Global Research

VIDEO: There is a War, A State of Emergency. The Paris Terrorist Attacks “Orchestrated from Abroad”

Last month, US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard went on CNN and laid bare Washington’s Syria strategy. 

In a remarkably candid interview with Wolf Blitzer, Gabbard calls Washington’s effort to oust Assad “counterproductive” and “illegal” before taking it a step further and accusing the CIA of arming the very same terrorists who The White House insists are “sworn enemies.” 

In short, Gabbard all but tells the American public that the government is lying to them and may end up inadvertently starting “World War III.”

For those who missed it, here’s the clip:

That was before Paris.

Well, in the wake of the attacks, Gabbard has apparently had just about enough of Washington vacillating in the fight against terror just so the US can ensure that ISIS continues to destabilize Assad and now, with bi-partisan support,the brazen Hawaii Democrat has introduced legislation to end the “illegal war” to overthrow Assad. 

Gabbard, who fought in Iraq – twice – has partnered with Republican Adam Scott on the bill. Here’s AP:

 In an unusual alliance, a House Democrat and Republican have teamed up to urge the Obama administration to stop trying to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad and focus all its efforts on destroying Islamic State militants.

Reps. Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat, and Austin Scott, a Republican, introduced legislation on Friday to end what they called an “illegal war” to overthrow Assad, the leader of Syria accused of killing tens of thousands of Syrian citizens in a more than four-year-old civil war entangled in a battle against IS extremists, also known as ISIS.

“The U.S. is waging two wars in Syria,” Gabbard said. “The first is the war against ISIS and other Islamic extremists, which Congress authorized after the terrorist attack on 9/11. The second war is the illegal war to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad.”

Scott said, “Working to remove Assad at this stage is counter-productive to what I believe our primary mission should be.”

Since 2013, the CIA has trained an estimated 10,000 fighters, although the number still fighting with so-called moderate forces is unclear. CIA-backed rebels in Syria, who had begun to put serious pressure on Assad’s forces, are now under Russian bombardment with little prospect of rescue by their American patrons, U.S. officials say.

For years, the CIA effort had foundered — so much so that over the summer, some in Congress proposed cutting its budget. Some CIA-supported rebels had been captured; others had defected to extremist groups.

Gabbard complained that Congress has never authorized the CIA effort, though covert programs do not require congressional approval, and the program has been briefed to the intelligence committees as required by law, according to congressional aides who are not authorized to be quoted discussing the matter.

Gabbard contends the effort to overthrow Assad is counter-productive because it is helping IS topple the Syrian leader and take control of all of Syria. If IS were able to seize the Syrian military’s weaponry, infrastructure and hardware, the group would become even more dangerous than it is now and exacerbate the refugee crisis.

And make no mistake, Tulsi’s understanding of Washington’s absurd Mid-East policy goes far beyond Syria. That is, Gabbard fully grasps the big picture as well. Here’s what she has to say about the idea that the US should everywhere and always attempt to overthrow regimes when human rights groups claim there’s evidence of oppression:

People said the very same thing about Saddam (Hussein), the very same thing about (Moammar) Gadhafi, the results of those two failed efforts of regime change and the following nation-building have been absolute, not only have they been failures, but they’ve actually worked to strengthen our enemy.

Somebody get Langley on the phone, this woman must be stopped.

Here’s Gabbard speaking to CNN this week about Assad:

So there’s hope for the US public after all.

Perhaps if the clueless masses won’t listen to “lunatic” fringe blogs or Sergei Lavrov, they’ll listen to a US Congresswoman who served two tours of duty in Iraq and who is now telling Americans that The White House, The Pentagon, and most especially the CIA are together engaged in an “illegal” effort to overthrow the government of a sovereign country and in the process are arming the very same extremists that are attacking civilians in places like Paris.

Good luck Tulsi, and thanks for proving that there’s at least one person inside that Beltway that isn’t either dishonest or naive.

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From Gabbard

“Here are 10 reasons the U.S. must end its war to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad:

1. Because if we succeed in overthrowing the Syrian government of Assad, it will open the door for ISIS, al-Qaeda, and other Islamic extremists to take over all of Syria.  There will be genocide and suffering on a scale beyond our imagination.  These Islamic extremists will take over all the weaponry, infrastructure, and military hardware of the Syrian army and be more dangerous than ever before.
2. We should not be allying ourselves with these Islamic extremists by helping them achieve their goal because it is against the security interests of the United States and all of civilization.
3. Because the money and weapons the CIA is providing to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad are going directly or indirectly into the hands of the Islamic extremist groups, including al-Qaeda affiliates, al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham, and others who are the actual enemies of the United States.  These groups make up close to 90 percent of the so-called opposition forces, and are the most dominant fighters on the ground.
4. Because our efforts to overthrow Assad has increased and will continue to increase the strength of ISIS and other Islamic extremists, thus making them a bigger regional and global threat.
5. Because this war has exacerbated the chaos and carnage in Syria and, along with the terror inflicted by ISIS and other Islamic extremist groups fighting to take over Syria, continues to increase the number of Syrians forced to flee their country.
6. Because we should learn from our past mistakes in Iraq and Libya that U.S. wars to overthrow secular dictators (Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi) cause even more chaos and human suffering and open the door for Islamic extremists to take over in those countries.
7. Because the U.S. has no credible government or government leader ready to bring order, security, and freedom to the people of Syria.
8. Because even the ‘best case’ scenario—that the U.S. successfully overthrows the Syrian government of Assad—would obligate the United States to spend trillions of dollars and the lives of American service members in the futile effort to create a new Syria.  This is what we have been trying to do in Iraq for twelve years, and we still have not succeeded.  The situation in Syria will be much more difficult than in Iraq.
9. Because our war against the Syrian government of Assad is interfering with our being one-pointedly focused on the war to defeat ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and the other Islamic extremists who are our actual enemy.
10. Because our war to overthrow the Assad government puts us in direct conflict with Russia and increases the likelihood of war between the United States and Russia and the possibility of another world war.”

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Oh, and if you needed another reason to like Tulsi, here’s a bonus 40 second clip for your amusement…

President Bashar al-Assad said that you cannot take any concrete political step before defeating terrorism, because this is the biggest obstacle, and this is the prime concern to every Syrian.

President al-Assad added in an interview given to “PHOENIX” TV Channel that  …” from the very first day, we were determined to fight terrorism. We never had any other position, we want to fight terrorism and defend our people”.

Following is the full text of the interview:

Question 1: Good morning, President Assad. Thank you for having us in this presidential palace. You see, when people talk about the crisis in Syria, the term “civil war” is often heard, but it seems like you never agree with it. You don’t think it’s a civil war going on in Syria, do you?

President Assad: First of all, you are most welcome in Syria. I’m glad to do the first interview with the Phoenix channel. Regarding the definition of this crisis, no, it’s not a civil war. You can say this is civil war when you have a certain line that divide between different components of a certain society, whether sectarian or ethnic or maybe political line, something that we don’t have in Syria. Civil war has internal factors, not states supporting terrorists who come to Syria while they announce publically that their aim is to change the state or, like what they call it, the regime. So no, it’s not civil war; it’s war.

Question 2: How is the situation now in Syria, I mean, both on the ground, and politically?

President Assad: Let’s say it’s been now nearly five years since the terrorism infected Syria, and of course because of the support of regional and international states, the terrorists could capture many areas within Syria. Of course, the army has been fighting them, and it won many battles, but the army cannot exist everywhere on the Syrian ground. But recently, after the participation of the Russian air forces in fighting terrorism, the situation has improved in a very good way, and now I can say that the army is making advancement in nearly every front, although front is not very precisely defined, it’s not wrong, but let’s say in many different directions and areas on the Syrian ground.

Question 3: You see, there are both Russian and NATO military activity going on in and over Syria. So, in your opinion, what are the differences in their presences in Syria, and are they both having effective coordination with the Syrian government?

President Assad: Let’s make this comparison through the facts; before the Russian participation started about two months ago, it had been more than a year the American – what they call “American alliance” – started their campaign against the terrorists, but the result is that the terrorists have gained more ground and more recruits from around the world. During the first month of the Russian participation, the same terrorists groups have been retreating and fleeing Syria in thousands to Turkey then to other countries; some to Europe, some to Yemen, and other areas. So, this is the fact.

The second one, the mythology; you cannot fight terrorism through air raids. You need troops on the ground. The Americans only fight through their airplanes.

Question 4: And how about the Russians? Are they sending any troops? They are not, right?

The Russians are depending on the Syrian troops on the ground

President Assad: What about the Russians? They are depending on the Syrian troops on the ground. They are cooperating with us. So, the difference, the main difference, is that the Americans don’t cooperate with any ground troops, while the Russians are doing this.

Question 5: So you mean the American troops, they are not having any coordination with the Syrian government?

President Assad: At all, not a single communication or connection.

Question 6: Speaking of coordination, we see that the Russian and American planes, they carried out flight tests last week, according to Washington it’s a planned communication test, and according to Moscow it’s joint military exercise, so what is it? So, which terms is more accurate, and what is the purpose of this test or exercise, whatever you name it?

President Assad: It was publically announced: not to have any conflict between the Russian and the American airplanes or aircrafts, because they work sometimes in the same area. This is the only reason.

Question 7: And that’s it? Just to validate the safety protocols? They are not ready to fight together against the terrorism yet?

President Assad: They [the Americans] didn’t actually; they took some actions against some terrorists in some areas in order to prevent them from attacking certain areas that they don’t want them to be in, but they didn’t do the same, for example, when the terrorists attacked Palmyra, which is a very important city, regarding its heritage, around the world. They didn’t do anything.

Question 8: Mr. President, how can you be sure that there’s no moderate oppositions in Syria? And if that really is the case, how do you understand the fact that last week, in one day, the Russian planes bombed dozens of targets using the coordinates supplied by the opposition groups. Have you been informed of this?

President Assad: Actually, there’s no tangible “opposition group,” under two quotations. First of all, if you want to define “opposition group,” we don’t mean militants, because when you talk about opposition, it’s a political term, not a military term. Whenever you hold a machinegun, you are a militant, you are a terrorist, whatever you want, but you cannot call “opposition” people who hold machineguns or any kind of armaments. But if you want to talk about who is related to extremists – this is the debate now – actually, no, the majority of those groups are linked to Al Qaeda, whether ISIS or al-Nusra, and we didn’t define them; they defined themselves through videos. You can find them on YouTube, on the internet, they published pictures from the very first day they started slaughtering, eating hearts, beheading, and dismemberment, and so on. So, they defined themselves as extremist groups. While if you want to talk about the opposition in the moderate way, you can talk about the political opposition that you have some of them within Syria, some of them outside Syria. Part of this opposition supported the terrorists politically, and some of them no; they stood against the terrorists and supported their government, although they are opposition.

Question 9: But now the Russian military, they are working with opposition groups, and did they tell you about this before they did this?

President Assad: Yes, again, it’s not opposition groups; they work with some of the militants, and we deal with some of the militants, because we need reconciliations in Syria. If you want to make reconciliations, local reconciliations, you want to talk to the people who have the armaments. So, we dealt with them, and there’s cooperation between the Syrians and the Russians regarding this kind of reconciliation. So, yes, they did recently, and we encourage them to do so, because this is the most effective way to make the situation better and to reach peace in the future.

Question 10: How do you understand the existence of the IS? Some say that they originated from Iraq, some say they originated from Syria. Where did their ideology come from anyway, and who is backing them financially?

ISIS cannot survive, because it doesn’t incubation in Syria

President Assad: In 2006, it was announced in Iraq as IS, which is the Islamic State, but it was “of Iraq” at that time, and their leader was al-Zarkawi who was killed by the Americans. The Americans announced his assassination. So, they announced that there is the Islamic State in Iraq under their supervision, or let’s say under American occupation. So, the Americans said that, so no-one can say that it didn’t exist in Iraq or it didn’t exist under the American supervision. This is clear.

ISIS and al-Nusra, they are offshoots of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and in Afghanistan – as Clinton said, and as everybody knows – they were formed in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets at that time with Saudi money and American supervision and instructions. So, this is very clear, this is reality. Now, their ideology is the Wahabi ideology, the Wahabi-Saudi ideology. Who supported them? The Saudi family supported the Wahabi institution publically and formally, and of course we have so many figures, Wahabi figures, who can send money to them. Logistically, all kinds of supports to ISIS, whether it’s human resources, money, and selling their oil, and so on, passes through Turkey, in cooperation with the Saudis and Qataris, and of course with American and Western overlooking of what’s going on.

But without this logistical space, or let’s say backyard, to ISIS, ISIS cannot survive, because it doesn’t incubation in Syria, it doesn’t have the incubator in Syria.

Question 11: They don’t?

President Assad: No, they don’t. So far, they don’t. They are like a foreign body in our country. But because of the fear, because of the oppression, because of the killing, they could take some areas. But actually, their force is coming from Turkey with the personal support of Erdogan and Davutoglu.

Question 12: Do you have lists of who are actually buying their oil, and do you understand how it’s even, I mean, the financial transactions, being realized?

President Assad: Mainly through Turkey, both money and oil selling, money coming through Qatar and Saudi Arabia. And of course, the Turkish government itself, and the oil goes from Syria to Turkey because anyway most of the oil fields are closer to Turkey and closer to Iraq. They cannot sell through Iraq, because the Iraqi government has been fighting ISIS, while the Turkish government has been supporting ISIS. So, this is the only lifeline to ISIS, through Turkey.

Question 13: But you see, I don’t understand what happened. It seemed like Syria and Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey, used to have good relationships before the crisis, so happened? It seems like all of a sudden, they just turned against Syria, or turned against you. How do you understand it?

President Assad: Because the current President of Turkey, who was Prime Minister at that time, he’s Muslim Brotherhood in his heart, so when he saw that the Muslim Brotherhood took over in Tunisia and later in Libya then in Egypt, he thought that he could revive the Ottoman empire in the Arab world, but not under the Ottoman name; under the Islamic name. So he thought that he could rule the world. The only obstacle was Syria. That’s why, for him as an ideological person, he forgot about everything, every plan we put in order to have good relations, prosperity, and so on, and he put his ideology first. So, for him, the Muslim Brotherhood should take over in Syria and he will be the “Imam” of the Muslim Brotherhood in this region.

Question 14: And how about Saudi Arabia?

Saudi Arabia is a mixture of two things: the Saudi family, and the Wahabi institution

President Assad: Saudi Arabia is Wahabi anyway. Saudi Arabia never had, let’s say, warm relations with Syria, so we cannot say that they were in a good position then they changed. It’s different from Turkey, completely different. Saudi Arabia is a mixture of two things: the Saudi family, and the Wahabi institution, for more than 200 years now, before the recent Saudi family, even the first Saudi family.  So, there’s a link; the Saudi family will be committed towards what the Wahabi institution will ask for.

Question 15: So, even if as you say that the IS is not going to stay, Turkey is going to be here, and Saudi Arabia is going to be here. How can you reconcile with these two countries?

President Assad: For us, I mean as a politician, as a state, as a government, their main goal is to work for the sake of their people, so whatever is proposed to be good, we have to follow it. So, if those countries are ready to stop supporting terrorists, we don’t have any problem. It’s not about living in the pat; we look to the future. So, we have to work in order to reach that point. After that, the people, their interests, their feelings, will define what kind of relations we can have with those countries. But we cannot say that we’re not going to have this relation. At the end we have people; it’s not only about the government. In Turkey you have 70 millions or more than 70 millions, and many of them are against Erdogan, many of them they understand what is happening in Syria, and they understand that if there’s fire in Syria, the fire will burn Turkey later.

Question 16: How about the Syrian people? Will they accept to move on with this country? After all, so many people have died in Syria and millions have been wounded.

President Assad: Emotions are very, how to say, I mean if you want to talk about the feelings of the people, you can talk about a kind of… like they are inflamed. But at the end, the people will define and they will for their interest, and they’re going to be aware. Of course, you cannot say that every Syrian is against or every Syrian is with; people are different. But at the end, I think, they will forget about what happened when they can see the bright future.

Question 17: Mr. President, you mentioned several times – actually, many times in the past – that further political steps are required to solve the Syrian crisis, and we understand that this will have to necessitate a dialogue among all the Syrian factions, a dialogue that eventually or hopefully leads into a consensus regarding Syrian political future. But you are the leader of the country, and your supporters look up to you. So, do you have a master plan or a grand vision about the future of Syria? What sort of Syria would you like to see after the crisis? And what kind of role do you see yourself play in it?

President Assad: If you talk about after the crisis, we have to define what political system you want, that is the most important thing. You can discuss it now, but it’s not related to the terrorism issue. The terrorism issue is related to maybe completely different factors; internal and external. If you want to talk about the future of Syria, it’s mainly the political system; parliamentarian, presidential, semi-presidential, federal, confederal, and so on. But the most important thing, for us and for me, is that the constitution and the whole system and the country in general should be secular. Secular doesn’t mean against religion. Secular means the freedom of religions. It’s the system that can include every religion’s followers, every sect, and every ethnicity under one umbrella, which is the Syrian umbrella. This is first. Second, I think the main concern is going to be the economy, the reconstruction, and this is going to be an important sector in rebuilding Syria.

Question 18: We’re going to come back to the economic aspect later, but if there’s going to be elections soon, do you see yourself participating as a candidate?

President Assad: That’s my right, but it’s too early to say “yes, I’m going to run” or not. That depends on how my feeling is regarding the Syrian people. I mean, do they want me or not? I might accept it or not. So, you cannot talk about something that’s going to happen maybe in the next few years. It’s too early. Sometimes you can define it only a few months before that, but I wouldn’t say no, I wouldn’t run if I feel that.

Question 19: How was your recent trip to Moscow? And I assume that you and President Putin talked about the crisis in Syria. I mean, is there any specific plan that you’re working on, or how long you and President Putin think that it will take before the war ends?

President Assad: You mean regarding the political aspect of the crisis? You know now Russia is leading the political activity regarding Syria in the world, and my visit was about two weeks or three weeks before the Vienna conference. That’s why I had that visit; in order to see what the horizon is in the political field regarding this crisis, what could be done. Now, Vienna defined some of the headlines which is general terms of course. At the end, Vienna mentioned elections and new constitution and so on, but at the end it’s about what the Syrians would agree upon, so there must be dialogue. That’s why I said in Moscow “we are ready for Moscow 3” because we need to have dialogue, whatever Vienna said or any other conference. At the end,  what the Syrians will say; with or against. So, that’s what we’re working on with the Russians; is to hold new dialogue meeting between the Syrians, maybe in Moscow, and if so, it’s going to be called Moscow 3.

Question 20: Have you talked about the end of this crisis? I mean, was there a timeline that you have to take?

Every Syrian wants to have security and safety

President Assad: Yes, we had, and we announced it before that visit. The Russians said and we said that you cannot take any concrete political step before defeating terrorism, because this is the biggest obstacle, and this is the prime concern to every Syrian; every Syrian wants to have security and safety. How can you achieve anything in your life if you’re not secure, politically or economically or in any other aspect? So, this is the priority. So, what we are doing in parallel beside fighting terrorism, we need to make the dialogue, but the concrete steps should follow at least a major defeat of the terrorists and the government takes control of a major area that has been captured by the terrorists. This is where you can take those steps, and the major step regarding the political, let’s say, part of the crisis, is to discuss the constitution, because the constitution will define the system, and both will define the future of Syria. So, this is our aim. Later, if there’s a dialogue, if the Syrians want any other procedure, like what you mentioned something related to the presidential elections, this is going to be part of the dialogue between the Syrians. I cannot say this is my plan or not my plan, because not everything is related to the president. We propose the major issue, then the rest will be the result of the dialogue between the Syrians.

Question 21: It seems like a quite secure thought. Is there any timetable, timeline?

President Assad: No, for one reason; because what is the timeline of defeating the terrorists? It’s a war, no-one can define when because it’s related not to only our advancement or to what they are going to do; it’s related to the support that they are going to have from other countries, because many countries, in the West, in our region, they don’t have any interest in any political solution. They only believe in supporting terrorists in order to topple the government and to have political collapse in Syria. So, they want it to drag on. But if you ask me, I mean if you don’t have that support, in less than one year you can change the situation and you can defeat the terrorists and you can start this process. But if you want to talk about the process after defeating the terrorists, if you want to talk about after that, you can talk about a maximum of two years of implementing everything, because when you talk about dialogue, then you’re going to talk about the constitution, you need to make referendum. Who’s going to define? People will accept or don’t accept? We don’t know. Then, you may have another possibility. So, more than two years, you don’t need. So, two years is enough. Let’s say this is range that we’re thinking about.

Question 22: When you were meeting President Putin, have you talked about the possibility to include the Americans or the operation system?

President Assad: The Americans? You mean in the military operations?

Question 23: Militarily.

President Assad: No, that was before the beginning of the operation. That was when President Putin announced his will to have an international coalition against terrorism. This is why that we thought everybody should be included, even countries who I think we believe that they support terrorism; at least we give them the chance to shift their position. And as we know, most of those didn’t want to participate, because they don’t have the will to fight terrorism. So, we had this discussion with the Russians a few months before.

Question 24: You have visited China in 2004. At the end throughout all these years, especially the past five years, are you still a sort of communication channel with the Chinese government? And is there any message that you would like to deliver to China, to the Chinese people, at this stage?

The relation with China hasn’t deteriorated, and the communications didn’t stop

President Assad: We recently had Syrian officials visiting China. Actually, the relation with China hasn’t deteriorated, and the communications didn’t stop. We still have embassy, and your ambassador is still active during the crisis, he never left. And the most important thing than these formal, let’s say, accessories, if you want to call it, actually the Chinese positions. China took four vetoes for the Syrian crisis, supporting the government, supporting the Syrian people, and supporting the international law, and let’s say the United Nations Charter. So, yes, the relation is very stable, let’s say, for decades now. Indeed, it wasn’t influenced by the crisis. But the most important thing to the Chinese people, now China is one of the greatest countries in this world, to be a great country doesn’t mean to have a great military and great economy; you need to have great values, and that’s what the Chinese have today. And when you talk about the Chinese government, Chinese politics, it normally reflects the values of the people, it’s not separated. So, the more role you have in the world, the more influence, the more weight, the greater you are as a country, the more responsibility you have towards the rest of the world, all the world. You have to regain the balance of the globe, and you have to support the values and the United Nations Charter. You have to rectify the moral decay of the Western policies that we’ve been paying the price of. So, we look toward what the Chinese people and the Chinese government will do for our world in the future, near future and after.

Question 25: So, are you already working on the post-war reconstruction?

President Assad: We already started, and we issued some laws regarding this, and the first area near Damascus is ready, and they started actually building the infrastructure a month ago. So, we already started, and we are working on, we are trying to make contact now with businessmen, especially in friendly governments and friendly countries, let’s say.

Question 26: How badly is the economy of Syria been damaged? Because you see the Syrian currency has devaluated by 70 or 80% in the past five years.

President Assad: Actually, very badly, you are talking hundreds of billions of dollars of damage. 10% of the schools have been destroyed, 30% of the public hospitals have been destroyed, or let’s say, out of work. And infrastructure,  electricity. This is the bad aspect of every war. This is very bad. But at the same time, this is an opportunity where you can have prosperity after the war, because reconstruction is the most important sector in any economy, especially after the war.

Question 27: What are you to do with the damage to cultural heritage sites, and how much will it cost for this restoration project?

President Assad: As much as it is Syrian heritage, actually it’s a global heritage, and you understand what I’m talking about because you belong to a country that has one of the oldest civilizations in the world, and your neighboring countries like Afghanistan and so on suffer from the same cultural disaster. The same happened in Iraq after the American invasion. Now, that’s what’s happening in Syria. Some of those international heritage sites have been demolished; they cannot be restored. There’s another part of the problem; that many of the monuments could be smuggled outside Syria in order to be sold internationally. But fortunately, I think all of them are documented, and they are registered in the UNESCO, so we are going to work with friendly countries and international organizations including the UNESCO in order to get back our heritage.

Question 28: So, you see Mr. President, this summer we have seen a heartbreaking photo about the dead body of a Syrian boy, a young boy found at a Greek beach. Have you seen that photo yourself? And what did you feel when you first saw it? And you see, now the refugee crisis is a big problem to a lot of European countries, and some say that the Syrian government is to be blamed on this. What do you think?

President Assad: Actually, I saw that photo, but we saw so many other photos, so you cannot feel the whole crisis through one picture, because we live in this crisis, we live with the bloodletting by the terrorists on daily basis. So we feel the sadness on daily basis. But that photo was used as propaganda by the West, and unfortunately in a very horrible way, because there are two reasons why those refugees left Syria: part of them left because of the dire threats by the terrorists themselves, they left their areas – of course, some of them left to government areas, and some of them left outside Syria, and the other part left because of the Western embargo, not because only of the terrorism and its influence, because of the Western embargo that influenced everything; the education, the health sector more than any other thing, and the basics of the daily living. So the problem of the West when they use that photo as propaganda to show their compassion with the Syrian people, is that this West, as a double standard as always, they offer the Syrian people with one hand, let’s say, a dish of food, and with the other hand a bomb. That’s the reality, because they supported the terrorists, those people and this boy and other boys and other children suffered and died and are being killed because of the Western policies in this world, in this region, and mainly inside Syria.

Question 29: So, people say that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Now do you think you are a stronger man compared to five years ago?

I can only feel strong as a president or as an official when the Syrian people are strong

President Assad: Personally, I can only feel strong as a president or as an official when the Syrian people are strong. It’s not a matter of personal ability; it’s more as national ability. When you talk about national ability, you should relate it to the Syrian people. We suffered a lot, we lost a lot, as Syrians, but at the same time, if you go around Syria, you see this determination. You are fighting terrorists coming from more than 100 countries around the world, including China of course, and most of Europe, and Russia, and other countries, and they are supported by the strongest countries in the world, including the United States, and by the richest countries including Saudi Arabia and Qatar. In spite of that, they haven’t been defeated.  So, I can say yes, the Syrian people are strong, and they are becoming stronger against the terrorism, yes.

Question 30: You have stayed in your position much longer than your enemies or opponents had anticipated. What made you believe that you could make it through, what made you believe that you could make it up until now, five years ago?

President Assad: Because I believe in the Syrian people first, I believe that I’m working for my country and for the Syrian people, not for myself. The West wanted to portray the situation as a problem regarding a president who wants to stay in power, he wants to stay on his chair, and he wants to kill the people because they want to get rid of him. That’s not the reality. How can you stay when you have the opposition of not only the terrorists inside Syria, but also the strongest countries and the richest countries, and you stay for five years? It means you have the support of, at least, let’s say, more than half of the Syrians. I wouldn’t talk about the majority, but more than half of the Syrian people. Without that, how can you stay here? It’s not a matter of a superman, it’s the matter of a normal person, he has the support of the public opinion. The problem with the West is they didn’t understand the Syrian people, they don’t understand this region. That’s why they miscalculated at the very beginning, they thought it was a matter of a few weeks or a few months, like what happened in Tunisia and in Egypt, and now because they failed, they want to blame somebody else, they look for a scapegoat, and they want to say it’s me, it’s some other reasons, and so on. But actually, they miscalculated, and I believed in the Syrian population.

Question 31: If we look back in the past five years, and I’m sure you’ve undergone some serious, huge pressure, is there anything that you would do differently if you had the chance?

We never had any other position, we want to fight terrorism and defend our people

President Assad: Actually, you can talk about strategies, and you can talk about tactics. Regarding strategy, it was based on two things: first of all, from the very first day, we were determined to fight terrorism. We never had any other position, we want to fight terrorism and defend our people. The second one, is to make dialogue, and from the very first day we opened the doors for any dialogue. Some opposition accepted that, and some others didn’t. So, our methodology and our strategy, I wouldn’t say they were wrong. I think we need to continue in opening the door for dialogue and fighting terrorism. So, we’re never going to change that. Most of the things that you mentioned could be related to the tactics. Of course you change it, because every day you make mistakes, and what’s correct today is going to be wrong tomorrow. For example, if you want to draw one example, we trust many in Syria that they are working for their country, then we discover that they are working for the terrorists, and some working for other states to implement the agenda of foreign countries, and so on. So, in the tactics you always commit mistakes.

Question 32: And if you had to choose, would you rather be a doctor in the first place or the president of Syria?

President Assad: Even when I was a doctor, I worked in the public sector, I didn’t have my own clinic. So, being president is another public sector but it’s on a larger scale. Actually, being in the public sector and helping more Syrian people is more important for me than choosing what the profession that I work in, but I don’t think being president is a profession; it’s a public service. So no, for me now I enjoy much more helping a larger part of the Syrian society, more than being a doctor in one sector.

Question 33: Thank you very much, President Assad. Thank you for your time.

President Assad: Thank you for coming to Syria.

A major US media outlet has been caught passing on footage of Russian air raids in Syria as American airstrikes in a bid to advance Washington’s military agenda, a new report reveals.

The US Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), aired a program on the Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group on November 19, purporting to show how their oil trucks were destroyed by US airstrikes, as part of Washington’s new plan to disrupt the group’s main source of income, according to the Information Clearing House.

Earlier this week, the Pentagon said it would escalate its airstrikes on Daesh and bomb the terrorist organization’s oil infrastructure in Syria.

The new operation is supposed to cripple eight major Syrian oil fields over the next several weeks, about two-thirds of which are said to be in Daesh’s hands.

On November 16, the US military claimed it has destroyed 116 tanker trucks carrying stolen Syrian oil from those fields, but failed to provide video evidence.

Two days later, however, the Russian Air Force destroyed some 500 oil trucks and promptly released footage of the airstrike.

On November 19, a program dubbed PBS NewsHour used the Russian footage and passed them off as US airstrikes, without revealing the true source.

“For the first time the US is attacking oil delivery trucks,” a voice-over said while the exact same video released by the Russian Defense Ministry was being shown.

Daesh is reportedly generating as much as $40 million a month by producing and exporting oil it steals from the areas under its control.

According to US military officials, the group operates a fleet of over 1,000 oil tanker trucks.

US military officials say that they have studied eight major Syrian oil fields, namely Omar, Tanak, El Isbah, Sijan, Jafra, Azraq, Barghooth and Abu Hardan and are gearing up to inflict upon them the kind of damage which takes longer to fix or requires specially-ordered parts.

As we’ve noted previously, the War on Cash is accelerating.

In recent months:

1)  The SEC and other regulators have implemented legislation allowing Money Market Funds to lock in your cash for up to 10 days during the next financial crisis (meaning you cannot get your money out).

2)  The FDIC has implemented legislation permitting it to seize “systemically important” banks and convert their deposits into equity (the dreaded “bail in” used in Cyprus in 2013).

3)  JP Morgan and other large banks have begun rejecting large deposits.

4)  France has banned any transaction over €1,000 Euros from using physical cash. Spain has already banned transactions over €2,500. Uruguay has banned transactions over $5,000. And on and on.

There is a widespread global campaign to eradicate physical cash. And we’ve now got a connected insider confirming it.

Dr. Harald Malmgren is about as connected as you can get into the Washington DC political elite. He served as a Senior Aide to FOUR separate Presidents as well the Senate Committee on Finance.

This is someone who KNOWS what global elites are thinking about the financial system and US economy.

Dr. Malmgren recently gave an interview to Sinclair and Co that is absolutely shocking.

The very first sentence:

Banks in the US and Europe are trying to develop a cashless transactions system… The concept is to establish a comprehensive ledger for a business or a person that records everything received and spent, and all of the assets held – mortgages, investment portfolios, debts, contractual financial obligations, and anything else of market value including pleasure boats, automobiles, and other machinery.

He continues…

Governments would very much like such ledgers to exist because they could view everything that is taking place financially in real time, including ability to evaluate net worth, patterns of spending and of earned and unearned income, and of course, an instant assessment of all taxable activities.

We’ve been warning of this for months. However, Dr. Malmgren is the one to “connect the dots” of the key players in this global plan to erase physical cash and financial privacy.

This is not a dreamy idea. Blythe Masters, the JP Morgan architect of organized market trading of modern asset backed securities like mortgage backed securities and collateralized debt obligations…is leading a new business effort to develop a universal cashless system. Not only is she gathering significant investor interest, but the Federal Reserve and various US Government agencies have become keenly interested in the potential usefulness and efficiencies of a universal cashless system.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cash-policy-tool-interview-hon-dr-harald-malmgren-tavares

The above description gets pretty technical, so let’s lay it out in clear, simple language. This is the woman who helped promote and institutionalize the securities that blew up the entire financial system in 2008.

Having left JP Morgan (after a lawsuit in which Masters was accused of lying under oath), Masters is now driving a push to allow Governments to monitor everything you do with your money in real-time.

This is not conspiracy, this is fact. Masters is already meeting with top financial executives to promote the idea. And Central Banks LOVE the idea.

That’s a bold statement, but Masters isn’t the only voice heralding the coming of the blockchain. The Bank of England, in a report earlier this year, calls it the “first attempt at an Internet of finance,”while the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis hails it as a “stroke of genius.” In a June white paper, the World Economic Forum says, “The blockchain protocol threatens to disintermediate almost every process in financial services.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-09-01/blythe-masters-tells-banks-the-blockchain-changes-everything

Anytime the Fed calls something “a stroke of genius” you can guarantee it’s going to be a complete disaster for Main Street. Especially given who’s involved in this mess.

This is just the start of a much larger strategy of declaring War on Cash.

Indeed, we’ve uncovered a secret document outlining how the Fed plans to incinerate savings to force investors away from cash and into riskier assets.

We detail this paper and outline three investment strategies you can implement right now to protect your capital from the Fed’s sinister plan in our Special Report

Survive the Fed’s War on Cash.

We are making 1,000 copies available for FREE the general public.

To pick up yours, swing by….

http://www.phoenixcapitalmarketing.com/cash.html

Best Regards

Phoenix Capital Research

First, Iceland jailed its crooked bankers for their direct involvement in the financial crisis of 2008. Now, every Icelander will receive a payout for the sale of one of its three largest banks, Íslandsbanki.

If Finance Minister Bjarni Benediktsson has his way — and he likely will — Icelanders will be paid kr 30,000 after the government takes over ownership of the bank. Íslandsbanki would be second of the three largest banks under State proprietorship.

“I am saying that the government take [sic] some decided portion, 5%, and simply hand it over to the people of this country,” he stated. Because Icelanders took control of their government, they effectively own the banks. Benediktsson believes this will bring foreign capital into the country and ultimately fuel the economy — which, incidentally, remains the only European nation to recover fully from the 2008 crisis. Iceland even managed to pay its outstanding debt to the IMF in full — in advance of the due date.

Guðlaugur Þór Þórðarson, Budget Committee vice chairperson, explained the move would facilitate the lifting of capital controls, though he wasn’t convinced State ownership would be the ideal solution. Former Finance Minister Steingrímur J. Sigfússon sided with Þórðarson, telling a radio show, “we shouldn’t lose the banks to the hands of fools” and that Iceland would benefit from a shift in focus to separate “commercial banking from investment banking.”

Plans haven’t yet been firmly set for when the takeover and subsequent payments to every person in the country will occur, but Iceland’s revolutionary approach to dealing with the international financial meltdown of 2008 certainly deserves every bit of the attention it’s garnered.

Iceland recently jailed its 26th banker — with 74 years of prison time amongst them — for causing the financial chaos. Meanwhile, U.S. banking criminals were rewarded for their fraud and market manipulation with an enormous bailout at the taxpayer’s expense.

Agrochemical giant Monsanto knowingly contaminated Oakland’s storm water and the San Francisco Bay with a highly toxic chemical for decades, a new lawsuit filed by the California city claims. Oakland wants the company to pay for the environmental cleanup.

The State Water Resources Control Board determined that the presence of highly toxic polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs) in Oakland’s storm water threatens the San Francisco Bay’s ecosystem and interferes with the bay’s use and enjoyment by Californians, the city said in a statement.

PCBs were widely used for five decades to insulate electronics and were incorporated into paints, caulks and other building materials until they were banned by the US Environmental Protection Agency in 1979. Despite the 36-year prohibition, the chemicals are a common environmental contaminant in water and in the tissues of marine life all the way up the food chain to humans.

Monsanto knew that PCBs were toxic and could not be contained as they readily escaped into the environment, finding their way into bays, oceans, lakes, rivers, streams, soil and air,” the statement read. “Although evidence confirms that Monsanto recognized that PCBs were becoming ‘a global contaminant’, well before the 1979 ban, it concealed this information and increased production of these profitable compounds.

Oakland and Alameda County could be forced to spend $1 billion to remove PCBs from storm water flowing into San Francisco Bay, the city said. The lawsuit is asking Monsanto to bear the costs of cleaning up the contamination.

“The company that is responsible for this vast contamination should bear the burden of cleaning up our environment, not the taxpayers of Oakland and California,” City Attorney Barbara J. Parker said in a statement.

