Global Research

This article was first published by Who What Why

The richest 20 Americans now own as much wealth as the country’s poorest 152 million people combined.

That is just one of the findings of noted inequality scholar and author Chuck Collins’s most recent report, “Billionaire Bonanza, The Forbes 400 and the Rest of Us.”

In a wide-ranging interview, which will be available in its entirety as a podcast tomorrow, Collins likened the current situation to the “Gilded Age,” the time just before the turn of the 20th century, when there was a similar accumulation of wealth at the top and political power was concentrated in the hands of a few rich men.

And Americans are slowly realizing that the extreme accumulation of wealth at the very top is hurting their own prospects.  But grassroots efforts to redress economic inequality must contend with the political power that comes with great wealth.

Wages have now been stagnant for three decades and the median wealth of Americans has actually declined since 1990. At the same time, the rich have gotten richer. A lot richer.

This is an unstable situation. With pressure building for change but potent forces stacked against it, there are only three options, Collins told WhoWhatWhy: “Realignment, revolution or repression.”

Rules Rigged, and the Rich Get Richer

Back in the Gilded Age, the country managed to convert the pressure that was building from the bottom up into meaningful changes that resulted in a realignment of political power and the rise of the middle class. Those gains, however, are now being reversed. In fact, a new report found that, for the first time in decades, the middle class no longerconstitutes the economic majority in the United States.

The shift toward increasing inequality began in the 1970s. At that time, Collins says (and research shows), “we stopped being an economy in which most people grew together” and instead became a “society that is dramatically pulled apart.”

Wages have now been stagnant for three decades and the median wealth of Americans has actually declined since 1990. At the same time, the rich have gotten richer. A lot richer.

Like the Great Depression in the early 1930s, the economic crisis of 2008 has been a wake-up call for the country. Polls historically have shown that people are indifferent to great wealth as long as they feel the rules are fair and that they at least have the option of moving up the ladder. But for many, the latest crash is changing that perception.

“In the economic meltdown of 2008, people realized the rules are rigged, that the big financial industry people … are tipping the scale in their favor,” Collins said. This has led to a perception that upward mobility in America is stalled — a perception supported by statistical data.

Collins believes that this sentiment has helped boost the candidacies of presidential hopefuls as diverse as Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.

The collapsing middle class, including groups like recent college students whose prospects are blighted by crushing debt burdens, represents an “angry and mobilized constituency.” These are the people whose dissatisfactions are articulated by populists like Trump.

At the other end of the spectrum, the success of self-avowed “democratic socialist” Sanders shows how fluid the situation is. Collins pointed out that the Vermont senator has been saying the same things for 30 years — but only now are they resonating with a larger proportion of the electorate.

Collins pointed out that Sanders is the only major candidate who does not need a billionaire bankrolling his primary campaign to do well in the polls.

One bloc of voters who can cause a tectonic shift in the near future are millennials, many of whom are resentful of the obstacles they face in pursuing the American dream while paying off their college loans. With 40 million households shouldering a burden of $1.2 trillion in college debt, Collins believes that if this segment of the population were to organize, they could force significant change.

“Otherwise, the machinery of inequality will just keep chugging along as it currently is and it will get more concentrated,” Collins said. In any case, all of the ingredients are there for a major political realignment.

“We’re headed for a showdown.”

The solution to the crisis in Syria could be democracy – letting the people of Syria decide who they want as their leaders – but it is the Obama administration and its regional Sunni “allies,” including U.S.-armed militants and jihadists, that don’t want to risk a democratic solution because it might not achieve the long-held goal of “regime change.”

Some Syrian opposition forces, which were brought together under the auspices of the Saudi monarchy in Riyadh this past week, didn’t even want the word “democracy” included in their joint statement. The New York Times reported on Friday, “Islamist delegates objected to using the word ‘democracy’ in the final statement, so the term ‘democratic mechanism’ was used instead, according to a member of one such group who attended the meeting.”

Even that was too much for Ahrar al-Sham, one of the principal jihadist groups fighting side-by-side with Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front, the two key elements inside the Saudi-created Army of Conquest, which uses sophisticated U.S.-supplied TOW missiles to kill Syrian government troops.

Ahrar al-Sham announced its withdrawal from the Riyadh conference because the meeting didn’t “confirm the Muslim identity of our people.” Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has sought to maintain a secular government that protects the rights of Christians, Alawites, Shiites and other religious minorities, but Sunni militants have been fighting to overthrow him since 2011.

Despite Ahrar al-Sham’s rejection of the Saudi-organized conference, all the opposition participants, including one from Ahrar al-Sham who apparently wasn’t aware of his group’s announcement, signed the agreement, the Times reported.

“All parties signed a final statement that called for maintaining the unity of Syria and building a civil, representative government that would take charge after a transitional period, at the start of which Mr. Assad and his associates would step down,” wrote Times’ correspondent Ben Hubbard.

But the prospects of Assad and his government just agreeing to cede power to the opposition remains highly unlikely. An obvious alternative – favored by Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin – is to achieve a ceasefire and then have internationally supervised elections in which the Syrian people could choose their own leaders.

Although President Barack Obama insists Assad is hated by most Syrians – and if that’s true, he would presumably lose any fair election – the U.S. position is to bar Assad from the ballot, thus ensuring “regime change” in Syria, a long-held goal of Official Washington’s neoconservatives.

In other words, to fulfill the neocons’ dream of Syrian “regime change,” the Obama administration is continuing the bloody Syrian conflict which has killed a quarter million people, has created an opening for Islamic State and Al Qaeda terrorists, and has driven millions of refugees into and through nearby countries, now destabilizing Europe and feeding xenophobia in the United States.

For his part, Assad called participants in the Saudi conference “terrorists” and rejected the idea of negotiating with them. “They want the Syrian government to negotiate with the terrorists, something I don’t think anyone would accept in any country,” Assad told Spanish journalists, as he repeated his position that many of the terrorists were backed by foreign governments and that he would only “deal with the real, patriotic national opposition.”

Kinks in the Process

Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters on Friday that he was in contact with senior Saudi officials and noted, “there are some questions and obviously a couple of – in our judgment – kinks to be worked out” though expressing confidence that the problems could be resolved.

A key problem appears to be that the Obama administration has so demonized Assad and so bought into the neocon goal of “regime change” that Obama doesn’t feel that he can back down on his “Assad must go!” mantra. Yet, to force Assad out and bar him from running in an election means escalating the war by either further arming the Sunni jihadists or mounting a larger-scale invasion of Syria with the U.S. military confronting Syrian and now Russian forces to establish what is euphemistically called “a safe zone” inside Syria. A related “no-fly zone” would require destroying Syrian air defenses, now supplied by the Russians.

Obama has largely followed the first course of action, allowing Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and other Sunni “allies” to funnel U.S. weapons to jihadists, including Ahrar al-Sham which fights alongside Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front as the two seek to transform Syria into a Islamic fundamentalist state, a goal shared by Al Qaeda’s spinoff (and now rival), the Islamic State.

Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, has termed Obama’s choice of aiding the jihadists a “willful decision,” even in the face of DIA warnings about the likely rise of the Islamic State and other extremists.

In August 2012, DIA described the danger in a classified report, which noted that “The salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [Al Qaeda in Iraq, later ISI or ISIS and then the Islamic State] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.” The report also said that “If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared salafist principality in eastern Syria” and that “ISI could also declare an Islamic State through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria.”

Despite these risks, Obama continued to insist that “Assad must go!” and let his administration whip up a propaganda campaign around claims that Assad’s forces launched a sarin gas attack outside Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013. Though many of the U.S. claims about that attack have since been discredited – and later evidenceimplicated radical jihadists (possibly collaborating with Turkish intelligence) trying to trick the U.S. military into intervening on their side – the Obama administration did not retract or clarify its initial claims.

By demonizing Assad – much like the demonization of Russian President Putin – Obama may feel that he is deploying “soft power” propaganda to put foreign adversaries on the defensive while also solidifying his political support inside hawkish U.S. opinion circles, but false narratives can take on a life of their own and make rational settlements difficult if not impossible.

Now, even though the Syrian crisis has become a tsunami threatening to engulf Europe with a refugee crisis and the United States with anti-Muslim hysteria, Obama can’t accept the most obvious solution: compel all reasonable sides to accept a ceasefire and hold an internationally supervised election in which anyone who wants to lead the country can stand before the voters.

If Obama is right about the widespread hatred of Assad, then there should be nothing to worry about. The Syrian people will dictate “regime change” through the ballot box.

Democracy – supposedly one of the U.S. government’s goals for Middle East countries – can be the answer to the problem. However, since democracy can be an unpredictable process, it might not guarantee “regime change” which apparently makes democracy an unsuitable solution for Syria.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). 

The Global Economic Crossroads

ASEAN’s solid growth in the past few decades has made it an enviable partner for many, and the economic bloc has entered into several high-profile free trade agreements (FTAs) in the past couple of years. As of the end of 2015, it has bilateral FTAs with Australia and New Zealand, China, India, Japan, and South Korea, essentially making it the formal economic crossroads between these leading world economies. Furthermore, it’s currently engaged in free trade negotiations with the EU and the Eurasian Union, which if ultimately sealed, would give ASEAN free trade rights with almost the entirety of the supercontinent with the exception of the Mideast and a small handful of other countries. With the convergence of so many economic interests over ASEAN, it’s only a matter of time before this smattering of bilateral agreements is expanded into a multilateral framework that progressively includes each of the given parties.

Such an arrangement would represent a major victory for Eurasia and the multipolar world because it would tie each of the Great Powers together and make them collectively more interdependent on one another than either of them individually would be with the US. This is obviously a long-term vision and isn’t something that can be actualized in the scope of just a few years, but the path is already being paved the closer that ASEAN comes to inking free trade deals with the EU and the Eurasian Union. The increasingly intertwined FTAs that these respective economic partners reach with one another will inevitably bring them all closer together with time, despite existing political and structural differences between some of them such as the current American-dictated chill in the EU’s relations with the Eurasian Union.

TTIP Tramples Everything

If given the chance to behave freely, the EU would likely intensify bilateral ties with the Eurasian Union as evidenced by Junker’s late-November 2015 outreach to the bloc, but US grand strategy has always been based on keeping the two divided, hence the manufactured Ukrainian Crisis and subsequently planned New Cold War. Should a breakthrough in bilateral relations occur, perhaps due to the structural changes that Balkan Stream and the Balkan Silk Road would generate inside the EU if either of them is successfully completed, then it’s probable that their overlapping economic interests in ASEAN (independently negotiated up until that point) could represent the perfect catalyst for banding together and formalizing a larger and more inclusive economic framework between all actors. The reasoning behind this is because the current American-attributed deterioration of EU-Eurasian Union relations is the only ‘non-natural’ structural impediment preventing all of the supercontinent’s trade blocs from cooperating on the all-inclusive scale suggested above.

From the American strategic standpoint, however, this would represent the ultimate failure of its divide-and-rule policy in Eurasia, and it’s for this institutional reason why the US is so adamant about pursuing the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the EU. In the event that this neo-imperialist proposal ever enters into force, then the US would have the dominant say in deciding whether its junior EU ‘partner’ is allowed to continue its existing free trade negotiations with Japan andIndia. More likely than not, it would indefinitely freeze these already-stalled processes in order to consolidate its economic control over the bloc, and only after it exercises indisputable control over it will Washington allow the talks to proceed. By that point, the goal would be to link TTIP and the TPP (which will be expanded upon shortly, but whose Asian component will be led by Japan) together to make the US the institutionally essential actor between them, and then complete the unipolar-dominated economic envelopment of Eurasia by bringing India into the mix to some capacity.

“Stop Fast Track” rally in Washington D.C., April 2015.

This strategy is contingent on the US using the New Cold War hype that it’s created to scare its partners into agreeing to the TTIP and TPP out of the manufactured perception that they need to contain Russia and China, respectively. In the scenario being describe above, if the US doesn’t succeed in pushing through TTIP and the EU independently aligns itself with either of those major Asian economies (let alone that it begins free trade negotiations with China), then the US could rapidly lose its present preeminence over the EU economy.

In a short time, Brussels might finally come to the conclusion that everyone else in the world has already arrived at and realize that the future of the global economy rests in the East, not the West, and enter into wider and freer trading relations with the rest of its prospective partners. This would of course naturally include Russia and the Eurasian Union, and with the two economies already converging on their own as it would be (remembering that it’s only because of American-attributed political impediments that they aren’t doing so already), it’s foreseeable that they could coordinate their respective FTAs with ASEAN as a final stepping stone before engaging in a similar one amongst themselves.

Multilateral Backup Plans

As positive of a picture as the above section paints, it probably won’t happen for at least the coming decade, if at all, seeing how serious the US is in ‘playing for keeps’ within the New Cold War rivalry. Whether through the institutional workings of the TTIP or outside of it via more unscrupulous measures if the said agreement isn’t passed by that time, the US will do everything in its power to prevent the EU from expanding its independent economic relations with the Eurasian Union, China, and ASEAN. It might potentially be allowed to deepen its ties with Japan and India (per the unipolar grand strategy described previously), but even that is debatable unless the US feels assured enough that it can maintain control over the bloc after those prospective agreements are clinched. It probably wouldn’t have the confidence to do so unless it formally controlled the EU through TTIP, thus making these potential free trade areas unlikely, at least in the short- to medium-term timeframes, barring of course any unexpected geopolitical shifts. For the most part, then, the EU can be safely discounted from any serious discussions about intra-Eurasian free trade zones, but that doesn’t mean that such dreams should be discouraged simply because the bloc realistically can’t take part in them for a while (if at all).

RCEP And FTAAP:

To compensate for the expected non-participation of the EU inside the envisioned multipolar economic frameworks, a few modified proposals have been suggested. Two of the most talked about are the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership(RCEP) and the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP), both of which are actively supported by China. The RCEP is the formalization of a multilateral FTA between ASEAN and each of its already-existing free trade partners (Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea), while the FTAAP takes things a lot further and proposes a grandiose free trade zone among all the countries that constitute the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, thereby including Russia, the US, and a few other Western Hemispheric countries but at the expense of a full free trade deal with ASEAN as a whole (Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia are not APEC members).

Nevertheless, it’s still significant that most of the countries within the bloc would be participants in that framework, highlighting just how important ASEAN economies are for transregional free trade deals nowadays. At the same time, however, the inclusion of the US would greatly erode the multipolar flexibility of the intended grouping and turn it into more of an apolitical economic organization that can’t be used in a relative way to weaken the US’ unipolar standing. It’s probable that Russia and China only support this idea so as to score political points of their own in contrasting it with the US’ exclusionary TPP plans that threaten to undermine both Great Powers’ existing trade connections and future opportunities with the involved states.

Russia’s Vision For GEFTA:

The latest proposal to be brought up for creating a multilateral transregional trading bloc came from Russia and was pronounced during President Putin’s Address to the Federal Assembly on 4 December, 2015. The Russian leader announced his country’s intention to form an economic partnership between the Eurasian Union, ASEAN, and SCO states (including the two ascending members of India and Pakistan), arguing that the new organization would “make up nearly a third of the global economy in terms of purchasing power parity.” This is the most realistic of the three suggestions and the most likely to be implemented in practice. China already has a FTA with Pakistan(the ‘zipper’ of Eurasian integration), and the Eurasian Union is exploring the possibility of sealing similar deals with India and official SCO-prospect Iran. Of note, Russia and China are also engaged in a trilateral partnership with Mongolia that could predictably become a free trade area sometime in the future as well.

Assuming that Moscow will be successful in reaching these (and there’s no reason to doubt that at the moment), then joining the Eurasian Union and the SCO together in an economic partnership would be a natural fit, with ASEAN offering a perfect complementary touch that would economically excite all of the members. Furthermore, India and Pakistan’s inclusion into the discussed framework would likely lead to the rest of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC, and which has its own internal free trade area) joining in as well, which would then push the proposed organization’s ranks to also include Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. Taken together, Russia’s vision amounts to a Grand Eurasian Free Trade Area (GEFTA) that’s supposed to encompass the vast majority of Asia and one day merge with the EU, with the notable exclusions for now obviously being the European economies (both EU and non-EU-member states), the Mideast (except for perhaps Syria and Israel [an odd combination to be sure, but pursued forentirely separate reasons]), the Koreas, and Japan.

The Indian Impediment Opens Up An ASEAN Opportunity

Even assuming a minimum of external (American) interference in trying to offset Russia’s vision, it’s foreseeable that India will present a major challenge for GEFTA’s implementation. India and China are engaged in a very intense security dilemma at the moment that neither side publicly wants to acknowledge, and under such conditions, it’s not likely that either of them is serious about pursuing a FTA with the other. From New Delhi’s perspective, India has no motivation whatsoever to sacrifice what it feels to be its national economic interests by entering into a FTA with China, no matter if it’s in RCEP or GEFTA. Relating to RCEP, India already has FTAs with Japan and South Korea, and it doesn’t believe that including Australia and New Zealand into the proposed multilateral framework would compensate for the economic unbalancing that it thinks it would experience through the tariff-free trade with China that it would have to agree to as part of the deal. With respect to GEFTA, the concerns are very similar. India is currently in a free trade relationship with ASEAN and might eventually enter into one with Iran after the latter proposed such an idea in spring 2015. With progress looking quite positive in reaching a free trade deal with the Eurasian Union one day soon, India doesn’t see any need to jump into GEFTA when it’s already all but assured to receive every benefit that it would be seeking out of the arrangement minus the foreseen complications that would happen if it has to do so with China as well (and to which its leadership presently sees no benefit).

India’s expected absence from GEFTA doesn’t translate into the vision’s failure, but it does raise its dependency on ASEAN’s inclusion in order to be geopolitically broad-based enough to become a defining point in the global economy. By itself, the Eurasian Union and its bilateral free trade arrangements are positive developments in and of themselves, especially if they lead to a prospective Eurasian Union-China FTA that multilaterally incorporates the other deals reached prior to that point (such as with Iran), but multipolarity would be infinitely more enhanced through the addition of ASEAN to this accord. Vietnam is already party to such a deal with the Eurasian Union, and even though it’s a robust component of the bloc’s partnership portfolio, its mutual potential pales in comparison to if both economic groupings had their own inclusive bloc-to-bloc pact. One of the steps in advancing this possibility would be for Russia to make efficient use out of ASEAN’s SEZs in Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia in order to reach individual FTAs with the rest of the organization’s mainland members (including Thailand, whom Medvedev offered the possibility to in spring 2015) so that they can collectively lobby their insular counterparts in this direction.

To be continued…

Andrew Korybko is the American political commentaror currently working for the Sputnik agency, exclusively for ORIENTAL REVIEW. This article is a select chapter from his second book that will focus on the geopolitical application of Hybrid Wars.

The Global Economic Crossroads

ASEAN’s solid growth in the past few decades has made it an enviable partner for many, and the economic bloc has entered into several high-profile free trade agreements (FTAs) in the past couple of years. As of the end of 2015, it has bilateral FTAs with Australia and New Zealand, China, India, Japan, and South Korea, essentially making it the formal economic crossroads between these leading world economies. Furthermore, it’s currently engaged in free trade negotiations with the EU and the Eurasian Union, which if ultimately sealed, would give ASEAN free trade rights with almost the entirety of the supercontinent with the exception of the Mideast and a small handful of other countries. With the convergence of so many economic interests over ASEAN, it’s only a matter of time before this smattering of bilateral agreements is expanded into a multilateral framework that progressively includes each of the given parties.

Such an arrangement would represent a major victory for Eurasia and the multipolar world because it would tie each of the Great Powers together and make them collectively more interdependent on one another than either of them individually would be with the US. This is obviously a long-term vision and isn’t something that can be actualized in the scope of just a few years, but the path is already being paved the closer that ASEAN comes to inking free trade deals with the EU and the Eurasian Union. The increasingly intertwined FTAs that these respective economic partners reach with one another will inevitably bring them all closer together with time, despite existing political and structural differences between some of them such as the current American-dictated chill in the EU’s relations with the Eurasian Union.

TTIP Tramples Everything

If given the chance to behave freely, the EU would likely intensify bilateral ties with the Eurasian Union as evidenced by Junker’s late-November 2015 outreach to the bloc, but US grand strategy has always been based on keeping the two divided, hence the manufactured Ukrainian Crisis and subsequently planned New Cold War. Should a breakthrough in bilateral relations occur, perhaps due to the structural changes that Balkan Stream and the Balkan Silk Road would generate inside the EU if either of them is successfully completed, then it’s probable that their overlapping economic interests in ASEAN (independently negotiated up until that point) could represent the perfect catalyst for banding together and formalizing a larger and more inclusive economic framework between all actors. The reasoning behind this is because the current American-attributed deterioration of EU-Eurasian Union relations is the only ‘non-natural’ structural impediment preventing all of the supercontinent’s trade blocs from cooperating on the all-inclusive scale suggested above.

From the American strategic standpoint, however, this would represent the ultimate failure of its divide-and-rule policy in Eurasia, and it’s for this institutional reason why the US is so adamant about pursuing the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the EU. In the event that this neo-imperialist proposal ever enters into force, then the US would have the dominant say in deciding whether its junior EU ‘partner’ is allowed to continue its existing free trade negotiations with Japan andIndia. More likely than not, it would indefinitely freeze these already-stalled processes in order to consolidate its economic control over the bloc, and only after it exercises indisputable control over it will Washington allow the talks to proceed. By that point, the goal would be to link TTIP and the TPP (which will be expanded upon shortly, but whose Asian component will be led by Japan) together to make the US the institutionally essential actor between them, and then complete the unipolar-dominated economic envelopment of Eurasia by bringing India into the mix to some capacity.

“Stop Fast Track” rally in Washington D.C., April 2015.

This strategy is contingent on the US using the New Cold War hype that it’s created to scare its partners into agreeing to the TTIP and TPP out of the manufactured perception that they need to contain Russia and China, respectively. In the scenario being describe above, if the US doesn’t succeed in pushing through TTIP and the EU independently aligns itself with either of those major Asian economies (let alone that it begins free trade negotiations with China), then the US could rapidly lose its present preeminence over the EU economy.

In a short time, Brussels might finally come to the conclusion that everyone else in the world has already arrived at and realize that the future of the global economy rests in the East, not the West, and enter into wider and freer trading relations with the rest of its prospective partners. This would of course naturally include Russia and the Eurasian Union, and with the two economies already converging on their own as it would be (remembering that it’s only because of American-attributed political impediments that they aren’t doing so already), it’s foreseeable that they could coordinate their respective FTAs with ASEAN as a final stepping stone before engaging in a similar one amongst themselves.

Multilateral Backup Plans

As positive of a picture as the above section paints, it probably won’t happen for at least the coming decade, if at all, seeing how serious the US is in ‘playing for keeps’ within the New Cold War rivalry. Whether through the institutional workings of the TTIP or outside of it via more unscrupulous measures if the said agreement isn’t passed by that time, the US will do everything in its power to prevent the EU from expanding its independent economic relations with the Eurasian Union, China, and ASEAN. It might potentially be allowed to deepen its ties with Japan and India (per the unipolar grand strategy described previously), but even that is debatable unless the US feels assured enough that it can maintain control over the bloc after those prospective agreements are clinched. It probably wouldn’t have the confidence to do so unless it formally controlled the EU through TTIP, thus making these potential free trade areas unlikely, at least in the short- to medium-term timeframes, barring of course any unexpected geopolitical shifts. For the most part, then, the EU can be safely discounted from any serious discussions about intra-Eurasian free trade zones, but that doesn’t mean that such dreams should be discouraged simply because the bloc realistically can’t take part in them for a while (if at all).

RCEP And FTAAP:

To compensate for the expected non-participation of the EU inside the envisioned multipolar economic frameworks, a few modified proposals have been suggested. Two of the most talked about are the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership(RCEP) and the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP), both of which are actively supported by China. The RCEP is the formalization of a multilateral FTA between ASEAN and each of its already-existing free trade partners (Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea), while the FTAAP takes things a lot further and proposes a grandiose free trade zone among all the countries that constitute the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, thereby including Russia, the US, and a few other Western Hemispheric countries but at the expense of a full free trade deal with ASEAN as a whole (Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia are not APEC members).

Nevertheless, it’s still significant that most of the countries within the bloc would be participants in that framework, highlighting just how important ASEAN economies are for transregional free trade deals nowadays. At the same time, however, the inclusion of the US would greatly erode the multipolar flexibility of the intended grouping and turn it into more of an apolitical economic organization that can’t be used in a relative way to weaken the US’ unipolar standing. It’s probable that Russia and China only support this idea so as to score political points of their own in contrasting it with the US’ exclusionary TPP plans that threaten to undermine both Great Powers’ existing trade connections and future opportunities with the involved states.

Russia’s Vision For GEFTA:

The latest proposal to be brought up for creating a multilateral transregional trading bloc came from Russia and was pronounced during President Putin’s Address to the Federal Assembly on 4 December, 2015. The Russian leader announced his country’s intention to form an economic partnership between the Eurasian Union, ASEAN, and SCO states (including the two ascending members of India and Pakistan), arguing that the new organization would “make up nearly a third of the global economy in terms of purchasing power parity.” This is the most realistic of the three suggestions and the most likely to be implemented in practice. China already has a FTA with Pakistan(the ‘zipper’ of Eurasian integration), and the Eurasian Union is exploring the possibility of sealing similar deals with India and official SCO-prospect Iran. Of note, Russia and China are also engaged in a trilateral partnership with Mongolia that could predictably become a free trade area sometime in the future as well.

Assuming that Moscow will be successful in reaching these (and there’s no reason to doubt that at the moment), then joining the Eurasian Union and the SCO together in an economic partnership would be a natural fit, with ASEAN offering a perfect complementary touch that would economically excite all of the members. Furthermore, India and Pakistan’s inclusion into the discussed framework would likely lead to the rest of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC, and which has its own internal free trade area) joining in as well, which would then push the proposed organization’s ranks to also include Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. Taken together, Russia’s vision amounts to a Grand Eurasian Free Trade Area (GEFTA) that’s supposed to encompass the vast majority of Asia and one day merge with the EU, with the notable exclusions for now obviously being the European economies (both EU and non-EU-member states), the Mideast (except for perhaps Syria and Israel [an odd combination to be sure, but pursued forentirely separate reasons]), the Koreas, and Japan.

The Indian Impediment Opens Up An ASEAN Opportunity

Even assuming a minimum of external (American) interference in trying to offset Russia’s vision, it’s foreseeable that India will present a major challenge for GEFTA’s implementation. India and China are engaged in a very intense security dilemma at the moment that neither side publicly wants to acknowledge, and under such conditions, it’s not likely that either of them is serious about pursuing a FTA with the other. From New Delhi’s perspective, India has no motivation whatsoever to sacrifice what it feels to be its national economic interests by entering into a FTA with China, no matter if it’s in RCEP or GEFTA. Relating to RCEP, India already has FTAs with Japan and South Korea, and it doesn’t believe that including Australia and New Zealand into the proposed multilateral framework would compensate for the economic unbalancing that it thinks it would experience through the tariff-free trade with China that it would have to agree to as part of the deal. With respect to GEFTA, the concerns are very similar. India is currently in a free trade relationship with ASEAN and might eventually enter into one with Iran after the latter proposed such an idea in spring 2015. With progress looking quite positive in reaching a free trade deal with the Eurasian Union one day soon, India doesn’t see any need to jump into GEFTA when it’s already all but assured to receive every benefit that it would be seeking out of the arrangement minus the foreseen complications that would happen if it has to do so with China as well (and to which its leadership presently sees no benefit).

India’s expected absence from GEFTA doesn’t translate into the vision’s failure, but it does raise its dependency on ASEAN’s inclusion in order to be geopolitically broad-based enough to become a defining point in the global economy. By itself, the Eurasian Union and its bilateral free trade arrangements are positive developments in and of themselves, especially if they lead to a prospective Eurasian Union-China FTA that multilaterally incorporates the other deals reached prior to that point (such as with Iran), but multipolarity would be infinitely more enhanced through the addition of ASEAN to this accord. Vietnam is already party to such a deal with the Eurasian Union, and even though it’s a robust component of the bloc’s partnership portfolio, its mutual potential pales in comparison to if both economic groupings had their own inclusive bloc-to-bloc pact. One of the steps in advancing this possibility would be for Russia to make efficient use out of ASEAN’s SEZs in Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia in order to reach individual FTAs with the rest of the organization’s mainland members (including Thailand, whom Medvedev offered the possibility to in spring 2015) so that they can collectively lobby their insular counterparts in this direction.

To be continued…

Andrew Korybko is the American political commentaror currently working for the Sputnik agency, exclusively for ORIENTAL REVIEW. This article is a select chapter from his second book that will focus on the geopolitical application of Hybrid Wars.

Russia knows well why Turkey shot down one of its warplanes in hot pursuit. Like Saudi Arabia, the emirate minions and Israel, Turkey of course has been losing its most prized pieces inside Syria–an assortment of the most violent jihadi and ultranationalist elements. The process may be systematic and limited for now, but the losses for the Wahhabi terroists are truly mind-boggling. Their scale testifies to the vast infrastructure of terror, murder and theft built up with billions of petrodollars.

Until now, the Syro-Russian-Iranian strategy seems to be to secure government-held areas, seal off the borders with Turkey, Jordan and Israel, now that the border with Lebanon is mostly impassable for the terrorists. Sealed in, all the foreign and foreign-controlled terrorist outfits will be more effectively pulled out by their roots.

Russia knows that Turkey simply wanted to complicate its unenviable task in Syria by introducing new, unexpected risks in the sky. But this has not really complicated Russia’s declared first strategic mission to crush Turkey’s pieces and the rest of the foreign Wahhabi presence in Syria. The difference now is that Russia is more determined than ever.

The second goal, in that order, is to ensure proper negotiations take place between the Syrian government and whatever Syrian opposition exists, leaving out the foreign or foreign-controlled outfits around which the West has been dancing. Hence the maneuvering at the Ryadh “opposition” conference to rehabilitate those same Wahhabi terrorists by any means, and the continued demand for the overthrow of the Syrian government, despite the fact that the terrorists are being erased on the battlefield.

The cooperation of some elements of the so-called Free Syria Army with Russia has already begun to produce good results in the fight to dislodge the Wahhabis. This cooperation has extended to coordination on the ground with the Syrian government army itself. In other words, Russia is already wrenching away pieces that the United States to this day pretends are its “allies” and which Britain insists are the fictitious “70,000 troops” ready to assist it against ISIL.

At any rate, Putin has been keen to raise the ante with Turkey with the painful economic sanctions he has so far slapped, a temporary tit-for-tat to make sure nobody fantasizes about the smell of Russian blood and be tempted to repeat Turkey’s “stab in the back.” But hurt Turkey he absolutely will–one step at a time. For starters, he will do it by enabling the Syrian army and the region’s republican forces to crush the Wahhabi terrorist plague in Syria. Further measures will depend on Turkey’s future actions and policy, which apparently are now going off the rails even inside NATO. The Turkish troop-incursion fiasco in Iraq this week is a clear example of desperation.

Then there is the case of Saudi Arabia. It is presently in dire straights in Yemen. Just this week it lost the eighth “Coalition” ship off the coast to Yemeni forces allied to Ansarullah Party led by the Houthis. It is financially exhausted because of this misadventure and diplomatically so isolated that pressure has mounted fast right up to the United Nations Security Council, as we hear today regarding an upcoming discussion of the Yemen. The United States itself has been privately expressing grave concern about the course of its operations.

In hindsight, Saudi Arabia has been planning for decades with Israel to topple every secular republican government and movement, from Syria to Tunisia, in fulfillment of an original plan dreamed up by Britain and France before World War II. For decades, the Saudi monarchy has been on board with that plan to balkanize the Middle East into religio-ethnic enclaves in order to guarantee the survival of the Zionist race colony and to finish with that “troublesome business” of Palestine.

Clearly, Israel is the centerpiece in this unfolding regional drama.

Continuing to trample this wild dream to dust, one that’s more fit for the wild animals, is thus the most effective response that Russia could undertake. This is the same addle-brained balkanization scheme that Bush and his Neocon gang (re: Israel lobby) revived on the pretext of 9-11. But if the United States persists in it, thinking it can redesign the Middle East in its own image, it will go down the tubes even faster than it presently is.

Nothing is going well for either the US or its retrograde allies.

What is Turkey doing in Iraq? Who invited them? Who incited them to shoot down the Russian SU-24? – The answer is the same. The Pentagon / NATO gang of aggressors. They found that Turkey is the perfect patsy for this type of operation. Erdogan’s corruption and greed make him a vulnerable pawn. He and his family are sucking up cheap Daesh / ISIS oil stolen from Syria and Iraq and ‘smuggled’ into the open gates of Turkey, where it is whitewashed so to speak and sold to the world, including to Israel. Exact amounts are not known, but are estimated in the billions of dollars since the Islamic State’s occupation of Northern Iraq and parts of Syria in 2014. Erdogan is also a megalomaniac – dreaming of expanding his influence in the region – and of a new Ottoman empire.

On 3 December Turkey deployed a few hundred troops and 25 tanks to Bashiqa just north of Mosul, the center of an oil rich region, an ISIS stronghold. The reason, the Turkish Defense Minister claims, is to train Kurdish Peshmerga and Arab fighters against ISIS. Ahmet Davuloglu, Turkish Prime Minister, says his country’s troops have been in Bashiqa since March 2015 with the consent of the Kurdistan Regional Government. Despite this presence – or because of it, Turkey being a key supporter of the Islamic State – Mosul, the oil-rich capital of Iraq’s Niniveh Province and the heartland of Kurdistan fell to ISIS in June 2015.

Turkey’s real motives may be securing and controlling northern Iraq, an area rich of petroleum and homeland of Kurdistan and much more importantly – pleasing the Washington masters who want Turkey on behalf of NATO to interfere with Russia’s air force fighting the Islamic State.

This war tactic against Russia by proxy was also applied when the US and Saudi air force guided Turkish F-16 fighters to ambush one of Russia’s two SU-24 on 24 November 2015

(http://www.globalresearch.ca/bombshell-the-turkish-assault-on-russias-su-24-was-guided-by-the-us-air-force/5493075).

What proxy – Turkey being a NATO member? – But Turkey also being a loose cannon, her acts of aggression against Russia may be sidelined by NATO.

On 3 December Iraq’s Prime Minister and Commander in Chief said clearly, “I did not ask any country to send foreign ground troops and we will [consider] any sent as hostile act.” He categorically rejected such action as an infringement on Iraq’s sovereignty and asked Turkey for immediate withdrawal of her troops.

Russia asked the UN Security Council to discuss Turkish military action in Iraq and Syria. Washington waffled, not knowing what to say, other than this was an issue to be resolved between Iraq and Turkey. See also how State Department’s spokesman John Kirby insults an RT journalist, who simply asked about Washington’s reaction to the Turkish invasion of sovereign Iraq.

So far nothing has changed. Iraqi protesters demonstrate against Turkish military presence in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square. But Turkey remains steadfast in northern Iraq, knowing that she has the full, if tacit, support of Washington and NATO – and the Saudi’s for that matter.

If Turkey shoots down a Russian plane it’s called a ‘blunder’ in the western media. If it were a more serious NATO partner like the UK, France or Germany, not to mention the US, it might even in the western public opinion become an act of aggression – an escalation towards WWIII. Turkish acts of aggression on Russia are just minor provocations, hoping Russia will fall into the trap of retaliating and starting a direct East-West confrontation.

Not to forget, Erdogan, once an ally and friend of President Assad, is a staunch supporter of the US policy doctrine that Bashar al-Assad must be removed. Isn’t it amazing how money and power can change friendships? It is reminiscent of then President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, who enjoyed financial support from Mohammed Gaddafi, yet was the initiator of the NATO attack on Libya in March 2011 which led to the horrendous murder of the Libyan leader and many of his family members.

Our western world has become a theatre of lies and deceit. Nothing is ‘mistake’ or ‘blunder’. All is well planned with a nefarious objective of full dominance by consent of the common citizen. Propaganda of terror with increasing numbers of false flags throughout the western world, are terrorizing the people with fear. Innocent people have to be killed, including invented attackers, thus subjugating the public into submission, or worse, into asking for police protection in the form of ever more repressive measures.

The latest false flag comes in the form of a warning: On 10 December the US Embassy in Switzerland warned US citizens residing in Switzerland, particularly in Geneva to be vigilant for a possible terror attack. Some Jihadists from the Paris 13 November attack may have escaped to Geneva. By inference, the Swiss Government had to take this warning seriously, lest some bought Islamists may have indeed caused terror in Geneva – leaving the city and Switzerland under a ‘We told you so’ blame.

Today, with due diligence and justifying the alert, Geneva police have arrested two ‘suspects’ – curiously with Syrian passports, whose homes have allegedly been searched and – oh wonder – a considerable cache of weapons and explosives was apprehended.

The people will never know the truth, because that’s police secret.

There is hardly a secure place any more in the western monotheistic Christian world – secure from false flags and lies and media manipulation – and secure from being killed in one of these necessary false flag attacks that justify large scale reprisals – like bombing Syria into rubble – pushing 11 million Syrians into homelessness and more than 4 million into becoming international refugees, ‘invading’ the countries of their hangmen, NATO countries, asking for mercy and shelter.

What an absurd world we are living in. Absurdity has become the norm of the day – of our despicable lives. That’s what we convey to our children – the next generation. The new normal, living in terror, artificially made terror to fear-beat as many into submission, for the Global Big Dictator with headquarters in Washington and a succursale in Tel Aviv to fast-step to full world hegemony.

In the meantime the Pentagon announces an expansion of its global network of military bases. Unnamed Pentagon officials told the New York Times on 9 December that

The US Defense Department (DOD) is preparing to expand its global network of military bases by establishing a new “string” of bases in countries stretching from Africa to East Asia, unnamed Pentagon officials told the New York Times Wednesday. The enlarged US basing arrangements will include at least four new large-scale bases or “hubs,” including new facilities in East Africa and West Africa and Afghanistan, along with a greater number of smaller camps or “spokes.” The new bases, which the Pentagon describes as “enduring” bases, will host forces ranging from dozens of commandos up to 5,000 soldiers at the largest hubs.

When do we wake up to stop the monster?

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

A Saudi-led plan to draw “moderate” Syrian opposition groups into a unified political front collapsed on Wednesday when a powerful Islamic militia refused to participate in the meetings after their demands were rejected.  Ahrar al-Sham, a hardcore amalgam of Wahhabi extremists and fanatical jihadis, withdrew from the anti-Assad confab because, according to the Washington Post:  “some of its comments and recommendations have been disregarded at the meeting.”

Not surprisingly, the Post failed to explain exactly what those “comments and recommendations” were.  The reason for this is easy to understand. The media doesn’t want the American people to know that the so called  “moderate” militias their government is backing are actually homicidal maniacs who are determined to topple a secular government and replace it with an Islamic Caliphate.  Here are a few of the group’s demands which have not appeared in any of the western media:

1 All Iranian and Russian military personnel must leave Syria.

2 The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) should be disbanded, along with their paramilitary units.

3 Syria will become an Islamic state.

4 No negotiations with the Syrian Government.

5 Fighting ISIS is secondary because rebels have lost family members because of the war with the Syrian Army.

6 A secular Syria will only empower ISIS

(“Largest Rebel Group Calls for an Islamic State in Syria“, Almasdarnews)

Ahrar al-Sham is anything but moderate. According to the Telegraph, “the group was established by Islamists and originally included internationally known jihadists with long-standing ties to al-Qaeda.” The group receives significant financial support from Saudi Arabia which is a country that is vehemently opposed to democratic government, which has a long history of support for terrorist organizations, and where citizens convicted of sorcery can face beheading. The whole idea of holding these phony negotiations in the terrorist capital of the planet is laughable.

According to the New York Times: “All parties signed a final statement that called for maintaining the unity of Syria and building a civil, representative government that would take charge after a transitional period, at the start of which Mr. Assad and his associates would step down.” (“Syrian rebels form bloc for new round of peace talks“, New York Times)

That sounds impressive, but what the Times fails to mention is that all of these conditions were inserted into previous agreements (Geneva) and insisted upon by Russia and Iran. If democracy prevails in Syria, it will be because the Russian’s and Iranians refused to accept anything less.

Here’s more from the New York Times: 

In two days of meetings hosted by the Saudi government that ended Thursday, more than 100 opposition leaders created a new high commission to oversee negotiations with the government….The high commission contains 33 members, about one-third representing armed factions. It will select a negotiating team of 15 people to face the Assad government at talks that could begin in January….

Mohammed Baerakdar, a representative of the Islam Army, one of the armed brigades, said that foreign military support had not been enough to ensure victory so the group had to pursue a political solution.

“We did not take up arms to spill blood,” he said. “We took up arms to spare blood.” (New York Times)

The ” high commission” is not going to have any impact on future negotiations because its leaders don’t represent the most powerful groups of fighters on the ground. The most powerful groups are the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), Jahbat al Nusra (and other al Qaida-linked militias), ISIS and the Kurdish People’s Protection Units or YPG.  None of these groups participated in the Saudi talks even though their delegates will eventually play a big role in determining the country’s future.

As for Baerakdar’s claim that, “We did not take up arms to spill blood. We took up arms to spare blood.” That is transparently false. In fact, most of the fighters active in Syria today, are foreigners that are funded, armed, and trained by Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the US. Their job is to tear the country to shreds in order to topple Assad, replace him with a compliant stooge, and divide the state in a way that best serves the commercial and strategic interests of the three main perpetrators.

The idea that prominent western media like the New York Times and the Washington Post would take these Saudi-led meetings seriously is simply mindboggling.  Does anyone need to be reminded that 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9-11 were from Saudi Arabia, or that Saudi royals have been arming and funding terrorist organizations for the last 30 years or that Riyadh is presently backing many of the Sunni militants now prosecuting the proxy war in Syria today?

The Saudis are up to their eyeballs in terror, in fact, it seems to be the national pastime much like soccer in Brazil or baseball in the US. The problem is that– this time around– their terror tactics aren’t working, in fact, their jihadi militias are getting beaten quite badly the by the Russian-led coalition, which is why they’ve moved on to Plan B, a political strategy for uniting the anti-Assad opposition to improve their chances for success in the next round of  negotiations in Vienna.

But how do the Saudis measure success?

Here’s a clip from the Washington Post which spells it out in black and white:

Speaking at a news conference earlier on Thursday, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir said Assad has two choices, “either to leave through negotiations” or be forcibly removed from power.

(“Syria opposition groups set framework for proposed talks“, Washington Post)

So nothing has changed, right?  This whole fiasco about convening “talks” between opposition leaders is just a smokescreen to conceal the real objective which is regime change.

But does anyone really think the Russians and Iranians are going to be fooled by this “opposition conference” charade?

Not on your life. They’re not going to let any of these foreign-born whackos from Chechnya, Libya or Saudi Arabia decide Syria’s future.  That has to be decided by the Syrian people themselves, which is what the Geneva Communique was all about: Self determination, sovereignty and free elections. Those are the foundation blocks that are needed to rebuild the Syrian state, but they can’t be put in place until the  foreign meddling stops and there’s an honest dialogue between the various stakeholders about the way forward.

First published in June 2014

Netanyahu is pushing a new bill to allow the force-feeding of Palestinian hunger strikers. The prime minister is in good company.

American practices at the prison at Guantanamo Bay are giving Benjamin Netanyahu ideas.

Earlier this week, a draft bill authorizing the force-feeding of hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners passed the first of three readings in the Knesset. Of the roughly 300 prisoners presently fasting in protest of Israeli administrative detention, at least 70 are hospitalized around the country, shackled to their beds. If the bill becomes law, dozens of them may be forced to undergo the procedure.

Netanyahu is personally pressing for the law, prodded along by the Shin Bet security service. The Shabak is calling for a tough approach to the mass strike andrefusing to negotiate with the prisoners lest they see any benefit from their protest. The prime minister is in good company. He explicitly cited the United States as inspiration, reportedly telling Israel’s Channel 2 that “in Guantanamo, the Americans are using the method of force-feeding too.”

The echoes of the U.S. example don’t stop there. Like its American andinternational counterparts, the Israeli Medical Association, to its credit, won’t go along, citing “the sanctity of life and the duty to respect the autonomy of the patient.”

Read: ‘Administrative detainees must have done something wrong’

Force-feeding, by all accounts, is an excruciating procedure that causes immense pain and has been declared “cruel, inhuman, and degrading” by medical experts the world over. Watch this video of rapper Yasiin Bey (aka Mos Def) being force-fed under the Guantanamo procedure (warning: it’s hard to watch), or consider this description of a method used at the island prison, a variation of “the water cure,” which has roots in the Spanish Inquisition:

In 2012, Khader Adnan, a Palestinian held in Israel without charge or trial, agreedto stop his 66-day hunger strike in exchange for release from prison. Several other hunger strikes, including that of Palestinian footballer Mahmoud Sarsak, were called off under similar terms. The prisoners managed to mobilize their only vestiges of autonomy – their bodies – in protest of a manifestly unjust practice. Israel, faced with the fallout of their deaths, no longer found them too dangerous too free.

But the Shin Bet is clearly seeking to avoid a repetition of those earlier successes. “You can’t have a situation where prisoners who are in jail for a very good reason will use the threat of a hunger strike to receive a ‘get out of jail free’ card,” an Israeli official recently explained.

But what’s the very good reason? Like at Guantanamo, those strikes and this one, which began in April, are a protest against the military use of administrative detention (“indefinite detention,” in American parlance), an oft-used tool in the occupation’s arsenal to detain Palestinians without charge or trial for indefinitely renewable periods. Over the years, thousands have come in and out of Israeli detention, many on a revolving basis. As of April, Israel was holding 191 administrative detainees, according to B’Tselem. They do not know why they are in jail or when they will be released.

“People go on a hunger strike for political reasons … and the consequence could be political damage to the state,” said Yoel Hadar, a government legal advisor. In the end, force-feeding isn’t about saving lives, it’s about neutralizing the long-term threat that the likes of Khader Adnan and Mahmoud Sarsak pose to the occupation: the exposure of a system whose raison d’être is repression and control, not security.

Guantanamo is 12 years old. Barack Obama continues to claim he wants to see it shuttered. But while Israel may now be borrowing from the U.S. playbook on force-feeding, the tactics of the 47-year-old occupation are clearly focused on the long game.

In recent speeches and other public statements, Netanyahu calls Palestinian self-defense against the Israeli occupier “terrorism.”

At the same time, he claimed daily Israeli-instigated violence has nothing to do with their justifiable courageous response after nearly half a century of illegal, brutalizing military occupation.

He lied, saying “(t)he terrorists are attacking in California or in Israel, or for that matter in Paris. They are attacking the very values that we hold dear – freedom, tolerance, diversity.”

Last month, he said

“(w)e are standing on the front lines against terrorism that is increasingly being transformed from Palestinian nationalistic terrorism to Islamic terrorism. An attack on any one of us should be seen as an attack on all of us. You can’t say these are the good terrorists and these are the bad terrorists. All terrorists are bad.”

Physician, political activist and human rights champion Mustafa Barghouti explained justifiable Palestinian rage “come(s) from hopelessness.” They want the same rights granted Jews.

PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi blasted Netanyahu, accusing him of

“cynically exploiting the pain of the innocent victims in order to create a misleading linkage and to justify Israeli state terror against the Palestinian people, while presenting Israel as the victim.”

Multiple daily examples explain. On Saturday, Israeli forces again invaded Gaza, attacking hundreds of mourners attending slain Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) leader Sami Shawqi Madhi’s funeral.

He’s the 19th Gazan Israeli soldiers killed since October 1. Another 100 were murdered in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Eighteen Israeli lives were lost, only five by stabbings.

Since January, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Israeli forces conducted a weekly average of 83 terror raids on Palestinian communities, greater numbers since October 1.

The whole world knows Israel is a racist, apartheid, rogue terror state, supported by the US. Too few voices of prominence admit it.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

A new international survey has ranked German Chancellor Angela Merkel, US President Barack Obama and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as the world’s top three liars of 2015.

The recent poll conducted by German web platform, Alles Schall und Rauch, asked more than 3,000 of its readers from Germany and 40 other countries to determine the world’s “liar of the year.”

More than 39 percent of those surveyed crowned the German chancellor with the “liar of the year” title.

Over 21 percent of those polled also said the US president deserved to be called the liar of 2015, while the Turkish president received 18 percent of the votes.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko also secured 8 and 7.8 percent of the votes, respectively.

On the contrary, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani and his Syrian counterpart, Bashar al-Assad, were classed as honest policy-makers, gaining only 0.03 and 0.10 percent of the votes, respectively.

French President Francois Hollande, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Russian President Vladimir Putin were further among those classified as honest policymakers.

The findings come less than a week after the New York-based Time magazine named Merkel its Person of the Year, citing her encouragement of other countries to open their borders to refugees and her determination to lead Europe through the Greek debt crisis this summer.

