attack the Houthis some more, whether or not they ever determine if the Houthis did anything.

Pentagon officials are also trying to insist that their attacks on the Houthis are totally distinct from the ongoing Saudi war against the Houthis, which the US is already heavily involved in, meaning this amounts to a second, separate war against the Houthis, with even less of a pretext. The Pentagon appears uncomfortable with connecting their heedless attacks to the myriad war crimes in the extent war.

The Houthis reiterated today that they had nothing to do with the missiles fired near the US ship, and insisted they consider the US attacks “unacceptable.” They warned that they have the right to defend themselves from future US attacks.

It should be personal to all of us. Yemen, regularly portrayed as the poorest nation in the Arab world, is proving itself to be the richest in courage, resourcefulness and resilience.

Ever since March 2015, some of you may have noticed how oil-rich Saudi Arabia, with the United States at its side, have been waging genocidal war against the Yemeni people.

Yemen are a people under attack by an undeclared super-power coalition comprised of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, US, UK, EU, UAE and Israel. As in Iraq,  while the Yemeni people are under attack from super-powers, they are simultaneously being collectively punished by the illegal sanctions imposed by a corrupt United Nations body.

Sanctions imposed by resolution 2216, against 5 named individuals, on the pretext of legitimizing an illegitimate fugitive ex-president, Saudi Arabia and Washington’s hand-picked puppet leader, Mansour Hadi, who demanded that neighbouring Saudi Arabia bomb his own people – even after Hadi had resigned twice from an already over-extended presidential term, before fleeing to his alma mater in Riyadh.

UN sanctions imposed upon 5 named individuals yet being exploited by the US/UK/EU backed Saudi coalition to collectively starve and punish 27 million Yemeni people. 

This fact has been consistently omitted and waxed over by western political appeasers and ethically challenged mainstream media apologists – and their ignorant and conceded omission is one of the primary reasons why this conflict has been allowed to go from bad to worse.

To compare Saudi Arabia’s belligerent actions in Yemen to Nazi Germany’s undeclared wars of aggression prior to WWII is no exaggeration. In fact, one could make the argument that this Saudi-US joint venture is much worse, and a far more dangerous precedent. Likewise, the failure of a corrupt UN (which effectively sold Saudi Arabia its seat on at the head of the UN Human Rights Council ), led by an impotent Secretary General in Ban-ki Moon, to censure Saudi Arabia for its flagrant violation of international law, the Nuremberg Principles and the entire Geneva Convention content and implied framework – leaves the UN in the exact same position as the League of Nations in 1938.

This is most certainly the case on paper, and with each passing moment we are nudging ever closer to geopolitical déjà vu.

The Anguish

This is one of the most egregious war crimes we’ve seen so far in Yemen, and considering what Saudi Arabia has already done to date, this is off the scale. On the 9th October 2016, the Saudi ‘coalition’ targeted one of the biggest public halls in Yemen’s capital Sanaa.

Officials said two air strikes hit the grand hall of ceremonies, where a post funeral gathering was held to receive condolences for the late Ali bin Ali al-Ruwaishan, the father of Interior Minister, Jalal al-Ruwaishan.

A total of 4 missiles were launched into crowds of civilians. The first strike, two missiles tore into the hall and surrounding areas  leaving dozens dead and dying. Then, as funeral-goers clambered over the smouldering rubble to rescue the injured, Saudi coalition planes returned for the double tap air-strike, targeting the civilian rescuers.

Yesterday, the under secretary of the Public Health Ministry in Yemen told journalist and Middle East commentator, Marwa Osman, the death toll had risen to 458 and hundreds more injured.  In an interview with RT, Osman went on to describe, 213 bodies were reported as charred, burned beyond recognition, 67 bodies were completely dismembered and 187 bodies torn apart by shrapnel.  The brutality of this attack is evident from the horrific photos that appeared on social media very quickly after the event, as Yemenis were reeling from the scale of the massacre.