“Monsanto knew that its products posed a significant threat to human and environmental health around the world,” she added. “However, the company chose profits over protecting people, and American cities and citizens are still suffering the consequences.”

Other California cities such as San Jose and San Diego have filed similar lawsuits against Monsanto, as has Spokane, Washington.

It would not be unprecedented for Oakland to win its suit. In May 2012, Swiss agrochemical group Syngenta AG was forced to pay $105 million to settle a class-action case that claimed the company knowingly poisoned hundreds of community drinking water systems across the United States with its weed killer atrazine.

The agrochemical giant has a history of poisoning and polluting. In February 2012, A French court ruled that Monsanto was guilty of unintentionally poisoning a French farmer with its chemicals, setting a French precedent for pesticide-poisoning. Two months later, farmers in Argentina sued the company, claiming it knowingly poisoned farmers after pressuring them to use Monsanto’s chemicals.

In November 2014, Monsanto was forced to pay $2.4 million to settle a lawsuit with US wheat farmers after its genetically engineered strain Roundup Ready, which was supposedly outlawed and scrapped a decade ago, was found alive and well in Oregon in 2013. It also settled seven other class-action suits over similar incidents without admitting any liability.

Monsanto also produced the infamous Agent Orange, an herbicide used during the Vietnam War that caused a myriad of illnesses and disabilities in people exposed to the chemicals, including thousands of US military personnel. In 2012, the company agreed to compensate residents of the West Virginia town where its Agent Orange plant was located. Under the settlement, Monsanto consented to pay $84 million for a 30-year monitoring program in Nitro, West Virginia and $9 million towards property clean-up efforts in still-contaminated cities.

The World Health Organization said that there was “convincing evidence” that glyphosate, a chemical in Roundup, causes cancer in lab animals, and classified the world’s most widely used herbicide as “probably” carcinogenic to humans in March. Monsanto immediately rejected the organization’s conclusions as ”a dramatic departure from the conclusion reached by all regulatory agencies around the globe.”

The company is currently involved in a lawsuit filed by two US agricultural workers at the end of September. They claimed that Roundup caused their cancers, and accused the biotech giant of pressuring regulators to downplay the risks from its herbicide.

The US’ “war on terror” is a covert geopolitical project carried out under a fake counter-terrorism agenda, Canadian author Professor Michel Chossudovsky believes.

According to renowned Canadian economist and author Michel Chossudovsky, Washington’s widely-discussed “war on terror” is nothing less than a series of military and covert intelligence operations being undertaken simultaneously on different geographic locations.

“Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The US military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states,” Professor Chossudovsky writes in his article for Global Research.

The Canadian author elaborates that the operations are carried out by the Western military alliance, while all the actions are coordinated “at the highest level of the military hierarchy.”

To illustrate his views, the Canadian author calls attention to the fact that the US-backed military actions in Ukraine coincided with the “onslaught of the attack” on Gaza, Syria and Iraq.

The Western alliance is waging a hybrid warfare which includes military attacks, economic sanctions and deliberate acts of destabilization of the financial and currency markets.

As a result of this “economic conquest”, powerful foreign investors are taking over “national economies” worldwide.

“The Global War on Terrorism has become a consensus. It is part of war propaganda. It is also used by Western governments to justify and implement ‘anti-terrorist’ legislation. It is the cornerstone of the West’s demonization campaign directed against Muslims. It should also be understood that the ‘Global War on Terrorism’ supports a process of ‘economic conquest,’ whereby countries forego their sovereignty,” the professor explains, adding that the campaign against the Islamic State is in fact a smokescreen used by Washington and its NATO allies to maintain control over the Middle East and North Africa.

Washington’s anti-ISIL air campaign has evidently proved ineffective. Obama’s critics have repeatedly slammed the US president for his inconsistent strategy in the Middle East.

Why was the Pentagon incapable of wiping out the Islamic State?

The answer is obvious, Chossudovsky notes: “from the very outset, this air campaign has NOT been directed against ISIS [ISIL].”

“The air raids are intended to destroy the economic infrastructure of Iraq and Syria,” the professor writes.

According to the Canadian academic, the ISIL caliphate project could be a part of Washington’s longstanding foreign policy plan to split Iraq and Syria into a Sunni Islamist caliphate, an Arab Shiite Republic and a Republic of Kurdistan.

In order to accomplish this task, the US-backed extremists are destabilizing Middle Eastern sovereign states by creating factional divisions within the countries.

Remarkably, although the US State Department has issued an official prohibition against providing material support and financial assistance to al-Qaeda affiliates, it continues to turn a blind eye to the flow of money and supplies to ISIL and al-Nusra from private Gulf and Turkish donors.

It is not the first time Washington has supported Islamists, the Canadian academic notes, referring to the US assistance to the radical Islamist guerrillas in Afghanistan in the 1980s, which resulted in the emergence of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden.

“The ISIS brigades were involved in the US-NATO supported insurgency in Syria directed against the government of Bashar al-Assad.  NATO and the Turkish High Command were responsible for the recruitment of ISIL and al-Nusra mercenaries from the outset of the Syrian insurgency in March 2011,” Professor Chossudovsky suggests.

Not to be outdone by the Eastsiders’ “92nd Street Y”, Manhattan’s Westside has its own popular cultural center:– McDonalds at 96th Street. (No website.)

A sunny autumn day in New York City, perfect for a stroll along Upper Broadway.  Before noon restaurant staffs are arranging lunch tables on the wide sunlit sidewalk. It’s a school holiday too; so 5 and 6-year-olds dressed in brand-name casuals skip beside parents, mingling with infants strapped in strollers overseen by their Filipino or Nepalese nannies. All signs of our stratified but celebrated multi-cultured New York.

I pass bargain-seekers browsing through stalls of used books set up outside Symphony Space (formerly Thalia film theater) whose broad window posters announce evening concerts and poetry readings.

A bulky, balding man in running shorts steps out of NYSportsClub wiping sweat from his neck and hurries southwards. Strolling singles’ are bejeweled with ipod buds; people perched at the Starbucks window, likewise muffled, focus on computer faces, coffee at their elbows. Fixed on the pavement is the fruit wagon stacked with trays of blue, purple, red, and black berries, pyramids of green papaya, a terrace of apples and heaps of unripe avocados; the vendor needs an assistant to handle waiting customers.

This is the New York which its residents proudly cling to and where tourists arrive from their own suburban institutions to observe us from an open tour bus– as on a safari. Two squat white vehicles, currently empty, are parked at the curb. I recognize them; they’re designed to transport wheelchair-bound commuters and handicapped youths, ferrying them from their suburban institutions for day- excursions into these poly-peopled streets.

Determinedly focused on my target at Broadway and 96th, I pass laptop gazers in Starbucks and breakfasters at Filicori Zuchein Café likewise absorbed scrolling a screen or resolutely hunched over their morning crossword puzzle. Cafes are interspersed among three commercial banks; a manicure shop advertises holiday specials. Then my destination: the most visited store along this promenade. I step inside, not for McDs new all-day-breakfast menu but for an ethnographic check in.

I’ve been into several of New York City’s 354 McDonalds restaurants, but I’m returning to this 96th Street outlet with a specific goal, namely to test my earlier assessment, and then to share its culture with you. I’ll linger in order to revisit the tenderness and tolerance I’ve glimpsed nowhere else that serves a Big Mac. Please suspend your hostility towards McDonalds’ fast food empire and its fattening menu and step inside with me.

The counter, manned by young, underpaid yet smiling waiters is at the back of the high-ceilinged room. I amble slowly forward. As I pass 8 or 9 tables en route I imbibe the mood I experience every time I drop by here.

The store is small, perhaps 15 feet wide with hardly 30 chairs, only few of which are empty. Both window tables, one on either side of the door, are occupied. At the table to my left sit three women, two elderly ladies in wheelchairs, and the third, younger, who’s probably their caregiver. They seem like young girls, huddling close to one another—intimate and unreserved.

The table on the other side of the entrance is monopolized by one customer with shopping bags, papers, and two briefcases consuming the floor space around him and the tabletop as well. Not even a cup of coffee. He’s alone, absorbed with his cell phones, one in each hand. It’s unclear if he’s speaking with anyone. I keep my gaze on him, but he avoids any eye contact. He’s dark skinned with African features except for his long, straight hair pulled untidily somewhere behind his ears. I note the fringe of a prayer shawl in his lap and when he turns I see he’s wearing a yarmulke, the Judaic head cover for men. Could he be on lunch break from the Hassidic-owned B&H electronic outlet downtown? Doubtful. Moreover, I learn he’s here every day; same table.

“Yep,” says my interlocutor. “And you just missed Frank; he’s 90 and never misses a day; yep, every morning.” Joe Wilson (that’s the name embossed on his shield) is a policeman who I interrupt speaking to a customer with a spread of CDs and papers covering his table. “Are you here to remove people if….?” (I anticipate Wilson’s reply but I needed an opener) “Nooooo Mam”, Joe assures me, turning so I can read his shoulder badge–NYC Traffic Police; “That’s up to management; I’m here for my pancakes.”

I explain my purpose and Officer Joe willingly responds. “Yep, I know most of these folks.” He nods toward the Hassidic guy with the phones: “That’s his spot; never eats anything.” I look over my shoulder towards the well-dressed couple at a third table. I’d already noticed how animated the woman is and how purposefully she speaks. The man, younger, nods as he listens. Three Christian bibles lay open at their elbows (no coffee cups here), also a copy of Awake, the magazine distributed by Jehovah Witnesses. (This makes sense; these evangelists often work travelers at the 96th Street express station; this stop is a common venue for them.) I overhear “…and now the world was created”, and, “when somebody goes to church…” . They’re regulars too, says Joe Wilson. “Yep, a regular meeting hall this here place is.”

The two washrooms further along the passageway are in constant use. A young couple arrives, tennis rackets under their arms. The man sits and checks his phone while the woman heads into the ladies room. They both exit without purchasing even a cookie. Throughout all this traffic, a woman, her shirt printed with All-Day-Breakfast, gently moves among the tables with a wet mop, sweeping up crumbs, adjusting chairs, and frequently checking the toilets.

Although almost every seat in this McDonalds is occupied and people are constantly arriving and leaving, the place is quiet. A man (bus driver?) wearing an MTA uniform sits down across from me absorbed in calculations with his electronic meter. Many of these McD patrons sit alone; others are in pairs. No one’s hurrying through their fast-food here.

When I return in the afternoon, I find the scene unchanged. Except the chairs around the table where I sat this morning are now occupied by a group of 6 people, adults who appear like children because of one disorder or another. They sit silently, smiling, neither talking nor eating. Some gaze at the ceiling, some at their nurse. Their day outing has ended and they’re awaiting their bus.

Can these customers purchase enough McPancakes and McBurgers to pay operating costs here? Given soaring property values, it’s remarkable that this small shop survives in a city being converted to serve only the rich. Would that out-of-city home for handicapped youths lobby Ronald McDonald to keep it open? Or, in the interests of public health, would wealthy citizens moving into this neighborhood in order to lounge in another $6./cup organic Starbucks mobilize to eject an unwholesome ‘greasy spoon’? Or will they know here is really a community center?

Dr. Léopold Munyakazi is a Rwandan intellectual and former Goucher College French professor who expected to be deported from the U.S. to Rwanda on Friday, Nov. 13, 2015. His attorney, Ofelia L. Calderón, had filed legal papers requesting a stay until his appeal could be heard in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, but the stay had been denied and his wife had been told to deliver a suitcase of no more than 40 pounds to the jail by 4 p.m. on Friday.

Three days later, on Monday, Nov. 16, 2015, he and his family and supporters were informed that his deportation will be suspended until his appeal can indeed be heard in the Fourth District Court of Appeals. No one on his support team is quite sure why, but some have contacted members of Congress and State Department officials to protest his deportation and ask that his appeal be heard before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.He had used a 20-second courtesy call to say goodbye and thank you to Nicole Lee Wills, a close friend who had done all she could to try and stop his deportation to all but certain imprisonment, torture and possibly even extrajudicial execution.

Dr. Léopold Munyakazi, right, poses with his wife, Catherine, and their friend, Nicole Lee Wills, who has organized a Léopold support committee.

Ofelia L. Calderón, the immigration attorney who has represented Dr. Munyakazi pro bono for the past nine years, shared this new, near term legal timeline: “Nov. 23 is the government’s response due date. Then we have another 15 days to reply. Then we wait for the possibility of arguing in court.”

The Rwandan government accuses Dr. Munyakazi of incitement to genocide and genocide divisionism. However, the Rwandan government did not indict and issue arrest warrants for Dr. Munyakazi until after he had given several speeches on Delaware and Maryland college campuses, in which he said that the Rwandan massacres of 1994 were a form of class war and fratricide because Rwandans are one people who speak the same language, share the same culture, and marry one another.

These statements undermine the justification of Rwanda’s totalitarian government, which is that it stopped a genocide.

Attorney Ofelia L. Calderón provided this precise summary of events that led to Dr. Munyakazi’s appeal in the Fourth District Court of Appeals.

Leopold was originally detained from Oct. 24, 1994, until Aug. 30, 1999, as part of the post genocide round up [in Rwanda]. He did not receive a trial nor was he actually charged with crimes. According to documents from the Rwandan government, they interviewed individuals in Kirwa who all indicated that Leopold had no part of the genocide.

Immigration attorney Ofelia L. Calderón, who has represented Dr. Munyakazi pro bono for nine years.

In 2004, he came to the U.S. for a conference and learned he was on a list of individuals with ‘divisive ideas.’ He applied for asylum pro se, which was not adjudicated for four years. During that time, he was a teacher and later a lecturer at Montclair.

He gave two speeches where he described the genocide as a fratricide: Oct. 25, 2006, at the University of Delaware and then Nov. 15, 2006, at Montclair. The first warrant was issued Nov. 10, 2006, and the second Oct. 20, 2008. In January of 2009, DHS denied his asylum and referred him to court as well as arresting him in his home.

The Rwandan government issued warrants accusing Leopold of inciting the genocide. Specifically, they claim he was involved with a group in or around Kirwa. They claim that he was present at a large meeting where he told other Hutus to go out and kill Tutsis. They also accuse him of genocide negation [a speech crime in Rwanda]. I don’t have any other official statements, but the warrants and indictment themselves.

As for the law, a person cannot get asylum if there is evidence indicating that they are a persecutor of others. So, notwithstanding a finding that he has been the subject of past persecution and has a reasonable fear of future persecution based on his political opinion, he was found ineligible for asylum because we were unable to demonstrate by a preponderance of the evidence that he was NOT involved in the genocide.

The evidence of the U.S. government consisted of the warrants and reports from a special agent who went to Rwanda to investigate these claims. He interviewed a number of people, most of whom were convicted genocidaires who ‘suddenly’ had information that Leopold was at this April 19 meeting.

Oakland writer Ann Garrison writes for the San Francisco Bay View, Black Agenda Report, Black Star News,Counterpunch and her own website, Ann Garrison, and produces for AfrobeatRadio on WBAI-NYC, KPFA Evening News, KPFA Flashpoints and for her own YouTube Channel, AnnieGetYourGang. She can be reached at [email protected]. In March 2014 she was awarded the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for promoting peace in the Great Lakes Region of Africa through her reporting.

Phil Taylor interviews Ofelia L. Calderón about the Munyakazi case on the CIUT 89.5fm-Toronto Taylor Report on Nov. 16, 2015.

A citizen journalist interviews Dr. Munyakazi about how he had been tortured in prison in Rwanda.

After several weeks of apparent troop withdrawals and drawdowns, there are once again ominous military developments in Ukraine which might herald either preparations for a renewed saber-rattling to draw attention back to Ukraine following the Paris terror attacks which have led to the intensification of the Russian air campaign against ISIS and prompted the French president Hollande to seek to improve his country’s relations with Russia. This situation gives Poroshenko a considerable incentive to attempt to escalate the conflict in order to prevent a Franco-Russian improvement in relations.

There are reports that Ukraine will ban males 45 years old and younger from leaving Ukraine starting in January 1, 2016 in preparation for the 7th wave of mobilization. There are also reports that Ukraine is no longer releasing individuals mobilized under previous waves of mobilization whose term of service has expired. Likewise contract soldiers who have been signed up for 6-month terms of service are not being released from service. The atmosphere of war hysteria is being kept up by Ukrainian officials with Aleksandr Turchinov in the lead are claiming that Ukraine’s top 2016 priority will be its air defenses, due to the demonstrated Russian air capabilities over Syria.

The UAF has stepped up demonstrative operations near the border with Russia in the Crimea, ostensibly to “rehearse defending the border against Russian invasion”. There are also reports of sizable Ukrainian troop movements near the border with Novorossia, which raises the possibility the earlier troop withdrawals were simply part of a major regrouping of UAF forces, possibly in preparation for a renewed offensive. Ukraine has also taken receipt of two US Firefinder counter-battery radars, which were delivered to Lvov. US instructors have begun training Ukrainian soldiers in their operation.

Still, would the junta really want to risk an escalation under these conditions? UAF units’ morale remains at rock bottom, with most of their casualties coming from “non-combat” incidents which are usually alcohol and even drug-related, like the recent deaths of four mechanized brigade soldiers who have just returned from a training exercise and were killed in a drunken shoot-out.

Ukraine’s defense industry is continuing its downward spiral, with the Motor Sich, a key engine manufacturer, being reduced to making…meatgrinders. Which is a curious metaphor for the current state of Ukraine…

However, whether or not Ukraine decides to start another round of fighting, one thing is certain: Russia Is Watching.

Just when you thought the mainstream media coverage couldn’t get anymore surreal…

Question: should ‘ISIS’ be considered a credible news source? Sadly, CNN does.

In the wake of the Paris Attacks, a most disturbing trend has suddenly emerged in the mainstream media’s ‘terror’ coverage – where CNN, FOX News, and other majors are now deferring to ISIS press releases as a primary news source.

Leading the charge on Wednesday was CNN’s intrepid reporter, Chris Cuomo, who seemed uncomfortably dazzled by a report in the latest English language issue of ‘ISIS Monthly’ aka DABIQ Magazine (image, left), a glossy coffee table rag filled with colorful jihadi lifestyle features and career advice for aspiring young terrorists (if only it were a joke).

Schweppes Bomb

The DABIQ article proudly displays an image of a 16oz Schweppes Gold pineapple soda can with a few bits alongside it, claiming that this was the bomb that brought down Russia’s Metrojet Airbus A321 – a plane which broke up in midair 20 minutes into its journey after leaving Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, en route to St. Petersburg, Russia on Oct. 31st.

The DABIQ article goes on to reveal a grand plot (albeit, after the fact), saying, “After resolving to bring down a plane belonging to a nation in the American-led Western coalition against ISIS, the target was changed to a Russian plane”.

‘WORKING THEIR SOURCES’: Crack ‘journalist’ Chris Cuomo scored a major scoop from the ISIS propaganda magazine. CNN even properly credits the terror group, as evidenced in the upper right hand corner ‘ISIS/Dabiq’.

Then comes the big DABIQ reveal: “A bomb was smuggled onto the airplane…”, although it doesn’t explain exactly how, or by whom. Seeing as the Sinai airline disaster took place almost 3 weeks ago, you’d think that ISIS might have boasted about this brilliant ‘job’ earlier. Maybe they were busy planning for Paris, or working on the magazine. Who knows. More reason to believe that the DABIQ article is nothing more than a very sick prank – unless of course you are a member of the mainstream media – then it’s good as gold.

‘What’s the take?’

Granted, most people are used to seeing this type of vapid reporting on TV, but it’s still astonishing to watch how CNN’s Cuomo seized upon his latest ‘scoop’ without even questioning the validity of the source. Later in their coverage, Cuomo tried to ‘walk it back’ somewhat, but still presented this ISIS propaganda as if it was actual ‘evidence’ of a bomb that brought down the Russian plane.

CHRIS CUOMO: “Joining us now is CNN’s Ian Lee. He’s in Cairo; he has the latest. Now, Ian, as you know, the early reporting was that this was a 1-kilogram explosive, that’d be about 2.2 pounds, certainly different than this soda can. What’s the take? ”

IAN LEE: “That’s right, this is a fairly primitive bomb. When you look at it, you do have that soda can. Now explosive experts have told CNN that that could hold about 500 grams, roughly a pound. But they say that’s enough to take down a plane. You also have the detonator and you have the switch.”

Now we do not know if this is in fact the bomb. It could be ISIS trying to throw investigators off their trail. But all signs are pointing that that it was a bomb that took down the plane. Now, the one thing that is also very concerning about this bomb, it’s is that if you look at it, it cannot be remotely detonated. This was a suicide mission, if it was the bomb…

CHRIS CUOMO: “Big point there at the end. Ian Lee, thank you very much for the reporting!”

‘TEAM COVERAGE’: David Soucie, Chris Cuomo and Josh Rogin (purple tie).

CNN’s then rolled out one of its many panels of ‘terror experts’, which on the occasion includedJosh Rogin (Daily Beast) and ‘Safety Analyst’ David Soucie, both of whom seemed to parrot Cuomo’s infatuation with the soda can images, all nodding in unison and seeming to agree that somehow, ‘Yes, it all makes sense Chris!’

Based on what’s been released so far from the official investigation into the Sinai airline crash, it’s clear that the soda can CNN and ISIS have been touting around this week could not have held the explosive material necessary to trigger the fatal explosion. According to Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia’s Federal Security Service, it’s estimated that the bomb TNT load was at least 2.2 lbs (1 kg). This would make DABIQ’s soda can claim even more impossible than it already is, unless of course, it was a Six Pack (now that would’ve been a real scoop!). Although CNN had access to this report at the time of their ‘Schweppes Bomb’ scoop, it didn’t slow down Cuomo and their crack news team from running with the ISIS version of events.

If ISIS says so, well then, that’s good enough for CNN.

Unfortunately, it didn’t stop there. CNN’s brain trust go on to ask, ‘is it possible that this soda can could have been detonated remotely?’, even though the crude switch meant to look like a detonator in the photo – looks nothing like a remote detonator. Hence, Ian Lee’s awkward deflection during his exchange with Cuomo.

While any real journalist would have immediately questioned the validity of this story if the source was a terrorist group with a history of fabricating claims of ‘credit’ for various events, this also begs the question of whether CNN is really in the business of journalism – or spreading fear and hysteria.

Even if the DABIQ article were somehow true (and who in their right mind would root for that?), there is something very weird about western TV networks whose ‘expert’ panels are comprised mainly of ‘former’ CIA operatives, Pentagon staffers, think tank fellows and private security executives – who rely on information supplied by what is supposed to be a ruthless  international terrorist outfit. It’s a little obvious to how easy it would be to deliver misinformation anddisinformation directly to millions of viewers worldwide. Funny that we find CNN right in the middle of that very uncomfortable junction, often doing most the PR heavy lifting for a dubious media production like DABIQ.

Interestingly, Schweppes Gold (non alcoholic) Soda Facebook page has 169,000 ‘likes’. Coincidentally (or not), its last post was on Oct 30th, some 24 hrs before the Sinai crash, showing a rather dark depiction of a Schweppes Gold can, presumably for Halloween.

Spooky.

At any rate, you can expect full-sized soda cans to be banned from the in-flight drinks trolley.

‘Maybe, Could Be, ISIS’

Although Russia’s Security Council now admits, “we can say definitely that this was a terrorist act…”, there is absolutely no proof that ISIS is responsible for this mid-air tragedy, other than an insistence by the media and Washington’s ‘intelligence community’ (‘probably is’, ‘seems like’, ‘could be’, ‘most likely is’, ‘has the fingerprints’ and ‘has all the hallmarks” etc.), the usual political innuendos, and of course, spurious online claims of credit by various social media accounts claiming to be run by ISIS affiliates.

What should be more worrying about this and other ‘virtual’ terrorist exhibitions and corresponding propaganda, is the fact none of these terrorist social media claims could ever stand-up as forensic evidence in any homicide case in any criminal court of law. For US and European media outlets and hapless politicians, that seems to be just fine though. In other words, when it comes to the emotive subject of ‘ISIS’, there is almost no burden of proof for the mainstream media and US-European policy makers, so long as ‘security officials believe’, or ‘… we’re told by the Islamic State’. That and the fact that there is no real independently verifiable comprehensive record which defines or quantifies ISIS, its membership, where they come from, from where their money and arms are derived  and where they reside. Until such a study is done, we are told to just accept certain self-styled ‘terrorism experts’ word as gospel (keeping it vague seems to be the trick here).

Why is the bar so low? Part of the problem is that passes for journalism in the corporate mainstream media these days is a far cry from anything which might have been taught in journalism schools or on the job 30, or 40 years ago. More than other recent events, the coverage of the Paris Attacks by the big networks embodies this terminal condition, one in which we are witnessing an erosion of facts, context and any real challenges to official statements. Instead, all we get is a bevy of anchors, correspondents and ‘experts’ (many of whom openly flaunt their ‘insider’ affiliations as if that’s meant to instill confidence in the viewer’s mind). If you went to sleep in 1985 and woke up in 2015, and turned on the TV, you would think you were living a repeating scene out of Terry Gilliam’s film Brazil.

Magic Passport?

Earlier in the week, 21WIRE asked a reasonable question regarding the ‘magic passports’ of the supposed suicide bombers on site, one which seems to have evaded the whole of the mainstream media and even much of the alternative media. Simply: is it possible that the alleged ‘Syrian’ passport was likely planted at the scene of the crime? Indeed, that’s what some European officials are now admitting.

Without the ‘Syrian Passport’ leg of the official story, then the whole ‘Terrorists Are Sneaking in With the Migrants” talking point rapidly disintegrates, and wouldn’t that be a shame.

Why haven’t any of the major networks, with all of their millions of dollars and investigative resources, ever done a proper investigation deconstructing any of the ‘beheading videos’, many of which are obviously fake productions? Is it that ISIS has such a ‘great production facility’, or thatsomeone else is producing their videos for them? Whether its on a beach in Libya, or against a green screen with an actor called ‘Jihadi John’, the list of Hollywood-style forgeries is a long one, and no prime time special from CNN looking into this? Instead, CNN and FOX act as a force multiplier for these so-called ‘ISIS’ media productions. The mainstream media is giving validity to misleading ISIS material.

Is this legal? If anything should be the subject of a US Congressional or Senate hearing, this should.

The following was produced by a Turkish production company, but in advance of the ISIS beheading videos. Watch:

One gets the feeling that either:

A. The mainstream media is playing a dark practical joke on the public.
B. The mainstream media pundits and ‘anchors’ are not smart enough to know the difference between what’s real, and what’s fabricated by ‘ISIS’, or someone else.

Either way, this is bad news for the public, especially in such an incendiary political environment where fear is the new order of the day, and where half the US political establishment is demanding a military “package” of ‘boots on the ground’ in Syria, which would almost certainly lead to a long-term occupation and wider regional war in the Middle East.

The only thing we haven’t heard yet, is talk of deploying “nukes”. Judging by the looks of it, that’s not far off now.

It only takes some well-placed disinformation and hysterical speculation to push this situation out of balance and into a regrettable state of all out war overseas, and at home. More than any other single entity, the mainstream media plays the pivotal role in nudging public support either towards, or away from any war. In the age of mass media and consensus reality, they bear most of the responsibility in that troubling process.

So a message, media elites… we can offer you some humble advice in these troubling times: a little restraint would go a long way.

In the aftermath of the latest attacks on Paris that left more than 120 dead, the corporate, Eurocentric media of the West is in overdrive to scare working people into sacrificing their civil liberties and convince us of the need to launch more aggressive bombing raids, with the possibility of deploying troops, in Iraq and Syria to defeat the Islamic State (ISIS). The attacks reek of a false flag operation by French security forces, but even if the attacks were indeed the work of ISIS, the attacks are nevertheless the inevitable response to Western imperialism’s exploitation of the Middle East and North Africa and worldwide military interventions.

Each conflict in the Middle East and North Africa can be attributed to the policies of Western imperialism. The conflict in Syria is not a civil war; it is a regional proxy war being waged by Western imperialism through air strikes, sanctions, and support for regional proxies (i.e., so-called “moderate” rebels, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Israel, etc.), all with their own agendas, to weaken movements and states opposed to their interests. Likewise, the war in neighboring Iraq can be directly attributed to the illegal occupation of the country by Western imperialism in 2003; al-Qaeda in Iraq, the predecessor of ISIS, was not formed until after the U.S.-led occupation.

The U.S. and its allies have over the last 50 years caused untold devastation and suffering to millions of people in dozens of countries throughout the world, especially in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. There is hardly a single country in all three regions that hasn’t been subjected to airstrikes, invasions, coups, sanctions, and/or mass murders by U.S.-led imperialism.

The rise of radical Islamic extremism itself has its origins in the policies of U.S. imperialism to overthrow the People’s Democratic Government of Afghanistan in the 1970s and 1980s. Muslims were recruited, trained, and armed by the U.S. and its allies Pakistan, then under the control of Zia ul-Haq, an authoritarian, US supported military dictator with a radical Islamic agenda, and Saudi Arabia, still controlled by one of the most corrupt and oppressive regimes in the world with an extreme interpretation of Islamic law, in camps and madrassas on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

These “freedom fighters”, as Ronald Reagan referred to them, poisoned the water of schoolchildren, mercilessly tortured teachers, raped women, and fought to reestablish the power of the feudal landlords. After the Soviet withdrawal and the overthrow of the socialist government, many of these Muslim fighters left Afghanistan to wage violent insurgencies against the authoritarian dictators that serve as the puppet masters of Western imperialism in their home countries and against the Western states that support them.

Whenever a terrorist attack is committed, Western politicians and the media try to capitalize on the anger and fear of the masses to implement pre-planned agendas, while deliberately ignoring the history of these very states in committing terrorist acts themselves.

France has terrorized the people of its former colonies for decades. In Algeria, 1.5 million were killed fighting for their independence from France, among many other bloody wars of independence fought against France. French imperialism routinely intervenes in its former colonies whenever its interests are threatened; French special forces were sent to control the uranium mines in Niger and the Central African Republic, and thousands of troops were deployed in the Ivory Coast to control the cocoa trade and also to Mali to control the country’s mineral wealth in competition with Chinese investments.

To this day 14 former French colonies in Africa are forced to pay France a ‘colonial tax’, putting $500 billion of wealth into the French treasury each year instead of being used to help the desperately impoverished people of Africa. When French President Hollande declared, “Our democracy stands more true than these assassins,” he is referring to the same ‘democratic’ state that massacred 200 Algerian protestors in Paris in 1961.

The most recent attacks in Paris have the hallmarks of a false flag operation. A Syrian passport was conveniently located by French police at the scene of one of the attacks, an extremely helpful piece of evidence to justify closing the borders for refugees fleeing the violence created by France and its allies and illegally bombing cities in Syria. Hollande’s accusation that ISIS was responsible for the attack, before any investigation was completed and before ISIS, itself, claimed responsibility for the attack, as well as the appearance on Wikipedia of a detailed account of the attacks within two hours of them happening and Hollande’s statement an hour before he made it raises serious suspicions that this was a pre-planned attack by French security.

False flag operations have been used by many states to carry out pre-planned agendas. The Nazis did it in 1933 when they set fire to the Reichstag, Israel did it when Israeli agents planted bombs in American and British own civilian targets (known as the Lavon Affair) in Egypt, and the U.S. did it during the Vietnam War (Gulf of Tonkin Incident) and was prepared to do it Operation Northwoods, a plan by the U.S. to bomb civilians targets in the U.S. as a pretext for war against Cuba.

French police conducted more than 150 raids following the attacks in Paris. If the U.S. Patriot Act and anti-terrorism activities of police in Canada, the U.K., Australia, and elsewhere tell us anything about these raids, it is that not all of them were against suspected terrorists. The FBI has used the Patriot Act to target anti-war, anti-globalization, environmentalist, immigrant, and socialist movements in the U.S., and the RCMP have used anti-terrorism legislation to monitorenvironmental and Aboriginal movements opposed to the Alberta Tar Sands.

Working people must remember that the tragic and despicable attacks on Paris are the inevitable consequence of Western imperialism’s destructive policies of exploitation and terrorism abroad. Further restrictions on domestic civil liberties and more military interventions will not keep working people safe. To fight terrorism Western imperialism must first stop engaging in it and recognize the fundamental right of the people of the Middle East to live in peace and to self-determination.

T.J. Petrowski is an independent geopolitical analyst. You can read more of his work on his website tjpetrowski.com.

Are Israel and Saudi Arabia really ‘friends’ of press freedom?

Wait, what about free speech? Ce qui est arrivé à…’Je Suis Charlie’?

Back in April, 21WIRE discovered in interesting media anomaly which no other media outlet picked up.

The New York Times had run a front page story in their early morning US domestic print edition, with a headline that read:

“Saudi Defiance on Yemen Reflects Limits of U.S. Strategy”

PRESS INTIMIDATION: Netanyahu’s photo-op at Charlie Hebdo seems even more meaningless now after bullying BBC.

Later, we looked for this same article online, only to find that the headline has been changed to:

“Saudi Resolve on Yemen Reflects Limits of U.S. Strategy”

Why? Was pressure applied on the NYT editors, and if so, who applied pressure to the editors to make such a significant change on a lead story to change it from ‘Defiance’ to ‘Resolve’? In an effort to sanitize the carnage in Yemen, did Saudi Arabia throw its weight around, causing NYT editors to cave in?

Perhaps a much worse situation happened yesterday with BBC and Israel, with Israel pressuring the BBC into changing its headline (see full report below). Who did Israel manage to do this to the BBC? Incredibly, it not only time that Israel has used intimidation to make the BBC to change its headlines. On at least one occasion, Israel even demanded an official apology from the BBC and issued a threat to revoke press cards of BBC journalists working in Israel.

Very few people are aware that the pressure applied to the BBC emanates from an Israel lobby organization that’s embedded in the UK called BICOM (Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre). They claim to be, “An independent organisation devoted to creating a more supportive environment for Israel in the UK.”

As we can now see, it’s anything but independent, and its hardly supportive, especially when it comes to press freedom and free speech.

BICOM’s mission is simple: to sanitize UK media coverage in the in the event that Israel is ever exposed doing what it does on a daily basis: oppressing the native Palestinian population.

A Dark Double Standard

Imagine if Russia, or any other country were caught trying to run a media racketeering scam like this. The western media would be awash with righteous indignation. But when Israel does it? Not even a mention anywhere in the press. So it should come as no surprise how Israel has been able to get away with running a brutal, racist apartheid state for long.

What’s even more ridiculous is the meme we hear so often – that “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East” (no if you are Palestinian, and not if you are western press).

It’s yet another example of the BBC being in violation of its public broadcasting charter by willfully deceiving the public – and not standing up for freedom of the press in Britain. Tragic.

Before (left) and after: a BBC headline was changed to obscure the fact Israeli killed a Palestinian in cold blood. (Screenshots by Media Lens)

Electronic Intifada reports:

In the early hours of 12 November, approximately two dozen Israeli gunmen, one disguised as a pregnant Palestinian woman, others wearing fake beards, invaded a hospital in Hebron and gunned down a 28-year-old man.

In a rare burst of reporting on an Israeli atrocity, the BBC ran an article on its website headlined: “Israelis shoot dead Palestinian in Hebron hospital raid.”

It was a straightforward headline which summed up the story. But later in the day, a different headline appeared above the report, reading: “Israelis in disguise raid Hebron hospital, seizing suspect.”

As is standard practice for the BBC, the amendment was not noted at the bottom of the page, so newcomers to the story would not have known the headline had been altered.

It was spotted, however, by the watchdog Media Lens, which posted a screengrab of the two headlines on its Facebook page, asking: “What happened? Pro-Israeli flak? Bending to pro-Israeli pressure?”

These questions are even more pertinent in the light of a documented exchange which took place between the BBC, the Israeli Government Press Office (GPO) and the Israeli embassy in London at the beginning of October about another of the broadcaster’s headlines.

Headline changes

The Times of Israel reported then on Israeli fury sparked by the 4 October BBC Online headline “Palestinian shot dead after Jerusalem attack kills two.”

The headline is factually correct, but ‘offense’ was caused to Israel’s PR machine because the killing of 19-year-old Muhannad Halabi took precedence in the headline over the slaying of two Israelis.

The Times of Israel wrote: “The [Israeli] Government Press Office on Sunday warned the BBC it could face sanctions for running a news headline highlighting the death of the Palestinian terrorist shot by the police Saturday after fatally stabbing two Israelis, rather than the attack itself.”

The website added that a “harshly worded letter was sent to Richard Palmer, the head of the BBC Bureau in Israel, by the head of the GPO,” and that “the Israeli Embassy in London asked the network to change the headline.”