This article was first published by the International Journal of Epidemiology in 2003 in the immediate wake of the war on Iraq

The only property of micro-organisms that enables them to be used as biological weapons is their capacity to cause infectious disease. People may be deliberately exposed to pathogenic micro-organisms in a variety of ways but it is the fact of exposure rather than the method of delivery that determines whether disease will result. Because the ability to cause infection is the defining aspect of a biological weapon, then anymalevolent intervention that causes infection in the civilian population constitutes an attack with a biological weapon.

Micro-organisms are necessary but not sufficient in the causation of infectious disease and other causal factors are required for infection to occur.¹ Host resistance is an important factor in the chain of causation leading to clinical infection.² Whether or not exposure to a micro-organism causes disease depends on whether or not the exposed individual is susceptible or immune. Dietary deficiency of key vitamins and micronutrients increases susceptibility to a number of infectious agents and also increases the likelihood that infectious disease will result in severe illness and death. Vitamin A and zinc deficiency impair the ability of the immune system to fight infection and the ability of mucous membranes to resist infection.^2,,³ Indeed, the decline in infectious diseases in high-income countries is more readily attributed to increased host resistance from better nutrition than to a reduction in the virulence of the relevant micro-organisms. It follows that any malevolent intervention that impairs the ability of a civilian population to resist infection constitutes biological warfare.

In public health practice, prevention involves removing one or more of the components in the chain of causation leading to disease. From an epidemiological perspective, causation and prevention are two sides of the same coin.¹ For this reason, a consideration of the actions that can prevent infectious disease from occurring after exposure to a biological agent can help to identify the other components in the causal chain. For example, following an attack with anthrax, spores can be washed off with soap and water and oral antibiotics can be given to prevent infection from developing.⁴ If an anthrax attack occurred in situations where antibiotics were unavailable then some cases of anthrax infection would be attributable to their absence. Consequently, any malevolent intervention that destroys a population’s ability to respond effectively to infectious diseases constitutes a biological attack.

These rather mundane scientific considerations have important implications for how biological warfare is defined in the context of the current conflict in Iraq. First, it implies that the Anglo-American bombing of water supplies, sanitation plants, and the power plants that are necessary for their functioning, constitutes a biological attack. Standard texts on biological weapons point out that three factors must be taken into account in selecting a biological agent for a biological attack: ease of manufacture, stability, and lethality. Despite widespread public concern about the use of anthrax, smallpox, and plague, all three are difficult to manufacture and disseminate. Anthrax requires sophisticated methods of manufacture and virulent stock is hard to find. The only confirmed sources of smallpox are in the US and Russia, and plague is both difficult to obtain and difficult to weaponize.⁴

On the other hand, the microbial agents that can cause devastating epidemics of diarrhoea are ubiquitous, lethal, and are readily disseminated by destroying the civilian sanitation infrastructure by bombing or otherwise destroying water sanitation and sewage disposal systems. These actions will ensure that food and water supplies to the civilian population will quickly become contaminated. Because the faeces of infected people will further contaminate the water supply and because there will be extensive person-to-person transmission this strategy has the potential to result in extensive, population-wide, and self-propagating epidemics. The scope for civilian casualties with such an approach is massive in comparison with the use of agents such as anthrax for which there is no evidence of person-to-person transmission. Declassified documents from the American Defense Intelligence Agency show that during the 1991 Gulf War, the ‘Allies’ deliberately targeted Iraq’s water supply. Twelve years later, half the water treatment plants are still out of action.⁵

Second, the economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council that have caused widespread dietary deficiencies throughout the civilian population, seriously reducing the ability of the population to resist infection, constitute a form of biological warfare. Micro-organisms that pose little threat to those with intact immune systems can be highly lethal to those with impaired immunity as a result of micronutrient deficiency and malnutrition. For example, life-threatening diarrhoea can be caused by ubiquitous microbes such as Escherichia coli that reside in the gastrointestinal tract and common respiratory viruses can cause highly lethal pneumonia. As a result of the sanctions against Iraq there has been a more than doubling of the infant and under-5 mortality rates, with most of the excess child deaths being due to diarrhoea and pneumonia exacerbated by malnutrition.⁶ The imposition of economic sanctions in Iraq is as much a form of biological attack as was the distribution of anthrax in the US mail system.

Third, the destruction of the Iraqi population’s ability to respond to outbreaks of infectious disease by restricting the import of essential medicines and medical equipment, by destroying the public health infrastructure, and by overwhelming the capacity of the healthcare system to respond effectively constitutes a further biological attack.

Fourth, having destroyed Iraq’s water and sanitation systems, leaving the civilian population highly vulnerable to major epidemics of infectious disease, the failure to restore the public health infrastructure and provide safe water supplies to homes and hospitals constitutes a biological attack. In this context, recent reports that reconstruction contracts may be awarded to the US company Bechtel are a particular cause for concern. In 1999, a Bechtel subsidiary took over the control of the public water system in Cochabamba in Bolivia and within weeks doubled and tripled the water rates for some of the poorest families in South America resulting in massive public demonstrations.⁷ Also, we must not forget that in the case of Afghanistan, despite the Bush administration’s claim that ‘the US will not walk away from the Afghan people’, the administration subsequently forgot to ask for any money for humanitarian and reconstruction costs in its 2003 budget.

The full extent of civilian casualties resulting from the war on Iraq will become clear in the coming weeks and months. An effective humanitarian response must be mounted urgently to reduce the death toll from this appalling episode in the history of biological warfare.

• © International Epidemiological Association 2003

The Nuclear End of the World never happened. When the Cold War finally ended, the whole world sighed in relief as the threat of total annihilation seemingly passed. And yet, 25 years later, both the US and Russia once again are pumping up their nuclear arsenal, and the Doomsday Clock shows it’s just three minutes before midnight. Is nuclear destruction looming once again over humankind? And, even if no state is actually ready to press the button – could Atomic Armageddon happen by accident? We ask these and many other questions to a specialist on nuclear technology, a professor from MIT and a former adviser to the US Chief of Naval Operations. Dr. Theodore Postol is on Sophie&Co.

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Sophie Shevardnadze:  Dr. Theodore Postol, former advisor to the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, a professor at MIT, nuclear technology expert, welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us – so, Ted, President Obama came into the White House calling for “Global Zero” – now, there are plans to spend a trillion dollars on an overall of entire nuclear arsenal. Why is this happening?

Dr. Theodore Postol: I think this is a consequence of the domestic politics. You can never understand the foreign policy of a country without understanding its domestic situation, and in this case, the domestic politics has caused Mr. Obama to decide – frankly, I think, incorrectly – that he has to modernize the U.S. arsenal in order to avoid being criticized for not being concerned about the defence of the country.

SS: Now, do you believe the U.S. is readying its nuclear forces for direct confrontation with Russia? Do you think nuclear war is possible now? At any scenario, do you see that?

Dr.TP: I do think that an accidental nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia is possible. I don’t know how likely it is – anyone who says they know how likely it is, has no idea what they’re talking about, so… But, I think any possibility is too high, and in that sense, I do think we are in danger. I think the current political confrontation between Russia and the West and, particularly, the U.S. is potentially dangerous too. Both sides are very aware of the catastrophic consequence of nuclear weapons being used by one or the other, so I think both will be very cautious – but I think the danger does exist, yes.

SS: But, nuclear weapons have worked as a deterrent against war with the risks, like you say, “way too high” for all sides involved. Has the mutually assured destruction doctrine being forgotten? Has the defenition been changed, maybe?

Dr.TP: No, I don’t think the definition has changed, and certainly, the reality has not changed, and I think, an understanding of the reality is very important if you’re not going to make a mistake that leads to nuclear use – on either side. I believe, from what I’ve seen on both sides, that the concern about the potential for the complete destruction of each country and the world is still very high. The problem is that as long as forces are on alert, at a high level, there’s always the possibility of a series of unexpected accidents that could lead to nuclear exchange, and I think, that’s the real danger.

SS: What happens, hypothetically, if there is a nuclear war? Will a doctrine like a mutual destruction doctrine ever work again?

Dr.TP: I think, anybody who is rational and understands pretty much, in a dim way, the consequences of nuclear weapons, would not rationally use nuclear weapons. The problem is that if you have a crisis situation when one or both sides have no understanding of what is actually happening on the other side, and people are exhausted because it was going on over time, and somebody makes a bad decision with incomplete information, which is almost certainly what happens in the real world – information is never complete – you could have a massive use of nuclear weapons, and that, of course, would end civilization as we know it and might, although we can’t be sure, but might actually end human life on the planet.

SS: You know, you’ve mentioned earlier that the nuclear war as it is, is unlikely, but there’s always a threat of an accident. And I’ve spoken to many political leaders, newsmakers like Noam Chomsky, Mikhail Gorbachev, and they also agree that nuclear war is something nobody’s willing to risk right now, but there is a danger of an accident involving nuclear weapons. What kind of accident can occur?

Dr.TP: I can give you a concrete example, and then expand on it. In 1955 there was, what’s called a “sounding rocket” launched off an island that is on off the NW coast of Norway. Now, this “sounding rocket” was different from other “sounding rockets” that had been launched at that time. It went to much higher altitudes than had previously occurred, and it passed through the radar search-fan of an early warning radar at Olenegorsk in Russia, and set off an alarm that led to Yeltsin at that time being brought into the command loop.

Now, I do not believe that Russia or the Russian military forces were put on high alert or would have done anything that could have led to an accident at that time, but if you had an accident like this which occurred for example, during the crisis between Russia and the U.S., where both sides had been at loggerheads for quite a while and both sides were exhausted, very concerned about military action happening – it could have led to an alert and possibly even a launch of Russian or U.S. forces. So, there’s a concrete situation where an accident that really, must be looked at as benign, given the circumstance under which it occurred, could have been fatal under different circumstances. Now, the likelihood of something like that happening is low, because you need this accident to occur at the time of extreme crisis and you need the overlap, but the consequences, of course, would be horrendous.

SS: Now, Ted, tell me something. Explain to an amateur, to me, how does one launch a nuclear weapon? Is it as easy as pressing a button? How long does it take for a nuclear missile to reach its target?

Dr.TP: Well, typically what the U.S. and Russia have are several kinds of what are called “ballistic missiles” – they, in the case of both Russia and the U.S. we have land-based ballistic missiles which are in fortified underground missile silos, so they are protected to some extent from nuclear attack, or on submarines, in the holds of submarines. The ballistic missile could be fired, basically, within 50 or 60 seconds, more or less, after alert being given to the operators.The warning could take minutes to occur  – that is, the Russian government or the American government, could believe that an attack is underway, they could access the situation, and then, collect information and then make a decision whether or not to launch.

That could take 10 or 15 minutes. In the case of actually launching a rocket, that would take 40-60 seconds, more or less, depending on procedures – which are easily changed. The rocket will then ignite, it would fly out of its silo or its launch hall in the submarine, it would typically undergo powered flight for about… between 150 and 300 seconds, depending on whether or not the rocket is what’s called a “solid-propellant” or “liquid propellant”, so in one case 5 minutes, in other cause, maybe, 2,5 minutes – and then it would release warheads. The warheads would float in the near vacuum of space under the influence of gravity and momentum, and in about 20-28 minutes would arrive at their targets, re-enter the atmosphere and explode. So the world could be, basically, finished off in anywhere from half hour to an hour upon the arrival of these warheads. People who think about these things generally expect – nobody really knows what to expect – but if you have a massive exchange, most nuclear warheads would be delivered in a very short time, probably within half hour or an hour interval.

SS: Now, the bombs that Russia and the U.S. have in their arsenal right now – they are 100 times more powerful than the ones that were used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. How devastating would be the aftermath of the nuclear explosion be today?

Dr.TP: They are more than 100 times more powerful. Typical warhead from a Russian missile like what we call the SS-18, the one of these warheads –  this rocket can carry up to 10 warheads – one of these warheads, detonated over New York city, for example – one! – would essentially destroy all of Manhattan, most of Staten Island, probably all of it, basically. Large parts of New Jersey to the west. basically, the borough of Brooklyn and most of Queens and the Bronx out to a range range of, maybe, anywhere from, I’d say, 10 kilometers range from the central area where it exploded. If you had a similar warhead from the U.S. over Moscow, it would destroy, again, most of the city. It would, again, destroy a 150 square kilometers of the city easily and that’s only one warhead. There would be many warheads targeted on each of these great cities by the other side.

SS: Now, you wrote that there’s a lack of quality stuff in the American nuclear forces. Are you saying nuclear arsenal is not being looked after properly, or is it safe?

Dr.TP: I think, there are very serious problems with the nuclear arsenal at the current time. Basically, what is going on is there is a catastrophic falling of morale among the troops. This is not hard to understand, and, in fact, to some degree… well, to high level, predictable. The reason is that the nuclear forces had an enormously high status in American military organisation for a long time. At the end of the Cold War, there was a giant change in the status accorded to the U.S. military forces that were doing nuclear weapons control.

The net result of that is that younger officers who are seeking advancement in their career and who are more talented and more upwardly mobile, more promotable, did not want to choose to go into the nuclear forces. So, the net result was you got people of less capability and less motivation populating the forces. This has been a real problem. A second aspect of this problem is that the interest in the American Pentagon in maintaining the current forces at a proper level has not been as high as it should’ve been. So, modernisation does not take place when it should. Let me give you an example. If you have computers that are extremely old – in our case, these computers are, in some cases, 40 or 50 years old, which is a very long time in computer technology. Now, the advantage of the older computers is that you know what you have. The problem with newer computers is that there’s more… when you’re moving over to a newer system there’s always a danger created by moving over to a newer system, because things are unpredictable on some level.

SS: Is that why you guys are sticking to the old computers?

Dr.TP: I can’t explain why that’s happening. I think, it would be very wise to actually modernise these systems. They are modernizing them in some ways, but they’re modernizing them in ways that are in my view not helpful. Let me give you an example: they modify the computer navigation system on our Minuteman Intercontinental ballistic missiles, so that we can the targets that we shoot at more rapidly and hold more targets, be able to select targets in Russia or other places more quickly, and select more targets. Well, that’s only useful if you’re planning to fight and win a nuclear war. If you think that by moving the targets on one missile to take advantage of some damage you’ve already done somewhere else, like you would your artillery in a conventional war – if you think that is a good idea, the way it looks to other people – for example, Russian military planners – it looks like you’re trying to prepare to fight and win a nuclear war against Russia.

SS: Is it even possible to win a nuclear war? Is there such thing as winning a nuclear war?

Dr.TP: Of course, it’s not possible to win a nuclear war. There’s no outcome that you can predict associated with the facts of nuclear weapons that would lead to any definition that is at all meaningful of “winning” a nuclear war. The problem is, if you have another adversary, you’re a military person, you’re evaluating the actions of the other adversary, and you see the adversary doing things that look like they believe that they can fight and win,  it makes you concerned, it raises concerns that they might actually believe that, or, in a crisis, they might actually exercise options created by these technical changes. So, it’s a dangerous, double-edged sword.

SS: Russia recently announced 40 new ballistic missiles to boost its military arsenal. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called the move “unjustified, destabilizing and dangerous”. Now, in light of this American nuclear rearmament we were talking about – do you think it’s unjustified?

Dr.TP: I think it’s unjustified from a technical point of view. From a political point of view, I have no real judgement, but I can see how the political leadership in Russia believes that it has to respond to what it sees as America’s continued encroachment and planning to intimidate. Whether that’s the intent of the U.S. or not – I have no way of knowing. But I can understand why they think that such an action makes sense. From a purely technical point of view, it in no way enhances Russia’s security – and it could detract from it, because of an American overreaction.

SS: Also, remember NATO’s plans for a missile defence shield in Europe, they were also supported by the U.S. and its allies. It was supposed to be protection against possible Iran nuclear program. Now, a deal with Iran is in place, a deal that, as you say, has unprecedented verification measures. Why is NATO still going forward with these plans?

Dr.TP: I’m not a total… I’m more of a technical than a political person, but I don’t want to make fake claims, I am unsophisticated politically…

SS: Sure, but you surely have your opinions and observations on that – I mean, it’s a huge topic…

Dr.TP: I think it’s going forward because the leadership of the U.S. has domestic – again, I want to underscore this, domestic political, not international, political commitments to doing missile defence. The Congress is deeply committed to it. I think, the big defence companies that do the work wanted to keep their contracts and the American Congress is strongly influenced by the ability of these companies to influence elections through their money. I think the President has not behaved…has not shown leadership in this particular area. He has backed away from his original scepticism, which was well-justified, about the value of these missile defences in terms of their technical capability, and…

SS: Okay, but, as you say, domestic policies usually play out, internally,  they play out to be foreign policies. In this case, does Russia have evidence to believe it’s not a security threat for it?

Dr.TP: I would that the Russian military, the informed military, the technically well-informed military, have to understand that the American missile defence is not viable – that’s to say, it does not have any capability. However, I want to underscore – however, they cannot treat this missile defence as if it has no capability. This is because they do not know what will happen next. The U.S. has vast industrial power, vast wealth. It has shown that it is more than able to engage in irrational military activities, and the Russian military cannot be assured that the U.S. won’t make some kinds of changes in some unforeseen future scenario to this missile defence. So you can have a missile defence, like the Americans have, which technically speaking is a joke –  I want to underscore it, it’s a technical joke in terms of what it can do – but, the Russian military has almost no choice but to treat it as if it is a serious concern. So you get the worst of both worlds. Even from an american point of view – a missile defence that doesn’t work, but is treated by the Russian side as if it works.

SS: Ted we have time for just one more question…

Dr.TP: Is that too convoluted?

SS: No, it sounds pretty simple to me. I don’t know why people up there don’t understand it.

Dr.TP: Okay.

SS: Now, states that embark on a nuclear weapons program, they actually do it because they feel it’s the only way to ensure their security. Can you say they are wrong? I mean – look at Libya, it gave up its nuclear weapons, and in the end, it was little to stop a NATO bombing campaign in 2011. We just have one more minute left for this question.

Dr.TP: I think it’s a double-edged sword, and it depends on who you are and your circumstances. Unfortunately, and I’m not comfortable saying this, I want to be clear, this is not a comfortable thing to say, if I were in a situation of some nuclear states, I would not give up my nuclear weapons. In the case of other nuclear states, I think not only it is a good idea to give up your nuclear weapons, but in fact you shouldn’t get them. Let me give you an example. If I were Japanese I would not want to have nuclear weapons. The reason is, I’m under the protection of the U.S., and if I get nuclear weapons, it will cause to be a target of the Chinese, it will cause the South Koreans to become extremely concerned, to the point that they might react in a bad way, and my overall security situation would be worse. But, if I’m alone, and I think I need nuclear weapons, for example, if I’m Russia, and the Americans have a nuclear monopoly – I would want nuclear weapons, because I’m not dependant on another nuclear power to offset the American threat. So, it’s a political judgement, not a technical one.

SS: Thanks, Ted. Unfortunately that’s all the time that we have, but thanks a lot for this very interesting and sometimes scary insight into the world of nuclear power game.

We were talking to Theodore Postol, former advisor to the U.S. Chief of Naval operations, professor of technology and international security at MIT, nuclear expert. We were talking on the current state of nuclear arsenals across the world and the ominous possibility of a nuclear catastrophe. That’s it for this edition of Sophie&Co, I will see you next time.

The daughter of Anbar, the Baghdadian city that rests on the banks of the Euphrates, barricaded itself every morning and learned to survive the abrasive nature of war and bombings. The Americans believed that their repeated shelling would extinguish the city’s flame but they were wrong. The beginning of a major liberation movement swept Iraq and ended with the expulsion of its twenty-first century invaders. They left with their tails between their legs in disappointment, reminding them of the failures they experienced in Vietnam, and perhaps even more.

Fallujah: what is unknown about this city is that it differs from the majority of other Iraqi cities and that it is located approximately 40 kilometres west of Baghdad. The mosques have found their place among the houses of the city and they are so great in number that Fallujah is now known as the “mother of mosques”, being home to more than 100 mosques; the perimeter of the city does not exceed 30 kilometres.

When the Americans invaded Baghdad in the spring of 2003 the shock was intense for all, whether it was the Iraqis who set eyes on a tank headed for their capital for the first time, or even the rest of the Arab and Islamic world as they saw the occupation of one of the region’s most influential capitals. While it is true that Iraqi resistance was quick to form in the face of the new invaders — many have called it the fasted growing resistance in history —it was still not enough to revive and protect the dignity of the Iraqi and Arab peoples when American tanks entered Baghdad on 9 April 2003.

The people of Fallujah protested against the occupation of Iraq for nearly a year in an effort to regain the balance of everyday life and the dignity of the city. At the time of the invasion of Iraq, the plan to divide the country was already on the invader’s table. Nothing was missing, not even the means to implement the project. Twenty-five million Iraqis were subsequently divided into Sunni, Shia, Kurds and other minorities. Even so, Fallujah stood as a reminder to all Iraqis that the path to resistance was ongoing and that national unity remained a goal. In the spring of 2004, Fallujah was the first Iraqi city to free itself from the US occupation after a battle that lasted 33 days. American forces used all of their energy to try to reclaim the city and failed.

On that day, men were truly men as America was forced to sit down at the negotiating table with the rest of the city’s inhabitants. All the US wanted to do was break Fallujah’s will but on that day Iraq was united behind the city. Songs praising Fallujah were broadcast from north to south of Iraq. There was no disagreement among any of the Iraqis as to what Fallujah stood for. The city was a thorn in the side of anyone who wanted to swallow Iraq whole.

Months went by and Fallujah became a liberated city within an occupied country. It became a bubble that governed itself. It frustrated all of the invaders who stood beyond the city boundary, subjecting them to humiliation and shame. The US used all of its forces and brought Tony Blair’s forces with it, including those who were trained in Iran. All of them wanted to take revenge on the city by testing out weapons that had never been used before. The results left the bodies of the victims completely destroyed or melted; not even their bones remained.

Today, years later, Fallujah finds itself, once again, the prey of evil beings who wish to retaliate for its steadfastness. They continue to use the same argument time and again; that the city is harbouring terrorists. This has been the excuse for everything since 2004 when it was believed that Fallujah was harbouring Al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. Since the beginning of 2014, Fallujah has been transformed into the city of death. Every day it is bombarded under the pretext of fighting Daesh. What the media and the international community continue to ignore is the fact that the city is home to 150,000 civilians who refuse to leave the city out of fear that they will be subject to government blackmail in Baghdad.

Despite today’s constant violence in the city, many of the inhabitants of the neighbouring city of Ramadi have sought refuge in Fallujah. From the perspective of those fleeing, it is more dignified to go to Fallujah then to stand on the bridge to Baghdad awaiting mercy. Today Fallujah is being bombed and the world continues to see only what it wants to see. It is important for us to remind the people across the Arab and Islamic world that this city, which is bombed every day, was once a symbol of honour and resistance. It is in need of more than a prayer or a loaf of bread because the people of Fallujah are fighting for their lives and paying the price with the blood of their children. That is the dearest thing that can be offered to this steadfast city.

Translated from Al-Araby Al-Jadid, 1 December, 2015

An ardent attempt is afoot on Capitol Hill to prevent states from requiring the labeling of genetically engineered foods – made especially urgent by the fact that Vermont’s labeling bill is set to take effect July 1st.

Although proponents of these foods scored a major victory in July when they induced the House of Representatives to pass a bill (HR 1599) that would ban such state-enacted legislation, a version of that bill has not yet been introduced in the Senate; and because of the intense focus on crafting and passing crucial legislation that will provide necessary funding to keep the federal government functioning, none is likely to be during this session.Accordingly, biotech advocates are endeavoring to get key provisions of HR 1599 attached as a rider to the must-pass appropriations bill – and sneak them into law without meaningful scrutiny and debate. But this attempt could be quickly foiled by one simple occurrence: the dissemination of a few essential facts. Moreover, if these facts had been widely known in July, HR 1599 could not have even made it through the House. That’s because the bill has always relied on disinformation – and could not survive an open airing of the truth.

The DARK Act’s Survival Depends on Keeping People in the Dark

HR 1599 was artfully titled the “Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2015.”

Mike Pompeo, Kansas

But because it would actually restrict the labeling of GE foods, public interest groups dubbed it the DARK Act (Denying Americans the Right to Know Act). Moreover, not only would that proposed legislation keep consumers in the dark, the legislators were significantly operating in the dark themselves. Indeed, it’s safe to say that virtually every member of the House who voted on that bill – whether for or against – was mistaken about at least one of the key relevant facts.

The false belief that there are no legitimate safety concerns

Some of the greatest confusion involves food safety. For instance, the bill’s sponsor, Congressman Pompeo, declared that consumer demands for labeling of GE foods have nothing to do with health or safety, and its other supporters have backed that assertion and proclaimed that no legitimate food safety concerns exist. Even the main witness who testified against the bill before a congressional committee in 2014 declared that there aren’t any. But this is flat-out false. For example, science-based concerns about the dangers to human health were repeatedly raised in memos written by the technical experts at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) when they analyzed the risks of genetic engineering in 1991. The pervasiveness of the concerns within the scientific staff is attested by a memo from an FDA official who asserted: “The processes of genetic engineering and traditional breeding are different, and according to the technical experts in the agency, they lead to different risks.”(1)

Such concerns have been expressed in subsequent years by numerous other scientists and scientific institutions as well, including the British Medical Association, the Public Health Association of Australia, and the respected medical journal The Lancet. One of the strongest set of cautions appeared within an extensive report issued by the Royal Society of Canada, which declared (a) that it is “scientifically unjustifiable” to presume that GE foods are safe and (b) that the “default presumption” for every one of them should be that the genetic alteration has induced unintended and potentially harmful side effects (2).

Laboratory testing has confirmed the legitimacy of the concerns, and a number of well-conducted research studies on GE foods published in peer-reviewed scientific journals have detected statistically significant instances of harm to the laboratory animals that were consigned to consume them. Moreover, a review of the scientific literature on GE foods (itself published in a peer-reviewed journal in 2009) concluded that “most” of the safety assessments have not only indicated problems, but indicated that “many GM [genetically modified] foods have some common toxic effects.” (3)

The erroneous notion that the FDA is responsibly regulating GMOs

Confusion also reigns regarding the adequacy of federal regulation, and it’s widely believed that the FDA is assiduously following the law and subjecting GE foods to rigorous scientific review. But in reality (and as will be seen), that agency has not conducted a genuinely scientific review for any GE food on the market, and far from following the law, it’s been deliberately violating the law’s express mandates in order to enable these products to be marketed without the kinds of testing that the law requires.

Accounting for the Confusion: The Decisive Role of Deception

The widespread misconceptions about GE foods have been created and sustained through the systematic spreading of disinformation by a large number of their proponents. Deplorably, one of the chief spreaders has been the FDA; and if that agency had not routinely distorted the facts – and instead told the truth – the GE food venture would almost surely have collapsed.

For instance, when the FDA issued its policy statement on GE foods in 1992, it claimed it was “not aware of any information showing that foods derived by these new methods differ from other foods in any meaningful or uniform way,”(4) despite the fact its files contained multiple memos from its own scientists explaining how GE foods do indeed differ, why they pose greater risks, and why none should be presumed safe unless its safety has been demonstrated through rigorous testing.

Moreover, the FDA compounded the fraud by claiming that GE foods were “Generally Recognized as Safe” among experts and could be marketed without the requirement of any safety testing at all, even though its files reveal that it knew there was no expert consensus – and even though the law mandates that foods containing novel substances must be established safe through solid technical evidence (5).

Furthermore, to create the illusion that responsible regulation was being exercised, the agency set up a voluntary consultation process that it claims affords “rigorous” review. But the process is not a genuine scientific review, and the FDA’s Biotechnology Strategic Manager has acknowledged that fact – while admitting that the agency does not even request or receive any original test data (6).

The agency’s shameful behavior continues, and although by now it is well aware of much more information showing that GE foods significantly differ from others, it persists in its bogus claim that it is “not aware” of any; and this blatant falsehood was repeated by an FDA official on October 21st at a hearing of the Senate Agriculture Committee. She also asserted that the consultation process is so rigorous that it resolves “all safety issues,” which is not only misleading but ridiculous, because the process is far too superficial to achieve such certitude (7).

The Delusions Cannot Last Much Longer

Because the facts weigh so heavily against the GE food venture, and because it has relied on distorting them in order to survive, it cannot long endure. When enough people in general, or even a small number on Capitol Hill, finally learn the truth – and realize the extent to which the truth has been consistently twisted – there will be dramatic change. And if a sufficient dose of enlightenment were to soon suffuse The Hill, the Dark Act would be dead.

The author is Executive Director of the Alliance for Bio-Integrity

Notes

1) Document 1 at http://biointegrity.org/24-fda-documents The FDA covered up the memos from its scientists, and they only came to light because a lawsuit initiated by the Alliance for Bio-Integrity compelled the agency to release its files on GE foods.
2) “Elements of Precaution: Recommendations for the Regulation of Food Biotechnology in Canada; An Expert Panel Report on the Future of Food Biotechnology prepared by The Royal Society of Canada at the request of Health Canada Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Environment Canada” The Royal Society of Canada, January 2001
3) Dona, A., and I. S. Arvanitouannis (2009) Health Risks of Genetically Modified Foods. Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition 49: 164-75.
4) Statement of Policy: Foods Derived From New Plant Varieties, May 29, 1992, Federal Register vol. 57, No. 104 at 22991
5) The legal requirements are delineated at 21 CFR Sec. 170.30 (a-b). For a fuller explanation of what the law requires for GRAS status and how the FDA has been violating the requirements, see Chapter 5 of my book,Altered Genes, Twisted Truth, or my article, “Why the FDA’s Policy on Genetically Engineered Foods is Unscientific, Irresponsible, and Illegal.”
6) Maryanski, J., “Safety Assurance of Foods Derived by Modern Biotechnology in the United States,” July 1996.
7) Statement of Susan Mayne, PhD, Director, FDA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, before the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, U.S. Senate, October 21, 2015.

Seeing the clapping and hollering enthusiasm from the likes of Al Gore and others in Paris, one would have thought the earth had been saved. “I now invite the COP to adopt the decision entitled the Paris Agreement outlined in the document,” came the words of French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius. Then, the deluge. “Together, we’ve shown what’s possible when the world stands as one,” claimed an overly optimistic US President, Barack Obama.

The conclusion of COP21 did give us an environmental agreement, the first to impose various binding and voluntary measures within its remit that will first permit a peak of greenhouse gases globally before rapidly reducing.[1] It will attempt to limit the rise in global temperatures “well below” 2°C above pre-industrial levels, with the background target being 1.5°C (Art. 2.1(a)). A climate finance fund of $100 billion per annum for developing countries by 2020, with further future finance, is to come from the pockets of developing states.

Delegates emphasised the historical sense of the occasion. A persistent theme to come through was that of “balance”. In the Agreement, it was recognised that “global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions” would vary for developing country parties. Once reached, rapid reductions would take place forthwith “so as to achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century, on the basis of equity, and in the context of sustainability development and efforts to eradicate poverty” (Art. 4.1).

Various environmental groups were certainly not convinced by the paperwork. The agreement, according to Friends of the Earth International, was a “sham,” the outcome of deception and bullying. The developed countries, in short, had gotten away with the meanest of undertakings.[2] The problems of differentiation, to take one example of this purported sham, have been combated with a severely contorting bit of legalese termed Common But Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities, In the Light of Different National Circumstances (Art 2(2)).

Other stinging criticisms were also mounted. Compensation mechanisms for irreparable damage have not been factored in; adequate finance will not be made available; and the proposed program will exceed the proposed temperature limit. The point was largely compounded by the memories of Copenhagen 2009, when the insistence on binding emission targets led to any prospective being scuppered.

The result, then, has been a new creature in the form of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), many of which were submitted in advance of the meeting, and will be a cornerstone of the agreement. When these are factored in, a target closer to three degrees is considered the more accurate outcome of the commitments. Data from Climate Analytics, ECOFYS, the New Climate Institute and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, suggests that the generated figure, based on the Paris undertakings, will come at 2.7°C by 2100.

Nick Deardon, director of the Global Justice Now group, took issue with the persisting disparity between developed and developing states on the subject. As for what was actually binding in the agreement, one could count only on some bare bones procedures: the submission of an emissions reduction target, for instance, and the regular review mechanism on reaching that goal. (The first review will take place in 2019, with a more thorough “global stocktake” (Art. 14) in 2023 followed by cuts to carbon emissions two years later.)

What otherwise stands out is Article 6(1), a wordy provision that puts the boot into binding obligations while giving a free hand to states, suggesting that flexibility is better than not. “Parties recognize that some Parties choose to pursue voluntary cooperation in the implementation of their nationally determined contributions to allow for higher ambition in their mitigation and adaptation actions and to promote sustainable development and environmental integrity.”

Is such a regime a genuine compromise on shouldering adequate and proportionate burdens? Not so, according to Deardon. “It’s outrageous that the deal that’s on the table is being spun as a success when it undermines the rights of the world’s most vulnerable communities and had almost nothing binding to ensure a safe and liveable climate for future generations.”[3]

Any arrangement worth its salt was going to have to go into the drawers of history to consider past wrongs, a sort of divvying up of resources that would require a dramatic shifting of wealth. That is simply not going to happen. The fund for $100 billion, which is in turn hundreds of billions short, is small fare for what has taken place, and what is to come.

The interaction between humankind’s engagement with the environment has already produced a range of dystopian foretastes. Even climate change sceptics would find it hard to deny Beijing’s “red alert” for smog, declared on Monday by authorities in an effort to keep people in from the lethal air.[4] They would find it impossible to deny the increasing deaths from those living in cities which are becoming uninhabitable, or movement from areas which are vanishing. These are simply some features of the environmental devastation that require addressing.

COP21 seeks the vision of the de-carbonized globe; but it is highly questionable whether it will have the legs, and the lengths, to fulfil it. Kumi Naidoo of Greenpeace claims that, even if the wheel of climate action turned slowly, it had at least turned at Paris. “There’s much in this deal that frustrates and disappoints me, but it still puts the fossil fuel industry squarely on the wrong side of history.”[5] But after the chatter has been concluded in Paris, the implementation on home fronts will have to take place. Fossil fuel lobbies will continue their dirty work. (They are glaring absentees in the final text.) A hostile US Congress, rent with climate change sceptics, is already promising to make life for the administration interesting.

In any case, such measures are meaningless without a united front of seemingly disparate interests, be they anti-austerity groupings on the one hand, or climate change activists on the other.[6] Environment, economy and politics are vast but related peas in a complex pod. In the aftermath of Paris, it is clear that COP21 was far from what Angelica Navarro, Bolivian trade and climate negotiator, would have wished for: the equivalent of a Marshall plan for planet earth.

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

Notes

[1] http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/l09.pdf

[2] http://www.foei.org/press/archive-by-subject/climate-justice-energy-press/paris-climate-deal-sham

[3] http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35084374

[4] http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1889215/how-china-has-gone-climate-villain-hero-just-six-years?utm_source=&utm_medium=&utm_campaign=SCMPSocialNewsfeed

[5] http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/cop21-climate-talks-paris-negotiations-conclusion/blog/55092/

[6] http://www.towardfreedom.com/32-archives/environment/4109-naomi-klein-we-are-going-backwards-cop21–the-opposite-of-progress

My warning that the neoconservatives have resurrected the threat of nuclear Armageddon, which was removed by Reagan and Gorbachev, is also being given by Noam Chomsky, former US Secretary of Defense William Perry, and other sentient observers of the neoconservatives’ aggressive policies toward Russia and China.

Daily we observe additional aggressive actions taken by Washington and its vassals against Russia and China. For example, Washington is pressuring Kiev not to implement the Minsk agreements designed to end the conflict between the puppet government in Kiev and the break-away Russian republics. 

https://www.rt.com/news/325687-ukraine-rhetoric-sabotage-churkin/

Washington refuses to cooperate with Russia in the war against ISIS. Washington continues to blame Russia for the destruction of MH-17, while preventing an honest investigation of the attack on the Malaysian airliner. Washington continues to force its European vassals to impose sanctions on Russia based on the false claim that the conflict in Ukraine was caused by a Russian invasion of Ukraine, not by Washington’s coup in overthrowing a democratically elected government and installing a puppet answering to Washington.

The list is long. Even the International Monetary Fund (IMF), allegedly a neutral, non-political world organization, has been suborned into the fight against Russia. Under Washington’s pressure, the IMF has abandoned its policy of refusing to lend to debtors who are in arrears in their loan payments to creditors. In the case of Ukraine’s debt to Russia, this decision removes the enforcement mechanism that prevents countries (such as Greece) from defaulting on their debts. The IMF has announced that it will lend to Ukraine in order to pay the Ukraine’s Western creditors despite the fact that Ukraine has renounced repayment of loans from Russia.

Michael Hudson believes, correctly in my view, that this new IMF policy will also be applied to those countries to whom China has made loans. The IMF’s plan is to leave Russia and China as countries who lack the usual enforcement mechanism to collect from debtors, thus permitting debtors to default on the loans without penalty.

In other words, the IMF is presenting itself, although the financial media will not notice, as a tool of US foreign policy.

What this shows, and what should concern us, is that the institutions of Western civilization are in fact tools of American dominance. The institutions are not there for the noble reasons stated in their founding documents.

The bottom line is that Western Capitalism is simply a looting mechanism that has successfully suborned Western governments and all Western “do-good” institutions.

As in George Orwell’s 1984, the IMF is dividing the world into warring factions — the West vs. the BRICS.

To avoid the coming conflict that the neoconservatives’ pursuit of American hegemony is bringing, the Russians have relied on fact-based, truth-based diplomacy. However, neocon Washington relies on lies and propaganda and has many more and much louder voices. Consequently, it is Washington’s lies, not Russia’s truth, that most of the Western sheeple believe.

In other words, Russia was misled by believing that the West respects and abides by the values that it professes. In fact, these “Western values” are merely a cover for the unbridled evil of which the West consists.

The Western peoples are so dimwitted that they have not yet understood that the “war on terror” is, in fact, a war to create terror that can be exported to Muslim areas of Russia and China in order to destabilize the two countries that serve as a check on Washington’s unilateral, hegemonic power.

The problem for the neocon unilateralists is that Russia and China—although misinformed by their “experts” educated abroad in the neoliberal tradtion, people who are de facto agents of Washington without even knowing it—are powerful military powers, both nuclear and conventional. Unless Russia and China are content to be Washington’s vassal states, for the neoconservatives, who control Washington and, therefy, the West, to press these two powerful countries so hard can only lead to war. As Washington is not a match for Russia and China in conventional warfare, the war will be nuclear, and the result will be the end of life on earth.

Whether ironic or paradoxical, the US is pushing a policy that means the end of life. Yet, the majority of Western governments support it, and the insouciant Western peoples have no clue.

But Putin has caught on. Russia is not going to submit. Soon China will undersand that US dependency on China’s workforce and imports is not a protection from Washington’s aggression. When China looks beyond its MIT and Harvard miseducated neoliberal economists to the writing on the wall, Washington is going to be in deep trouble.

What will Washington do? Confronted with two powerful nuclear forces, will the crazed neocons back off? Or will their confidence in their ideology bring us the final war?

This is a real question. The US government pays Internet trolls to ridicule such quesions and their authors. To see the people who sell out humanity for money, all you have to do is to read the comments on the numerous websites that reproduce this column.

Nevertheless, the question remains, unanswered by the Western presstitute media and unanswered by the bought-and-paid-for stooges in the US Congress and all Western “democracies.”

Indications are that Russia has had enough of Amerian arrogance. The Russian people have elevated a leader as they always do, and which Western countries seldom, if ever, do. The West has triumphed by technology, not by leadership. But Vladimir Putin is Russia’s choice of a leader, and he is one. Russia also has the technology and a sense of itself that no longer exists in the diversified West.

There is nothing like Putin anywhere in the West, over which presides a collection of bought-and-paid-for-puppets who report to private interest groups, such as Wall Street, the military-industrial complex, the Israel Lobby, agribusiness, and the extractive industries (energy, mining, timber).

At the 70th Anniversary of the United Nations (September 28), Putin, backed by the President of China, announced that half of the world no longer accepts American unilateralism. Additionally, Putin said that Russia can no longer tolerate the state of affairs in the world that results from Washington’s pursuit of hegemony.

Two days later Putin took over the fight against ISIS in Syria.

Putin, still relying on agreements with Washington, relied on the agreement that Russia would announce beforehand its attacks on ISIS installations in order to prevent any NATO-Russian air encounters. Washington took advantage of this trust placed in Washington by Russia, and arranged for a Turkish jet fighter to ambush an unsuspecting Russian fighter-bomber.

http://sputniknews.com/analysis/20151211/1031591091/us-defense-analyst-su-24-downing.html

This was an act of war, committed by Washington and Turkey, and thereby Washington’s European NATO vassal states against a nuclear power capable of exterminating all life in every one of the countries, including the “superpower US.”

This simple fact should make even the American super-patriots, who wear the flag on their sleeve, wonder about the trust they place in “their” government and in Fox “news,” CNN, NPR, and the rest of the presstitutes who continually lie every minute of every broadcast.

But it won’t. Americans and Europeans are too insouciant. They are locked tightly in The Matrix, where the impotent creatures are content to live without understanding reality.

Realizing that it is pointless to attempt to communicate to the Western sheeple, who have no input into their government’s policy, Putin now sends his message directly to Washington.

Putin’s message is loud and clear in his order directed against any US/NATO operations against Russia in its Syrian operations against ISIS:

“Any targets threatening the Russian groups of forces or land infrastructure must be immediately destroyed.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/11/putin-immediately-destroy-target-threatening-russia-syria

Putin followed up this order with another order to the Russian Defense Ministry Board:

“Special attention must be paid to strengthening the combat potential of the strategic nuclear forces and implementing defense space programs. It is necessary, as outlined in our plans, to equip all components of the nuclear triad with new arms.”

http://sputniknews.com/russia/20151211/1031582368/putin-air-defense.html 

Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported at the Defense Ministry meeting that 56 percent of Russia’s nuclear forces are new and that more than 95 percent are at a permanent state of readiness. The few Western news sources that report these developments pretend that Russia is ”saber-rattling” without cause.

To make it clear even for the insouciant Western populations, everything that Reagan and Gorbachev worked for has been overthrown by crazed, demented, evil American neoconservatives whose desire for hegemony over the world is driving the world to extinction.

These are the same bloodthirsty war criminals who have destroyed seven countries, murdered, maimed, and displaced millions of Muslim peoples, and sent millions of refugees from the neocon wars into Europe. None of these war criminals are protected from terrorist attack. If the alleged “Muslim threat” was real, every one of the war criminals would be dead by now, not the innocent people sitting in Paris cafes or attending parties in California.

Neocons are the unhumans who created on purpose the “war against terror” in order to gain a weapon against Russia and China. You can witness these unhumans every day on talk TV and read them in the Weekly Standard, National Review, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the British, German, Australian, Canadian, and endless Western newspapers.

In the West lies prevail, and the lies are driving the world to extinction. An expert reminds us that it only takes one mistake and 30 minutes to destroy life on earth.

https://www.rt.com/shows/sophieco/324941-nuclear-cold-war-us/

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books areThe Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.

How could Russia in just 20 years, without wars or other perturbations, rise from a semi-colony to an acknowledged world leader, equal among the top ones?

Kitchen “strategists”, who sincerely believe that massive nuclear strike is the universal solution to any international problem (even the hottest one, close to military confrontation), are unhappy about the moderate position of the Russian leadership in the crisis with Turkey. However, they deem insufficient even direct participation of the Russian military in the Syrian conflict. They are also dissatisfied with the Moscow’s activities on the Ukrainian front.

However, for some reason nobody asks a simple question. How did it happen that all of a sudden Russia started not just actively stand up to the world hegemonic power, but successfully win against it on all fronts?

Why now

By the end of 1990s, Russia was a state that economically and financially was at the level of the third world. An anti-oligarch rebellion was brewing in the country. It was fighting an endless and hopeless war with Chechens that spilled over to Dagestan. National security was supported only by nukes, as to conduct any serious operation even within its own borders, the army did have neither trained personnel nor modern equipment, fleet could not sail, and aviation could not fly.

Sure enough, anybody can tell how the industry, including military, was gradually revived, how growing living standards stabilized the internal situation, how the army was modernized.

But the key question is not who did more to rebuild the Russian military: Shoygu, Serdukov, or the General Staff. The key question is not who is a better economist, Glaziev or Kudrin, and whether it would have been possible to allocate even more resources to social spending.

The key unknown factor in this task is time. How did Russia have it, why did the US give Russia time to prepare resistance, to grow economic and military muscle, to annihilate State Department-funded pro-American lobby in the politics and the media?

Why did not the open confrontation, in which we are now getting ahead of Washington, begin earlier, 10-15 years ago, when Russia had no chance to withstand sanctions? In reality, the US in the 1990s or 2000s started installing puppet regimes on the post-Soviet space, including Moscow, which was considered as one of several capitals of dismembered Russia.

Healthy conservatism of diplomats

The conditions for today’s military and diplomatic successes were being built for decades on the invisible (diplomatic) front.

It must be said that among central ministries the Foreign Ministry was the first to recover from administrative mess caused by the breakup of the early 1990s. As early as in 1996, Evgeny Primakov became the Foreign Minister, who, in addition to turning the government plane around over the Atlantic upon learning about the US aggression against Yugoslavia, turned around the Russian foreign policy, which after that never followed the US course.

Two and a half years later, he recommended Igor Ivanov as his successor, who slowly (almost imperceptibly), but surely continued to strengthen the Russian diplomacy. He was succeeded in 2004 by the current foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, under whose leadership diplomacy accumulated enough resources to switch from positional defense to decisive offence.

Among these three ministers only Ivanov received The Hero Star, but I am sure that both his predecessor and successor are just as worthy of this award.

It must be said that traditional caste closeness and healthy conservatism of the diplomatic corps contributed to rapid restoration of the work of the Foreign Ministry. That very unhurriedness and traditionalism the diplomats are accused of helped. “Kozyrevshchina” (the word is derived from the name of Andrei Kozyrev, the Foreign minister in 1990-1996; the word means “acting like Kozyrev”, i.e. in a subservient manner against one’s own interests – translator’s note) never caught on in the Foreign Ministry because it did not fit.

Period of internal consolidation

Let’s return to the 1996. Russia is at the bottom of the pit economically, but the default of 1998 is still ahead. The USA totally disregards the international law replacing it with its arbitrary actions. NATO and the EU are getting ready to move to the Russian borders.

Russia has nothing to respond with. Russia (as USSR before it) can annihilate any aggressor in 20 minutes, but nobody plans to fight it. Any deviation from the Washington-approved line, any attempt to pursue an independent foreign policy would lead to economic strangulation and subsequent internal destabilization – at that time the country lives on Western credits.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that until 1999 the power is in the hands of the comprador elite beholden to the US (like the current Ukrainian one), and until 2004-2005 compradors are still fighting for power with patriotic Putin’s bureaucracy. The last rearguard battle given by the loosing compradors was an attempt at a revolution in 2011 at Bolotnaya square. What would have happened if they had made their move in 2000, when they had an overwhelming advantage?

The Russian leaders needed time for internal consolidation, restoration of the economic and financial systems, ensuring their self-reliance and independence from the West, and rebuilding the modern army. Finally, Russia needed allies.

Diplomats had an almost impossible mission. It was necessary, without retreating on key issues, to consolidate the influence of Russia in post-Soviet states, ally itself with other governments resisting the US, strengthen them, if possible, all the while creating an illusion in Washington that Russia is weak and ready for strategic concessions.

The illusion of Russia’s weakness

One demonstration of the fact that this task was successfully achieved are the myths that are still alive among some Western analysts and pro-American Russian “opposition”. For example, if Russia opposes another instance of Western adventurism, it is “bluffing to save face”, the Russian elites are totally dependent on the West because “their money is there”, “Russia sells out its allies”.

However, the myths of “rusty rockets that do not fly”, “hungry solders building dachas for generals”, and about “economy in tatters” are essentially gone. Only marginals believe in them, who are not really incapable, but are too afraid to acknowledge the reality.

These very illusions of weakness and readiness to back off that fooled the West into belief that the Russian question is solved and prevented it from rapid political and economic attacks on Moscow, gave the Russian leadership the precious time for reforms.

Naturally, there is never too much time, and Russia would have preferred to postpone the direct confrontation with the US, which started in 2012-13, by another 3-5 years, or even avoid it altogether, but the diplomacy won 12-15 years for the country – a huge period of time in today’s rapidly changing world.

Russian diplomacy in Ukraine

To save space, I will give just one very clear example, most relevant in the current political situation.

People still blame Russia for not counteracting the US in Ukraine actively enough, for failing to create a pro-Russian “fifth column” to counterbalance the pro-American one, for working with elites, rather than with the people, etc. Let us evaluate the situation based on real capabilities, rather than wishful thinking.

Despite all references to the people, it is the elite that determines the state policy. The Ukrainian elite, in all its actions, has always been and still is anti-Russian. The difference is that the ideologically nationalistic (gradually becoming Nazi) elite was openly russophobic, whereas the economic (comprador, oligarchic) elite was simply pro-Western, but did not object to lucrative links with Russia.