For further background on Saudi ‘s war of aggression please read 21WIRE article: UN Whitewashing Saudi Coalition War Crimes and International Human Rights Violations

Yemen civil defence and army recovering bodies from the Saudi coalition bombed ceremony hall in Sanaa (Photo: Yemen the Forgotten War)

The hundreds more injured have been described as “bleeding to death in the streets“.  The following report came in from Sanaa hours after the attack:

“Saudi-American airstrikes targeted the biggest hall in Sanaa. The hall was hit by 4 missiles, 2 air-strikes. When rescuers went to the aid of the dying and injured Saudi jets attacked for the second time in their double tap operation. It’s impossible to count the deaths. Officially they are saying less than 500 but many more are dying because they cant be treated due to the absence of medical supplies and hospital facilities. This is entirely due to the UN sanctions and effective land, air and sea blockades. The hall is 2km from our home and 150m from my university but luckily, today I was not there.

This video captures the depth of anguish and horror felt by the relatives searching in vain for their children, parents, friends or relatives.

WARNING: this video is not graphic but it is extremely distressing. Watch:

According to Hassan Al Haifi, writer, academic and political commentator, living in Sanaa, the Saudi attack was deliberate:

“The mourners were paying tribute to General Jalal Al-Rouishan, Min of Int, who hails from a leading family of Khowlan Al-Tayyal Tribe, a leading and powerful Yemeni tribe.”

Al Haifi commented that this was a cynical and brutal attack by the Saudi coalition, intending to kill as many Ansarullah and Ali Abdullah Saleh officials and supporters as possible. A number of Saleh’s closest friends and allies were killed by the strikes along with a smaller number of Ansarullah members. Al Haifi, himself should have been at the ceremony but had been delayed and fortunately was not there when the Saudi jets launched their missiles into the throngs of mourners.

The Bloodshed

Saudi air-strike on Sanaa (Photo supplied to 21st Century Wire from Yemen)

The US State Department immediately swung into damage limitation mode and cranked up their hypocrisy to protect their Saudi coalition military industrial complex clients. John Kirby even deployed the “self-defence” terminology usually reserved for their other regional, arms guzzling ally with close links to Al Qaeda, Israel.

The bloodshed and suffering of the Yemeni people was reduced to an obscene game of semantics by a cold and calculating US State Department, as their multi billion dollar arms industry registered obscene trading levels with the Saudi coalition in 2015. In the first 21 months of Saudi-US illegal war on Yemen, US arms sales worth $33 Billion were closed Saudi and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) entities according to Defense News. In total, America’s Nobel Peace Chief Barack Hussein Obama has offered to sell $115 billion in weapons to Saudi Arabia since taking office in 2009 – more than any previous US administration, according to a recent report.

Not to be left out of the party, Britain has also sold more than £3.7 billion in arms to Saudi Arabia since Saudi’s illegal war of aggression began.

In truth, many of these estimates are conservative and do not include many more hundreds of millions in ancillary costs, staffing, support contracting and engineering.

Forgotten Heroes

Even though they’ve been completely redacted by the western media, and also by the myriad of Gulf monarchy media outlets, the real heroes of this conflict are the Yemeni people.

In their reductionist way of thinking and categorizing the world outside of their shores, Americans refer to Middle East populations in sectarian terms – because this is they way they would like to see the world, but it couldn’t be any further from reality. To Americans, the Yemeni war is all because of “Iranian-backed Shia Houthi Rebels.” The first US Congressman ever to say that in public probably read it directly off an AIPAC policy briefing sheet. That’s the sad reality still in Washington – information-poor (and lobby cash-rich) elected representatives are only able to see the world through the Israeli lens.

The reality is much more complex than just “the Houthis.” A genuine Arab Spring has taken place in Yemen and the US and Saudi response was simply to try and crush the people. But the people have resisted fiercely, and together. Unlike other neo-colonial ventures like Iraq and Afghanistan – the people of Yemen have united to a large degree and are determined to realize their own vision of self government. This is something that has been written off by everyone in the US establishment – from the President all the way down the political food chain.

Damning Indictment

The UK/US built, House of Saud, is waging a genocidal war of aggression that has already destroyed entire swathes of Yemeni cultural heritage and decimated entire communities, particularly in the northern, traditionally Ansarullah (Houthi) held areas such as Saada and Hajjah. This was by design. By now, we can see clearly how this was yet another ethnic cleansingprogramme being endorsed, fuelled and defended by the United States and her allies in the UK, EU, Israel, and of course the neighbouring Gulf States, the majority of whom participated in this dirty war. Oman, a lone, moderate, and independent thinking gulf state, has remained neutral, providing a degree of support to the Yemeni people.