Whatever the GPO’s harsh words were, they appear to have been enough to scare the BBC into changing the headline, which went through three alterations – documented by the Zionist lobby group BBC Watch – before it met with the satisfaction of the Israeli embassy and the Israeli GPO.

The Israeli-approved headline ran: “Jerusalem: Palestinian kills two Israelis in Old City.” 

(This headline has since been changed again, apparently unnoticed by either the Israeli embassy or the GPO, to “Israelis killed in Jerusalem, Palestinians banned from Old City.”)

In its report of 4 October, The Times of Israel noted: “According to a GPO official, Israel expects an official apology from the network, and said the office was considering annulling the press cards of BBC journalists, a decision that if implemented would not allow the network to continue operating in Israel.”

This is not an idle threat, and BBC staff know it.

“A very evil light”

In 2003, the Israeli government severed ties with the corporation, accusing it of the “worst of Nazi propaganda” after it broadcast the documentary Israel’s Secret Weapon which shed light on the country’s nuclear and chemical arsenal.

Danny Seaman, then head of the Israeli GPO, said it was “because of what we feel to be a bias and an anti-Israel line … that portray Israel in a very evil light.” Seaman said government officials would no longer help BBC journalists get expedited press accreditation.

When Orla Guerin, then a BBC Middle East correspondent, questioned Israel’s repressive attitude towards the corporation, she too found herself in the Israeli government’s line of fire.

In an interview with the London Evening Standard in 2003, she said, “How can you still be a democracy and try to harass the press? This is not how a democracy behaves.”

Guerin was later pulled from the Middle East, the decision being announced just days after the BBC’s director general at the time, Mark Thompson, returned from a visit to Israel in 2005 where he met with then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

[Undue] Influence

Journalist Keith Dovkants, writing in the London Evening Standard in 2012, noted that “on [Thompson’s] return to London the corporation instituted the Middle East reporting regime that exists today and which, many believe, influenced the decision to refuse to show the charity aid appeal for Gaza.”

This is a reference to the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal of January 2009, which was aired by major television channels to raise money for Gaza as another Israeli massacre there came to an end. But the BBC, in an unprecedented move, refused to show it.

Arthur Neslen, a journalist who worked at the BBC for four years, told me: “They take Israeli calls very seriously, and critical stories about Israel get shot down through official pressure and the fear of official pressure. These are very powerful lobbyists — people know their careers can be broken.”

Swedish academic and media expert Leon Barkho told Dovkants: “I have investigated this and I am convinced [BBC] policy is dictated from the top because of the enormous sensitivity … The message is: don’t antagonize the Israelis.”

And so the questions asked by Media Lens when the BBC amends a headline to soften public perception of an Israeli crime — “What happened? Pro-Israeli flack? Bending to pro-Israeli pressure?” – answer themselves.

It is a sad state of affairs for a news organization which prides itself as a leader in global journalism. BBC journalists and editors, it would seem, sit at their desks in London and cower in fear at the thought of an angry phone call from the Israeli embassy.

They let us all down, but, most of all, they let down the Palestinian people, whose cry for freedom goes unheard at BBC Broadcasting House, drowned out by the undemocratic machinations of the Israeli PR machine.

This week was clearly dominated by two major events: the terrorist attacks in Paris and the Russian official declaration that Kogalymavia Flight 9268 was, indeed, destroyed by a bomb.

First, I would notice that contrary to so many predictions that the Russians, Egyptians and other nations involved would lie and cover up this attack, this did not happen. Both the Russians and the Egyptians were open and honest about this attack from day 1. There is something to be learned here: while some politicians clearly have lost the ability to speak the truth even if they tried to, others did not. While lying is the standard operating procedure for most (all?) of “western” (Empire-run) states, this is still not the case everywhere else. It is simply wrong to assume that Russia is some kind of “anti-USA” and that the Kremlin has a policy of systematic deception like the White House. To the extend that Russia could be considered an “anti-USA” this ought to include categorically different methods and motives.

Second, and this might seem highly counter-intuitive, it is undeniable that Daesh did everything in its power to invite retaliation: not only did Daesh immediately claim that it blew up Flight 9268, it also claimed the credit for the Paris attacks and even threatened more such attacks, including against the USA. Again, this might seem outright bizarre, but Daesh appears to be doing everything it can to create a large, multi-national coalition to destroy it. We must keep this in mind every time we consider the retaliatory steps taken by Russia, France and others (see below).

Third, while it is too early to call the recent French attacks a “false flag” it is logical to at least consider that possibility as likely, if not highly likely. I personally do not like knee-jerk conclusions and I would prefer waiting for more info to come out. But at this point in time whether this was a “real” attack or a “false flag” really makes no difference. Why? Because whether the French ‘deep state’ was an accomplice/culprit or whether the regime is completely incompetent, the “action is in the reaction” – that is to say that the French are getting involved with their own military operation in Syria and they are doing so in coordination with the Russians. So, at this point in time, I suggest focusing on that.

But first, let’s look at the really important development this week.

Russia dramatically increases her anti-Daesh operations

While you can read my initial assessment here, the dramatic surge in Russian strikes against Daesh is important enough to take a more detailed look at it.

First, in purely military terms, what the Russians did was both predictable (and I had predicted just that for several weeks now) and highly significant. The small Russian contingent at the Khmeimim air base in Latakia was, if amazingly skilled and outright heroic, simply too small to really hurt Daesh. Keep in mind that Russia does not have the kind of power projection capabilities the USA has and that regardless of that disadvantage, the Russian succeeded in creating a full airport capable of supporting the 24/7 night and day operation of about 50 aircraft in a record time.

And they did that without the Empire ever getting any good intelligence about what the Russians were up to. By the time the Empire understood what the Russians had done, it was way too late to stop them. In terms of organization and logistics, this was an absolutely brilliant operation and the folks who organized it most certainly deserve to get a medal and promotion for it. I mention that here because it was probably simply impossible to bring in a bigger force. Even right now the Khmeimim air base is over-saturated with flights and the extra aircraft flow in will make a very difficult situation even worse. This is why I predicted that the long-range aviation would have to be brought in at least as a stop-gap measure until either a “Khmeimim 2” airport is built near Latakia or another airfield(s) become(s) available (maybe in Iran). Bottom line is this: bombing or not bombing, the Russians had no choice but to bring in the long-range aviation.

Second, and this is significant, the Russians clearly decided to take advantage of the fact that the long-range aviation was not constrained by any logistical difficulties: the force they brought in this time around is a big and powerful one: not only will another 37 aircraft now join the Russian force in Syria (including the formidable SU-34: to the 4 already present in Syria another 8 will be added for a total force of 12), but 25 long-range bombers are now fully dedicated to the Russian effort, including Tu-22M3, Tu-95MC and Tu-160.

Now this is a “big stick”. Even the “old” Tu-95MC and Tu-22M3 are highly modernized versions of excellent airframes who can deliver plenty of very powerful and highly accurate munitions in any weather conditions, including gravity bombs and strategic cruise missiles. In other words, Russia has at least doubled her Syria-based capabilities and much more than doubled it if the Russia-based long-range bombers are included. From being a small force, the Russian air force contingent now dwarfs what the French will bring in on their Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier and what the Empire has been using until now.

We can now expect the Daesh logistics, communications and infrastructure to suffer a major degradation. And just to make sure that it hurts were it counts, the Russians began their long-range attacks with strikes on oil processing and distribution networks, including depots, trucks, fueling stations, etc. The Russian long-range bombers will not make a big difference to the Daesh frontline fighters, but their attacks on the Daesh infrastructure will free the Russian helicopters and Su-25s to finally provide close air support to the Syrian forces (so far, this task was mostly limited to the Syrian Air force which cannot fly at night). I also believe that the current SU-24 and SU-34 force will also be given much more frontline attack missions to provide the Syrians with much needed firepower. Bottom line: the Russians have brought in a “big stick” and this time Daesh will really hurt. But, remember, Daesh wanted exactly that (see above).

Third. The Kremlin did an excellent job of “selling” this dramatic increase of the pace and intensity of Russian operations in Syria. Polls show that most Russians fully approve. However, from personal contacts in Russia, I am told that they approve but are getting very uncomfortable. There is no denying that Russia has now suffered from what I like to call a “mandate creep”: from going in to support the Syrians and fighting the Takfiri crazies away from home rather than at home, Russia is now promising retribution for the murder of her citizens. Putin made that absolutely clear when he said that military forces and special services will be used to hunt down the perpetrators of this atrocity. He said:

We will find and punish these criminals. We will do this with no limitation period. We will find out all their names. Will will hunt them down everywhere, regardless of where they are hiding. We will find them in any location on the planet and we will punish them. (…).

He even added a “Dubya” -like warning that anybody supporting or protecting them will be fully responsible for the consequences of doing so.

All those who might try to render assistance to these criminals must know that the consequences for such a protection will lie entirely upon them.

Keep in mind that the last time Putin issued such a warning was in 1999 when he promised that Russia would hunt down the Chechen Wahabi terrorist everywhere, “even in toilets”, and kill every one of them. At this occasion Putin used a colorful Russian slang idiom “мочить” which can very roughly be translated as “off them off” (or even to “f**king blast them”). What is less remembered is that the Russians did just that: they killed every single Takfiri insurgency leader including Baraev, Dudaev, Maskhadov, Iandarbiev, Hattab, Raduev, Basaev and many others. Some of these executions were botched (Iandarbiev) some were superb (Dudaev, Hattab). But Putin got every single one of them. Every one. Putin has just made exactly the same threat, though in more diplomatic terms. And while most Russians agree with Putin, and while they know that he does not make empty threats, they also realize that suddenly a small and local military operation has turned into a potentially worldwide chase for terrorists. Considering how poorly the USA did just that after 9/11 there are plenty of good reasons to be worried.

But I would also immediately add that most Russians also realize that Putin and Dubya are in different leagues and that while the USA seems to be chronically unable to do anything right “Russia does not start wars – she ends them” (as the expression goes in Russia). Bottom line: I believe that the Russians will not repeat the mistakes made by the clueless US Neocons and that the hunt for Daesh leaders is now on.

Fourth. There is an uncanny political dimension to this about which I am frankly very unsure. Everybody in Russia knows that Qatar is the prime sponsor of terrorism in Syria and in Egypt. How will the Kremlin square that knowledge with the publicly made promise to punish every person guilty for the murder of 224 Russian citizens in anybody’s guess. Since Qatar is basically one giant US base, there is no way to strike at Qatar without hitting the CENTCOM. Alternatively, the Russians could decided to hunt down and kill specific Qatari officials in various “accidents”. What is certain is that the Russian foreign intelligence service – SVR – has teams capable of such actions (Zaslon, Vympel), as does the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff – GRU – which has Spetsnaz GRU officer teams and special operation forces SSO units capable of such operations. For better deniability (assuming that is a goal), the Russians might also use their deep connections inside the Russian mob (quite a few of whom are ex-secret services, especially in the middle-ranks) to “subcontract” such an operation.

Whatever options the Kremlin chooses, I would not sleep well if I was a Qatari official involved in this atrocity. Bottom line: Putin has publicly made it a point of personal honor to get every single one of those responsible, regardless of where or who they are, and I strongly believe that he will deliver on that promise.

Fifth. There are other nations besides Qatar who are also very much co-sponsors of Daesh. They include Turkey (and, by extension, NATO), the KSA and even the Ukraine (see here and here). Potentially, all of them can become targets of Russian retaliation (whatever form it takes). Finally, there are all the western financial institutions which are providing crucial services for Daesh, including many involving the export of oil from Daesh controlled territory and the import of modern weapon (primarily US-made) into Daesh territory. The list is long and the fact that the Russians have now openly threatened a long list of powerful entities is certainly a dramatic increase in the scope of the Russian involvement in this war.

Sixth. As with any escalation the stakes and the risks for Russia have now sharply increased. The timeframe has now officially changed from “about three months” to “as long as needed”, the size and nature of the force committed now fully engages the Russian political prestige and all of the above makes Russia a prime target for Daesh retaliation, both inside and outside Russia. Now that Putin has officially declared that Russian special services are tasked with the elimination of those who blew up the Russian aircraft, the use of some kind of “boots on the ground”, even if these are “special boots”, becomes much more likely. For somebody like myself who has always been very reluctant about the use of military force it is disturbing to see how rapidlyRussia is getting pulled-in into the war in Syria with no exit strategy I can discern, at least not in the foreseeable future. I personally do not believe that the Russians will send in boots, but I cannot say that I am categorically certain that this will not happen. Currently unpredictable events might well force them to.

The attacks in Paris

Tragic and horrible as these attacks were, the first thing that comes to my mind is the obscene difference in which the western media and zombified public treated 129 (provisional figure) murdered French and 224 murdered Russians. We had the “Je Suis Charlie” abomination and now we have the “Je Suis Paris” collective (planetary!) grief-fest. I don’t recall any “Je Suis Russie”, or “Je Suis Donbass” grief-fests? Or any “Je Suis Aleppo” or even “Je Suis Iraq”.

Apparently, Russian or Arab lives matter a hell of a lot less than US or French lives (even if only in Iraq the body count is well over a million!). This is disgusting, unworthy of respect, utterly dishonest and terminally stupid. This is no “homage” to any victims, but your garden variety media-induced hysteria. The West ought to be ashamed of such pathetic lack of simple courage and maturity. Truly, did they really believe that they can play at such “terrorist games” and not eventually get hurt themselves (by a false flag or otherwise)?! Did not Putin warn the West of exactly that when he said:

I’m urged to ask those who created this situation: do you at least realize now what you’ve done? But I’m afraid that this question will remain unanswered, because they have never abandoned their policy, which is based on arrogance, exceptionalism and impunity. (…) In fact, the Islamic State itself did not come out of nowhere. It was initially developed as a weapon against undesirable secular regimes. (…) The situation is extremely dangerous. In these circumstances, it is hypocritical and irresponsible to make declarations about the threat of terrorism and at the same time turn a blind eye to the channels used to finance and support terrorists, including revenues from drug trafficking, the illegal oil trade and the arms trade. It is equally irresponsible to manipulate extremist groups and use them to achieve your political goals, hoping that later you’ll find a way to get rid of them or somehow eliminate them. I’d like to tell those who engage in this: Gentlemen, the people you are dealing with are cruel but they are not dumb. They are as smart as you are. So, it’s a big question: who’s playing who here? The recent incident where the most “moderate” opposition group handed over their weapons to terrorists is a vivid example of that. We consider that any attempts to flirt with terrorists, let alone arm them, are short-sighted and extremely dangerous. This may make the global terrorist threat much worse, spreading it to new regions around the globe, especially since there are fighters from many different countries, including European ones, gaining combat experience with Islamic State. Unfortunately, Russia is no exception. Now that those thugs have tasted blood, we can’t allow them to return home and continue with their criminal activities. Nobody wants that, right?

Prophetic words by Putin indeed. But since the AngloZionists have a long and “distinguished” tradition of using death-squads, vicious dictatorships and, of course, terrorists, Putin’s words were ignored. Heck, even after the Paris attacked the West is still supporting Nazis in the Ukraine! I suppose it will take some Nazi atrocity in London, Warsaw or Munich to wake up the zombified western general public to the simple reality that sponsoring and using terrorist is always a very dangerous policy. If not, then the West will continue on a neverending cycle of terrorism sponsoring and grief-fests, over and over again.

[Sidebar: I am often criticized for stating that Russia is not part of the West, ever was, and never will be. If you believe that I am wrong, ask yourself a simple question: why is it that Russian victims of atrocities (including Western sponsored atrocities!) are treated just like Black or Brown people and not like the other putatively “civilized” Whites? QED.]

Oh how much I wish most people in the West could understand Russian read the Russians newspapers, watch Russian talkshows or listen to Russian conferences! They would see something which they have been conditioned to consider impossible: far from fearing the West, most Russians find it crippled with narrow-minded consumerism, devoid from any real moral or ethical values, fantastically ignorant and provincial and suffering from terminal infantilism.

Even the tiny pro-Western minority has now given up on defending the West and, at most, it retorts against the typical tsunami of anti-western arguments something like “what about us – are we not as bad?” or even “let’s not sink down to their level!”. It is quite amazing to see that happening in a country which used to almost worship anything western just 20-30 years ago! I should add that if the most despised and ridiculed country must, of course, be Poland, France is not far behind in the list of “most pathetic”, As for the USA, it is the least despised adversary simply because most Russian respect the US for defending whatever it perceives has its national interests and for making Europe it’s “bitch”. The Russians always say that to get something done one must talk to the USA and not waste time with its European colony.

If we look beyond all that rather shameful display of narcissistic self-pity, the real question is what is France going to do about it? Here again, there are two dimensions:

First, in purely military terms France will now commit the Charles de Gaulle with its wing of Rafales to the strikes on Daesh. Good, but compared to what the Russians are brining to the fight, it’s really irrelevant.

Second, in purely political terms, the French just might do something very interesting: apparently they have agreed with the Russians that the Russian forces in Syria will provide “cover” for the French. I am not really sure why a Rafale would need “cover” but whatever – what matters here is that the French have de-facto entered into an alliance with Russia over Syria and that, in turn, could open the door for other western countries.

In other words, we just might (finally!) see a multi-national Russian-lead alliance take on the fight with Daesh and that, in turn, means that these countries would de-facto find themselves allied with Damascus. If northern Europe walks in lockstep with Uncle Sam, countries of southern Europe (Italy? Greece?) might decide to assist the Russians, as might Egypt or Jordan. I am not sure that such a coalition will happen, but at least now it might and that, by itself, is also an interesting development. This being said, Hollande is about to meet Obama in the US and he will probably be told in no uncertain terms that he must not “play ally” with Russia. Considering how abjectly subservient Hollande has been the the USA, I am not optimistic at all about the French meaningfully joining forces with Russia.

Third, there is no doubt in my mind, but many others do disagree, that the pro-Zionist regime in power in Paris is making the maximal use of all these events to stir up an anti-Muslim hysteria in France. And I am not talking about the stupidity of insisting to serve an non-halal meal with wine to an Iranian leader who also happens to be a cleric, or the now “old” anti-hijab harassment in French schools.

What I am talking about is the openly declared idea that traditional Islam is incompatible with the secular French Republic and that it therefore represents a danger to society. Conversely, the only “good” form of Islam is one of abject collaborationism with the Zionist regime typified by the infamous Hassen Chalghoumi, Imam of the mosque in Drancy. The message is xclear: the only “good Muslim” is a Zionist Muslim. All others are potential or actual, terrorists and shall be treated as such. That, in turn, makes it easier for Takfiri recruiters to find more volunteers for their terrorist operations which, in turn, make it possible to the regime to pass even more draconian laws, including laws against free speech or Internet freedom. Being a real, pious and practicing, Muslim in France will become very, very hard in the near future. It certainly appears to me that the warnings of Sheikh Imran Hosein are coming true.

The unknown “breaking point” of Daesh

After six weeks of very hard fighting Russia has brought in the big stick, but those who expect Daesh to collapse under Russian air operations should not rejoice too soon. Breaking Daesh will probably take a much bigger effort. But let me explain why I am saying “probably”.

For the first time in many weeks and months Daesh is truly in a difficult situation, not a desperate one yet, but a difficult one. Unless something changes in the current dynamic, time is now beginning to run against Daesh. Still, the resilience of Daesh in the current conditions is close to impossible to predict, at least without some very good information from the frontlines and that is something which most analysts, including myself, don’t have. When a force is put under pressure the way Daesh has been, there is a breaking point somewhere in the future at which point the force collapses really fast. The problem is that it is extremely difficult to estimate how far away in time such a (wholly theoretical) breaking point might be because it really depends on the morale and determination of the Daesh fighters on the ground. All we can say at this point in time is that such a breaking point exists in a theoretical future and that we hope that it will be reached soon. But we also have to be aware that this might not be the case at all. Not only that, but we have to take a long hard look at the most puzzling issue of them all: why did Daesh deliberately place itself in such a position. Here are a few hypotheses I can come up with:

1) Daesh leaders are crazed lunatics. They are in such a hurry to get to heaven that all they want is to die in combat against the infidels. Alternatively, they are so deluded about their power that they think that they can take on the entire planet and prevail. While I cannot discount this hypothesis completely, I find it highly unlikely simply because even if the rank-and-file Takfiri is an ignorant goat herder, the middle and top level commanders are clearly sophisticated and well-educated.

2) Daesh has outlived its utility for the AngloZionist Empire and now it is sent into a battle it cannot win, but which will kill off thousands of now useless liver-eating sociopaths. Maybe. I don’t know where any evidence to support this hypothesis could be found, but this one at least make sense to me.

3) The real purpose for Daesh has always been the same: to inflict such damage to the entire Middle-East that, by comparison, an Israeli occupation would appear as a liberation to the few lucky ones who would survive the medieval horrors meted out by Daesh on a daily basis on all the territories it controls. So the bigger and the bloodier the fight, the better for the Israelis who have taken a relatively strong state controlled by relatively strong Baathist leaders – Assad père et fils – and who have now turned it into a heap of smoldering ruins. The problem with this theory is that unless something changes Daesh will not win, but lose, and that Assad will come out not weaker, but much stronger. And I won’t even mention the fact that Syria now has a small, but battle hardened military whereas the putatively “invincible” Tsahal only is experienced at shooting unarmed civilians. So if there was an Israeli plan to prepare for a future “Grand Israel” it backfired pretty badly.

Frankly, I find none of the hypotheses above really convincing and that makes me nervous. The question which always haunts all analysts is “what am I missing” and, in this case, it also haunts me. I honestly cannot imagine that the Daesh leaders would sincerely believe that they can win the kind of “war against everybody” they apparently are determined to fight. I would hope that somebody with better understanding of Daesh, fluent in Arabic and well-versed in Takfiri literature would give us all the reply to this apparently simple question: what does Daesh really want? I will gladly admit that I have no idea. And that worries me a lot.

The Resistance and its options

Seven weeks into the Russian intervention, the Resistance to the Empire is doing well and it still has the potential to intensify its struggle. First and foremost, what is most needed at this point in time are more combatants on the ground. I still believe that the Russians are not going to provide ground troops for Syria. My guess is that Hezbollah is pretty close to being maxed out. Unless I am missing something, this means that the only party capable of providing many more combatants on the ground is Iran. Right now, the official line out of Moscow, is that one of the goals of the Russian intervention is to give the Syrians enough time to reorganize and field a much bigger force. Maybe. I hope that they can do that soon enough to fully use the momentum created by the Russian intervention.

As for the Russians, they are also coming close to being maxed out. In terms of air force, they could have allocated even more aircraft, but they did not do so simply because they know that there is only that much any air force can do when intervening in a civil war. Still, this time around the Russians really “mean business”: According to the latest figures, the latest Russian strikes was formidable: ten ships from the Caspian Sea and the Mediterranean coordinated strategic cruise missile strikes on Daesh targets (18 cruise missiles were fired by only four ships the Caspian Sea flotilla see footage here: https://youtu.be/yf2SZ_gjtA0). According to official figures, in just four days, the Russian air force have conducted 522 sorties, deploying more than 100 cruise missiles and 1,400 tons of bombs of various types. Just one cruise missile strike in Deir ez-Zor had killed more than 600 militants. Clearly, Daesh is taking a formidable beating (the “pretend airstrikes” of the US-lead “pretend coalition” probably gave them a false sense of security of what an angry superpower can *really* do when it means it).

I am quite certain that Russia can keep up this pace of operations for a long while: while the stocks of the latest “Kalibr-NK” are reportedly low, Russia is now using a lot of her immense Cold War arsenal where there stocks of cruise missiles and gravity bombs are plentiful. Russia will run out of targets long before she runs out of these strategic weapons. This is no joke, by the way: it makes no sense to fire multi-million Ruble cruise missiles at non-lucrative, secondary or even tactical targets. The situation is better with relatively cheaper gravity bombs, but the biggest problem is that Daesh targets will eventually split into two groups: destroyed ones and well hidden ones.

At this point the Russian intervention will not become useless, but it will reach a point of diminishing marginal returns, both in a financial and in a strategic sense. This happened to the USA and NATO in Kosovo and it happened to Israel in Lebanon. Of course, the AngloZionists then switched their attention to what they call “infrastructure” and “support” target destruction, but which are basically terror strikes against the civilian population. Russia will not engage in such systematic policy of war crimes and thus the option of bombing Raqqa into oblivion is not something we will see the Russians do (the US, in contrast, probably will). This leaves only the naval component of the Russian task force.

The main task of the Russian naval task force has been to protect the Russian logistics and to provide air defenses to the newly built airbase with Latakia. Apparently, Russian denial notwithstanding, there are S-400s in Khmeimim, but if not, we can assume that S-300s are there. So the air-defense task for the Russian naval task force is now been replaced by a role of support for the Russian logistical effort which I expect to not only continue, but even to also sharply increase. This is where the Russians can do the most good and where they are not maxed out: help the Syrians reequip, reassemble, reorganize, retrain and *finally* provide them with relatively modern equipment (at least on par with what Daesh has). My guess is that after 4 years of war the Syrians need literally *everything* and this is were the Russians can play a crucial role.

The current Russian naval task force allocated to Syria is far from being trivial, see for yourself:

Graphic by SouthFront

This is by no means a small force. Still, there have been some speculations that the Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov might join the naval task force off the Syrian coast. I find that rather unlikely. Unlike the US aircraft carriers, the Admiral Kuznetsov was designed from day 1 to be primarily an anti-aircraft platform (primarily to protect the Russian submarine bastions) and not as a landstrike aircraft carrier. The Russians are currently reconsidering this role, but for the time being the Kuznetsov has very limited landstrike capabilities. Of course, if needed, the Kuznetsov could be used to strengthen the air-defense capabilities of Syria or the Russian contingent in Syria, but that is not something which will directly affect Daesh. Still, I would not count out the Kuznetsov either: according to the latest reports, she will be sent to a patrolling area off the Kola Peninsula, but that is not set in stone.

In terms of direct attack support, a possible Russian option would be to use submarine-based cruise missiles, but with 25 long-range strategic bombers already allocated to this task, this would not be a game changer either. My feeling is that the Russians are now as strongly committed as they can be. The only thing they could do now would be to increase the flow of modern weapons to Syria and to provide the technical personnel to train the Syrians. In my opinion this, along with an energetic political campaign to force the West to accept the facts on the ground, is the most likely Russian strategy for the future: continue to pound Daesh, while re-building the Syrian military and “engaging” Russia’s western “partners”.

Frankly, I will conclude by saying that I find this Russian strategy as militarily sound as it is morally correct. Russia cannot win this war “for” the Syrians. The best thing Russian can do is to provide meaningful help, and that she is very much doing.

With Hezbollah probably maxed-out, the big unknown is Iran: will the Iranians dare to bring in a much larger contingent of ground-forces to take the pressure off the Syrians? I hope not – because that would mean that the Syrian could do well even without such aid, but I still consider an Iranian surge as very likely.

As for the Syrians, Assad has just declared that he would not leave power before the defeat of Daesh. In other words, Assad has just turned the tables on the West and declared that the “departure” (i.e. elimination) of Daesh is now a pre-condition of his departure. Only time will show whether this is grandstanding or true confidence.

What about the “Indispensable Nation”:

I realize that bashing the USA is always a popular exercise, but for all my hostility to the AngloZionist Empire I also have to admit that the US is in a very bad and complicated position: it has created a bloody mess (literally), then it painted itself into a political corner, and all of its so-called ‘regional allies’ are, I believe, inherently disloyal and pursue their own interests. If you look at the relationship between the USA, on one hand, and countries like Turkey, Qatar, the KSA or Israel on the other, it really is hard to establish who uses whom and whether what we are seeing is a case of a tail wagging the dog. Take Qatar: there is no doubt that the presence of CENTCOM in Qatar gave the Qatari a strong sense of impunity which, in turn, bred arrogance and, frankly, irresponsibility.

The Qatari wanted Assad “out” so they could get their gas to the Mediterranean, but now they are directly involved in the bombing of a Russian airliner. As for their much wanted pipeline, they can forget it for at least a decade now. How smart was that? More relevantly: is Qatar a good ally for the USA? What about Turkey which is actively supporting, financing, equipping and training Daesh (and al-Qaeda – same difference!) under the convenient protection of NATO. They apparently cannot decide which is worse: Assad or the Kurds, and since they fear them both, they end up in bed with liver-eating sociopaths. Is that a good ally for the USA? I won’t even go into the Israeli issue – we all know that AIPAC runs Congress and the Neocons try run the White House. None of which elicits any big love or loyalty from the Israelis who are constantly looking at the “Russian option” (partnering up with Russia) to get things done in the Middle-East. Besides, since the slow-mo genocide of Palestinians by the Ziocrazies currently in power is continuing, being allied to the Israelis means being hated by everybody else. Still, at least and unlike the other “regional allies” of the USA, the Israeli regime itself is stable, fairly predictable and can unleash an immense amount of violence. So compared to the Saudis, the Israelis look outright attractive. Still, at the end of the day, the USA has to try to get out of this mess without alienating its allies too much, but also without being manipulated by them.

Some seem to believe that the correct policy for the USA would be to work together with Russia. While this would undoubtedly make sense for the USA as a country, it would make no sense at all for the USA as an Empire. For the US (AngloZionist) Empire and the “deep state” forces which run it Russia is, indeed, a far bigger threat because Russia directly threatens the imperial status of the USA. The USA can either be the “Indispensable Nation” and world hegemon, or a “normal country” part of a civilized and multipolar world system ruled by the rule of law. It cannot be (or do) both. So when the US “deep state” is categorical in its refusal to do anything meaningful with Russia, it does act logically, at least from its point of view. As any other Empire, the USA sees its relationship with any competitor (actual or possible) as a zero-sum game which means that anything good for Russia is bad for the USA and vice-versa. Yes, this is sick and sociopathic, but this is how all Empires function. Hence the current US policies: the only good coalition is a US-lead one, any anti-Russian force must be supported, there will be no negotiations with Russia – only demands and ultimatums, etc. Add to this the apparently total lack of well-educated and competent diplomats (Americans get killed in every single negotiation they have conducted with the Russians), and you will see why the US is so averse to any notion of being anything other than hostile and confrontational with Russia.

The USA is in a terrible mess, the upcoming elections are only making matters worse and that makes the USA highly unpredictable. Yes, there is, I suppose, a small chance that the French might set a precedent for collaboration with Russia, but I am not holding my breath here. Maybe if another massacre is committed in Europe, especially Germany, but even that is a long shot. Still, there have been cases in history when a slave gave some good advice to his master and maybe this will happen this time around. I sure hope so.

Addendum: was I wrong about my predictions about the Russian intervention in Syria?

I think that this is a good time to reply to those who have accused me of being wrong about the Russian intervention in Syria. I could have done that as soon as these accusations were made, but I concluded that to do so in the flag-waving “go Russia! go!” kind of atmosphere this was futile. Many at that time were sure that this was the “showdown of the century” (no less), a “game changer” and that it was all “over” for Daesh. Seven weeks into this intervention, I propose to revisit what I actually said.

First, I never said that no military intervention would take place. In fact, I repeated over and over again that I cannot prove a negative and that an intervention *might* take place, I even suggested one (limited to intelligence support, training and weapons). All I said that the kind of intervention which was discussed 7-8 weeks ago would not take place: no Russian boots, no MiG-31, no forces in Damascus, no Russian SSBNs, no Airborne Forces, etc. And, indeed, that kind of intervention did not happen. Furthermore, I also said that the notion that Russia could “protect” Syria from NATO is laughable. It still is! Does anybody still seriously believe that the Russian contingent in Syria really has that kind of capabilities?! If so, I got a bridge to sell them. Now, I will gladly admit that I did not think that Putin would agree to what I consider an extremely daring and risky option of sending a very small force into Syria, a force just barely big enough to (maybe) give enough relief for the Syrians to reorganize and counter-attack. That I did, indeed, miss. As did everybody else who predicted a *much* larger Russian intervention (with MiG-31s and all the rest of the nonsense). I will also admit that I am still amazed at the fact that the Russians, who are both intervention-averse and risk-averse, did go for such a risky move and I marvel at the superb way they executed their operation. But they way they actually did it is something which nobody predicted.

Second, I also got in trouble for raising the alarm about the limited capabilities inherent to any air operation and, specifically, to a rather small Russian one. Now that the Russians had to use their cruise missiles and strategic aviation (which I did predict, by the way) is there anybody who will deny that I was right about the limitation of using airpower against Daesh, especially with the low number of aircraft initially brought in?

Third, I did point out that the Russian law and general public are extremely foreign intervention averse. That is still very true and that is still limiting the Kremlin’s options. This is why Russian officials go out of their way to stress that the Russian intervention in Syria is primarily in Russia’s national interest.

I want to set the record straight today not because of some ruffled feathers or a hurt ego, but because I am sick and tired of having to reply to a toxic combo of strawman accusations and j ingoistic predictions. High-fiving, flag waving and back-slapping are all very fine unless you are the one sent into combat. Then they become obscene.

There are those out there (quite a few, in fact), who accuse me of “pessimism” and of writing “defeatist” analyses when what is needed is “uplifting” and “inspiring” essays. If that is the accusation, then I plead “guilty as charged”. But I will also add that this is not how I see my role. My role is to write truthful and honest analyses regardless of whether they are received as “uplifting” or “pessimistic”. There are plenty of “inspiring” and “uplifting” blogs out there, so if that is what you are in to, you know where to find them.

Finally, I also got into trouble for saying early on that one ought to wait for facts before coming to conclusions about what happened to Flight 9268 and for saying that my personal working hypothesis was that it was a bomb. Then I was accused of being naïve when I said that I did not believe that the Russians would lie about it. I know that there are still those who believe that the Israelis did it or that some kind of directed energy weapon did it. Whatever. There never was a shred of evidence to support either one of these hypotheses and I very much doubt that the future will bring any. To which we will be told that “the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence”. Again – whatever. It is also possible that a swarm of subatomic UFOs did it. “Possible” is a very low standard since almost anything is possible. But is it “probable” or “likely”? As soon as the “evidentiary bar” is raise just above the “possible” level all these theories instantly collapse. Again, while others are welcome to explore all sorts of “possible” hypotheses, I personally will stick to those who are at least probable.

At the end of the day it is you – the reader – who gets to pick and chose whatever you like. There is a big and diverse blogosphere out there and that is a very good thing. I strive to present fact-based and logical analyses and I am not trying to win a popularity contest of “inspire” you (-: unless, of course, you find fact-based and logical analyses inspiring 

Having clarified this, I won’t do that again the next time I am accused of writing what I never wrote or of failing to cheer on the good guys.

The Iraqi security forces have seized 2 German planes at Baghdad Airport that were carrying weapons to the Kurdistan region illegally and without prior information and permission of the central government in Baghdad.

The captured planes were carrying arms worth $5 million to the city of Erbil in Kurdistan region without prior coordination or information of Baghdad, the Kurdish-language Kurd Press news agency reported on Saturday.

Earlier this month, the Iraqi defense ministry announced in a statement that two Canadian and Swedish planes which had also been carrying arms to the Kurdistan region illegally were seized and later returned to their bases in Kuwait and Turkey after unloading their cargoes in Baghdad.

According to the statement, “Upon the order of the commander-in-chief of the Iraqi armed forces and after several days of confiscation, the two planes were allowed to leave Baghdad international airport with all their cargos to their bases in Kuwait and Turkey”.

Also in November, the Iraqi government had announced that it had seized two planes of the US-led anti-ISIL coalition member states that were carrying weapons to the Kurdistan Region without prior coordination or information of Baghdad.

“The inspection committee in Baghdad International Airport has found a huge number of rifles equipped with silencers, as well as light and mid-sized weapons,” Head of the Iraqi Parliament’s Security and Defense Commission Hakem al-Zameli said.

He noted that two Swedish and Canadian airplanes were going to fly to Iraq’s Kurdistan region, but they were seized after arms cargos were discovered.

Zameli called on the Iraqi foreign ministry to question the international coalition in this regard and warn the coalition members to avoid such moves in the future.

“The US ambassador to Baghdad has tried to send the weapons to the Iraqi Kurdistan region, and the government should investigate this and arrest the perpetrators,” he added.

The US and some other coalition members have been supplying arms to different actors in Iraq.

The so-called Islamic State should have learned by now: they’ve picked a fight against the wrong guys. We have entered “take no prisoners” territory. For Russia, now all the gloves are off.

Especially after online terrorist magazine Dabiq published a photo of the alleged bomb that downed the Metrojet: a crude device inside a can of Schweppes Gold, placed under a passenger seat. Also published were photos of passports of Russian victims, allegedly taken “by the mujahedeen.”

Their collective fate was sealed the minute the Director of the Federal Security Service Aleksandr Bortnikov told President Putin, about the Metrojet crash on October 31 in Egypt that: “We can say with confidence that this was a terrorist act.”