I would like to remind you that not somebody else but representatives of supposedly pro-Russian Party of Regions bragged that they did not allow Russian business to Donbass. They also were the once who tried to convince the world that they are better for Euro-integration than nationalists.

The regime of Yanukovich-Azarov precipitated economic confrontation with Russia in 2013, demanding that despite signing the treaty of association with the EU Russia retained and even enhanced favorable regime with Ukraine. After all, Yanukovich and his fellows in the Party of Regions, while they had absolute power (2010-2013), supported Nazis financially, informationally, and politically. They led them from marginal niche to mainstream politics in order to have a convenient opponent in the presidential elections in 2015, while suppressing any pro-Russian informational activity (not to mention a political one).

The Ukrainian communist party, while retaining pro-Russia rhetoric, never had a shot at power, and played a role of convenient loyal opposition indirectly supporting oligarchs, channeling protest activity into venues safe for any (including current) powers.

Under these conditions, any Russian attempt to work with NGOs or to create pro-Russian media would be perceived as an encroachment on the rights of Ukrainian oligarchs to rob the country singlehandedly, which would cause a further drift of the Ukrainian officialdom towards the West viewed by Kiev as a counter-balance to Russia. The US would, quite naturally, see it as transition of Russia to direct confrontation, and would have redoubled its efforts to destabilize Russia and support pro-Western elites all over the post-Soviet space.

Neither in 2000, nor in 2004 Russia was ready to openly confront the US. Even when (not by Moscow’s choice) this happened 2013, Russia needed almost two years to mobilize its resources in order to give a strong response in Syria. The Syrian elite, in contrast to the Ukrainian one, from the very beginning (in 2011-2012) rejected the option of compromising with the West.

That is why during 12 years (from “Ukraine without Kuchma” action, which was the first unsuccessful attempt of pro-American coup in Ukraine) the Russian diplomacy worked on two key tasks.

First, it was keeping the situation in Ukraine in unstable equilibrium; second, convincing the Ukrainian elite that the West was a danger to their wellbeing, whereas reorientation towards Russia was the only way to stabilize the situation and save the country as well as the position of the elite itself.

The first task was successfully achieved. The US has managed to switch Ukraine from the multi-directional mode into the mode of anti-Russian battering ram only by 2013, having spent enormous amount of time and resources and having acquired a regime with huge internal contradictions incapable of existing independently (without growing American support). Instead of using Ukrainian resources for their benefit, the US is forced to spend their own resources to prolong the agony of the Ukrainian statehood destroyed by the coup.

The second task has not been accomplished due to objective (independent of Russian efforts) reasons. The Ukrainian elite turned out to be totally inadequate, incapable of strategic thinking, of evaluating real risks and advantages, but living and acting under the influence of two myths.

First – the West will easily win in any confrontation with Russia and share the spoils with Ukraine. Second – no effort, except the unwavering anti-Russian position, is necessary for comfortable existence (at the expense of Western financing). In the situation of choice between orientation on Russia and survival, or siding with the West and dying, the Ukrainian elite chose death.

However, even out of negative choice of the Ukrainian elite the Russian diplomacy managed to get maximum advantage. Russia did not let itself be sucked into a confrontation with Ukrainian regime, instead forcing Kiev and the West into the grueling negotiation process on the background of a low-key civil war and excluding the USA from the Minsk format. By focusing on contradictions between Washington and the EU, Russia managed to burden the West with Ukraine financially.

As a result, initially consolidated position of Washington and Brussels disintegrated. Counting on a politico-diplomatic blitzkrieg, the European politicians were not prepared for a prolonged confrontation. The EU economy simply could not support it. In its turn, The US was not ready to accept Kiev exclusively on its own payroll.

Today, after a year and a half of efforts, the “old Europe”, which determines the position of the EU, such as Germany and France, has abandoned Ukraine completely and is looking for a way to extend a hand to Russia over the heads of the pro-American Eastern European limitrofes (Poland and Baltics). Even Warsaw, which used to be the main “advocate” of Kiev in the EU, openly (although semi-officially) hints at the possibility of dividing Ukraine, having lost the faith in the ability of the Kiev authorities to keep the country together.

In the Ukrainian political and expert community hysterics about “the treason of Europe” is growing. Former governor of the Donetsk region (appointed by the Nazi regime) and oligarch Sergey Taruta states that his country has eight months to exist. Oligarch Dmitry Firtash (who had a reputation of the Ukrainian “king maker”) predicts disintegration as early as in the spring.

All this, quietly and imperceptibly, without using tanks and strategic aviation, was achieved by the Russian diplomacy. Achieved in a tough confrontation with the block of most powerful, militarily and economically, countries, while starting from a much weaker position and with the most peculiar allies, not all of which were or are happy about growing Russian power.

Breakthrough in the Middle East

In parallel, Russia managed to return to the Middle East, retain and develop integration within the post-Soviet space (Eurasian Economic Union), together with China roll out a Eurasian integration project (Shanghai Cooperation Organization), and initiate via BRICS a global integration project.

Unfortunately, limited space does not allow us to discuss in detail all strategic actions of the Russian diplomacy for the past 20 years (from Primakov until today). A comprehensive study would take many volumes.

However, anyone who would try to answer honestly how Russia managed within 20 years, without wars or upheavals, to rise from the state of a semi-colony to the state of a recognized world leader, would have to acknowledge the contributions of many people on Smolenskaya Square (where the Foreign Ministry is located – translator’s note). Their efforts do not tolerate fuss or publicity, but without blood and victims yield results comparable to those achieved by multi-million armies in many years.

Rostislav Ischenko, analyst of “Russia Today”.

Source: http://oko-planet.su/politik/politiklist/301881-rostislav-ischenko-rossiya-v-nevidimoy-voyne.html

Translated by Seva

Bagnolet, 12 December 2015

After two weeks of heads of states taking centre stage to salve their consciences, COP21 has come up with an agreement that many worried in advance would offer nothing good for the peoples of the world. There is nothing binding for states, national contributions lead us towards a global warming of over 3°C—and multinationals are the main beneficiaries. It was essentially a media circus. However states know how to make binding commitments when it comes to signing free trade agreements. Those agreements threaten the democratic functioning of countries by merely serving the interests of multinationals. Once more, it is clear that money dictates the law, even taking precedence over the future of humanity.

“Despite multiple attempts to silence us these past few weeks, the social movements have made their voices heard today,” said Antolin Huascar, a peasant leader from Peru. “The future of the planet is in the hands of the people,” he added.

Peasants from across the world, from member organizations of Via Campesina, came together to warn others that the agricultural sector is being severely affected. While they are the guardians of a changing climate, they stressed that industrial agriculture is threatening their disappearance. At the same time, COP21 is further opening the door to financial speculation on nature, industrialisation of agriculture, and accelerating resource grabbing.

“We, the peasants of the world, will now return to our territories and farms all the more determined to continue our struggle for food sovereignty for all the peoples of the world,” Huascar concluded.

The masquerade may be over, but the peasant fight will only continue to gain momentum.

Contacts :

Elina Bouchet, media contact (French) : 00 33 6 95 29 80 78

Solenne Garin, media contact (English, Spanish) : 00 33 6 10 04 83 69

and [email protected]

Damascus, SANA – President Bashar al-Assad gave an interview to the Spanish EFE news agency in which he stressed that the Russians’ values and interests in their policy towards Syria are not in contradiction, noting that as long as the US is not serious in fighting the terrorists, the West won’t be serious.

The following is the full text of the interview:

Question 1: Thank you very much, Mr. President, for your hospitality and for giving the Spanish News Agency EFE the opportunity to understand what is the situation in your country. Okay, on November 14th, the world powers, including Russia and Iran, agreed in Vienna on a timetable for a political solution for the Syria crisis. According to this timetable, the negotiations between your government and the moderate opposition should start on January 1st. Are you ready to start those negotiations?

President Assad: You are most welcome in Syria. Since the very beginning of the conflict in Syria, we adopted the dialogue approach with every party that is involved in the Syrian conflict, and we dealt positively, responded positively, to every initiative that has been launched by different states around the world regardless of the real intention and the genuineness of the people or the officials who started those initiatives. So, we were ready, and we are ready today to start the negotiations with the opposition. But it depends on the definition of opposition. Opposition, for everyone in this world, doesn’t mean militant. There’s a big difference between militants, terrorists, and opposition. Opposition is a political term, not a military term. So, talking about the concept is different from the practice, because so far, we’ve been seeing that some countries, including Saudi Arabia, the United States, and some Western countries wanted the terrorist groups to join these negotiations. They want the Syrian government to negotiate with the terrorists, something I don’t think anyone would accept in any country.

Question 2: Would you be ready to negotiate, to dialogue, with the opposition groups that are right now gathering in Riyadh?

President Assad: It’s the same, because they are a mixture of political opposition and militants. Let me be realistic; regarding the militants in Syria, we already had some dialogue with some groups, not organizations, for one reason, and the reason was to reach a situation where they give up their armaments and either join the government or go back to their normal life, having amnesty from the government. This is the only way to deal with the militants in Syria.

Whenever they want to change their approach, give up the armaments, we are ready, while to deal with them as a political entity, this is something we completely refuse. This is first. Regarding what they call political opposition, you as a Spanish [person], when you look at the opposition in your country, it’s self-evident that the opposition is a Spanish opposition, is related to the Spanish grassroots, Spanish citizens. It cannot be opposition while it’s related and beholden to any other country, to a foreign country, no matter which country. So, again, it depends on which group are we talking about in Saudi Arabia. People that have been made as opposition in Saudi Arabia, in Qatar, in France, in the UK, in the US. So, as a principle, we have to, we are ready, but at the end, if you want to reach something, to have successful and fruitful dialogue, you need to deal with the real, patriotic, national opposition that has grassroots in Syria and is only related to the Syrian people, not to any other state or regime in the world.

Question 3: Will the Syrian delegation attend the conference in New York in case this conference was confirmed, in the next weeks?

There’s no point of meeting in New York or anywhere else without defining terrorist groups

President Assad: It’s not confirmed yet. The recent Russian statement said they preferred it to be, I think, in Vienna. This is first. Second, they said it’s not appropriate before defining which are the terrorist groups and which are not, which is very realistic and logical. For us, in Syria, everyone who holds a machinegun is a terrorist, so without defining this term, reaching a definition, there’s no point of just meeting in New York, or anywhere else.

Question 4: Okay, Mr. President, in your opinion, what can be done to put an end to “Daesh?”

President Assad: This is a very complicated issue, not because of ISIS, because ISIS is an organization. There’s something more dangerous to be dealt with, which is the reasons. First of all, the ideology, something that’s been instilled in the minds of the people or the society in the Muslim world for decades now, because of the Wahabi institutions, because of the Saudi money that’s been paid to support this kind of dark and resentful ideology. Without dealing with this ideology, it’s just a waste of time to say we are going to deal with Daesh or al-Nusra or any other organization that belongs to Al Qaeda. Daesh-Al Qaeda and al-Nusra-Al Qaeda, and you have many other organizations that have the same ideology.

So, this is something that should be dealt with on the long term; how to prevent those Wahabi institutions and Saudi money from reaching the Muslim institutions around the world in order to have more extremism and terrorism spreading around the world. This is first. Second, we have to talk about the short term and dealing with the situation now, Daesh in Syria and Iraq, mainly. Of course, fighting terrorism is another self-evident answer to that question, but we are talking about an ideology and an organization that has unlimited ability to recruit terrorists from around the world. In Syria, we have more than 100 nationalities fighting with the extremists and terrorists,

Al Qaeda and al-Nusra and others. The first step we should take in order to solve this problem is to stop the flood of terrorists, especially through Turkey to Syria and to Iraq, and of course we have to stop the flowing of money, Saudi money and other Wahabi money and Qatari money to those terrorists through Turkey, and the armaments, and every other logistical support. This is how we can start, then later, if you want to talk about the rest, it could be political, it could be economic, it could be cultural, it has many aspects, but for the time being, we have to start with stopping the flow, and at the same time fighting terrorists from within Syria by the Syrian Army and by whoever wants to support the Syrian Army.

Question 5: Who buys the oil from Daesh? Which countries are behind Daesh?

Turkey is the only lifeline for ISIS

President Assad: The Russians last week published on TV pictures and videos of trucks carrying oil crossing the Syrian-Turkish borders. Of course, the Turks denied this, it’s very easy to deny, but let’s think about the reality. Most of the oil in Syria is in the northern part of Syria. If they want to export it to Iraq, that’s impossible, because every party in Iraq is fighting ISIS. In Syria, it’s the same. In Lebanon, it’s very far. Jordan in the south is very far. So, the only lifeline for ISIS is Turkey. Those trucks moving the oil from Syria to Turkey, and Turkey selling this cheap oil to the rest of the world. I don’t think anyone has any doubt about this indubitable reality.

Question 6: Which countries are behind Daesh?

Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar are the main perpetrators in the atrocities of ISIS

President Assad: You have states, mainly Saudi Arabia, because both this country and this organization do the beheading, both following the Wahabi ideology, both of them reject anyone who is not like them; not only not Muslim, but who is Muslim but not like them. That Muslim could belong to the same sect, but if he’s not like them, he’s rejected. So, Saudi Arabia is the main supporter of this kind of organization. Of course, you have figures, you have different people who have the same ideology or same belief, they send money privately, but it’s not only who sends the money, who facilitates the reaching of the money to those organizations. How could organizations considered [to be] terrorist around the world like ISIS or al-Nusra have hundreds of millions, to have this recruits, to have a nearly full army like any other state, if they don’t have direct support, source of money, and direct support like Turkey in particular. So, Saudi Arabia and Turkey and Qatar are the main perpetrators in the atrocities of ISIS.

Question 7: Yesterday we saw the mortars falling near Damascus. It seems that this fighting is far from ending. When do you think that the war will be over in Syria?

Pressure Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and this conflict will end in less than a year

President Assad: If you want to talk about the Syrian conflict as an isolated conflict with the same situation now, the same Syrian troops and Syria’s allies, and the terrorists from the other side, we could end it in a few months. It’s not very complicated in either meaning, whether militarily or politically. It’s not complicated. But as long as you’re talking about a lifeline that isn’t being suffocated for those terrorists, having recruits on daily basis, in every sense, money, armaments, human resources, everything, that will make it much longer. Of course it’s going to have a heavy price. But at the end, we are making advancement. I’m not saying that we’re not making advancement. The situation on the military level is much better than before, but again, the price is very high. That’s why I said earlier if you want to end it shorter, and most of the world is saying now they want to see an end to this crisis, okay, make pressure on those countries that, you know them, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, then this conflict will end in less than a year, definitely.

Question 8: Is there any kind of military coordination between the Syrian Army and the bombing attacks of the US-led coalition?

Russian and Syrian armies achieved in a few weeks  much better than the US-led alliance

President Assad: Not at all, not at all, not a single connection regarding this sector, let’s say, military sector. That’s why, for more than one year now, they’ve been bombing ISIS, and at the same time ISIS is expanding, because you cannot deal with terrorists from the air. You have to deal with them from the ground, and that’s why when the Russians came and started their participation in the war against terrorism, the achievement of the Russian and Syrian armies in a few weeks was much better than the alliance has achieved during more than a year, and actually didn’t achieve anything to say more, because they were supporting ISIS, maybe indirectly, because it was expanding, and you have more recruits coming. So, we cannot say that they achieved something in reality.

Question 9: What do you think about Obama’s role in this crisis?

As long as the US is not serious in fighting the terrorists, the West won’t be serious

President Assad: Let’s talk about the American administration, because Obama, at the end, is part of the administration. You have lobbies in the United States. From the very beginning, the United States provided those terrorists with different political covers. At the very beginning they called them “peaceful demonstrations” then when they appeared that they are terrorists they said they are “moderate terrorists,” then at the end they have to say that you have ISIS and al-Nusra, but at the end, they’re not objective, they don’t dare to say that they were wrong. They don’t dare to say that Qatar at the very beginning, and then Saudi Arabia, have misled them. This is first. Second, as long as the United States is not serious in fighting the terrorists, we cannot expect the rest of the West to be serious, because they are the allies of the United States, and so far, in brief, let’s say, the role of the Americans in that situation is not to destroy ISIS or the extremism or the terrorism, and Obama said it; he said he wants to contain it. What does it mean? It means to allow you to move somewhere, while not to let you go somewhere else. It’s like to define the border of the harmful effect of ISIS. So, we don’t think that the Americans are genuine in fighting the terrorism.

Question 10: And what about French President Francois Hollande? He has talked about destroying ISIS. Do you think that at some point at the end, the French will cooperate with your government?

President Assad: Look at what he did after the recent shootings in Paris last month. They started, the French aircrafts, started attacking ISIS with heavy bombardments. They said they wanted to fight – he said we’re going to be in a war with terrorism. What does it mean? It means before the shootings, they weren’t in a war with terrorism. Why didn’t they do the same before the war? It means this heavy bombardment is just to dissipate the anger within the French public opinion, not to fight terrorism. If you want to fight terrorism, you don’t wait for a shooting in order to fight terrorism. Fighting terrorism is a principle. It’s not a transient situation where you feel you’re angry and you want to attack the terrorists. You have to have value, principle, in order to defeat it, and it should be a sustainable kind of fighting. So, this is another proof that the French are not serious in fighting terrorism.

Question 11: And what do you think about the EU in general? The EU position on this conflict? Could Europe do something more inside Europe against Jihadist groups?

Europe can play a role, but it is now just a satellite to the US policy

President Assad: Of course they can, definitely. They have the ability, but it’s not only about the ability; it’s about the will. The question that we’ve been asking – not only during the crisis, before the crisis, for the last, let’s say, more than ten years, especially after the war on Iraq: does Europe exist politically anymore, or is it just a satellite to the United States policy? So far, we don’t see any independent political position. Some, you have some cases, let’s say, we don’t put everyone in one basket, and the proof is the relation between Europe and Russia. The United States pushed Europe to do something against its interests, to make embargo on Russia. This is not realistic, not logical. So, of course it can, of course it has interest to fight terrorism like we have the same interest, and the recent shooting and what happened in Madrid in 2004 and 2001 in New York and then in London, and recently in California, this is proof that everyone has interest to do, but who has the will and who has the vision? That is the question that I don’t have an answer about it now, but in the meantime, I’m not optimistic about this will.

Question 12: What has President Vladimir Putin asked of you in return for Russian military aid?

President Putin didn’t ask for anything in return for Russian military aid

President Assad: He didn’t ask for anything in return for a simple reason; because it’s not a trade. Actually, the normal relation between two countries is a relation about mutual interest. The question is what is the mutual interest between Syria and Russia? Does Russia have interest in having more terrorism in Syria? The collapse of the Syrian state? Anarchy? No, they don’t have. So, let’s say in return, Russia have the stability of Syria, of Iraq, of our region – we’re not far from Russia, of Russia, and let me go far beyond that, of Europe. Russia now, in Syria, they are defending Europe directly, and again, the recent terrorist events in Europe is the proof that what’s going on here will affect them positively and negatively.

Question 13: Okay, has Putin asked you to resign your position of president at some point?

Staying in or leaving office depends on the Syrian people’s option

President Assad: First of all, the question is: what is the relation between the president staying in power or resigning with the conflict? That is the first question we have to ask. This kind of personalizing the problem just to be used as a cover to say that “there’s no problem with the terrorism, no country interfering from the outside, sending money and armaments to the Syrian rebels in order to make chaos and anarchy. Actually, this is a president who wants to stay in power and people who are fighting for freedom, and he’s oppressing them and killing them, and that’s why they are revolting.” This is a very romantic picture for, let’s say, teenagers, like a love story for teenagers. Reality is not like this. The question is if it’s part of the solution in Syria. Political solution, that means when I say political solution doesn’t mean Western or external; it should be a Syrian solution. When the Syrian people doesn’t want you to be a president, you have to leave the same day, not the other day. The same day. This is a principle for me. If I think that I can help my country, especially in a crisis, and the Syrian people still support me – I don’t say the Syrian people; the majority of the Syrian people to be more precise – of course I have to stay. That’s self-evident.

Question 14: As a hypothesis, would you accept the possibility of leaving Syria in the future and leaving to a friendly country if this was the condition for a final political arrangement?

President Assad: For me leaving the position?

Question 15: Leaving the position and leaving Syria.

President Assad: No, leaving Syria, I never thought about leaving Syria under any circumstances, in any situation, something I never put in my mind, like the Americans say “plan B” or “plan C.” Actually, no. But again, the same answer: that depends on the Syrian population; would they support you or not? If you have the support, it means you’re not the problem, because if you are the problem as a person, the Syrian people will be against you. What’s the point of the people, of the majority, supporting you, while you are the reason of the conflict? This is the first aspect. The second aspect, if I have a problem with the Syrians, with the majority of the Syrians, and you have the national and regional countries being against me, and the West, most of the West, the United States, their allies, the strongest countries and the richest countries in the world against me, and I’m against the Syrian people, how can I be president? It’s not logical. I’m being here after five years – nearly five years – of the war, because I have the support of the majority of the Syrians.

Question 16: Is it true that Russia will have another military base in Syria?

If there will be another Russian military base in Syria, they would have announced it

President Assad: No, that’s not true, and two days ago, they denied this allegation. If there is, they would have announced it, and we would have announced it at the same time, so no.

Question 17: Are the Iranians planning to build here their own military base?

President Assad: No. They never thought about it, never discussed this.

Question 18: Okay. Is it possible to include President Erdogan in solution for the crisis? What is the role of Turkey in this crisis?

Erdogan is a Muslim Brotherhood ideological person, we don’t expect him to change

President Assad: As a principle, if he’s willing to get away from his criminal attitude that he’s been adopting since the beginning of the crisis by supporting the terrorists in every way, we don’t have a problem. We don’t have a problem. At the end, we will be ready to welcome any help or positive participation from anywhere. That’s in principle. So, whoever’s been complicit against Syria, we don’t havea problem with, but do we expect Erdogan to change? No, for one reason, because Erdogan is a Muslim Brotherhood ideological person, so he cannot go against his ideology. He’s not a pragmatic man who thinks about the interests of his country. He’s working against the interests of his country for the sake of his ideology, whether it’s realistic or not. So we don’t expect Erdogan to change in that way.

Question 19: Mr. President, US Secretary of State John Kerry has announced recently that he will travel to Moscow to see President Putin and the Russian Foreign Minister. Don’t you fear that a kind of trade between the US and Moscow, Ukraine against Syria, could be in preparation?

No Russia-West deal against Syria, Russia’s policy towards Syria is based on values and interests

President Assad: No, because it’s been now nearly five years, and we’ve been hearing that argument, or let’s say, kind of, how to say, idea, by the Western officials, just to make a wedge, a kind of wedge between Syria and Russia. The Russians are pragmatic, but at the same time they are adopting a moral policy based on values and principles, not only on interests, and the good thing in their position is that there’s no conflict or contradiction between their values and their interests. This is first. Second, The Russians know very well that any solution, if there’s a trade for example for the solution, any solution cannot be implemented if it’s not a compromise between the Syrians. So, Russia and the United States and any other country in this world cannot make a deal; we can make the deal with ourselves, Syrians can make a deal with the Syrians, can make dialogue with the Syrians. That’s what the Russians know very well. That’s why they don’t make such mistakes, beside the values that they have.

Question 20: In relation with Turkey again, what do you see about the downing of the Russian aircraft by Turkey? Was it an accident or premeditated?

President Assad: Since the Russian military participation in Syria regarding fighting against the terrorists’ organizations, the situation on the ground has changed in a positive way, and for Erdogan, that would bring his ambitions to failure, and if Erdogan failed in Syria, as he looked at it, that would be his political demise; it is like sounding the death knell of his political future, his ambitions to make Turkey the hub for the Brotherhood in the region by having a Brotherhood government and having following or satellite Brotherhood governments around the world. He thinks the last bastion of his dream is Syria. If he failed in Syria, as he failed in Egypt and as he failed in other places, he will think that this is the end of his career. So, his reaction was an unwise reaction but reflected not his way of thinking, but actually his instinct, his visceral instinct towards the Russian issue. This is the first part of the shooting. The second one, he thought the NATO would help him, and he would bring the NATO to conflict with Russia and the result would be more complicated situation in Syria on the ground, and may be his dream of having a no-fly zone where he can send those terrorists to Syria and they can use them as another state in front of the legitimate state here in Syria. That was his ambition, his way of thinking, as we think, and his plan in Syria.

Question 21: Mr. President, the US holds you responsible for the civil war and the rise of terrorism in Syria. Your enemies blame you for the death of 250 thousand in Syria since the beginning of the war. They also accused you of attacking opposition groups and civilians. How you defend yourself against those accusations?

President Assad: Actually, you cannot shoot yourself in the foot. Now the whole war in Syria, since the beginning of the conflict, was about who is going to bring more Syrians to his side. That was the war from the very beginning. How can you shoot the people and get their support? This is impossible. But at the same time, there is no good war; every war is a bad war. So whenever you have a war – something you should avoid but you cannot avoid – any war, will have civilian casualties, will have innocent casualties. This is a very bad and dangerous aspect in any war. That is why we have to end the war. While to say that the government attacked the civilians, what is the point, what do you get from attacking the civilians? Actually, the reality if you want to go around in Syria, you will be surprised that most of the families of the militants, they don’t live with them, they live under the umbrella of the government, and they get the support of the government, which is another proof that we don’t work against the civilians or kill them, otherwise they would not come to the government’s side. So, those allegations are false allegations.

Question 22: Mr. President, we want you to send a message to the Syrian refugees that have fled the country, many of them fled to Europe and even to Spain. What message do you have for them?

European governments’ embargo and support to terrorists created the migration issue

President Assad: Most of those refugees have contact with their families in Syria, so we’re still in contact with them. The majority of those refugees are government supporters, but they left because of the situation created by the terrorists, the direct threatening, killing, and because the terrorists destroyed the infrastructure, and by the embargo by the West on Syria where the basic life needs are not affordable anymore. So, actually, I don’t have to send them a message to them because they are going to come back when the situation is better. Most of them like their country, they love this country. Actually, the message I would like to send is to the European governments: they brought them, they created the situation, they helped the terrorists, and they made the embargo that has played directly into the hands of those terrorists and helped those people leaving Syria to other countries. So, if you are working for the sake of the Syrian people, as you said, the first thing you do is to lift the embargo. The second thing to do is to stop the flooding of terrorists. So, I think the message to the western governments who helped them going and live in their countries.

Question 23: Would you pardon the terrorists if they lay down their weapons?

President Assad: Of course, that is already happening in Syria. What we called “the reconciliation” is the only real political solution that has reached fruitful solution and positive reality in different places in Syria. The crux of the reconciliation is based on them giving up their armaments as terrorists and the government gives them amnesty or pardon. Of course, this the only way, and this is the good way I think to solve the problem.

Question 24: Okay, two last questions; if you go back to March 2011, would you make any different decisions?

President Assad: On daily basis, as a human, every day you have something you wish you did it in a better way. That is natural, because you have a lot of details, but if we want to talk about the pillars of our policy, it depends on two things. First of all, dialogue from the very first day, although we believed that it wasn’t about political problems at the very beginning, in spite of that we said we are ready for political dialogue, we are ready to change the constitution, we are ready to change many laws, and we did it, we did in 2012, the next year after the conflict has begun. At the same time, from the very beginning we said we are going to fight terrorism and terrorists. There is no way to change either to adopt dialogue or fight terrorism. Anything else is not a pillar, I mean if you talk about the daily practice, of course you have to do a lot of mistakes in daily practice whether my practice and other institutions’ practice or other official’s practice, that’s self-evident, there’s nothing in my mind now, but maybe one of the things I wouldn’t do it again is to trust many officials, Western or regional, Arabs, or like Turkish or others, to trust them, to think that they really wanted to help Syria at some point. This is one of the things that I wouldn’t do gain.

Question 25: How do you explain to your children what is happening in Syria? Would you like them to follow your footsteps?

President Assad: To follow my steps in politics you mean?

Question 26:  Yes.

President Assad: I think politics is not a job, and it is not a book you read, and it is not a specialty you do at the university. So, you cannot teach your children to be politicians; you can teach them a job. Actually, politics is everything in life; it is the sum of economy, society, culture, everything, and the fact that you live on a daily basis. So as a result, that depends on the path of your children if they go in that regard. For me, the most important thing is to help them in helping their country, but how? Should they be politicians in the future, or should they be in any other job? This is not a very important issue for me. But I wouldn’t try to influence them; they have to choose their path. I have to explain as much as I can from our reality about our country so that they can read it very well and they can decide which path they want to follow.

Journalist: Thank you very much Mr. President for the interview and for your time.

President Assad: Thank you for coming to Syria

The Greek tragedy of national economic collapse appeared to be turning into farce with the re-election of Syriza at the end of September. The leftist party had been first elected only seven months earlier on the promise to end the austerity measures forced on Greece by the troika of the European Union (EU), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Central Bank (ECB) in exchange for $339 billion in bailout loans (see March Monitor). Reforms to that point had devastated the Greek economy causing it to shrink by 25% and increasing overall unemployment by the same amount, and pushing youth unemployment to 48%.

Syriza has now been returned to power after pledging to enact arguably more severe austerity measures than the ones it had first been elected to oppose. A month after the July 5 referendum, in which Greeks overwhelmingly (61.31%) rejected the troika’s bailout plans, Alexis Tsipras, Syriza’s leader, signed a third memorandum of understanding with Europe, in which his government agreed to significant tax hikes, drastic pension cuts and wide-ranging privatizations that exceed many of the structural reforms undertaken over the previous five years. When some of his own party members rebelled against this clear betrayal, ending Syriza’s coalition majority in parliament, Tsipras called an election.

The party took 35.5% of the vote in September, winning 145 seats in the 300-seat Greek parliament—only slightly lower than its January performance—allowing Syriza to again govern in coalition with the right-wing Independent Greeks party, which won 10 seats. Syriza’s closest rival, the right-wing New Democracy party, got 28% of the vote, but the more important voice came from the many people who did not vote. This election saw the highest abstention rate in Greek history (45%), signifying widespread dissatisfaction with Syriza and the Greek political system in general. This is particularly remarkable in a country where voting is compulsory.

Cyprus-based author and news commentator Andreas C. Chrysafis, who supported Syriza in January, told me “the Greeks can take no more austerity—they have reached rock bottom and that is why they did not vote; they no longer trust the system.

The Greek debt is not sustainable and only a madman would believe that it is. It was a bad mistake by Tsipras to betray the trust of the people, which is unforgivable. I do not support Syriza any more nor do I support the current political mentality of the Greeks.

The central contradiction brought out by both of this year’s Greek elections has been the electorate’s desire to end the EU’s austerity measures, but to also stay in the EU. Syriza reflects the pro-EU stance of most Greek voters, which hobbles its attempts to negotiate a better deal, with fewer neoliberal concessions, in return for badly needed loans.

According to former Syriza finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, who was removed by Tsipras as Greece’s chief negotiator with the troika in April, the government must now “implement a fiscal consolidation and reform programme that was designed to fail.”

In a Guardian UK commentary on the September election, Varoufakis explained: “Illiquid small businesses, with no access to capital markets, have to now pre-pay next year’s tax on their projected 2016 profits. Households will need to fork out outrageous property taxes on non-performing apartments and shops, which they cannot even sell. Substantial [value-added tax] rate hikes will boost VAT evasion. Week in week out, the troika will be demanding more recessionary, anti-social policies: pension cuts, lower child benefits, more foreclosures.”

Chrysafis warned, “If the Greek government and the political elite insist on introducing all of the Troika’s [bailout] conditions, the Greek people will rise up and possibly topple the government for a new start. They did that before with the Greek junta [the military dictatorship which ruled from 1967 to 1974] and would not hesitate to do it again.” The author says a similar wave of antipathy is affecting politics in other parts of Europe.

The Communist Party of Greece (KKE), which has long warned that Syriza was no different from the other pro-austerity mainstream parties (New Democracy and the social democratic PASOK) that have perpetuated Greece’s economic crisis, won 15 seats in the Greek parliament in September. Plato Routis, the party’s representative in Toronto, told me the Communists are, “the only party in the Greek parliament that opposes austerity and Greece’s membership in the EU and in NATO.

But we go further because the main issue is about who controls the economy and the means of production. We want to nationalize the big banks, major corporations including shipyards, and the natural resources of Greece. We will strongly oppose all austerity measures that Syriza will try to impose and do this inside and outside parliament by mobilizing the people against them. We have close relations with the All-Workers Militant Front (PAME), the most militant trade union confederation, which will be supporting our efforts.

Routis said he considers the EU a trap that has robbed Greece of its political and economic independence and demolished the country’s industry. He thinks that this independence must be regained if Greece is to recover economically.

Greece is a rich country, contrary to popular belief. We grow wheat, vegetables, sugar, cotton and we have oil, bauxite and chromium. Some years ago we were not only self-sufficient in food production but were exporting food so Greece has the resources to sustain its population.

In fact, the Communists are not as alone in some of these plans as Routis suggests. The new Popular Unity party, a splinter group of former Syriza radicals, also plans to steadfastly resist new austerity measures, but will support the party when it introduces social measures such as legalizing gay marriage or implementing more welcoming immigration rules.

In an interview with Jacobin Magazine, Popular Unity member Stathis Kouvelakis claimed the one benefit of Syriza’s catastrophic first seven months in power was that “political illusions have now dissipated,” in that it convinced the Greek and EU people “of the brutally undemocratic and pernicious character of the European Union. It provides a peerless practical demonstration of this.”

Like Routis, he believes Tsipras was afflicted with a “Europeanist blindness…. He had not understood that the interests of the EU leaders could be contradictory and antagonistic. For me he proved his genuine blindness—he was truly naïve.”

Varoufakis gives the situation a slightly different spin. “During the first six months of 2015, when we were challenging the troika’s monopoly over policy-making powers in Greece, its greatest domestic supporters were the oligarch-owned media and their political agents. The same people and interests who have now embraced Tsipras!” he wrote in his post-election column. “Can he turn against them? I think he wants to but the troika has already ensured that his main weapons have been disabled (with, for example, the disbandment of the economic crime fighting unit, SDOE).”

Routis told me more could be done for the Greek economy outside the EU, notably because this would give much financial authority back to the government. “For instance, tourism is a big industry in Greece and we could get a lot more tourists if we were able to devalue our currency,” he said. “Our biggest industry, which is shipbuilding, has been destroyed and so has sugar and garment production. With control of our economy, we would be able to start the process of reviving these and other industries to create employment and generate income.”

Corruption and military spending are also significant drains. Routis pointed out that Greece would save billions by leaving NATO, where a lot of Greek wealth is being spent. In addition, he emphasized that the Greek oligarchy “has been draining billions of Euros out of the country for the last 20 years,” storing it in offshore tax havens. “Syriza promised to destroy this oligarchy, but did nothing about it. Through nationalization we will extinguish the power of this elite.”

In spite of its anti-austerity position, which most Greeks share, and its commitment to rebuilding the Greek economy to benefit the majority, the KKE remains stuck at 15 seats in parliament, which is the same number it had before the election, placing it fifth among parties. Alarmingly, Golden Dawn, a neo-Nazi party with criminal connections whose leaders are in jail for murder, won an extra seat in September’s elections, placing it third among parties with 18 seats.

Routis explained that the KKE’s limited voter base stems partly from the fact that despite five years of brutal austerity, Greeks are not yet ready to leave the EU, so they vote for the lesser evil, Syriza, as opposed to the mainstream New Democracy and PASOK, which are largely blamed for the economic mess. “People would like to give Syriza another chance because it has only been in power for seven months”, he said.

Varoufakis suggested Europe’s refugee crisis might have played a role as well. “A comparison [by the conservative opposition] between the welcome afforded to the thousands of ship-wrecked people in recent weeks with the concentration camps built by the Samaras government explains why disappointed progressives swung back to SYRIZA in the polling stations,” he wrote.

The pro-austerity, pro-EU parties were not above fear-mongering, says Routis. Their line of argument suggested that “without the EU the Greeks would lose whatever little money, jobs or property they have left at present and become isolated internationally.

There is also the fact that the Greek people have not felt the full pain of EU-enforced austerity yet, which will come with the implementation of the third memorandum during the coming months. It is true that Greeks have suffered a lot during the last five years of austerity, but there is even greater suffering to come.

Asad Ismi is the international affairs correspondent of the CCPA Monitorand author of the radio documentary Capitalism is the Crisis which has been aired on 42 radio stations in Canada, the U.S. and Europe reaching 33 million people. For his publications visit www.asadismi.ws.

(Featured image: Syrian checkpoint outside Yarmouk, the Palestinian settlement in southern Damascus. The Syrian Arab Army is the main force protecting Syrian citizens.)

A new version of ‘humanitarian intervention’, known as the ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P), was developed at the turn of the 21st century. An invention of the big powers, with reference to the suggested humanitarian consequences of their supposed failures to intervene in the past, it became a tremendous moral argument for the 2011 intervention in Libya. That intervention, based on lies, was a disaster for the Libyan people. A similar course was attempted with Syria, but failed. Russia and China, in particular, were no longer prepared to play Washington’s game. However it may have sounded in theory, in practice this R2P emerged as a new tool of intervention. It carries great dangers, having helped incite ‘false flag’ massacres by armed groups in their search for greater foreign support. It has also helped undermine the international system which, since the 1940s, has been founded on principles of sovereignty and non-intervention.

In some respects it is extraordinary that, so soon after the 2003 invasion of Iraq on a manifestly false pretext (see Kramer and Michalowski 2005), an earnest debate began over how to deepen and sanctify the reasons for military intervention. The debate was extraordinary, in that relatively little attention was paid to the long history of false pretexts for intervention. Yet in many respects it was logical, as it appeals to a naïve social conscience while opening new avenues for big power ambition. The ‘double game’ of mixing false pretext, political ambition and public benefit rationale is an age-old tradition.

The recent debate has been mostly western referenced and often focussed on promotion of the R2P as ‘a new norm of customary international law’, even one of obligation (Loiselle 2013: 317-341). This has articulated a groundswell of western sentiment generally in favour of intervention, almost regardless of the detail. This was a reversal of trends established by the formal colonies in the post-colonial era. The Non-Aligned Movement of 118 nations, mostly former colonies, on the other hand, elevates non-intervention as a founding principle of nation-states (Köchler 1982). As an example of past debates, the major in-principle dispute between the United States and the Latin American states at all Pan-American conferences in the early twentieth century was Washington’s refusal to accept the principle of non-intervention. Finally, in 1933, the United States recognised that principle (Dreier 1963: 40-41). Of course, the US continued to intervene in Latin America after this, but that principle helped drive a search for new pretexts.

While the notion of ‘humanitarian intervention’ has been around for some time, the more specific doctrine of a ‘responsibility to protect’ is quite recent. Nevertheless, the two share similar rationales for foreign military intervention, always by the big powers but usually in the name of a wider group. In one North American view, contemporary ‘humanitarian intervention’ links up to earlier practise, for example by the British Empire against slavery (well, forgetting about the 16^th, 17^th and 18^th centuries) and by the alleged idealism of US intervention in the Spanish-American war (Bass 2009). In this view humanitarian intervention was distinct from imperialism, yet opposed by both ‘realists’ and ‘leftists’. Bass quotes John Stuart Mill, the famous English liberal, an opponent of absolute sovereignty and of slavery, yet an advocate of humanitarian intervention:

‘Barbarians have no rights as a nation, except a right to such treatment … [to] fit them for becoming one … [we should] mediate in the quarrels which break out between foreign states, to arrest obstinate civil wars … intercede for mild treatment of the vanquished … [and to abolish] the slave trade’ (Mill 1867: 252-253).

Mill’s view might be considered a predecessor of the ‘liberal imperialism’ argued by British writers (Ferguson 2004; Cooper 2002), though somewhat different to the arguments of North Americans such as Ignatieff (2005) and Ikenberry (2012), who tend to adhere to ‘hegemonic stability’ ideas. In this North American doctrine a benevolent superpower does not exploit its dominant role, but rather engages in self-sacrificing behaviour to provide ‘public goods’ to all (Keohane 1986).

In any case, ‘liberal imperialism’ does not sit well in the post-World War Two world, supposedly ordered by the United Nations Charter and the twin covenants of human rights. Both that Charter and those covenants begin with the right of states and peoples to self-determination. Critical perspectives also call for historical interpretations of ‘humanitarian intervention’ and of the ‘responsibility to protect’. Chomsky says such norms must be understood as historical parts of imperial doctrine. Most military aggressions, he writes, were ‘justified by elevated rhetoric about noble humanitarian intentions’ (Chomsky 2008: 48).

The idea of a ‘responsibility to protect’, however, was crafted in an era of clear recognition of self-determination and state sovereignty and, at the same time, conventions on war crimes, crimes against humanity and the newly-created crime of genocide. In this context, and following the mass killings in Cambodia and Rwanda, an ‘International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty in 2001 promoted the idea of ‘sovereignty as responsibility’, with a focus on violence within weak or emerging states. The World Summit of 2005 then stated:

‘Each individual state has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity … The international community should, as appropriate, encourage and help States … [and] we are prepared to take collective action … through the Security Council … should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities are manifestly failing to protect their populations’ (UN 2005: 138-139).

The substance of this text was adopted in UN Security Council resolution 1674, the following year (UNSC 2006; see also ICRtoP 2014). Edward Luck (2009) observes that there is no necessary contradiction between this doctrine and state sovereignty, as the notion draws on conventional humanitarian law and ‘reinforces state sovereignty’. However he acknowledges a tension with a stricter sense of sovereignty, which he calls ‘Westphalian sovereignty’, and says the concern that R2P ideas ‘might be used by powerful states … to justify coercive interventions undertaken for other reasons is eminently understandable’ (Luck 2009: 17).

The R2P does not change the UN charter or the International Bill of Rights. It does, however, attract greater attention to the Chapter VII intervention powers of the Security Council. Yet the R2P has not altered the legal prohibition on military intervention, except in the case of self-defence or to prevent any attack on sovereignty which the Security Council regards as a breach of ‘collective security’. Both rationales aim to defend the international system, built on the integrity of nation-states.

In critical analysis, the first notable feature of the R2P doctrine is that it provides a new intervention rationale for the big powers, including the former colonial powers, to ‘prevent’ crimes which have traditionally been committed by those same powers. Rafael Lemkin – a Polish Jew, lawyer and creator of the concept of ‘genocide’ – said it had generally been the very strong states which engaged in wars of aggression, ethnic cleansing and genocide. Genocide, he said, was ‘not the result of the mood of an occasional rogue ruler but a recurring pattern in history … a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups’ (Frieze 2013: 138; Lemkin 1944: 79). The victims were those in contested and occupied territories, while the perpetrators described were the Ottoman, Japanese, Mongol and Spanish empires (Frieze 2013: 80, 138, 168, 184). Bloxham, who also wrote of the Armenian genocide, concurs with Lemkin that genocide must be understood as the outcome of historical processes and ‘structured relationships’, rather than the ‘evil intentions of wicked men’ (Bloxham 2003: 89). This great crime was one of the dreadful but logical outcomes of projects of domination, driven by empires. With this history in mind it was audacious of the big powers to seek use of ‘impending great crimes’, including anticipated genocide, as a pretext for intervention. No entity has committed great crimes on the scale of empires, which are interventionist by character.

Conscious of the legacies of colonisation, slavery and genocide, leaders of the Non Aligned group of nations, almost all former colonies, have strongly defended the principle of non-intervention (e.g. Lage 2006). From the beginning of the Syrian conflict most of these nations dismissed the idea of big power intervention on humanitarian grounds, regarding the R2P as ‘a Trojan Horse’ created to help bring about ‘regime change’ (Mendiluza 2014).

A second notable feature of the R2P is that the driving force tends to come from the liberal side of western politics. This is distinct from the divisions that emerged between the big powers over the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but consistent with the argument from Bass (2009) that ‘humanitarian intervention’ has its roots in the liberal, as opposed to the ‘realist’, side of hegemonic culture. I explained in Chapter Seven how former Human Rights Watch director Holly Burkhalter argued, on behalf of the US State Department, a very wide role for Washington’s military intervention, supposedly to prevent great crimes. The US military was more cautious, stressing a need for closer links to direct US interests (CFR 2000).

The Libyan intervention of 2011 drew heavily on R2P arguments, but NATO forces immediately went well beyond the UNSC’s ‘no fly zone’ mandate (see RT 2011). NATO air power and ground forces were decisive in destroying the government of Muammar Qaddafi and in dismantling the Libyan state. Former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (2012: 12-13) points out that Iraq, Libya and Syria were ‘old pro-Soviet regimes’ that US Pentagon officials from the early 1990s had wanted to ‘clean up’. Those plans were sharpened with the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. The Libyan pretext was alleged civilian massacres, in the wake of an al Qaeda style insurrection in Eastern Libya. Graham Cronogue (2012) citing the British Guardian, a key supporter of ‘humanitarian intervention’, claimed that ‘hundreds of civilians’ had been killed in ‘protests’. Amnesty International (2011: 8) supported claims of ‘killings, disappearances, and torture’.

Yet most of those reports were tainted by conflicts of interest.

The key source of information on supposed abuses by the Libyan Government, Sliman Bouchuiguir, drew his allegations directly from opposition political forces (Nazemroaya 2012: 132-134). He would later admit there was no way to verify the data he had presented on killings (Teil 2011). After Qaddafi was killed and his government overthrown, French Amnesty Head Genevieve Garrigos admitted the claims that Qaddafi was using ‘African mercenaries’ to slaughter Libyans was ‘just a rumour spread by the media’ (in Truth Syria 2012). Across the Atlantic, Amnesty USA’s Director, Suzanne Nossel, was recruited directly from her position at the US State Department, where she had worked on US policy against Russia, Iran, Libya, Syria (Teil 2012: 146; Wright and Rowley 2012; Cartalucci 2012).

The state of Qatar had helped supply arms to Libyan Islamists as well as propaganda through its media network, Al Jazeera (Fitrakis in McKinney 2012: 22). The US Government, through its National Endowment for Democracy, had funded several NGOs in Libya, which also contributed to the campaign for ‘humanitarian’ intervention (Nazemroaya 2012: 147). Conflicts of interest in the Libyan R2P debate were rampant. Estimates of the loss of life, drawing on North American sources, say that around ten times as many died after the NATO intervention as before. Four years after that intervention Libya remains in a disastrous situation (Kuperman 2015).

Wide academic dissatisfaction has been expressed over Libya as a model of R2P. Dunne and Gelber say that the Libyan arguments undermined the idea of an R2P ‘norm’, with the NATO shift from a ‘no fly zone’ to regime change ‘betraying’ the UN trust and showing the partisan nature of intervention (Dunne and Gelber 2014: 327-328). Brown agrees, saying that the Libyan intervention demonstrates that the suggested ‘apolitical nature’ of a responsibility to protect ‘is a weakness not a strength … the assumption that politics can be removed from the picture is to promote an illusion and thus to invite disillusionment’ (Brown 2013: 424-425). Even in western circles the doctrine lost its intellectual gloss, after Libya.

The historical record can help us take this critique, along with recognition of R2P as a ‘permissive norm’ (Steele and Heinze 2014: 88, 109), one step further. Both humanitarian intervention and R2P arguments must be interrogated by the well-established principles of avoiding conflicts of interest and having regard to sufficiently detailed and relatively independent evidence of the matters in question. Further, these arguments might best be informed by the long history of imperial interventions. That applies to all such conflicts, including the partisan claims made over civilian massacres in Syria. The fabrications over these massacres have been documented in this book at Chapters Eight and Nine. Without such principled examination the debate can easily fall hostage to false pretexts of the ‘double game’, a historical tactic of the great powers.

In 2014 there was a change in the principal rationale for western intervention in Syria. It shifted from one which drew on the ‘responsibility to protect’ to one of ‘protective intervention’, in the name of suppressing terrorism globally. This argument trampled on international law, showing reckless disregard for the rights of other peoples and their nations. In Syria this new argument involved the bizarre claim that Washington was arming one group of Islamists so they could fight another, more extreme group.

Both humanitarian intervention and the more specific R2P doctrine carry a high risk of aggravating serious crimes, as the ‘false flag’ massacres in Syria have demonstrated. When outside powers back proxy militias against a nation-state, those militia can be encouraged to carry out with impunity the worst atrocities, or to manipulate combinations of their own crimes and events, blaming them on the target ‘regime’ in the hope of attracting greater military support from their sponsors. That contribution to aggravated violence vindicates the wide-spread insistence on respect for the principle of non-intervention.