This is yet another war being fought over resources, based upon illegitimate pretexts and murderous hegemony, whose primary victims are the innocent people of Yemen, and above all the children of Yemen whose sunken eyes, distended, starving bellies and bird-like limbs are a stark reminder of the cruelty of the corporatist-imperialist elite branding their road map on the lives of peoples who, in their twisted optic, are nothing more than insignificant obstacles, collateral damage in the ascent to unipolar supremacy.

The height of US hypocrisy was on full display during a US State Department press briefing where the already discredited US spokesman John Kirby shameless danced around a mass-murder by Saudi Arabia – whose airstrikes are supported logistically by the United States. This is the definition of criminality unchecked. Watch:

In Hama province, the Syrian army’s Tiger Forces and its allies have been continuing operations against the joint terrorist forces. Intense clashes are ongoing at the Tell Buzam front. Russian and Syrian warplanes are pounding terrorist units near Ma’an, Souran and Tal Al-Sawwan as a pretext for further offensives by the government forces.

The High Command of the Syrian Arab Army and militant groups started negotiations on allowing the militant groups’ members a free passage from the eastern Aleppo pocket. In case of success, the army will set control of Bustan Al-Qasir Neighborhood. Nonetheless, Jabhat al-Nusra and Nour Eddine Al-Zinki, that are main striking forces of the Jaish al-Fatah operation room in Aleppo, refuse to negotiate with the government.

Over 600 militants have handed over their heavy weapons and military equipment to the Syrian army in Damascus countryside. About 200 militants and their families will be evacuated from al-Hamah and Qudsiyah while others will use an opportunity to get a pardon from the government. Then, the government forces will set full control of al-Hamah and Qudsiyah.

The US and Saudi Arabia have agreed to grant free passage to over 9,000 of Islamic State terrorists before the Iraqi city of Mosul is stormed. The jihadists will be redeployed to fight against the government in Syria, the media reported, citing various military and diplomatic sources. This will allow them to carry out operations against the government-controlled cities of Deir Ezzor and Palmyra. Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Directorate will be the mediator and guarantor of the agreement.

US President Barack Obama has allegedly sanctioned an operation to liberate Mosul, due to take place in October. Redeployment of 9,000 ISIS fighters from Mosul will allow Washington the widely-needed PR success in fight against terrorism in Iraq to balance the de-facto support of terrorist factions, including Al-Qaeda linked Jabhat Al-Nusra, in Syria.

Meanwhile, the first photos, which allegedly depict the Russian heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser “Admiral Kuznetsov” on the way to Syria’s shores, have appeared in social media outlets. Initial reports suggested that the warship is set to depart to the Syrian coast to take part in the ongoing anti-terrorist operation in the period from October 15 to October 20.

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Colombians voting in a plebiscite October 2 astonishingly rejected a peace agreement, already signed, between FARC guerrillas and the Colombian government. Álvaro Uribe headed the campaign for a No vote. He is Juan Manuel Santos’ predecessor as president and consistently has opposed negotiations with the FARC. He and Santos met October 5 to discuss “adjustments and corrections to be introduced into the texts of the Havana agreement.” They were forming a “new national front,” he said.

Afterwards Uribe outlined for reporters the proposed changes he had dictated to Santos, among them prohibitions against future FARC crimes and “judicial and economic solutions” for “eliminating drug trafficking.” These should be applied “immediately lest the brazen guerrillas engage in crimes against humanity.”

Uribe rejects the “Special Jurisdiction for Peace,” contained within the peace agreement, as a means for judging and punishing war criminals. He objects to “total impunity” for FARC leaders as conveyed in the agreement. “[P]olitical participation by persons responsible for crimes” is off limits. Members of the armed forces deserve judicial immunity.

Subsequently the No campaign added other demands: arms must be handed over quickly, guerrillas must clear minefields, and they must provide “real reparations” to victims. The FARC would use money gained through “illicit activities” to pay for the last two.