Caliphate goons may run – in the deserts of ‘Syraq’ and beyond – but they can’t hide, as per Russia’s presidential message: “We will search for them everywhere – wherever they are hiding. We will find them in any spot on the planet and we will punish them.” The message comes with extra enticement; the $50 million bounty offered by the FSB for any information leading to the perpetrators of the Sinai tragedy.

Putin’s message instantly turned heavy metal in the form of a massive, impressive Russian barrage over 140 Caliphate targets, delivered via 34 air-launched cutting-edge cruise missiles and furious action by Tu-160, Tu-22, and the Tu-95MC‘Bear’ strategic bombers. This was the first time the Russian long-range strategic bomber force has been deployed since the 1980s Afghan jihad.

And there’s more coming – to be stationed in Syria; an extra deployment of 25 strategic bombers, eight Su-34 ‘Fullback’attack aircraft, and four Su-27 ‘Flanker’ fighter jets.

The tanker truck riddle

At the G-20 in Antalya, Putin had already, spectacularly, unveiled who contributes to Daesh’s financing – complete with“examples based on our data on the financing of different [Daesh] units by private individuals.”

The bombshell: Daesh’s cash, “as we have established, comes from 40 countries and, there are some of the G20 members among them.” It doesn’t take a Caltech genius to figure out which members. They’d better take the “you can run but you can’t hide” message seriously.

Additionally, Putin debunked – graphically – to the whole G20 the myth of a Washington seriously engaged on the fight against Daesh:“I’ve shown our colleagues photos taken from space and from aircraft which clearly demonstrate the scale of the illegal trade in oil.” He was referring to Daesh’s oil smuggling tanker truck fleet, which numbers over 1,000.

Apparently acting on Russian satellite intelligence, the Pentagon then miraculously managed to find tanker truck convoys stretching“beyond the horizon,” smuggling out stolen Syrian oil. And duly bombed 116 trucks. For the first time. And this in over a year that the‘Coalition of the Dodgy Opportunists’ (CDO) is theoretically fighting Daesh. The only such bombing that happened before was by the Iraqi Air Force.

The US “strategy”, which Obama recently turbocharged, is to bomb (aging) Syrian oil infrastructure currently expropriated and exploited by Daesh. Technically, this is the property of Damascus, and thus belongs to “the Syrian people.”

And yet Washington seemed so far to be more focused on other“people” who could make a bundle rebuilding the devastated infrastructure, disaster capitalism-style, in case “Assad must go”works.

Russia once again went straight to the point. Bomb the transportation network – the oil truck convoys – not the oil infrastructure. That will eventually drive oil smugglers out of business.

The key reason the Obama administration had not thought about this before is Turkey. Washington needs NATO member Ankara for the use of the Incirlik air base. And then there’s the sensitive subject of who profits from Daesh’s oil smuggling.

Turkish Socialist party member Gursel Tekin has established that Daesh’s smuggled oil is exported to Turkey by BMZ, a shipping company controlled by none other than Bilal Erdogan, son of “Sultan”Erdogan. At a minimum, this violates UN Security Council resolution 2170. Under the light of Putin’s message of going after anyone or any entity engaged in facilitating Daesh’s operations, Erdogan’s clan better come up with some really good excuses.

That jihadi boot camp

Putin’s vow to go after anyone or any entity that facilitates/collaborates with Daesh should logically imply a trip back to‘Shock and Awe 2003’: the bombing, invasion and occupation of Iraq that created the conditions for the establishment of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, “directed” by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi up to 2006.

The next significant step was Camp Bucca, near Umm Qasr in southern Iraq; a mini-Guantanamo where at least nine members of the future metastasis of al-Qaeda – Islamic State (IS) – was spawned.

ISIS/ISIL/Daesh was born in an American prison. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a.k.a. Caliph Ibrahim did time there, as well as Daesh’s previous number two, Abu Muslim al-Turkmani, and most of all Daesh’s conceptualizer: Haji Bakr, a former colonel in Saddam Hussein’s Air Force.

Hardcore Salafi-jihadist meet former Ba’athist notables and find a common purpose; an offer the Pentagon could not refuse and in fact – willfully – let prosper. GWOT (the Global War on Terror), after all, is a Cheney-Rumsfeld-coined“Endless War”.

The US neocon regime change obsession ended up bolstering Daesh’s reach in Syria.

The whole process exhibits multiple ramifications of imperial folly, past and future, that can be identified like splinters from a suicide bomb; from CIA-trained/weaponized, Wahhabi-drenched mujahedeen (“Reagan’s freedom fighters”) metastasizing into ‘Al-CIAada’, to Hillary Clinton admitting Saudi Arabia is a top source of terrorist financing.

Paris 2015 – as well as Sinai 2015 – essentially is a side effect of Baghdad 2003. Putin knows it. For now, the task is to smash those mongrel imperial offspring once and for all.

When US President Barack Obama and Israel’s Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu met the other day in Washington they tried to get along fairly well. The fundamental conflict between the US superpower and its political client state was watered down and rhetorically whitewashed. Obama has put up a brave front because he thinks of the day after leaving the White House and the election chances of Hillary Clinton. And Netanyahu was in great shape because he got all his wish fulfilled. A 50 % increase in subsidies, plus the most sophisticated warplanes in order to test them on the Palestinians and the neighboring countries such as Lebanon, Syria or Iran.

For a foreign observer of US foreign policy, it’s elusive that a sassy leader of a teensy-weensy country who behaves like a political madman can push a US President around and gets amply rewarded for his sass. Just before Netanyahu set off for the US, his media adviser Ran Baratz called the President a “modern-day anti-Semite” and about Secretary of State John Kerry he wrote that he has the “intellectual acuity of a 12-year-old”. The political misery of the progressive institutions was demonstrated by the Centre for American Progress. The president Neera Tanden in her “conversation” with Netanyahu acted as a mere stooge. The audience was all convinced Zionists. Controversial opinions: None.

The question arises; why can Netanyahu behave like a political desperado and gets away with it? In his new book, Kirk J. Beattie might give an answer. Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer attributed the pro-Israel policy of the US administrations to the power and enormous influence of the Israel Lobby. Their approach has been criticized as too one-dimensional and simplistic.

Beattie analyzes the power and influence of pro-Israel special interest groups in the US Congress systematically. There for, he conducted almost 200 interviews with congressional staffers, lobbyists, members of Congress, and foreign embassy officials over years in order to find out how Congress’ stance on the Arab-Israeli conflict. He investigated Congress’s role by examining the vetting of congressional candidates, financing of campaigns, congressional staffing, bipartisan alliances within the Senate and the House, and the agenda-driven allocation of foreign aid and policymaking. This approach has led to a fairly concrete and convincing picture of how the US congress acts in favor of Israel and other Middle Eastern countries.

According to the author, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict serves as a backdrop to many conflicts in the area and of the perception of the US role in the world. US Congress makes the life for every US President very difficult when it comes to Israel. For Beattie, the Zionist Lobby doesn’t own Congress but has established a very strong present and plays a decisive role. Potential candidates for Congress have to show up, especially at right-wing pro-Israeli interest groups and pledge allegiance to Israel. Among these numerous lobby groups, AIPAC is the most influential politically and money wise. AIPAC out-guns all the other Zionist groups that bustle in this field.

At every opportunity, AIPAC argues that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and the US shares the same values; that is why, the US should support Israel firmly.  President Obama can’t do much because of strong opposition in Congress. He is between a rock and a hard place as the Iran issue has shown and the opportunity of his own party in the upcoming elections. The support of Israel in the US is especially strong among the evangelists. According to Beattie’s findings, this support is not reflected at the level of congressional stuff but rather on the elite level among the evangelists who wants to curry favor with the right-wing Israelis and they take advantage of this kowtowing.

Despite his important and unique work on the insights of the workings of Congress’ Middle Eastern involvement, the author is anything but optimistic that a solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict is just around the corner. Due to the congressional machinations and Israel fixation, one understands now better why US Middle East policy stumbles and has been creating such a mess in the region.

Dr. Ludwig Watzal works as a journalist and editor in Bonn Germany. He runs the bilingual blog http://between-the-lines-ludwig-watzal.blogspot.de/

Kirk J. Beattie, Congress and the Shaping of the Middle East, Seven Stories Press, New York 2015,  320 pp. 

“Well, certainly as far as France is concerned, from my standpoint, this is the end of the French Republic, because when a government declares a state of emergency in response to a terror event, prior to the conduct of a police investigation…and then closes the borders, and then gives a green light to police and security personnel to conduct house arrests… without a warrant throughout France… this is a transition towards a police state.” -Professor Michel Chossudovsky (from this week’s interview)

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On the evening of November 13, 2015, within the span of less than half an hour, a series of carefully coordinated terror attacks ravaged France. The shootings and suicide bombings took place in five areas of Paris as well as in the northern suburb of Saint-Denis. The most deadly attack by far was at the Bataclan where 89 died. [1]

The death toll from the attacks stood at 129.[2]

In his address to the nation, and the world, French President François Hollande declared a state of emergency. Public demonstrations on Paris streets have been banned. Cinemas, stadiums and other public facilities have been closed, and 1500 military personnel have been dispatched in France’s capital. The French President ordered the shut down of the country’s borders, and for the first time since the Second World War, instituted a mandatory curfew. [3] [4]

Two days later, French military forces launched a massive aerial assault against the Syrian city of Raqqa, where Islamic State militants are believed to be headquartered. [5]

The incident is reminiscent of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, which similarly resulted in the restriction of civil liberties and military aggression on the part of the United States.

These events are taking place in the wake of a fairly successful counter-insurgency by Russia in alliance with the Syrian Army.

As of November 20, a UN Security Council Resolution has passed unanimously called on “Member States that have the capacity to do so to take all necessary measures…to eradicate the safe haven they (ISIS) have established over significant parts of Iraq and Syria.” [6]

Newly minted Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is facing a revolt within his own caucus over his principled decision not to support military action against ISIS in Syria. [7]

How dramatically have these recent attacks altered the geo-political playing field? Who exactly is the enemy responsible? And where do the floods of desperate refugees fit into this picture?

This week’s Global Research News Hour attempts to shed a light into this latest flashpoint and how it is being used tom manipulate the masses.

First we hear from Canadian journalist, broadcaster, author and media critic Barrie Zwicker. He strongly suspects the attacks were fabricated and focuses his thoughts on the defecits he is seeing within mainstream media coverage and the contrast with what is available through the internet and independent media.

Then Professor Michel Chossudovsky, Emeritus Professor at the University of Ottawa and founder of the Centre for Research On Globalization, resurrects his own understanding of the formulation of the Extremist Islamist brigades as being supported by Western Powers and a smokescreen for further penetration of U.S./NATO powers into the Middle East. Professor Chossudovsky discredits the narrative of the War on ISIS and speaks to what the world may now be facing in the wake of the attacks.

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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. Marina Fang, November 18, 2015, “Timeline of the Paris Attacks and Aftermath”, Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/paris-attacks-timeline_56490a09e4b0603773499133
2. ibid
3. ibid
4. Gaumont Pathé, November 14, 2015, Le Monde, “Equipements publics fermés, manifestations interdites à Paris… mais trafic ferroviaire normal”; http://www.lemonde.fr/attaques-a-paris/article/2015/11/14/apres-les-attaques-a-paris-peut-on-circuler-normalement-prendre-le-bus-faire-ses-courses_4809969_4809495.html?xtmc=urgence&xtcr=3
5. Marina Fang, November 18, 2015
6. http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=52623#.VlE8rcVdWvQ
7. Toby Helm, Daniel Boffey et al, November 22, 2015, “Labour rift widens over intervention in Syria”, The Guardian; http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/nov/21/jeremy-corbyn-defies-labour-colleagues-call-settlement-syria

Es inevitable, y es correcto, que nos sintamos horrorizados por los atentados terroristas de París que han producido la muerte de cientos de personas inocentes, como es correcto que expresemos nuestra solidaridad con esas víctimas y con sus familias, y, por supuesto, que condenemos esa forma de actuar del llamado Estado Islámico… Pero no podemos dejar de preguntarnos -y respondernos- unas cuantas cosas para no caer en la hipocresía de gobiernos y personalidades que se limitan a maldecir y amenazar.

La primera pregunta que nos tenemos que hacer es por qué no cunde el mismo horror y el mismo sentimiento de condena cuando todos los días es mayor el número de gente inocente que es víctima de una violencia igual o peor que la de París en países como Siria o Líbano, o hace poco en Libia, o hace más en Afganistán y en Iraq. ¿Será que por tratarse de árabes sus muertes injustificables nos merecen menos horror que las muertes injustificables de europeos? ¿O les vamos a echar a ellos y ellas la culpa de los pecados que cometen sus gobiernos -que a fin de cuentas son por lo menos equiparables a los pecados del Gobierno francés, que hace cinco días empezó a bombardear Siria, fingiendo que así castigaba al Estado Islámico-?

En segundo lugar, ¿nos hemos preguntado de dónde salen esos sujetos desalmados, fanáticos y psicópatas de los que se vale el Estado Islámico para sembrar el terror? ¿Será que el Islam produce de por sí ese tipo de personas decididas a morir a cambio de matar? ¿No será más bien el resultado de la desesperación generada por condiciones de vida esencialmente deshumanizantes, por la opresión, el abandono y el terror vividos desde la infancia en países humillados, invadidos, ofendidos y brutalmente maltratados por “potencias occidentales” (o en su momento en Afganistán por la exUnión Soviética)?

Siempre hemos sabido que no es suficiente condenar a los criminales -y a los delincuentes en general-, sino que es imprescindible entender cuáles son los factores que generan la delincuencia y el crimen, pese a lo cual casi siempre nos limitamos a seguir condenando, sin intentar entender, y así es como nunca resolvemos el problema. ¿No sería más serio y más productivo que al mismo tiempo que condenamos los crímenes de París condenemos también a los gobiernos que hace decenios -por no decir siglos- vienen produciendo criminales decididos a suicidarse con tal de matar?
Y la pregunta más grave: ¿Sabemos quién organiza y financia al Estado Islámico, como organizó y financió en su momento a Al Qaeda? Al respecto, quiero citar a Resumen Latinoamericano en su edición del pasado 14 de noviembre: “El profesor  Michel Chossudovsky, economista canadiense y director del

Centro de Investigación sobre la Globalización, en Montreal, ha recopilado 24 verdades que los gobiernos occidentales no quieren que la población conozca acerca de  ISIS  (o Estado Islámico) y  Al Qaeda… ¿Cómo es posible que sigan el juego de los Estados Unidos encaminado a crear un estado mundial policial, pasando por la destrucción de pueblos, culturas ancestrales y restos de antiguas civilizaciones?”.

Y entre esas verdades está la de que fue Estados Unidos el que creó los campos de entrenamiento para Al Qaeda, donde 35.000 yihadistas, procedentes de 43 países islámicos, fueron reclutados por la CIA para luchar en la jihad afgana contra la Unión Soviética. Y Ronald Reagan calificó a esos terroristas como  “luchadores por la libertad”; los mismos que luego, el 11 de septiembre del 2001, protagonizarían el ataque a las Torres Gemelas…

Pues bien, resulta -según el mismo Chossudovsky– que el Estado Islámico o ISIS era originalmente una entidad afiliada a Al Qaeda, creada por la inteligencia de Estados Unidos con el apoyo del M16 Británico, el Mossad Israelí, los servicios de Inteligencia de Pakistán y la Presidencia General de Inteligencia de Arabia Saudita… ¿Qué tal? ¿No sería coherente que a tiempo de solidarizarnos con las víctimas de París denunciemos a los auténticos autores de la masacre? Ustedes dirán.

Rafael Puente es miembro del Colectivo Urbano por el Cambio (CUECA) de Cochabamba.

In response to the tragic Paris events of November 13, Central Intelligence Agency director  John Brennan  warned that “ISIL is planning additional attacks… It is clear to me that ISIL has an external agenda, that they are determined to carry out these types of attacks.” (Quoted in Daily Telegraph, November 16, 2015)

Five days later following the CIA Chief’s  premonition, the Bamako Radisson Hotel Blu in Mali’s capital was the object of a terrorist attack, resulting in  21 people dead. Following the attack and the taking of hostages by the terrorists, French and Malian special forces raided the hotel. US. Africa Command (AFRICOM) also confirmed that US special forces were involved.

The Bamako terror operation was allegedly coordinated by Mokhtar Belmokhtar (aka Khaled Abu al-Abbas), leader of an affiliate of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the Islamist al-Mulathameen (Masked) Brigade, or “Those who Sign with Blood.”

Belmokhtar’s group was created in 2012 in the wake of the war on Libya. His organization has also allegedly been involved in the drug trade, smuggling as well kidnapping operations of foreigners in North Africa.  While his whereabouts are said to be known, French intelligence has dubbed Belmokhtar “the uncatchable”.

In June he was reported dead  as a result in a U.S. air strike in Libya. His death was subsequently denied.

Based on shaky evidence, The New York Times report below (November 20) concludes that Belmokhtar’s group (together with AQIM) is unequivocally behind the Bamako attacks:

A member of Al Qaeda in Africa confirmed Saturday that the attack Friday on a hotel in Bamako, Mali, had been carried out by a jihadist group loyal to Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an Algerian operative for Al Qaeda. The Qaeda member, who spoke via an online chat, said that an audio message and a similar written statement in which the group claimed responsibility for the attack were authentic. The SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadist groups, also confirmed the authenticity of the statement.

The Qaeda member, who refused to be named for his protection, said that Mr. Belmokhtar’s men had collaborated with the Saharan Emirate of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, … In the audio recording, the group, known as Al Mourabitoun, says it carried out the operation in conjunction with Al Qaeda’s branch in the Islamic Maghreb.

The recording was released to the Al Jazeera network and simultaneously to Al Akhbar, … The recording states: “We, in the group of the Mourabitoun [Arabic Rebel Group], in cooperation with our brothers in Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb, the great desert area, claim responsibility for the hostage-taking operation in the Radisson hotel in Bamako.” (emphasis added)

The SITE Intelligence Group is presented as an “independent” Washington think tank with a mandate of analyzing data pertaining to Al Qaeda affiliated terror organizations. SITE is also on contract with a number of US government agencies and has close links to US intelligence.

SITE has provided no substantive evidence which supports the authenticity of the online audio chat recording, which is considered as a reliable source. The story could have been planted.

Following the audio release, the Western media in chorus immediately pointed to an act of revenge directed against the French Republic in response to France’s 2013 military intervention in Mali, which had been ordered by President Francois Hollande.

“France saved Mali from al-Qaeda but it never broke terror threat”.   “France saved northern Mali from al-Qaeda’s brutal rule … But the country is still beholden to outsiders and, as events at the Radisson hotel have demonstrated, acutely vulnerable to the worst of terrorism” (The Independent, November 20, 2015)

Screenshot The Independent, November 20, 2015

In turn, the French Minister of Defense acknowledged –prior to the conduct of a police investigation– that the authors of the attack were “most likely” led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar’s group in association with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

What Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drain failed to mention was that both Belmokhtar and AQIM have longstanding links to the CIA, which in turn has a working relationship with France’s  General Directorate for External Security, Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure (DGSE). 

Casually ignored by the Western media, the leaders of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) including Belmokhtar were trained and recruited by the CIA in Afghanistan. Acknowledged by the Washington based Council on Foreign Relations (CFR):

Saudi born terror mastermind Osama bin Laden was recruited in 1979 ironically under the auspices of the CIA. The training, recruitment and indoctrination of Mujahideen launched in 1979 was considered to be “the largest covert operation in the history of the CIA” in response the Soviet Union’s military support of the pro-Communist secular Afghan government of Babrak Kamal.

Al Qaeda in Arabic means “the Base”. What it referred to was the CIA’s “Database” of Mujahideen recruits who were referred to by President Ronald Reagan as “freedom fighters”:

Shortly before his untimely death, former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook told the House of Commons that “Al Qaeda” is not really a terrorist group but a database of international mujaheddin and arms smugglers used by the CIA and Saudis to funnel guerrillas, arms, and money into Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. (See Pierre-Henri Bunel, Al Qaeda: The Database, Global Research, November 20, 2005, emphasis added)

 Mokhtar Belmokhtar: Post Cold War CIA intelligence asset? 

The Council on Foreign Relations erroneously describes “Mokhtar Belmokhtar as the one-eyed veteran of the anti-Soviet Afghan insurgency.” (CFR, op cit, emphasis added). Belmokhtar (born in 1972) did not fight in the Soviet-Afghan war (1979-1989). He was recruited in 1991 at the age of 19 in the immediate wake of the Cold War.

CIA recruitment continued in the wake of the Cold War. It was in large part directed against the Russian Federation and the former Soviet Republics as well as the Middle East.

The purpose of this later CIA recruitment was to establish a network of “intelligence assets” to be used in the CIA’s post-cold war insurgencies. Leaders of the Chechen Islamist insurgencies were also trained in CIA camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including the notorious leader of the Chechen insurrection Ibn al-Khattab (a citizen of Saudi Arabia).

Following his training and recruitment and a two year stint in Afghanistan (1991-1993), Mokhtar Belmokhtar was sent back to Algeria in 1993 at age 21 where he joined the  Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) (emblem left). The latter was initially part of the so-called Armed Islamic Group  (Groupe islamique armé (GIA)) in Algeria which sought to overthrow the secular Algerian Government with a view to installing a theocratic Islamic State.

Supported covertly by the CIA, Belmokhtar fought in Southern Algeria in the civil war opposing Islamist forces and the secular government. He was also  instrumental in the integration and merging of “jihadist” forces.

In January 2007,  the Armed islamic Group (GIA) which had been prominent in the 1990s, officially changed its name to the Al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

In turn, as of 2007, the newly formed AQIM established a close relationship with the Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), which was directly supported by NATO during the 2011 war on Libya, “providing weapons, training, special forces and even aircraft to support them in the overthrow of Libya’s government.” (Tony Cartalucci, The Geopolitical Reordering of Africa: US Covert Support to Al Qaeda in Northern Mali, France “Comes to the Rescue”, Global Research, January 2013).

British SAS Special Forces had also been brought into Libya prior to the onset of the insurrection, acting as military advisers to the LIFG.

In fact, what has unfolded since the war on Libya is the merging of LIFG and AQIM forces. In turn, many of the LIFG operatives have been dispatched to Syria to fight within the ranks of Al Nusrah and the ISIS.

Robert Stephen Ford, US Ambassador to Algeria (2006-2008)

Robert Stephen Ford

It is worth noting that the 2007  restructuring  of jihadist forces in Algeria and the Maghreb coincided with  the appointment of Robert Stephen Ford as US ambassador to Algeria in August 2006. Ford had been reassigned by the State Department from Baghdad to Algiers. From 2004 to 2006, he worked closely with Ambassador John Negroponte at the US embassy in Baghdad in supporting the creation of  both Shia and Sunni death squads in Iraq.

This project consisted in recruiting and training terrorists modelled on the so-called “Salvador Option” which had been applied by the CIA in Central America. Negroponte as we recall played a central role in supporting the Contras terrorists in Nicaragua as ambassador to Honduras from 1981-1985. For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, “The Salvador Option For Syria”: US-NATO Sponsored Death Squads Integrate “Opposition Forces”, Global Research,  May 28, 2012)

The 2006 appointment of Robert Stephen Ford to head the US Embassy in Algeria was timely. It coincided with the consolidation of jihadist groups within Algeria and the Maghreb. It preceded the 2011 US-NATO sponsored insurrections in Libya and Syria.

In 2010, Ford was approved by the US Congress as US Ambassador to Syria. He presented his credentials to president Bashar al Assad in January 2011, barely two months prior to the onslaught of the terrorist insurrection in the border city of Daraa in mid-March 2011. Ford played a central role in assisting the channelling of US and allied support to Syrian “opposition” groups including Al Nusrah and the ISIS.

Concluding Remarks

Motivated by nationalism and religious fervor, the Islamic warriors were unaware that they were fighting the Soviet Army on behalf of Uncle Sam. While there were contacts at the upper levels of the intelligence hierarchy, Islamic rebel leaders in theatre had no contacts with Washington or the CIA.  (Ibid)

Amply documented, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)and its affiliated groups including the Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) was serving the interests of the Western military alliance. Confirmed by the Washington Post, June 29, 2011 (See below), France was supplying weapons to the LIFG at the height of NATO’s bombing raids.

AQIM in turn was receiving weapons from the LIFG, which was supported by NATO. Moreover, LIFG mercenaries had integrated AQIM brigades.

According to alleged Terror Mastermind Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who also coordinated the 2013 In Amenas Mali kidnapping operation:

Suu Kyi disenfranchised a million voters before elections, and has declared herself above the constitution afterwards. What about that seems “democratic?” 

The Western media is portraying Myanmar’s recent elections as historic. One commentator described Myanmar as an “exuberant nation prepared for a new era of democracy and political freedom.” But one wonders what sort of democracy and political freedom can be borne of elections in which nearly a million voters were banned from casting their ballots and with the apparent victor already declaring herself above the law.

Sidestepping these inconvenient facts, the West is nonetheless excited about the prospect of Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) taking power in Myanmar.

This is in part due to the fact that Suu Kyi herself, along with the NLD she leads and a vast network of supporting “civil society” nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have all been created and sustained annually by billions of dollars worth of backing from the United States and United Kingdom for years. In exchange for this support, Suu Kyi’s long-standing proclivity toward “foreign investment” will lead to the wholesale feeding of Myanmar’s nationalized resources, industry, and infrastructure into the maw of the Wall Street corporations and institutions that have long underwritten Suu Kyi’s rise to power.

“Democracy” and “political freedom,” in this context, appear only to be convenient facades to hide a more obvious and logical explanation for the West’s current post-election exuberance.

“Democracy,” But Only When Convenient 

In reality, Suu Kyi and her NLD’s supporters helped disenfranchise nearly a million Rohingya from voting even before the elections took place.  Through widespread protests and threats of violence if their demands that the Rohingya remain stripped of their voting rights were not met, the ruling military-led government backed down from a scheme to grant the Rohingya minority long-sought after rights, including the ability to vote.

The BBC reported in their article, “Myanmar revokes Rohingya voting rights after protests,” that:

Hundreds of Buddhists took to the streets following the passage of a law that would allow temporary residents who hold “white papers” to vote. 

More than one million Rohingya live in Myanmar, but they are not regarded as citizens by the government.

The BBC fails to mention that these “Buddhists” who “took to the streets” are in fact the cornerstone of Suu Kyi’s political movement, leading every major pro-NLD protest over the years including the infamous “Saffron Revolution” in 2007.

They and the violence they have demonstrated throughout the years, were instrumental in ensuring Suu Kyi’s uncontested victory in recent elections by ensuring demographic blocs were either barred from voting entirely, or intimidated sufficiently from voting against the NLD.

Suu Kyi Declares Herself Above the Law 

Additionally, in the wake of Suu Kyi’s apparent victory, she has literally declared herself above Myanmar’s constitution, vowing to make all decisions regardless of who is actually made president under the law.

The Guardian’s report, “Aung San Suu Kyi vows to make all the decisions in Myanmar’s new government,” stated that (emphasis added):

Under the constitution anyone with foreign children is barred from becoming president, in a clause seen as the military’s attempt to stop her taking power. But Suu Kyi, who has two British sons, suggested she would still be Myanmar’s leader. 

Asked what she meant by stating last week that she would be “above the president”, Suu Kyi said: “If I’m required to field a president who meets the requirements of section F of the constitution, alright then we’ll find one. But that won’t stop me making all the decisions as the leader of the winning party.” 

Asked if she planned to be president in all but name, she said “It’s a name only,” and after laughing added: “A rose by any other name.” 

Suu Kyi’s disenfranchisement of the Rohingya and flagrant disregard for the rule of law demonstrates the very dictatorial traits she has long accused the ruling establishment of for decades.

Whether Suu Kyi agrees with Myanmar’s current laws or not, her choice to arbitrarily and selectively observe some while disregarding others entirely – instead of pursuing change through proper, legal procedures – makes her indistinguishable from the alleged “dictatorship” she claims to be replacing.

In the coming weeks and months, if Suu Kyi’s victory materializes in her NLD’s firm grip on power, one wonders what other laws she will selectively observe or disregard. For Myanmar’s Rohingya minority, the military-led government at times formed the only protection preventing genocide at the hands of Suu Kyi’s ultra-violent saffron mobs.

With the diminished role of the military in government and Suu Kyi’s self-serving and selective adherence to the rule of law, her supporters likely anticipate a free hand in actualizing their genocidal ambitions versus not only the Rohingya, but all of their political and sociocultural enemies.

Not only is the prospect of wider violence a concern for the people of Myanmar, but the rise of political order in Myanmar unwilling or incapable of stemming genocide spells chaos for its neighbors, particularly Thailand.

Myanmar’s Age of Disillusionment Has Begun 

Suu Kyi’s “promising victory” will inevitably deteriorate not unlike the initially promising victory of Thaksin Shinawatra in neighboring Thailand in 2001. Shinawatra’s initial tidal wave of naive support and progressive expectations yielded to a reality of unprecedented abuses of power, the privatization and selling-off to foreign corporations of Thailand’s nationalized resources and infrastructure, humiliating geopolitical concessions to the United States, and unprecedented human rights abuses including the mass murder of some 3,000 innocent people during a 90-day police crackdown in 2003.

After over a decade of clinging to power owed mainly to substantial Western support, Shinawatra and his various proxies were finally ousted from power by a military coup. Thailand’s painful but necessary decade-long national nightmare helped disillusion the majority of Thais regarding the empty promises of “globalization” and Western notions of “democracy.” Today, there stands little chance of Shinawatra or a Shinawatra-like character ever again seizing so much power in the near to intermediate future.

If and when a similar awakening occurs in Myanmar is anyone’s guess. However, the paradox of Suu Kyi’s pro-democracy facade versus her undemocratic, inhumane reality, particularly her and her supporters’ abuse of Myanmar’s Rohingya minority, has become so apparent even the West is having a difficult time glossing over it.

Increasingly frequent articles like the London Guardian’s, “Why is Aung San Suu Kyi silent on the plight of the Rohingya people?,” attempt to claim Suu Kyi’s role in what is essentially ethnically-motivated genocide is mere silence. In reality, Suu Kyi’s silence is complicity, and those carrying out atrocities form the cornerstone of her support base, representing millions of votes.

Suu Kyi’s trading in of her clearly disingenuous principles and the basic human rights of the Rohingya people in exchange for votes has raised concern even among some of the most indoctrinated rank and file across the West’s vast network of NGOs.

It will only become increasingly difficult to continue rationalizing Suu Kyi’s actions to fit her empty rhetoric and manufactured image.

As Suu Kyi and her NLD get their hands dirty leading – or rather misleading – the country, wider disillusionment will follow. Should the military or other opposition parties prepare themselves sufficiently, the opportunity to successfully and permanently dismantle the NLD and all its US-UK funded supporting networks, will reveal itself sooner than later.

Real progress in Myanmar will happen when the people of Myanmar themselves – all of them including ethnic minorities like the Rohingya – are able to more equitably utilize its vast natural and human resources for their own future, not that of a handful of special interests in the capital of Naypyidaw, and not that of a handful of special interests on Wall Street or in London.

Myanmar may believe it has shed dictatorship in recent elections, but it is clear they have only replaced one of local and very limited means, with one backed by immense foreign interests bringing with them centuries of experience in emptying out the wealth of other nations – including at one point in the past, Myanmar itself.

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

The war which has now spread to Paris is incomprehensible for those French citizens who are ignorant of practically all the secret activities of their government in the Arab world, of its unnatural alliances with the Gulf dictators, and its active participation in international terrorism. These policies have never been discussed in Parliament, and the major media have rarely dared to take an interest in them.

For the last five years, the French people have been hearing about distant wars, but without ever understanding what they meant. The Press informed them about the engagement of their army in Libya, but never about the presence of French soldiers on mission in the Levant.

My articles on this subject are widely-read, but perceived as some sort of Oriental aberration. Despite my personal history, it remains quite acceptable to qualify me as an « extremist », or a « conspiracy theorist », and to point out that my articles are reproduced by Internet sites of all political colours, including those which are in fact authentically extremist or conspiracist. Yet nobody seems to have any quarrel with what I write. But neither do they pay any attention to my warnings about the alliances concluded by the French governement.

Minister Laurent Fabius and President Francois Hollande

Now, suddenly, the unheeded truth surfaces.

France was attacked on the night of Friday 13th November 2015 by several commandos who massacred at least 130 people in five different areas of Paris. The state of emergency was decreed for a period of 12 days over the whole territory, and may be extended by act of Parliament.

No direct link with the Charlie Hebdo affair

The French Press interprets these acts of war by linking them to the attack made on Charlie Hebdo, although the operational modes were completely different. In January, the attack was aimed at killing specific people, while in this case, it was a co-ordinated attack on a large number of people chosen at random.

We know today that just before the January attack, the editor-in-chief of Charlie Hebdo had received a « gift » of 200,000 Euros from the Near East in order to continue his anti-Muslim campaign [1] ; that the killers were linked to the French intelligence services [2] ; and that the origin of their weapons is covered by the Official Secrets Act [3]. I have already demonstrated that the attack was not an Islamist operation [4], that it was immediately recuperated by a state [5], and that this recuperation had raised echoes in populations hostile to the Republic [6] – an idea which was brilliantly developed a few months later by the demographer Emmanuel Todd [7].

To get back to the war which has just spread to Paris, it has been a shock for Western Europe. It can not be compared to the attacks in Madrid in 2004. In Spain, there were no shooters, no kamikazes, but 10 bombs placed in 4 separate locations [8]. The type of horror which has just exploded in France is the daily lot of many populations of the « Wider Middle East », and has been since 2001. And comparable events can be found elsewhere, like the three days of attacks in six distinct locations, in Bombay, 2008 [9].

Even if the assaillants of the 13th November were Muslims, and even if some of them shouted « Allah Akbar ! » as they killed passers-by, there is no link to such earlier attacks, to Islam, or to an eventual « war of civilisations ». These commandos had clearly received the order to kill at random, without first enquiring as to the religion of their victims.

In the same way, it is absurd to take at face value the motive claimed by Daesh against France – even if there is no doubt about its implication in this attack. Indeed, if the terrorist organisation had wanted to « avenge » itself, it would have struck at Moscow.

France has been a terrorist state since at least 2011

The interpretation of these events is unclear, because behind non-state groups there are always states which sponsor them. In the 1970’s, the Venezualan Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, known as « Carlos » or « The Jackal » aligned himself by conviction with the Palestinian cause and the Revolution, and was offered the discrete support of the USSR. In the 1980’s, the example of Carlos was revived by mercenaries working for the highest bidder, like Sabri al Banna, known as « Abou Nidal », who carried out terrorist attacks for Libya and Syria as well as Israël. Today, there exists a cloudy network of terrorism and secret actors implicating a large number of states.

In principle, states always deny their participation in terrorist groups. However, the French Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, declared in December 2012, during the « Friends of Syria » conference in Marrakesh, that Al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of Al-Qaïda, had « done a good job » [10].

Because of his status, M. Fabius knew that he did not risk being taken to court to answer for supporting an organisation listed as « terrorist » by United Nations Security Council, but he took a serious risk for his country by dropping them into the cauldron of terrorism with this statement.

In truth, France had been implicated on the side of Al-Qaïda at least since the beginning of 2011. At that time, the United Kingdom and France had signed up for the US project called « the Arab Spring ». The goal of this operation was to overthrow all the secular Arab régimes and replace them with dictatorships run by the Muslim Brotherhood. Although London and Paris had discovered this operation while it was on-going in Tunisia and in Egypt, they had previously been solicited for Libya and Syria [11]. In Libya, with the help of the Italian Special Forces, they organised the massacres in Benghazi, and then, with the help of Al-Qaïda, the capture of the Libyan arsenals. I can attest to the fact that in August 2011, while I was under the protection of Khamis el-Kadhafi, NATO assaulted the capital, and the Hotel Rixos, where we were staying, was seiged to cries of « Allah Akbar ! » by a unit of Al-Qaïda. They were called the Tripoli Brigade, and were commanded by Mahdi al-Harati and supervised by operational French officers. The same Mahdi al-Harati was present with his commanding officer, Abdelhakim Belhaj, the founder of the so-called « Free Syrian Army » which was in reality a section of Al-Qaïda, fighting under the French colonial flag.

In Syria, the presence of French officers supervising armed groups while they were committing crimes against humanity is widely attested.

France then went on to play an extremely complex and dangerous game. In January 2013 – in other words, one month after Laurent Fabius’ public support for Al-Qaïda in Syria – France launched an operation in Mali against the same Al-Qaïda, provoking the first reaction against its agents infiltrated in Syria.