References:

Bass, Gary J. (2008) Freedom’s Battle: the origins of humanitarian intervention, Vintage Books, New York

Bloxham, Donald (2003) ‘The Armenian Genocide of 1915-1916: cumulative radicalization and the development of a destruction policy’, Past and Present, No 181, November, 189

Brown, Chris (2013) The Anti-Political theory of Responsibility to Protect’, Global Responsibility to Protect, Vol 5, Issue 4, 423-442

Cartalucci, Tony (2012) ‘Amnesty International is US State Department propaganda’, Global research, 22 August, online: http://www.globalresearch.ca/amnesty-international-is-us-state-department-propaganda/32444

CFR (2000) Humanitarian Intervention: crafting a workable doctrine, A Council Policy Initiative, Council on Foreign Relations, Washington

Chomsky, Noam (2008) ‘Humanitarian Imperialism: The New Doctrine of Imperial Right’, Monthly Review, Vol 60, No 4, September, online: http://monthlyreview.org/2008/09/01/humanitarian-imperialism-the-new-doctrine-of-imperial-right/

Cooper, Robert (2002) ‘The new liberal imperialism’, The Guardian, 7 April, online: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/apr/07/1

Cronogue, Graham (2012) ‘Responsibility to Protect: Syria, the Law, Politics and Future of Humanitarian Intervention Post-Libya’, Journal of International Humanitarian Legal Studies, Volume 3 issue 1, 124-159

Dreier, John (1963) ‘The Organization of American States and United States Policy’, International Organization 17, no. 1, 40–41.

Dunne, Tim and Katherine Gelber (2014) ‘Arguing Matters: The responsibility to protect and the Case of Libya’, Global Responsibility to Protect, 6, 326-349

Ferguson, (2004) Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, Penguin, London

Frieze, Donna-Lee (Ed) (2013) Totally Unofficial: the autobiography of Raphael Lemkin, Yale University Press, New Haven

ICRtoP (2014) International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect, World Federalist Movement, New York, online: http://www.responsibilitytoprotect.org/

Ignatieff, Michael (2005) American Exceptionalism and Human Rights, Princeton University Press, New Jersey

Ikenberry, G. John (2012) Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order, Princeton University Press, New Jersey

Keohane, Robert O. (1986) Neorealism and Its Critics, Colombia University, New York

Köchler, Hans (Ed) (1982) Principles of Non-alignment: The Non-aligned Countries in the Eighties – Results and Perspectives, Third World Centre, London

Kramer, Ronald C. and Raymond J. Michalowski (2005) ‘War, Aggression and State Crime: A Criminological Analysis of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq’, British Journal of Criminology, July, 45:4, 446-469

Kuperman, Alan J. (2015) ‘Obama’s Libya Debacle’, Foreign Affairs, March-April, online: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/libya/2015-02-16/obamas-libya-debacle

Lage, Carlos (2006) ‘Discurso del Vicepresidente del Consejo de Estado de la República de

Cuba Carlos Lage Dávila, en la Inauguración de la Reunión de Cancilleres del Movimiento de Países No Alineados, Granma, 18 September, online: http://www.granma.cu/granmad/secciones/noal-14/noti-noal/n060.html

Lemkin, Raphael (1944) Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Division of International Law, Washington

Loiselle, Marie-Eve (2013) ‘The Normative Status of the Responsibility to Protect After Libya’, Global Responsibility to Protect, Vol 5, Issue 3, 317-341

Luck, Edward C. (2009) ‘Sovereignty, Choice, and the Responsibility to Protect’, Global Responsibility to Protect 1, pp. 10–21

McKinney, Cynthia (2012) The Illegal war on Libya, Clarity Press, Atlanta GA

Mendiluza, Waldo (2014) ‘Debate sobre Siria en ONU, el tema humanitario como Caballo de Troya’, Avanzada, 16 February, online: http://avanzada.reduc.edu.cu/index.php/especial-siria/7088-debate-sobre-siria-en-onu-el-tema-humanitario-como-caballo-de-troya

Mill, John Stuart (1874) ‘On the Treatment of Barbarous Nations’, in Dissertations and Discussions: Political, Philosophical, and Historical, Vol 3, Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer, London

Nazemroaya, Mahdi Daerius (2012) ‘The Big Lie and Libya’, in Cynthia McKinney (2012) The Illegal war on Libya, Clarity Press, Atlanta GA, 127-139

RT (2011) ‘Russia accuses NATO of going beyond UN resolution on Libya’, April 17, online: http://rt.com/news/russia-nato-un-resolution-libya/

Steele, Brent J, and Eric A. Heinze (2014) ‘Norms of Intervention, R2P and Libya’, Global Responsibility to Protect, Vol 6, 88-112

Teil, Julian (2011) ‘Lies behind the “Humanitarian War” in Libya: There is no evidence! (Part 1), NATO Crimes In Libya’, YouTube, Interview with Soliman Bouchuiguir, October 15, online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4evwAMIh4Y

Truth Syria (2012) ‘The Gaddafi Mercenaries and the Division of Africa’, YouTube, Interview with Genevieve Garrigos (Amnesty International France), 4 February, online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WFknaEKdOM

UN (2005) 2005 World Summit Outcome, 60/1, 24 October, online: http://www.un.org/womenwatch/ods/A-RES-60-1-E.pdf

UNSC (2006) Resolution 1674, online: http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/Civilians%20SRES1674.pdf

Wright, Ann and Coleen Rowley (2012) ‘Amnesty’s Shilling for US Wars’, Consortium News, June 18, online: https://consortiumnews.com/2012/06/18/amnestys-shilling-for-us-wars/

Damascus –The Cabinet condemned the terrorist bombing that rocked Homs city earlier today and left civilian casualties.

This “cowardly” terrorist attack came in retaliation for the local reconciliations taking place in Homs province, said a statement by Prime Minister Wael al-Halaqi, referring to a most recent settlement agreement that will ensure clearing al-Waer neighborhood of weapons and gunmen.

Such terrorist attacks, the statement added, will not succeed in intimidating the Syrians off the reconciliation track, but will rather boost their determination to continue fighting terrorism and consolidating national unity.

In the Cabinet’s statement, the Premier held the countries supporting and funding terrorism fully responsible for the “barbaric massacres” committed in Syria, demanding that those countries stop their conduct.

Today’s terrorist attack, carried out with a car packed with 150 kg of explosives, targeted the crowded al-Zahraa neighborhood, claiming several lives, injuring others and leaving massive material damage.

The neighborhood has been previously targeted several times. The latest was on October 4 when a similar car bomb attack killed a civilian and injured 21 others.

An attack on September 22 also left a civilian dead and 12 others wounded.

“The targets we’ve set are bold.  And by empowering businesses, scientists, engineers, workers, and the private sector — investors — to work together, this agreement represents the best chance we’ve had to save the one planet that we’ve got.” –U.S. President Barack Obama, commenting on the adoption of the Paris Climate Agreement, December 12, 2015 [1]

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The 21^st annual  UN climate conference of parties (COP21) gathered in Paris this year.

World leaders engaged in two weeks of intense negotiations geared at turning the tide on one of the greatest threats facing humanity, namely runaway climate change.

As of Saturday December 12, negotiations concluded with an agreement focused on keeping global temperatures below the agreed upon limit of 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, as well as $100 billion a year commitment in climate financing for developing countries.

The celebratory rhetoric and declarations of the ‘historic’ nature of this accord glosses over some of the complications involved in adequately confronting the fall-out from a society addicted to fossil fuels.

This week’s Global Research News Hour invites three analysts with three different perspectives related to fossil fuel dependence and climate change.

First we speak to Richard Heinberg. He is a Senior Fellow with the Post-Carbon Institute. He is a journalist, and author of a dozen books including The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies (2003) and his most recent Afterburn: Society Beyond Fossil Fuels (2015). Heinberg is considered one of the world’s leading educators on the subject of Peak Oil, the opposite side of the fossil fuel energy coin. In this interview he outlines the extent to which our society is dependent on cheap oil, why peak oil is still an issue in spite of $40 a barrel oil, how hydraulic fracturing and other new oil recovery technologies is generating an oil economy ‘bubble’ that is set to burst, and why transitioning to a “renewable energy” economy is much more complicated than many people anticipate.

Dane Wigington is a licensed contractor based in northern California and a former employee of Bechtel. The founder of the information site geoengineeringwatch.org, Wigington is convinced that geo-engineering is among the greatest threats facing humanity at present, He remarks that geo-engineering efforts such as Solar Radiation management and the (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program  (HAARP) are not only harmful, but have been clandestinely pursued for decades. He expresses his thoughts about why weather modification is being pursued, how humanity and the ecosphere is being affected, and why there is so little public discussion about impacts of these programs even from traditional Climate activists.

Finally, we hear from Guy McPherson. He is a Professor Emeritus of  Natural Resources and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona. He has spent years assembling and collating available peer-reviewed research on climate. On his blog Nature Bats Last is a ‘Monster Climate Essay‘ which leaves readers with the conclusion that there is virtually nothing that can be done to halt runaway climate change and the Near-Term Extinction of the human species. Dr. McPherson updates listeners on the most recent discoveries and the prospects of these Climate Meetings to accomplish much of anything of significance.

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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:

CHLY 101.7fm in Nanaimo, B.C – Thursdays at 1pm PT

Boston College Radio WZBC 90.3FM NEWTONS  during the Truth and Justice Radio Programming slot -Sundays at 7am ET.

Port Perry Radio in Port Perry, Ontario –1  Thursdays at 1pm ET

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

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

Notes: 

1) http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/12/12/transcript-and-video-obama-praises-climate-deal/

Syria will not negotiate with terrorists to end the conflict on their terms, no matter how hard the West tries to present armed gangs as grassroots political opposition, the country’s President Bashar Assad told Spanish News Agency EFE.

The problem, Assad says, lies with the fact that large portion of armed fighters and terror gangs in Syria are foreign mercenaries, which the US and their allies in the Gulf region are craving to include in the negotiation process.

“Opposition is a political term, not a military term. So, talking about the concept is different from the practice, because so far, we’ve been seeing that some countries, including Saudi Arabia, the United States, and some western countries wanted the terrorist groups to join these negotiations. They want the Syrian government to negotiate with the terrorists, something I don’t think anyone would accept in any country,” Assad told EFE.

At the same time, Assad once again reiterated that his government is always open for negotiations with the real opposition – but emphasized that opposition must be defined.

“Opposition, for everyone in this world, doesn’t mean militant,” Assad stressed. He said that Damascus is already engaged in dialogue with certain armed “groups, not organizations”, so they would lay down their arms in exchange for “amnesty from the government” and a chance to return to “normal life.”

“This is the only way to deal with the militants in Syria. Whenever they want to change their approach, give up the armaments, we are ready, while to deal with them as a political entity, this is something we completely refuse,” Assad clarifies.

An agreement on a peaceful resolution to the crisis, according to Assad, can only be reached with the “real, patriotic, national opposition” that has grassroots in and related to Syria, “not to any other state or regime in the world.”

In Syria “more than 100 nationalities” have united with the government in their fight with the extremists, including Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), Al-Qaeda and Al-Nusra. Fighting these jihadi groups in the long term should focus on tackling“Wahabi” militant ideology of Islam, Assad said.

“The ideology, something that’s been instilled in the minds of the people or the society in the Muslim world for decades now, because of the Wahabi institutions, because of the Saudi money that’s been paid to support this kind of dark and resentful ideology,” Assad said.

“Saudi Arabia and Turkey and Qatar are the main perpetrators in the atrocities of ISIS,” he stressed.

OP-EDGE: This isn’t about ISIS, just good old fashioned regime change

In the short term, anti-ISIS combat efforts should focus on cutting the jihadist supply routes of fighters and financing on the Turkish border.

“To solve this problem is to stop the flood of terrorists, especially through Turkey to Syria and to Iraq, and of course we have to stop the flowing of money…to those terrorists through Turkey, and the armaments,” the Syrian president said.

Assad confirmed Russian intelligence data over ISIS oil smuggling activity, explaining why Syrian illegally harnessed oil has no other place to go but to Turkey.

“Most of the oil in Syria is in the northern part of Syria. If they want to export it to Iraq, that’s impossible, because every party in Iraq is fighting ISIS. In Syria, it’s the same. In Lebanon, it’s very far. Jordan in the south is very far. So, the only lifeline for ISIS is Turkey. Those trucks moving the oil from Syria to Turkey, and Turkey selling this cheap oil to the rest of the world,”Assad reasoned.

Assad said that if pressure is stepped up on Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, “then this conflict will end in less than a year, definitely,” as Syrian army is making impressive gains on the ground.

Commenting on Russian participation in the air campaign against the terrorists in Syria, Assad attributed its success to joint coordination with the Syrian forces on the ground. The Syrian leader says the US coalition has failed to produce any fruitful results because it does not have any significant forces doing the ground work for them in Syria.

“You have to deal with them [ISIS] from the ground, and that’s why when the Russians came and started their participation in the war against terrorism, the achievement of the Russian and Syrian armies in a few weeks was much better than the alliance has achieved during more than a year,” he said.

Another reason for US underachievement is their support – probably indirect – for the extremists, Assad says.

Actually [the US-coalition] didn’t achieve anything … because they were supporting ISIS, maybe indirectly, because it was expanding, and you have more recruits coming.

The Syrian leader also accused the US of lacking the will to fight terrorism. At the same time, Assad criticized the French involvement in Syria following the November 13 attacks as an overdue retaliatory revenge strike.

This heavy bombardment is just to dissipate the anger within the French public opinion, not to fight terrorism. If you want to fight terrorism, you don’t wait for a shooting in order to fight terrorism. Fighting terrorism is a principle.

Russia instead is fighting for a principle, a principle to protect its borders. Furthermore “Russia now, in Syria, they are defending Europe directly,” Assad concluded.

The dirty war on Syria has involved repeated scandals, often fabricated against the Syrian Government to help create pretexts for deeper intervention. Perhaps the most notorious was the East Ghouta incident of August 2013, where pictures of dead or drugged children were uploaded from an Islamist-held agricultural area east of Damascus, with the claim that the Syrian Government had used chemical weapons to murder hundreds of innocents. The incident generated such attention that direct US intervention was only averted by a Russian diplomatic initiative. The Syrian Government agreed to eliminate its entire stockpile of chemical weapons (Smith-Spark and Cohen 2013), maintaining that it had never used them in the recent conflict.

Indeed, all the independence evidence on the East Ghouta incident (including evidence from the US and the UN) shows that the Syrian Government was falsely accused. This followed a series of other false accusations, ‘false flag’ claims recorded by Mother Agnes (SANA 2011), a biased investigation into the Houla massacre (see Chapter Eight) and failed or exposed attempts to blame the Syrian Government over Islamist group killings, for example at Daraya and Aqrab (Fisk 2012; Thompson 2012). However the Islamist groups’ use of chemical weapons was mostly dismissed by the western powers, and that stance has been reflected in almost all western media reports. Further, because the chemical weapon claims have been repeated for years, public perceptions seem to have little reference to facts based on evidence. After a little background, let’s consider the independent evidence on the East Ghouta incident, in some detail. Arising from that evidence we are led to another serious crime of war, the fate of the dead or drugged children portrayed in those infamous images.

A range of independent evidence fairly quickly showed the claims
of Syrian Army involvement in the chemical weapons incident at East Ghouta were false.

9.1 Chemical Weapons in Syria

Chemical weapons are a crude relic of an earlier era, such as the trench warfare of a century ago. They have no utility in urban warfare, where an army hunts armed groups amongst streets, buildings and civilian populations. No real utility, unless a ruthless party wants to create general panic or make false claims. In the case of the Syrian Arab Army, their conventional weapons were far superior to crude chemical weapons and their urban warfare training, including that done in Iran, had the aim of rooting out terrorist groups, building by building (al Akhras 2013). A stockpile of chemical weapons had been kept as a deterrent to Israel, which holds nuclear weapons; but there had been no proven use of them in recent decades.

By mid-2013 the war had turned in favour of the Government. Although parts of Aleppo, east Damascus and some parts of eastern Syria were held by various Islamist groups, the Army had secured the major populated areas in western Syria and had closed much of the armed traffic across the mountainous Lebanese border. Along the borders with states which backed the Islamists – Turkey, Israel and Jordan – there were regular incursions, but they were mostly beaten back by the Syrian Army. Over May-June 2013 the Army, backed by Lebanon’s Hezbollah, took back the city of Qusayr, south-west of Homs, from a combination of the Farouq Brigade and Jabhat al Nusra, including many foreigners (Mortada 2013).

In this context anti-government armed Islamist groups were accused of using chemical weapons. The main foreign support group for the Syrian Islamists, Jabhat al Nusra, were reported to have seized a chemical factory near Aleppo in December 2012 (Gerard Direct 2012). Then in March the Syrian Government complained to the UN that sarin gas had been used in a major battle with the Islamists at Khan al Assal, west of Aleppo. The Syrian news agency SANA reported that terrorists had fired a rocket ‘containing chemical materials’, killing 16 people and wounding 86, soldiers and civilians. The death toll later rose to 25 (Barnard 2013). The Muslim Brotherhood-aligned British-based source, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, along with other anti-government ‘activists’, confirmed the casualties but insinuated that the Syrian Army might have used the weapons and ‘accidentally’ hit themselves (Barnard 2013). Western media reports mostly elevated the Islamist counter-claims to the level of the Government’s report. In April 2013 Jabhat al Nusra was reported as having gained access to chlorine gas (NTI 2013).

About Khan al Asal, a 19 March statement from Syria’s UN Ambassador, Bashar al Ja’afari, said that ‘armed terrorist groups had fired a rocket from the Kfar De’il area towards Khan Al Asal (Aleppo district) … a thick cloud of smoke had left unconscious anyone who had inhaled it. The incident reportedly resulted in the deaths of 25 people and injured more than 110 civilians and soldiers who were taken to hospitals in Aleppo’. The following day the Syrian Government ‘requested the Secretary-General to establish a specialized, impartial independent mission to investigate the alleged incident’ (UNMIAUCWSAA 2013: 2-3).

Almost immediately following this, from 21 March onwards, the governments of the USA, France and Britain (all of which were by then directly or indirectly supporting the Islamist groups) began to add a series of incidents, claiming the use of chemical weapons in Syria (UNMIAUCWSAA 2013: 2-6). Washington repeatedly claimed there was ‘no proof’ the ‘rebels’ were responsible for chemical weapon use. They sought to turn the accusations against the Syrian Government. However, in an interim statement in May, UN investigator Carla del Ponte said she had testimony from victims that ‘rebels’ had used sarin gas (BBC 2013). Then in May, Turkish security forces were reported to have found a 2kg canister of sarin, after raiding the homes of Jabhat al Nusra fighters (RT 2013). In July Russia announced it had evidence that Syrian ‘rebels’ were making their own sarin gas (Al Jazeera 2013).

Despite dissatisfaction over the Houla inquiry the previous year the Syrian Government invited UN inspectors to visit the Khan al Asal attack site. Details were organised and the UN’s Special Mission finally arrived in Damascus on 18 August 2013. The Mission ‘intended to contemporaneously investigate the reported allegations of the use of chemical weapons in Khan Al Asal, Saraqueb and Sheik Maqsood’, that is, at three of the 16 reported sites where such attacks ‘were deemed credible’. However, ‘after the tragic events of 21 August 2013’ the UN Secretary General directed the group to investigate the East Ghouta incident ‘as a matter of priority’ (UNMIAUCWSAA 2013: 7-8). This incident derailed the initially planned investigations. Despite the implausibility of the Syrian Government launching a chemical weapons attack, just as it had invited UN inspectors in Damascus, the new claims gained world attention.

9.2 The East Ghouta Incident

The main armed Islamist group which controlled the area, the Saudi-backed Islamic Front (Liwa al Islam), blamed the Government for gassing children. Photos of dozens of dead or injured children were circulated. Supporting the ‘rebel’ accusations, the US government and the US-based Human Rights Watch blamed the Syrian government. Human Rights Watch said it had ‘analyzed witness accounts of the rocket attacks, information on the likely source of the attacks, the physical remnants of the weapon systems used’, and claimed the rockets used were ‘weapon systems known and documented to be only in the possession of, and used by, Syrian government armed forces’ (HRW 2013a). Much the same was said by the US Government. Close links between the two should tell us that this was more collaboration than corroboration. A group of Nobel Prize winners would later accuse Human Rights Watch of running a ‘revolving door’ between its offices and those of the US government (Pérez Esquivel and Maguire 2014).

The New York Times backed the US Government claim ‘that only Syrian government forces had the ability to carry out such a strike’ (Gladstone and Chivers 2013). The paper claimed vector calculations of the rocket trajectories indicated they must have been fired from Syrian Army bases in Damascus (Parry 2013). Yet studies at MIT quickly showed the rockets to have a much shorter range than was suggested. The NYT retreated from its telemetry claims saying, while ‘some argued that it was still possible the government was responsible’, new evidence ‘undermined the Obama administration’s assertions’ about the rocket launch points’ (Chivers 2013; also Parry 2013). The final MIT report was more emphatic, concluding that the rockets ‘could not possibly have been fired at East Ghouta from the ‘heart’, or from the eastern edge, of the Syrian Government controlled area shown in the intelligence map published by the White House on August 30, 2013’ (Lloyd and Postol 2014).

While western media outlets mostly repeated Washington’s accusations, independent reports continued to contradict the story. Journalists Dale Gavlak and Yahya Ababneh reported direct interviews with ‘doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families’ in the East Ghouta area. Many believed that the Islamists had received chemical weapons via Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the gas attack (Gavlak and Ababneh 2013). The father of a rebel said his son had asked ‘what I thought the weapons were that he had been asked to carry’. His son and 12 other rebels were ‘killed inside of a tunnel used to store weapons provided by a Saudi militant, known as Abu Ayesha’ (Gavlak and Ababneh 2013). A female fighter complained they had no instructions on how to use chemical weapons. A rebel leader said much the same. Many of those interviewed reported that their salaries came from the Saudi government (Gavlak and Ababneh 2013).

Next a Syrian group, ISTEAMS, led by Mother Agnes Mariam, carried out a detailed examination of the video evidence, noting that bodies had been manipulated for the images and that many of the children appeared ill or drugged (ISTEAMS 2013: 32-35). The videos used ‘artificial scenic treatment … there is a flagrant lack of real families in East Ghouta … so who are the children that are exposed in those videos?’ (ISTEAMS 2013: 44). How is it that there are so many children without parents, the report asked? All reports came from ‘rebel’ controlled areas. The medical office of the area claimed 10,000 injured and 1,466 killed, 67% of whom were women and children; while the Local Coordinating Committee (by this time an FSA linked group) said there were 1,188 victims. Videos showed less than 500 bodies, by no means all dead (ISTEAMS 2013: 36-38). Even more striking was the subsequent absence of verified bodies. ‘Eight corpses are seen buried. [The] remaining 1,458 corpses, where are they? Where are the children?’ (ISTEAMS 2013: 41). A ‘rebel’ spokesperson claimed that ‘burials took place quickly for fear the bodies might decompose as a result of the heat’ (Mroue 2013).

The ISTEAMS report suggested a possible link with a large scale abduction of children in Ballouta, Northern Latakia, just two weeks prior to the East Ghouta incident.

‘We refer also the list of the victims of the invasion of 11 Alawite villages in Lattakia the 4th of August 2013, where 150 women and children were abducted by Jobhat Al Nosra’ (ISTEAMS 2013: 43).

The report said:

‘the families of some adducted women and children … recognise their relatives in the videos’, and called for an ‘unbiased’ investigation to determine the identity and whereabouts of the children (ISTEAMS 2013: 44). Later reports noted that the children abducted in northern Syria had been held in the northern town of Selma (Martin 2014; Mesler 2014), with one alleging the armed groups had drugged those children to create a video, sending the images to East Ghouta to be uploaded (Mesler 2014). If this were true, those children were never in the East Ghouta.

At the end of 2013 a Turkish lawyers and writers group issued a substantial report on crimes against civilians in Syria. A particular focus was the responsibility of the Turkish Government, which was backing the ‘rebel’ groups. The report concluded that ‘most of the crimes’ against Syrian civilians, including the East Ghouta attack, were committed by ‘armed rebel forces in Syria’. The Saudi backed group Liwa al Islam, led by Zahran Alloush, was said ‘by several sources to be the organization behind the chemical attack (Peace Association and Lawyers for Justice 2013).

The US storyline received another blow, from within the US. Veteran North American journalist Seymour Hersh interviewed US intelligence agents and concluded that Washington’s claims on the evidence had been fabricated. Al Nusra ‘should have been a suspect’, he said, ‘but the [US] administration cherry picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad’ (Hersh 2013). President Obama cited as evidence the Syrian Army’s preparation for a gas attack and ‘chatter’ on the Syrian airwaves at the time of the incident. However Hersh said he had found ‘intense concern’ and anger amongst US agents over ‘the deliberate manipulation of intelligence’. One officer said the attack ‘was not the result of the current regime’ (Hersh 2013). The White House backgrounder combined facts after the event with those before. Hersh concludes that the White House ‘disregarded the available intelligence about al-Nusra’s potential access to sarin and continued to [wrongly] claim that the Assad government was in sole possession of chemical weapons’ (Hersh 2013).

The UN special mission on chemical weapons returned to Syria in late September and investigated several sites, including East Ghouta. They decided to investigate seven of the initial sixteen reports (UNMIAUCWSAA 2013: 10). This Mission was not briefed to determined responsibility, but rather to determine whether chemical weapons had been used and what had been the results. In a December 2013 report they reported that chemical weapons had been used in Syria, and specifically

‘against civilians, including children, on a relatively large scale in the Ghouta area of Damascus on 21 August … in Khan Al Asal on 19 March 2013 against soldiers and civilians … in Jobar on 24 August 2013 on a relatively small scale against soldiers … in Saraqueb on 24 August 2013 on a small scale, also against civilians … [and] in Ashrafiah Sahnaya on 25 August 2013 on a small scale against soldiers’ (UNMIAUCWSAA 2013: 19-21).

Notice that on three of these five occasions chemical weapons were used against soldiers. Logically those attacks came from groups which were fighting soldiers, not from government forces. A later report for the Human Rights Council (February 2014) noted that the chemical agents used in Khan-Al-Assal attack ‘bore the same unique hallmarks as those used in al Ghouta’; however they could not determine the perpetrator (HRC 2014: 19). The independent evidence was overwhelming and inescapable: chemical weapons had been used in East Ghouta, but the charges against the Syrian Army were fabricated.

Evidence independent of the Syrian Government came from Syrian, Jordanian, Turkish and US sources, and from a United Nations team. Further, many of the images of sick of dead children were not reliably linked to East Ghouta.

Nor is there independent verification of who those children are and what happened to them. The weight of evidence shows this to be another ‘false flag’ incident, designed to attract deeper foreign intervention. The scale of independent reporting which undermined claims against the Syrian Government stands in marked contrast to the boastful self-publicity by ‘rebels’ of their own atrocities: beheadings, public executions, truck bombings, mortaring of cities, bombing of hospitals and destruction of mosques and churches. The fact that the Syrian Army strongly contests civilian atrocity claims (the treatment of captured fighters is another matter), while many of the ‘rebels’ publicise their own atrocities, sets a distinct background to these controversies.

9.3. Chemical fabrications and Syria’s Missing Children

After the East Ghouta incident, Islamist groups supported by a range of states opposed to Syria maintained the chemical accusations. Jabhat al Nusra claimed the chemicals they were caught with in Turkey were ‘not for making sarin gas’ (Today’s Zaman 2013). Yet video evidence from south Syria showed al Nusra using chemical weapons against Syrian soldiers (Turbeville 2014). In July 2014 barrels containing sarin were reported as discovered in parts of ‘rebel-held Syria’ (RT 2014). Then in 2015 Iraqi Kurds reported the other main al Qaeda group ISIS as using chemical weapons (Solomon 2015; Ariel 2015). Kurdish fighters seized chlorine canisters after a suicide bomb attack which left them ‘dizzy, nauseous and weak’ (Akbar 2015).

Anti-Syrian ‘activists’, plus US-based NGOs such as Avaaz, the Syria Campaign and The White Helmets, repeated and extended the accusations, urging a Libyan styled ‘no fly zone’ (NFZ Syria 2015; White Helmets 2015), clearly intended to topple the Government in Damascus. By 2014 there seemed little chance that would happen. In April 2014 Al Jazeera again accused the Syrian Government of using chlorine gas (Baker 2014), while anonymous activists’ accused the Syrian army of a poison gas attack (Mroue and Lucas 2015). In neither case was there any independent verification. Nevertheless, media channels repeated the initial claims of the East Ghouta incident, as though they were fact, oblivious to the evidence. An April 2015 article in the UK Guardian, for example, claimed in its backgrounder that the Syrian Government had used chemical weapons and ‘killed up to 1,400 people in August 2013’ (Black 2015). Such was the reckless disinformation.

The smokescreens around chemical weapons effectively derailed reasonable western discussion about the war in Syria; and perhaps that was the point. It is sad, though, that reasonable discussion of the evidence should matter so little. Further, the constant stream of fabrications have certainly aggravated and helped prolong the violence. Islamist militia carry out their crimes with relative impunity, regularly blaming them on the Syrian Government.

Another crime has been buried by the chemical fabrications: the fate of the children kidnapped in Ballouta. Even Human Rights Watch reported this crime (HRW 2013b), if not the link to the children said to have been injured or killed in East Ghouta. This mass kidnapping was just one of many by the armed groups. The victims are held for ransom, for prisoner exchanges, or simply slaughtered because they are thought be from pro-government families. However in the East Ghouta incident, several sources (ISTEAMS 2013; Martin 2014; Mesler 2014) link the Ballouta children to the photos of the dead or drugged little bodies said to have bene in the East Ghouta. That is, their images may have been uploaded from East Ghouta but the bodies were never there. While some of those kidnapped were released in a 2014 prisoner exchange, many are still held, reportedly in Selma.

This is said to be why many families in northern Syria did not wish to publicly identify their children. They want to free those that have survived. Western media sources continue refer to ‘1,400’ dead, without names, but only eight bodies are known to have been buried. In the fog of war, Mother Agnes Mariam has been right all along to insist on names and details of people killed, and not just a recital of numbers, as though these killings were a cricket match. Back in September 2013 her ISTEAMS group posed one of the most vital questions of this whole affair: ‘Eight corpses are seen buried’. [The] remaining 1,458 corpses, where are they? Where are the children?’ (ISTEAMS 2013: 41).

References:

Al Akhras, Samer (2013) Interview with this writer, Damascus, 24 December

Al Jazeera (2013) ‘Syria rebels made own sarin gas, says Russia’, 10 July, online: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/07/20137920448105510.html  

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Gladstone, Rick and C.J Chivers (2013) ‘Forensic Details in U.N. Report Point to Assad’s Use of Gas’, New York Times, 16 September, online: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/17/world/europe/syria-united-nations.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1387381766-55AjTxhuELAeFSCuukA7Og

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Hersh, Seymour M. (2014) ‘The Red Line and the Rat Line’, London Review of Books, 36:8, 17 April, pp 21-24, online: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line  

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HRW (2013b) ‘You Can Still See Their Blood’, Human Rights Watch, Washington, 11 October, online: http://www.hrw.org/node/119675/  

ISTEAMS (2013) ‘Independent Investigation of Syria Chemical Attack Videos and Child Abductions’, 15 September, online: http://www.globalresearch.ca/STUDY_THE_VIDEOS_THAT_SPEAKS_ABOUT_CHEMICALS_BETA_VERSION.pdf  

Lloyd, Richard and Theodore A. Postol (2014) ‘Possible Implications of Faulty US Technical Intelligence in the Damascus Nerve Agent Attack of August 21, 2013’, MIT, January 14, Washington DC, online: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1006045-possible-implications-of-bad-intelligence.html#storylink=relast

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NFZ Syria (2015) ‘Call from Syria: London march 26th April’, 4 April, online: http://www.nfzsyria.org/  

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RT (2013) ‘Turkey finds sarin gas in homes of suspected Syrian Islamists – reports’, 30 may, online: http://rt.com/news/sarin-gas-turkey-al-nusra-021/  

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This article first published in October 2013 is of utmost relevance in relation to current events including the mainstream news coverage of the war on Syria.

During the public debate around the question of whether to attack Syria, Stephen Hadley, former national security adviser to George W. Bush, made a series of high-profile media appearances. Hadley argued strenuously for military intervention in appearances on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and Bloomberg TV, and authored a Washington Post op-ed headlined “To stop Iran, Obama must enforce red lines with Assad.”

In each case, Hadley’s audience was not informed that he serves as a director of Raytheon, the weapons manufacturer that makes the Tomahawk cruise missiles that were widely cited as a weapon of choice in a potential strike against Syria. Hadley earns $128,500 in annual cash compensation from the company and chairs its public affairs committee. He also owns 11,477 shares of Raytheon stock, which traded at all-time highs during the Syria debate ($77.65 on August 23, making Hadley’s share’s worth $891,189). Despite this financial stake, Hadley was presented to his audience as an experienced, independent national security expert.

Though Hadley’s undisclosed conflict is particularly egregious, it is not unique. The following report documents the industry ties of Hadley, 21 other media commentators, and seven think tanks that participated in the media debate around Syria. Like Hadley, these individuals and organizations have strong ties to defense contractors and other defense- and foreign policy-focused firms with a vested interest in the Syria debate, but they were presented to their audiences with a veneer of expertise and independence, as former military officials, retired diplomats, and independent think tanks.

The report offers a new look at an issue raised by David Barstow’s 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times series on the role military analysts played in promoting the Bush Administration’s narrative on Iraq. In addition to exposing coordination with the Pentagon, Barstow found that many cable news analysts had industry ties that were not disclosed on air.

If the recent debate around Syria is any guide, media outlets have done very little to address the gaps in disclosure and abuses of the public trust that Barstow exposed. Some analysts have stayed the same, others are new, and the issues and range of opinion are different. But the media continues to present former military and government officials as venerated experts without informing the public of their industry ties – the personal financial interests that may be shaping their opinions of what is in the national interest.

This report details these ties, in addition to documenting the industry backing of think tanks that played a prominent role in the Syria debate. It reveals the extent to which the public discourse around Syria was corrupted by the pervasive influence of the defense industry, to the point where many of the so-called experts appearing on American television screens were actually representatives of companies that profit from heightened US military activity abroad. The threat of war with Syria may or may not have passed, but the threat that these conflicts of interest pose to our public discourse – and our democracy – is still very real.

Key Findings

The media debate surrounding the question of whether to launch a military attack on Syria in August and September of 2013 was dominated by defense industry-backed experts and think tanks. These individuals and organizations are linked to dozens of defense and intelligence contractors, defense-focused investment firms, and diplomatic consulting firms with strong defense ties, yet these business ties were rarely disclosed on air or in print. This report brings transparency to these largely undocumented and undisclosed connections.

For more on the methodology used to identify commentators, think tanks, and industry ties, please see the “Methodology” section below.

Commentators

• 22 commentators. The report identifies 22 commentators who weighed in during the Syria debate in large media outlets, and who have current industry ties that may pose conflicts of interest. The commentators are linked to large defense and intelligence contractors like Raytheon, smaller defense and intelligence contractors like TASC, defense-focused investment firms like SCP Partners, and commercial diplomacy firms like the Cohen Group.
• 111 appearances, 13 attempts at disclosure. These commentators made 111 appearances – as op-ed authors, quoted experts, or news show guests – in major media outlets such as CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Bloomberg, and the Washington Post. Despite the commentators’ apparent financial and professional stakes in military action, major media outlets typically failed to disclose these relationships, noting them, often incompletely, in only 13 of the 111 appearances (see table below for media outlet breakdown).
• Varying types of conflicts of interest. In some cases, commentators have undisclosed industry ties that pose significant and direct conflicts of interest. In other cases, the undisclosed ties were less direct, but still suggest that the commentator has a financial interest in continuing heightened levels of US military action abroad. A number of consultants are included because their business relationships are foreign policy-focused and likely involve work for defense clients, though most do not disclose client lists. One consulting relationship highlighted in the report is with the Department of Defense – not an industry connection, but a significant conflict of interest.
• Largely supportive of military action. The commentators profiled have largely expressed support for military action in Syria, and many have framed the decision as an issue of national security. However, the opinions they expressed were not uniformly supportive of military action. Several commentators identified, such as Robert Scales, opposed military intervention outright. (see correction)

The following is a selection of commentators, profiled at greater length below, who have multiple undisclosed ties to the defense industry and have expressed strong support for military intervention in Syria in multiple appearances:

• Jack Keane has strongly supported striking Syria on PBS, the BBC, and Fox News. Though Keane is currently a director of General Dynamics, one of the world’s largest military services companies, and a venture partner of SCP Partners, a defense-focused investment firm, only his military and think tank affiliations were identified in all sixteen appearances.
• General Anthony Zinni has expressed support for military action in Syria during three appearances on CNN and one on CBS This Morning, and has been quoted in the Washington Post. Though a director with major defense contractor BAE Systems and an advisor to defense-focused private equity firm DC Capital Partners, only Zinni’s military experience was considered relevant by the media outlets interviewing him all five times.
• Stephen Hadley has voiced strong support for a strike on Syria in appearances on Bloomberg TV, Fox News, and CNN, as well as in a Washington Post op-ed. Though he has a financial stake in a Syria strike as a current Raytheon board member, and is also a principal at consulting firm RiceHadleyGates, he was identified all four times only as a former National Security Advisor to George W. Bush.
• Frances Townsend has appeared on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 six times strongly favoring action in Syria. Though Townsend holds positions in two investment firms with defense company holdings, MacAndrews & Forbes and Monument Capital Group, and serves as an advisor to defense contractor Decision Sciences, only her roles as a CNN national security analyst and member of the CIA and DHS advisory committees were revealed in all six appearances.

Think Tanks

• Seven think tanks. The report profiles seven prominent think tanks with significant industry ties that weighed in on intervention in Syria. These think tanks were cited 144 times in major US publications from August 7th, 2013 to September 6th, 2013. The Brookings Institution, Center for Strategic and International Studies, and The Institute for the Study of War were the most cited think tanks from our dataset.
• Experts with The Brookings Institution were cited in 31 articles on Syria in our dataset, more than any other think tank. Brookings is an influential think tank that is presented in the media as an independent authority, yet it receives millions in funding from the defense industry, including $1 – 2.5 million from Booz Allen Hamilton and $50,000 – $100,000 from Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Palantir Technologies. Brookings Executive Education’s Advisory Council Chair, Ronald Sanders, is a Vice President and Senior Fellow at Booz Allen Hamilton.
• The Center for Strategic and International Studies was cited in 30 articles on Syria. CSIS has ample individual connections to the defense industry through its advisors and trustees, including CSIS Senior Advisor Margaret Sidney Ashworth, Corporate Vice President for Government Relations at Northrop Grumman, and CSIS Advisor Thomas Culligan, Senior Vice President at Raytheon. CSIS President and CEO John Hamre is a director for defense contractor SAIC.
• Analysts representing The Institute for the Study of War were cited in 22 articles on Syria in our dataset. One such article by former ISW Senior Research Analyst Elizabeth O’Bagy was cited by Secretary John Kerry and Senator John McCain during congressional hearings in their effort to justify intervention.¹ ISW’s Corporate Council represents a who’s who of the defense industry and includes Raytheon, SAIC, Palantir, General Dynamics, CACI, Northrop Grumman, DynCorp, and L-3 Communication.

The report also includes profiles on the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Enterprise Institute, the Atlantic Council, and the Center for American Progress. Each profile includes a selection of commentary from analysts associated with the think tank and a selection of defense industry ties. These ties are both organizational (corporate sponsorships and donations) and individual (ties through their directors, advisors, trustees, fellows, and analysts).

Methodology

Commentators were identified in articles, videos and transcripts gathered from Factiva and Google News searches, for the period August 20, 2013 to September 18, 2013. Research on the commentators’ backgrounds was then conducted, drawing on data from SEC EDGAR, news archive searches, online biographies, and other sources. Commentators with current industry ties were selected for inclusion in the report. Each piece was reviewed for relevance and only those directly related to discussions around Syria were counted toward the total. Potentially conflicted commentators were included in our dataset regardless of their support or opposition to military intervention. Where possible, videos of appearances were reviewed to determine whether industry affiliations were noted on-screen in a way that would not appear in transcripts.

The think tanks were identified through a review of articles appearing in major US publications for a slightly different period, from August 7th, 2013 to September 6th, 2013, and included the keyword “Syria” in the headline and/or lede paragraph. Searches were conducted using the Factiva database. Each article was reviewed for relevance to the Syria intervention debates. Only articles directly related to discussions around Syria were counted toward the total. Research was then conducted on the think tanks’ industry ties through reviews of annual reports, news articles, SEC data, and sources such as Right Web (http://rightweb.irc-online.org/), a database which includes extensive information on some of the think tanks profiled in the report.

In each case, data was reviewed and compiled on LittleSis.org (the opposite of Big Brother), PAI’s investigative research platform. The data in this report is available on LittleSis.org. At times, citations link to LittleSis.org profiles; additional, original sources for information about these individuals and organizations can be found on these pages.

Commentators and think tanks were included if they had significant current ties to the following types of firms:

• Defense and intelligence contractors.
• Investment firms with a significant defense or intelligence focus.
• Consulting firms with a significant focus on defense, intelligence, or commercial diplomacy.

Some consulting firms identified in the report function as shadow diplomatic firms, working for foreign governments and corporate clients seeking overseas business. These firms, such as the Albright Stonebridge Group, usually do not disclose their clients, so it can be difficult to discern their defense industry ties. In the absence of disclosure, this report includes these firms, and notes their defense ties where possible. Regardless of whether they have defense clients, principals at these firms likely have business relationships that complicate their public personas as expert foreign policy commentators.

I. Commentators

Each profile below highlights how the commentator was identified by the media, typically a previous position in government or the military. It then identifies their undisclosed ties to the defense industry, typically current positions as executives, board members or advisors with defense and intelligence contractors and defense-focused investment and consulting firms. Many of them also hold positions with the think tanks investigated in this report, which are identified where possible. If a news outlet attempted to disclose a commentators’ industry ties in any way, the profile includes a section titled “Disclosure” that describes that attempt.

Stephen Hadley

Identified as: Former national security adviser to George W. Bush

Undisclosed industry ties: Hadley has served on the board of defense contractor Raytheon since 2009. Raytheon manufactures the Tomahawk cruise missiles that were potentially to be used in airstrikes against Syria. He also sits on the Special Activities committee of Raytheon’s board, the stated purpose of which is “provide oversight of the Company’s business activities which involve matters that have been classified for purposes of national security by an agency or instrumentality of the government customer (‘Classified Business’).” Members of the committee must obtain “applicable security clearances.”² Hadley also chairs the company’s Public Affairs Committee, which reviews “political, social and legal trends and issues that may have an impact on the business operations, financial performance or public image of the Company.”³ Hadley owns 11,477 shares of Raytheon stock, worth close to $900,000, and earned $128,500 in cash compensation from the company last year.⁴

Hadley is a principal at RiceHadleyGates LLC, an international strategic consulting firm. The firm advises companies on their international strategies, including foreign policy and national security matters. One example of its work highlighted on its website: “Providing information and analysis to help a client manage the changes to its business brought about by the Arab Awakening.”⁵ He is also an advisor, focused on Policy Research & Analysis, to the consulting firm APCO Worldwide and director and member of the Executive Committee of the Atlantic Council (see below).⁶

Media commentary: Hadley has been a vocal and highly visible supporter of war with Syria. He published an opinion piece for the Washington Post headlined “To stop Iran, Obama must enforce red lines with Syria.” He has also done interviews with Bloomberg TV, MSNBC, and CNN, conveying a similar message.⁷ House Majority Leader Eric Cantor invited Hadley to brief staffers on Syria, according to the National Journal.⁸ National Security Advisor Susan Rice tweeted Hadley’s remarks in support of the strike, according to the Wall Street Journal.⁹ From Bloomberg Television’s Political Capital with Al Hunt (9/6/2013):

HUNT: How would it be read in Tehran if we don’t strike?HADLEY: I think that’s one of the biggest problems. And that’s why, if I were – and when I talk to Republicans, I say if you are concerned about Iran and the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, you better be voting in favor of this resolution, because having – the president having set down a red line for chemical weapons use in Syria, if he does not enforce it, the – the red line, if you will, that we’ve put down with Iran on its nuclear program doesn’t look credible. We’ve said that Iran needs to give up its nuclear program, and if it does not do so, all options are on the table, including the military option. If we don’t enforce the red line in Syria, that threat looks empty. And if that threat looks empty, I think there’s very little chance that we can get Iran to be willing to negotiate away its nuclear weapons program.¹⁰

Disclosure: CNN’s John Berman noted that Hadley is “with the consulting firm RiceHadleyGates”, but failed to disclose his position with Raytheon. None of Hadley’s ties to the defense industry were noted in his other three appearances.

James Cartwright

Identified as: Retired General and former Vice Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Undisclosed industry ties: Cartwright has served on the board of Raytheon since January 2012. He served on the Public Affairs Committee and the Special Activities committees (described above, under Stephen Hadley) until recently. Cartwright owns 5,374 shares of stock and earned $124,000 in cash compensation from Raytheon last year.¹¹

Cartwright has a number of other defense industry affiliations, as well. He is currently an advisor to defense and intelligence contractor TASC, consulting firm Accenture, and Enlightenment Capital, a private equity firm with defense investments. He is also a director of the Atlantic Council (see below).¹²

Cartwright is currently the target of a federal investigation into leaks regarding the Stuxnet virus.¹³

Media commentary: Cartwright appeared on ABC’s This Week Syria experts panel on September 1, 2013, the same day John Kerry made appearances on all of the Sunday shows. Cartwright echoed concerns that a limited strike would not be an effective deterrent, but agreed with host George Stephanopoulos that the United States needed to strike Syria to maintain credibility and send a message to Iran:

STEPHANOPOULOS: And General Cartwright, so much of this idea of hitting back at Assad, in part because of those horrific pictures, but also the word credibility comes back into play. All of the military, all the entire region, also looking at Iran and wondering the kind of message it sends to Iran if we do not, if we do not strike in the wake of an attack like this.CARTWRIGHT: I think it’s critical here and that’s probably one of the audiences we have to pay close attention to.¹⁴

Frances Townsend

Identified as: CNN national security analyst; member of the CIA and DHS advisory committees

Undisclosed industry ties: Townsend, former assistant for homeland security to George W. Bush, is a senior vice president at MacAndrews & Forbes, an investment firm. MacAndrews & Forbes owns AM General, which manufactures military vehicles. Townsend also serves as an operating advisor to Monument Capital Group, an investment firm with a global security and defense sector investment focus, and on the advisory board of Decision Sciences, a cargo screening company with defense contracts.

Townsend was the chair of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, a private intelligence contractor association, until 2012.¹⁵

Media commentary: As CNN’s national security analyst, Townsend has made multiple appearances on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 to discuss Syria.¹⁶ Townsend has stated that she sees action as “inevitable,” but has also questioned the effectiveness of a limited air strike on most appearances, instead promoting a “full comprehensive strategy” without limits set by Congress. She has expressed on multiple occasions her concern that a limited strike will threaten US national security. From CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 (8/28/2013):

TOWNSEND: When we have used these standoff assaults before, like after the East Africa bombing, it has a short-term effect, but not a long-term strategic effect. And that’s what you really want to do. You don’t want to just deter the Syrians. You want to deter Hezbollah, al Qaeda, Iran from using these kind of weapons as well.¹⁷

From CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 (9/3/2013):

TOWNSEND: That’s right, so you worry about the release of what chemical weapons they have, the use of Hezbollah, you know, asymmetric attacks not only inside Syria but are in the region and around the world against Western targets.¹⁸

She has also commented on the quality of the intelligence on Syria, calling it a “pretty compelling narrative” and questioned the trustworthiness of Russia’s plan to deal with Syria’s chemical weapons.¹⁹

General Anthony Zinni

Identified as: Retired U.S. Marine Corps General and Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Central Command

Undisclosed industry ties: Zinni is an outside director at BAE Systems, which was the third largest military services company in the world in 2011²⁰ and received $6.1 billion in federal contracts in 2012.²¹ He was previously chairman of the board and acting CEO between 2009 and 2012. He is a member of the Advisory Board of DC Capital Partners, a private equity firm investing in defense contractors. According to its website, “DC Capital’s investment strategy emphasizes certain sectors that it believes offer the most compelling growth opportunities for investment, including but not limited to: Intelligence, Homeland Security, Information Technology, and Operations and Maintenance.”²²

Zinni is also a Distinguished Senior Advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (see below).²³

Media commentary: Zinni has made multiple appearances on CNN and was quoted in the Washington Post. He has expressed support for the strike, but questioned the likelihood of it being a “one-and-done.”²⁴ He has also appeared on CBS’s This Morning with a similar message:

ZINNI: Well, we have to do something because the President laid a red line down. This is an unacceptable act. And– and so I think we’re committed, or look, we can– he’ll continue to test us. I think we need to think in terms of a longer campaign, not that this shot might be just one act and then finished²⁵

In his most recent appearance, on CNN’s State of the Union with Candy Crowley, Zinni expressed concern that Iran might see U.S. indecision on Syria as a “potential opportunity to exploit:”

CROWLEY: Is that the signal, you think, that Iran has gotten from the U.S. over the past couple of weeks?ZINNI: I think it’s probably been confusing for them. They probably see an opportunity here. I think prior to this they would have been convinced that we intended to act if they crossed the red line there. Knowing the Iranians, they see everything as a potential opportunity to exploit. And I’m sure they are calculating much how they could take advantage of this and maybe push the edge of the envelope.²⁶

Jeremy Bash

Identified as: Former Chief of Staff to the Defense Department and CIA under Leon Panetta

Industry ties: Bash is co-founder and managing director of Beacon Global Strategies. According to its website, Beacon is a “strategic advisory firm specializing in matters of International Policy, Foreign Affairs, National Defense, Cyber, Intelligence, and Homeland Security,” though its clients are not disclosed.²⁷ Defense News notes the firm is “built on providing advice to companies, primarily defense contractors, focused on international defense business as well as cyber, although their first client was Bash’s former boss, Panetta.”²⁸

Media commentary: Bash has made multiple appearances on CNN and MSNBC to discuss Syria. He has expressed strong confidence in U.S. intelligence on Syria. He has expressed support for the strike, including his “hope” that Congress will vote to approve it, and commented on its effectiveness in the interest of national security as a deterrent to other governments, citing Iran in particular.²⁹ From MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews (8/30/2013):

MATTHEWS: Jeremy Bash, your thoughts on that. Let`s see — keep the focus here on deterrence. We have a military capability. Can we, should we use it in this way to signal our potential future enemies, Don’t go nuclear because we’re not going to let this bum go chemical?BASH: Well, Chris, it`s good to be with you. I’ve probably sat through several hundred intelligence briefings over the last eight years on Capitol Hill, at the CIA, and at the Defense Department. Not one has been as nearly definitive as this one and not one has been nearly as horrifying as this. This really ranks up there as one of the most convincing and compelling intelligence cases for using military action in this way. And in terms of your question about deterrence and talking about Iran, let me point out two things. In 2003, Iran suspended its nuclear program. We know that definitively. Why did they do that? In part because that was the same year we invaded Iraq. We were in both countries around Iran, and they feared our military. Now, that wasn’t the objective of the Iraq war, but it was one of the intended — that was one of the consequences.³⁰

Disclosure: CNN’s Jake Tapper noted that Bash founded Beacon Global Strategies and called it “a consulting firm.” CNN and MSNBC failed to disclose the connection in Bash’s five other appearances.