Government representatives met later with leaders on Uribe’s side to formulate changes in the agreement. They will be passed on to peace negotiators reconvened in Havana. The two factions would be forming “a political pact to save the agreement with the FARC.”

Uribe described President Santos as “willing” to make adjustments. “A cordial atmosphere and language of respect” marked the first meeting involving both sides. It looked like the Santos government was bowing to superior force. He himself seemed to be making amends.

Santos indicated the current ceasefire would end on October 31. FARC leaders announced their troops would be moving to secure areas “to avoid provocations.” FARC leader Timoleón Jiménez tweeted that “the country is passing through a “limbo of dangerous uncertainty.” He and head FARC negotiator Iván Márquez called for “defending peace in the streets.”

Tens of thousands of Colombians – “social organizations, students, workers, and regular people” – did march October 5 in many cities. In Bogota “rivers of people” blocked the streets, mostly young people, all silent. Many carried signs saying “no more war.”

The Santos presidency is weak as it defends the peace agreement. Only 25 percent of Colombians surveyed in March, 2016 liked his presidency. Unemployment and inflation are rising. Santos ran for re-election in 2014 on the issue of protecting the peace process. He would have lost but for leftist backing.

The government, not peace negotiators, decided upon a plebiscite. Strategists may have calculated that approval there would protect implementation of an agreement against Uribe – inspired counterattacks. Or maybe they thought use of a plebiscite for endorsing the agreement would preclude doing so through a constituent assembly, the FARC’s preference.

Actually, a plebiscite wasn’t required to validate the peace agreement, according to one legal opinion. The Colombian plebiscite apparently is the world’s only example – out of 56 – of a negotiated settlement of an armed conflict being put to a popular vote.

The face –off between Santos and Uribe reflects longstanding divisions within Colombia’s elite. Throughout the nation’s post – independence history, there’s been wrangling, even war, between a modernist clique of entrepreneurs, intellectuals, and professionals and a wealthy, often religiously-oriented, landowning class. Colombia’s conservative old guard tried to block Santos’ peace initiative from its start.

Today financiers and commercial interests – often with international ties – are confronting ranchers and drug – trade intermediaries, custodians of land with agricultural, extractive, or energy potential. Agreeing with the former that war and massacres frighten investors, President Santos, with U. S. backing, moved to end armed conflict. Following the plebiscite, 380 industrialists, appealing to the “national interest,” called for a new agreement “with full national support.”

The side led by Alvaro Uribe – his landowning family is allied to paramilitaries – is having its day now. Their machinations will weaken any new peace agreement. That’s unfortunate, because the rejected accord promised an opening for peaceful political agitation against social wrongs.

There are many; 2.300 persons or groups own 53.5 percent of the country’s useful land and 2,681 Colombians possess 58.6 percent of money deposited in bank accounts.   Colombia’s income disparity is the widest in the Western Hemisphere.

Those in resistance face persecution, and of the kind that has created 9500 political prisoners in Colombia today. And violent retribution looms, as when thousands of Patriotic Union activists were murdered beginning in the mid-1980s, among them demobilized guerrillas. Paramilitary murders and intimidation are on the rise now.

Class conflict pervades Colombian society. Yet the ruling class itself is divided; hence a macabre scrambling following rejection of the agreement. The people’s movement has had to choose, and so the more relaxed Santos branch of the oligarchy gained its backing in regard to peace.

Colombian academician and author Manuel Humberto Restrepo Domínguez thinks the No vote was “A massive act of sabotage.” He explains: “In the plebiscite there are signs of one more trap set by elites to reinsure power they already possess and to correct the fancies of a president departed from the right wing’s innermost heart. He called upon his political capital to make himself independent, thinking that his upper-class status might allow that, although he knew he was on a rocky road.

And,

“The elites have no shame, no regret. To the contrary, they regard weakness and longing to be occasions for attacking. They clearly are not disposed to allow spaces being opened up for real democracy. Nor do they allow others to contend for power. They are even less likely to abandon the only serious and consistent politics that unites and protects them, which is war … With their No, they have notified the national country … that they are disposed not to cede a single millimeter of what they have attained and defended with war.”

W.T. Whitney Jr. is a retired pediatrician and political journalist living in Maine.