You, of course, have never heard anything about all that, because although France has democratic institutions, its current policy in the Arab world has never been publicly discussed. In violation of article 35 of the Constitution, it decided to enter into war with Libya and Syria after only a few hours of superficial parliamentary debate – at the most – and without a vote. The French parliamentarians thus discarded their mandate to excercise control over the Executive as far as foreign policy was concerned, apparently believing that this was a private domain of the President, and without real consequence for daily life. However, as anyone can now see, on the contrary, peace and security, one of the four « Human and Citizens’ Rights » of 1789 (article 2), depend upon it directly. The worst is yet to come.

In the beginning of 2014, while the liberal US hawks were working on their plan for the transformation of the Islamic Emirate in Iraq and Cham into what was going to become Daesh, France and Turkey transported munitions to Al-Qaïda so that they could fight the Islamic Emirate – this point is attested by a document presented to the Security Council on the 14th July 2014 [12]. However, France later joined this secret operation, and participated in the international anti-Daesh Coalition, which, as everyone now knows, contrary to its name, did not bomb Daesh, but delivered weapons to it for a year [13]. The situation evolved further after the signature of the 5+1 agreement with Iran. The United States suddenly turned on the terrorist organisation and pushed it back to Al-Hasakah (Syria) [14]. But it was only in mid-October 2015 – a month ago – that France began to fight Daesh. Not to stop the massacres, but to conquer part of the territory it occupies in Syria and Iraq, and install a new colonial state which is to be called « Kurdistan », even though the Kurdish population will be largely in the minority [15].

In this perspective, France sent its aircraft-carrier – which has not yet arrived – to support the Marxist-Leninists of the Kurdish party YPG against its ex-ally Daesh. But what does this polititcal reference mean when the project is to create a colonial state ?.

We are currently witnessing the second reaction. Not from al-Qaïda in Syria this time, but from Daesh in France, on the instructions od France’s unmentionable allies.

Who directs Daesh

Daesh is an artificial creation. It is nothing more than the instrument of the policies of several states and multinationals.

Its principal financial resources come from petrol, Afghan drugs – of which the French have not yet understood the implications on their own territory – and Levantine antiques. Everyone agrees that the stolen petrol freely crosses Turkey before being sold in Western Europe. Given the quantities involved, there can be no possible doubt about Turkish support for Daesh [16].

Three weeks ago, a spokesperson for the Syrian Arab Army revealed that three planes, respectively chartered by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, had exfiltrated Daesh combatants from Syria and taken them to Yemen. Once again, there can be no possible doubt concerning the links between these three states and Daesh, in violation of the pertinent resolutions of the UN Security Council.

Following the first Geneva Conference in June 2012, I explained in depth that a faction within the US state apparatus was waging its own policy, contrary to that of the White House. At first, this conspiracy was directed by the head of the CIA, which was the co-founder of Daesh in 2007 (« The Surge ») [17], General David Petraeus, until his removal in handcuffs the day after the re-election of President Barack Obama. Then it was the turn of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was prevented by an unfortunate « accident » from completing her mandate during the period of presidential transition. Finally, the combat was continued by ambassador Jeffrey Feltman from his offices at the UNO, and by General John Allen, at the head of the phoney anti-Daesh Coalition. This group, a part of the US « deep state », which had never ceased from opposing the 5+1 agreement with Iran and fighting the Syrian Arab Republic, maintains its members within the Obama administration. Above all, it can count on the multinational corporations, whose budgets are greater than those of the states themselves, and who can finance their own secret operations. In particular, this is the case of the petrol company Exxon-Mobil (the true owner of Qatar), the investment fund KKR, and the private army Academi (ex-Blackwater).

France has thus become a mercenary state working for these multinationals.

France, object of blackmail

On the 11th November 2015, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls declared that France was engaged against terrorism [18].

On the 12th November, the Observatoire national de la délinquance et des réponses pénales (National Observatory for Delinquency and Legal Response) – attached to the Ministry of the Interior – published a report stating that terrorism has become the second preoccupation of the French people, after unemployment [19].

On the morning of the 13th November, in Nanterre, the Minister for the Interior, Bernard Cazeneuve, presented a 20-part plan to limit the arms traffic [20].

Clearly, the government was expecting the worst, which implies that France was in negotiation with the organisation that attacked it. France made engagements that it did not respect, and is now certainly the victim of blackmail by the terrorist leaders it has betrayed.

An excercise simulating terrorist attacks was carried out on the very morning of the attack by the hospital emergency services [21]. A coïncidence that had already been revealed during the attacks of the 11th September 2001 in New York and Washington, those of the 11th March 2004 in Madrid, and also the 7th July 2005 in London.

Provisional Conclusion

The successive French governments have created alliances with states whose values are opposed to those of the Republic. They have successively engaged in secret wars on their behalf, and then retreated. President Hollande, his private Chief of Staff, General Benoit Puga, his Minister for Foreign Affairs, Laurent Fabius, and Fabius’ predecessor Alain Juppé, are today the objects of blackmail from which they can not extricate themselves without revealing the mess in which they have implicated their country, even if this exposes them to the High Court of Justice.

On the 28th September, at the tribune of the United Nations, President Putin, addressing the United States and France, exclaimed: « I would like to ask those responsible for this situation – “Are you at least aware of what you have done ?” But I fear that this question will remain unanswered, because these people have not renounced their politicies, which are based on an exaggerated self-confidence and the conviction of their exceptional nature and their impunity » [22]. Neither the United States nor France listened to him. It is now too late.

Keep in mind 

• The French government has progressively distanced itself from international legality. It has perpetrated political assassinations and supported terrorist actions since at least 2011.
• The French government has created unnatural alliances with the wealth oil dictatorships of the Persian Gulf. It is working with a group of US personalities and multinational companies to sabotage the politics of appeasement advanced by Presidents Obama and Putin.
• The French government has entered into conflict with some untrustworthy allies. One of these organisations sponsored the attacks in Paris.

Translation
Pete Kimberley

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

I remember in March 2011 feeling proud of Canada’s air force. Flying their first bombing run in the NATO campaign to oust the government of Libya, two of our CF-18s abandoned the plan to drop their payloads on an airfield because it was evident there would be civilian casualties.

The next day we got with the program and Canada played its modest part in the NATO overthrow of one of Africa’s most prosperous nations. We learned later that the so-called rebels we supported prominently featured Al-Qaida-linked mercenary types – a favourite regime change tool for western Intelligence (see French journalist Thierry Meyssan’s latest article, “The French Republic taken hostage,” on www.voltairenet.org/en; Meyssan was an eyewitness to the Libyan horror show).

Tens of thousands of people killed, Libya utterly destroyed, the whole region destabilized, North African migrants and refugees pouring into Europe to escape their respective hellholes – the fruits of regime change are indeed bitter.

With Libya taken out, the same formula was applied to Syria. When an all-out attack was being prepped two years ago, based on claims (now discredited) that the Syrian government was gassing its own people, the public in the U.K. and U.S. sent a strong message to their politicians that they didn’t want to be dragged into another war in the Middle East. With the help of Russian diplomacy, war was averted.

But regime change was still the objective and so, handily, “ISIS” emerged. Pure Hollywood villainy whose prime aim seems to be to reshape public opinion in the West – just as the 9/11 attacks did – and make war palatable as a show of toughness and an instrument of revenge. Like 9/11, the propaganda shock value of the Paris attacks has stirred up a visceral fear and rage against “militant Muslims” among a substantial chunk of the population.

Despite all the political rhetoric about fighting the Islamic State in Syria, regime change could well be the true goal of the post-Paris-attack war strategy.

Russia’s combat role in the past six weeks, launched at the invitation of the Syrian government, appears to have done more to degrade and destroy the terrorists than the U.S. and its coalition partners have done in more than a year. In Iraq especially, the widespread belief is that the U.S. has never been serious about defeating ISIS.

That’s why I’m feeling a bit proud again – this time of our new prime minister. Justin Trudeau ran for office promising to withdraw our CF-18s from the combat mission in Iraq and Syria, and by all accounts he is going to stick to that promise, despite the post-Paris war fever. “Our side” in the Middle East – and that includes France, Britain and the U.S. – has been compromised by years of deceit backing imperial designs. Our role should be in peacemaking, or we should have no role at all in that region.

If you’re one of the millions of Americans who think Hillary Clinton would make a lousy president, then pat yourself on the back because she pretty much proved it yesterday. In a presentation to the Council on Foreign Relations, Clinton made it clear that if she’s elected in 2016, she’s going to drag the country straight to war.  Invoking the same imagery as her ideological twin, George W. Bush, Clinton fulminated for more than an hour and a half on Syria, war, terrorism, war, no-fly zones, war, radical jihadism, war, and “metastasizing threats”, whatever the heck those are. Oh, and did I mention war?

Seriously, while regretful Democrats can claim that they never thought Obama would turn out to be the disappointment he has been, the same can’t be said about Clinton.  Madame Secretary has a long pedigree and the bold print on the warning label is easy to read.  There’s simply no excuse for anyone to vote for a proven commodity like Hillary and then complain at some later date, that they didn’t know what a scheming and hard-boiled harridan she really was. Clinton’s hawkishness is part of the public record. It’s right there for everyone to see. She voted for Iraq, she supported the Libya fiasco, and now she’s gearing up for Syria. Her bloodthirsty foreign policy is just slightly to the left of John McCain and his looneybin sidekick, Lindsey Graham. Simply put: A vote for Clinton is a vote more-of-the-same death and destruction spread willy-nilly across the planet in the endless pursuit of imperial domination. It’s that simple. Here’s an excerpt from her speech:

…let’s be clear about what we’re facing. Beyond Paris, in recent days, we’ve seen deadly terrorist attacks in Nigeria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Turkey, and a Russian civilian airline destroyed over the Sinai. At the heart of today’s new landscape of terror is ISIS. They persecute religious and ethnic minorities, kidnap and behead civilians, murder children. They systematically enslave, torture, and rape women and girls. ISIS operates across three mutually reinforcing dimensions—a physical enclave in Iraq and Syria, an international terrorist network that includes affiliates across the region and beyond, and an ideological movement of radical jihadism. We have to target and defeat all three. And time is of the essence. ISIS is demonstrating new ambition, reach, and capabilities. We have to break the group’s momentum, and then its back…

(“A Conversation With Hillary Clinton“, Council on Foreign Relations)

Get the picture? ISIS is everywhere; Syria, Iraq, Europe, the US, in the closet, under the rug…everywhere. So we need to get busy and kill them all pronto before they rape our women, behead our children and turn us all in to sex slaves.

Ever heard that mantra before? Maybe just once or twice?

Of course this is all music to the ears of the weapons manufacturers, the pudgy bankers and the other ne’er-do-wells who assemble at these elitist gatherings. They just love the idea of everlasting war, perpetual war, war stretching in all directions across all continents forever and always. That’s the perennial dream of elites, isn’t it; making sure that we’re all at-each-others-throats so they can lend us the money to buy the weapons to kill each other as efficiently as possible? That’s like Braham’s Lullaby to these guys, but for everyone else, it’s holy hell.

And what, pray tell, does Clinton have in store for us all once she’s sworn in and comfortably ensconced in the Oval Office?  Well, more war, of course. Check it out:

The United States and our international coalition has been conducting this fight for more than a year. It’s time to begin a new phase and intensify and broaden our efforts to smash the would-be caliphate and deny ISIS control of territory in Iraq and Syria. That starts with a more effective coalition air campaign, with more allies’ planes, more strikes, and a broader target set…..And we should be honest about the fact that to be successful, air strikes will have to be combined with ground forces actually taking back more territory from ISIS.

Like President Obama, I do not believe that we should again have 100,000 American troops in combat in the Middle East. (“A Conversation With Hillary Clinton“, Council on Foreign Relations)

A “new phase” in the war on terror, says she, and it will only cost you 100,000 troops or so…for starters, that is.  And, of course, she’s drawing on her vast military experience to make that calculation.

Oh, that’s right, she doesn’t have any “vast military experience”, in fact, she doesn’t have any military experience at all, she was a flunkey diplomat at the State Department who knows nothing about these matters.

But, maybe we’re being too harsh, after all, Don Rumsfeld didn’t have any experience either, and look how that turned out.

Here’s more: “We need to lay the foundation for a second “Sunni awakening.” We need to put sustained pressure on the government in Baghdad to gets its political house in order, move forward with national reconciliation, and finally, stand up a national guard.” (CFR)

Yes, and we also need to ride unicorns over rainbows to a shiny bright future in Candyland. It’s about the same thing, isn’t it?

Washington has been trying to accomplish what Clinton is recommending for the last 10 years and, guess what, it’s never worked. And it won’t work, because it’s a pipedream. The Iraqis are not “going to stand up, so we can stand down.” (Remember that one?) It’s not going to happen. She knows it and everyone in the audience knows it too. She’s just blowing smoke to convince the bigshots that she’ll faithfully prosecute their freaking wars until hell freezes over.  That’s what’s really going on,  or does someone actually believe these cutthroat plutocrats really want a more stable and secure Middle East?

Uh huh. That’s right at top of their list right next to higher wages for working people.

Clinton again:  “We should immediately deploy the Special Operations force President Obama has already authorized, and be prepared to deploy more as more Syrians get into the fight. And we should retool and ramp up our efforts to support and equip viable Syrian opposition units. Our increased support should go hand in hand with increased support from our Arab and European partners, including special forces who can contribute to the fight on the ground.” (CFR)

Here we go again: More Special Ops, more guns and money for sketchy thugs in black pajamas, and stronger ties with the terror-breeding crackpots in Ankara and Riyadh. Intensify, escalate, ramp up, and deepen our involvement.  Why not? What could go wrong?

Clinton again:  “We should also work with the coalition and the neighbors to impose no-fly zones that will stop Assad from slaughtering civilians and the opposition from the air. Opposition forces on the ground with materiel support from the coalition could then help create safe areas where Syrians could remain in the country rather than fleeing toward Europe.” (CFR)

This is where career fantasist Clinton really goes off the rails.  If you haven’t noticed, Russia, Iran and Hezbollah are currently carrying out military operations in Syria. The objective of these operations is to prevent regime change, to maintain the sovereign integrity of the state (which means securing the borders) and to kill as many jihadi dirtbags as humanly possible. Russian President Vladimir Putin is not going to allow the United States, or anyone else for that matter, to effectively annex part of Syria so it can continue to wage its not-so-clandestine proxy-war on Assad. That’s just not going to happen. So if Clinton is under the misguided impression that the US is calling the shots, well, she’s in for a rude awakening.

It’s one thing to spew this kind of chest-thumping blabber in front of your think tank buddies at the CFR, but it’s something else altogether to try to put this type of lunatic plan into play. The problem is, Clinton doesn’t seem to know the difference because she’s what you call a “true believer”, one of those rare birds who actually believes in the imperial mission to conquer the unwashed masses and bring them under Uncle Sam’s benign rule. She’s a Koolaid drinker, the type of person who would risk a clash with Putin just to prove a point, just to prove that the exceptional nation has an exceptional role to play in making everyone comply with its exception diktats. That’s Hillary in a nutshell, a charter member of the American Taliban, an unrepentant extremist capable of launching a nuclear war if she ever gets close enough to the Big Red Switch. Which is why it is every voting-age American should make sure she never gets that chance, or we’ll all be goners.

One last excerpt: “Now, much of this strategy on both sides of the border hinges on the roles of our Arab and Turkish partners….because ultimately our efforts will only succeed if the Arabs and Turks step up in a much bigger way. This is their fight and they need to act like it….(but) There is no alternative to a political transition that allows Syrians to end Assad’s rule…..” (H. Clinton, CFR)

So, even though Assad is in no immediate danger of being removed, Clinton insists that the effort to topple Assad is going to continue.

Doesn’t that concern you, dear reader? Doesn’t that suggest that, if given half-a-chance, Clinton’s going to ramp up the war and use Turkish and US ground troops to launch an invasion of Syria?  Read the excerpt again. What else could it mean?

Readers should peruse the CFR transcript for themselves and see if they think I’m exaggerating or not. This is serious stuff. There’s nothing Hillary Clinton would like more than to slip into her Rough-Rider togs and lead the country into World War 3.  We need to make sure that never happens.

The General leading the U.S. military’s hidden war in Africa says the continent is now home to nearly 50 terrorist organizations and “illicit groups” that threaten U.S. interests. And today, gunmen reportedly yelling “Allahu Akbar” stormed the Radisson Blu hotel in Mali’s capital and seized several dozen hostages. U.S. special operations forces are “currently assisting hostage recovery efforts,” a Pentagon spokesperson said, and U.S. personnel have “helped move civilians to secured locations, as Malian forces clear the hotel of hostile gunmen.”

In Mali, groups like Ansar Dine and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa have long posed a threat. Major terrorist groups in Africa include al Shabaab, Boko Haram and al Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb (AQIM). In the wake of the Paris attacks by ISIS, attention has been drawn to ISIS affiliates in Egypt and Libya, too. But what are the dozens of other groups in Africa that the Pentagon is fighting with more special operations forces, more outposts, and more missions than ever?

For the most part, the Pentagon won’t say.

Republic of Mali and United States Special Operations Forces troops stand in formation next to each other during the opening ceremony of the Flintlock 10 Exercise held May 3, 2010 in Bamako, Mali.

Brigadier General Donald Bolduc, chief of U.S. Special Operations Command Africa, made a little-noticed comment earlier this month about these terror groups. After describing ISIS as a transnational and transregional threat, he went on to tell the audience of the Defense One Summit, “Although ISIS is a concern, so is al Shabaab, so is the Lord’s Resistance Army in Central Africa and the 43 other illicit groups that operate in the area … Boko Haram, AQIM, and other small groups in that area.”

Bolduc mentioned only a handful of terror groups by name, so I asked for clarification from the Department of Defense, Africa Command (AFRICOM), and Special Operations Command Africa (SOCAFRICA). None offered any names, let alone a complete accounting. SOCAFRICA did not respond to multiple queries by The Intercept. AFRICOM spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Anthony Falvo would only state, “I have nothing further for you.”

While the State Department maintains a list of foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs), including 10 operating in Africa (ISIS, Boko Haram, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, al Shabaab, AQIM, Ansaru, Ansar al-Din, Ansar al-Shari’a in Tunisia, as well as Libya’s Ansar al-Shari’a in Benghazi and Ansar al-Shari’a in Darnah), it “does not provide the DoD any legal or policy approval,” according to Lt. Col. Michelle Baldanza, a Defense Department spokesperson.

“The DoD does not maintain a separate or similar list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations for the government,” she said in an email to The Intercept. “In general, not all groups of armed individuals on the African continent that potentially present a threat to U.S. interests would be subject to FTO. DoD works closely with the Intel Community, Inter-Agency, and the [National Security Council] to continuously monitor threats to U.S. interests; and when required, identifies, tracks, and presents options to mitigate threats to U.S. persons overseas.”

This isn’t the first time the Defense Department has been unable or unwilling to name the groups it’s fighting. In 2013, The Intercept’s Cora Currier, then writing for ProPublica, asked for a full list of America’s war-on-terror enemies and was told by a Pentagon spokesman that public disclosure of the names could increase the prestige and recruitment prowess of the groups and do “serious damage to national security.” Jack Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard Law School who served as a legal counsel during the George W. Bush administration, told Currier that the Pentagon’s rationale was weak and there was a “very important interest in the public knowing who the government is fighting against in its name.”

The secret of whom the U.S. military is fighting extends to Africa. Since 9/11, U.S. military efforts on the continent have grown in every conceivable way, from funding and manpower to missions and outposts, while at the same time the number of transnational terror groups has increased in linear fashion, according to the military. The reasons for this are murky. Is it a spillover from events in the Middle East and Central Asia? Are U.S. operations helping to spawn and spread terror groups? Is the Pentagon inflating the terror threat for its own gain? Is the rise of these terrorist organizations due to myriad local factors? Or more likely, is it a combination of these and other reasons? The task of answering these questions is made more difficult when no one in the military is willing to name more than a handful of the transnational terror groups that are classified as America’s enemies.

Before 9/11, Africa seemed to be free of transnational terror threats, according to the U.S. government.

In 2000, for example, a report prepared under the auspices of the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute examined the “African security environment.” While noting the existence of “internal separatist or rebel movements” in “weak states,” as well as militias and “warlord armies,” it made no mention of Islamic extremism or major transnational terror threats.

In early 2002, a senior Pentagon official speaking on background toldreporters that the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan might drive “terrorists” out of that nation and into Africa. “Terrorists associated with al Qaeda and indigenous terrorist groups have been and continue to be present in this region,” he said. “These terrorists will, of course, threaten U.S. personnel and facilities.”

Pressed about genuine transnational threats, the official drew attention to Somali militants, specifically several hundred members of al Itihaad al Islamiya—a forerunner of al Shabaab — but admitted that even the most extreme members “really have not engaged in acts of terrorism outside Somalia.” Questioned about ties between Osama bin Laden’s core al Qaeda group and African militants, the official offered tenuous links, like bin Laden’s “salute” to Somali fighters who killed U.S. troops during the infamous 1993 Black Hawk Down incident.

The U.S. nonetheless deployed military personnel to Africa in 2002, while the State Department launched a big-budget counterterrorism program, known as the Pan Sahel Initiative, to enhance the capabilities of the militaries of Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger. In 2005, that program expanded to include Algeria, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, and Tunisia and was renamed the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership.

In the years that followed, the U.S. increased its efforts. In 2014, for example, the U.S. carried out 674 military missions across the continent — an average of nearly two per day and an increase of about 300 percent since U.S. Africa Command was launched in 2008. The U.S. also took part in a number of multinational military interventions, including a coalition war in Libya, assistance to French and African forces fighting militants in Central African Republic and Mali, and the training and funding of African proxies to do battle against extremist groups like al Shabaab and Boko Haram.

The U.S. has also carried out a shadow war of special ops raids, drone strikesand other attacks, as well as an expanding number of training missions by elite forces. U.S. special operations teams are now deployed to 23 African countries “seven days a week, 24/7,” according to Bolduc. “The most effective thing that we do is about 1,400 SOF operators and supporters integrated with our partner nation, integrated with our allies and other coalition partners in a way that allows us to take advantage of each other’s capabilities,” he said.

The U.S. military has also set up a network of bases — although it is loath to refer to them in such terms. A recent report by The Intercept, relying on classified documents leaked by a whistleblower, detailed an archipelago of outposts integral to a secret drone assassination program that was based at the premier U.S. facility on the African continent, Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti. That base alone has expanded since 2002 from 88 acres to nearly 600 acres, with more than $600 million allocated or awarded for projects and $1.2 billion in construction and improvements planned for the future.

A continent relatively free of transnational terror threats in 2001 is — after almost 14 years of U.S. military efforts — now rife with them, in the Pentagon’s view. Bolduc said the African continent is “as lethal and dangerous an environment as anywhere else in the world,” and specifically invoked ISIS, which he called “a transnational threat, a transregional threat, as are all threats that we deal with in Africa.” But the Pentagon would not specify whether the threat levels are stable, increasing, or decreasing. “I can’t get into any details regarding threats or future operations,” Lt. Col. Baldanza stated. “I can say that we will continue to work with our African partners to enable them in their counter-terrorism efforts as they further grow security and stability in the region.”

In the end, Bolduc tempered expectations that his troops might be able to transform the region in any significant way. “The military can only get you so far,” he told the Defense One Summit audience. “So if I’m asked to build a counter-violent extremist organization capability in a particular country, I can do that … but if there’s not … a valid institution to plug it into, then we are there for a long time.”

The thing that keeps me awake at night is the guy behind his computer, looking for messages from IS and other hate preachers. Jan Jambon, November 2015

It is one of the great myths that technology and the savage are somehow distinct. Sophistication suggests encryption devices, or tech abilities. Brave new world technologies will lull us on the pneumatic chair, calming our more savage instincts. But time and time again, the opposite case has been made. Methods of killing can be industrialised; technology can be adapted to the most destructive ends.

The point has already been made that the Islamic State operates within the spirit of terrorism that is very much in the enlightenment tradition of revolutionary France.[1] This will be a shocking statement to those whose feel clear distinctions should be drawn. In spirit, however, the French Revolution, with Dr. Guillotine’s decapitating machine and violent inspirations, is closer than many dare admit.

Now, ISIS is being seen in a different light. Not a force purely medieval, with its celebratory beheadings and primordial methods of murder. It is now deemed cunning, inventive, with communications hard to track.

It is ISIS who is now seen as technologically savvy, amenable to “going dark” with its operations, dangerously inscrutable in its cyber digging. It is ISIS and its affiliates who have been coopted by security forces in pushing alarmist agendas for weakening encryption and reinvigorating dispirited, dare one say incompetent intelligence forces.

This reverse idealisation has been given dramatic force after the Friday attacks in Paris. Allegations, which have seemingly shown up as false, have been made that the coordinated attacks took place using unbreakable encryption software. Given that the French police were able to identify the fourth cell and raid it in St. Denis because of un-encrypted messages from an abandoned phone is not a point that has been pressed home.

Another allegation doing the rounds is that ISIS has availed itself of the wonders of PlayStation 4, presumably via its Party Chat feature, which allows players the means of exchanging voice and text messages in groups or between individuals in secure fashion.

The source of the observation was Belgium’s deputy prime minister, Jan Jambon, whose comments, it is important to note, came prior to the Friday attacks. “PlayStation 4 is even more difficult to keep track of than WhasApp. It’s very, very difficult for our services – not only Belgian services but international services – to decrypt the communication that is done via PlayStation 4.”[2]

This claim must be regarded as suspect. According to Ars Technica (Nov 17), “there’s no evidence that the feature is actually being used by terrorists, let alone that it played an integral part in the Paris attacks.”

Main papers decided to swallow the suggestion wholeheartedly. “Paris attacks: Terrorists could have used PlayStation4 to plot,” went the Telegraph, while the Express decided on pure certitude: “ISIS terrorists used Sony Playstation 4 to plot Paris massacre.”

The International Business Times and Forbes were the frontrunners in suggesting that ISIS had delved into the weird and wonderful world of PlayStation chatter, feeding off Jambon’s titbit. “The comparatively low-tech system may offer a more secure means of communication than even encrypted phone calls, texts and email” (Forbes, Nov 14).

Forbes subsequently had to concede that it had all too enthusiastically taken the plunge: “It has not been confirmed, as originally written, that a console was found as a result of specific Belgian terror raids. Minister Jambon was speaking about tactics he knows ISIS to be using generally.”[3] Nor could it verify “how much access the government has gotten to places like PSN and Xbox Live in the past few years”.

Eurogamer subsequently explained that the slew of stories did not point out “the likelihood that a PS4, a console that has sold just shy of 30m units, would be found at a home in Belgium occupied by a person in their twenties.”[4]

The site also managed to reproduce a statement from Sony, which emphasised that “we take our responsibilities to protect our users extremely seriously and we urge our users and partners to report activities that may be offensive, suspicious or illegal. When we identify or are notified of such conduct, we are committed to taking appropriate actions in conjunction with the appropriate actions in conjunction with the appropriate authorities and will continue to do so.”

Various technological platforms have proven to be friends of ISIS, just as they have been handmaidens of activist groups and protesters keen to cause disruption and change. It is in this field that organisations such as Anonymous hope to gain victories, and where the next stage of this battle will be fought.

Such cyber skirmishes will certainly not be won by a wholesale degradation, let alone ban, of encryption across a range of technologies. Besides, we already have it on good authority that the NSA and GCHQ have been attempting to find ways of joining Xbox Live discussions around “The World of Warcraft.”[5] So much, then, for the element of inscrutability.

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/commentisfree/2014/sep/09/isis-jihadi-shaped-by-modern-western-philosophy

[2] http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/11/despite-what-the-papers-say-theres-no-evidence-isis-used-ps4-to-plan-paris-attacks/

[3] http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2015/11/14/why-the-paris-isis-terrorists-used-ps4-to-plan-attacks/

[4] http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-11-16-sony-responds-to-claim-ps4-used-for-terrorist-communications

[5] http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-12-09-nsa-gchq-can-listen-to-xbox-live-chat-communications

As the world reels from the horrific terrorist attacks in Paris last week, more than half of US governors began lining up to scapegoat Syrian refugees fleeing violence in their country. Of those 27 governors, all but one are Republicans. Democrat Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire joined the gubernatorial group and called for the United States to refuse to admit those fleeing Syria. Many proclaimed they would deny entry to the refugees. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott wrote to President Barack Obama: “I write to inform you that the State of Texas will not accept any refugees from Syria in the wake of the deadly terrorist attack in Paris.”

A Republican congressman from Tennessee, House Republican Caucus Chair Glen Casada, wants the National Guard to round up Syrian refugees already settled there and prevent others from entering Tennessee. “We need to activate the Tennessee National Guard and stop [Syrian refugees] from coming in to the state by whatever means we can,” he said.

But only the federal government – not the states – has the power to decide if and where refugees can settle in this country.

The Law on States’ Rights and Immigration

In 2012, the Supreme Court reaffirmed in Arizona v. United States that “The Government of the United States has broad, undoubted power over the subject of immigration and the status of aliens.” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority, “Returning an alien to his own country may be deemed inappropriate … The foreign state may be mired in civil war, complicit in political persecution, or enduring conditions that create a real risk that the alien or his family will be harmed upon return.” Kennedy noted that under the supremacy clause of the US Constitution, “Congress has the power to preempt state law.” States cannot regulate conduct in a field that Congress “has determined must be regulated by its exclusive governance,” Kennedy added. “Federal law makes a single sovereign responsible for maintaining a comprehensive and unified system to keep track of aliens within the Nation’s borders.”

The 1980 Refugee Act grants authority to the president to determine how many refugees may be admitted to the United States. The president must consider whether “an unforeseen emergency refugee situation exists” and whether “the admission of certain refugees in response to the emergency refugee situation is justified by grave humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest.”

Obama said he will continue with his plan to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees in 2015, stating “many of these refugees are the victims of terrorism themselves … That’s what they’re fleeing. Slamming the door in their faces would be a betrayal of our values.”

“Our nations can welcome refugees who are desperately seeking safety and ensure our own security,” he added, citing rigorous screening and security checks. “We can and must do both.”

Republican presidential candidates, including Marco Rubio and Ben Carson, oppose the admission of Syrian refugees to the United States. Donald Trump says if he’s elected president, “they’re going back.”

Responding to Jeb Bush, who wants to focus assistance efforts on Christian refugees fleeing Syria, Obama retorted, “That’s shameful. That’s not American. That’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion.” In fact, in addition to Christians, Kurds, Yazidis, Alawites, Shiite Muslims and Sunni Muslims have been targeted for persecution by ISIS.

Refugee Screening and Resettlement

While states cannot refuse to admit refugees, they may make resettlement more onerous by denying resources, including housing assistance, to the federal government. If governors tried to block certain categories of refugees, they would be vulnerable to discrimination lawsuits.

Security screenings for refugees are conducted by several federal agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, FBI, National Counterterrorism Center and National Security Council. “The vetting process now in place is already a dreadful maze – a Rubik’s Cube of bureaucracies practically guaranteeing that few Syrians will ever set foot on our shores,” according to James Jennings, president of Conscience International, a humanitarian organization that delivers aid to Syrian refugees in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Greece. “The process takes up to three years and requires 21 steps with numerous agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, all required to sign off. There is next to no chance that a terrorist could get in under the present system. A greater threat is posed by considerable numbers of disaffected, angry young men who are already in the US.”

Kevin Appleby, director of the Migration and Refugee Services Office of Migration and Refugee Policy at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, concurs. “These refugees are the most vetted, they go through more security screening than any arrivals to the United States. It’s not like Europe. It’s a different scenario,” he told the Los Angeles Times.

Muslims constitute the largest proportion of victims of terrorism, with those in Syria and Iraq leading the pack. Many of the Syrian refugees in Europe are escaping ISIS; others are fleeing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s repression. Iyad El-Baghdadi, an activist during the Arab Spring, monitors jihadist chatter on Twitter. “Nothing pissed off Islamist extremists” more than “watching [Europe’s] very humane, moral response to the refugee crisis,” he told teleSUR.

Indeed, according to a 2012 report of the US National Counterterrorism Center, between 82 percent and 97 percent of the victims of religiously motivated terror attacks during the previous five years were Muslims.

The Sudden Proliferation of Anti-Refugee Legislation

Two GOP presidential hopefuls are introducing legislation to prevent or slow down the migration of Syrian refugees to the United States. Sen. Ted Cruz is reportedly drafting a bill that would forbid Syrian Muslim refugees from entering the United States. It would, however, welcome Christians. Sen. Rand Paul will introduce a bill to place an immediate moratorium on US visas, preventing refugees and “others from obtaining visas to immigrate, visit, or study in the US from about 30 countries that have significant jihadist movements.” Paul plans to pay for the legislation “with a special tax on arms sales to any of these countries.”

Later this week, a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee will take up security matters related to Syrian refugees.

To their credit, all three Democratic presidential candidates favor Obama’s plan to admit 10,000 Syrians this year. “We will not be terrorized or live in fear. During these difficult times, we will not succumb to Islamophobia,” Sen. Bernie Sanders said. “We will not turn our backs on the refugees who are fleeing Syria and Afghanistan. We will do what we do best and that is be Americans – fighting racism, fighting xenophobia, fighting fear.”

“There are women, there are children dying,” observed Martin O’Malley. “They are fleeing the same sort of carnage that was unleashed on the people of France … I don’t think it’s too much to ask of us that we do our part here.” Hillary Clinton tweeted, “We’ve seen a lot of hateful rhetoric from the GOP. But the idea that we’d turn away refugees because of religion is a new low.”

There is no evidence that refugees pose a security risk. The Paris attackers were not refugees, although one of them used a fake Syrian passport; they were born in Europe. Since 1980, none of the millions of refugees the United States has welcomed – many of them from the Middle East – has committed a terrorist attack. The 9/11 hijackers entered the United States legally on student or tourist visas. The Boston Marathon bombers were not refugees.

The charge that refugees are a threat to the United States is a tempest in a teapot. If we want to stop terrorism, we should stop killing innocent civilians in other countries.

Bombing Is Not the Solution

Western airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria have killed at least 459 civilians, including more than 100 children, according to the Guardian. French President François Hollande retaliated for the Paris attacks by bombing Raqqa, thought to be the “headquarters” of ISIS. Raqqa is a city with hundreds of thousands of civilians. The bombs struck the electricity grid, a museum and clinics. Untold numbers of people have been injured or killed in the strikes.

The invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and drone bombings in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and Syria have not destroyed ISIS. Military retaliation is exactly what ISIS wants.

Four former Air Force service members who operated drones wrote an open letter to Obama saying that the drone program has “fueled the feelings of hatred that ignited terrorism and groups like ISIS, while also serving as a fundamental recruitment tool similar to Guantanamo Bay.”

Brandon Bryant, Michael Haas, Stephen Lewis and Cian Westmoreland maintained that the killing of civilians in drone strikes has been one of the most “devastating driving forces for terrorism and destabilization around the world.”

That is why the bombing by the United States and France must stop immediately. A diplomatic solution involving all players in the region, including Iran, Russia and China, should be seriously pursued.

Arms sales must be halted. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait have spent billions of dollars arming the opposition to the Assad regime but ISIS is a beneficiary of those weapons. The French have a $10 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia, and Obama has concluded more than $100 billion in arms sales to the Saudis during the past five years.

As Charles Pierce argues in Esquire, our Middle East “allies,” including the bankers and political elites, must be held accountable. “Assets from these states should be frozen, all over the West,” Pierce writes.

The United States should welcome many more than the 10,000 Syrian refugees Obama has agreed to accept. We have a moral responsibility to provide refuge to those displaced by US actions, which contributed to destabilizing the entire region with invasions and regime changes since 2001. It is the vacuum we created that gave birth to ISIS.

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Her most recent book is Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues. See www.marjoriecohn.com.

As usual, the politicos and talking heads are all talking their own book, using the Paris terror attacks to push their own agendas.

As shown below, they’re spouting nonsense.

Mass Surveillance Won’t Help

The NSA and other spy agencies are pretending that the Paris attacks show that we need more mass surveillance.

But the New York Times correctly points out in a scathing editorial that mass surveillance won’t help to prevent terrorism:

As one French counterterrorism expert and former defense official said, this shows that “our intelligence is actually pretty good, but our ability to act on it is limited by the sheer numbers.” In other words, the problem in this case was not a lack of data, but a failure to act on information authorities already had.

In fact, indiscriminate bulk data sweeps have not been useful. In the more than two years since the N.S.A.’s data collection programs became known to the public, the intelligence community has failed to show that the phone program has thwarted a terrorist attack. Yet for years intelligence officials and members of Congress repeatedly misled the public by claiming that it was effective.

In reality, top security experts agree that mass surveillance makes us MORE vulnerable to terrorists.

Indeed, even the NSA has previously admitted that it’s collecting too MUCH information to stop terror attacks.