Nicholas Burns

Identified as: Former Under Secretary of State; professor at Kennedy School of Government, former U.S. ambassador to NATO

Undisclosed industry ties: Burns is a Senior Counselor to the Cohen Group, a global consulting firm with Aerospace & Defense and Homeland Security among its practice groups. The Cohen Group has previously been registered as a lobbyist to the U.S. government on behalf of defense contractors Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, United Technologies and others. James Loy, senior counselor to the Cohen Group, and Joseph Ralston, Cohen Group vice chairman, are both directors at Lockheed Martin.

Burns is also a director for Entegris, which is “the leading manufacturer of graphite and silicon carbide materials and products for use in Aerospace applications,” according to their website.³¹ He serves on the board of the Atlantic Council (see below).³²

Media commentary: Burns has made appearances on CNN and Fox News in addition to penning op-ed columns for the Boston Globe. He has expressed strong support for a strike on Syria and suggested that inaction may threaten national security.³³ From one of Burns’s Boston Globe op-ed pieces (9/7/2013):

From a foreign policy perspective, the decision isn’t even close — the United States must act by attacking President Bashar Assad’s air force, artillery, and command and control assets within Syria. The goal is to intimidate him, degrade his military capacity, and deter him from ever using these weapons again. There are risks, to be sure, in any use of force. But this will not be another Iraq — the United States will not put ground troops into Syria. And the risks are even greater if we do nothing.³⁴

From CNN’s State of the Union with Candy Crowley (9/1/2013):

BORGER: And Nick Burns, let me ask you, what are the implications of this kind of delay for our allies in the region, or in Syria, for that matter?BURNS: Well, Gloria, there are some risks here. Risk one is that Assad will misread this, not understand what the president is trying to do as David has described in terms of domestic affairs and believes that we’re a paper tiger. And that will embolden him. The second risk is that Iran, Hezbollah and Russia, the coalition supporting Assad, will also feel that they have got license to continue what they’re doing. So the president needs to counteract those.³⁵

William S. Cohen

Identified as: Former Secretary of Defense during the Clinton Administration; former Republican Senator and Congressman from Maine; served as a Director of the Council on Foreign Relations

Industry ties: Cohen is Chair and CEO of the Cohen Group, a global consulting firm with Aerospace & Defense and Homeland Security among its practice groups, both led by Cohen. The firm’s website asserts Cohen’s particular credentials in those areas. The Cohen Group has previously been registered as a lobbyist to the federal government on behalf of defense contractors Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, United Technologies and others. James Loy, senior counselor to the Cohen Group, and Joseph Ralston, Cohen Group vice chairman, are both directors for Lockheed Martin. Cohen is also a trustee at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.³⁶

Media commentary: Cohen has made multiple appearances on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, and Bloomberg TV to discuss Syria in recent weeks. He has expressed confidence in the US intelligence on Syria, but advised consulting with the UN and Congress and determining more clear objectives before taking action.³⁷ From CNN Newsroom (9/11/2013):

COHEN: Nonetheless, the president is where he is right now and if he is forced to take action because the Russians are stalling and Assad is not complying, then he should use the Desert Fox operation that President Clinton initiated against Saddam Hussein with a four-day campaign that did real damage to Saddam’s capabilities. And I think that’s what the president has in mind.³⁸

Disclosure: MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell and CNBC noted the Cohen Group affiliation, but did not identify it as a defense consulting firm. The affiliation was not disclosed in Cohen’s other four appearances on CNN, Bloomberg TV and MSNBC.

Wesley Clark

Identified as: Retired General; former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO; senior fellow at the Burkle Center for International Relations at UCLA

Undisclosed industry ties: Clark founded a consulting firm Wesley K Clark & Associates in 2004, which, according to its website, “uses his expertise, relationships, and extensive international reputation and experience in the fields of energy, alternative energy, corporate and national security, logistics, aerospace and defense, and investment banking.”³⁹ He currently serves as CEO of the firm. Clients are not disclosed on its website.

Clark sits on the boards of many companies, most of them focused on the energy sector, and serves as an energy sector advisor to the Blackstone Group. He serves on the board of MFG.com, a sourcing company, which landed a Department of Defense contract shortly before he joined its board.⁴⁰ He is also a director of the Atlantic Council (see below).⁴¹

Media commentary: Clark has made appearances on CNN and NPR and penned an op-ed for Zocalo Public Square that was published in USA Today. He has expressed condemnation of Syria’s use of chemical weapons and support for Obama’s response on moral grounds.⁴² From Clark’s op-ed in USA Today (8/29/2013):

But President Obama has rightly drawn a line at the use of chemical weapons. Some weapons are simply too inhuman to be used. And, as many of us learned during 1990s, in the words of President Clinton, “Where we can make a difference, we must act.”⁴³

From CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront (9/4/2013):

CLARK: Because I think if the United States is going to lead, this is the time to lead, and what the president is doing is leading. Everyone signed this chemical warfare convention. It outlaws the use of chemical weapons. It’s actually been in law since 1925. And this is a chance for the United States and the world community to show that we meant the piece of paper when we signed it. And that’s what this is about, U.S. leadership. It is not about the strike. This is about bringing the United States and the world together to make a statement. This is not going to be permitted in the 21st Century.⁴⁴

Roger Cressey

Identified as: former National Security Council staff/White House counterterrorism official; NBC News counterterrorism consultant

Undisclosed industry ties: Cressey was until recently a senior vice president with Booz Allen Hamilton, “supporting the firm’s cybersecurity business and international government clients,” according to its website.⁴⁵ His profile is no longer available on the Booz Allen Hamilton website, but was as of September 21, 2013. He is currently listed as a partner with Arlington-based risk and crisis management firm, Liberty Group Ventures LLC.⁴⁶

Media commentary: Cressey has appeared on MSNBC and was quoted in NBC News commenting on the nature of Syrian rebels and whether regime change may be a consequence of the US strike.⁴⁷

From NBC News (9/9/2013):

President Barack Obama and other U.S. officials have said that any U.S. reprisal for Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons against his people would be limited and not aimed at regime change. But Cressey, the NBC News consultant, and other experts say that attacks – likely to be in the form of cruise-missile strikes on Syrian command-and-control facilities — could have that effect, coming at a time when the rebels have been gaining ground, even making headway in Alawite strongholds like Latakia. “You don’t have to advertise regime change,” said Cressey, “but you can strike a series of targets that are critical to the regime’s survival, that ultimately will help the rebels.⁴⁸

Charles Duelfer

Identified as: former chief U.S. weapons inspector (in Iraq during the administration of George W Bush); led the CIA’s Iraq Survey Group; author of Hide and Seek: The Search for Truth in Iraq

Undisclosed industry ties: Duelfer is chairman and special advisor to the CEO of Omnis, a consulting firm with a national security and intelligence focus. Omnis was part of team of contractors assembled by SAIC that in December 2007 won a 5-year contract worth up to $1 billion with the Defense Intelligence Agency.⁴⁹ Other clients are not disclosed on its website. According to Duelfer’s bio on the firm’s website, he is also currently “consulting on a range of intelligence and security management topics.”⁵⁰

Media commentary: Duelfer has made multiple appearances on PBS NewsHour and NPR to discuss Syria, as well as being quoted in The Nation and The Guardian. He has commented on the quality of intelligence in Syria and the plan to find and destroy their supply of chemical weapons.⁵¹

From PBS NewsHour (September 16, 2013):

IFILL: You mentioned Iraq. How does this compare to Syria, another place where the leader came out and said I’m going to give up my weapons and then someone had to enforce that?DUELFER: Well, I think implicitly or explicitly, the threat of force is there. Certainly, Bashar al-Assad will have noticed that the president gave a speech basically saying he was going to conduct a military strike. In the book of Obama, I think he is guilty, but he suspended the sentence. So whether or not the Security Council agrees to the use of force, the United States will.⁵²

Adam Ereli

Identified as: Former State Department deputy spokesperson; former ambassador to Bahrain; former State Department diplomat to Syria

Industry ties: Ereli recently joined public relations firm Mercury LLC as vice chairman and co-leads its international affairs team. Defense and homeland security are both listed among his focus industries on the firm’s website.⁵³

Media commentary: Ereli made an appearance on Fox News, shortly after the chemical attacks were discovered, repeatedly calling for an attack on Syria: “If it is demonstrated that chemical weapons were used, then force is not an option, it’s a necessity.” He reiterated his point on Twitter with a link to the interview: “The question is not whether the US should respond with force to the use of WMD in Syria, but how much force to use.”⁵⁴

Ereli has also made appearances in international press, including an interview on France 24 and quotes in the Telegraph, Voice of America, and the United Arab Emirates’ Khaleej Times and The National, all calling for an attack on Syria and suggesting inaction could threaten national security. He made another appearance on Fox News as well with a similar message.⁵⁵

From The National (9/8/2013):

“First of all, Obama made it clear that he wants to act. He doesn’t want Bashar [Al Assad, the Syrian president] and the Syrian regime to use chemical weapons with nothing done about it, but he also wants America to be united in this action,” Mr Ereli said. “That’s why he asked Congress to vote on it although he does not constitutionally need that. Will he get it? I hope so because if he doesn’t it will be a disaster for the United States, a disaster for Syria and a disaster for the whole region.”⁵⁶

Disclosure: Of all the media outlets that interviewed Ereli, only The National noted that he is “now a diplomatic consultant.” It is unclear if Ereli was already under contract with Mercury when he made appearances on Fox and other quotes in the international press.

Michèle Flournoy

Identified as: Former Undersecretary of Defense

Industry ties: Flournoy has been a senior advisor at the Boston Consulting Group since mid-2012 in the firm’s worldwide public sector practice, to “provide advice on driving change in the government arena to BCG teams and the government they are supporting around the world.”⁵⁷ According to Wikileaks State Department cables, past Boston Consulting Group clients have included the government of the United Arab Emirates and Kazakhstan.⁵⁸ The firm has also opened a major office in Dubai, which plays a “strategic role in serving clients throughout the fast-growing Gulf and MENA (Middle East North Africa) regions.”⁵⁹

Flournoy is also a cofounder and president of the Center for a New American Security, a director at the Atlantic Council and a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (see below).⁶⁰

Media commentary: Flournoy appeared on MSNBC expressing support for a strike on Syria:

FLOURNOY: Look, I think there are very important stakes involved here: first, the issue of upholding the international norm against the use of chemical weapons; second, U.S. credibility and leadership in the world and third, knowing that the rest of the world is watching. What messages does Iran take from either action or inaction? So I do think that limited, focused strikes, focused on deterring further use of chemical weapons, degrading Assad`s ability to carry out such attacks, that those are something we need to support and we need to do. But I also think we need to better explain to the American people and to Congress the stakes involved and the risks of not acting, what that would mean.⁶¹

Disclosure: MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell noted Flournoy’s position at the Boston Consulting Group, but did not indicate the nature of its business.

Michael Hayden

Identified as: Retired General; former CIA director

Industry ties: Hayden is a principal at the Chertoff Group, a global security consulting firm founded by former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. Hayden’s focus areas include “technological intelligence and counterintelligence (communications and data networks),” “global political and terrorist risk analysis,” and “the structure and strategy of the American intelligence community,” according to the firm’s website.⁶² Hayden serves on the board of Alion Science and Technology and the advisory board of Next Century Corporation, both defense contractors. He is also a director at the Atlantic Council (see below).

Media commentary: Hayden has made multiple appearances on CNN to discuss Syria. He has expressed support for striking Syria and suggested the attack cannot be “one and done.” He has also commented on the quality of intelligence on Syria.⁶³

From CNN’s Piers Morgan Live (8/29/2013):

HAYDEN: No, I think the United States would act unilaterally because President Obama made this commitment for the United States and frankly for himself personally about a year ago. And I just can’t conceive that he would back down from a very serious course of action in which these actions of President Assad have serious consequences.⁶⁴

Disclosure: Hayden’s affiliation with the Chertoff Group, described as a “risk management/security consulting firm,” was noted on most appearances. CNN’s Anderson Cooper and and Wolf Blitzer also noted that Hayden “serves on the board of several defense firms.” CNN’s Piers Morgan incorrectly identified Hayden as a National Security Advisor to President George W. Bush, but did not note his affiliations with Chertoff or any defense contractors.

Colin Kahl

Identified as: Former deputy assistant secretary of Defense for the Middle East; former Obama administration Pentagon official

Undisclosed industry ties: Kahl does not appear to have current ties to defense contractors, but he is currently a consultant to the Office of the Secretary of Defense with TS-SCI clearance, according to his CV.⁶⁵ He is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

Media commentary: Kahl was quoted in Politico, the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg about Syria. He has expressed support for the strike on Syria, but concern about potential consequences that would make disengagement difficult, similar to Iraq.⁶⁶

From the Wall Street Journal (8/31/2013):

Colin Kahl, a former Obama administration Pentagon official, said the president’s expected military action was an appropriate demonstration of U.S. credibility. “One of the things I heard most often when I was in the administration is that superpowers don’t bluff,” he said. “That’s why the administration has been very cautious across a whole host of issues not to issue a lot of red lines.”⁶⁷

Brian Katulis

Identified as: Senior fellow/national security specialist at the Center for American Progress (see below)

Undisclosed industry ties: Katulis is a senior advisor at the Albright Stonebridge Group, a global strategy firm. According to his bio on its website, Katulis “assists clients with issues related to the Middle East and South Asia. He has consulted numerous U.S. government agencies, private corporations, and non-governmental organizations on projects in more than two dozen countries, including Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Egypt, and Colombia.”⁶⁸ Albright Stonebridge does not disclose its clients.

Media commentary: Katulis has appeared on MSNBC’s Politics Nation with Al Sharpton and Bloomberg TV, published a piece on Syria in the New York Daily News, and has been quoted in the Christian Science Monitor, Bloomberg and the LA Times. On MSNBC, Katulis said that Obama and Kerry had done a “very good job” making the case for airstrikes, though raised doubts about the efficacy of a limited strike.⁶⁹ He has also commented on the role of international “silent partners,” countries who may not support the strike militarily, but in other ways.⁷⁰

Jack M Keane

Identified as: Retired Army General; vice chief of staff of the Army from 1999 to 2003; Board Chairman for the Institute for the Study of War (see below); Fox News military analyst. He has also been described as “an influential advocate for the surge of troops in Iraq” and “serving in an advisory role in the U.S. occupation of Iraq.”

Undisclosed industry ties: Keane has been a director with major defense contractor General Dynamics since 2004.⁷¹ General Dynamics was the fourth largest military services company in the world in 2011⁷² and received $15 billion in federal contracts in 2012, making it the fourth largest federal contractor.⁷³ Keane is a venture partner with SCP Partners, a private equity firm targeting defense and security investments.⁷⁴

Media commentary: Keane has appeared on PBS News Hour, BBC Radio 4, NPR-affiliated Utah Public Radio, and Fox News on thirteen occasions as a military analyst. In every appearance he has expressed strong support for striking Syria. He has expressed some of the earliest support for military action in Syria, following initial reports of the chemical attacks, and emphasized the importance of “degrading” the Syrian military.⁷⁵ Most recently, Keane has been a strong critic of the deal with Russia on Fox, calling the focus on chemical weapons disarmament “a lost opportunity to achieve the kind of strategic balance we need to buffer the Iranians.”⁷⁶ From PBS NewsHour (9/2/2013):

BROWN: General Keane, I want to ask you because I understand you talked to Senators McCain and Graham after their meeting with the president. Do they have a sense of some kind of plan on the table for what could be done militarily?KEANE: Yes, I think they came away from that meeting a little bit more optimistic than they had thought they would be. I believe they were encouraged by the fact that I think the plan is a little bit more robust and that degrades significantly Assad’s delivery systems, to include airpower.⁷⁷

Patrick Murphy

Identified as: Iraq veteran, former US Representative from Pennsylvania

Undisclosed industry ties: Patrick Murphy is a partner at the law firm Fox Rothschild LLP. According to a Philadelphia Business Journal article, another partner in the firm indicated that Murphy’s service in the military and the House Armed Services Committee “will be a big help in the firm’s recently expanded Washington office, where the firm’s clients largely revolve around the defense industry.” He also noted that Murphy “would become involved in some government relations work.”⁷⁸

Media commentary: Murphy has made multiple appearances on MSNBC to discuss Syria. He has expressed concern about the effectiveness of a limited strike and has advocated exploring diplomatic options before using the military.⁷⁹

Madeleine Albright

Identified as: Former Secretary of State during the Clinton Administration

Industry ties: Albright chairs the Albright Stonebridge Group, an international consulting firm, as well as Albright Capital Management, an emerging markets investment firm. As noted above, Albright Stonebridge does not disclose its clients, though its business, described as “commercial diplomacy,” likely gives rise to significant conflicts of interest and likely involves work with defense contractors. One of the consulting firm’s clients, Marsh Inc. CEO Brian Storms, said “To be blunt, the access that Madeleine Albright gives Marsh through her global contacts is unprecedented.”⁸⁰ Albright is also a director of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Center for a New American Security, as well as an honorary director for the Atlantic Council (see below)⁸¹

Media commentary: Albright issued a statement urging Congress to vote in favor of striking Syria that was quoted in the Washington Post:

The “risks of complacency and inaction far outweigh those of the limited, but purposeful, response now contemplated,” Albright said in a statement. “The dangers of this world will only deepen if aggressors believe that global norms have no meaning and that gross violations can be carried out with impunity.”⁸²

Most recently, she has appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation and CNN commenting on a possible deal with Russia.⁸³

Disclosure: Albright’s affiliation with Albright Stonebridge was noted by CNN on the screen during her appearance, but not verbally, and the firm’s business was not described for viewers. The Washington Post indicated that Albright’s statement was “released by her consulting company,” but failed to name it.⁸⁴ CBS failed to mention any of her ties.

James A “Spider” Marks

Identified as: Retired Army Major General; former commander of the U.S. Army intelligence center; CNN military analyst

Undisclosed industry ties: Marks serves as a venture partner and advisory board member at the Stony Lonesome Group, an investment firm with a defense and national security focus.⁸⁵ He is also a co-founder of Willowdale Services, a consulting firm that lists “global strategic risk management,” “defense operations,” and “intelligence support operations” among its areas of expertise, and “geographic and operational risk assessments” among its service offerings.⁸⁶

Media commentary: Marks is a military analyst on CNN and has made ten appearances to discuss Syria. He has expressed support for striking Syria and commented on a range of military options, suggesting that regime change and use of ground forces should be on the table. He has also commented on the plan to find and destroy chemical weapons in Syria.⁸⁷ From CNN Newsroom (8/27/2013):

COSTELLO: OK so last question for you the President is set to get this document that will present evidence that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons on its own people. How long after that do you think a decision will be made?MARKS: Well I would hope a decision has already been made and that all that is necessary now is confirmation and at least alerting the American public that this is an inevitability. It literally could be a New York minute. Make the decision and then launch the first cruise missiles immediately. There should be no effort on the part of Assad — we’ve demonstrated, or at least Assad has demonstrated an inability to be reasonable in terms of what he is doing, so our expectations should be that he’s not going to alter his behavior. We need to be prepared to strike immediately.⁸⁸

Chuck Nash

Identified as: Retired US Navy Captain; Fox News military analyst.

Undisclosed industry ties: Nash serves as an independent director of Applied Visual Sciences, a contraband detection company seeking Defense and Homeland Security contracts. Since 2000, he has also run Emerging Technologies International Inc. (ETII), a defense consultancy. It is unclear if ETII is active.⁸⁹

Media commentary: Nash has made multiple appearances on Fox News to discuss Syria. He has criticized the effectiveness of a limited strike, instead supporting a larger strategic military plan to “change the events on the ground.”⁹⁰ From Fox News’ America’s Newsroom (9/3/2013):

MARTHA: What do you think should be done? Do you think Congress should vote to approve this strike?NASH: It depends on what this strike really entails. If this strike is nothing more than poking our nose in there and not changing the game then, no. Because if you take a shot at somebody, you should expect them to take a shot back at you. Therefore, this ought to be part of an overall plan that achieves certain strategic political ends, and if it doesn’t, if all it is is “doing something” then, no, I don’t support that at all. But if it’s to change the events on the ground and we have a plan on what we want that outcome to look like then, yes, I can say support it because the President has already gotten far out in front of the whole process with his rhetoric, and now the United States and our reputation abroad is really swinging in the balance.⁹¹

Disclosure: Nash’s Fox News bio indicates his affiliation with Emerging Technologies,⁹² but neither that nor his affiliation with Applied Visual Sciences are noted during his appearances.

John D Negroponte

Identified as: Former Director of National Intelligence (during the Bush administration); former Ambassador to Iraq and the UN; former Deputy Secretary of State

Undisclosed industry ties: Negroponte is vice chairman of McLarty Associates, a global strategic consulting firm that lists defense among its sectors of focus. He is also an advisor to Aamina, a global investment company with private investing “currently focused on ventures in the Middle East and North Africa,”⁹³ and Oxford Analytica, a global analysis and advisory firm. Negroponte became Chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, a private intelligence contractor association, in 2012.⁹⁴

Media commentary: In late August, Negroponte was quoted in Politico with concerns about striking Syria without accurate intelligence and an international coalition, given his experiences with Iraq. He praised Obama for trying to get more buy-in at home and abroad on CNN’s State of the Union.⁹⁵ During his appearance on Fox News’ On the Record with Greta Van Susteren the following week, Negroponte expressed support for the strike as a way to deter Assad and discussed possible regime change:

NEGROPONTE: Well, the truth is, this is a situation fraught with uncertainty and fraught with terrible choices, choices between different shades of bad and worse. And I don’t think we know what’s going to happen, but I think one of the things that is forcing our hand and sort of giving impetus to our thinking is the fact that Mr. Bashar al Assad’s behavior has become even more reprehensible. And in a way, you might argue that this use of chemical weapons has been kind of a straw that broke the camel’s back⁹⁶

Robert Scales

Identified as: retired Army major general, former commandant of the U.S. Army War College.

Correction, 10/11/2013 11:50 am: The following section has been updated to reflect the following correction: Scales is no longer a consultant to the defense industry, and his firm, Colgen, has not been operating for the past year. The “media commentary” section is unchanged from its original version. As the report noted, Scales voiced outright opposition to war in a Washington Post op-ed and multiple appearances on Fox News. He was the only analyst in our dataset who fully opposed striking Syria, but was included because of his defense industry ties. His ties to Colgen were found in his online bios and Colgen’s company website, which appeared to be up-to-date.

Undisclosed industry ties: Scales is the former founder and CEO of Colgen, a defense consulting firm which . Many major defense contractors, including Boeing, Booz Allen Hamilton, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and SAIC, and branches of the U.S. military are listed among its clients.⁹⁷

Media commentary: Scales wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post calling the Syria strike “a war the Pentagon doesn’t want.”⁹⁸ He has also made multiple appearances on Fox News opposing the Syria strike and expressing concern that it might lead to a larger conflict.⁹⁹

Disclosure: Scales’ Fox News bio online notes his affiliation with Colgen, but it is not noted during his appearances.

II. Think Tanks

Brookings Institution

Industry Ties: Brookings is an influential research and policy think tank that works in many major policy areas, including defense and foreign policy. In its most recent annual report Brooking’s corporate donors include some prominent names in the defense industry.¹⁰⁰ The bulleted points below give the donation level and each defense industry contractor that gave at that level.

• $1 – 2.5 million: Booz Allen Hamilton
• $500 thousand – 1 million: Qualcomm Inc.
• $50 – 100 thousand: Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Palantir Technologies

In addition to organizational funding, Brookings has several industry-connected individuals in its ranks. David Rubenstein, co-founder and co-CEO at the Carlyle Group, the majority shareholder of Booz Allen Hamilton and the company responsible for taking the firm public in 2010, is co-chair of Brookings’ board of trustees. He also made a personal contribution at the $1-2.5 million level, according to the 2012 annual report.¹⁰¹ Another Brookings trustee, Ken Duberstein, is a director of Boeing, the second largest defense contractor in the United States.¹⁰²¹⁰³

Brookings employs Booz Allen Hamilton vice president and senior fellow, Ronald Sanders as adjunct faculty.¹⁰⁴ Sanders also chairs Brookings’ Executive Education’s Advisory Council, most recently heading up a Brookings event entitled “Enterprise Leadership: The Essential Framework for Today’s Government Leaders,” which featured Booz Allen senior vice president Admiral Thad Allen as keynote speaker. ^{105 106}

Syria commentary: The Brookings Institution’s commentary on intervention in Syria was cited in 31 articles. Though largely logistical and focused on analysis of the President’s response and effects of Congressional involvement, some analysts weighed in on intervention specifically, advocating missile strikes and offering public relations pointers.

Michael O’Hanlon, national security analyst at Brookings, urged a comparison between the hypothetical Syria intervention and President Clinton’s punitive missile strikes against Iraq on NPR, saying that the operation would be “small scale” and “over as soon as it’s begun”:

Michael O’Hanlon, a national security analyst at The Brookings Institution, said that for all the contrasts with the 2003 Iraq invasion, the more apt comparison in Syria is with missile strikes ordered against Iraq by President Bill Clinton, including strikes in 1998 to punish Saddam for not complying with U.N. chemical weapons inspections.“I’m surprised this administration doesn’t make that analogy,” O’Hanlon said. “This operation is going to be limited. It’s going to be small scale or medium scale and it’s going to be over as soon as it’s begun practically. We’re going to hear about the beginning, middle and end of it all in one Pentagon briefing, more or less.”¹⁰⁷

Ken Pollack, senior fellow in the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, Brookings Institution, drew a comparison between intervention in Syria and the (positively viewed) US intervention in Kosovo in the late 1990s, also on NPR, implying that opposition to intervention is largely due to bad public relations:

One path may be persuading NATO to get involved or even lead any military action. That helped the Clinton administration cast a frame of legitimacy on the Kosovo war in the late 1990s even though the Security Council, with Russia firmly opposed, never sanctioned the bombing campaign against Belgrade, said Ken Pollack, an expert on Middle Eastern political-military affairs at the Brookings Institute.“Very famously, the Kosovo war was not legal,” Pollack said. “Yet … you don’t have people running around screaming that the Kosovo war was illegal. That is because the US did a good job of building a case for it.”¹⁰⁸

A pentagonal network: think tank-defense industry ties. (click through for detail).

Center for Strategic and International Studies

Industry Ties: The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is an established foreign policy think tank with a long roster of corporate executives and government officials serving as trustees¹⁰⁹ and counselors.¹¹⁰ CSIS has more defense industry connected advisors than most think tanks, including at its highest level of leadership: its president and CEO, John J Hamre, serves as a director for defense contractor SAIC. ¹¹¹

• CSIS trustee James McNerney is president, CEO, and chairman of the board at Boeing.¹¹²
• CSIS senior advisor Margaret Sidney Ashworth is the corporate vice president for government relations at Northrop Grumman and former Raytheon lobbyist.¹¹³
• CSIS Advisory Board member Thomas Culligan is senior vice president at Raytheon.¹¹⁴
• CSIS Advisory Board member Gregory Dahlberg is senior vice president of Washington operations at Lockheed Martin. ¹¹⁵
• CSIS Advisory Board member Timothy Keating is senior vice president of public policy at Boeing.¹¹⁶
• CSIS Roundtable member Gregory Gallopoulos is senior vice president, general counsel and secretary at General Dynamics. ¹¹⁷
• CSIS trustee Ray L Hunt is a former Halliburton director.¹¹⁸
• Trustee James L Jones is a former director of General Dynamics and Boeing.¹¹⁹

Syria Commentary: CSIS’ experts were cited in 30 articles on intervention in Syria, often advocating for greater military action than the target strikes being considered by Secretary Kerry.

Anthony Cordesman, Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy for CSIS and a former national security assistant to Senator John McCain said limited strikes would be “pointless”:

Others said that Mr. Obama needs to go beyond cruise-missile strikes. “Simply taking reprisal action to say ‘We mean it’ does not strike me as significant meaningful action,” said Anthony Cordesman, a longtime military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It’s a pointless punitive military exercise.”¹²⁰

In another article Cordesman said that the planned strikes would cause “lasting” damage to Assad:

Defense analyst Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank said if successful, hitting fixed targets would eliminate key assets to Assad that “can’t easily be replaced, like command and control facilities, major headquarters.”“These are lasting targets,” Cordesman said.¹²¹

In yet another article Cordesman said that the limited strikes would send a message of weakness and hypothetically incentivize similar regimes to use nuclear weapons:

“If anything, the message of a narrowly focused US strike could be just the opposite of what the US intends,” says Anthony Cordesman, a defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.“To the world’s worst regimes, the unintended message of limited strikes that leave their governments intact may be that that if you are going to use such weapons, use them decisively enough to make any international action worth the cost,” he adds. “Worse, such actions may lead regimes to question the utility of using weapons with limited value in deterring international intervention, like chemical weapons. Instead, they may be incentivized to go nuclear, go cyber, or support violent non-state actors.”¹²²

Institute for the Study of War

Industry ties: The Institute for War Studies’ close connection to defense contractors is well documented. ISW Founder and President Kimberly Kagan was criticized in a December, 2012 Washington Post article for “pro bono” advisory services she and her husband provided to General Petraeus.¹²³ The article noted that Kagan’s proximity to the general “provided an incentive for defense contractors to contribute” to her think tank and “during Petraeus’s tenure in Kabul, she sent out a letter soliciting contributions so the organization could continue its military work.” Most telling of how the deep ties between ISW and the defense industry are bolstered is the following anecdote from the Washington Post, describing their 2011 dinner honoring Petraeus:

At the August 2011 dinner honoring Petraeus, Kagan thanked executives from two defense contractors who sit on her institute’s corporate council, DynCorp International and CACI International. The event was sponsored by General Dynamics. All three firms have business interests in the Afghan war.Kagan told the audience that their funding allowed her to assist Petraeus. “The ability to have a 15-month deployment essentially in the service of those who needed some help — and the ability to go at a moment’s notice — that’s something you all have sponsored,” she said.She called her work for him “an extraordinary and special occasion.”After accepting the award, Petraeus heaped praise on the institute.“Thanks to all of you for supporting an organization that General Keane very accurately described as filling a niche — a very, very important one,” he said. “It’s now a deployable organization. We’re going to start issuing them combat service stripes.”

ISW’s Corporate Council is a “who’s who” of the defense industry and includes Raytheon, SAIC, Palantir, General Dynamics, CACI, Northrop Grumman, DynCorp, and L-3 Communication.¹²⁴ Raytheon, of course, is the manufacturer of the Tomahawk cruise missile, widely understood as the weapon of choice for the proposed strike and the featured armament in Harmer’s ISW study.

Syria commentary: The Institute for the Study of War was cited in 22 articles on intervention. The message from analysts from the ISW focused on quelling the notion that the opposition forces, which stood to gain from a US intervention, are extremists and argued in favor of immediate strikes over waiting for Congress.

Christopher Harmer, a senior naval analyst with the Middle East Security Project at the Institute for the Study of War, released a widely circulated study on the use of Tomahawk missiles for a “surgical” strike against Assad. The study was touted by Sen. John McCain as proof that limited strikes were a viable intervention strategy. From Foreign Policy:

In July, Harmer authored a widely-circulated study showing how the U.S. could degrade key Syrian military installations on the cheap with virtually no risk to U.S. personnel. “It could be done quickly, easily, with no risk whatsoever to American personnel, and a relatively minor cost,” said Harmer. One of the study’s proposals was cruise missile strikes from what are known as TLAMs (Tomahawk land attack missiles) fired from naval vessels in the Mediterranean.¹²⁵

In addition to advocating for intervention, Harmer was critical of any delay in the strikes. From Bloomberg:

While a delay doesn’t present “insurmountable difficulty” for the U.S., Assad will benefit from time to prepare for an attack, said Christopher Harmer, an analyst with the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War who follows the Syrian military.The decision to wait for a vote in Congress lets Assad disperse his forces and equipment and allows Syria’s ally, Russia, to reposition some of its Black Sea fleet into the Mediterranean, Harmer said. It also provides Assad a “considerable psychological advantage within Syria,” he said.“It strains credibility to assert that the effect of delaying action is positive for the U.S. and negative for the Assad regime,” Harmer said in an e-mail.¹²⁶

Prior to her dismissal from ISW for lying about holding a Ph.D. from Georgetown University, Elizabeth O’Bagy, who also worked for the Syrian Emergency Task Force, was quoted in several articles supporting intervention and arguing that opposition forces were not linked to extremists groups as feared. Her articles were influential enough to be quoted by Secretary Kerry. From Reuters:

Kerry cited an article by Elizabeth O’Bagy, an analyst with the Institute for the Study of War think tank, in which she wrote that Islamic extremist factions are not “spearheading the fight against the Syrian government,” but rather that the struggle is being led by “moderate opposition forces.”¹²⁷

Council on Foreign Relations

Industry ties: The Council on Foreign Relations claims over 4,700 members and boasts many celebrity and high profile members among those ranks including Brian Williams, Fareed Zakaria, Angelina Jolie, Chuck Hagel, and Erin Burnett.¹²⁸ Its prominence lends it a gravitas that obscures substantial conflicts of interest.

CFR has a robust corporate membership¹²⁹ program that includes many of the top companies in the defense industry including Booz Allen Hamilton, DynCorp, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Palantir. Each company paid between $30,000 and $100,000 for varying levels of access to CFR’s experts and directors.

CFR’s board members include many individuals with defense industry ties, such as R. Nicholas Burns (profiled above), Ann Fudge, a director of General Electric, and Donna J. Hrinak, an executive at Boeing. The vice chairman of CFR’s board of directors is David Rubenstein, co-founder and co-CEO of top Booz Allen shareholder the Carlyle Group.

Individual memberships are similarly stocked with defense industry insiders. CFR members Thad Allen and Tom Moorman are Booz Allen Hamilton executives, while members Robert Millard and John P White are Directors at L-3 Communication. CFR member Norman Augustine was the chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin.

Syria commentary: CFR’s analysts and experts were cited in 19 articles on intervention in Syria. Much of CFR’s pro-intervention commentary came from CFR President Richard Haass¹³⁰ who advocated directly arming the Syrian opposition in addition to the proposed limited strikes:

Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said providing “significant” arms to the rebels would be the best way to help shape the battlefield and influence the outcome in Syria.“I think the strikes are in a narrow way successful by simply occurring,” Haass said. “It shows that you cannot use these weapons and get off scot-free,” said Haass. “If the Syrians continue to slaughter — as I believe they probably would — their fellow citizens as the civil war continues, then the United States has other means rather than direct military participation to counter that. And that’s where I have been arguing, will continue to argue, for serious arming of the opposition.”¹³¹

In an op-ed in the Washington Post, CFR senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies Robert Danin called for a military commitment that would “send a message to Assad”:

But if the Obama administration wants to send a message to Assad that he accurately understands, the United States must provide not only a credible response to his recent use of chemical weapons but also make him believe that response is part of a larger strategy to compel him to stop slaughtering his own people — by any means. Such an approach would require a U.S. commitment to doing more than limited strikes against facilities related to chemical weapons. But it is the only message Assad will understand.¹³²

American Enterprise Institute

Industry ties: The American Enterprise Institute does not disclose its corporate donor base but its trustees and fellows have significant ties to the defense industry.

• Trustee Daniel D’Aniello is co-founder and Chairman of the Carlyle Group, the majority shareholder of Booz Allen Hamilton.¹³³
• Trustee John Faraci sits on the board of directors of United Technologies Corporation, an aerospace and aviation manufacturing company. ¹³⁴
• Trustee Dick Cheney is the former Vice President of the United States, former CEO of Halliburton, and a famed Washington, DC hawk.¹³⁵
• Senior Fellow Thomas Donnelly was the director of strategic communications and initiatives for Lockheed Martin.¹³⁶
• Fred Kagan, director of the Critical Threats Project¹³⁷, is the husband of ISW director Kim Kagan. Both were criticized in the Washington Post for “pro bono” senior advisory work to General Petraeus.¹³⁸

Syria commentary: Individuals associated with the American Enterprise Institute were cited in 15 articles on intervention in Syria.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed former Senators Lieberman and Kyl, co-chairmen of the American Enterprise Institute’s American Internationalism Project, derided inaction in Syria as detrimental to national security, a betrayal of US allies in the region, and an ominous “green-light” for Iran and Putin:

But none of this should blind us from a larger truth: Regardless of how we got here, failure to authorize military force against Assad now will have far-reaching and profoundly harmful consequences for American national security.This is no longer just about the conflict in Syria or even the Middle East. It is about American credibility. Are we a country that our friends can trust and our enemies fear? Or are we perceived as a divided and dysfunctional superpower in retreat, whose words and warnings are no longer meaningful?¹³⁹

This doomsday scenario of “green-lighting” the hypothetical ambitions of Iran and North Korea was echoed by AEI scholar Michael Rubin in comments to the Associated Press:

“President Obama issued those words – red line – a little more than a year ago,” said Rubin. “If you draw a line in the sand and you allow your opponent to cross, then that’s not an issue of confidence only in Syria, but that’s something the North Koreans will be watching, the Iranians will be watching and potentially other rogues around the globes will be watching. So the whole idea of a symbolic strike is to say ‘you can’t cross the line.’”¹⁴⁰

Atlantic Council

Industry ties: Supporters of the Atlantic Council are grouped into sponsor circles of increasing access depending on the financial commitment to the organization. Donors giving less than $25,000 are designated as “Other Supporters”:

• Global Leaders Circle ($100,000+): SAIC, EADS, Lockheed Martin
• Chairman’s Circle ($50,000+): Raytheon
• President’s Circle ($25,000+): Boeing
• Other Supporters: General Dynamics, Northrop¹⁴¹

In addition to direct support from defense industry contractors, the Atlantic Council maintains its own stable of connected directors and advisors:

• Former National Security Advisor Stephen J Hadley, profiled above, is a director for the Atlantic Council and a director at Raytheon. ¹⁴²
• Director James Cartwright, also profiled above, is also a director for Raytheon and an advisor for TASC.¹⁴³
• Advisor Robert J Stevens is the former CEO and currently serving as chairman of Lockheed Martin.¹⁴⁴
• Advisor General John Jumper was the CEO and Chairman of SAIC until September 27, 2013, when the company split off its national security, health, and engineering businesses as a new public company called Leidos. Jumper now serves as the CEO and Chairman of Leidos.¹⁴⁵¹⁴⁶
• Director Thomas M Culligan is senior vice president for Raytheon. ¹⁴⁷
• Director Admiral Edmund Giambastiani Jr serves as a director for Boeing.¹⁴⁸
• Atlantic Council Chairman James L Jones was formerly a director for Boeing and General Dynamics.¹⁴⁹

Syria commentary: Analysts with the Atlantic Council were cited in 14 articles on intervention in Syria.

Frederic C Hof, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, wrote that limited, symbolic strikes were worse than doing nothing and mused on the image of American weakness portrayed in such an intervention scenario in an interview with the Christian Science Monitor:

On the other hand, if the attack is limited in scope and duration, it could send entirely the wrong signal to the Assad regime.“The more limited and symbolic it is the more disastrous it would be for the US and its partners… It would be worse than doing nothing,” says Frederic C. Hof, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East who previously served as the Obama administration’s liaison with the Syrian opposition.“It would only confirm Assad’s view that it is safe to walk up to the president of the United States and slap him in the face, as appears to have been the case in this most recent incident,” he adds, in reference to last week’s chemical attack, believed to be the deadliest single poison gas attack in quarter of a century.¹⁵⁰

Center for American Progress

Industry ties: Although considered dovish by defense policy standards, the Center for American Progress’ business alliance and analysts have ties to large defense contractors.

CAP’s business alliance was revealed in a Nation article that exposed its undisclosed corporate donors. Among these donors were two of the biggest names in the defense industry, Lockheed Martin and Boeing.¹⁵¹

These ties extend into their roster of experts. CAP’s senior vice president for national security and international policy, Rudy de Leon, was senior vice president of Boeing; CAP senior fellow Scott Lilly was a lobbyist for Lockheed Martin. Several senior staff at the Albright Stonebridge Group, a commercial diplomacy firm, have ties to CAP, including Madeleine Albright and Carol Browner, both board members, and Brian Katulis and Richard Verma, both senior fellows with a national security focus. Former Raytheon and SAIC director John Deutch is a CAP trustee.

Syria commentary: The Center for American Progress was the least cited of the think tanks profiled, appearing in 13 articles on intervention in Syria.

Larry Korb, a former Pentagon official and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, said that intervention would be a foregone conclusion if not for the looming shadow of Iraq. From AFP:

“It’s the elephant in the room,” said Larry Korb, a former Pentagon official and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. “Had we not had the Iraq war, there would be no real question here,” he said, suggesting that proposed strikes on Syria would have been “approved overwhelmingly” by Congress.¹⁵²

In addition to providing their own commentary, the Center for American Progress provided a platform for UN Ambassador Samantha Power to promote military strikes as the sole available strategy to avoid green-lighting future atrocities. From the New York Times:

Warning that President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has barely put a dent in his chemical weapons stockpile, President Obama’s new envoy to the United Nations said on Friday that a failure to intervene in Syria would “give a green light to outrages that will threaten our security and haunt our conscience” for decades to come.“We have exhausted the alternatives,” Ms. Power said. “For more than a year, we have pursued countless policy tools short of military force to try to dissuade Assad.”¹⁵³

The “green-lighting” narrative was echoed by other commentators and think tanks including conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute.