As the US officially enters the Yemen military campaign, the UK appears ready and willing to precipiate a catalytic event from which there is no going back. With relations between Russia and the West at post-Cold War lows and deteriorating fast, Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots have been given the go-ahead to shoot down Russian military jets when flying missions over Syria and Iraq, if they are endangered by them. The development comes with warnings that the UK and Russia are now “one step closer” to being at war, according to the Sunday Times.

While the RAF’s Tornado pilots have been instructed to avoid contact with Russian aircraft while engaged in missions for Operation Shader, the codename for the RAF’s anti-Isis work in Iraq and Syria, their aircraft have been armed with air-to-air missiles and the pilots have been given the green light to defend themselves if they are threatened by Russian pilots.

“The first thing a British pilot will do is to try to avoid a situation where an air-to-air attack is likely to occur — you avoid an area if there is Russian activity,” an unidentified source from the UK’s Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ) told the Sunday Times. “But if a pilot is fired on or believes he is about to be fired on, he can defend himself. We now have a situation where a single pilot, irrespective of nationality, can have a strategic impact on future events.”

Where things get tricky is the qualifier “if he believes he is about to be fired on” – since this makes open engagement a function of threat evaluation in real time during stressed conditions, the likelihood of an escalation that could result in two warplanes shooting at each other, just jumped significantly.

The RAF Tornados aircraft will be armed with heat-seeking Advanced Short Range Air-to-Air Missiles (Asraams, also called AIM-132 missiles), the IBT adds. These weapons, which cost £200,000 each, have a longer range than other air-to-air missiles, allowing RAF pilots to shoot down enemy aircraft without being targeted themselves.

Providing cover to the largely underreported, if substantial escalation, according to the Sunday Times report an appraisal carried out by UK defence officials said: “It took six days for Russia to strike any Isis targets at all. Their air strikes have included moderate opposition groups who have been fighting to defend their areas from Isis. Among the targets hit were three field hospitals.” In the past 24 hours Russia’s Defence Ministry said that it has continued its air strikes on IS positions in Hama, Idlib, Latakia and Raqqa. It reported that the attacks resulted in the “complete destruction” of “53 fortified areas and strong points with armament and military hardware”, seven ammunition depots, four field camps of “terrorists”, one command centre, and artillery and mortar batteries.

Russia has countered that US airstrikes have failed to make much of an impact on ISIS targets, and as reported last month, a “mistaken” strike by the US coalition forces killed over 60 Syrian soldiers in a move Russia accused of being a provocation to war.

The Sunday Times’ report quoted a defence source as saying: “Up till now RAF Tornados have been equipped with 500lb satellite-guided bombs — there has been no or little air-to-air threat. But in the last week the situation has changed. We need to respond accordingly.”

But another source of the original story summarized the severity of the situation best when he said that “we need to protect our pilots but at the same time we’re taking a step closer to war. It will only take one plane to be shot down in an air-to-air battle and the whole landscape will change.”

The British majority in favour of leaving the EU (Brexit) was surprising, even shocking, to many. The discussion runs high on both the result and the causes. The confusion seems to be extraordinarily high on the left, in Britain as in the rest of Europe.

In reality, the result of the referendum reflects an EU in existential crisis, while the discussion reflects a Left in deep political and ideological crisis.

Seen from a left position, the British campaign was of course not without problems. The Brexit campaign was dominated by forces on the political right, and anti-immigration, xenophobia and racism were at the centre, although it was not as dominant as many media reported. National self-determination was reported as the main reason for the majority’s support of Brexit. And there was also a left organized Brexit movement, even though it was not very strong.

What is clear, is that large sections of the British working-class voted for Brexit. Xenophobia was an important part of this picture, no doubt. First and foremost, however, it must be seen as a reaction to a policy that systematically and with few exceptions has undermined wages and working conditions, trade union and social rights for workers. This is the result both of EU policies and of the aggressive neoliberal policies that have been conducted by British governments. Workers’ massive support for Brexit was therefore more than anything a protest against ‘the Establishment’. Those who had lost most as a result of the neoliberal policies, gave the elite a slap in the face.

Why is the EU Losing Popular Support?