Encryption Isn’t What Made Us Vulnerable

The spy agencies are also pretending that encryption made it impossible to stop the attacks.

But Tech Dirt notes:

Most of the communications between the attackers was conducted via unencrypted vanilla SMS:

“…News emerging from Paris — as well as evidence from a Belgian ISIS raid in January — suggests that the ISIS terror networks involved were communicating in the clear, and that the data on their smartphones was not encrypted.

European media outlets are reporting that the location of a raid conducted on a suspected safe house Wednesday morning was extracted from a cellphone, apparently belonging to one of the attackers, found in the trash outside the Bataclan concert hall massacre. Le Monde reported that investigators were able to access the data on the phone, including a detailed map of the concert hall and an SMS messaging saying “we’re off; we’re starting.” Police were also able to trace the phone’s movements.

The reports note that Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the “mastermind” of both the Paris attacks and a thwarted Belgium attack ten months ago, failed to use any encryption whatsoever (read: existing capabilities stopped the Belgium attacks and could have stopped the Paris attacks, but didn’t). That’s of course not to say batshit religious cults like ISIS don’t use encryption, and won’t do so going forward. Everybody uses encryption. But the point remains that to use a tragedy to vilify encryption, push for surveillance expansion, and pass backdoor laws that will make everybody less safe — is nearly as gruesome as the attacks themselves.

7 of the 8 Terrorists Were Known to U.S. or French Intelligence Agencies

Just as with 9/11, the Boston marathon bombings, and other recent attacks, governments are pretending “it wasn’t foreseeable”.

But CBS reports that law enforcement sources say that 7 of the 8 terrorists were known in advance to U.S. or French intelligence services.

The New York Times confirms:

Most of the men who carried out the Paris attacks were already on the radar of intelligence officials in France and Belgium, where several of the attackers lived only hundreds of yards from the main police station, in a neighborhood known as a haven for extremists.

Escalating War Against ISIS Is Not the Only Option

I’m all for killing members of ISIS.

But given that the U.S. and its close allies – Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and Bahrain – are massively supporting ISIS, stopping the arming, feeding and logistical support is even more important if we want to stop these crazies.

None of the Terrorists Were Syrian

None of the Paris terrorists were Syrian. All of them were European nationals.

The German Interior Minister suggests that the Syrian passport found at the scene of the terror attacks was a “false flag” by ISIS meant to force countries to seal their borders against further refugees.

Why would they do this? Numerous security experts suggest that refugees fleeing ISIS’ “Caliphate” is a PR disaster for ISIS. After all, happy fundamentalist Muslims wouldn’t flee utopia, would they?

But we do take the risk of infiltration of refugee groups by terrorists very seriously. Indeed, the Telegraph reports today:

The mastermind of the Paris attacks was able to slip into Europe among Syrian migrants, it emerged last night, as police on the continent admitted they are unable to monitor thousands of suspected jihadists.

***

It has emerged that Abaaoud, and at least two of the Paris terrorists took the migrant route via Greece, intensifying fears that terrorists are able easily to exploit the refugee crisis to get to Europe.

Specifically, many of the Paris terrorists were European nationals who went to fight for ISIS in Syria, and then they slipped in with the refugees coming from Syria to get back into Europe.

So those saying that the civilians fleeing war and mayham in Syria are all terrorists are wrong … but so are those saying that the massive refugee flow poses no danger.

Washington has learned that threats and coercion do not work against Russia.  All the threats have done is to build Putin’s public support to astronomical levels and to unify Russia against the West’s assault.  This is a failed policy that Washington is abandoning as Washington sees a new opportunity in Russia’s desire for Western cooperation, not only against ISIL but also on a wide range of other issues.  

Realizing that guile can be more effective than the stick, the West is moving toward drawing Russia into the Western system by offering a coalition against ISIL.  Once Russia is in a coalition against ISIL, Russia will lose control.  This is Washington’s strategy for counteracting the initiative that Russia seized in Syria.

Once Russia is in a coalition against ISIL, Russia will have to make compromises.  Putin will be told that Russia can have ISIL, but Russia has to turn Assad’s fate over to the West.  If Putin balks, the Western media will blame Putin for topedoing the war against ISIL.

Getting rid of ISIL is more important to the Russian government than saving Assad.  If a jihadist Islamic State is established, there will be a base for exporting turmoil into the Muslim regions of the Russian Federation.

Once Russia accepts “cooperation” with the West against ISIL, more “cooperation” will be used to gradually erode bit by bit Russia’s independence and to bring Russian policy in alignment with Washington’s.

Many in Russia believe that the Paris attack proves that Putin was right and that the West now realizes this and will accept Russian leadership in the fight against ISIL.  This belief is delusional.  Washington will take advantage of Russian desire for Western cooperation and will use this desire in order to bring Russia under Western influence, thus reestablishing Washington’s hegemony.

On November 10, an alliance of left parties forced to resign Portugal’s center-right minority government by a vote of no confidence. This is a next stage of the crisis created by conservative President Anibal Cavaco Silva. He gave the opportunity to form a government to the coalition headed by Portuguese Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho’s Social Democratic Party despite it won just 39 percent at the October 4 general elections. In reply, the three leftist parties — the Socialist Party, 32 percent of the vote, the Left Bloc, 10 percent, and the Communist Party, 8 percent, in coalition with the Greens — united against the government.

According to the Portuguese constitution new elections cannot be held until at least June 2016. Thus, the responsibility for the formation of a government returns once again to the president which supports the minority coalition. He should to decide whether to empower the leftist coalition which holds the majority in the Parliament as a new government. However, attempts to ignore the leftist alliance would leave the president open to accusations of bias and of anti-democratic behavior. He is clearly aligned with the center-right alliance.

In its action to resign the government, the left-wing parties showed a level of cohesion that was unexpected by their opponents. Following the tendency, they have serious chances to force the president to endorse a left-wing government. In this case, the Portugal’s adherence to EU-mandated budget limits to exit its IMF bailout will become an issue under question. The Communist Party and the Left Bloc oppose to austerity measures in general while the Socialist Party has formally committed to them.

The developments in Portugal are just a part of the ongoing crisis in the Southern Europe where EU-mandated austerity measures conducting a serious disaffection of the citizens and pushing Euroskeptics to the power. Greece is still struggling to keep its creditors at bay. Spain has a fragmented political landscape, with four main parties competing for seats in the parliament. Meanwhile, the Catalonian Parliament has started the independence process to separate from the central government in Madrid.

We could see a clear crisis in the EU political system. It will only grow strengthened by the economic, migration crises, security issues and arise of Euroskeptic political powers which oppose the EU bureaucracy’s efforts to rule the union ignoring the member states’ sovereignty and interests.

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The India-Australia uranium deal, whereby Australia agrees to sell uranium to India in spite of India’s not being a signatory of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, and in spite of the fact that a vigorous nuclear arms race is in progress on the subcontinent, beggars belief for anyone who has been involved for decades as I have, in questions of nuclear nonproliferation, disarmament, and nuclear safety.

A vigorous nuclear arms race is taking place right now on the Indian subcontinent between India and Pakistan, with Pakistan now having some 130 nuclear warheads, and India not far behind with between 110 and 120.

Pakistan has deployed short-range, war-fighting ‘mini nukes’ to repel Indian tank attacks. India has said that their use will lead to full-scale nuclear war.

India and Pakistan are poised on a nuclear knife-edge.

While we can say all we like that Australian uranium will only ever be used to ‘civil’ uses, the fact is that because India has limited uranium supplies of its own (mined under appalling conditions at Jharsguda in Bihar with catastrophic effects on the health of local people) – the fact is that use of Australian uranium will ‘free up’ un-safeguarded Indian uranium for weapons use. It can be no other way, there is simply no avoiding the brute facts of arithmetic. Uranium that has been replaced by imported (Australian) uranium for nuclear power use is now available for use in nuclear weapons.

Australia has chosen to sell its uranium into the worlds most dangerous nuclear flashpoint. It has done so against the recommendations of a parliamentary joint committee.

This is a mindbogglingly foolish decision.

John Hallam is a Nuclear Weapons Campaigner PND-NSW

[email protected]
[email protected]

What has happened in Paris last weekend is surely tragic indeed. At least 129 civilians were murdered in blatant terrorist attacks on civilian areas. The mainstream media and social media response is understandable given the surprise nature of the attacks and the geographical location in which they took place: Paris, the city of love.

However, if the public truly cares about the deaths of innocent lives perhaps they should direct their anger, frustration, fear and political grievances at the French government. The sympathy, fear and unity that the public feel is not only a powerful distraction from truly awful atrocities that happen daily in other parts of the world, but distract us from France’s acts of aggression in the last decade.

In 2011, France spent over 450 million euros flying at least 4500 sorties over Libya bombing the North African nation back into the Middle Ages. The UN Security Council Resolution authorizing this military activity authorized a no-fly zone to protect civilians but in actuality killed scores of civilians, desecrated Gaddafi’s armed forceswhilst backing, funding, supporting and providing air cover for al-Qaeda affiliated rebels. Although we had been told that this military aggression was necessary to prevent Gaddafi from committing genocide on his own people, it transpired that the public had once again been lied to through an Iraq-WMD style propaganda campaign. The French-backed rebels at the time fighting to overthrow Gaddafi were not only the same fighters that France was claiming to fight in Mali, but included fighters from al-Qaeda in Iraq, which today are known as ISIS.

According to the UN Human Development Index (2010), Libya had the highest standard of living out of any country in Africa. Although the United States, the United Kingdom and Italy also played their part; it was a French Rafale jet that first struck Muammar Gaddafi’s motorcade as he attempted to escape Sirte, before these same al-Qaeda affiliated rebels were brought in to the area by NATO commandos to execute the Libyan leader without trial. Before this blatant war of aggression disguised as a humanitarian intervention occurred, Libya was debt free, had high literacy rates and had free healthcare. The country is now in a perpetual state of civil war as two rival governments backed by separate regional and foreign powersfight for control of the country. It should be no surprise that ISIS has a major stranglehold there given that the NATO countries, France being one of the main contributors, backed ISIS affiliated rebels to topple Gaddafi in the first place. According to UNICEF, Libya now has 2 million children out of school. As bad as Gaddafi was, this did not happen under his leadership.

To make this matter more corrupt, the French leader at the time, Nicolas Sarkozy, was under investigation for having received 50 million euros from Gaddafi himself for Sarkozy’s election campaign. So, essentially, Gaddafi sent Sarkozy 50 million euros and Sarkozy pays him back by having him assassinated? That has to be the worst recorded friendship in history.

In 2014, France made over 8 billion euros selling arms. The beneficiaries of these arms include the beacon of human rights itself, Saudi Arabia, a country who not only openly executes political dissidents within its own jurisdiction and supports violent jihadist activity, but is currently contravening international law by launching awar of aggression in neighbouring Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world. The most recent French-Saudi deal is worth $12 billion.Saudi Arabia has used their current weaponry to bomb Yemeni wedding parties and refugee camps. Together with a brutal blockade, Yemen has become Syria within half a year of bombing and faces a humanitarian catastrophe.

France is also actively bombing Mali, Somalia, and in December 2012emerged as one of the biggest contributors to the rebel groups trying to topple Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Although we have heard time and time again that the US and NATO are only backing moderate rebels, this distinction between rebel groups on the ground has transpired to be false. Take for example the Western-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA), which France has actively and openly supported. The FSA’s ranks have become dominated by extremists and their leaders have admitted not only that they regularly conduct joint operations with al-Qaeda, but that they wish to impose sharia law on Syria. Furthermore, since 2012, Western countries have known that the majority of the weapons and arms that they have been pouring into Syria have endedup in the arms of extremists but they are still doing it.

This selective over-play by the mainstream media combined withsocial media Giant Facebook’s response makes you wonder why the victims in France are more important than the victims in Lebanon 2 days prior, or the victims of France’s colonial aggression in the Middle East and Africa. How about the 5.4 million people who have died in the Democratic Republic of Congo? When will Facebook propose a flag change for the solidarity of the people who suffer these kinds of attacks daily?

In the wake of the attacks in Paris, the Mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, stated “the only answer to terrorism is to be resolute, to not let the terrorists change who we are”.

But perhaps it is time to change who we are. Whether you like it or not, France has become an aggressive colonial power in the last decade. The France that was opposed to the 2003 invasion of Iraq has become a nation responsible for the death and suffering of millions of people. Let’s not forget that ISIS was born out of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, meaning that France had the morally superior position back in 2003. Yet, the public now are sleep-walking and are eating up every single bit of President Hollande’s response.

If Hollande truly cared about terrorism, he should stop funding it.

What has he proposed instead? To close the borders of France, to allow right-wing xenophobia take root and blame this whole issue on the refugee crisis, and to immediately start aggressively bombing Syria. Apparently, France has not done enough bombing in the Middle East and North Africa. Note how quickly Hollande has referred to the Paris attacks as an act of war. The perpetrators of this crime were few and were not acting on behalf of any sovereign government. Who is France now at war with? With ISIS? Given that Western leaders stillblame Assad for the rise of ISIS it should not be hard to predict where France’s campaign is headed. It would also be a safe bet that we will start to see an activation of France’s new democratic and transparent surveillance laws passed earlier this year.

If blowing up civilians in France is a tragic and cowardly act which can generate so much fear, anger and sympathy, it cannot be realistically said that blowing up civilians in Syria in response is a realistic solution.

California is in the midst of the worst drought in recorded history. An anticipation of El Nino and an early winter snow have made people hopeful for rising water tables. Projects throughout the state have attempted to address water shortages, including recommending wastewater programs. Recently, a desalination plant was announced for Santa Clara County.

Twenty-four municipalities and two private organizations affiliated with Hetch Hetchy Water System, administered by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and part of the Bay Area Water Supply and Conservation Agency have been involved in a long-range water conservation program. Initially announced in 2009, BAWSCA projected drastic circumstances confronting Northern California, including possible water shortages and industrial divestment as companies were forced to relocate due to water shortages. By the time it presented the first report of its conservation efforts, the forecast was much rosier, contending that water conservation efforts initiated a year before its initial assessment had worked.

While the projections put forth don’t exactly add up, there were also anticipations of securing additional water during drought years through “water transfer” projects that included diverting water from the Yuba River, which is part of the Central Valley Authority and administered by the Bureau of Land Reclamation. As San Francisco and municipalities in its BAWSCA network record moderate water reductions, entire communities in the Central Valley have experience increased unemployment as fields are idled in order to do their part for water conservation.

http://www.sfgate.com/…/California-drought-Jobs-money-dry-u…

BAWSCA acknowledges that the proliferation of the tech industry in the Silicon Valley area is a large consumer of water resources. And many projects are being considered for offsetting the problems experienced by the drought. Among them are increased investment and consideration of water desalination technologies, a sector that has been highly developed in Israel and considered an inspiration for addressing California’s water issues. At the same time, heavy water use industries, including fracking for oil and natural gas, continue to be large water consumers and private companies are able to access California water ways without having to pay for the water they use to then in turn sell it for profit.

A long term view of this situation and an understanding of dynamics surrounding water usage around the world is instructive. BAWSCA contracts with CDM Smith, a large scale water and utility engineering firm with operations in most states in the US, as well as the West Bank and El Salvador. Since 2000, Israel has been intentionally diverting water from aquifiers in the West Bank to meet the consumption needs of Israelis, while allotting less that one-quarter of the per person amount to Palestinians and requiring them to purchase a large percent of their water from Israel, despite the fact that the water they are purchasing comes from sources within the West Bank.

http://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/1.574554

In fact, the construction of Israel’s “security barrier” was intentionally designed to encompass settlements located above or near the major aquifier sites in the West Bank and Palestinians are required to obtain permits from Israeli authorities in order to access indigenous sources. Throughout the process, CDM Smith has been operating water facilities throughout the West Bank and Gaza. As part of Israel’s assault on Gaza last summer, the only water treatment plant serving Palestinians was destroyed. A cursory look of the company’s site reveals that in the past two months, several job opening have been announced for its facilities in the West Bank and Gaza.

Meanwhile, Israel has been able to develop desalination technology that is considered to be pioneering in the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr0ReW8U2Ns

This is the very same technology it is now trying to export to California. This technology came at the cost of an entire nation’s infrastructure and access to water, not to mention the impact it has had on Palestinian agriculture alongside the Israeli policies of destroying Palestinian land and industry. One can not overlook that California’s water rights policies, which privilege “senior” water rights holders–a seniority which entails the historical exclusion of entire communities along with the dispossession of indigenous water access–and allow for the destruction of agricultural communities primarily comprised of immigrants, correspond to the ways in which urban areas like San Francisco determine water consumption. Add into this the fact that the private, for-profit corporations that are “stewarding” the water access issues have been complicit in Israeli policies to destroy Palestinian society, and one sees a recurrent pattern that is ultimately as immoral as it is unsustainable.

Without some serious consideration of how the inequalities stemming from the privatization of water and utility access compound social and economic, as well as environmental, problems and correspond to unequal distribution of resources both in California and around the world, life as we know it will soon become obsolete. A true overhaul of our resource distribution system is necessary immediately. These resources start with equal and non-profit-driven access to basic human rights like food and water, homes, jobs, non-militarized security and education and extend to non-privatized access and respect for the land and communities that sustain it. It’s not just the right thing to do–it’s the only way we’re going to survive.

Charity Crouse is a writer and activist currently existing in California. She is an now witting but ultimately unwilling and non-compliant accomplice to San Francisco’s water tyranny.

At this time, the tragedy of the Paris terror attacks has one unanswered question. Was it a “false flag operation” or “blowback”? Some historians and political scientists who understand Western intervention in the Middle East may point to the latter. The late Chalmers Johnson wrote a book titled ‘Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire’ where he defined‘Blowback’ as “unintended consequences” of foreign policies conducted by U.S. Intelligence agencies (CIA) “that were kept secret from the American people.” Johnson wrote:

The term “blowback,” which officials of the Central Intelligence Agency first invented for their own internal use, is starting to circulate among students of international relations. It refers to the unintended consequences of policies that were kept secret from the American people. What the daily press reports as the malign acts of “terrorists” or “drug lords” or “rogue states” or “illegal arms merchants” often turn out to be blowback from earlier American operations

France’s foreign policy during the reign of their colonial Empire since the 17th Century ruled parts of Africa, North America, Southeast Asia, India and the Caribbean. France has experienced social upheavals and faced resistance from various populations they oppressed. Haiti, Vietnam and Algeria come to mind. France along with the U.S. and the U.K. had foreign interventionist policies for centuries resulting in acquiring territories that they still occupy today. Many would say that the Paris terror attack was a long time in the making.

Yes, it is true in a sense that the terror attacks could be retaliation for the current US-NATO interventions of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria which did create the refugee crisis in Europe in the first place. But with evidence that the U.S., Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel arming, training and funding “moderate rebels” since 2011 to topple Assad, the dynamics do change. Washington armed and funded the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan which became “the base” known as Al-Qaeda originally managed by Osama Bin-Laden (Deceased in 2001). So were the Paris terror attacks a “payback” from centuries of oppression? Not so sure.

Is There a Possibility of a False-Flag Operation?

The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) declared that it was responsible for the latest attacks in Paris as did Al-Qaeda who also claimed responsibility for 911. Terrorist organizations usually do claim responsibility for their actions. However, the question still remains whether the attacks were a false-flag operation or not? That still remains to be seen. However, there are similarities between the terror attacks in Paris and New York City on September 11th.

First, Syrian and Egyptian passports from two of the suicide bombers were found at the scene of the stadium attack in the northern part of the city. After both suspected terrorists detonated their explosive devices, their passports were still found.

This brings us back to the September 11th terror attacks where U.S. officials recovered a passport intact a few blocks from the World Trade Center which did belong to one of the hijackers, ‘Satam Al Suqami’. When the American airlines flight 11 crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center, 10,000 gallons of fuel erupted into a ball of fire which supposedly brought down the tower. However, Suqami’s passport was found proving who was behind the attacks. It is a coincidence that a passport was found in Paris in the same manner as the tragic event of the September 11th attacks. It is convenient for investigators to produce evidence with passports they find by indentifying suspected terrorists usually who are from the Middle East. The government of Francois Hollande has already retaliated to “fight those same terrorists” because the passports prove where the terrorists came from, in this case, Syria and Egypt.

There are many coincidences in regards to the September 11th attacks, but skeptics still doubt that 911 was an inside job no matter what the evidence suggests. One of the suicide bombers in the Paris terror attack, Ibrahim Abdeslam was an unemployed electrician who slept during the day and was constantly “smoking weed” who never attended a mosque according to his wife, a Daily Mail report said. It sure does resemble one of the ring leaders of 911, Mohammed Atta who was doing much more than smoking marijuana. Atta was reportedly sniffing cocaine, drinking and partying at night clubs (accompanied with occasional lap dances) in Las Vegas with four of his fellow hijackers. Author and Investigative journalist Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed (www.nafeezahmed.com) published ‘The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism’ in 2005 and wrote the following:

According to US investigators, five of the hijackers including Atta, Al-Shehhi, Nawaq Alhamzi, Ziad Jarrah, and Hani Hanjour visited Las Vegas at least six times between May and August 2001. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that here, they “engaged in some decidedly un-Islamic sampling of prohibited pleasures in America’s reputed capital of moral corrosion,” including drinking alcohol, gambling, and visiting strip-clubs. As the South Florida Sun Sentinel observed, the hijackers’ frequent debauchery was at odds with the most basic tenets of Islam:

“Three guys cavorting with lap dancers at the Pink Pony Nude Theater. Two others knocking back glasses of Stolichnaya and rum and Coke at a fish joint in Hollywood the weekend before committing suicide and mass murder. That might describe the behavior of several men who are suspects in Tuesday’s terrorist attack, but it is not a picture of devout Muslims, experts say. Let alone that of religious zealots in their final days on Earth”

As for the Paris terror attacks and 911, the suspects share similar characteristics. Don’t you think that such coincidences make the situation at least, highly suspicious? Both Ibrahim Abdeslam and Atta do share similarities that do seem un-Islamic. More information on Ibraham Abdeslam and his brother Salah (who is still wanted by French and Belgium authorities) will soon emerge. We all know that suspicion alone, does not constitute a fact; but for starters, it sure opens up a can of worms.

Western Intervention around the World was Always a Major Problem

Western Imperial powers over Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean and Asia has been a major factor for anti-Western sentiments. But this particular terrorist attack with this type of magnitude does have the hallmarks of a false-flag operation, but it is still too early to make a declarative statement.

An important factor to understand is that whether it was blowback or a false-flag operation, both serve the political and financial establishment in France which can be used as a pretext to continue the war in Syria to fight the Islamic state under NATO.  One other important note to consider is France’s debt problem which will eventually lead to massive protests against austerity measures imposed by Brussels. The French government can now ban those same protests by suspending civil rights to keep the people safe. For France, an increase in state surveillance powers coupled with war and a rise of anti-Muslim sentiments will be part of everyday life.

Author’s note: This article is dedicated to Li Baodong, China’s Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs, who inspired this work, and to Jeanette Himmel, China’s brave, beautiful daughter.  With special thanks to Mrs. Eleanor R. Seagraves, who encouraged me throughout these years.

INTRODUCTION

On August 24, 2015, Chinese Ambassador Wang Min introduced an extraordinary exhibit of photos at United Nations Headquarters, entitled:  “Remembering for Peace, a Commemoration of the Anniversary of the Victory of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression/The World Anti-fascist War and the Founding of the United Nations.”

One of the most titanic achievements in the history of the world was the victory of China against Japanese fascism in World War II, a victory over almost insurmountable obstacles, and in the deadliest of circumstances..  But this almost superhuman triumph was won by the Chinese people, led by men and women of genius, inspired by the noblest humanitarian spirit, a heroic combination of combustible force which vanquished the most venal, sadistic and genocidal onslaught of the Japanese aggressors.   During the course of their 14 year invasion of China, the Japanese military killing machine left millions of Chinese dead, human beings upon whom they inflicted hideous atrocities prior to murder.  The death toll of Chinese in the war was 35 million.

China’s victory against fascism in World War II was unique in many respects.  The struggle was almost a decade longer than the war in Europe, and China was in the midst of a horrific civil war at the time of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931.  The European nations overrun by fascist Germany and Italy were at least nominally intact at the time of the nazi invasion.  Heroic partisan resistance in France, Italy, Spain, Greece, and elsewhere throughout Europe  contributed to the nazi defeat, but it was the extraordinary power of the Soviet defense against the nazi invasion and the fierce indomitable spirit of the Soviet people that ultimately defeated the nazi war machine:  the Soviet victory at Stalingrad broke the will of the Hitler coalition.  At least 30 million Soviet citizens were killed in the war.

Part 1:   The Split Within the Kuomintang, Sun Yat-sen Betrayed, the 1927 Massacre in Shanghai, the Long March

China, by contrast, was just emerging from the subjugation and humiliation of colonial oppression by European powers, which had carved up China for centuries, deliberately degrading and further impoverishing the Chinese people by the enforced imposition of opium.  The newly liberated  Chinese Republic, established by the revolutionary leader Dr. Sun Yat-sen, was torn apart in 1927, after his death, when the right wing of the Kuomintang betrayed the principles of Dr. Sun, and slaughtered the emerging Communist party in a betrayal so unexpected and horrific that it contained the seeds of one of the deadliest civil wars in history.  Few Communists survived the bloodbath, many of the victims were roasted to death in locomotive boilers.  The  Chinese Communist Party had deplored the destitution of the majority of the Chinese people, and sought to transform China into a more egalitarian society, restoring hope to a broken people.  The decimation of the party hurled the Chinese people back into enslaving poverty, despair and rampant starvation. Chiang Kai-chek, was the Judas who betrayed the Communists in Shanghai in 1927, and then proceeded to betray China throughout the early years of the Japanese invasion.

The Communists who survived the Shanghai massacre began the famous Long March to the Northwest, led by Mao Tse-tung, Chou En-lai, Ju De, Ho Lung, Lin Piao, and so many others, and always with the support of the widow of Sun Yat-sen, the noble Soong Ching-ling, a woman of greatest personal and intellectual integrity, who remained in China, often at peril to her own life, throughout the decades of civil war and Japanese aggression.  Madame Sun Yat-sen was the daughter of Charlie Soong, one of the richest men in China, and, indeed in the world.  It was said of the three Soong sisters that “one loved money, one loved power and one loved China”  Soong Ching-ling dedicated her life to the Chinese people, and to the progressive humanitarian ideals of her husband, China’s first President.

Another feature unique to the Chinese war against fascism was the bitter hatred between two of the major protagonists:  throughout the war and beyond, Soong Ching-ling, a brilliant political analyst, recognized that her brother-in-law, Chiang Kai-chek was plundering the Chinese economy and destroying the nation, and she expressed her disgust with her brother-in-law with ferocious courage.  Indeed, her refusal to align herself with the psychotic anti-Communists earned her a large FBI file in the United States.  She endured poverty, the danger of assassination by her own sister, but she never wavered in her passionate love for the great masses of the Chinese people, and for the leaders who were fighting to salvage China from subjugation by foreign invaders, and the degradation of horrific poverty.  Although she protected Chou-En-lai (upon whose head a price of $60,000 had been placed by Chaing Kai-chek) by arranging for him to travel safely in her own limosine, knowing the anti-communists would stop short of blowing up her own car, and she helped innumerable others in this, and in many other ways, she was unable to prevent the torture and murder of some of her dearest friends, assassinated by her brother-in-law Chiang, and she was the victim of slander and vicious attacks on her impeccable character.

Although the Chinese are charitable to Chiang Kai-chek, attributing to him some effort to repel the Japanese invaders, in fact, Chiang admired Hitler and Mussolini, and there was significant danger that he would join the Axis, allying with Japan to exterminate the Chinese Communists. It was the Chinese Communists who initially fought most fiercely against the Japanese invaders, and after 1936 joined together with the left-wing of the Kuomintang in the newly created United Front, while Chiang Kai-chek preferred “accommodation” with his country’s invaders.

To understand the colossal scope of the victory, it is crucial to place the Chinese struggle against fascism in historic context, following their famous, epic “Long March,” an almost 6,000 mile “strategic retreat,” to sanctuary in the northwest, begun in 1928, following the massacre in Shanghai.  According to some estimates, of the 100,000 Communists who began the Long March, 90,000 perished, some were murdered, some died of illness, or starvation, and at one point, lacking water, the survivors had to drink their own urine.  Heroism is not a strong enough word to describe these Chinese, determined to endure and prevail in the noblest cause, to raise the masses of Chinese people from the hellish depths of poverty and degradation, and endow their lives with human dignity.  Throughout, they were barbarously attacked by the right wing anti-communist forces who had usurped the Kuomintang, ordered by Chiang Kai-chek to attack the Communists instead of fighting the Japanese invaders.

Edgar Snow’s memorable description, from “Red Star Over China” is quoted here at length:

“…suffering, sacrifice, and loyalty, and then through it all, like a flame, an undimmed ardor and undying hope and amazing revolutionary optimism of those thousands of youths who would not admit defeat by man or nature or God or death—all this and more seemed embodied in the history of an odyssey unequaled in modern times.   The journey took them across some of the world’s most difficult trails, unfit for wheeled traffic, and across the high snow mountains and the great rivers of Asia.  It was one long battle from beginning to end.  The crossing of the Tatu River was the most critical single incident of the Long March.  Had the Red army failed there, quite possibly it would have been exterminated….the river flowed faster and faster.  The crossing became more and more difficult…Chiang Kai-shek’s airplanes had found the spot, and heavily bombed it.  Enemy troops were racing up from the southeast, others approached from the north.  A hurried military conference was summoned by Lin Piao.  Ju De, Mao Tse-Tung, Chou En-lai, and P’eng The Huai had by now reached the river.  They took a decision and began to carry it out at once.  Some 400 li to the west of An Jen Ch’ang, where the gorges rise very high and the river flows narrow, deep and swift, there was an iron-chain suspension bridge called the Liu Ting Chiao—the Bridge Fixed by Liu.  It was the last possible crossing of the Tatu east of Tibet…..  If they captured the Liu Ting Chiao the whole army could enter central Szechuan.  If they failed, they would have to retrace their steps through Lololand, re-enter Yunnan, and fight their way westward toward Likiang, on the Tibetan border – a detour of more than a thosand li which few might hope to survive…There could be no slackening of pace, no halfheartedness, no fatigue.  “Victory was life,” said Peng The-huai, “defeat was certain death.”…The Bridge Fixed by Liu was built centuries ago, and in the manner of all bridges of the deep rivers of western China.  Sixteen heavy iron chains, with a span of some 100 yards or more, were stretched across the river, their ends embedded on each side under great piles of cemented rock, beneath the stone bridgeheads.  Thick boards lashed over the chains made the road of the bridge, but upon their arrival  the Reds found that half this wooden flooring had been removed, and before them only the bare iron chains swung to a point midway in the stream.  At the northern bridgehead an enemy machine-gun nest faced them, and behind it were positions held by a regiment of White troops….And who would have thought the Reds would insanely try to cross on the chains alone?  But that was what they did.”

“No time was to be lost.  The bridge must be captured before enemy reinforcements arrived.  Once more vounteers were called for.  One by one Red soldiers stepped forward to risk their lives, and, of those who offered themselves, thirty were chosen.  Hand grenades and Mausers were strapped to their backs, and soon they were swinging out above the boiling river, moving hand over hand, clinging to the iron chains.  Red machine guns barked at enemy redoubts and spattered the bridgehead with bullets.  The enemy replied with machine-gunning of his own, and snipers shot at the Reds tossing high above the water, working slowly toward them.  The first warrior was hit, and dropped into the current below;  a second fell, and then a third.  But as others drew nearer the center, the bridge flooring somewhat protected these dare-to-dies, and most of the enemy bullets glanced off, or ended in the cliffs on the opposite bank.”

“Probably never before had the Szechuanese seen fighters like these –men for whom soldiering was not just a rice bowl, and youths ready to commit suicide to win.  Were they human beings or madmen or gods?  Was their own morale affected?  Did they perhaps not shoot to kill?  Did some of them secretly pray that these men would succeed in their attempt?  At last one Red crawled up over the bridge flooring, uncapped a grenade, and tossed it with perfect aim into the enemy redoubt.  Nationalist officers ordered the rest of the planking torn up.  It was already too late.  More Reds were crawling into sight.  Paraffin was thrown on the planking, and it began to burn.  By then about twenty Reds were moving forward on their hands and knees, tossing grenade after grenade into the enemy machine-nest.”

“Suddenly, on the southern shore, their comrades began to shout with joy. ‘Long live the Red Army!  Long live the Revolution! Long live the heroes of Tatu Ho!’  For the enemy was withdrawing in pell-mell flight.  Running full speed over the remaining planks of the bridge, through the flames licking toward them, the assailants nimbly hopped into the enemy redoubt and turned the abandoned machine gun toward the shore.”

“More Reds now swarmed over the chains, and arrived to help put out the fire and replace the boards.  And soon afterwards the Red division that had crossed at An Jen Ch’ang came into sight, opening a flank attack on the remaining enemy positions, so that in a little while the White troops were wholly in flight—either in flight, that is, or with the Reds, for about a hundred Szechuan soldiers here threw down their rifles and turned to join their pursuers.  In an hour or two the whole army was joyously tramping and singing its way across the River Tatu into Szechuan.  Far overhead angrily and impotently roared the planes of Chiang Kai-shek, and the Reds cried out in delerious challenge to them.  For their distinguished bravery the heroes of An Jen Ch’ang and Liu Ting Chiao were awarded the Gold Star, highest decoration in the Red Army of China.”

“According to data furnished to Edgar Snow by Commander Tso Ch’uan, the Reds crossed eighteen mountain ranges, five of which were perennially snow-capped, and they crossed twenty-four rivers.  They passed through twelve different provinces, occupied sixty-two cities and towns, and broke through enveloping armies of ten different provincial warlords, besides defeating, eluding, or outmaneuvering the various forces of Central Government troops sent against them.  They crossed six different aboriginal districts, and penetrated areas through which no Chinese army had gone for scores of years….However one might feel about the Reds and what they represented politically, it was impossible to deny recognition of their Long March—the Ch’ang Cheng, as they called it—as one of the greatest exploits of military history…  The Communists rationalized, and apparently believed, that they were advancing toward an anti-Japanese front, and this was a psychological factor of great importance.  It helped them turn what might have been a demoralized retreat into a spirited march of victory.  History has subsequently shown that they were right in emphasizing what was undoubtedly the second fundamental reason for their migration:  an advance to a region which they correctly foresaw was to play a determining role in the immediate destinies of China, Japan and Soviet Russia.  The Reds passed through provinces populated by more than 200,000,000 people., freed many slaves, preaching ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’.  Millions of the poor had now seen the Red army and heard it speak, and were no longer afraid of it.  The Reds explained the aims of agrarian revolution and their anti-Japanese policy.” (1)

Finally established in their base at Yenan in the northwest, by 1935 Mao Tse-tung’s Communists organized anti-Japanese resistance, and their heroic patriotism inspired nationwide adulation and support.  By this time, the Kuomintang, originally founded by Sun Yat-sen as a progressive, revolutionary party, had been split apart along the lines of the civil war, with a right wing, reactionary faction led by Chiang Kai-chek, who had usurped ledership of the party, and an increasingly embittered and humiliated progressive left wing of the party, ashamed of its passivity and capitulation to Japan.

At the beginning of the split in the Kuomintang, Madame Sun Yat-sen scathingly denounced her brother-in-law’s usurpation of the party, stating:

“Some members of the party executive are so defining the principles and policies of Dr. Sun Yat-sen that they seem to me to do violence to Dr. Sun’s ideas and ideals….all revolution must be based upon fundamental changes in society;  otherwise it is not a revolution, merely a change of government.  In Dr. Sun’s Third Principle we find his analysis of social values and the places of the labor and peasant classes defined.  These classes become the basis of our strength in our struggle to overthrow imperialism, and cancel the unequal treaties that enslave us, and effectively unify our country.  They are the new pillars for the building of a new, free China….Dr. Sun’s policies are clear.  If certain leaders of the party do not carry them out consistently then they are no longer Dr. Sun’s true followers, and the party is no longer a revolutionary party, but merely a tool in the hands of this or that militarist…a machine, the agent of oppression, a parasite fattening on the present enslaving system.  Revolution in China is inevitable.”

Later Madame Sun Yat-sen, in even more searing words continued:

“The reactionary Nanking Government is combining forces with the imperialists in brutal repressions against the Chinese masses.  Never has the treacherous character of the counter-revolutionary Kuomintang leaders been so shamelessly exposed to the world as today.  Having betrayed the Nationalist revolution, they have inevitably degenerated into imperialist tools and attempted to provoke war with Russia.  But the Chinese masses, undaunted by repression and undeceived by lying propaganda, will fight only on the side of revolution.  Terrorism will only serve to mobilize still broader masses and strengthen our determination to triumph over the present bloody reaction.”