References

¹ The Lead with Jake Tapper, “Syria Crisis”, CNN (September 2, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/11/us/syria-elizabeth-obagy-fired/index.html
² “Committee Charter”, Raytheon. Accessed at: http://investor.raytheon.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=84193&p=irol-govCommittee&Committee=9674
³ “Committee Charter”, Raytheon. Accessed at: http://investor.raytheon.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=84193&p=irol-govCommittee&Committee=5055
⁴ Form 4 Stephen J Hadley, Raytheon Co (June 6, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1047122/000104712213000126/xslF345X03/wf-form4_137030261738473.xml
⁵ “Our Work”, RiceHadleyGates LLC. Accessed at: http://www.ricehadleygates.com/work.html
⁶ “Stephen J Hadley”, LittleSis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/60272/Stephen_J_Hadley
⁷ Stephen J Hadley, “To stop Iran, Obama must enforce red lines with Assad”, Washington Post (September 8, 2013). Accessed at: http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-09-08/opinions/41881087_1_chemical-weapons-hassan-rouhani-syria; Andrea Mitchell Reports, “Crisis in Syria”, MSNBC (September 5, 2013). Accessed at: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/andrea-mitchell/52928555#52928555; The Lead with Jake Tapper, “Interview With New York Congressman Charles Rangel”, CNN (September 5, 2013) Accessed at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1309/05/cg.01.html
⁸ Ben Terris, “Obama (Finally) Reaches Out to Republicans. But Is It Too Little, Too Late?”, National Journal (September 10, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/obama-finally-reaches-out-to-republicans-but-is-it-too-little-too-late-20130910
⁹ Colleen McCain Nelson, “Obama Finds Unlikely Allies, Foes Over Syria Strikes”, Wall Street Journal (September 11, 2013). Accessed at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323864604579069513569705676.html
¹⁰ Political Capital with Al Hunt, “Hadley Says Republicans Must Support Obama on Syria”, Bloomberg Television (September 6, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-06/hadley-says-republicans-must-support-obama-on-syria-transcript-.html
¹¹ Form 4 James E Cartwright, Raytheon Co (June 3, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1047122/000104712213000120/xslF345X03/wf-form4_137030159527917.xml
¹² “General James Cartwright”, LittleSis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/81719/General_James_Cartwright
¹³ Michael Isikoff, “Ex-Pentagon general target of leak investigation, sources say”, NBC News (June 27, 2013). Accessed at: http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/27/19174350-ex-pentagon-general-target-of-leak-investigation-sources-say?lite
¹⁴ This Week, “Secretary of State John Kerry”, ABC News (August 31, 2013). Accessed at: http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/week-transcript-secretary-state-john-kerry/story?id=20123604&singlePage=true
¹⁵ “Frances Townsend”, LittleSis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/69328/Frances_Townsend
¹⁶ Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees, “U.S. Preparing for Larger Air Attack in Syria”, CNN (September 5, 2013). Accessed at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1309/05/acd.01.html; Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees, “Will U.S. Strike Syria?”, CNN (August 29,2013). Accessed at: http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1308/29/acd.01.html;
¹⁷ Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees, “Crisis in Syria”, CNN (August 28, 2013). Accessed at: http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1308/28/acd.02.html
¹⁸ Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees, “Syria Showdown in the Senate”, CNN (September, 3 2013). Accessed at: http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1309/03/acd.01.html
¹⁹ Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees, “President Obama Weighs Syria Options”, CNN (August 30, 2013)> Accessed at: http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1308/30/acd.01.html; Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees, “President Obama to Address Nation on Syria”, CNN (September 10,2013). Accessed at: http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1309/10/acd.01.html
²⁰ “The SIPRI Top 100 arms-producing and military services companies in the world excluding China, 2011”, SIPRI (2011). Accessed at: http://www.sipri.org/research/armaments/production/Top100
²¹ “Top 100 Contractors Fiscal Year 2012”, Federal Data Procurement System. Accessed at: https://www.fpds.gov/fpdsng_cms/index.php/reports
²² “Overview”, DC Capital Partners. Accessed at: http://www.dccapitalpartners.com/overview/index.html
²³ General Anthony Zinni”, LittleSis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/11454/General_Anthony_Zinni
²⁴ Ernesto Lodoño and Ed O’Keefe, “Imminent U.S. strike on Syria could draw nation into civil war”, Washington Post (August 27 2013). Accessed at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/imminent-us-strike-on-syria-could-draw-nation-into-civil-war/2013/08/27/d780e0f6-0f59-11e3-bdf6-e4fc677d94a1_story.html; State of the Union with Candy Crowley, “Interview with John Kerry”, CNN (September 1, 2013). Accessed at: http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1309/01/sotu.02.html; CNN Live Event/Special, “Crisis in Syria: The Debate Begins”, CNN (September 3, 2013). Accessed at: http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1309/03/se.07.html
²⁵ CBS This Morning, “U.S. “committed” to Syria action, will look weak to Assad if it doesn’t act, retired general says”, CBS (August 29, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57600559/u.s–committed-to-syria-action-will-look-weak-to-assad-if-it-doesnt-act-retired-general-says/
²⁶ State of the Union with Candy Crowley, “Interview with Ron Johnson, Bob Casey”, CNN (September 15,2013). Accessed at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1309/15/sotu.02.h tml
²⁷ Beacon Global Strategies. Accessed at: http://beaconglobalstrategies.com/
²⁸ Zachary Fryer-Biggs, “Clinton Allies Join Bush Alum To Form New Consulting Group”, Defense News (September 3, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.defensenews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2013309030006
²⁹ State of the Union with Candy Crowle, “Interview with John Kerry”, CNN (September 1, 2013). Accessed at: http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1309/01/sotu.02.html;
²⁹ The Lead with Jake Tapper, “Did Obama Administration Lack In Preparedness To Deal With Syrian Chemical Attack?”, CNN (September 2, 2013). Accessed at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1309/02/cg.02.html;
²⁹ Andrea Mitchell Reports, “Bash: US will ‘deter, punish and degrade’ in Syria”, MSNBC (August 27, 2013). Accessed at: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/andrea-mitchell/52856784#52856784; The Lead with Jake Tapper, “Will U.S. Strike Syria?”, CNN (August 27, 2013). Accessed at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1308/27/cg.01.html; The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, MSNBC (August 29, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/52884818/ns/msnbc/t/last-word-lawrence-odonnell-thursday-august-th/#.UjiiJcZ6Yf0
³⁰ Hardball With Chris Matthews, NBC News (August 30, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/52912919/ns/msnbc-hardball_with_chris_matthews/#.UjiZG8Z6Yf0
³¹ “Aerospace”, Entegris. Accessed at: http://www.entegris.com/Industry_indAerospace.aspx
³² “R Nicholas Burns”, LittleSis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/90277/R_Nicholas_Burns
³³ State of the Union with Candy Crowley, “Interview with Ron Johnson, Bob Casey”, CNN (September 15, 2013). Accessed at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1309/15/sotu.02.html; Nicholas Burns, “Diplomacy to the rescue in Syria?”, Boston Globe (September 12,2013). Accessed at: http://”, CNN (September 15, 2013). Accessed at: www.” bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/09/11/diplomacy-rescue-syria/AZvPyvXNfZ9ELepVIULtvL/story.html; Studio B with Shepard Smith, “Why the US should still keep military action on the table”, Fox News (September 10, 2013). Accessed at: http://video.foxnews.com/v/2663051270001/why-the-us-should-still-keep-military-action-on-the-table//
³⁴ Nicholas Burns, “Response is fundamental to a world of civility and justice”, Boston Globe (September 7, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/09/06/five-reasons-why-congress-should-support-obama-syria/0Ryq8EzYoJn37Sp0GS3v6L/story.html
³⁵ State of the Union with Candy Crowley, “Interview with John Kerry”, CNN (September 1, 2013). Accessed at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1309/01/sotu.02.html
³⁶ “William S Cohen”, LittleSis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/13995/William_S_Cohen
³⁷ The Daily Rundown, “How does Obama handle the Middle East mess?”, MSNBC (August 22, 2013). Accessed at: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/daily-rundown/52817525#52817525; CNN Newsroom, “Obama Talks Syria, Builds U.S. Support; Obama Vows “No Boots On The Ground”, CNN (September 4, 2013). Accessed at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1309/04/cnr.03.html; Political Capital with Al Hunt, “Cohen on Syria, Chemical Arms”, Bloomberg TV (August 30, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.bloomberg.com/video/cohen-on-syria-chemical-arms-political-capital-R2vVBW9NQtGyAcFqK4HItg.html; Andrea Mitchell, “Decision still not made on Syria strike”, MSNBC (August 29, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/49263362#52875781; Squawk on the Street, “President Obama sending ‘mixed messages’”, CNBC (September 11, 2013). Accessed at: http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000198073; Power Lunch, “The conflict in Syra”, CNBC (August 29, 2013). Accessed at: http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?play=1&video=3000195187; Closing Bell, “Syria cast shawdo over G-20 Summit”, CNBC (September 6, 2013). Accessed at: http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000197384&play=1
³⁸ CNN Newsroom, “9/11 Museum Still under Construction”, CNN (September 11, 2013). Accessed at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1309/11/cnr.01.html
³⁹ “Gen Wesley K. Clark, (ret)”, Wesley K. Clark & Associates, LLC. Accessed at: http://wesleykclark.com/about/
⁴⁰ “MFG.com Awarded Contract to Connect American Manufacturing,” MFG.com (August 2, 2012). Accessed at: http://www.mfg.com/media/press-release/mfgcom-awarded-contract-connect-american-manufacturing
⁴¹ “Wesley K Clark”, LittleSis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/30287/Wesley_K_Clark
⁴² All Things Considered, “Retired Gen. Wesley Clark Talks about Precedents and Syria”, NPR (August 27, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=216155784; Fareed Zakaria GPS, “GPS Shadow National Security Council Discusses Syria”, CNN (September 8, 2013). Accessed at: http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1309/08/fzgps.01.html;
⁴² The Ed Show, MSNBC. Accesed at:http://www.nbcnews.com/id/45755822/ns/msnbc-the_ed_show/vp/52965553/#52965458
⁴³ Wesley Clark, “Syria vs. Kosovo”, USA Today (August 30, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/08/29/syria-wesley-clark-kosovo-nato/2726733/
⁴⁴ Erin Burnett Outfront, “Senate Committee Authorizes Military Force In Syria”, CNN (September 4, 2013). Accessed at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1309/04/ebo.01.html
⁴⁵ “Roger Cressey”, Booz Allen Hamilton. Accessed at: http://www.boozallen.com/about/leadership/executive-leadership/Cressey
⁴⁶ “Roger Cressey”, Greater Talent Network. Accessed at: http://www.greatertalent.com/rogercressey/
⁴⁷ The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, MSNBC.Accessed at: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/45755883/ns/msnbc-the_last_word/vp/52932353#52932353
⁴⁸ Richard Engel, Jim Miklaszewski, Ghazi Balkiz, & Robert Windrem, “Extremist element among Syrian rebels a growing worry”, NBC News (September 10, 2013). Accessed at: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/09/09/20403434-extremist-element-among-syrian-rebels-a-growing-worry?lite
⁴⁹ “Press Release”, Omnis (April 7, 2008). Accessed at: http://omnisinc.com/press_news/Omnis-SAIC-April_7_2008.pdf
⁵⁰ “Charles A Duelfer, Chairman o the Board of Directors”, Omnis. Accessed at: http://omnisinc.com/leadership.php#Duelfer
⁵¹ NewsHour, “World Waits for ‘Slam Dunk’ Evidence That Assad Regime Used Chemical Weapons”, PBS (August 29, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/world/july-dec13/syria2_08-29.html; NewsHour, “What Are the Ground Rules of Transferring Weapons to International Control?”, PBS (September 10, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/international/july-dec13/weapons_09-10.html; Morning Edition, “UN Inspectors Try to Get to Site of Alleged Chemical Attack”, NPR (August 22, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.npr.org/2013/08/22/214392642/accusations-of-chemical-weapons-use-complicates-u-n-inspection; Weekend Edition, “The Ins And Outs Of Securing Chemical Weapons”, NPR (September 14, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=222390725; Barbara Crossette, “How to Disarm During a Civil War”, The Nation (September 16, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.thenation.com/article/176181/how-disarm-during-civil-war#; Martin Chulov, Mona Mahmood and Ian Sample, “Syria conflict: chemical weapons blamed as hundreds reported killed”, The Guardian (August 22, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/21/syria-conflcit-chemical-weapons-hundreds-killed
⁵² NewsHour, “Chemical Weapons Declaration May Offer ‘First, Key Tipoff’ of Assad’s Intentions”, PBS (September 16, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/world/july-dec13/syria2_09-16.html
⁵³ “Amb. Adam Ereli”, Mercury. Accessed at: http://www.mercuryllc.com/staff-member/amb-adam-ereli
⁵⁴ Amb. Adam Ereli, Twitter. Accessed at: https://twitter.com/aereli;
⁵⁴ Happening Now, “Alleged Syrian chemical attack: France calls for force”, Fox News (August 22, 2013). Accessed at: http://video.foxnews.com/v/2622996327001/alleged-syrian-chemical-attack-france-calls-for-force/?playlist_id=930909808001
⁵⁵ The Interview, J. Adam Ereli, former US ambassador to Bahrain (2007-2011)”, France 24 (September 3, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.france24.com/en/20130902-interview-j-adam-ereli-former-us-ambassador-to-Bahrain-syria-vote-congress; David Blair, Peter Foster, Philip Sherwell, & Roland Oliphant, “Russia and US to hold crunch talks on Syria chemcial weapons plan”, The Telegraph (September 11, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10303354/Russia-and-US-to-hold-crunch-talks-on-Syria-chemcial-weapons-plan.html; Scott Stearns, “US Cannot ‘Conclusively Determine’ Chemical Weapons Use in Syria”, Voice of America (August 23, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.voanews.com/content/us-cannot-conclusively-determine-chemical-weapons-attack-in-syria/1735401.html; Sarah Young and Patrick Michael, “Obama should strike Syria,
says diplomat”, Khaleej Times (September 4, 2010). Accessed at: http://www.khaleejtimes.com/kt-article-display-1.asp?section=middleeast&xfile=data/middleeast/2013/september/middleeast_september32.xml;
Studio B with Shepard Smith, “International resistance to strike on Syria”, Fox News (September 2, 2013). Accessed at: http://video.foxnews.com/v/2645389870001/international-resistance-to-strike-on-syria/
⁵⁶ Awad Mustafa, “ US ‘no option’ but to order Syria strike, says former State Department official”, The National (September 10, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/us-no-option-but-to-order-syria-strike-says-former-state-department-official#ixzz2g3qrthwK
⁵⁷ “Press Releases”, The Boston Consulting Group. Accessed at: http://www.bcg.com/media/pressreleasedetails.aspx?id=tcm:12-109698
⁵⁸ “Cablegate’s Cables: Full-text search for ‘Boston Consulting-Group’”, WikiLeaks Accessed at: http://cablegatesearch.wikileaks.org/search.php?q=%22boston+consulting+group%22&qo=0&qc=0&qto=2010-02-28
⁵⁹ “Dubai Founded in 2007”, Boston Consulting Group. Accessed at: http://www.bcg.com/about_bcg/offices/dubai.aspx
⁶⁰ “Michele Flournoy”, LittleSis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/33226/Mich%C3%A8le_Flournoy
⁶¹ “Michael Hayden” LittleSis.org Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/33391/Michael_Hayden hMItMImIp://video.msnbc.s..on.com/andrea-mitchell/52928793#52928793
⁶² “General Michael V. Hayden”, Chertoff Group. Accessed at: http://chertoffgroup.com/bios/michael-hayden.php
⁶³ CNN Live Event/Special, “Crisis in Syria: The Debate Begins”, CNN (September 3 2013). Accessed at: http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1309/03/se.07.html; The Lead with Jake Tapper, “Syria Crisis”, CNN (September 2, 2013). Accessed at: http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1309/02/cg.01.html; The Situation Room, “Crisis in Syria; Interview With Michigan Congressman Mike Rogers” CNN (August 29 2013). Accessed at: http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1308/29/sitroom.02.html; Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees, “President Obama Blames Chemical Attack on Assad Regime”, CNN (August 28 2013). Accessed at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1308/28/acd.01.html
⁶⁴ Piers Morgan, “Interview with John McCain; What Should the U.S. Do in Syria?” CNN (August 9 2013) http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1308/29/pmt.01.html
⁶⁵ “Colin H. Kahl” curriculum vitae. Accessed at: http://explore.georgetown.edu/people/chk34/
⁶⁶ Glenn Thrush and Jennifer Epstein, “The Lonely President” Politico.com (August 29 2013) Accessed at: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/barack-obama-the-lonely-president-96064.html;
⁶⁶ David Lerman and John Walcott, “Obama’s Push for Syria Strike Revives Calls to Rebels”, Bloomberg.com (September 4 2013). Accessed at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-04/obama-s-push-for-syria-strike-revives-calls-to-arm-rebels.html
⁶⁷ Adam Entous and Carol E. Lee , “Quietly, Some Allies Push for Action”, The Wall Street Journal (August 31 2013). Accessed at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324324404579045300639945302.html
⁶⁸ “Brian Katulis,” Albright Stonebridge Group.com. Accessed at: http://www.albrightstonebridge.com/team/Brian-Katulis/
⁶⁹ “Politics Nation with Al Sharpton”, NBCNews.com Accessed at: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/45755884/vp/52888485#53046250
⁷⁰ Brian Katulis, Silent International Partners in President Obama’s Possible Syria strike may be Critical” New York Daily News, (August 30 2013). Accessed at: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/silent-partners-syria-strike-critical-expert-article-1.1442238; Jennifer Skalka Tulumello, “Syria crisis: Dovish Democrats urge Obama to consult Congress, (August 29, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/2013/0829/Syria-crisis-Dovish-Democrats-urge-Obama-to-consult-Congress; David Lerman and Indira A. R. Lakhsmanan “Obama Faces Toughest Foreign Policy Challenge in Syria” , (August 26 2013). Accessed at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-26/obama-faces-toughest-foreign-policy-challenge-in-syria.html; Paul Richter, “Russia’s Syria Proposal Offers Major Powers Clear Advantages”, Los Angeles TImes (September 11 2013). Accessed at: http://articles.latimes.com/2013/sep/11/world/la-fg-syria-assess-20130911; US to Have Silent Partners on Syria, Katulis Says”, Bloomberg.com. Accessed at: http://www.bloomberg.com/video/u-s-to-have-silent-partners-on-syria-katulis-says-7tQ93G6ETzy 66LHnK9lGvA.html
⁷¹ “John M. Keane,” General Dyamanics Accessed at: http://investorrelations.gd.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=85778&p=irol-govBio&ID=161819
⁷² The Sipri Top 100 arms producing and military services companies in the world excluding China, 2011” Sipri.org. Accessed at: http://www.sipri.org/research/armaments/production/Top100
⁷³ “Federal Procurement Data System- Next Generation”, FPDS.gov. Accessed at: https://www.fpds.gov/fpdsng_cms/index.php/reports
⁷⁴ “The SCP Team”, SCP Partners. Accessed at: http://www.scppartners.com/team.html
⁷⁵ Editor, “If The U.S. Strikes, What Are The Targets Inside Syria?”(August 30 2013). Acccessed at: http://upr.org/post/what-would-be-best-targets-hit-syria; “Search Results: Keane”, Fox News. Accessed at: http://www.foxnews.com/search-results/search?&q=keane&mediatype=Video&sort=date
⁷⁶ Lou Dobbs Tonight, “Has U.S. Lost Strategic Opportunities in Syria?”, Fox News (September 18, 2013). Accessed at: http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/2680791936001/has-us-lost-strategic-opportunities-in-syria/;
⁷⁷ PBS NewsHour, “Can Obama Convince Congress to Approve a Limited Air Strike?” PBS (September 2 2013), Accessed at: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/world/july-dec13/syria1_09-02.html
⁷⁸ Jeff Blumenthal, “Patrick Murphy Following Up Congress with Fox Rothschild Job”, Philadelphia Business Journal (January 3 2013). Accessed at: http://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/blog/jeff-blumenthal/2011/01/patrick-murphy-following-up-congress.html?page=all
⁷⁹ The Cycle, “ The False Choice on Syria”, MSNBC (September 11 2013). Accessed at: http://video.msnbc.msn.c om/the-cycle/52985286#52985286; Politics Nation with AL Sharpton, MSNBC. Acessed at: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/45755884/vp/52878571#52878571; Now with Alex Wagner, “How Feasible is a Limited Strike in Syria”, MSNBC (September 11 2013). Accessed at: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/now/52984065#52984065
⁸⁰ Otis Bilodeau, “Madeleine Albright Raises $329 Million for New Fund(Update 4)”, Bl oomberg (January 18 2007). Accessed at: http:/www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aU1Dya07Rrr8
⁸¹ “Madeleine Albright”, LittleSis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/33351/Madeleine_K_Albright
⁸² David Nakamura, “Madeleine Albright pushes Congress in Support of Syria Resolution”, Washington Post (September 6 2013). Accessed at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/09/06/madeleine-albright-pushes-congress-in-support-of-syria-resolution/
⁸³ Face the Nation, “Levin, Corker, Albright”, CBS (September 15 2013). Accessed at: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3460_162-57603011/face-the-nation-transcripts-september-15-2013-levin-corker-albright/?pageNum=3
⁸⁴ David Nakamura, “Madeleine Albright pushes Congress in Support of Syria Resolution”, Washington Post (September 6 2013). Accessed at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/09/06/madeleine-albright-pushes-congress-in-support-of-syria-resolution/
⁸⁵ “James A “Spider” Marks”, LittleSis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/130930/James_A_%22Spider%22_Marks
⁸⁶ “Our Team, Why We’re Different”, Willowdale Services. Accessed at: http://willowdaleservices.com/our-team-why-were-different.html
⁸⁷ The Situation Room, “Russica Submits Plan to U.S.”,CNN (September 11 2013). Accessed at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1309/11/sitroom.01.html; Piers Morgan, “A Strike on Syria?”, CNN (August 28 2013). Accessed at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1308/28/pmt.01.html; Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees, “President Obama Weighs Syria Options”,CNN (August 30 2013). Accessed at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1308/30/acd.01.html; Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees, “U.S. Preparing for Larger Air Attack in Syria”, CNN (September 5 2013). Accessed at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1309/05/acd.01.html; Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees, “U.S. Preparing Possible Military Strike on Syria”, CNN(August 27 2013). Accessed at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1308/27/acd.02.html;CNN Newsroom ,CNN (September 14 2013). Accessed at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1309/14/cnr.03.html;CNN Newsroom, “Obama Press Congress on Syria Strike”,CNN (September 7 2013). Accessed at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1309/07/cnr.02.html; The Lead with Jake Tapper, “Syria Options”, CNN (August 29 2013). Accessed at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1308/29/cg.01.html; The Lead with Jake Tapper, “Will U.S. Strike Syria?” ,CNN (August 27 2013). Accessed at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1308/27/cg.01.html
⁸⁸ CNN Newsroom, ‘Mass Grave Dug in Damascus”, CNN (August 27 2013). Accessed at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1308/27/cnr.04.html
⁸⁹ “Chuck Nash”, LittleSis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/131035/Chuck_Nash
⁹⁰ America’s Newsroom, “Kerry’s Syria Argument ‘terribly naive’”, Fox News (September 10 2013). Accessed at: http://video.foxnews.com/v/2662502760001/kerrys-syria-argument-terribly-nave/; Markets News, “Can the U.S. Build International Support for Syria?”, Fox News (September 5 2013). Accessed at: http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/2651513506001/can-the-us-build-international-support-for-syria/
⁹¹ America’s Newsroom, “Why Congress Should Approve or Not Approve a Syria Strike”, Fox News (September 3, 2013). Accessed at: http://video.foxnews.com/v/2647221746001/why-congress-should-approve-or-not-approve-a-syria-strike/
⁹² “On Air Personalities: Captain Chuck Nash”, Fox New Accessed at: http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/personalities/chuck-nash/bio/#s=a-d
⁹³ “Home,” Aamina. Accessed at: http://www.aamina.com/
⁹⁴ “John D Negroponte”, LittleSis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/33503/John_D_Negroponte
⁹⁵ Katie Glueck, “Bush Vets Split on Syria”, Politico (August 30, 2013) Accessed at: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/bush-vets-split-on-syria-96077.html; State of the Union with Candy Crowley, “Interview with John Kerry”, CNN (September 1, 2013). Accessed at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1309/01/sotu.02.html
⁹⁶ On The Record, “Short-term versus long-term strategy in Syria”, Fox News (September 5, 2013) Accessed at: http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/on-the-record/2013/09/06/short-term-versus-long-term-strategy-syria
⁹⁷ “Clients”, Colgen. Accessed at: http://www.colgen.net/clients.html
⁹⁸ Robert Scales, “A war the Pentagon doesn’t want”, Washington Post (September 5, 2013). Accessed at: http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-09-05/opinions/41798832_1_u-s-army-war-college-syria-next-war
⁹⁹ On the Record with Greta Van Susteren, “Are long-term military strikes on Syria part of US plan?”, Fox News (August 27, 2013). Accessed at: http://video.foxnews.com/v/2633029503001; On the Record with Greta Van Susteren, “What would a short-term Syria strategy look like?”, Fox News (August 30, 2013). Accessed at: http://video.foxnews.com/v/2639220961001; On the Record with Greta Van Susteren, “Why the military is opposed to strikes in Syria”. Fox News (September 11, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/on-the-record/2013/09/12/why-military-opposed-strikes-syria
¹⁰⁰ “Annual Report 20”, Brookings (2012). Pages 35-37. Accessed at: http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/about/content/annualreport/2012annualreport.pdf
¹⁰¹ “David Rubenstein”, Littlesis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/15122/David_Rubenstein
¹⁰² “Kenneth M Duberstein”, Littlesis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/1104/Kenneth_M_Duberstein
¹⁰³ Eloise Lee and Robert Johnson, “The 25 Biggest Defense Contractors In America”, Business Insider (March 13, 2012). Accessed at: http://www.businessinsider.com/top-25-us-defense-companies-2012-2?op=1
¹⁰⁴ “Ronald Sanders”, Littlesis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/126442/Ronald_Sanders
¹⁰⁵ “Enterprise Leadership: The Essential Framework for Today’s Government Leaders”, Brookings (August 14, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/events/2013/8/14%20enterprise%20leadership/20130814_strategic_choices_management_review_transcript.pdf
¹⁰⁶ “Thad W Allen”, Littlesis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/76593/Thad_W_Allen
¹⁰⁷ Associated Press, “Difference Aside, Iraq War Haunts Obama on Syria”, NPR (August 31, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=217574155
¹⁰⁸ Associated Press, “With Security Council divided, US and allies look beyond UN in justifying Syria strike”, Fox News (August 27, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/08/27/with-security-council-divided-us-and-allies-look-beyond-un-in-justifying-syria/¹⁰⁹ “Board of Trustees”, Center for Strategic and International Studies. Accessed at: http://csis.org/about-us/board-trustees
¹¹⁰ “Counselors”, Center for Strategic and International Studies. Accessed at: http://csis.org/about-us/counselors
¹¹¹ “John J Hamre”, Littlesis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/4796/John_J_Hamre
¹¹² “James McNerney Jr”, Littlesis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/1418/W_James_McNerney_Jr
¹¹³ “Margaret Sidney Ashworth”, Littlesis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/60038/Margaret_Sidney_Ashworth
¹¹⁴ “Thomas M Culligan”, Littlesis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/119819/Thomas_M_Culligan
¹¹⁵ “Gregory Dahlberg”, Littlesis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/20462/Gregory_Dahlberg
¹¹⁶ “Timothy Keating”, Littlesis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/18350/Timothy_Keating
¹¹⁷ “Gregory S Gallopoulos”, Littlesis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/60088/Gregory_S_Gallopoulos
¹¹⁸ “Ray L Hunt”, Littlesis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/1971/Ray_L_Hunt
¹¹⁹ “James L Jones”, Littlesis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/1061/James_L_Jones
¹²⁰ Adam Entous, Dion Nissenbaum, & Maria Abi-Habib, “Little Doubt Syria Gassed Opposition”, Wall Street Journal (August 26, 2013). Accessed at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323407104579036173795495190.html
¹²¹ Phil Stewart, “Analysis – Surprise or Not, US Strikes Can Still Hurt Assad”, Reuters (September 5, 2013). Accessed at: httpA://uk.mobile.reuters.com/article/topNt.t:ews/idUKBRE98405V20130905
¹²² Anna Mulrine, “Uncertainty Over How US Military Intervention In Syria Would End”, Christian Science Monitor (September 9, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2013/0909/Uncertainty-over-how-US-military-intervention-in-Syria-would-end
¹²³ Rajiv Chandrasekaran, “Civilian analysts gained Petraeus’s ear while he was commander in Afghanistan”, Washington Post (December 18, 2012). Accessed at:
[123]http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-12-18/world/35907960_1_petraeus-paula-broadwell-afghan-war
¹²⁴ “Corporate Council”, Institute for the Study of War. Accessed at: http://www.understandingwar.org/our-supporters
¹²⁵ John Hudson, “Architect of Syria War Plan Doubts Surgical Strikes Will Work”, Foreign Policy (August 26, 2013). Accessed at: http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/08/26/architect_of_syria_war_plan_doubts_surgical_strikes_will_work
¹²⁶ Tony Capaccio & Gopal Ratnam, “Delay for Syria Debate Lets Pentagon Spot Missile Targets”, Bloomberg (September 6, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-05/delay-for-syria-debate-lets-pentagon-spot-targets-for-tomahawks.html
¹²⁷ Mark Hosenball and Phil Stewart, “Kerry Portrait of Syria Rebels at Odds With Intelligence Reports”, Reuters (September 5, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/05/us-syria-crisis-usa-rebels-idUSBRE98405L20130905
¹²⁸ “About”, Council on Foreign Relations. Accessed at: http://www.cfr.org/about/
¹²⁹ “Corporate Members”, Council on Foreign Relations. Accessed at: http://www.cfr.org/about/corporate/roster.html
¹³⁰ “Richard N Haass”, Littlesis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/33557/Richard_N_Haass
¹³¹ Associated Press, “US Plans for Missile Strikes Against Syria as Questions Swirl About the Endgame”, Fox News (August 27, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/08/27/us-plans-for-missile-strikes-against-syria-as-questions-swirl-about-endgame/
¹³² Robert M Danin, “Send Assad a Message He Will Understand”, Washington Post (September 6, 2013). Accessed at: http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-09-06/opinions/41823042_1_chemical-weapons-u-s-officials-mass-destruction
¹³³ “Daniel D Aniello”, Littlesis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/15121/Daniel_D%27Aniello
¹³⁴ “John V Faraci”, Littlesis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/1667/John_V_Faraci
¹³⁵ “Dick Cheney”, Littlesis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/14305/Dick_Cheney
¹³⁶ “Thomas Donnelly”, Littlesis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/131902/Thomas_Donnelly
¹³⁷ “Frederick Kagan”, Littlesis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/130466/Frederick_Kagan
¹³⁸ Rajiv Chandrasekaran, “Civilian analysts gained Petraeus’s ear while he was commander in Afghanistan’, Washington Post (December 18, 2012). Accessed at: http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-12-18/world/35907960_1_petraeus-paula-broadwell-afghan-war
¹³⁹ Joe Lieberman and Jon Kyl, “Inaction in Syria Threatens US Security”, Wall Street Journal (September 5, 2013). Accessed at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324432404579053661192848056.html
¹⁴⁰ Associated Press, “US plans for missile strike against Syria as questions swirl about the endgame”, Fox News (August 27, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/08/27/us-plans-for-missile-strikes-against-syria-as-questions-swirl-about-endgame/
¹⁴¹ “Supporters”, Atlantic Council. Accessed at: http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/support/supporters
¹⁴² “Stephen J Hadley”, Littlesis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/60272/Stephen_J_Hadley
¹⁴³ “General James Cartwright”, Littlesis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/81719/General_James_Cartwright
¹⁴⁴ “Robert J Stevens”, Littlesis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/1931/Robert_J_Stevens
¹⁴⁵ “General John P Jumper”, Littlesis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/4871/General_John_P_Jumper
¹⁴⁶ Joann S. Lublin, “Defense Contractor SAIC Set to Divide Mission With Spinoff”, The Wall Street Journal (September 10, 2013). Accessed at: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323864604579067353151539122
Interestingly, Jumper explains SAIC’s decision to spin-off Leidos in terms of conflicts of interest: “Our services and solutions businesses are both highly involved in government. The solutions side is also about a $2-billion commercial health, environment and energy business. Over time, we came up against serious conflicts of interest. If services side people were giving technical assistance to government agencies, you couldn’t bid on providing solutions after being part of proposing them.”
¹⁴⁷ “Thomas M Culligan”, Littlesis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/119819/Thomas_M_Culligan
¹⁴⁸ “Edmund P Giambastiani Jr”, Littlesis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/59767/Edmund_P_Giambastiani_Jr
¹⁴⁹ “James L Jones”, Littlesis.org. Accessed at: http://littlesis.org/person/1061/James_L_Jones
¹⁵⁰ Nicholas Blanford, “How a US Strike on Syria on Syria Might Play Out”, The Christian Science Monitor (August 28, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2013/0828/How-a-US-strike-on-Syria-might-play-out
¹⁵¹ Ken Silverstein, “The Secret Donors Behind the Center for American Progress and Other Think Tanks”, The Nation (June 10, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.thenation.com/article/174437/secret-donors-behind-center-american-progress-and-other-think-tanks?page=0,1#
¹⁵² “Iraq war debacle haunts US debate on Syria”, Agence France-Presse (September 9, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.afp.com/en/news/topstories/iraq-war-debacle-haunts-us-debate-syria/
¹⁵³ Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “Envoy Says Syria Inaction Would Give Green Light to Outrages”, New York Times (September 6, 2013). Accessed at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/07/world/middleeast/power-says-syria-inaction-would-give-green-light-to-outrages.html

Over 22 people were killed in a massive blast in the Syrian city of Homs near a hospital, according to a source.

At least 22 people were killed and over 70 injured in the explosion near a charity association and the al-Ahli hospital in the center of the Syrian city of Homs, a source in the hospital said Saturday.

“According to our information, 22 people have died. There are about 70 injured people in the hospital. Some of the wounded were also taken to other hospitals,” an employee at the al-Ahli hospital told RIA Novosti.

Most of the injured are in critical condition, according to the source.

We are providing emergency assistance, however there are seriously injured people here and more are still comming in. A lot of wounded started arriving after the second explosion.

Warning: The following video contains graphic content that some may find disturbing. Viewer discretion is advised.

According to local television, the area was rocked with two large “terrorist explosions” with the first blasting in the vicinity of the hospital while the other reportedly hitting a close-by shop within minutes.

The car was packed with 150 kg of explosives, the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) stated.

“A terrorist car bomb attack took place in central Homs city on Saturday, leaving a number of civilians dead,” the agency reported.

This was the largest terrorist attack in Homs in the five years of the Syrian crisis.

Earlier, a source told RIA Novosti that “two explosions took place one after another between the al-Abbasiya square and the al-Ahli hospital. According to the preliminary data, 10 civilians are dead, 23 people have been hospitalized, some severely injured.”

A group of terrorists detonated a car bomb near a hospital in the center of the Syrian Homs. The blast that took place near gas cylinders triggered a second explosion. As a result of the two explosions several houses and shops were partially destroyed.

Syria’s Prime Minister Wael Nader Al-Halqi condemned the explosions, stressing that these terrorist attacks will not hamper the truce and the fight against terrorism in the country, according to SANA.

“Prime Minister Wael Nader Al-Halqi confirmed these were terrorist bombings, however, these attacks will not affect the national truce in Syria and will not hamper the fight against terrorism,” the tweet states.

One of the members of the notorious Turkish opposition movement has urged a criminal investigation against Russian President Putin for “insulting” and “defamation” of Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

A gun linked to last month’s Paris mass shootings has been traced back to a Florida arms dealer.

The serial number for a M92 semi-automatic pistol linked to the deadly Nov. 13 terrorist attacks matched one for a weapon delivered by the Zastava arms factory in May 2013 to Century International Arms in Delray Beach, reported the Palm Beach Post.

Michael Sucher, the owner of Century Arms, did not answer calls seeking comment Thursday and the doors to his shop were closed as TV news crews gathered outside.

Employees leaving the arms dealer’s building did not comment on the case, and a woman who works next door said she had no idea the business dealt guns.

Century Arms buys and sells military-grade surplus guns — with a specialty in buying weapons from overseas and reselling them to dealers — and is one of the largest arms dealers in the U.S.

The company also holds a federal firearms license in Georgia, Vermont, to import and build guns and to import destructive devices such as large-caliber guns and armor-piercing ammunition.

Documents shared by WikiLeaks in 2011 showed Century Arms had illegally traded firearms with the help of “unauthorized brokers.”

The Center for Public Integrity reported that same year that WASR-10 rifles manufactured for Century Arms in Romania had become a favorite of Mexican drug cartels.

John Rugg, a former police officer and longtime Century Arms employee, testified before a U.S. Senate committee in 1987 that the company had supplied rockets, grenades and other weapons to Nicaraguan rebels as part of the Iran-Contra scandal.

The export of firearms is heavily regulated, and weapons experts suggested the weapon may have been illegally transferred.

Century Arms sells to individuals or other businesses with a federal firearms license, and its website directs most retail traffic to a network of dealers.

But there are no restrictions on who can obtain those licenses.

The owner of the Zastava arms factory in Serbia that delivered the rifle to Century Arms said his company did not sell weapons to terrorists.

“Here’s where the weapons ended, there’s the data,” said arms dealer Milojko Brzakovic. “Zastava cannot be blamed for where it went afterward. Wherever there are wars, there are bigger possibilities for abuse and to hide the channels for guns (and) they end up where they shouldn’t.”

Watch this Century Arms customer demonstrate his M92 pistol:

Washington’s undeclared war on Russia (and China) is the greatest threat to world peace, risking the unthinkable – possible nuclear war.

Both countries stand in the way of unchallenged US global dominance – allied with NATO partners (mainly Britain, France, Germany and Turkey), Israel and the  Middle East regimes led by Saudi Arabia, a metastasizing cancer masquerading as a nation-state.

Two major flashpoint areas risk igniting global war – Ukraine and Syria.

Washington transformed Kiev into a de facto Neo-Nazi regime  (for the first time in Europe since WW II) – used as a dagger targeting Russia’s heartland, along with other Eastern European countries close to its border.

Preserving Syrian sovereign independence is the lynchpin of preventing Iran’s isolation and the entire region from becoming a US/Israeli colony, partnered with ruling Saudi tyrants using ISIS and other terrorist groups partnered with Washington to ravage Syria, Iraq and Yemen, ahead of what increasingly looks like an inevitable US/Russia clash.

On December 15, John Kerry will meet with Vladimir Putin and Sergey Lavrov in Moscow. Ongoing conflicts in Syria and Ukraine will be discussed – both countries at odds on resolving them.

Russia’s supports nation-state sovereignty, America wants all independent governments replaced by pro-Western ones it controls – using ISIS and other terrorist groups to achieve its objectives.

Next week’s meeting between US and Russian officials will resolve nothing, not as long as Washington’s hegemonic aims remain unchanged.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry called US/Moscow relations “difficult,” citing Washington’s “confrontational steps…under the pretext of the Ukrainian crisis.” They negatively “impacted cooperation between (both) countries.”

US support for ISIS and other terrorist groups in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere further exacerbated relations. Nothing in prospect suggests positive change.

“…Russia has been consistently stressing the necessity to observe the principles of equality, mutual respect and non-interference into (the) domestic affairs” of all nations, its Foreign Ministry said.

Moscow’s hope for better US/Russian relations furthered by Kerry’s upcoming visit is more pipe dream than reality.

Kerry heads to Moscow after a planned December 14 meeting in Paris with European and Arab foreign ministers. They’ll discuss ongoing Middle East conflicts, plotting strategy to continue them and ways to subvert Russia’s war on terrorism.

Separately, interviewed by Spanish EFE news on Friday, Bashar al-Assad stressed Washington, its NATO partners and regional allies aren’t serious about fighting terrorism. They’re the problem, not the solution.

Russia’s intervention alone achieved progress, Washington trying to subvert it. The struggle for Syria’s soul continues, along with Putin’s efforts to save humanity from the scourge of another global war. He deserves universal support against US-led pure evil.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

A significant debate is underway in Russia since imposition of western financial sanctions on Russian banks and corporations in 2014. It’s about a proposal presented by the Moscow Patriarchate of the Orthodox Church. The proposal, which resembles Islamic interest-free banking models in many respects, was first unveiled in December 2014 at the depth of the Ruble crisis and oil price free-fall. This August the idea received a huge boost from the endorsement of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. It could change history for the better depending on what is done and where it further leads.

Some 20 years ago during the Yeltsin era, within the chaos of Russian hyperinflation and IMF “shock therapy,” the Russian Orthodox Church introduced a similar proposal for interest-free banking as an alternative. During that time a gaggle of liberal pro-free-market Russian economists around Yeltsin, such as Yegor Gaider, prevailed. They instead opened Russia’s state-owned assets to literal plunder by western banks, hedge funds and corporations.

In my first visit to Russia in May 1994 to give a talk at a Russian economic institute on IMF shock therapy, I saw first-hand the lawless mafia, russkaya mafiya, speeding through the near-empty Tverskaya Street near Red Square in new state-of-the-art Mercedes 600 limos without license plates. It was a devastating time in Russia and Washington and the technocrats at the IMF knew exactly what they were doing to foster the chaos.

US sanctions focus attention

By 2014 much has changed in Russia. Most significantly, the infatuation with everything American of two decades ago has understandably vanished. The US Treasury financial sanctions were launched in stages in 1914 against specific individuals around President Putin, specific banks and corporations dependent on foreign credit. They had the effect of forcing a critical rethinking among Russian intellectuals, government officials and in the Kremlin itself.

The Washington attacks, legally-speaking acts of warfare against a sovereign nation, were initiated by the US Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, the only government finance agency in the world with its own in-house intelligence agency. The Office was created under the pretext of going after and freezing the assets and bank accounts of drug cartels and terrorists, something it seems strangely inept at if we judge from their record regarding groups like ISIS or Al Qaeda in Iraq. It seems to be far better going after “undesireable” countries like Iran and Russia. It has offices around the world, including in Islamabad and Abu Dhabi.

Those US Treasury financial warfare sanctions and the prospect of much worse to come have sparked a deep debate within Russia on how to defend the nation from more attacks. Vulnerability to western sanctions in their banking system has led Russia, like China, to develop an internal Russian version of SWIFT interbank payments. Now the very nature of money and its control is at the heart of the debate.

Unorthodox Orthodox Proposal

In January 2015, in the depth of the financial crisis, with a Ruble at half what it had been months earlier and oil prices in a free-fall as a result of the September 2014 John Kerry-King Abdullah agreement, the Moscow Patriarchate reissued its idea.

Dmitri Lubomudrov, the Orthodox Church’s legal adviser told the media at that time, “We realized we couldn’t stay dependent on the Western financial system, but must develop our own. As with the Islamic system, the Orthodox one will be based not just on legislation, but on Orthodox morality as well, and will be an invitation to businessmen seeking security at a time of crisis.” Among its features would be interest-free credit issuance and prohibition of investment in gambling casinos or such activities going against Church moral values.

Then in early August this year the Orthodox plan for interest-free money creation gained a major added support. Sergei Katyrin, head of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, after meeting with Vsevolod Chaplin, the senior Orthodox cleric overseeing the project, announced, “The Chamber of Commerce and Industry supports the creation of the Orthodox Financial System… and is ready to provide its platform for detailed and professional discussion of these questions together with the relevant committees of the chamber.” The proposal is aimed at reducing Russia’s reliance on the Western banking system, an essential national economic security requirement.

Much as with Islamic banking models than ban usury, the Orthodox Financial System would not allow interest charges on loans. Participants of the system share risks, profits and losses. Speculative behavior is prohibited, as well as investments in gambling, drugs and other businesses that do not meet Orthodox Christian values. There would be a new low-risk bank or credit organization that controls all transactions, and investment funds or companies that source investors and mediate project financing. It would explicitly avoid operations with active financial risks. Priority would be ensuring financing of the real sector of the economy, its spokesman stated.

Interestingly, Russia’s largest Islamic autonomous republic, Tatarstan, recently introduced Islamic banking into Russia for the first time and it was supported positively by German Gref, CEO of the state-owned Sperbank, Russia’s largest bank. This May, Gref called it a very important instrument amid the current problems with raising funds on international markets. In July Sberbank and the Republic of Tatarstan signed an agreement on cooperation in the field of Islamic financing.

Under Czar Alexander III and his Finance Minister Nikolai Bunge, Russia established the Peasant Land Bank in the beginning of the 1880’s to give interest-free loans to the liberated peasantry that had been freed from serfdom in 1861 by his father, Alexander II and given land. The Land Bank invested in the modernization of Russian agriculture with farmers only paying a small handling charge for credits. The result was such a spectacular rise in Russian wheat, and other cereals that Russia became the world “bread basket” up to outbreak of World War I, exceeding the combined production of the USA, Argentina and Canada by some 25%.

Glazyev proposals

The new prominence of the Orthodox Monetary model in Russian discussions comes at a time when one of Vladimir Putin’s economic advisers, Sergei Glayzev, the person advising the President on Ukraine as well as relations with fellow-members of the Eurasian Economic Union, has presented a plan for enhancing Russia’s national economic and financial security under the quite sensible assumption that the financial sanctions and now military pressures from Washington and NATO are no whimsical accident but a deep-seated strategy of weakening and economically destroying one of the two nations which stand in a way of a globalist US New World Order.

In May 2014, a few weeks after the Obama Administration imposed a series of select sanctions on key Russian individuals, banks and energy companies, striking at the heart of the economy, Glazyev made an interview with the Russian financial paper, Vedomosti, in which he proposed a number of prudent defensive measures. Among them were several which are now policy. This has included a credit and currency swap with China to finance critical imports and a shift to settlement in national currencies–Ruble and RMB; creation of a Russian

interbank information exchange system, analogous to SWIFT, for payments and settlements within the Eurasian Economic Union and other partner countries.

A strategic proposal of Glazyev that the state impose a halt on all export of gold, precious metals, and rare earth elements, and that the Central Bank buy up gold mined by foreign companies to build monetary gold reserve strength, was, unfortunately, refused by Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina who told the Duma, “We don’t believe that a moratorium is needed on gold exports. We are able to buy enough gold to diversify our gold and currency reserves.”

Nabiullina has come under criticism from members of the Duma for being far too slow in building the gold reserves of the ruble. Russia today is the world’s second largest gold producer after China, and China has been building its Peoples’ Bank of China gold reserves in recent years at a feverish pace. Western central banks, led by the Federal Reserve, since gold backing for the dollar was abandoned in August, 1971, have done everything, including brazen market manipulation, to discourage gold currency reserves around the world.

Most recently, on September 15 Glazyev presented a new series of economic proposals to the Presidential Russian Security Council to, as he stated it, reduce the vulnerability to western sanctions over the coming five years and achieve foundations for long-term growth and economic sovereignty. Among his proposals were creation of a State Committee on Strategic Planning under the President of the Russian Federation, together with a State Committee for Scientific and Technological Development, modeled on a system created in Iran during the 1990s following the introduction of Western sanctions there.

The first measure, creation of a Committee on Strategic Planning, echoes the highly successful French national Planification model introduced under President Charles de Gaulle, that was credited with transforming France from a stagnant peasant-dominated economy to an advanced, innovative modern industrial nation by the early 1970’s.

In the 1960’s France had a General Commission of the Plan which surveyed the entire economy to identify critical weaknesses that needed attention for overall national development. They would set goals for the coming 5 years. General Commission members were senior civil servants consulting with business leaders, trade unions and other representative groups. Each proposed plan was then sent to the national parliament for voting approval or change.

The crucial difference between France’s 5-year Planification and the Soviet 5-year central planning model was that the French was indicative and not imperative as was the Soviet Five Year Plan. Private or state companies could freely decide to focus on a sector such as railway development knowing the state would encourage the investment with tax incentives or subsidies to lower risk and make it attractive. It was highly successful until the mid-1970’s when the massive oil shocks and increasing Brussels supra-national rule-making made it increasingly difficult to implement.

There are other features to the detailed Glazyev proposal, among the most interesting his proposal to use Central Bank resources to provide targeted lending for businesses and industries by providing them with low interest rates between 1-4 percent, made possible by quantitative easing to the tune of 20 trillion rubles over a five year period. The program also suggests that the state support private business through the creation of “reciprocal obligations” for the purchase of products and services at agreed-upon prices.

Russia is in a fascinating process of rethinking every aspect of her national economic survival because of the reality of the western attacks. It could produce a very healthy transformation away from the deadly defects of the Anglo-American free-market banking model.

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

The December 6, 2015 election resulted in a clear victory of the opposition over the Bolivarian alliance led by the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV). The opposition won 112 seats, obtaining votes from 67.7% of the approximately 74% of the electorate who voted. The Bolivarian coalition won 55 seats and garnered 42% of the votes. This provides the opposition with one more seat than the minimum 111 needed to be declared a full majority. The 112-seat block holds 20 seats more than a simple majority. This status provides the opposition with the control of the unicameral National Assembly.

By obtaining two-thirds of the National Assembly (NA), the opposition may approve organic laws, propose reforms and make constitutional amendments, to replace members of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice, the National Electoral Board and other public authorities, but only with the approval of other legal bodies. The NA, to be installed in January 2016, must comply with its powers already enshrined in the Constitution. The system of Venezuela is not parliamentary, but mixed, as there are checks and balances between the five branches of government. The Assembly cannot remove other powers, even with the backing of a two-thirds majority, if there is not a previous ruling by the Supreme Tribunal of Justice, from the Citizens’ Power or the authority established for each case. Nor can the NA legislate against the principle known as improving human rights, which states that the rights are improved or left untouched, but never removed or limited.

This is the second time in the 20 elections held since the 1998 election of Hugo Chávez that the Chavista forces have lost. There was peaceful voting at the polls on December 6. This was followed by the results and the immediate acceptance of them by Nicolás Maduro. The respect for the results was never in doubt. What does this show? It indicates once again that the Venezuelan electoral system is not only fair but one of the best in the world. It provides proof for the world to view the electoral system as being solid and transparent. In this sense, it is a so-called “victory”; it is, however, a pyrrhic one.

This is because, it seems, one cannot declare that it was victory for democracy. The electoral system as mainly a legal process is one thing, while the concept of democracy is something else. Democracy cannot be assessed in the abstract. Democracy in the Venezuelan context means the political power of the people in a Venezuela that is sovereign and independent in the face of US imperialist attempts to gain control of the country of Bolívar once again. Who and what forces represent this people’s political power? It is the political alliance led by the PSUV. Most importantly, people’s power springs from the concept that political power resides in the hands of the people as enshrined in the Constitution: “Sovereignty resides untransferably in the people [cannot be transferred], who exercise it directly in the manner provided for in this Constitution and in the law, and indirectly, by suffrage, through the organs exercising Public Power. The organs of the State emanate from and are subject to the sovereignty of the people” (article 5). Thus, the situation is very complex both for the opposition and the Bolivarian revolutionary forces.

Taking this into account, democracy today is based on the approximately 42% of the electorate. It voted, in general, to continue the Bolivarian Revolution. Moreover, voting day is for the Bolivarian force just one day in their daily ongoing struggle for their social, economic, cultural and political rights for the poor and others. Voting day is just a part of the participatory democracy that Venezuelan leaders from Chávez to Maduro have been striving to develop. In fact, it is successful to the extent that the new experiments in participatory democracy in Venezuela constitute a basis for its further development, even since December 6. This is so despite the shortcomings the new situation has to face. It still offers lessons to other countries as well.

However, this force in favour of people’s power or democracy lost to those who seek to turn the clock back on recent Venezuelan history since December 1998. As such, it was a major defeat for democracy. The opposition is fiercely against the Bolivarian Revolution and in favour of the Venezuelan oligarchy and further US penetration and control. This is in flagrant violation of democracy. Yet, the opposition easily won.

Nevertheless, the democratic force of millions of Venezuelan revolutionaries has become, and is today, a material force. Under certain conditions, consciousness can be converted into a material force. It does not consist merely of ideas. Even though its numbers have drastically fallen, it is still a solid force despite being the minority. Many of those inside and outside of Venezuela who support the Bolivarian Revolution do not think very highly of those among the most disadvantaged sections of the society who voted for the opposition. This sentiment is understandable and justified.

However, there is the other side of the coin. While important sections at the base were duped by the media war against the Chavistas, those who were not stood up very strongly and resisted the media terrorism. This highlights that those millions of Venezuelans, while now a minority, should be considered more solid than ever. They have to be appreciated more now than before December 6. Their December 6 option represents a heroic resistance to the all those Venezuelan and international forces that targeted the Bolivarian Revolution in an attempt to bury it. The revolution is not dead. December 6 is not even a nail in the coffin of the revolution.

The Bolivarian Revolution as the bearer of democracy in Venezuela is a democracy in motion. It has its ups and downs. Although December 6 represents a serious downswing, it challenges the revolutionary forces to further innovate and improve the notion that sovereignty resides in the people and cannot be transferred. Its first task is to resist all attempts to roll back the gains of their revolution, as Maduro has pointed out. As for those who voted for the opposition, but should not have, they can also learn by the positive example of the democracy in motion in the streets, neighbourhoods, workplaces and educational institutes. This is bound to contrast with their experience alongside the opposition forces that now control the National Assembly.

Compared to this compact material force, based on a clear ideology tempered in battle since 1998, what does the opposition represent today? It is a mixed bag of different outlooks and classes. This shaky coalition is based first and foremost on the determined efforts of the oligarchy and their ideology, which revolves around capitalism and dependence on the US. This is relatively solid and will not change significantly until they are eventually overthrown by the further development of the Bolivarian Revolution.

On the other hand, the forces from the base that adhered so massively for the first time to the oligarchy on December 6 did so for a variety of reasons. They mainly stem from the economic war and its accompanying media war led by the US and its allies in Venezuela. These forces probably did not all vote to “punish” the Maduro government. Rather, many were animated by a general dissatisfaction resulting from the economic war. This materialized in a vague hope of seeking relief, for example, from the seven-hour lineups to obtain necessities at increasingly higher prices.