Why is it then, that the EU is losing popular support so massively, in country after country? To understand that, we must look closely at the EU’s role and character. In the first phase (under the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community (EEC)), member countries were characterized by the reconstruction after WWII, the post-war class compromise, Keynesian economic policies (i.e. traditional social democratic regulatory policy) and stable economic growth. Already in the Treaty of Rome (1957), however, it was established that market freedoms should be the basis for the formation of the EEC.

Then, in the 1970s, global capitalism ran into a deep crisis, and the leading economic and political forces started to withdraw from the class compromise, abolished market and capital regulation, turned to an ever more aggressive neoliberalism – including privatization, austerity policies, rising unemployment and a massive redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top in society. The lack of democratic institutions and traditions in the EU made it possible to introduce more extreme neoliberal politics here than in many of the member states, with stronger democratic traditions. Thus, the EU now has come to a stage that not only socialism, but also Keynesianism, are banned by law. Neoliberalism is constitutionalized and institutionalized as the EU economic model.

After the financial crisis of 2008, the reactionary austerity policies of the EU were reinforced, while it increasingly took on authoritarian forms, institutionalized through new agreements and pacts. The powerful interventions against the most crisis-hit countries (Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Italy) illustrates this in the most extreme way. To abolish the welfare states and defeat the trade union movement have now obviously become embedded parts of EU institutions and policies. In addition, the EU has virtually made it impossible to reverse this project, by requiring consensus between all member states to change existing treaties.

EU’s institutionalized neoliberalism, therefore, can only be brought down through massive mobilizations and confrontations.

It is this EU a majority of Britons have decided to leave. A project that is impossible to reform from within using ordinary democratic methods. And it is this EU the left in Europe fails to develop a common policy on. For too long both the trade union and the political arm of the labour movement have harboured illusions about the EU as ‘Social Europe’. It applies not only to Social Democracy, which has helped to build today’s increasingly authoritarian, neoliberal EU, but also the majority of parties to the left of Social Democracy – as well as the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), as one of the most EU-devoted organizations in the European labour movement.

The Real Existing EU

As part of this political confusion, a dangerous myth is currently being created in parts of the left, that an exit from the EU (or the Euro) only will strengthen nationalism and the right. Quite the opposite, such exits have to be among the important and necessary tools if we really want to weaken the EU as an authoritarian, neoliberal stronghold. It is not exit movements which have created and strengthened far right political parties in country after country in Europe. It is not exit movements which have resulted in the far right being in government in Hungary and Poland (and almost in Austria). It is the policies of the real existing EU which today divide the people of Europe. It is the same policies which feed the far right. Thus, discontent with EU policies and the feeling of powerlessness is spreading among people in Europe – for good reasons.

In this situation, left political forces, with their illusions, have put themselves in a situation where they are able neither to organize the discontented to political resistance, nor to give the discontent a political expression. Thus, the far right is given monopoly on mobilizing against the EU. This is a far right which of course does not direct its resistance against the forces behind the neoliberal attacks of the EU, but rather against other groups of people (immigrants, Muslims, people of different colour etc.). When people on the left then vote to remain in the EU, “rather than being lumped with racists and the extreme right,” they continue to give the far right monopoly in conducting resistance against the reactionary EU.

Of course, an exit from the EU (or the Euro) cannot be the primary demand for a left movement. Left forces will have to be developed through interest-based struggles. The question of exit, however, will be actualised immediately since EU institutions and treaties in practise are barriers against a realisation of our demands (very well illustrated by the fact that the Syriza government in Greece was forced to choose between fighting austerity and remaining in the Eurozone – and ended up administrating the austerity policies itself, as a “colonial administration” as J. K. Galbraith names it). To give up the struggle for our main interest-based demands in order to stay within the EU institutions should clearly be a no-go zone.

The structure and functioning of the EU create a number of barriers against simultaneous mobilization of resistance across Europe. Thus, the fight for a democratic and social(ist) Europe has to adopt a flexible strategy in which both civil disobedience and the possibility for single countries or groups of countries to exit – both from the euro and the EU – have to be actual tools. The development of an internationalist, class-oriented policy of exit is therefore both possible and necessary. It is about framing and narrative. The policies and institutions of the real existing EU today stand in the way of a united Europe, stand in the way of a democratization of Europe.