Soon afterward,  Tai Ch’i-tao, one of the leaders of the party’s hard right-wing faction confronted Madame Sun, who retorted:  “rest assured that no one considers the Nanking Government as representative of the Chinese people!  I speak for the suppressed masses of China and you know it.  Is it not disgraceful to set foreign spies against me?  …the Kuomintang was created as a revolutionary organization.  It was never meant to be a Reform Society, otherwise it would be called that.”

Tai asked her:  “May I ask what is your idea of a revolutionist?  There seem to be various definitions.”

Madame Sun replied:

“One who is dissatisfied with the present system and works to create a new social order in the stead that will benefit society at large….I have noticed nothing but the wanton killing of tens of thousands of revolutionary youths who would one day replace the rotten officials.  Nothing, but the hopeless misery of the people, nothing but the selfish struggling of the militarists for power, nothing but extortion upon the already starving masses, in fact, nothing but counter-revolutionary activities…..Do you suppose for one moment that Dr. Sun organized the Kuomintang as a tool for the rich to get still richer and suck the blood of the starving millions of China?  There is only one way to silence me Mr. Tai.  Shoot me or imprison me.  But whatever you do, do it openly like me, don’t surround me with spies.”

Tai replied:  “If you were anyone but Madame Sun, we would cut your head off.”

Madame Sun retorted:  “If you were the revolutionaries you pretend to be, you’d cut it off anyway.”

According to Sterling Seagrave, in “The Soong Dynasty,”:

“When Hitler came to power in 1933, Chiang asked for military help.  Hitler sent von Seeckt and Lieutanant General Georg Wetzell.  The Generalissimo’s determination to fight communists rather than the Japanese was to Hitler’s liking…..Von Seeckt’s strategy brought famine to the mountain populations and his scorched earth tactics devastated the towns and villages.  Estimates of the dead varied widely.  Edmund Clubb said 700,000 KMT troops participated against 150,000 Communist guerrillas.  Edgar Snow said the Communists suffered 60,000 casualties, and that in all a million people were killed or starved to death.  ‘Of that million dead, therefore, at least 940,000 were not ‘Communist bandits.’”

Following the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, according to Seagrave:

“The Chinese were outraged when Chiang Kai-shek inexplicably refused to take arms against the Japanese invaders, merely exhorting his people to ‘maintain a dignified calm.’    Rioters in Shanghai attacked Japanese business establishments and demanded that war be declared.   The Generalissimo’s standing sank to an abysmal low.  There was unsavory gossip that a secret ‘deal’ existed between Chiang and Tokyo—possibly a pact struck originally at the time of the Shanghai Massacre to assure Japanese support for Chiang’s takeover.  According to this rumor, Chiang could not act against Japan, or Tokyo would reveal the secret pact.  Other gossip singled out Chiang’s Defense Minister, General Ho Ying-chin, and Chiang’s chief political advisor, Tai Ch’i-tao, as leaders of a pro-Japanese faction with a suspiciously strong hold on the Generalissimo. It was also whispered that Chiang and members of Madame Chiang’s family were linked to powerful Japanese cartels with industrial and busness holdings in Shanghai….At no point did Chiang Kai-shek challenge the Japanese, although his armies vastly outnumbered the invaders.  He simply cabled an appeal to the League of Nations, then withdrew his government from Nanking to Loyang for safety…. T.V. Soong (Madame Sun Yat-sen’s brother), shaken by what he had observed of the Japanese assault of Chapei,  began to draw some dangerous conclusions.  ‘If China is placed before the alternative of communism and Japanese militarism with its military domination, then China will choose communism.’  (March, 1932)

“While T.V Soong was tryng to persuade Chiang to forget the Chinese Communists and defend China against Japanese aggression, the Japanese, Germans, and Italians were all encouraging Chiang to love Japan and kill Reds. Both Italy and Germany were anxious to cultivate allies.  China was particularly important because it formed the eastern border of Soviet Russia.  It was axiomatic that if Russia could be kept busy on the East, she was less of a threat on the west.  The Generalissimo daily became more enamored of the Nazi military and police state.” (2)

Part 2:  The Xian Incident, The United Front, The Japanese Invasion, The Mobilization of a Nation, Mao Tse-tung, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, The Ultimate Victory of China

The Japanese committed a fatal error early after their invasion of Manchuria, an error so costly it contributed significantly to their ultimate defeat.  Japanese assassins murdered Old Marshal Chang Tso-lin, father of the Young Marshal Chang Hsueh-liang, a fascinating, progressive and extremely intelligent leader of the patriotic left-wing of the Kuomintang.

By 1935 the Young Marshal recognized that the humiliation of his patriotic soldiers and of a great part of the Chinese people, who were shamed by Chiang’s capitulation to the Japanese invaders, and his plundering of the treasure of the nation, was increasing the strength and credibility of the Communists, who, almost alone were fighting the Japanese invaders.  The Young Marshal secretly met with Chou-En-lai to organize the United Front alliance, and he ordered his troops to stop fighting the Communists.

Finally, a strategy which promised to repel the Japanese invaders had been adopted by the alliance between the Communist Party, represented by Chou en-lai, and the Kuomintang, represented by the Young Marshal.  But Chiang Kai-chek raged against this only hope of freeing China. With no alternative to the total enslavement of China, Chang Hsueh-liang executed an action of supreme audacity, a brilliant manoeuver that significantly contributed to turning the tide of battle against Japanese fascism.  On December 12, 1936, the Young Marshal, together with General Yang Hu-cheng, kidnapped Chiang Kai-chek, to compel him to stop killing the Communists, who were the only force resisting Japan, and to order all the guns of the Kuomintang to be turned, instead, against the Japanese invaders.

It is one of the great paradoxes of history that it was the Chinese Communists who saved the life of Chiang Kai-chek, who could so easily have been killed in Xian in 1936, in reprisal for the many thousands of Communists hideously tortured to death at the order of Chiang Kai-chek in 1927 in Shanghai.  But the Communists were, first, humanists, and secondly, perhaps anticipated that the death of Chiang could precipitate a takeover of the Kuomintang by an even more extreme reactionary faction.  Recognizing that the progressive faction of the Kuomintang, represented by the Young Marshall Chang Hsueh-liang would be important allies in combatting the Japanese, they not only spared Chiang’s life, they agreed to set him free, and to allow him to continue as head of the government at Nanking.  General Yang Hu-cheng, who had helped the Young Marshal throughout this momentous “Xian incident” was promised safety by Chiang, but, in violation of this promise, Chiang ultimately ordered the murder of General Yang and his entire family.

1937:   Nanking

As described by Iris Chang in “The Rape of Nanking,”:

“In November 1937, during several high-level military conferences on the issue of defending or abandoning Nanking, Tang, virtually alone among Chiang’s advisers, spoke up in support of providing a strong defense.  …Perhaps Chiang knew that his adviser was in no shape to do battle with the seasoned Japanese military and had appointed him merely to make it appear as if the Chinese were really going to put up a strong defense.  What we do know is that during the latter half of November..Chiang ordered most government officials to move to three cities west of Nanking –Changsha, Hankow, and Chungking—stoking rumors among the few officials left behind that they had been abandoned to whatever fate the Japanese planned for them……On December 8, Chiang Kai-shek, his wife and his adviser fled the city by plane.  There was no longer any doubt.  The Japanese siege of Nanking was about to begin……Even a bad air force is better than no air force.  And that was the situation presented to Tang.  On December 8, the day Chiang and his advisers left the city, so too did the entire Chinese air corps.  Tang fought the next four days without the benefit of any strategic aerial data on Japanese movements, rendering even the expensive Chinese fort guns on the hills and mountains around Nanking much less effective.  Second, the government officials who moved to Chungking took with them most of the sophisticated communications equipment;  thus, one part of the army could not talk to another…..  But worse news awaited Tang, and this time the bad news would come not from the enemy’s successes but from Chiang himself…..Orders had come directly from Chiang, General Gu Zhutong informed Tang, for a massive retreat of Tang’s Forces.  Unable to hold the line and under pressure, Tang complied.  It was a decision that resulted in one of the worst disasters of Chinese military history.”

“Even by the standards of history’s most destructive war, the Rape of Nanking represents one of the worst instances of mass extermination….The Rape of Nanking should be remembered not only for the number of people slaughtered but for the cruel manner in which many met their deaths.  Chinese men were used for bayonet practice and in decapitation contests.  An estimated 20,000-80,000 Chinese women were raped.  Many soldiers went beyond rape to disembowel women, slice off their breasts, nail them alive to walls.  Fathers were forced to rape their daughters, and sons their mothers, as other family members watched.  Not only did live burials, castration, the carving of organs, and the roasting of people become routine, but more diabolical tortures were practiced, such as hanging people by their tongues on iron hooks or burying people to their waists and watching them get torn apart by German shepherds.  So sickening was the spectacle that even the Nazis in the city were horrified, one proclaiming the massacre to be the work of ‘bestial machinery.’”…The Japanese not only disemboweled, decapitated and dismembered victims but performed more excruciating varieties of torture.  Throughout the city they nailed prisoners to wooden boards and ran over them with tanks, crucified them to trees and electrical posts, carved long strips of flesh from them, and used them for bayonet practice.  At least one hundred men reportedly had their eyes gouged out and their noses and ears hacked off before being set on fire.  Another group of two hundred Chinese soldiers and civilians were stripped naked, tied to columns and doors of a school, and then stabbed by zhuizi – special needles with handles on them – in hundreds of points along their bodies, including their mouths, throats and eyes..  The incidents mentioned above are only a fraction of the methods that the Japanese used to torment their victims.  The Japanese saturated victims in acid, impaled babies with bayonets, hung people by their tongues.  One Japanese reporter who later investigated the Rape of Nanking learned that at least one Japanese soldier tore the heart and liver out of a Chinese victim to eat them.  Even genitals, apparently were consumed…” (3)

Japan’s barbarism was universal throughout China.  The account given by Iris Chang in “The Rape of Nanking” is corroborated by the American journalist Harrison Forman, in his “Report From Red China,” published in 1945. (Pages 118-119):

“Several of the Japanese admitted candidly that they had killed civilians, and for this they blamed their army training:  they had been taught that the Chinese were little more than animals and that they themselves were superior beings.  An account ran as follows: ‘In July, 1941 I was assigned to the Military Dog-Training Institute at Changsintien, southwest from Peiping.  One day they brought about fifty Chinese civilians into a high-walled courtyard.  Major Kato ordered us to take positions along the wall, and when we were settled he cried, ‘Sergeant Oisi, begin the attack!’  A little door on the far side of the courtyard opened and a pack of sharp toothed dogs came bounding out and made straight for the throats of the screaming Chinese, who tried to beat them off with their fists.  The spouting blood only made the dogs more ferocious, and they literally tore their victims to pieces.  Eventually all the Chinese lay dead of their mutilations, and the glutted dogs were led away.’”

“Such episodes are terribly hard to read, I know but because they are a part of every soldier’s knowledge in invaded China I continue to quote them.”  “Another account:  ‘In May 1940 the Third Company of the 39^th Battalion, Ninth Independent Mixed Brigade, was garrisoned at Sanchio in Chihsien, Shansi Province.  One day Second Lieutanant Ono said to us: ‘You have never killed anyone yet, so today we shall have some killing practice.  You must not consider the Chinese as a human being, but only as something of rather less value than a dog or a cat.  Be brave!  No one moved.  The lieutenant lost his temper.  ‘You cowards!’ he shouted.  ‘Not one of you is fit to call himself a Japanesee soldier.  So no one will volunteer? Well then, I’ll order you.’ And he began to call out names:  ‘Otani—Furukawa—Ueno—Tajima!’(My God—me too!)  I raised my bayoneted gun with trembling hands, and—directed by the lieutenant’s almost hysterical cursing—I walked slowly toward the terror-stricken Chinese standing beside the pit—the grave he had helped to dig.  In my heart I begged his pardon, and—with my eyes shut and the lieutenant’s curses in my ears—I plunged the bayonet into the petrified Chinese.  When I opened my eyes again, he had slumped down into the pit.  ‘Murderer!  Criminal! I called myself.’

“There were many more such stories.  That such things have occurred not once but thousands of times, I know.” (4)

Among the war crimes committed by Japan during the World War II invasion of China was the establishment of Unit 731, a germ warfare development facility in operation from 1937-1945.  Grotesque experiments of the effects of various germ warfare substances were tested on human prisoners of war from China, Korea, and the USA, who were used as human guinea pigs.  These experiments led to the agonized deaths of many thousands of victims of these monstrous experiments by the Japanese fascists, experiments which had their counterpart in similar sadistic nazi “medical” experiments on human prisoners (called the “Lapins”) in the Ravensbrueck concentration camp, and other barbarous facilities in Germany and their conquered territories.

The unifying leader of China’s resistance to Japan was Mao Tse-tung, one of the greatest political and military strategists in history.  A study of the military writings of Mao Tse-tung from 1928-1949 reveals a brilliant intelligence and a personality of enormous psychological strength.  From May 1938 his focus is exclusively on mobilizing the entire Chinese people to resist the Japanese aggressors, and his writings are concentrated on “Problems of Strategy in Guerrilla War Against Japan,”  “The Central point of the problem is the unity of the entire Chinese people and the building up of a nation-wide anti-Japanese front.  This is what we have long been advocating.”

“Question:  If the war drags on for a long time and Japan is not completely defeated, would the Communist Party agree to the negotiation of a peace with Japan and recognize her rule in Northeastern China?”

“Answer:  ‘No.  Like the people of the whole country the Chinese Communist Party will not allow Japan to retain an inch of Chinese territory.’”

Mao consistently recognized China’s anti-fascist struggle as an integral part of the world anti-fascist war, a life and death struggle between reactionary fascist imperialism and the progressive forces of humanity.  His extraordinary insight into the significance of developments at every stage of the war, and the amazing accuracy of his analysis of events during each battle proved of vital importance both tactically and strategically in planning successful military campaigns against the Japanese.  His profound understanding of the needs and the will of the Chinese people enabled him to win the allegiance of hundreds of millions of Chinese patriots, to coordinate the struggle effectively with the progressive and patriotic sectors of the Kuomintang, and ultimately to lead the Chinese nation to victory against the Japanese invasion.

In a series of lectures he delivered at the Yenan Association for the Study of the War of Resistance against Japan, Mao Tse-tung delivered a relentlessly honest appraisal of the war being confronted, and with perfect dialectic clarity described and predicted the course of the war:

“41.  In the three stages the changes in relative strength will proceed along the following lines.  In the first stage the enemy is superior and we are inferior in strength.  With regard to our inferiority we must reckon on changes of two different kinds from the eve of the War of Resistance to the end of this stage.  The first kind is a change for the worse. China’s original inferiority will be aggravated by war losses, namely decreases in territory, population, economic strength, military strength and cultural institutions.  Toward the end of the first stage the decrease will probably be considerable, especially on the economic side.  This point will be exploited by some people as a basis for their theories of national subjugation and of compromise.  But the second kind of change, the change for the better must also be noted.  It includes the experience gained in the war, the progress made by the armed forces, the political progress, the mobilization of the people, the development of culture in a new direction, the emergence of guerrilla warfare, the increase in international support, etc.  What is on the downgrade in the first stage is the old quantity and the old quality, the manifestations being mainly quantitative.  What is on the upgrade is the new quantity and the new quality, the manifestations being mainly qualitative.  It is the second kind of change that provides a basis for our ability to fight a protracted war and win final victory.” (5)

On October 12, 1942 Mao Tse-tung wrote:  “The battle of Stalingrad is not only the turning point of the Soviet-German war, or even of the present anti-fascist world war, it is the turning point in the history of all mankind.”  By this point Soviet soldiers, American soldiers, Canadian soldiers, and what was virtually an international brigade had joined the Chinese resistance.

This year, on May 8, 2015, The New York Times published a disgraceful falsification of the reality of the Chinese struggle against fascism, stating:  “it was not the Communists who bore the brunt of the fighting against the Japanese during World War II, when 14-20 million Chinese died.  Rather, it was the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek backed by the United States and General Joseph W. Stilwell who deployed most of the troops against the Japanese.”  The New York Times’  fraudulent allegation is refuted by General Joseph Stilwell, himself, in two words:  when asked how much Chiang Kai-chek had contributed to the war against Japan, General Stilwell replied that Chiang Kai-chek’s contribution to the struggle against Japanese fascism was “practically zero.”  General Stilwell’s words are corroborated by virtually every major Western reporter in China during the war, as well as most Chinese.  (The sole exception is the Luce publications, which are outrageous propaganda organs which fired some of the most brilliant and knowledgeable journalists who were courageous enough to confront Luce with the truth).  It was almost universally recognized that only after Chiang Kai-chek was kidnapped by the Young Marshall Chang Hsuieh-liang in Xian, in 1936, and forced to fight against the Japanese invaders, that Chiang grudgingly turned his guns, at least temporarily, against the Japanese, diverting them from targeting the Chinese Communists, who were, until Xian, the only ones fighting the Japanese invaders.

In fact, the Communists wholeheartedly honored their commitment to the United Front, changing their name to the Eighth Route Army, and on September 25, 1937 defeated the Japanese in Pinxinguan, Shanxi, winning the first major battle against the Japanese aggressors.

By November, 1937 Shanghai fell to Japan, and by March 1940 a puppet government allied with Japan was established in Nanjing, with Wang Ting Wei as president, taking command of millions of Kuomintang troops.  In August, 1940, the Eighth Route Army fought the puppet government in Nanjing, for six months, and sent a half-million men to battle the Japanese in North China, where they fought 1,824 battles against the Japanese invaders.  By September 1940, Japan, Germany and Italy formed the Axis, and following the Japanese attack against Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941,  Franklin Delano Roosevelt committed the United States to supporting China against Japan.  World War II had exploded, threatening to enslave the world by fascism,  jeopardizing the very survival of humanity.

 Throughout these years, Japan had continued their onslaught against China, from the Marco Polo Bridge Incident that “officially” began the Sino-Japanese war in 1937, to the occupation of Shanxi, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Hebei, meeting fierce resistance by United Front forces, and especially the Eighth Route Army.  The atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese in Nanking in 1937 were systematically inflicted upon the Chinese in the other territories invaded by the Japanese military.

In a remarkable new book entitled “Roosevelt and Stalin,” written by the Bennington College graduate Susan Butler, she documents:

“Stalin now voiced doubts about the question of Chinese participation.  Roosevelt answered to Stalin that he recognized China’s weakness.  (No one knew better than he just how unstable China was, or how weak Chiang’s government.  In 1938 Roosevelt had arranged to give Chiang a $100 million loan because his government had run out of money.  Things had not improved at Cairo, Chiang had just asked him for a $1 billion gold loan.)  FDR was concerned that if he pushed Chiang too hard, and didn’t give him enough support, the generalissimo might make a deal with Japan. (He wasn’t worried that the Chinese Communists would ever surrender.)  But it was the future of the United Nations—always uppermost in his mind—that most worried him, for if the United Nations was to work, it needed China.  As Roosevelt wrote, ‘I really feel that it is a triumph to have got the four hundred and twenty-five million Chinese in on the Allied side.  This will be very useful 25 or 50 years hence, even though China cannot contribute much military or naval support for the moment.’  He now told Stalin he was thinking of the already astoundingly large Chinese population, whose sheer numbers would ensure it a major role no matter what its government;  ‘After all China was a nation of 400 million people, and it was better to have them as friends rather than as a potential source of trouble.’…Roosevelt touched on other subjects he had discussed with Chiang, most notably that there had been a promise that Chinese Communists would be taken into the Chinese government before there were national elections and that elections would take place as soon as possible after the war.” (6)

After the war, Chiang violated his promise to Roosevelt.  As Sterling Seagrave comments:  “Chiang was husbanding his resources for a renewal of his war with the Communists.  By 1940-1941 Chiang’s sphere of influence had shrunk while the Communists’ area had expanded at the expense of the Japanese.  In the Red area soldiers, guerrillas and peasants were fighting furiously against Japan, and with results.  But each time the Reds enlarged their perimeter and repelled the Japanese, Chiang had his army attack the Communists instead of the Japanese.  It was a war within a war.”

In 1941 the Communist New Fourth Army, under Kuomintang command, was planning to retake control of the Japanese-held railway from Nanking to Shanghai.  General Ku Chu t’ung, a collaborator with the Japanese, sabotaged this plan, arrested the Kuomintang general in command of the New Fourth Army, and the butchery of 5,000 Kuomintang soldiers ensued, resulting in the de facto collapse of the United Front.

By 1943 many Chinese and Americans protested that Roosevelt’s lend-lease assistance to China was being diverted and stolen, from the war against Japan, by reactionaries.  Among the voices of protest were Madame Sun Yat-sen, John Service, John Gunther, and other reliable witnesses.  The Luce publications were simultaneously feeding the American public the drivel of anti-Communist propaganda, deceiving the American public about the reality of the Sino-Japanese war, and thereby undermining the effectiveness of the remaining United Front resistance to Japanese aggression.  But through it all, despite the de-facto resumption of the civil war and the attempted demolition of China from both without, and collaborators within, the Chinese people, led by the United Front of Communists with the Progressive faction of the Kuomintang, and supported by the huge majority of impoverished, patriotic Chinese, endured the impossible and the overcame the unthinkable, and ultimately victoriously celebrated the end of the war against Japanese fascism when, on September 9,  1945 in Nanjing, Yasuji Okamura, representing Japan, signed the “instrument of surrender” to China.

CONCLUSION

Following the defeat of Japanese fascism, the civil war in China resumed on a scale of ferocity and horror seldom matched in human history.  Finally, ultimate victory was won by the Communists, whose humanitarian policies and arduous commitment to justice won them the loyalty of the masses of the Chinese people.  On October 1, 1949 the People’s Republic of China was established, completing the work of Sun Yat-sen begun a half century before.  Dr. Sun’s widow, Soong Ching-ling stood on the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Beijing, celebrating the Liberation, next to Mao-Tse-tung, Chou En-lai, Ju De, and the other heroes who fought for “liberty, equality, fraternity,” hailed by hundreds of millions of Chinese.  It was a celebration of almost a century of virtually superhuman struggle and dedication to social and economic justice.   The dream of Sun Yat-sen.  that  China would emerge from the enslavement and shame of colonial domination, and the impoverishment of millions of its citizens, to hold the status of a great world power has today become a reality

NOTES                                                                                                                                                                                          

(1)     Edgar Snow, “Red Star Over China,” Published by Grove Press, Inc.  Bantam Edition, March 1978, excerpts quoted from Snow’s account of the Long March, pages 186-206.

(2)    Sterling Seagrave, “The Soong Dynasty,” Published by Harper and Row, 1986, excerpts quoted from pages 290, 303-304, 320.

(3)    Iris Chang, “The Rape of Nanking,” Published by Penguin Books, 1998, excerpts quoted from pages 68-74, 87-88.

(4)    Harrison Forman, “Report From Red China,” Published by Henry Holt and Company, 1945, excerpts quoted from pages 118-119.

(5)    Selected Military Writings of Mao Tse-Tung, Published by Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1972, excerpt quoted from page 215.

(6)    Susan Butler, “Roosevelt and Stalin,” Published by Alfred A. Knopf, 2015, excerpts quoted from pages 95-96.

Author’s note: This article is dedicated to Li Baodong, China’s Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs, who inspired this work, and to Jeanette Himmel, China’s brave, beautiful daughter.  With special thanks to Mrs. Eleanor R. Seagraves, who encouraged me throughout these years.

INTRODUCTION

On August 24, 2015, Chinese Ambassador Wang Min introduced an extraordinary exhibit of photos at United Nations Headquarters, entitled:  “Remembering for Peace, a Commemoration of the Anniversary of the Victory of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression/The World Anti-fascist War and the Founding of the United Nations.”

One of the most titanic achievements in the history of the world was the victory of China against Japanese fascism in World War II, a victory over almost insurmountable obstacles, and in the deadliest of circumstances..  But this almost superhuman triumph was won by the Chinese people, led by men and women of genius, inspired by the noblest humanitarian spirit, a heroic combination of combustible force which vanquished the most venal, sadistic and genocidal onslaught of the Japanese aggressors.   During the course of their 14 year invasion of China, the Japanese military killing machine left millions of Chinese dead, human beings upon whom they inflicted hideous atrocities prior to murder.  The death toll of Chinese in the war was 35 million.

China’s victory against fascism in World War II was unique in many respects.  The struggle was almost a decade longer than the war in Europe, and China was in the midst of a horrific civil war at the time of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931.  The European nations overrun by fascist Germany and Italy were at least nominally intact at the time of the nazi invasion.  Heroic partisan resistance in France, Italy, Spain, Greece, and elsewhere throughout Europe  contributed to the nazi defeat, but it was the extraordinary power of the Soviet defense against the nazi invasion and the fierce indomitable spirit of the Soviet people that ultimately defeated the nazi war machine:  the Soviet victory at Stalingrad broke the will of the Hitler coalition.  At least 30 million Soviet citizens were killed in the war.

Part 1:   The Split Within the Kuomintang, Sun Yat-sen Betrayed, the 1927 Massacre in Shanghai, the Long March

China, by contrast, was just emerging from the subjugation and humiliation of colonial oppression by European powers, which had carved up China for centuries, deliberately degrading and further impoverishing the Chinese people by the enforced imposition of opium.  The newly liberated  Chinese Republic, established by the revolutionary leader Dr. Sun Yat-sen, was torn apart in 1927, after his death, when the right wing of the Kuomintang betrayed the principles of Dr. Sun, and slaughtered the emerging Communist party in a betrayal so unexpected and horrific that it contained the seeds of one of the deadliest civil wars in history.  Few Communists survived the bloodbath, many of the victims were roasted to death in locomotive boilers.  The  Chinese Communist Party had deplored the destitution of the majority of the Chinese people, and sought to transform China into a more egalitarian society, restoring hope to a broken people.  The decimation of the party hurled the Chinese people back into enslaving poverty, despair and rampant starvation. Chiang Kai-chek, was the Judas who betrayed the Communists in Shanghai in 1927, and then proceeded to betray China throughout the early years of the Japanese invasion.

The Communists who survived the Shanghai massacre began the famous Long March to the Northwest, led by Mao Tse-tung, Chou En-lai, Ju De, Ho Lung, Lin Piao, and so many others, and always with the support of the widow of Sun Yat-sen, the noble Soong Ching-ling, a woman of greatest personal and intellectual integrity, who remained in China, often at peril to her own life, throughout the decades of civil war and Japanese aggression.  Madame Sun Yat-sen was the daughter of Charlie Soong, one of the richest men in China, and, indeed in the world.  It was said of the three Soong sisters that “one loved money, one loved power and one loved China”  Soong Ching-ling dedicated her life to the Chinese people, and to the progressive humanitarian ideals of her husband, China’s first President.

Another feature unique to the Chinese war against fascism was the bitter hatred between two of the major protagonists:  throughout the war and beyond, Soong Ching-ling, a brilliant political analyst, recognized that her brother-in-law, Chiang Kai-chek was plundering the Chinese economy and destroying the nation, and she expressed her disgust with her brother-in-law with ferocious courage.  Indeed, her refusal to align herself with the psychotic anti-Communists earned her a large FBI file in the United States.  She endured poverty, the danger of assassination by her own sister, but she never wavered in her passionate love for the great masses of the Chinese people, and for the leaders who were fighting to salvage China from subjugation by foreign invaders, and the degradation of horrific poverty.  Although she protected Chou-En-lai (upon whose head a price of $60,000 had been placed by Chaing Kai-chek) by arranging for him to travel safely in her own limosine, knowing the anti-communists would stop short of blowing up her own car, and she helped innumerable others in this, and in many other ways, she was unable to prevent the torture and murder of some of her dearest friends, assassinated by her brother-in-law Chiang, and she was the victim of slander and vicious attacks on her impeccable character.

Although the Chinese are charitable to Chiang Kai-chek, attributing to him some effort to repel the Japanese invaders, in fact, Chiang admired Hitler and Mussolini, and there was significant danger that he would join the Axis, allying with Japan to exterminate the Chinese Communists. It was the Chinese Communists who initially fought most fiercely against the Japanese invaders, and after 1936 joined together with the left-wing of the Kuomintang in the newly created United Front, while Chiang Kai-chek preferred “accommodation” with his country’s invaders.

To understand the colossal scope of the victory, it is crucial to place the Chinese struggle against fascism in historic context, following their famous, epic “Long March,” an almost 6,000 mile “strategic retreat,” to sanctuary in the northwest, begun in 1928, following the massacre in Shanghai.  According to some estimates, of the 100,000 Communists who began the Long March, 90,000 perished, some were murdered, some died of illness, or starvation, and at one point, lacking water, the survivors had to drink their own urine.  Heroism is not a strong enough word to describe these Chinese, determined to endure and prevail in the noblest cause, to raise the masses of Chinese people from the hellish depths of poverty and degradation, and endow their lives with human dignity.  Throughout, they were barbarously attacked by the right wing anti-communist forces who had usurped the Kuomintang, ordered by Chiang Kai-chek to attack the Communists instead of fighting the Japanese invaders.

Edgar Snow’s memorable description, from “Red Star Over China” is quoted here at length:

“…suffering, sacrifice, and loyalty, and then through it all, like a flame, an undimmed ardor and undying hope and amazing revolutionary optimism of those thousands of youths who would not admit defeat by man or nature or God or death—all this and more seemed embodied in the history of an odyssey unequaled in modern times.   The journey took them across some of the world’s most difficult trails, unfit for wheeled traffic, and across the high snow mountains and the great rivers of Asia.  It was one long battle from beginning to end.  The crossing of the Tatu River was the most critical single incident of the Long March.  Had the Red army failed there, quite possibly it would have been exterminated….the river flowed faster and faster.  The crossing became more and more difficult…Chiang Kai-shek’s airplanes had found the spot, and heavily bombed it.  Enemy troops were racing up from the southeast, others approached from the north.  A hurried military conference was summoned by Lin Piao.  Ju De, Mao Tse-Tung, Chou En-lai, and P’eng The Huai had by now reached the river.  They took a decision and began to carry it out at once.  Some 400 li to the west of An Jen Ch’ang, where the gorges rise very high and the river flows narrow, deep and swift, there was an iron-chain suspension bridge called the Liu Ting Chiao—the Bridge Fixed by Liu.  It was the last possible crossing of the Tatu east of Tibet…..  If they captured the Liu Ting Chiao the whole army could enter central Szechuan.  If they failed, they would have to retrace their steps through Lololand, re-enter Yunnan, and fight their way westward toward Likiang, on the Tibetan border – a detour of more than a thosand li which few might hope to survive…There could be no slackening of pace, no halfheartedness, no fatigue.  “Victory was life,” said Peng The-huai, “defeat was certain death.”…The Bridge Fixed by Liu was built centuries ago, and in the manner of all bridges of the deep rivers of western China.  Sixteen heavy iron chains, with a span of some 100 yards or more, were stretched across the river, their ends embedded on each side under great piles of cemented rock, beneath the stone bridgeheads.  Thick boards lashed over the chains made the road of the bridge, but upon their arrival  the Reds found that half this wooden flooring had been removed, and before them only the bare iron chains swung to a point midway in the stream.  At the northern bridgehead an enemy machine-gun nest faced them, and behind it were positions held by a regiment of White troops….And who would have thought the Reds would insanely try to cross on the chains alone?  But that was what they did.”

“No time was to be lost.  The bridge must be captured before enemy reinforcements arrived.  Once more vounteers were called for.  One by one Red soldiers stepped forward to risk their lives, and, of those who offered themselves, thirty were chosen.  Hand grenades and Mausers were strapped to their backs, and soon they were swinging out above the boiling river, moving hand over hand, clinging to the iron chains.  Red machine guns barked at enemy redoubts and spattered the bridgehead with bullets.  The enemy replied with machine-gunning of his own, and snipers shot at the Reds tossing high above the water, working slowly toward them.  The first warrior was hit, and dropped into the current below;  a second fell, and then a third.  But as others drew nearer the center, the bridge flooring somewhat protected these dare-to-dies, and most of the enemy bullets glanced off, or ended in the cliffs on the opposite bank.”

“Probably never before had the Szechuanese seen fighters like these –men for whom soldiering was not just a rice bowl, and youths ready to commit suicide to win.  Were they human beings or madmen or gods?  Was their own morale affected?  Did they perhaps not shoot to kill?  Did some of them secretly pray that these men would succeed in their attempt?  At last one Red crawled up over the bridge flooring, uncapped a grenade, and tossed it with perfect aim into the enemy redoubt.  Nationalist officers ordered the rest of the planking torn up.  It was already too late.  More Reds were crawling into sight.  Paraffin was thrown on the planking, and it began to burn.  By then about twenty Reds were moving forward on their hands and knees, tossing grenade after grenade into the enemy machine-nest.”

“Suddenly, on the southern shore, their comrades began to shout with joy. ‘Long live the Red Army!  Long live the Revolution! Long live the heroes of Tatu Ho!’  For the enemy was withdrawing in pell-mell flight.  Running full speed over the remaining planks of the bridge, through the flames licking toward them, the assailants nimbly hopped into the enemy redoubt and turned the abandoned machine gun toward the shore.”

“More Reds now swarmed over the chains, and arrived to help put out the fire and replace the boards.  And soon afterwards the Red division that had crossed at An Jen Ch’ang came into sight, opening a flank attack on the remaining enemy positions, so that in a little while the White troops were wholly in flight—either in flight, that is, or with the Reds, for about a hundred Szechuan soldiers here threw down their rifles and turned to join their pursuers.  In an hour or two the whole army was joyously tramping and singing its way across the River Tatu into Szechuan.  Far overhead angrily and impotently roared the planes of Chiang Kai-shek, and the Reds cried out in delerious challenge to them.  For their distinguished bravery the heroes of An Jen Ch’ang and Liu Ting Chiao were awarded the Gold Star, highest decoration in the Red Army of China.”

“According to data furnished to Edgar Snow by Commander Tso Ch’uan, the Reds crossed eighteen mountain ranges, five of which were perennially snow-capped, and they crossed twenty-four rivers.  They passed through twelve different provinces, occupied sixty-two cities and towns, and broke through enveloping armies of ten different provincial warlords, besides defeating, eluding, or outmaneuvering the various forces of Central Government troops sent against them.  They crossed six different aboriginal districts, and penetrated areas through which no Chinese army had gone for scores of years….However one might feel about the Reds and what they represented politically, it was impossible to deny recognition of their Long March—the Ch’ang Cheng, as they called it—as one of the greatest exploits of military history…  The Communists rationalized, and apparently believed, that they were advancing toward an anti-Japanese front, and this was a psychological factor of great importance.  It helped them turn what might have been a demoralized retreat into a spirited march of victory.  History has subsequently shown that they were right in emphasizing what was undoubtedly the second fundamental reason for their migration:  an advance to a region which they correctly foresaw was to play a determining role in the immediate destinies of China, Japan and Soviet Russia.  The Reds passed through provinces populated by more than 200,000,000 people., freed many slaves, preaching ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’.  Millions of the poor had now seen the Red army and heard it speak, and were no longer afraid of it.  The Reds explained the aims of agrarian revolution and their anti-Japanese policy.” (1)

Finally established in their base at Yenan in the northwest, by 1935 Mao Tse-tung’s Communists organized anti-Japanese resistance, and their heroic patriotism inspired nationwide adulation and support.  By this time, the Kuomintang, originally founded by Sun Yat-sen as a progressive, revolutionary party, had been split apart along the lines of the civil war, with a right wing, reactionary faction led by Chiang Kai-chek, who had usurped ledership of the party, and an increasingly embittered and humiliated progressive left wing of the party, ashamed of its passivity and capitulation to Japan.

At the beginning of the split in the Kuomintang, Madame Sun Yat-sen scathingly denounced her brother-in-law’s usurpation of the party, stating:

“Some members of the party executive are so defining the principles and policies of Dr. Sun Yat-sen that they seem to me to do violence to Dr. Sun’s ideas and ideals….all revolution must be based upon fundamental changes in society;  otherwise it is not a revolution, merely a change of government.  In Dr. Sun’s Third Principle we find his analysis of social values and the places of the labor and peasant classes defined.  These classes become the basis of our strength in our struggle to overthrow imperialism, and cancel the unequal treaties that enslave us, and effectively unify our country.  They are the new pillars for the building of a new, free China….Dr. Sun’s policies are clear.  If certain leaders of the party do not carry them out consistently then they are no longer Dr. Sun’s true followers, and the party is no longer a revolutionary party, but merely a tool in the hands of this or that militarist…a machine, the agent of oppression, a parasite fattening on the present enslaving system.  Revolution in China is inevitable.”