This opportunist electoral alliance is no match in the long run for the forces of the Bolivarian Revolution. It has a huge responsibility at this time. There is, of course, the domestic situation. However, December 6 is also a direct challenge to maintaining, let alone further developing, the regional integration of Latin America and the Caribbean, one of the greatest legacies of Hugo Chávez. It is also a threat to international cooperation such as demonstrated by PetroCaribe, which is based on the use of the oil industry for the people of Venezuela and neighbouring countries. Given this, the results also defy the new developing multipolar world in resistance to the unipolar one led by the US.

Can the Bolivarian Revolution successfully face up to these momentous domestic and international challenges? In the long run, yes. Seventeen years is a relatively short period in a revolution that is continuously developing. One cannot underestimate the Venezuelan base. After all, this incipient democracy in motion was largely responsible for defeating the 2002 US-inspired coup d’état against Hugo Chávez. He was brought back to power and democracy was reinstated in the main by the masses in the street.

Arnold August, a Canadian journalist and lecturer, is the author of Democracy in Cuba and the 1997–98 Elections and, more recently, Cuba and Its Neighbours: Democracy in Motion. Cuba’s neighbours under consideration are the US, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. Arnold can be followed on Twitter @Arnold_August.

PARIS, FRANCE, December 12, 2015 – The climate deal to be agreed today is a sham, according to Friends of the Earth International.

“Rich countries have moved the goal posts so far that we are left with a sham of a deal in Paris. Through piecemeal pledges and bullying tactics, rich countries have pushed through a very bad deal,” said Sara Shaw, Friends of the Earth International climate justice and energy coordinator.

A detailed policy analysis of the Paris Agreement will be available at http://www.foei.org/what-we-do/paris

“Despite the hype, the Paris agreement will fail to deliver. Politicians say it is a fair and ambitious deal – yet it is the complete opposite. People are being deceived,” said Dipti Bhatnagar, Friends of the Earth International climate justice and energy coordinator.

“Vulnerable and affected people deserve better than this failed agreement; they are the ones who feel the worst impacts of our politicians’ failure to take tough enough action,’” she added.

Rich countries must make their fair share of emissions cuts and provide finance and support to developing countries to help them adapt to the impacts of climate change, according to Friends of the Earth International. Instead, they are failing to cut carbon emissions and the finance they have offered is insufficient.

In Paris rich countries are seeking to dismantle the UN Climate Convention to suit their own needs. The Climate Convention states that the rich countries who have done most to cause the climate crisis must do their fair share to stop it.

According to Friends of the Earth International three major problems stem from the Paris talks:

•  The draft Paris deal states that 2 C is the maximum acceptable global temperature increase, and that countries should pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C. This is meaningless without requiring rich countries to cut their emissions drastically and provide finance in line with their fair share, and places the extra burden on developing countries. To avoid runaway climate we need to urgently and drastically cut emissions, not just put it off.
• Without compensation for irreparable damage, the most vulnerable countries will be left to pick up the pieces and foot the bill for a crisis they didn’t create.
• Without adequate finance, poor countries will now be expected to foot the bill for a crisis they didn’t cause. The finance exists. The political will does not.

Jagoda Munic, chairperson of Friends of the Earth International said:

Instead of acting with ambition and urgency, our governments are acting in the interests of powerful lobbies and corporations, but people are taking back the power. History will not be made in the convention centre, but on the streets of Paris and round the globe. The climate justice movement is unstoppable and will continue to expand in 2016 and beyond. A handful of politicians will not stop the energy revolution.

Today (Saturday 12^th December) over 2,000 activists from the Friends of the Earth International federation, joined by thousands more from Paris sent a global message for climate justice and peace, writ large across the city in a peaceful protest. [1]

Friends of the Earth International is one of many civil society organisations that have used The People’s Test on Climate 2015 to assess the Paris climate agreement.

The demands in the Test cover the key pillars of what would have constituted a just deal: a commitment to keeping us well below 1.5 C warming while dividing the carbon budget using the fairshares principle; finance and support in line with rich nations’ climate debt; a just, systemic transformation; and justice for impacted communities, including compensation for irreparable climate damage. [2]

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Sara Shaw, Friends of the Earth International climate justice and energy coordinator + 33 6 71 71 38 31 (until 12 Dec) or + 44 79 74 00 82 70 or email [email protected]

Lucy Cadena, climate justice and energy coordinator, Friends of the Earth International, +44 7580 270129 or +33 6 07103962 (until 12 Dec) or [email protected]

Dipti Bhatnagar, climate justice and energy coordinator, Friends of the Earth International,+33 6 07 10 17 28 (until 14 Dec) or [email protected]

Asad Rehman, Friends of the Earth International spokesperson at the Summit in Paris, + 33 753 92 59 04 (until 13 Dec), or [email protected]

Jagoda Munic, chairperson of Friends of the Earth International, Tel: +33 (0) 6 07 104 213, email [email protected]

Friends of the Earth International media line: Tel: +31 (0) 6 51 00 56 30 or +33 (0) 6 07 104 509, email [email protected]

NOTES:

[1] Thousands of individuals spelled out “Climate Justice Peace” across Paris using geo-localisation software, recorded online here: http://www.climatejusticepeace.org/

The Friends of the Earth demonstration is followed by a number of peaceful demonstrations planned by a broad coalition of organisations including the French Coalition Climat 21.

Demonstrations include the ‘Climate State of Emergency’ gathering at the Eiffel Tower, co-organised by Friends of the Earth France, Alternatiba and allies, and a ‘Red-Lines’ action organised by 350.org, ATTAC and others.

[2] The People’s Climate Test is available at http://peoplestestonclimate.org

Since Russia began military operations in Syria against the terrorist proxy forces of NATO and the Gulf states, ubiquitous reports in the Western media have emerged which claim that Russia has killed and targeted civilians. Yet a large proportion of these news organisations that apparently are at the pinnacle of journalism in the West, are publishing reports that are often based on one or two very  dubious (to say the least) sources.

No photographs, videos or any actual evidence is provided in a lot of these articles. The presstitutes are so lazy these days they can’t even be bothered manufacturing fake evidence most of the time, they just cite a blog post from what may as well be some random guy on Twitter, and then quote a few Western politicians who want to oust Assad from power in Damascus; and they try and pass that off as professional news gathering. It’s truly a new low for Western mainstream journalism.

One of the most widely cited ‘organizations’ in the Western media pertaining to the Syrian conflict is the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). As Tony Cartalucci astutely noted back in 2012, in his article: West’s Syrian Narrative Based on “Guy in British Apartment”, the Western media portrays the SOHR as a group of impartial and highly skilled professionals who are based in Syria:

One would believe this to be a giant sprawling organization with hundreds of members working hard on the ground, documenting evidence in Syria with photographs and video, while coordinating with foreign press to transparently and objectively “observe” the “human rights” conditions in Syria, as well as demonstrate their methodologies. Surely that is the impression the Western media attempts to relay to its readers.

As usual, the reality of this so-called organization is the complete inversion of the way the mainstream media portrays it. TheSOHR was founded in 2006 by the enigmatic Rami Abdulrahman (also spelled Abdurrahman, but his real name is Ossama Suleiman), who is also the director of the one-man group. He is the only individual publicly listed as working for the SOHR, with even the New York Times admitting in a 2013 article that the SOHR is “virtually a one-man band”.

He apparently relies on four unnamed men inside Syria who assist him, along with over 200 unnamed informants. Obviously, the major problem with these unnamed activists is that they are anonymous, meaning the media has absolutely no idea who these people are, or if they even exist. Are some of these activists members of ISIS or Jabhat al-Nusra? Do they work for MI6 or the CIA? Is the tooth fairy one of his informants? There is no way to verify that Abdulrahman’s informants are authentic, reliable or objective.

Secondly, Abdulrahman is not an impartial individual himself, and is starkly opposed to the Syrian government. He told Reutersin 2012 that he would only return to Syria “when Bashar al-Assad goes”. (It should also be noted that when he was still living in Syria, Abdulrahman supposedly served three brief spells in a Syrian jail for what Reuters called “pro-democracy activism” – you can make of that what you wish).

In 2011, CNN reported that Abdulrahman meet the former Foreign Secretary of Britain, William Hague, in London, as a representative of the Syrian opposition (he was even photographed outside the Foreign & Commonwealth Office). The SOHR clearly has an agenda, and should not be relied on to give impartial reports on the situation in Syria.

Thirdly, Abdulrahman left Syria in 2000 and now lives in Coventry, England! You would think the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is based in Syria, considering the ‘organization’ supposedly monitors the situation solely in Syria.

Furthermore, the SOHR casualty count for certain periods in the Syrian conflict often differs from the figures calculated by specialists from around the world.

Blatant Propaganda! 

Many of the allegations in the Western press that accuse the Russian government of killing civilians are solely based on this one unprofessional and biased source. The International Business Times (IBT) published an article on the 21st of October, titled: Russia in Syria: 370, including civilians killed in Russian airstrikes, says SOHR. The IBT article provides no second source, and merely says “according” to the SOHR.

On the 20th of November 2015, the SOHR released a report which claimed that the Russian air force had killed 403 civilians in Syria, including 166 women and children. In the report, there is absolutely zero evidence to support these claims – literally not a shred of evidence. But that doesn’t stop Western media quoting the SOHR report as proof of civilian casualties however.

The Independent published an article on the 23rd of November with the sensationalist headline: Russian air strikes in Syria ‘have killed 97 children’, monitoring group says. The Independent only cites the SOHR report which has zero evidence in it, and provides no additional evidence to support this accusation, but somehow that passes for journalism in the West – what a joke. The Independent isn’t even a tabloid paper, it’s meant to be a little more respectable than say The Sun.

Other mainstream news outlets such as Reuters, Yahoo News and the New York Times, publish stories which quote this figure of 403 civilians from the SOHR report.

The Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, denounced the SOHR in October of this year, when she was responding to allegations widely circulated in the Western media that Russia had bombed a hospital in Northern Syria, killing 13 people. Zakharova stated:

This information appears with reference to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights based in London. As we all understand, it is very ‘convenient’ to cover and observe what is happening in Syria without leaving London and without the ability to collect information in the field.

It is obvious to anyone who values real journalism and intellectual honesty, that the SOHR is a joke, and is the antithesis of a reliable and impartial source. For the Western mainstream media however, its legitimate sounding name is an important and useful tool when promulgating war propaganda and disinformation to their ignorant readers.

Steven MacMillan is an independent writer, researcher, geopolitical analyst and editor of  The Analyst Report, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Donald Trump has had it in for the followers Allah and the Prophet from the start of his campaign. Much of this, however, is histrionics. Adopting a salesman’s pitch, Trump changes the message depending on his audience. If one is to go back into the troves of interviews he has done, chiding remarks about fellow Republicans who took racial, historically questionable lines can be found.

Now, in the full flight of engineered bigotry, Trump has taken the anti-Islamic position and made it firm within his platform. The timing is apt. The war in Syria is only expanding, ostensibly against the forces of ISIS. A faceoff is unfolding. The attacks in Paris remain raw. He resorts to history, poorly, but his deficiency as a student of Clio’s mysteries disappears when he puts on the demagogue’s hat. Resonances change; the register is different.

Given that the register in many Western states is very much sceptical of Islam and its followers, his cue was as unsurprising as it was violent. On Monday, he called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States while we figure out what the hell is going on.” “We,” he pointedly remarked, “are out of control.”

Trump had referenced his statement by referring to poll results farmed by an anti-Islamic group, suggesting that “great hatred” had been evidenced “towards Americans by large segments of the Muslim population.”

Trump’s proposal to bar foreign Muslims, one which shares its DNA with numerous proposals on the Right to restrict the entry of Muslims generally, has caused a storm. GOP leaders baulked. Even that dark eminence, former Vice President Dick Cheney, took issue with the supposedly “un-American” nature of the idea. “Well, I just think this whole notion that somehow we need to say no more Muslims and just ban a whole religion goes against everything we stand for and believe in.”

A stunned Kassem Allie, executive director of the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, Michigan, claimed that he was “trampling on our constitution and packaging it as snake oil cure for our security concerns.”[1]

Allie also detected a Nazi-Stalinist echo, a rather dramatic point given that the US has previously barred other groups from entering on bureaucratic security grounds. The refugee annals will show a rather poor record in the 1930s to Jews fleeing Nazi Germany, characterised by the ignominious turning back of the German Ocean liner, the MS St. Louis. A quarter of those on board would perish in the Holocaust.

Trump’s sharp stance has various effects. For one thing, it provides cover for other presidential candidates who are themselves problematic. The focus on Hillary Clinton, which should be razor sharp and sceptical, has not so much blurred as vanished – for the moment. The limelight has been well and truly cast on the property tycoon. What will he do next?

The remarks have not been falling on deaf electoral ears. Trump knows how to snap up coverage, something he needed to do after losing ground in a Monmouth University poll. (That poll had suggested Ted Cruz’s shading him into second spot in the first party election contest on February 1 in Iowa.) He plays the press, claims Jeb Bush, “like a fiddle”. Cast an outrageous remark out in the open, and the media will give it legs. “That’s his strategy to dominate the news.”

Accordingly, a new poll from NBC news and the Wall Street Journal has found that 42 percent of Republican voters support the suggestion. A smaller 36 percent oppose it. But ever polarising, Trump’s anti-Muslim bar is opposed by 57 percent of respondents across party lines.[2]

There has also been some movement in the polls for Trump personally – and these have not been entirely negative. There is nothing ingenious to it – the technique is the classic anti-establishment message that is trundled into old populism. The result is a surge since Monday, one that has placed him ahead of a paltry lot of rivals.

While one should take Fox News, and its polls, with the slightest of pinches, the network’s poll of 437 likely Republican primary voters, conducted over December 5 to 8, was music for The Donald. Steaming ahead of the historically challenged Ben Carson, languishing at 15 percent, Trump mustered 35 percent.[3]

Such results can have one of two effects. Other candidates can contrast their positions, drawing strength from distinction rather than similarity. But the law of polemical averages suggests that drawing similarity from distinction is the more regular pattern. Other GOP candidates have had to compete on similar terms, modifying more moderate stances, notably surrounding refugees and security.Trump might be deemed mad, obscene, absurd and somehow self-disqualifying for the White House, but he does possess a dangerous appeal to a slew of voters. The Democrats have expressed concern, but will hope that such appeal remains confined to a cancelling GOP core. As for Trump, he has made sounds to the effect that he is happy to run as an independent, if need be. Interesting times await.

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

Notes

 [1] http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/08/donald-trump-muslim-ban-republican-party-chaos

[2] http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/10/donald-trump-strikes-chord-with-gop-voters-over-muslims-poll-finds

[3] http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-10/trump-polling-lead-surges-after-anti-muslim-comments

Syrian Arab Army (SAA), National Defense Forces (NDF) and Hezbollah are successfully advancing the in the Eastern parts of Aleppo province. The pro-government forces are now closing in on the terrorists’ positions in the town of Deir Hafer, approaching the town from several directions.

Meanwhile, the Russian strikers heavily pounded the terrorists’ gathering centers in the Darat Izza, Bashkoy, Keshtaar, Kafarina and Azaz regions of the province. Dozens of militants were killed. A large number of weapons and equipment was destroyed. The Syrian airstrikes hit terrorists’ positions in Jarouf, Ein al-Beida, al-Bab and Anadan.

On Wednesday, the SAA killed a senior commander of the “Thuwar al-Sham Brigades” terrorist group in a strategic town of Khan Touman. Abdul Rahim al-Hamoud was a defected lieutenant colonel of the SAA.

The SAA made important advances in the city of Dara’a. The field reports said that the loyalists are in a striking distance of the old Dara’a border crossing with Jordan which is commonly referred to as the Al-Jamrak crossing. Sporadic clashes between the SAA and militants were observed at the outskirts of al-Sheikh Meskeen and Atman.

ISIS militants in Iraq’s Ramadi have destroyed a lock on the Euphrates River which served as a bridge as pro-government forces advance further in the fight to retake the western militant-held city. It was the last bridge which connected the city center. Thus, 300 militants trapped in the city. This week, the Iraqi security forces and local militia seized control of a military complex north of the city and captured the neighborhood of Husaybah on the eastern outskirts of the city. Separately, Iraqi military and allied volunteer fighters cleared almost the whole area of the western neighborhoods of Ramadi.

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After photographing the new, enormous and undoubtedly sinister building of the US embassy in Bishkek, capital of Kyrgyzstan, I was driven by a local left-wing politician towards the mountains. We agreed to have lunch; simple, good local food.

In front of the restaurant, which my friend selected, was parked an indescribable monster: a white double-decker ‘extremely stretched’ limousine with tinted windows.  I had never seen a double-decker limo before.

“An American-style wedding”, my host commented gloomily.

The bride was dressed all in white. She looked rather depressed. The groom appeared to be concerned, scared of something. Some 100 guests were desperately trying to appear merry and positive.

The wedding was monstrously kitschy.  ‘So will be their married life’, I thought. It was obvious. Bad taste has lately been penetrating everything, everywhere: from the lives of married couples to kindergarten wards.

I looked at the bride. Our eyes met for a few seconds.  I thought that I read in her desperate gaze, “Take me to Patagonia or to Polynesia”. Maybe I was wrong… Maybe she was actually happy… With that stretched limo at the parking lot.

She smiled shyly. I smiled back, and then I went to a backroom to eat and to discuss with my friend how the West destroyed the Soviet Union, and how it then implanted hate, tribalism and extremism in all parts of Central Asia.

I have seen hundreds of weddings, all over the world. Almost all of them based on some outdated, depressing monotheist ideology. All offering shackles instead of wings, depressing obligations and prison bars instead of love; consumerism instead of dreams.

Possess, possess, possess; control, control, control, consume, consume, consume…

Possess the other person, break her or his identity and will, control her or his steps, while consuming what the market tells you to consume. And don’t forget about Jesus, even if you absolutely don’t believe in that gentleman. Because Jesus has been converted into some sort of justification for why you consume the way you do, step on others every day, and fuck (or don’t fuck) at night.

A man and a woman, two loving beings, are now expected to spend, reproduce, pay taxes to some monstrous state, and behave obediently and “morally”, instead of turning their feelings into some positive creative force, instead of dreaming and fighting side by side for a much better society and for a much better world.

After the 1917 Revolution, the Soviets considered abolishing the institution of marriage altogether as something obsolete, religious, oppressive, regressive and grotesque. But inertia in the psyche of the masses proved to be too great. The desire to control other human beings was still deeply rooted even in the psyche of the wretched of the earth.

Love that would be simply based on trust and on free choice appeared too ‘risky’.

Handcuffs and ropes survived.

Even now, in the 21st Century, before a man and a woman are allowed to make love, some sclerotic bureaucrat or child-molesting priest, is expected to slam a stamp on a paper form and declare: “you can now kiss the bride.”

How thoroughly disgusting, patronizing and humiliating… for love! How, actually, endlessly feudal and sleazy!

Isn’t love supposed to be the highest form of rebellion, a fight for something totally new? Its purity should not be based on virginity, but on beauty, trust, determination and courage.

It should be, but as we all know, it is not.

Instead, the monotheist religions and Western cultural imperialism are using the institution of marriage for their own despotic, dictatorial interests. While the weddings,  themselves, exactly like Christmas and other religious gaga carnivals, are converted into some pathetic and shameless orgy of consumerism.

The “Bride’s dream” is now mostly that of a Disneyland-style bad taste orgy of consumption and cash burning, designed as an injection of funds into a private sector service industry.

Imperialist and market fundamentalist ideologues love the game – as long as there is no deep meaning left in all this! And there certainly isn’t. The modern marriage institution is not unlike some low Hollywood film or pop tune.

Once rings are exchanged, papers stamped and excessive food puked out in overflowing toilets, what follows is the brutal reality of married life, in most cases broken, forced, depressing, sustained only because of “children”, or “obligation”, or because of guilt, or because of religious idiocy.

In short: married life exists mainly so that many absolutely despicable, and for centuries unreformed societies (including those in the West), could survive intact.  Through the degenerate institution of marriage, sadistic Christian dogma manage to persist…

Western-style marriage, now also implanted into virtually all parts of the world, is resting on several mighty columns including fear, selfishness (like putting the family unit above national and other objective interests, which indisputably breeds corruption), submission, lack of creativity and imagination, and yes, lack of love.

Because love, if allowed to bloom, is mostly founded on trust, understanding, generosity, but also on rebellion, freedom, and a desire to live one’s life in a totally new way. All of the above is directly opposed to Western cultural imperialism, Christian dogma and market fundamentalism, read: opposed to the global fascism that is ruling the world.

Global fascism wants married couples to live like slaves, consuming like idiots, erecting a twisted Disney-style “reality” for their children, while following the most idiotic religious and cultural concepts of their parents and grandparents: concepts that already brought our planet to its present pitiful state!

All this – in the name of “morality”! A penis entering an “unmarried vagina” being portrayed as more immoral than murdering millions, spreading nihilist ideological and religious lies, corrupting, stealing from and scaring billions of poor people.

***

One day after our lunch at the restaurant converted to a wedding parlor, we drove to the southern shore of a mighty Central Asian lake. There, several years ago, a Canadian mining company managed to drive a truck full of cyanide, into a river. In order not to pay compensations, the company lied. It corrupted the then country’s President, as well as the local press and several MPs. My friend was heading the investigating commission. He refused to betray his people. One day, a representative of the company came into his office, with a case full of US dollars. My friend kicked them out, and then made everything public.

Until now, hundreds of people are dying from cancer. Until now, children are born deformed. Mining goes on.

“The mining company arranges small events in the village,” I was told. Village, which lost so many people!

Events include weddings. Why?

The entire Central Asia is dreaming about the old Soviet Union. I was told this in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, even in Uzbekistan, and I will address the topic in my future essays.

The West corrupts, steals and supports nationalist and religious extremists. Not only is ISIS now active, but also several extremist Christian fascist organizations had been implanted, like in Indonesia and Africa. Like everywhere in the world!

But smashing countries to pieces is not considered “immoral”. Robbing them is fine. Indoctrinating, brainwashing them – all just part of some daily routine.

While love is being reduced to a filthy market place, while marriage feels increasingly like a prison, while human relationships are mass-produced. There is almost no space left for imagination, the ability to dream, the desire to fight for a much better world!

Like Western porn, mechanical and gym-like, like Western culture, increasingly resembling a supermarket, like childhood that is infiltrated by mass-produced unsavory chemical-colored characters, a union between a woman and a man now consists of pre-fabricated, computer-generated gigs and squeaks. It appears to be toxic, unfit for human consumption.

I say: “screw such unions!” Let’s think about something better.  Let’s laugh at morally corrupt preachers and bureaucrats, and at their stamps! Let’s try to bring back poetry, dreams and humanism. And trust! And let’s do it really soon!

It was certainly not because the SU-24 posed any threat. The plane is old and slow, and the Russians were careful not to arm it with anti-aircraft missiles. It was not because the Turks are quick on the trigger. Three years ago Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said, “A short-term violation of airspace can never be a pretext for an attack.” And there are some doubts about whether the Russian plane ever crossed into Turkey’s airspace.

Indeed, the whole Nov. 24 incident looks increasingly suspicious, and one doesn’t have to be a paranoid Russian to think the takedown might have been an ambush. As Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney (ret), former U.S. Air Force chief of staff commented, “This airplane was not making any maneuvers to attack the [Turkish] territory,” the Turkish action was “overly aggressive,” and the incident “had to be preplanned.”

So why was the plane downed? Because, for the first time in four years, some major players are tentatively inching toward a settlement of the catastrophic Syrian civil war, and powerful forces are maneuvering to torpedo that process. If the Russians had not kept their cool, several nuclear-armed powers could well have found themselves in a scary faceoff, and any thoughts of ending the war would have gone a glimmering.

There are multiple actors on the Syrian stage and a bewildering number of crosscurrents and competing agendas that, paradoxically, make it both easier and harder to find common ground. Easier, because there is no unified position among the antagonists; harder, because trying to herd heavily armed cats is a tricky business.

A short score card on the players:

The Russians and the Iranians are supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and fighting a host of extremist organizations ranging from Al-Qaeda to the Islamic State (IS). But each country has a different view of what a post civil war Syria might look like. The Russians want a centralized and secular state with a big army. The Iranians don’t think much of “secular,” and they favor militias, not armies.

Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan with President Barack Obama during a G20 summit in Pittsburgh, Sept, 25, 2009. (Pete Souza)

Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and most the other Gulf monarchies are trying to overthrow the Assad regime, and are the major supporters of the groups Russia, Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah are fighting. But while Turkey and Qatar want to replace Assad with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi Arabia might just hate the Brotherhood more than it does Assad. And while the monarchies are not overly concerned with the Kurds, Turkey is bombing them, and they are a major reason why Ankara is so deeply enmeshed in Syria.

The U.S., France and Great Britain are also trying to overthrow Assad, but are currently focused on fighting the IS using the Kurds as their major allies—specifically the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Party, an offshoot of the Kurdish Workers Party that the U.S. officially designates as “terrorist.” These are the same Kurds that the Turks are bombing and who have a friendly alliance with the Russians. Indeed, Turkey may discover that one of the price tags for shooting down that SU-24 is the sudden appearance of new Russian weapons for the Kurds, some of which will be aimed at the Turks.

The Syrian war requires a certain suspension of rational thought.

For instance, the Americans are unhappy with the Russians for bombing the anti-Assad Conquest Army, a force dominated by the Nusra Front, al-Qaeda’s franchise in Syria. That would be the same al-Qaeda that brought down the World Trade towers and that the U.S. is currently bombing in Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan.

Suspension of rational thought is not limited to Syria.

A number of Arab countries initially joined the U.S. air war against the Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaeda, because both organizations are pledged to overthrow the Gulf monarchies. But Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar have now dropped out to concentrate their air power on bombing the Houthis in Yemen.

The Houthis, however, are by far the most effective force fighting the IS and al-Qaeda in Yemen. Both extremist organizations have made major gains in the last few weeks because the Houthis are too busy defending themselves to take them on.

In spite of all this political derangement, however, there are several developments that are pushing the sides toward some kind of peaceful settlement that doesn’t involve regime change in Syria. That is exactly what the Turks and the Gulf monarchs are worried about, and a major reason why Ankara shot down that Russian plane.

The first of these developments has been building throughout the summer: a growing flood of Syrians fleeing the war. There are already almost two million in Turkey, and over a million in Jordan and Lebanon, and as many as 900,000 in Europe. Out of 23 million Syrians, some 11 million have been displaced by the war, and the Europeans are worried that many of those 11 million people will end up camping out on the banks of the Seine and the Rhine. If the war continues into next year, that is a pretty accurate assessment.

Hence, the Europeans have quietly shelved their demand that Assad resign as a prerequisite for a ceasefire and are leaning on the Americans to follow suit. The issue is hardly resolved, but there seems to be general agreement that Assad will at least be part of a transition government. At this point, the Russians and Iranians are insisting on an election in which Assad would be a candidate because both are wary of anything that looks like “regime change.” The role Assad might play will be a sticking point, but probably not an insurmountable one.

(Wikiwand)

Turkey and Saudi Arabia are adamant that Assad must go, but neither of them is in the driver’s seat these days. While NATO supported Turkey in the Russian plane incident, according to some of the Turkish press many of its leading officials consider Erdoğan a loose cannon. And Saudi Arabia—whose economy has been hard hit by the worldwide fall in oil prices—is preoccupied by its Yemen war that is turning into a very expensive quagmire.

The second development is the Russian intervention, which appears to havechanged things on the ground, at least in the north, where Assad’s forces were being hard pressed by the Conquest Army. New weapons and airpower have dented a rebel offensive and resulted in some gains in the government’s battle for Syria’s largest city, Aleppo.

Russian bombing also took a heavy toll on the Turkmen insurgents in the Bayirbucak region, the border area that Turkey has used to infiltrate arms, supplies and insurgents into Syria.

The appearance of the Russians essentially killed Turkey’s efforts to create a “no fly zone” on its border with Syria, a proposal that the U.S. has never been enthusiastic about. Washington’s major allies, the Kurds, are strongly opposed to a no fly zone because they see it as part of Ankara’s efforts to keep the Kurds from forming an autonomous region in Syria.

The Bayirbucak area and the city of Jarabulus are also the exit point for Turkey’s lucrative oil smuggling operation, apparently overseen by Erdoğan’s son, Bilal. The Russians have embarrassed the Turks by publishing satellite photos showing miles of tanker trucks picking up oil from IS-controlled wells and shipping it through Turkey’s southern border with Syria.

Erdoğan did not get quite the response he wanted from NATO following the shooting down of the SU-24. While the military alliance backed Turkey’s defense of its “sovereignty,” NATO then called for a peaceful resolution and de-escalation of the whole matter.

At a time when Europe needs a solution to the refugee crisis, and wants to focus its firepower on the organization the killed 130 people in Paris, NATO cannot be happy that the Turks are dragging them into a confrontation with the Russians, and making the whole situation a lot more dangerous than it was before the Nov. 24 incident.

The Russians have now deployed their more modern SU-34 bombers and armed them with air-to-air missiles. The bombers will now also be escorted by SU-35 fighters. The Russians have also fielded S-300 and S-400 anti-aircraft systems, the latter with a range of 250 miles. The Russians say they are not looking for trouble, but they are loaded for bear should it happen. Would a dustup between Turkish and Russians planes bring NATO—and four nuclear armed nations—into a confrontation? That possibility ought to keep people up at night.

Some time around the New Year, the countries involved in the Syrian civil war will come together in Geneva. A number of those will do their level best to derail the talks, but one hopes there are enough sane—and desperate—parties on hand to map out a political solution.

It won’t be easy, and who gets to sit at the table has yet to be decided. The Turks will object to the Kurds, the Russians, Iranians and Kurds will object to the Conquest Army, and the Saudis will object to Assad. In the end it could all come apart. It is not hard to torpedo a peace plan in the Middle East.

But if the problems are great, failure will be catastrophic, and that may be the glue that keeps the parties together long enough to hammer out a ceasefire, an arms embargo, a new constitution, and internationally supervised elections.

Global developments in finance and geopolitics are prompting a rethinking of the structure of banking and of the nature of money itself. Among other interesting news items:

• In Russia, vulnerability to Western sanctions has led to proposals for a banking system that is not only independent of the West but is based on different design principles.

• In Iceland, the booms and busts culminating in the banking crisis of 2008-09 have prompted lawmakers to consider a plan to remove the power to create money from private banks.

• In Ireland, Iceland and the UK, a recession-induced shortage of local credit has prompted proposals for a system of public interest banks on the model of the Sparkassen of Germany.

• In Ecuador, the central bank is responding to a shortage of US dollars (the official Ecuadorian currency) by issuing digital dollars through accounts to which everyone has access, effectively making it a bank of the people.

Developments in Russia

In a November 2015 article titled “Russia Debates Unorthodox Orthodox Financial Alternative,” William Engdahl writes:

A significant debate is underway in Russia since imposition of western financial sanctions on Russian banks and corporations in 2014. It’s about a proposal presented by the Moscow Patriarchate of the Orthodox Church. The proposal, which resembles Islamic interest-free banking models in many respects, was first unveiled in December 2014 at the depth of the Ruble crisis and oil price free-fall. This August the idea received a huge boost from the endorsement of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. It could change history for the better depending on what is done and where it further leads.

Engdahl notes that the financial sanctions launched by the US Treasury in 2014 have forced a critical rethinking among Russian intellectuals and officials. Like China, Russia has developed an internal Russian version of SWIFT Interbank payments; and it is now considering a plan to restructure Russia’s banking system. Engdahl writes:

Much as with Islamic banking models that ban usury, the Orthodox Financial System would not allow interest charges on loans. Participants of the system share risks, profits and losses. Speculative behavior is prohibited . . . . There would be a new low-risk bank or credit organization that controls all transactions, and investment funds or companies that source investors and mediate project financing. . . . Priority would be ensuring financing of the real sector of the economy . . . .

On September 15, 2013, Sergei Glazyev, one of Vladimir Putin’s economic advisers, presented a  a series of economic proposals to the Presidential Russian Security Council that also suggest radical change is on the horizon. The plan is aimed at reducing vulnerability to western sanctions and achieving long-term growth and economic sovereignty.

Particularly interesting is a proposal to provide targeted lending for businesses and industries by providing them with low-interest loans at 1-4 percent, financed through the central bank with quantitative easing (digital money creation). The proposal is to issue 20 trillion rubles for this purpose over a five year period. Using quantitative easing for economic development mirrors the proposal of UK Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn for “quantitative easing for people.”

William Engdahl concludes that Russia is in “a fascinating process of rethinking every aspect of her national economic survival because of the reality of the western attacks,” one that “could produce a very healthy transformation away from the deadly defects” of the current banking model.

Iceland’s Radical Money Plan

Iceland, too, is looking at a radical transformation of its money system, after suffering the crushing boom/bust cycle of the private banking model that bankrupted its largest banks in 2008. According to a March 2015 article in the UK Telegraph:

Iceland’s government is considering a revolutionary monetary proposal – removing the power of commercial banks to create money and handing it to the central bank. The proposal, which would be a turnaround in the history of modern finance, was part of a report written by a lawmaker from the ruling centrist Progress Party, Frosti Sigurjonsson, entitled “A better monetary system for Iceland”.

“The findings will be an important contribution to the upcoming discussion, here and elsewhere, on money creation and monetary policy,” Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson said. The report, commissioned by the premier, is aimed at putting an end to a monetary system in place through a slew of financial crises, including the latest one in 2008.

Under this “Sovereign Money” proposal, the country’s central bank would become the only creator of money. Banks would continue to manage accounts and payments and would serve as intermediaries between savers and lenders. The proposal is a variant of the Chicago Plan promoted by Kumhof and Benes of the IMF and the Positive Money group in the UK.

Public Banking Initiatives in Iceland, Ireland and the UK

A major concern with stripping private banks of the power to create money as deposits when they make loans is that it will seriously reduce the availability of credit in an already sluggish economy. One solution is to make the banks, or some of them, public institutions. They would still be creating money when they made loans, but it would be as agents of the government; and the profits would be available for public use, on the model of the US Bank of North Dakota and the German Sparkassen (public savings banks).

In Ireland, three political parties – Sinn Fein, the Green Party and Renua Ireland (a new party) — are now supporting initiatives for a network of local publicly-owned banks on the Sparkassen model. In the UK, the New Economy Foundation (NEF) is proposing that the failed Royal Bank of Scotland be transformed into a network of public interest banks on that model. And in Iceland, public banking is part of the platform of a new political party called the Dawn Party.

Ecuador’s Dinero Electronico: A National Digital Currency

So far, these banking overhauls are just proposals; but in Ecuador, radical transformation of the banking system is under way.

Ever since 2000, when Ecuador agreed to use the US dollar as its official legal tender, it has had to ship boatloads of paper dollars into the country just to conduct trade. In order to “seek efficiency in payment systems [and] to promote and contribute to the economic stability of the country,” the government of President Rafael Correa has therefore established the world’s first national digitally-issued currency.

Unlike Bitcoin and similar private crypto-currencies (which have been outlawed in the country), Ecuador’s dinero electronico is operated and backed by the government. The Ecuadorian digital currency is less like Bitcoin than like M-Pesa, a private mobile phone-based money transfer service started by Vodafone, which has generated a “mobile money” revolution in Kenya.

Western central banks issue digital currency for the use of commercial banks in their reserve accounts, but it is not available to the public. In Ecuador, any qualifying person can have an account at the central bank; and opening one is as easy as walking into a participating financial institution and exchanging paper money for electronic money stored on their smartphones.

Ecuador’s banks and other financial institutions were ordered in May 2015 to adopt the digital payment system within the next year, making them “macro-agents” of the Electric Currency System.

According to a National Assembly statement:

Electronic money will stimulate the economy; it will be possible to attract more Ecuadorian citizens, especially those who do not have checking or savings accounts and credit cards alone. The electronic currency will be backed by the assets of the Central Bank of Ecuador.

That means there is no fear of the bank going bankrupt or of bank runs or bail-ins. Nor can the digital currency be devalued by speculative short selling. The government has declared that these are digital US dollars trading at 1 to 1 – take it or leave it – and the people are taking it. According to an October 2015 article titled “Ecuador’s Digital Currency Is Winning Hearts!”, the currency is actually taking the country by storm; and other countries in Latin America and Africa are not far behind.

The president of the Ecuadorian Association of Private Banks observes that the digital currency could be used to finance the public debt. However, the government has insisted that this will not be done. According to an economist at Ecuador’s central bank:

We did it from the government because we wanted it to be a democratic product. In any other countries, [digital currency] is provided by private companies, and it is expensive. There are barriers to entry, like [expensive fees] if you transfer money from one cellphone operator to another. What we have here is something everyone can use regardless of the operator they are using.

Banking Moves into the 21^st Century

The catastrophic failures of the Western banking system mandate a new vision. These transformations, current and proposed, are constructive steps toward streamlining the banking system, eliminating the risks that have devastated individuals and governments, democratizing money, and promoting sustainable and prosperous economies.

They also raise some provocative questions:

• Would issuing “quantitative easing” to the tune of 20 trillion rubles for Russian development and trade trigger hyperinflation?

• Could merging the Iceland version of the Chicago Plan with a public banking initiative return the power to create money to the public without collapsing credit?

• How does the Ecuadorian national digital currency mesh with the “war on cash” underway in Europe?

These and related questions will be explored in later articles. Stay tuned.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including the best-selling Web of Debt. Her latest book, The Public Bank Solution, explores successful public banking models historically and globally. Her 300+ blog articles are at EllenBrown.com. Listen to “It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown” on PRN.FM.

“Russia bombing Syria will lead to further radicalization and increased terrorism”. Prime Minister David Cameron, 4^th October 2015.

How desperately Prime Minister Cameron has been yearning to bomb the Syrian Arab Republic.

In August 2013 when his aim was defeated in Parliament by a 285-272 vote, his vision of the UK joining US-led strikes bit the dust. His dreams of illegally joining the bigger bully and bombing an historic nation of just 22.85 million people (2013 figures) three and a half thousand kilometers away, posing no threat to Britain, was thwarted.

The US threw a conciliatory bone to the snarling Cameron and according to the BBC (1): “would ‘continue to consult’ with the UK, ‘one of our closest allies and friends.’

France said (that) the UK’s vote does not change its resolve on the need to act in Syria.

After the vote … Cameron said it was clear Parliament did not want action and ‘the government will act accordingly.’

Chancellor George Osborne whined on BBC Radio 4’s flagship “Today” programme that: “there would now be “national soul searching about our role in the world “, adding: “I hope this doesn’t become a moment when we turn our back on all of the world’s problems.

Translation: “Inconsequential politicians on small island only feel like real men when sending off their depleted air force to blow modest populations far away to bits.”

The then Defence Secretary Philip Hammond: “ … told BBC’s Newsnight programme that he and the Prime Minister were “disappointed” with the result, saying it would harm Britain’s “special relationship” with Washington. Ah ha, that tail wagging, panting, lap dog “special relationship” again, for which no body part licking, no crawling on all fours, no humiliation, no deviation of international law is too much.

The excuse for the 2013 rush to annihilate was accusations that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons in March and August of that year, a claim subsequently comprehensively dismissed by detailed UN investigations (2.)

Cameron’s excuse for attack had all the validity of Tony Blair’s fantasy Iraq weapons of mass destruction, but of course he regards Blair as a trusted advisor. Judgement, it might be argued, as Blair’s, is not one of Cameron’s strong attributes.

Then came the Friday 13^th November tragedies in Paris and by 2^nd December Cameron’s parliamentary press gangs managed to threaten and arm twist through a vote to attack Syria in an action of shame which will surely haunt him as Blair is haunted by Iraq.

As the bombs fell, on 6^th December, Cameron celebrated the anniversary of his his tenth year as Leader of the Conservative Party with his very own military action, Libya’s tragedy forgotten and belonging to yesterday. That, as Blair’s Iraq, it is entirely illegal (3) apparently bothers the former PR man not a whit.

As the Parliamentary debate was taking place, before the vote, it was reported that RAF reconnaissance ‘planes had already taken off for Syria from Scotland – of whose fifty nine parliamentarians, fifty seven voted against the attack. Cameron thumbed his arrogant nose to near and far.

Apart from the illegality, did it even cross Cameron’s mind, or did he care, that using the Paris attack not only defied law, it defied reason. To repeat again, the attackers were French and Belgian born, of North African extraction, with no Syrian connections apart from that some of them had been there joining the organ eating, head chopping, people incinerating terrorists. Syria is the victim, not the perpetrator, deserving aid and protection, not cowardly retribution from 30,000 feet.

After the vote, pro-killing MPs reportedly went straight into the Commons bar to celebrate with tax payer subsidized booze. Warned that the main doors in to Parliament had been closed due to anti-war protesters outside, one woman MP apparently shouted gleefully “It’s a lock in.” How lightly mass murder is taken in the Palace of Westminster.

Chancellor George Osborne: “eschewed the celebratory drinks … and joined a carol service in nearby St. Margaret’s Church – in aid of a charity for child amputees. You couldn’t make it up”, wrote a ballistic friend.

Within a week Osborne was in the US addressing the Council on Foreign Relations stating that with the air strikes Britain had “got it’s mojo back” and stood with the United States to “reassert Western values.”

It was he said “a real source of pride” to have the authority for air strikes in Syria.

“Britain has got its mojo back and we are going to be with you as we reassert Western values, confident that our best days lie ahead.”

Britain was prepared to play a “bigger role”, he vowed.

“Mojo” according to varying dictionaries means “a quality that attracts people to you, makes you successful and full of energy”, denotes “influence” and “sex appeal.” The man needs help.

Immediately after the vote during a visit to RAF Akrotiri, the British base in Cyprus from which the airborne killers will take off to drop their human being incinerating ordnance, UK Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon, told military personnel that their mission had the backing of “both the government and the people of Britain.” He lied.

A recent ITV poll showed 89.32 % of British people against bombing. Governmental “mojo” has clearly passed them by.

Pro bombing MPs though, it seems, are anything but warrior material. When angry emails arrived from their constituents condemning the bombing, the heavyweight Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Tom Watson (pro bombing) complained of “bullying” saying stronger social media policy was needed to prevent such correspondence.

Anti war campaigners had also sent graphic photographs of dead Syrian children to MPs to persuade them not to vote for creating more mutilated little souls. This, the warmongers said, was “intimidation.”

One pro-war parliamentarian said the messages led him to have concerns for the health of his pregnant wife. Beyond pathetic, try being the husband of a pregnant wife, or the wife, in Syria with Britain’s bombs incinerating your neighbourhood.

Another MP was so keen to become a member of the “bullied” club, she was found to have added a death threat to herself at the end of a justifiably angry email from a member of the public. Her attempt to was speedily uncovered. The desire to tarnish those repelled by illegally murdering others is seemingly becoming common currency in the Cameron Reichstag.

A majority of British politicians, prepared to drop bombs on people, blow their children, parents, relatives, villages, towns, homes to bits and are cowed by a few words. As for “bullied”, try being under a bomb Mr Watson, one of the bombs you voted for. “Bullying” doesn’t come bigger than that.

Upset at being sent pictures of dead babies? Imagine being a mother or father holding the shredded remains of theirs. Courtesy the RAF.

Have they any idea of the reality of their “mojo” moment? People tearing at the tons of rubble that was a home, trying to dig friends, beloveds out with bare, bleeding hands?

Further reality is the demented, terrified howls of the dogs who hear the ‘planes long before the human ear can, the swathes of birds that drop from the sky from the fear and vibration, their bodies carpeting the ground, the cats that go mad with fear, rushing from a loving home, never to be seen again. And the children that become mute in their terror, losing the ability to speak for weeks, sometimes months and even years.

Yet David Cameron allegedly called Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn and those who voted against this shameful act of terror: “terrorist sympathisers”, reportedly telling a meeting of a Parliamentary Committee before the vote: “You should not be walking through the lobbies with Jeremy Corbyn and a bunch of terrorist sympathisers.” (5)

This presumably was juvenile pay back time for Corbyn having stated correctly that: “Cameron’s approach is bomb first, talk later. But instead of adding British bombs to the others now raining down on Syria what’s needed is an acceleration of the peace talks in Vienna.”

Cameron also received widespread derision, including from Conservative Parliamentarian Julian Lewis, Chairman of the influential Defence Select Committee, for his claims that there were 70,000 “moderate” fighters on the ground ready to take on ISIS after British bombing.

One government source compared the claim to Tony Blair’s fantasy that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction on the West “in 45 minutes.” Lewis commented: “Instead of having ‘dodgy dossiers’, we now have bogus battalions of moderate fighters.” (6) Another commentator referred unkindly to Cameron’s “70,000 fantasy friends.”

Perhaps the best encapsulation of anger and desperation came from author Michel Faber, who sent his latest book to Cameron (7.)

In searing sarcasm, he wrote in an accompanying letter that he realized: “a book cannot compete with a bomb in its ability to cause death and misery, but each of us must make whatever small contribution we can, and I figure that if you drop my novel from a plane, it might hit a Syrian on the head … With luck, we might even kill a child: their skulls are quite soft.”

He explained:

“I just felt so heartsick, despondent and exasperated that the human race, and particularly the benighted political arm of the human race, has learned nothing in 10,000 years, 100,000 years, however long we’ve been waging wars, and clearly the likes of Cameron are not interested in what individuals have to say.”

He speaks for the despairing 89.32% who hang their heads in shame. He speaks for those of us who simply cannot find the words.

Notes

1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23892783
2. http://www.globalresearch.ca/syria-un-mission-report-confirms-that-opposition-rebels-used-chemical-weapons-against-civilians-and-government-forces/5363139
3. http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-uk-parliaments-decision-to-bomb-syria-is-illegal/5493200
4. http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14129765.Osborne__UK_has__got_its_mojo_back__with_air_strikes/?ref=twtrec
5. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/dec/01/cameron-accuses-corbyn-of-being-terrorist-sympathiser
6. http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2015/dec/04/so-david-camerons-70000-syrian-forces-claim-really-is-dodgy?CMP=share_btn
7. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/07/michel-faber-donates-book-of-strange-things-to-syria-cameron

Syria is being bombed as part of a “counter-terrorism campaign” allegedly against the Islamic State, an elusive “outside enemy” based in Raqqa, Northern Syria.

While the ISIL is said to be “threatening the Western World”, the evidence confirms that the Islamic State is supported and financed by the Western military alliance, together with Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.  Amply documented, Al Qaeda and its various affiliates including the Islamic State Caliphate Project are creations of Western intelligence. 

Moreover, whatever the justification, the bombing of a sovereign country is an illegal and criminal act under international law. It constitutes a war of aggression, namely a crime against the peace under Nuremberg (Principle VI):

It is also defined as an illegal act under Article 2, paragraph 4 of the UN Charter:

“All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”

What is important to underscore is that neither Nuremberg Principle VI, nor Article 2 of the UN Charter can be overridden by an ad hoc resolution of the United Nations Security Council put forth by one or more permanent members of the Security Council (e.g. UNSC Resolution 2249) with a view to justifying an act of military aggression. 

“Self Defense”

In bombing Syria, the Western military alliance claims the right to “self-defense”: our countries are “being attacked from abroad”.  An alleged ISIL terrorist attack, however,  is not tantamount to “an act of war” by a foreign power as defined under international law.

Ironically, this fake pretext of “self defense” invoked by several EU member states, was claimed by the French government two months prior to the Paris November 13th terrorist attack. In the words of France’s Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius …” Due to this threat [ISIL] we decided to start reconnaissance flights to have the option for airstrikes, if that would be necessary. This is self-defense,” (quoted by RT, September 23, 2015, emphasis added)

The US, France, Britain are the aggressor nations against Syria. They cannot under any circumstances invoke the Right of Self-defense. In contrast, Syria is the victim of foreign aggression and has the Right to Self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter which states that:

“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of collective or individual self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations” ,

The Criminalization of Parliamentary Democracy 

Britain’s Cameron government has sought to justify an outright act of war by seeking the endorsement of  the House of Commons.

The justification to wage war on Syria is a Big Lie, it borders on the absurd. Prime Minister Cameron claims that the ISIL plots “to kill the British People” are  decided in Raqqa, Northern Syria by an entity which just so happens to be supported (covertly) by the US, NATO, not to mention Turkey and Saudi Arabia. This political narrative sounds strangely familiar. As we recall, the George W. Bush administration had intimated that the terrorist attacks in 2001 against America had been coordinated out of Osama bin Laden’s headquarters in the Tora Bora mountain caves of  Afghanistan.

According to Prime Minister Cameron:

” The question before the House today is how we keep the British people safe from the threat posed by Isil.

… they [ISIL] have plotted atrocities on the streets here at home. Since November last year our security services have foiled no fewer than seven different plots against our people, so this threat is very real. The question is this: do we work with our allies to degrade and destroy this threat, and do we go after these terrorists in their heartlands, from where they are plotting to kill British people, or do we sit back and wait for them to attack us?…

Paris wasn’t just different because it was so close to us, or because it was so horrific in scale; as different because it showed the extent of terror planning from Daesh in Syria and the approach of sending people back from Syria to Europe.