It is therefore important that the current authoritarian and neoliberal EU does not gain more power and influence in Europe. From a left-wing perspective therefore, it was encouraging that the British went Brexit, despite the fact that right wing xenophobia got such a big place. Of course, the latter phenomenon provides the left with an even bigger challenge. It is now imperative that left forces take the opportunity Brexit has given them to go on the offensive, confront capitalist interests, strengthen democracy and develop real popular unity across borders in Europe. The real existing EU constitutes a barrier to such a united Europe today. •

Asbjørn Wahl is Director of the broad Campaign for the Welfare State in Norway and Adviser to the Norwegian Union of Municipal and General Employees. He is also Chair of the ITF Working Group on Climate Change.

Anticipating an outcome of the US presidential election as a remix of the 1972 Nixon landslide, Hillary has also coined, George “Dubya” Bush-style, a remixed axis of evil: Russia, Iran and “the Assad regime”.

Clinton Claims Russian Aggression Keeps War in Syria Going On That’s not even counting China, which, via “aggression” in the South China Sea, will also feature as a certified foe for the Founding Mother of the pivot to Asia.

And if all that was not worrying enough, Turkey now seems on the path to join the axis.

President Putin and President Erdogan met in Istanbul. Moscow positioned itself as ready to develop large-scale military-technical cooperation with Ankara.

That includes, of course, the $20 billion, Rosatom-built, four-reactor Akkuyu nuclear power plant. And the drive to “speed up the work” on Turkish Stream – which will de facto strengthen even more Russia’s position in the European gas market, bypassing Ukraine for good, while sealing Ankara’s position as a key East-West energy crossroads.

In addition, both Moscow and Ankara back UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura’s position that “moderate rebels” (the Beltway’s terminology) holding eastern Aleppo hostage must be eradicated.

The geopolitical game-changer is self-evident. As much as Erdogan may be a whirling political dervish, impossible to fathom and trust, while Putin is a master of the strategic long game, Moscow’s and Ankara’s interests tend to converge in the New Great Game; and that spells out closer integration in the dawn of the Eurasian Century.

Quite a cup of hemlock for Hillary Clinton, who has already equated Putin with Hitler.

Regime change or hot war?

In the appalling spectacle that turned out to be round two of the interminable Trump/Clinton cage match, Donald Trump once again made a rational point – expressing his wish for a normalized working relationship with Russia. Yet that is absolute anathema for the War Party, as in the neocon/neoliberalcon nebulae in the Beltway-Wall Street axis.

The Clinton (Cash) Machine-controlled Democrats once again condemned Trump as a tool of Putin while bewildered Republicans condemned Trump because he goes against “mainstream Republican thinking”.

Here’s what Trump said; “I don’t like Assad at all, but Assad is killing ISIS.

Russia is killing ISIS and Iran is killing ISIS.”Trump’s outlook on Southwest Asia relies on only one vector; destroy ISIS/ISIL/Daesh. That’s what adviser and former Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) director, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, has been infiltrating into Trump’s notoriously short attention span.

Flynn may have admitted on the record that ISIS/ISIL/Daesh’s progress was a “willful” decision taken by the Obama administration. Yet in his disjointed book Field of Fight, Flynn insists that, “the Russians haven’t been very effective at fighting jihadis on their own territory”, are “in cahoots with the Iranians”, and “the great bulk of their efforts are aimed at the opponents of the Assad regime.”

This is a neocon mantra; unsurprisingly, the co-author of Flynn’s book is neocon Michael Ledeen.

From dodgy American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) armchair “experts” to former counselors at the State Department, they all subscribe to the laughable view that the remixed axis of evil – now fully adopted by Hillary – is useless against jihadis; the good guys doing the difficult work are “the US-led coalition”. And damn those who dare criticizing the “relative moderates” backed by the CIA.

What Trump said is anathema not only for establishment Republicans who despise Obama for not fighting against the Hillary-adopted remixed axis of evil. The real mortal sin is that it “disregards” core US foreign policy bipartisan assumptions held to be as sacred as the Bible.

Thus the success of the neocon Ash Carter-led Pentagon in bombing the Kerry-Lavrov ceasefire deal which would imply coordinated airstrikes against both ISIS/ISIL/Daesh and the Front for the Conquest of Syria, formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, a.k.a. al-Qaeda in Syria.