This was if you like, the head of the snake in Raqqa in action. 

So it’s not surprising in my view that the judgement of the Chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee and the judgement of the Director General of the Security Service is that the risk of a similar attack in the UK is real and that that the UK is already in the top tier of countries on Isil’s target list.

…

The action we propose to take is legal, it is necessary and it is the right thing to do to keep our country safe.

(David Cameron’s speech to the House of Commons, Hansard, December 2, 2015, emphasis added)

Members of Parliament on both sides of the House are fully aware that Prime Minister Cameron is a liar and that the bombing raids ARE ILLEGAL UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW. But those lies are now endorsed by the House of Commons in a historic vote.

The text of the motion is as follows (December 2, 2015, Hansard)

Making a Criminal Act “Legal” and “Democratic”

Endorsement of an illegal and criminal act of war by a majority parliamentary vote in the British House of Commons does not in any way “make it legal” to bomb Syria. Whatever the pretext, a war of aggression cannot be upheld as an instrument of peacemaking and democracy.

A criminal act endorsed by a democratically elected legislature remains a criminal act. Nonetheless, what should be emphasized is that the parliamentary vote in favour of Cameron’s motion modifies  the criminal nature of the decision-making process.

Responsibility for war crimes committed against Syria no longer rests solely with Her Majesty’s government: A criminal act of war endorsed by the legislature ultimately signifies the de facto criminalization of  parliamentary democracy. Each and every member of parliament who voted in favor of the bombing raids is a war criminal under international law.

The “humanitarian” bombing campaign against Syria which has resulted in countless civilian deaths has been endorsed by the legislature in Britain, as well as in France and Germany.

What we are dealing with is the criminalization of the State.

In retrospect, Tony Blair is not the only war criminal on the block, neither are Prime Minister David Cameron, France’s President Francois Hollande and Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel. Those who within the national legislature uphold the conduct of wars of aggression (as defined under Nuremberg, Principle VI) are also war criminals. The legislative process in several EU countries has become criminalized. The state apparatus is criminalized.

Inasmuch as The Judiciary upholds the legitimacy of a national government’s decision to wage air strikes directed against a sovereign country, the judicial system is also criminalized.

New investigative reporting from McClatchy has exposed the hidden legacy—and “enormous human cost”—of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, providing “an unprecedented glimpse of the costs of war.”

The reporting, which comes as the nation prepares to upgrade its aging nuclear arsenal to the tune of $1 trillion over the next 30 years, reveals the abundant health and safety risks from radiation exposure at atomic weapons facilities. It’s based on more than 100 interviews at current and former weapons plants and in the towns that surround them, as well as analysis of more than 70 million records in a federal database obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

According to McClatchy, 107,394 Americans have been diagnosed with cancers and other diseases after building the nation’s nuclear stockpile over the last seven decades. And at least 33,480 former nuclear workers who received compensation from a special fund—created in 2001 for those sickened in the construction of America’s nuclear bombs—are dead.

Declaring that “the great push to win the Cold War has left a legacy of death on American soil,” McClatchy notes that the death toll “is more than four times the number of American casualties in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

“Now with the country embarking on an ambitious $1 trillion plan to modernize its nuclear weapons,” the investigation reads, “current workers fear that the government and its contractors have not learned the lessons of the past.”

Among the investigation’s other findings, as per journalists Rob Hotakainen, Lindsay Wise, Frank Matt, and Samantha Ehlinger:

• Federal officials greatly underestimated how sick the U.S. nuclear workforce would become. At first, the government predicted the program would serve only 3,000 people at an annual cost of $120 million. Fourteen years later, taxpayers have spent sevenfold that estimate, $12 billion, on payouts and medical expenses for more than 53,000 workers.
• Even with the ballooning costs, fewer than half of those who’ve applied have received any money. Workers complain that they’re often left in bureaucratic limbo, flummoxed by who gets payments, frustrated by long wait times and overwhelmed by paperwork.
• Despite the cancers and other illnesses among nuclear workers, the government wants to save money by slashing current employees’ health plans, retirement benefits and sick leave.
• Stronger safety standards have not stopped accidents or day-to-day radiation exposure. More than 186,000 workers have been exposed since 2001, all but ensuring a new generation of claimants. And to date, the government has paid $11 million to 118 workers who began working at nuclear weapons facilities after 2001.

McClatchy produced this short video to accompany its piece:

The new reporting adds fuel to the call for global nuclear disarmament, which reverberatedacross the world on the 70th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki earlier this year.

“This 70th anniversary should be a time to reflect on the absolute horror of a nuclear detonation,” Ann Suellentrop of Physicians for Social Responsibility-Kansas City said at the time, “yet the new Kansas City Plant is churning out components to extend U.S. nuclear weapons 70 years into the future.”

And along with those components, McClatchy‘s exposé suggests, “more unwanted fallout.”

The commander-in-chief of a mercenary company in Yemen, a Mexican national was killed in clashes with Houthi Ansarullah fighters and allied forces in the Ta’izz Province on Wednesday. According to the reports, the recent fatality has brought to 15 the number of foreign forces with the Blackwater killed in clashes in Yemen since Tuesday. The mercenaries are part of the UAE forces that help Saudi Arabia in its intervention in Yemen.

Yemeni security officials say governor of the embattled southern province of Aden has been assassinated after his convoy came under a rocket-propelled grenade attack. The incident took place when Jaafar Mohammed Saad was travelling with his entourage in the Tawahi district of the port city on Sunday. They said several members of his convoy also died in the act of terror.

Some 1,500 Moroccan soldiers will be dispatched to Yemen to participate in the Saudi aggression against the Arab country. According to the reports, the troopers will assist Saudi soldiers in ground operations against Yemen. We remember, in October, about 6,000 Sudanese forces entered Yemens southern port city of Aden to join Saudi soldiers. Emirati, Bahraini and Qatari soldiers are also participating in the Saudi operations.

Warring factions in Yemen are preparing to observe a week-long truce from December 15 while UN-mediated peace talks take place in Switzerland. A source in the cabinet of Saudi-backed President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi said the truce would last seven days, as specified in a letter sent by Hadi to the UN Security Council. Earlier attempts at ceasefires in the conflict fell apart after the two sides accused each other of violations.

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Justifiable suspicions about what happened surfaced straightaway after the incident.

The alleged perpetrators, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, appear to have been used as convenient patsies – the same way April 2013 Boston Marathon bombing suspects Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Dzhokhar were unjustly framed for a crime they didn’t commit.

False flag attacks are used to stoke fear, to enlist public support for planned domestic and foreign horrors. Events post-9/11 are well-documented. What’s unfolding now looks like more of the same – the phony pretext of combating ISIS, state-sponsored high crimes at home and abroad.

Eyewitnesses to the San Bernardino shooting said three white gunmen in black military attire, armed with assault rifles, were responsible.

Sally Abdelmageed working at the Inland Regional Center described them this way, saying “(a)s soon as they opened up the doors to building three…one of them (began) shoot(ing) into the room.”

“I couldn’t see a face. He had a black hat on…black cargo pants, the kind with the big puffy pockets on the side…long sleeve shirt…gloves…huge assault rifle…six magazines…I just saw three dressed exactly the same.”

“It looked like their skin color was white. They look like they were athletic(ally) buil(t), and they appeared to be tall” – clearly professionals, carrying out a well-planned attack, the way all false flags are conducted.

Abdelmageed and other eyewitnesses gave similar accounts, debunking the official narrative – a Big Lie, framing two innocent Muslim patsies, killed by police to tell no tales, given no chance to explain their innocence.

Their bodies were found handcuffed, indicating they were apprehended and likely extrajudicially executed to be unable to refute the official narrative.

Former NSA/CIA contractor Steven D. Kelley told Press TV intimated that hired guns allegedly from Craft International (a Blackwater type paramilitary group, the same one responsible for the Boston Marathon bombings) could have been behind the San Bernardino shootings. (see below)

The incident “is just one in a long string of false flag events that I am afraid to say are not over,” he said. “We’ll probably be seeing several more before the end of the year, because of the events that are going on in the world, specifically with NATO implicated in the buying of (stolen Iraqi and Syrian oil complicit with) Daesh and other events.”

“(W)hen these things happen, they need to have a rapid response which requires a false flag attack. This was very obvious that this was going to happen” – with lots more to come, Kelly believes, part of Washington’s well-orchestrated fear-mongering campaign.

The early stages of its dirty aftermath are playing out, most Americans mindless about how they’re being duped.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

In his 1933 inaugural address, during the height of the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt said: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” 

Today it’s rogue US governance waging war on humanity at home and abroad – what too few people understand.

Americans are the world’s most over-entertained, uninformed people – largely mindless and indifferent about the horrors committed by their government. threatening world peace.

Instead of getting informed and acting to protect their welfare, they believe the Big Lies they’re told by official sources – repeated by the media,  mouthpieces for wealth and power exclusively.

The claim about waging endless wars to protect national security is a complete fabrication. America’s only threats are state-sponsored or ones it invents.

Fear-mongering gets most people to believe a phantom terrorist threat exists. State-sponsored false flags like 9/11 (the mother of them all), Paris in mid-November and most recently San Bernardino, make it easy to manipulate an uninformed public to support policies demanding condemnation.

As long as most people rely on television for so-called news and information, they’ll remain mindless that terrorists “R” us. US intelligence covertly supports Al Qaeda and its affiliated entities.

New York Times/CBS polling data show pre-Paris and San Bernardino, only 4% of Americans called terrorism the nation’s top problem. Now it’s 19%.

Chances of a significant terrorist attack on US soil (a real one, not a false flag) is near zero. Public opinion believes otherwise.

Asked in The Times/CBS poll “how likely is a terror attack in the US,” 44% said very, 35% somewhat, and only 17% not too likely or not at all.

These numbers are the highest registered since since the post-9/11 October 1, 2001 Times/CBS poll. Asked the same question about the likelihood of a terrorist attack in America, 53% of respondents said very, 35% somewhat, and only 10% not too likely or not at all.

Fear-mongering aided by false flags works. Instead of focusing on real issues like protracted Main Street Depression conditions, poverty and the threat of possible nuclear war, most people  nonsensically believe a phantom terrorist threat is likely or somewhat likely – not realizing they’ve been duped to support an agenda harming their welfare and security.

For the first time since 2006 (before the 2008 financial crisis, creating protracted Main Street Depression conditions), most Americans fear a terrorist attack on US soil – either homegrown (63%) or originating from abroad (59%), clear evidence of public ignorance and the power of propaganda to manipulate people effectively.

Nearly 70% of Americans consider ISIS a major threat. Only 11% say not at all – the public mindless about US responsibility for creating the terror group and others like it, used as imperial foot soldiers.

Only one-fourth of Americans think the fight against ISIS is going well or somewhat well – not realizing Washington supports what it claims to oppose, or understanding US imperial wars caused the greatest refugee crisis since WW II.

The public is evenly divided on whether to let displaced Syrians enter America – even after a careful vetting process to screen out threats.

Post-San Bernardino, Obama’s approval rating on combating terrorism sunk to 34%, a record low. 57% of Americans disapprove of how he’s handling the issue, a record high.

Two-thirds of Democrats support him, compared to 90% of Republicans and 60% of independents against. His overall approval rating is 44% – astonishing it’s not much lower given how gravely he’s affected the welfare of the vast majority of Americans.

Only 24% believe the country is headed in the right direction. The Times/CBS poll was conducted from December 4 – 8 among a random sample of 1,275 adults nationwide.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

According to Turkish media reports, Ankara has begun putting up a wall along a 82-kilometer section of the country’s border with Syria which is currently under the control of Daesh (ISIL/ISIS). The fact, however, has not been verified by any government official.

The agency also said it has obtained video footage showing construction vehicles lining concrete blocks along the border.

The agency however couldn’t verify the information with any government official.

The move apparently comes as a step up of security along the border line to prevent Daesh militants from entering Syria and crossing back into Turkey.

In August, Turkey also began constructing a wall along the border near the town Reyhanli, a main hotspot for smuggling, southwest of Kilis.

The border construction could also come as a radical response to the US pressure on Turkey to do more to stop jihadists crossing its border with Syria.

In a work by the Irish painter George William Joy, set during the Anglo-Egyptian administration in Sudan at the time of the British Empire, General Charles Gordon looks down onto an uprising led by the Mahdi army, each member of the revolt advancing upwards towards him with spears in their hands.

When the painting was created in 1893 General Gordon was considered a national hero; today the painting raises different questions: “Should Britain get involved in the areas outside that are not really beneficial to Great Britain, or should it be supportive of regimes where they had influence. It was quite a divisive point and this painting became really iconic,” says Alison Smith, lead curator at the Tate Britain, British Art to 1900.

“It became overlooked in the twentieth century,” she continues, “it became one of those really embarrassing pictures seen to be quite racist in its assumption of European white superiority. He’s shown to be calm at the moment of death, in contrast to this disorganised mob. But recently people have focused on this in light of ISIL, jihad and political Islam,” using another acronym for Daesh. It’s a timely analysis given that the day we meet British MPs voted to support airstrikes in Syria despite the long shadow cast by the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

It is precisely parallels like these which capture a central theme in Artist and Empire, the exhibition at the Tate Britain where The Death of General Gordon hangs: how has the British Empire shaped art and how has this art shaped our perceptions of the Empire not just in the early colonial period, but right up to the present day?

By 1922 the British Empire had grown from several overseas possessions and trading posts to covering almost a quarter of the world, an expanse of land which went on to inspire the phrase “the Empire on which the sun never sets.” Artist and Empire offers an insight into the Empire’s painful and brutal history: the arbitrary carving up of continents, the slave trade, the wars, the destruction and displacement to name but a few. But at the same time it draws attention to the Empire’s legacy, which is everywhere: in public monuments, social structures, contemporary politics and, of course, British art, which came through imperial networks and took on artistic influences from the countries it conquered.

Some observers may feel a certain sense of guilt admitting or recognising there is beauty and diversity in work that has come out of such destruction, but Smith says the show attempts to look beyond this narrative: “Now with so much interest in the Empire I think we’re moving beyond that binary, good thing, bad thing, and we can accept that this is the world we live in now politically, culturally socially and we can’t just ignore it.”

[click to enlarge]

Image: Wenceslaus Hollar 1607-1677, the settlement at Whitby 1699. Pen and ink with watercolour on paper – The British Museum, London

The exhibition takes the viewer back to one of Britain’s first colonies overseas, Tangier, which it controlled between 1661 and 1684. When Charles II of England married the Portuguese Catherine of Braganza he acquired Tangier and Bombay as part of the dowry settlement. On display are two watercolours which the Prague-born draftsman and engraver Wenceslaus Hollar produced after an expedition to document fortifications and settlements.

One image shows Tangier from the north, the other looks at a settlement in an area which has been named after the English seaside town Whitby: “It’s quite interesting how the whole thing is domesticated. It could almost be mistaken for an English scene. These rolling hills and the place names” comments Smith as we look at the images. “This colony only lasted a few years because it was vulnerable and isolated and I think it fell apart through internal discord, disagreements as well as pressure from outside.”

On the other side of the room is a map entitled Imperial Federation: Map Showing the Extent of the British Empire in 1886. Britain has been placed right in the middle of the map and in proportion to Africa and America is over-sized. “As a child I was used to maps like this, you thought Britain was the centre of the world, but it’s not,” says Smith. The map has also marked Gambia and Lagos in the wrong place, “which is quite interesting for a map which purports to be the truth,” she adds.

“One of the things we wanted to bring out in this room is how unprovocative maps, charts and surveys are because they’re to do with shifting boundaries and taking existing boundaries and superimposing others and taking away existing place names so you get this layer cake of different names and what is the true identity. It’s problematic.”

Like maps, paintings were taken to be objective. Before photography and television, artists would present history paintings as visual tributes to a notable occasion and yet they were often sympathetic towards the Empire. They would be circulated widely, other artists would create similar depictions on the same subject and then these images would play a central role in conditioning people’s understanding of battles and heroic moments.

[click to enlarge]

Image: Felice A. Beato (1832-1909), Interior View of the North Fort of Taku 1860. Albumen print – Victoria and Albert Museum

In Robert Home’s The Reception of the Mysorean Hostage Princes by Marquis Cornwallissons the sons of Tipu Sultan, ruler of Mysore, are taken hostage by the British Lieutenant-General Cornwallis, governor-general of India, to ensure Tipu Sultan pays his war reparations. Although kidnapping and hostage taking are now considered horrific and frightening, says Smith, in this painting the act is shown to be quite benign.

“This subject was painted again and again and again and again in a sentimental way, the Empire being rather like a mother or paternalistic and welcoming and kind. So anyone brought up in the nineteenth century will have known this iconography. Today we don’t really learn much about the Mysore wars in history.” The repetition of certain battles meant that countless others were simply written out of history.

[click to enlarge]

Image: Robert Home 1752-1834, The Reception of the Mysorean Hostage Princes by Marquis Cornwallis, 26 February 1792 c.1793. Oil paint on canvas – National Army Museum

With the advent of photography the genre of “polite history painting” died out because it was believed photos could show the real nature of war. But a photograph by Felice A. Beato of the 1860 Second Opium War in the Taku Forts in China reveals a different story. “It seems to be an objective eyewitness account but there seems to be quite a few he did of these dead Chinese soldiers but he had rearranged the corpses to get the maximum vantage point. I think the point of this is it’s just as manipulated in its own way as the paintings,” says Smith.

During the 1960s work from artists of the former Empire grew in profile; many came to work and study in London after the Second World War as the Empire was being decolonised. An iconic work during this period was Guyanese artist Donald Locke’s Trophies of Empire which is based on the plantation system where the slaves worked in Demerara. Ceramic bullets are tied together, a reference to slavery, shackles and colonial violence but also a comment on how objects have been uprooted from their places of origins and put on display in museums, explains Smith.

Many of these works of art came into Britain through discovery voyages, individual agents, officials working overseas; some were commissioned, others given as gifts, she says. Recently much attention has been paid to the acquisition of big works of western art by the Gulf countries, purchases which are helping to secure their place as a major player in the art world.

“It’s a reversal really because a lot of those paintings they’re collecting, like J. F. Lewis, a lot of his works go back to the Gulf states,” she says. “He was an artist who travelled overseas and painted in places like Egypt and continued doing that when he came back to Britain and now it seems right that those works should go back in a way.”

Exploring the Empire through art, says Smith, can be an entry point into history, an insight into relationships and encounters or the human angle to the story; but this is just some of what can be taken away from Artist and Empire. “It’s not an exhibition with a conclusion. Everyone has some kind of relationship with the British Empire or ancestral relationship, people will bring their own experiences and memories or assumptions to bear on this exhibition, maybe they’ll be reinforced or maybe they’ll be challenged in some way.”

Artist and Empire can be seen at the Tate Britain until 10 April 2016.

A book by hardline Israeli rabbis justifying the murder of non-Jews will not have to face charges of inciting violence, the Jerusalem High Court said.

Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post reported Thursday that the court ruled there was “no basis” for the charges, upholding a 2012 decision by Israel’s Attorney General to not pursue a criminal investigation.

The Torat Hamelech (The King’s Torah) was published in 2009 and sparked controversy and a debate on free speech by arguing that Jewish law allowed, in some cases, for Jewish people to kill non-Jews without being to court.

According to The Jerusalem Post, the book states that anyone who opposes “our kingdom” or encourages attacks against them can be killed, as can children “if there is a good chance they will grow up to be like their evil parents.”

The Attorney General’s 2012 decision argued that the book was a religious study and not aimed at encouraging individuals to violence, despite concern within Israeli society that it could lead to violence against Palestinians.

Several Jewish groups objected the groups, as did senior Rabbis, including the Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism, which petitioned the High Court to question why there have been no investigation for racial incitement.

Israeli blog Reform Judaism, which supported the petition, wrote in 2012 that the book was “a manual on how Jewish law can justify hate and violence.”

“When the Mufti of Jerusalem gave a sermon about killing Jews, the State opened a criminal investigation in less than a week,” the blog wrote. “When rabbis widely distribute their manual for violence to the masses, the State remains silent.”

In an under-reported incident in which Russian Crimea’s power lines were severed from Ukraine, leaving the peninsula and over 2 million residents in darkness for over a week, it has become clear to the world the tenuous grip Kiev and its NATO backers actually have over the “Ukraine” they claim they preside over.

It would be Russia through an underwater cable that would begin restoring power to Crimea. While rhetoric regarding Crimea is still strong on both sides, it is the actions of both Ukraine and its NATO backers versus Russia that appear to finally be answering the “Crimea question” if there even was such a question.

Russia Restores Power, Asserts Sovereignty 

In the first week of December, the International Business Times would report in their article, “Vladimir Putin inaugurates Crimea energy bridge during surprise visit,” that:

President Vladimir Putin has inaugurated the first leg of a power line between the Russian mainland and Crimea in a surprise visit to the peninsula. His visit to the strategically important territory comes after the region plunged into darkness over widespread power outage. 

Crimea, which Moscow claims to have been hit by Ukraine’s energy blockade, will start receiving power supply from Russia once the “electricity bridge” is completed. The undersea cable project was scheduled to have been completed by the end of December but it has been brought forward after Crimean power supply was knocked off.

While Crimea’s dependency on Ukraine for power and other necessities could have been used as a means of proving that the peninsula exists as an integral part of Ukrainian territory, by cutting power and being unable to rein in the terrorists who for over a week blocked repairs from the Ukrainian side, Kiev has all but proved it has no interest or ability to administer the region.

That the terrorists in fact are backed by not only special interests now occupying Kiev, but by NATO and the United States in particular, illustrates the punitive measures Ukrainians and their neighbors face for falling on the wrong side of NATO and its proxies in Kiev. It also illustrates once again the impetus that drove the people of Crimea to wisely choose ascension into the Russian Federation rather than to remain a part of Ukraine in the first place.

US Insists on the “Return” of Crimea

In a pattern that is becoming all too familiar, the United States continues to make statements contrary to reality. US Vice President Joseph Biden was reported to have called on Russia to return Crimea to Ukraine – despite the obvious act of terrorism carried out against the people of Crimea and Kiev’s clear role behind the terrorism.

Bloomberg in its article, “Biden Says ‘Illegal’ Russian Occupation of Crimea Must End,” would report that:

Vice President Joe Biden called Russia’s annexation of Crimea “illegal” in a demonstration of solidarity with Ukraine’s government that signaled the U.S. won’t bargain away its support for the country to win Russian cooperation in the fight against Islamic State in Syria. 

“The United States stands firmly with the people of Ukraine in the face of continued — and I emphasize continued — aggression from Russia and Russian-backed separatists,” Biden said in Kiev on Monday, following a meeting with Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko.

Papers like the Moscow Times with deceptive headlines like, “Activists Block Crimea Power Line Relaunch,” would reveal in the bodies of their articles that these “activists” were in fact the heavily armed, Neo-Nazi paramilitary organization Right Sector, notorious for its front line role in NATO’s proxy war on eastern Ukraine.

Image: The heavily armed fanatics of the Neo-Nazi Right Sector, when not intimidating political adversaries in western Ukraine, or killing them in eastern Ukraine, have more recently been implicated in cutting power to some 2 million civilians residing in Russian Crimea.

The Moscow Times would report:

Activists have prevented Ukrainian repair crews from relaunching one of the four power lines supplying Crimea with electricity from the mainland, despite Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko stating earlier that Kiev would allow power flows to resume, Russian and Ukrainian media reported Monday.

Members of the far-right paramilitary Right Sector group blocked the first attempt at re-activating the Kakhovskaya-Titan line on Sunday night, the RIA Ukraine news agency and depo.ua news site wrote the following morning.

Either Kiev has no control over what takes place in its own territory or it has ordered Right Sector and other groups to initiate the blockade of Crimea. Either way, Vice President Biden’s calls for Russia to return Crimea to Ukrainian control appear irresponsible at best. With literal Neo-Nazis cutting power to 2 million civilians – a blatant war crime – seems only to further vindicate Russia’s actions regarding Crimea and the decision of the people of Crimea themselves to seek a place within the Russian Federation.

Sovereignty Games  

The illegitimacy of not only the regime in Kiev, but of NATO who created it and to this day perpetuates its existence, has helped erode the very principles both are now trying to appeal to in order to maintain the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Beyond Ukraine, similar scenarios are developing across all of Eastern Europe, where as NATO attempts to expand closer and closer to Russia’s borders, it is finding it increasingly difficult to find allies who are not extremists with ties to fascism and/or Nazism.

By allying itself with these radical elements, those populations subjected to their NATO-backed domination of politics, economics, and security are more likely to turn toward Russia either as Crimea did, or as the break-away republics of Donetsk and Lugansk have.

Beyond Eastern Europe, the continual violation of Syria and Iraq’s sovereignty by NATO is making it exponentially more difficult to appeal to sovereignty and territorial integrity in regards to Ukraine. The West has repeatedly called for the “Balkanization” of Syria into several weaker regions. As the balance of power turns in the region, and even globally, the West may find this contempt it has shown toward national sovereignty and the territorial integrity of existing nations backfire on it when its own allies face the same prospect of being carved up.

Some may argue that Crimea’s ascension into the Russian Federation itself  was only possible because the NATO-driven lawlessness that it occurred in the midst of. As this lawlessness continues, it is all but guaranteed that Crimea will only be driven deeper within the Russian Federation.

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

When it comes to existing discourse on efforts to counter radicalization and the subsequent extremism that arises, it appears that Western policymakers and media outlets want to address everything but the actual long-term causes. The elephant in the room being Gulf States (namely Saudi Arabia and Qatar) whose state institutions have acted as an ideological incubator for extremist sentiment to flourish both domestically and abroad.

It is rarely talked about in a sensible way since the Saudis continue to hire a spree of U.S. lobbyists and PR experts, one of which is the PR powerhouse Edelman. The largest privately owned PR agency in the world, Edelman is known for helping clients with favorable media coverage on mainstream outlets. Meanwhile, a Saudi-led coalition is continuing to bomb the poorest country in the Middle East (Yemen), violating international law in the process, which like many of their activities has Western approval due to lucrative arms deals, in turn, affording Gulf states impunity for any of their actions. This explains the notable media blackout and minimal coverage on events in Yemen across Western media outlets.

If you look at the relationship extremist movements have with these countries, you find they will employ various discrete or indirect methods of both financing and arming. A prime example being Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria — Jabhat Al-Nusra. GCC states along with NATO member Turkey have effectively armed them through the guise of arming a so-called moderate coalition ‘Jaysh al-Fatah,’ which itself is already comprised of hardline Sunni Islamist groups such as Ahrar al-Sham.

Qatar in particular, are known to finance such groups by way of paying ransoms; acting as a mediator in hostage situations. The most recent example being in Arsal, Lebanon, where Qatar mediated on a prisoner exchange deal for the release of Lebanese soldiers held captive by the group. Using this method enables them to deflect any charges of culpability for financing what are effectively al-Qaeda insurgents.

In modern times, much of the extremism we witness today can be traced back to the U.S. and Saudi backing in the 1980s when they built up the Afghan Mujahideen to battle the Soviets; who we come to know today as the Taliban. It just goes to show how such policies of arming the ‘moderate Islamist’ has come back around to bite the U.S., having to invest in conflicts just to get rid of a problem they themselves aided and abetted in creating. We see a similar process taking place in Syria today.

As part of this process, the Saudis would go on to utilize their petrodollars in order to finance and build fanatical religious schools. In the Punjab region alone, (which today witnesses extremism on a regular basis) has seen Salafi madrassas (or religious seminaries) increase threefold over the last few decades. This links back to a more recent case with the San Bernadino shooting, as U.S. officials found links between the infamous Lal Masjid in Islamabad and the woman [Tashfeen Malik] who took part in the ISIS-inspired massacre. This mosque is notorious for its links to past extremism and its leader (Maulana Abdul Aziz) who has gained a reputation in Pakistan for his hateful rhetoric. In the past, he has expressed support for ISIS, named a library after Osama Bin Laden and refused to condemn a massacre of schoolchildren in Rawalpindi (much to the dismay even of many of his own followers).

In light of both the San Bernadino shooting and the Paris attacks, it is almost inevitable that despite concerted efforts by intelligence services, terrorist attacks will only become more frequent on Western soil. What remains to be seen, however, is whether Western governments will ever re-evaluate their stance with their allies in the Middle East; if they continue to grant them impunity, this means that any efforts to seriously tackle extremism are all but disingenuous, but it will be civilians who will continue to pay the price for governments which remain in denial as to the ideological roots of extremism.

Hasan Hafidh is working on his Ph.D. at the University of Leeds in comparative politics of the Middle East focusing on civil society networks and sectarianism in Gulf States.

For the first time in more than four decades, “middle-income households” no longer constitute the majority of American society, according to a study published Wednesday by the Pew Research Center. Instead, the majority of households are either low or higher-income.

The study concluded, “Once in the clear majority, adults in middle-income households in 2015 were matched in number by those in lower- and upper-income households combined.” Pew called its findings “a demographic shift that could signal a tipping point” in American society.

The study also found a sharp fall in household incomes and wealth, particularly for low-income households, noting that only “upper-income families realized notable gains in wealth from 1983 to 2013.”

Together with the decline in the relative numbers of middle-income earners, the incomes of households in this group has fallen substantially in recent decades. The median income of middle-income households fell by four percent between 2000 and 2014, while their median wealth fell by 28 percent over approximately the same period.

The study notes that since 1983, the total share of income accruing to high-income households has grown significantly. The study found that “fully 49% of US aggregate income went to upper-income households in 2014, up from 29% in 1970.” Meanwhile the share “accruing to middle-income households was 43% in 2014, down substantially from 62% in 1970.”

These findings reflect the persistent declines in wages for US workers following decades of de-industrialization, which has been accompanied by significant increases in the yields of financial assets, helping to increase the wealth and earnings of the financial elite, along with a section of upper middle-class households.

While the study’s metrics are too broad to capture the enormous concentration of society’s wealth in the hands of the top 1 and 0.1 percent, they reflect the reality that a “middle class” lifestyle is increasingly out of reach for the broad majority of the US population.

The Pew study, an analysis of data from the Census Bureau’s current population survey, defines “middle-income” households as those earning between two-thirds and twice the US median household income, or between $42,000 to $126,000 for a household of three. Those classified as low-income made less than two-thirds the typical income, while those classified as high-income made twice the median income.

The study added that the fastest growing sections of the population were those at the extremes of the income distribution: the very rich and the very poor. “The movement out of the middle has not simply been at the margins—the growth has been at the extreme ends of the income ladder,” with “the fastest-growing numbers… in the very lowest and very highest income tiers.”

The study found that, after dividing US households into fifths based on household income, “In 2015, 20% of American adults were in the lowest income tier, up from 16% in 1971. On the opposite side, 9% are in the highest income tier, more than double the 4% share in 1971.” Meanwhile the share of adults in the lower middle or upper middle income brackets have remained unchanged.

The report added, “The growth at the top is similarly skewed,” as “the share of adults in highest-income households [has] more than doubled, from 4% in 1971 to 9% in 2015. But the increase in the share in upper-middle income households was modest, rising from 10% to 12%.”

The study further noted the impact of the 2008 crisis on the wealth of middle-income households. It stated,

“Before the onset of the Great Recession, the median wealth of middle-income families increased from $95,879 in 1983 to $161,050 in 2007, a gain of 68%. But the economic downturn eliminated that gain almost entirely. By 2010, the median wealth of middle-income families had fallen to about $98,000, where it still stood in 2013.”

The wealth of higher income households has largely been protected from the 2008 financial crash.

“Upper income families more than doubled their wealth from 1983 to 2007 as it climbed from $323,402 to $729,980. Despite losses during the recession, these families recovered somewhat since 2010 and had a median wealth of $650,074 in 2013, about double their wealth in 1983.”

The Pew figures also show the impact of the persistent economic slump on a broad range of households, noting,

“Americans are less well-to-do now than at the start of the 21st century. For all income tiers, median incomes in 2014 were lower than in 2000. These reversals are the result of two recessions—the downturn in 2001 and the Great Recession of 2007-09—and economic recoveries that have been too anemic to fully repair the damage.”

The conclusion that the incomes and wealth of all sections of society have declined since the start of the 2008 crisis is attributable to the fact that the study’s methodology is too broad to encompass the most dramatic change in American society: the enormous concentration of wealth and income in the hands of the financial oligarchy. The handful of multi-millionaires and billionaires in this social group are wealthier than ever.

Figures published last year by professors Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman showed that the wealthiest 0.5 percent of American society saw their share of the country’s wealth double, from about 17 percent in 1978 to just under 35 percent in 2012. The top 0.1 percent (one one-thousandth of the population) now controls more than 20 percent of all wealth, up from about 8 percent in the late 1970s.

The vast growth of social inequality is not the result of an impartial and merely objective process, but is rather the result of policies pursued by the government for decades aimed at slashing the wages and benefits of American workers while enriching the financial oligarchy that dominates wealth and political power in the US. This process has been dramatically accelerated under the Obama administration.

The persistent growth of social inequality is the most conspicuous and defining characteristic of contemporary American society. It is this process, facilitated by the financialization of the economy and the continuous diversion of resources away from productive investment, that underlies the erosion of democratic forms of government and the endless promotion of war and militarism.

This process expresses, moreover, a deep social crisis to which the financial elite, obsessed with the expansion of its own wealth and social privilege, can offer no solutions.

The US Defense Department (DOD) is preparing to expand its global network of military bases by establishing a new “string” of bases in countries stretching from Africa to East Asia, unnamed Pentagon officials told the New York Times Wednesday.

The enlarged US basing arrangements will include at least four new large-scale bases or “hubs,” including new facilities in East Africa and West Africa and Afghanistan, along with a greater number of smaller camps or “spokes,” sources told the Times .

The new bases, which the Pentagon describes as “enduring” bases, will host forces ranging from dozens of commandos up to 5,000 soldiers at the largest hubs, the unnamed military officials said.

West Africa is a main focus of the expanded basing plans, and will host one of the larger hubs. The West African countries of Niger and Cameroon are the only countries set to host smaller “spoke” bases listed by the Times report.

The Pentagon plans to build a large “hub” near Erbil in northern Iraq, where US special forces have already been conducting combat operations for months. US Special Forces commandos affiliated with the “expeditionary targeting force” announced last week by US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter are already setting up operations in the same area, according to reports.

The new bases are only the latest development in the metastatic growth of Washington’s global military apparatus. According to the official list of US overseas bases, US forces are stationed in Afghanistan, Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, British Indian Ocean Territory, Bulgaria, Cuba, Djibouti, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Honduras, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Netherlands, Norway, Oman, Romania, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and United Kingdom.

Taking into account non-officially acknowledged bases, “forward operating posts,” and other long-term deployments, the list of US bases expands to include the majority of the countries in the world.

Recent weeks have made clear that the US is launching yet another expansion of its wars in the Middle East. Wednesday announcement, transmitted by the Pentagon through the semi-official mouthpiece of the Times, demonstrates that the escalation of the US-led imperialist wars in Iraq and Syria will be accompanied by a generalized military build-up encompassing far wider areas of the globe.

The new bases will facilitate a further expansion of manhunts, kidnapping, and other counter-insurgency operations which have been orchestrated by US military-intelligence cadres across ever-expanding areas of the planet since 2001 under the banner of the US “Global War on Terrorism.”

Working from the new “hubs,” Special Force troops and intelligence operatives will orchestrate supposed “counterterrorism” missions, according to the description offered by the Times. Operations launched from the new bases will enable close collaborations between “regional American commanders, diplomats and spies,” US officials said. In other words, the bases will provide launching pads for a further expansion of US military and intelligence activities in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, along the entire Indo-Pacific rim, and in every significant corner of Africa.

In statements defending the basing expansion, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter claimed that the all-pervasive nature of the ISIS threat requires permanent global presence that reaches easily into every corner of the world.

“Because we cannot predict the future, these regional nodes—from Morón, Spain, to Jalalabad, Afghanistan—will provide forward presence to respond to a range of crises, terrorist and other kinds,” US Defense Secretary Carter said in reference to the basing expansion.

“The new bases will enable unilateral crisis response, counter-terror operations, or strikes on high-value targets,” he added.

US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford similarly claimed earlier this month that ISIS is based on a “global dynamic” that makes it impossible to combat the group within any limited list of countries.

In reality, rather than “fighting terrorism,” the real purpose of the bases is to shape the world political order in accordance with needs of US imperialism, subjecting ever wider areas of the globe to military violence and repression by US forces.

Recent operations in Eastern Europe have given a taste of what is planned for the new US military “hubs” and “spokes.” Some 400 US troops have been deployed to forward operating bases in western Ukraine, where they are reportedly gathering information about Russian forces stationed near the eastern border with Russia, Military Times reported Thursday. Intelligence gathered from the military spying is already being used to develop new training programs for the main US Army infantry school on the European continent, located in Germany.

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and Hezbollah are pushing towards the Aleppo-Damascus highway in the Aleppo province’s southern countryside. The main clashes against the militants of Al-Nusra, Harakat Ahrar Al-Sham, and Harakat Nouriddeen Al-Zinki are continuing at the towns of Barqoum and Al-Zorba.

Separately, Al-Nusra and Harakat Ahrar Al-Sham launched a counteroffensive and attempted to capture the town of Tal Al-‘Eiss. They failed to break the pro-government forces’ defenses. The inability to successfully counter-attack puts the militants in a hard situation in the Aleppo province. Advancing Al-Zorba, the Syrian forces are threatening to cutoff the militants’ primary supply line from the Idlib province to the provincial capital of the Aleppo city.

The SAA made heavy gains inside the city of Daraa leaving them in striking distance of the old Daraa border-crossing with Jordan which is commonly referred to as the Al-Jamrak Crossing. The loyalists imposed full control over the al-Manshiyah district and captured several buildings inside the Daraa al-Balad quarter.

Terrorists are controlling the both major border-crossings with Jordan: Nassib and Daraa. The recent SAA operations in Daraa are aimed to decrease the flow of weapons and manpower supplied to the militants from Jordan.

On Wednesday, ISIS launched a counter-offensive at the village of Maheen in order to recover several points lost to the pro-government forces over the last three weeks. ISIS started operation with capturing the Quraytayn-Maheen checkpoint and the corresponding hill that overlooks the Christian city of Quraytayn. Then, the ISIS forces would seize two more hilltops along the Maheen-Quraytayn road after clashes with the National Defense Forces and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party. As a result of these gains, ISIS was able to reenter Maheen and retake the town.

The ISIS counter-offensive has become possible because the Syrian Arab Army’s 120th Brigade of the 2nd Division and the Assyrian “Gozarto Protection Forces” (GPF) had been moved from the Maheen-Quraytayn front to another area of the battleground.

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We reported in 2011 that the International Atomic Energy Agency knew within weeks that Fukushima had melted down … but failed and refused to tell the public.

The same year, we reported in 2011 that the U.S. knew within days of the Fukushima accident that Fukushima had melted down … but failed to tell the public.

We noted in 2012:

The fuel pools and rods at Fukushima appear to have “boiled”, caught fire and/or exploded soon after the earthquake knocked out power systems. See this, this, this, this and this.

Now, a declassified report written by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on March 18, 2011 – one week after the tidal wave hit Fukushima – states:

The source term provided to NARAC was: (1) 25% of the total fuel in unit 2 released to the atmosphere, (2) 50% of the total spent fuel from unit 3 was released to the atmosphere, and (3) 100% of the total spent fuel was released to the atmosphere from unit 4.

NARAC is the the U.S. National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center, located at the University of California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. NARAC “provides tools and services that map the probable spread of hazardous material accidentally or intentionally released into the atmosphere“.

The fuel pools at Units 3 and 4 contained enormous amounts of radiation.

For example, there was “more cesium in that [Unit 4] fuel pool than in all 800 nuclear bombs exploded above ground.”

EU officials are hoping to renew its economic sanctions against Russia. This can only mean one thing: More economic pain for Europe.

The current round of EU sanctions is due to expire on January 31, 2016. The trade ban includes cutting Russia off from European funding sources, industrial trade, food, energy and oil, as well as an endless list of other items and caveats.

While this has certainly hurt the Russian economy, it’s also damaged the West’s bottom line too. A recent study commissioned by the Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO) revealed that sanctions EU against Russia – and Moscow’s reciprocal moves against the EU – are costing Europeans approximately 100 billion euros and is jeopardizing up to 2.5 million jobs, including a loss of 465,000 jobs in Germany, 215,000 jobs in Italy, 160,000 in Spain, 145,000 in France, and 110,000 jobs in Britain.

Luckily, there’s someone in Europe who’s still holding out a candle for sanity. It seems that Italy is offering a remedy to some of Europe’s economic pain. It’s a revolutionary concept: daring to put its own economic and national interests ahead of Washington and Brussels half-baked, geopolitical machinations.

Here’s a report on this story which aired today:

The obvious question for the rest of Europe: is there a good reason for doing it?

To answer that question, you need to understand what is the West’s core political justification for keeping up with the sanctions. The official western propaganda line goes as follows:

“We need sanctions against Russia in order to uphold a peace agreement and end the conflict between Ukrainian government forces and Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine that has killed 9,100 people since April, 2014.”

This line might play well in the reality vacuum that exists between Washington DC and Westminster, but not as much elsewhere. It’s a political fiction which is becoming harder and harder to sell. The reason is that the primary sales pitch for Russian sanctions was based on the Downing of Flight MH17 which European and American leaders immediately tried to somehow blame on Moscow. The initial propaganda pushed worked well enough to get sanctions off the ground, but the main problem now for Washington and its reluctant EU surrogate is that no one actually believes the old fairy tale.

Hence, anyone with a brain is now starting to ask: with Europe’s economy suffering, and no proof that Russia had anything to do with MH17 – then what’s the point of sanctions in the first place?

Whether or not you believe that MH17 was a genuine accident, or was a prefabricated event designed to trigger a call for sanctions – makes little difference now. The fact remains that there never was, is, or will be, any real evidence to convict Moscow over the MH17 incident. If there was then it’s certain we would have already seen it by now. Conversely, base on motive, intent and means, there is a very compelling case to suggest that Western interests are behind an MH17 false flag event.

THE MH17 NARRATIVE: One lie led to another.

No matter how you cut it, Europe must have total political unity in order to maintain any international sanctions regime against Moscow. The EU’s original plan was to simply wave through” the extension of Russian sanctions as a minor agenda note, hoping that no one would notice or demand any debate on what appears to be a Washington-imposed policy of geopolitical containment aimed at Russia.

Brussels technocrats may have expressed some public shock that Italy would dare to attempt to force a democratic debate on the issue, but in private you can be sure that Washington dissenters are everywhere.

Thompson Reuters reported earlier today:

“Italy unexpectedly demanded that a mooted extension of the European Union’s economic sanctions on Russia go for further discussion within the bloc rather than be rubber-stamped by EU envoys who met on Wednesday. The envoys aimed to approve a six-month extension to the sanctions, imposed on Moscow last year over the Ukraine crisis, without discussion after an agreement by EU leaders – including Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi – in the wings of the Group of 20 summit in Turkey last month.”

Rome breaking ranks on this issue could be risky for Brussels, so expect some push-back or good fashion political blackmail (or another bizarre international incident) waged by sanctions proponents.

If Italy falls, then expect others to follow. Add to this the newly developing situation in Syria and a renewed international imperative fo r cooperation there, and you’d expect even more reason for European leaders to want to work with its neighbor Russia, rather than against it (as Washington would like).

When Europe eventually sees the futility of the Russian sanctions facade, then Washington will be isolated, alone with its dysfunctional basket case of a regime in Kiev as the surviving partner on this flagging initiative. In terms of the United States as a main broker of international peace and prosperity, no real progress can be made in the Middle East, the Ukraine or anywhere else, so long as Washington insists on a policy of diplomatic aggression against Moscow. It will simply block any route to mutually beneficial bilateral negotiations.

High Hopes in Geneva?

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Italian newspaper La Repubblica in an interview this week: “As long as Obama’s deputy Joe Biden goes around Europe recommending continued sanctions against us without taking into account how Kiev is behaving under Western pressure, we will not be able to reach any understanding.”

As much as the world would like to see Washington drop its imperialist NATO-driven lunge into the Eurasia heartland, no one is really holding their breathe. Reports of more NATO-backed paramilitary activity in the Crimea (N azis and Jihadis, fighting shoulder to shoulder, for OTAN?) should be a cause for worry. That’s a story which has been completely blacked out in the western media, for obvious reasons.

Lavrov will join Russian President Vladimir Putin next week to meet U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, and others – to discuss the conflicts in both Ukraine and in Syria.

That should be interesting.

Following nearly eight years of negotiations, 12 Pacific Rim countries – Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam – have agreed to take part in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), a sweeping trade deal that affects some 40 percent of the global economy.

The International Movement for a Just World (JUST) has closely monitored the TPPA throughout the negotiation period and regards several aspects of the draft text as deeply troubling from the perspective of regional stability, economic feasibility, social justice, and national sovereignty. While advocates of the deal have attempted to allay public criticism, there is a need to reaffirm concerns shared by wide segments of society across all the participating nations.

The TPPA aims to enforce a common regulatory framework structured around the norms of American trade policies that govern rules for tariffs and trade disputes, patents and intellectual property, foreign investment, and other areas such as environmental regulations and internet governance.

Despite a level of secrecy that barred even elected public representatives of participating countries from access to the deal’s draft text during the negotiating process, advisors from major multinational corporations played a consistent, key role in forming the deal’s proposed measures.

This is no ordinary trade deal – it is a fundamental aspect of Washington’s pivot-to-Asia policy, involving the large-scale refocusing of American corporate and military muscle within the heart of the ASEAN region.

The TPPA aims at nothing less than formulating new rules for international trade around core US strategic interests, and in the process overshadowing key functions of the World Trade Organization (WTO), a comparatively more even platform for discussing issue of global trade.

The agreement does not include China. The exclusion of the region’s largest economy and world’s second-largest (and by some measures largest) economy is no accident. It is a central aspect of the TPPA’s strategic policy function: harnessing the power of the developing nations throughout ASEAN as an economic counterweight to Beijing for the benefit of the United States.

As the TPPA is implemented, it is possible that friction could occur between Washington and Beijing, as the former reaps preferential treatment from the agreement, which in turn could affect relations between China and certain ASEAN states to the detriment of peace and stability in the region.

Only 4 out of 10 ASEAN states are party to the agreement’s founding group; the trade ties that will emerge from the TPPA, which will reflect the inclusion of some ASEAN states and the exclusion of others, could be inimical to intra-ASEAN harmony.

The most egregious aspect of the trade deal is the Investor-State-Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism, which would allow corporations to seek restitution against states in an international arbitration court for the contraction of their potential future profits as a result of government regulations.

ISDS-enforced agreements effectively put global multinational companies on a level legal playing field with national governments, thereby limiting the scope of domestic policies that governments can undertake without potentially being challenged for impinging on investor rights.

Acquiescing to ISDS provisions systematically undermines the integrity of public institutions in participating countries and their domestic arbitration instruments while significantly lowering the bargaining power of domestic labour and rights advocacy groups.

The agreement encompasses numerous areas of concern that intimately relate to human health and well-being – from unimpeded entry of genetically modified products into domestic markets, the gradual elimination of tariffs on alcoholic beverages and tobacco, the neglect of any measures to combat climate-disrupting emissions spurred on increased shipping and mass consumption, to the drastic extension of patents on pharmaceutical products that will impede access to affordable medicines. Furthermore, proposed regulations of the internet will require Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to more actively monitor users to enforce copyright protections at the expense of individual privacy.

In actuality, the TPPA obliges signatory countries to reshape their national laws and economic policies to conform to a neo-liberal agenda set by giant multinational corporations, to the benefit of local elites at the expense of the region’s working classes and poor.

The agreement’s political undercurrents are apparent in view of the unprecedented measures that the US is attempting to push through that codify legislation to combat the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel – essentially designed to discourage governments around the world from participating in BDS activities by leveraging the incentive of free trade with the US.

The economic policies pushed by the US and its allies – backed to the hilt by multinational corporate interests ­– are demonstrably against the public good and show disregard for national sovereignty and political independence.

Facing notable domestic opposition, each country must now assess its own situation and decide whether or not to agree to the deal’s terms. It should not be forgotten that Malaysia withdrew from a Malaysia-US Free Trade Agreement negotiation in 2009 because the deal being negotiated was perceived to be against national interests.

JUST believes that Malaysia would be better off showing similar courage in the face of the TPPA. It isn’t a question of ‘losing out’ or being ‘left behind’. ASEAN itself has initiated its own vision for free trade, the Regional Cooperation for Economic Partnership (RCEP), with negotiations expected to be completed next year.

ASEAN and the region as a whole would be better positioned to throw its weight behind a trade architecture that is inclusive, formulated on a truly level playing field and capable of demonstrating greater respect for national sovereignty and social priorities.