Russian military air group at Khmeimim airbase in Syria © Sputnik/ Dmitriy Vinogradov Pentagon ‘Silent’ Coup Undermines US-Russia Engagement on Syria – Ex-White House Advisor Neocons and mainstream Republicans blame lame duck Team Obama for the “unholy reliance” on Russia and Iran, while neoliberalcons blame Russia outright. And high in the altar of righteousness, hysteria rules, with the neocon president of the NED calling for the US government to “summon the will” to pull a Putin regime change.

Ready to go nuclear?

Hillary Clinton continues to insist the US is not at war with Islam. The US is de facto at war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan’s tribal areas; involved in covert war in Iran; and has totally destroyed Libya. It’s not hard to do the math.

In parallel, the deafening talk about Washington now advancing a Plan C in Syria is nonsense. There has never been a Plan C; only Plan A, which was to draw Russia into another Afghanistan. It did not work with the controlled demolition of Ukraine. And it will not work in Syria, as Moscow is willing to supply plenty of air and missile power but no boots on the ground of any consequence. That’s a matter for the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), Iran and its Shi’ite militias, and Hezbollah.

Ash Carter has threatened Russia with “consequences”. After blowing up the ceasefire, the Pentagon – supported by the Joint Chiefs of Staff — now is peddling “potential strikes” on Syria’s air force to “punish the regime” for what the Pentagon actually did; blow up the ceasefire. One can’t make this stuff up.

Major-General Igor Konashenkov, Russia’s Defense Ministry spokesman, sent a swift message to “our colleagues in Washington”; think twice if you believe you can get away with launching a “shadow” hot war against Russia. Russia will target any stealth/unidentified aircraft attacking Syrian government targets – and they will be shot down.

The only serious question then is whether an out of control Pentagon will force the Russian Air Force – false flag and otherwise — to knock out US Air Force fighter jets, and whether Moscow has the fire power to take out each and every one of them.

So in this three-month window representing the “death throes” of the Obama era, before the likely enthronization of the Queen of War, the question is whether the Pentagon will risk launching WWIII because “Aleppo is falling”.

Afterwards, things are bound to get even more lethal. The US government is holding open a first-strike nuclear capacity against Russia. Hillary firmly supports it, as Trump made clear he “would not do first-strike”.

The prospect of having axis of evil practitioner Hillary Clinton with her fingers on the nuclear button must be seen as the most life-and-death issue in this whole circus.

Global Research Editor’s Note 

The following article published in June 2015 is of relevance to the ongoing situation in Syria. Already in mid-2015, former National Security adviser had proposed the possibility of direct military action (i.e. threats) against Russia, while at the same calling for dialogue and cooperation in regards to the campaign against ISIS,  a somewhat contradictory stance. (M.Ch. GR Editor)

*       *      * 

In a newly published op-ed for the Financial Times, [June 2015] former official in the Johnson and Carter Administrations Zbigniew Brzezinski urged that US to use “strategic boldness” in confronting Russia, potentially militarily, over their involvement in Syria.

Brzezinski presented Russian airstrikes against Syrian rebel factions as at best a display of “Russian military incompetence” and at worst a “dangerous desire to highlight American political impotence,” saying America’s credibility is at stake from allowing Russia to strike the rebels the US previously armed, terming them “American assets.”

He called for the US to openly demand Russia unconditionally halt all such moves, saying Russian warplanes in Syria are “vulnerable, isolated geographically from their homeland” and could be “disarmed” by force if the Russians don’t comply with US demands.

Perhaps most bizarrely, Brzezinski closes with talk of calling for Russia to coordinate with the US in the war against ISIS, even though Russia has been openly offering this for weeks over US objections. He further suggests coaxing China into joining the war against ISIS as well, saying China would likely be interested in “increasing its own regional influence.”

Ultimately, the long-time policy adviser’s position seems, like so many of his recent missives, to center around deliberately antagonizing Russia. He advocates taking enormous risks of a large military confrontation with Russia, and his end-game goal is something Russia is already offering at any rate, and which the Obama Administration keeps spurning.