Later Madame Sun Yat-sen, in even more searing words continued:

“The reactionary Nanking Government is combining forces with the imperialists in brutal repressions against the Chinese masses.  Never has the treacherous character of the counter-revolutionary Kuomintang leaders been so shamelessly exposed to the world as today.  Having betrayed the Nationalist revolution, they have inevitably degenerated into imperialist tools and attempted to provoke war with Russia.  But the Chinese masses, undaunted by repression and undeceived by lying propaganda, will fight only on the side of revolution.  Terrorism will only serve to mobilize still broader masses and strengthen our determination to triumph over the present bloody reaction.”

Soon afterward,  Tai Ch’i-tao, one of the leaders of the party’s hard right-wing faction confronted Madame Sun, who retorted:  “rest assured that no one considers the Nanking Government as representative of the Chinese people!  I speak for the suppressed masses of China and you know it.  Is it not disgraceful to set foreign spies against me?  …the Kuomintang was created as a revolutionary organization.  It was never meant to be a Reform Society, otherwise it would be called that.”

Tai asked her:  “May I ask what is your idea of a revolutionist?  There seem to be various definitions.”

Madame Sun replied:

“One who is dissatisfied with the present system and works to create a new social order in the stead that will benefit society at large….I have noticed nothing but the wanton killing of tens of thousands of revolutionary youths who would one day replace the rotten officials.  Nothing, but the hopeless misery of the people, nothing but the selfish struggling of the militarists for power, nothing but extortion upon the already starving masses, in fact, nothing but counter-revolutionary activities…..Do you suppose for one moment that Dr. Sun organized the Kuomintang as a tool for the rich to get still richer and suck the blood of the starving millions of China?  There is only one way to silence me Mr. Tai.  Shoot me or imprison me.  But whatever you do, do it openly like me, don’t surround me with spies.”

Tai replied:  “If you were anyone but Madame Sun, we would cut your head off.”

Madame Sun retorted:  “If you were the revolutionaries you pretend to be, you’d cut it off anyway.”

According to Sterling Seagrave, in “The Soong Dynasty,”:

“When Hitler came to power in 1933, Chiang asked for military help.  Hitler sent von Seeckt and Lieutanant General Georg Wetzell.  The Generalissimo’s determination to fight communists rather than the Japanese was to Hitler’s liking…..Von Seeckt’s strategy brought famine to the mountain populations and his scorched earth tactics devastated the towns and villages.  Estimates of the dead varied widely.  Edmund Clubb said 700,000 KMT troops participated against 150,000 Communist guerrillas.  Edgar Snow said the Communists suffered 60,000 casualties, and that in all a million people were killed or starved to death.  ‘Of that million dead, therefore, at least 940,000 were not ‘Communist bandits.’”

Following the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, according to Seagrave:

“The Chinese were outraged when Chiang Kai-shek inexplicably refused to take arms against the Japanese invaders, merely exhorting his people to ‘maintain a dignified calm.’    Rioters in Shanghai attacked Japanese business establishments and demanded that war be declared.   The Generalissimo’s standing sank to an abysmal low.  There was unsavory gossip that a secret ‘deal’ existed between Chiang and Tokyo—possibly a pact struck originally at the time of the Shanghai Massacre to assure Japanese support for Chiang’s takeover.  According to this rumor, Chiang could not act against Japan, or Tokyo would reveal the secret pact.  Other gossip singled out Chiang’s Defense Minister, General Ho Ying-chin, and Chiang’s chief political advisor, Tai Ch’i-tao, as leaders of a pro-Japanese faction with a suspiciously strong hold on the Generalissimo. It was also whispered that Chiang and members of Madame Chiang’s family were linked to powerful Japanese cartels with industrial and busness holdings in Shanghai….At no point did Chiang Kai-shek challenge the Japanese, although his armies vastly outnumbered the invaders.  He simply cabled an appeal to the League of Nations, then withdrew his government from Nanking to Loyang for safety…. T.V. Soong (Madame Sun Yat-sen’s brother), shaken by what he had observed of the Japanese assault of Chapei,  began to draw some dangerous conclusions.  ‘If China is placed before the alternative of communism and Japanese militarism with its military domination, then China will choose communism.’  (March, 1932)

“While T.V Soong was tryng to persuade Chiang to forget the Chinese Communists and defend China against Japanese aggression, the Japanese, Germans, and Italians were all encouraging Chiang to love Japan and kill Reds. Both Italy and Germany were anxious to cultivate allies.  China was particularly important because it formed the eastern border of Soviet Russia.  It was axiomatic that if Russia could be kept busy on the East, she was less of a threat on the west.  The Generalissimo daily became more enamored of the Nazi military and police state.” (2)

Part 2:  The Xian Incident, The United Front, The Japanese Invasion, The Mobilization of a Nation, Mao Tse-tung, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, The Ultimate Victory of China

The Japanese committed a fatal error early after their invasion of Manchuria, an error so costly it contributed significantly to their ultimate defeat.  Japanese assassins murdered Old Marshal Chang Tso-lin, father of the Young Marshal Chang Hsueh-liang, a fascinating, progressive and extremely intelligent leader of the patriotic left-wing of the Kuomintang.

By 1935 the Young Marshal recognized that the humiliation of his patriotic soldiers and of a great part of the Chinese people, who were shamed by Chiang’s capitulation to the Japanese invaders, and his plundering of the treasure of the nation, was increasing the strength and credibility of the Communists, who, almost alone were fighting the Japanese invaders.  The Young Marshal secretly met with Chou-En-lai to organize the United Front alliance, and he ordered his troops to stop fighting the Communists.

Finally, a strategy which promised to repel the Japanese invaders had been adopted by the alliance between the Communist Party, represented by Chou en-lai, and the Kuomintang, represented by the Young Marshal.  But Chiang Kai-chek raged against this only hope of freeing China. With no alternative to the total enslavement of China, Chang Hsueh-liang executed an action of supreme audacity, a brilliant manoeuver that significantly contributed to turning the tide of battle against Japanese fascism.  On December 12, 1936, the Young Marshal, together with General Yang Hu-cheng, kidnapped Chiang Kai-chek, to compel him to stop killing the Communists, who were the only force resisting Japan, and to order all the guns of the Kuomintang to be turned, instead, against the Japanese invaders.

It is one of the great paradoxes of history that it was the Chinese Communists who saved the life of Chiang Kai-chek, who could so easily have been killed in Xian in 1936, in reprisal for the many thousands of Communists hideously tortured to death at the order of Chiang Kai-chek in 1927 in Shanghai.  But the Communists were, first, humanists, and secondly, perhaps anticipated that the death of Chiang could precipitate a takeover of the Kuomintang by an even more extreme reactionary faction.  Recognizing that the progressive faction of the Kuomintang, represented by the Young Marshall Chang Hsueh-liang would be important allies in combatting the Japanese, they not only spared Chiang’s life, they agreed to set him free, and to allow him to continue as head of the government at Nanking.  General Yang Hu-cheng, who had helped the Young Marshal throughout this momentous “Xian incident” was promised safety by Chiang, but, in violation of this promise, Chiang ultimately ordered the murder of General Yang and his entire family.

1937:   Nanking

As described by Iris Chang in “The Rape of Nanking,”:

“In November 1937, during several high-level military conferences on the issue of defending or abandoning Nanking, Tang, virtually alone among Chiang’s advisers, spoke up in support of providing a strong defense.  …Perhaps Chiang knew that his adviser was in no shape to do battle with the seasoned Japanese military and had appointed him merely to make it appear as if the Chinese were really going to put up a strong defense.  What we do know is that during the latter half of November..Chiang ordered most government officials to move to three cities west of Nanking –Changsha, Hankow, and Chungking—stoking rumors among the few officials left behind that they had been abandoned to whatever fate the Japanese planned for them……On December 8, Chiang Kai-shek, his wife and his adviser fled the city by plane.  There was no longer any doubt.  The Japanese siege of Nanking was about to begin……Even a bad air force is better than no air force.  And that was the situation presented to Tang.  On December 8, the day Chiang and his advisers left the city, so too did the entire Chinese air corps.  Tang fought the next four days without the benefit of any strategic aerial data on Japanese movements, rendering even the expensive Chinese fort guns on the hills and mountains around Nanking much less effective.  Second, the government officials who moved to Chungking took with them most of the sophisticated communications equipment;  thus, one part of the army could not talk to another…..  But worse news awaited Tang, and this time the bad news would come not from the enemy’s successes but from Chiang himself…..Orders had come directly from Chiang, General Gu Zhutong informed Tang, for a massive retreat of Tang’s Forces.  Unable to hold the line and under pressure, Tang complied.  It was a decision that resulted in one of the worst disasters of Chinese military history.”

“Even by the standards of history’s most destructive war, the Rape of Nanking represents one of the worst instances of mass extermination….The Rape of Nanking should be remembered not only for the number of people slaughtered but for the cruel manner in which many met their deaths.  Chinese men were used for bayonet practice and in decapitation contests.  An estimated 20,000-80,000 Chinese women were raped.  Many soldiers went beyond rape to disembowel women, slice off their breasts, nail them alive to walls.  Fathers were forced to rape their daughters, and sons their mothers, as other family members watched.  Not only did live burials, castration, the carving of organs, and the roasting of people become routine, but more diabolical tortures were practiced, such as hanging people by their tongues on iron hooks or burying people to their waists and watching them get torn apart by German shepherds.  So sickening was the spectacle that even the Nazis in the city were horrified, one proclaiming the massacre to be the work of ‘bestial machinery.’”…The Japanese not only disemboweled, decapitated and dismembered victims but performed more excruciating varieties of torture.  Throughout the city they nailed prisoners to wooden boards and ran over them with tanks, crucified them to trees and electrical posts, carved long strips of flesh from them, and used them for bayonet practice.  At least one hundred men reportedly had their eyes gouged out and their noses and ears hacked off before being set on fire.  Another group of two hundred Chinese soldiers and civilians were stripped naked, tied to columns and doors of a school, and then stabbed by zhuizi – special needles with handles on them – in hundreds of points along their bodies, including their mouths, throats and eyes..  The incidents mentioned above are only a fraction of the methods that the Japanese used to torment their victims.  The Japanese saturated victims in acid, impaled babies with bayonets, hung people by their tongues.  One Japanese reporter who later investigated the Rape of Nanking learned that at least one Japanese soldier tore the heart and liver out of a Chinese victim to eat them.  Even genitals, apparently were consumed…” (3)

Japan’s barbarism was universal throughout China.  The account given by Iris Chang in “The Rape of Nanking” is corroborated by the American journalist Harrison Forman, in his “Report From Red China,” published in 1945. (Pages 118-119):

“Several of the Japanese admitted candidly that they had killed civilians, and for this they blamed their army training:  they had been taught that the Chinese were little more than animals and that they themselves were superior beings.  An account ran as follows: ‘In July, 1941 I was assigned to the Military Dog-Training Institute at Changsintien, southwest from Peiping.  One day they brought about fifty Chinese civilians into a high-walled courtyard.  Major Kato ordered us to take positions along the wall, and when we were settled he cried, ‘Sergeant Oisi, begin the attack!’  A little door on the far side of the courtyard opened and a pack of sharp toothed dogs came bounding out and made straight for the throats of the screaming Chinese, who tried to beat them off with their fists.  The spouting blood only made the dogs more ferocious, and they literally tore their victims to pieces.  Eventually all the Chinese lay dead of their mutilations, and the glutted dogs were led away.’”

“Such episodes are terribly hard to read, I know but because they are a part of every soldier’s knowledge in invaded China I continue to quote them.”  “Another account:  ‘In May 1940 the Third Company of the 39^th Battalion, Ninth Independent Mixed Brigade, was garrisoned at Sanchio in Chihsien, Shansi Province.  One day Second Lieutanant Ono said to us: ‘You have never killed anyone yet, so today we shall have some killing practice.  You must not consider the Chinese as a human being, but only as something of rather less value than a dog or a cat.  Be brave!  No one moved.  The lieutenant lost his temper.  ‘You cowards!’ he shouted.  ‘Not one of you is fit to call himself a Japanesee soldier.  So no one will volunteer? Well then, I’ll order you.’ And he began to call out names:  ‘Otani—Furukawa—Ueno—Tajima!’(My God—me too!)  I raised my bayoneted gun with trembling hands, and—directed by the lieutenant’s almost hysterical cursing—I walked slowly toward the terror-stricken Chinese standing beside the pit—the grave he had helped to dig.  In my heart I begged his pardon, and—with my eyes shut and the lieutenant’s curses in my ears—I plunged the bayonet into the petrified Chinese.  When I opened my eyes again, he had slumped down into the pit.  ‘Murderer!  Criminal! I called myself.’

“There were many more such stories.  That such things have occurred not once but thousands of times, I know.” (4)

Among the war crimes committed by Japan during the World War II invasion of China was the establishment of Unit 731, a germ warfare development facility in operation from 1937-1945.  Grotesque experiments of the effects of various germ warfare substances were tested on human prisoners of war from China, Korea, and the USA, who were used as human guinea pigs.  These experiments led to the agonized deaths of many thousands of victims of these monstrous experiments by the Japanese fascists, experiments which had their counterpart in similar sadistic nazi “medical” experiments on human prisoners (called the “Lapins”) in the Ravensbrueck concentration camp, and other barbarous facilities in Germany and their conquered territories.

The unifying leader of China’s resistance to Japan was Mao Tse-tung, one of the greatest political and military strategists in history.  A study of the military writings of Mao Tse-tung from 1928-1949 reveals a brilliant intelligence and a personality of enormous psychological strength.  From May 1938 his focus is exclusively on mobilizing the entire Chinese people to resist the Japanese aggressors, and his writings are concentrated on “Problems of Strategy in Guerrilla War Against Japan,”  “The Central point of the problem is the unity of the entire Chinese people and the building up of a nation-wide anti-Japanese front.  This is what we have long been advocating.”

“Question:  If the war drags on for a long time and Japan is not completely defeated, would the Communist Party agree to the negotiation of a peace with Japan and recognize her rule in Northeastern China?”

“Answer:  ‘No.  Like the people of the whole country the Chinese Communist Party will not allow Japan to retain an inch of Chinese territory.’”

Mao consistently recognized China’s anti-fascist struggle as an integral part of the world anti-fascist war, a life and death struggle between reactionary fascist imperialism and the progressive forces of humanity.  His extraordinary insight into the significance of developments at every stage of the war, and the amazing accuracy of his analysis of events during each battle proved of vital importance both tactically and strategically in planning successful military campaigns against the Japanese.  His profound understanding of the needs and the will of the Chinese people enabled him to win the allegiance of hundreds of millions of Chinese patriots, to coordinate the struggle effectively with the progressive and patriotic sectors of the Kuomintang, and ultimately to lead the Chinese nation to victory against the Japanese invasion.

In a series of lectures he delivered at the Yenan Association for the Study of the War of Resistance against Japan, Mao Tse-tung delivered a relentlessly honest appraisal of the war being confronted, and with perfect dialectic clarity described and predicted the course of the war:

“41.  In the three stages the changes in relative strength will proceed along the following lines.  In the first stage the enemy is superior and we are inferior in strength.  With regard to our inferiority we must reckon on changes of two different kinds from the eve of the War of Resistance to the end of this stage.  The first kind is a change for the worse. China’s original inferiority will be aggravated by war losses, namely decreases in territory, population, economic strength, military strength and cultural institutions.  Toward the end of the first stage the decrease will probably be considerable, especially on the economic side.  This point will be exploited by some people as a basis for their theories of national subjugation and of compromise.  But the second kind of change, the change for the better must also be noted.  It includes the experience gained in the war, the progress made by the armed forces, the political progress, the mobilization of the people, the development of culture in a new direction, the emergence of guerrilla warfare, the increase in international support, etc.  What is on the downgrade in the first stage is the old quantity and the old quality, the manifestations being mainly quantitative.  What is on the upgrade is the new quantity and the new quality, the manifestations being mainly qualitative.  It is the second kind of change that provides a basis for our ability to fight a protracted war and win final victory.” (5)

On October 12, 1942 Mao Tse-tung wrote:  “The battle of Stalingrad is not only the turning point of the Soviet-German war, or even of the present anti-fascist world war, it is the turning point in the history of all mankind.”  By this point Soviet soldiers, American soldiers, Canadian soldiers, and what was virtually an international brigade had joined the Chinese resistance.

This year, on May 8, 2015, The New York Times published a disgraceful falsification of the reality of the Chinese struggle against fascism, stating:  “it was not the Communists who bore the brunt of the fighting against the Japanese during World War II, when 14-20 million Chinese died.  Rather, it was the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek backed by the United States and General Joseph W. Stilwell who deployed most of the troops against the Japanese.”  The New York Times’  fraudulent allegation is refuted by General Joseph Stilwell, himself, in two words:  when asked how much Chiang Kai-chek had contributed to the war against Japan, General Stilwell replied that Chiang Kai-chek’s contribution to the struggle against Japanese fascism was “practically zero.”  General Stilwell’s words are corroborated by virtually every major Western reporter in China during the war, as well as most Chinese.  (The sole exception is the Luce publications, which are outrageous propaganda organs which fired some of the most brilliant and knowledgeable journalists who were courageous enough to confront Luce with the truth).  It was almost universally recognized that only after Chiang Kai-chek was kidnapped by the Young Marshall Chang Hsuieh-liang in Xian, in 1936, and forced to fight against the Japanese invaders, that Chiang grudgingly turned his guns, at least temporarily, against the Japanese, diverting them from targeting the Chinese Communists, who were, until Xian, the only ones fighting the Japanese invaders.

In fact, the Communists wholeheartedly honored their commitment to the United Front, changing their name to the Eighth Route Army, and on September 25, 1937 defeated the Japanese in Pinxinguan, Shanxi, winning the first major battle against the Japanese aggressors.

By November, 1937 Shanghai fell to Japan, and by March 1940 a puppet government allied with Japan was established in Nanjing, with Wang Ting Wei as president, taking command of millions of Kuomintang troops.  In August, 1940, the Eighth Route Army fought the puppet government in Nanjing, for six months, and sent a half-million men to battle the Japanese in North China, where they fought 1,824 battles against the Japanese invaders.  By September 1940, Japan, Germany and Italy formed the Axis, and following the Japanese attack against Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941,  Franklin Delano Roosevelt committed the United States to supporting China against Japan.  World War II had exploded, threatening to enslave the world by fascism,  jeopardizing the very survival of humanity.

 Throughout these years, Japan had continued their onslaught against China, from the Marco Polo Bridge Incident that “officially” began the Sino-Japanese war in 1937, to the occupation of Shanxi, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Hebei, meeting fierce resistance by United Front forces, and especially the Eighth Route Army.  The atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese in Nanking in 1937 were systematically inflicted upon the Chinese in the other territories invaded by the Japanese military.

In a remarkable new book entitled “Roosevelt and Stalin,” written by the Bennington College graduate Susan Butler, she documents:

“Stalin now voiced doubts about the question of Chinese participation.  Roosevelt answered to Stalin that he recognized China’s weakness.  (No one knew better than he just how unstable China was, or how weak Chiang’s government.  In 1938 Roosevelt had arranged to give Chiang a $100 million loan because his government had run out of money.  Things had not improved at Cairo, Chiang had just asked him for a $1 billion gold loan.)  FDR was concerned that if he pushed Chiang too hard, and didn’t give him enough support, the generalissimo might make a deal with Japan. (He wasn’t worried that the Chinese Communists would ever surrender.)  But it was the future of the United Nations—always uppermost in his mind—that most worried him, for if the United Nations was to work, it needed China.  As Roosevelt wrote, ‘I really feel that it is a triumph to have got the four hundred and twenty-five million Chinese in on the Allied side.  This will be very useful 25 or 50 years hence, even though China cannot contribute much military or naval support for the moment.’  He now told Stalin he was thinking of the already astoundingly large Chinese population, whose sheer numbers would ensure it a major role no matter what its government;  ‘After all China was a nation of 400 million people, and it was better to have them as friends rather than as a potential source of trouble.’…Roosevelt touched on other subjects he had discussed with Chiang, most notably that there had been a promise that Chinese Communists would be taken into the Chinese government before there were national elections and that elections would take place as soon as possible after the war.” (6)

After the war, Chiang violated his promise to Roosevelt.  As Sterling Seagrave comments:  “Chiang was husbanding his resources for a renewal of his war with the Communists.  By 1940-1941 Chiang’s sphere of influence had shrunk while the Communists’ area had expanded at the expense of the Japanese.  In the Red area soldiers, guerrillas and peasants were fighting furiously against Japan, and with results.  But each time the Reds enlarged their perimeter and repelled the Japanese, Chiang had his army attack the Communists instead of the Japanese.  It was a war within a war.”

In 1941 the Communist New Fourth Army, under Kuomintang command, was planning to retake control of the Japanese-held railway from Nanking to Shanghai.  General Ku Chu t’ung, a collaborator with the Japanese, sabotaged this plan, arrested the Kuomintang general in command of the New Fourth Army, and the butchery of 5,000 Kuomintang soldiers ensued, resulting in the de facto collapse of the United Front.

By 1943 many Chinese and Americans protested that Roosevelt’s lend-lease assistance to China was being diverted and stolen, from the war against Japan, by reactionaries.  Among the voices of protest were Madame Sun Yat-sen, John Service, John Gunther, and other reliable witnesses.  The Luce publications were simultaneously feeding the American public the drivel of anti-Communist propaganda, deceiving the American public about the reality of the Sino-Japanese war, and thereby undermining the effectiveness of the remaining United Front resistance to Japanese aggression.  But through it all, despite the de-facto resumption of the civil war and the attempted demolition of China from both without, and collaborators within, the Chinese people, led by the United Front of Communists with the Progressive faction of the Kuomintang, and supported by the huge majority of impoverished, patriotic Chinese, endured the impossible and the overcame the unthinkable, and ultimately victoriously celebrated the end of the war against Japanese fascism when, on September 9,  1945 in Nanjing, Yasuji Okamura, representing Japan, signed the “instrument of surrender” to China.

CONCLUSION

Following the defeat of Japanese fascism, the civil war in China resumed on a scale of ferocity and horror seldom matched in human history.  Finally, ultimate victory was won by the Communists, whose humanitarian policies and arduous commitment to justice won them the loyalty of the masses of the Chinese people.  On October 1, 1949 the People’s Republic of China was established, completing the work of Sun Yat-sen begun a half century before.  Dr. Sun’s widow, Soong Ching-ling stood on the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Beijing, celebrating the Liberation, next to Mao-Tse-tung, Chou En-lai, Ju De, and the other heroes who fought for “liberty, equality, fraternity,” hailed by hundreds of millions of Chinese.  It was a celebration of almost a century of virtually superhuman struggle and dedication to social and economic justice.   The dream of Sun Yat-sen.  that  China would emerge from the enslavement and shame of colonial domination, and the impoverishment of millions of its citizens, to hold the status of a great world power has today become a reality

NOTES                                                                                                                                                                                          

(1)     Edgar Snow, “Red Star Over China,” Published by Grove Press, Inc.  Bantam Edition, March 1978, excerpts quoted from Snow’s account of the Long March, pages 186-206.

(2)    Sterling Seagrave, “The Soong Dynasty,” Published by Harper and Row, 1986, excerpts quoted from pages 290, 303-304, 320.

(3)    Iris Chang, “The Rape of Nanking,” Published by Penguin Books, 1998, excerpts quoted from pages 68-74, 87-88.

(4)    Harrison Forman, “Report From Red China,” Published by Henry Holt and Company, 1945, excerpts quoted from pages 118-119.

(5)    Selected Military Writings of Mao Tse-Tung, Published by Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1972, excerpt quoted from page 215.

(6)    Susan Butler, “Roosevelt and Stalin,” Published by Alfred A. Knopf, 2015, excerpts quoted from pages 95-96.

Damascus, SANA-President Bashar al-Assad gave an interview to Italian TV channel RAI UNO. Below you will find the full transcript of this interview:

Question 1: Mr. President, thanks for the opportunity of talking to you. Let’s start from Paris. How did you react to the news coming from Paris?

President Assad: We can start by saying it’s a horrible crime, and at the same time it’s a sad event when you hear about innocents being killed without any reason and for nothing, and we understand in Syria the meaning of losing a dear member of the family or a dear friend, or anyone you know, in such a horrible crime. We’ve been suffering from that for the past five years. We feel for the French as we feel for the Lebanese a few days before that, and for the Russians regarding the airplane that’s been shot down over Sinai, and for the Yemenis maybe, but does the world, especially the West, feel for those people, or only for the French? Do they feel for the Syrians that have been suffering for five years from the same kind of terrorism? We cannot politicize feeling, feeling is not about the nationality, it’s about the human in general.

Question 2: There’s Daesh behind that. But from here, from this point of view, from here from Damascus, how strong Daesh is? How do you think we can fight terrorists on the ground?

President al-Assad: ISIS has no incubator in Syria 

President Assad: If you want to talk about the strength of Daesh, the first thing you have to ask is how much incubator, real incubator, natural incubator, you have in a certain society. Till this moment, I can tell you Daesh doesn’t have the natural incubator, social incubator, within Syria. This is something very good and very assuring, but at the same time, if it’s becoming chronic, this kind of ideology can change the society.

Question 3: Yes, but some of the terrorists were trained here, in Syria, just a few kilometers from here. What does it mean?

President Assad: That’s by the support of the Turks and the Saudi and Qatari and of course the Western policy that supported the terrorists in different ways since the beginning of the crisis, of course, but that’s not the issue. First of all, if you don’t have the incubator, you shouldn’t worry, but second, they can be strong as long as they have strong support from different states, whether Middle Eastern states or Western states.

Question 4: Mr. President, there are speculations in the West, that say that you were one of who supported Daesh in the beginning of the crisis, because of dividing the opposition, because of dividing the rebels. How do you react?

President al-Assad:Al Qaeda was created by the Americans

President Assad: Actually, according to what some American officials said, including Hillary Clinton, Al Qaeda was created by the Americans with the help of Saudi Wahabi money and ideology, and of course, many other officials said the same in the United States. And ISIS and al-Nusra, they are offshoots of Al Qaeda. Regarding ISIS, it started in Iraq, it was established in Iraq in 2006, and the leader was al-Zarqawi who was killed by the American forces then, so it was established under the American supervision in Iraq, and the leader of ISIS today, who is called Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, he was in the American prisons, and he was put in New York in their prisons, and he was released by them. So, it wasn’t in Syria, it didn’t start in Syria, it started in Iraq, and it started before that in Afghanistan according to what they said, and Tony Blair recently said that yes, the Iraqi war helped create ISIS. So, their confession is the most important evidence regarding your question.

Question 5: Mr. President, watching the map of Syria, it seems that Syrian-Iraqi borders doesn’t exist anymore. Which part of Syria do you really control at the moment?

President Assad: If you’re talking geographically, it’s changing every day, but the most important thing is how much of the population are under the government’s control. Actually, most of the area that’s being controlled by the terrorists has been evacuated either by the terrorists, or because the people fled to the government control. There’s the question of how much of the Syrian population still supports the government? Militarily, you can win ground, you can lose some area, but anyway the army cannot exist everywhere in Syria. But looking to the map that you described, and what I see from time to time in the Western media, when they show you that the government controls 50% or less of their ground, actually 50 or 60% of Syria is empty ground, where you don’t have anyone, so they put it under the control of the terrorists, while it’s empty, fully empty.

Question 6: Yes, I spoke about the borders between Syria and Iraq.

President Assad: Exactly. After Damascus toward Iraq, it’s empty space, it’s empty area, so you cannot talk about its control. But regarding the borders, it’s only related to the terrorists; it’s related to the governments that supported the terrorists like the Turkish government first of all, and the Jordanian government. Both governments support terrorists, that’s why you have loose borders, because when you want to have controlled borders, it needs to be controlled from both sides, not from one sides.

Question 7: Well, the last weekend there have been two very important meetings talking about the situation in Syria, in Vienna and in Antalya. Most countries are talking about the transition in Syria. There are different positions, but basically most of the countries agree with the idea of elections in 18 months. But they also say that in the meantime, basically, you should leave. What’s your position about that?

President al-Assad: The main part of Vienna statement is that everything regarding the political process is about what the Syrians are going to agree upon

President Assad: No, in the statement there is nothing regarding the president. The main part of Vienna is that everything that is going to happen regarding the political process is about what the Syrians are going to agree upon, so the most output of that phrase is about the constitution, and the president, any president, should come to his position and leave that position according to constitutional procedures, not to the opinion of any Western power or country. So, as long as you are talking about the consensus of the Syrians, forget about the rest of Vienna. Regarding the schedule, that depends on the agreement that we can reach as Syrians. If we don’t reach it in 18 months, so what? You have many things that I think are trivial now, or let’s say, not essential. The most important part is that we’re going to sit with each other then we’re going to put our schedule and our plan as Syrians.

Question 8: I understand, but do you consider it an option, the possibility to leave power? I mean, do you imagine an electoral process without you?

President Assad: It depends. What do you mean by electoral? Do you mean at the parliament or the president?

Question 9: At the parliament.

President Assad: At the parliament, of course, there’s going to be parliamentarian elections because the parliamentarian elections is going to show which power of the political powers in Syria has real weight among the Syrian people, which one has real grassroots. Now, anyone can say “I’m opposition.” What does it mean, how do you translate it? Through the elections, and the seat that they can get in the parliament will tell how much they can have in the coming government, for example. Of course, that will be after having a new constitution. I’m just putting a proposal, for example, now, I’m not giving you the thing that we have agreed upon yet.

Question 10: And about the presidential [elections]?

President Assad: The presidential… if the Syrians, in their dialogue, they wanted to have presidential elections, there’s nothing called a red line, for example, regarding this. But it’s not my decision. It should be about what the consensus is among the Syrians.

Question 11:But, there could be someone else that you trust, participating in the process of elections instead of you.

President Assad: Someone I trust? What do you mean by someone I trust?

Question 12: I mean someone else in which you trust that can make this job.

President Assad: [laughs] Yeah, but it looks like talking about my private property, so I can go and bring someone to put in my place. It’s not a private property; it’s a national issue. A national issue, only the Syrians can choose someone they trust. Doesn’t matter if I trust someone or not. Whoever the Syrians trust will be in that position.

President al-Assad: Terrorists are main obstacle of any real political advancement

Question 13: Let me see if I understood well. Which is the real timetable, which is exactly your timetable, I mean the realistic timetable to get out of this crisis?

President Assad: The timetable, if you want to talk about schedule, this timetable starts after starting defeating terrorism. Before that, there will be no point in deciding any timetable, because you cannot achieve anything politically while you have the terrorists taking over many areas in Syria, and they’re going to be – they are already they main obstacle of any real political advancement. If we talk after that, one year and a half to two years is enough for any transition. It’s enough. I mean if you want to talk about first of all having a new constitution, then referendum, then parliamentarian elections, then any kind of other procedure, whether presidential or any other thing, doesn’t matter. It won’t take more than two years.

Question 14: There’s something else about the opposition; in these years, you said that you couldn’t consider as an opposition those who are fighting. Did you change your mind?

President Assad: We can apply that to your country; you don’t accept any opposition that are holding machineguns in your country. That’s the case in every other country. Whoever holds a machinegun and terrorizes people and destroys private or public properties or kills innocents and whoever is a terrorist, he’s not opposition. Opposition is a political term. Opposition could be defined not through your own opinion; it could be defined only through the elections, through the ballot box.

Question 15: So what do you consider opposition at the moment? Political opposition?

President Assad: I mean, ask the Syrians who they consider opposition. If they elect them, they are the real opposition. So that’s why I said we can define, we can give definition to this after the elections. But if you want to talk about my own opinion, you can be opposition when you have Syrian grassroots, when you belong only to your country. You cannot be opposition while you are formed as person or as entity in the foreign ministry of another country or in the intelligence building of other countries. You cannot be a puppet, you cannot be a surrogate mercenary; you can only be a real Syrian.

President al-Assad: Every Syrian citizen who leaves this country, is a loss to Syria

Question 16:Now in Europe, in Italy, we see so many Syrians coming, Syrian refugees, they are refugees. What would you like to tell these fleeing people, to you escaping people?

President Assad: Of course I would say everyone who leaves this country, is a loss to Syria. That’s for sure, and we feel sad, we feel the suffering, because every refugee in Syria has a long story of suffering within Syria, and that’s what we should deal with by asking the question “why did they leave?” For many reasons. The first one, the direct threat by terrorists. The second one is the influence of terrorists in destroying many of the infrastructure and affecting the livelihood of those people. But the third one, which is as important as the influence of terrorists, is the Western embargo on Syria. Many of those, if you ask him “do you want to go back to Syria” he wants to go back right away, but how can he go back to Syria while the basics of his life, his livelihood, has been affected dramatically, so he cannot stay in Syria. The embargo influence of the West and the terrorist influence has put those people between the devil and the deep blue sea.

Question 17: But don’t you feel in any way responsible for what has happened to your people?

President Assad: You mean myself?

Question 18: Yes.

President Assad: The only thing that we did since the beginning of the crisis is fighting terrorism and supporting dialogue. What else can we do? Does anyone oppose the dialogue? Does anyone oppose fighting terrorism? If you want to talk about the details, and about propaganda in the West, we shouldn’t waste our time. It’s just propaganda, because the problem from the very beginning with the West is that they don’t need this president, they want this government to fail and collapse, so they can change it. Everybody knows that. The whole Western game is regime-change, regardless of the meaning of regime; we don’t have a regime, we have a state, but I’m talking about their concept and their principle. So, you can blame whoever you want, but the main blame is on the West who supported those terrorists who created ISIS in Syria and created al-Nusra because of the umbrella that they gave to those terrorist organizations.

Question 19: So no responsibility?

President Assad: Of course, as a Syrian, no, I’m not saying that we don’t do mistakes. You have mistakes on the tactical level that you do every day in your work, and you have strategies. And the strategies, we adopted these two approaches, but on the tactical level, you do many mistakes every day. Every Syrian is responsible for what happened. We are responsible as Syrians, when we allow these terrorists to come to Syria, because of some Syrians who have the same mentality, and some Syrians who accepted to be puppets to the Gulf states and to the West. Of course we’re taking responsibility, while if you want to talk about my responsibility, it’s something you talk about details. I mean it’s difficult to judge now.

Question 20: I would like to ask you: how was your trip to Moscow?

President Assad: It was a trip to discuss the military situation, because it happened nearly two weeks after the Russians started the airstrikes, and to discuss the political process, because it was, again, a few days before Vienna 1. It was very fruitful, because the Russians understand very well this region, because they have historical relations, they have embassies, they have all kinds of necessary relations and means to play a role. So, I can describe it by fruitful visit.

Question 21: From Rome, from the Vatican, the Pope said that killing in the name of God is a blasphemy. And the question, first of all, is this war really a war of religion?

President Assad: No, actually, no. It’s not a religious war. It’s between people who deviated from the real religion, mainly of course, Islam, towards extremism, which we don’t consider as part of our religion. It’s a war between the real Muslims and the other extremists. This is the core of the war today. Of course, they give it different titles; war against Christians, war about other sects. This is only headlines the extremists use to promote their war, but the real issue is the war between them and the rest of the Muslims, the majority who are mainly moderate.

Question 22: Even if they kill in the name of God? They kill saying Allah Akbar?

President Assad: Exactly, that’s how they can promote their war. That’s why they use these holy words or phrase, in order to convince the other simple people in this region that they are fighting for Allah, for God, which is not true. And some of them, they use it with knowing that this is not true, and some of them are ignorant and they believe that this is a war for God. That’s the deviation, that’s why I said it’s a deviation; they are people who deviated from real Islam with knowing or without knowing.

Question 23: And what about the future of Christian people in Syria, in your country?

President Assad: Actually, this region, I think most of the Italians and many in the West know that this is a moderate region, a moderate society, especially Syria, whether politically or socially and culturally, and the main reason why we have this moderation is because we have this diversity in sects and ethnicities. But one of the most important factors is the Christian factor in the history of Syria, especially after Islam came to this region14 centuriesago. So, without them, this region will move more toward extremism. So, their future is important, but you cannot separate it from the future of the Syrians, it’s not separated. I mean, if you have a good future for the Syrians, the future of every component of our society will be good, and vice versa.

Question 24: Okay, so there’s a future for them here, because there seems to be a target in this war on Christian people.

President Assad: Not really, actually the number of Muslims that have been killed in Syria is much, much more than the Christians, so you cannot say there’s a target. Again, it’s only used by the extremists in order to promote their war, that it’s against the “atheists” and it’s for God and so on, but in reality, no.

Question 25: Mr. President, before the end of this interview, let me ask you one more question. How do you see your future? Do you consider the more important the future of Syria, or you staying in power?

President Assad: It’s self-evident; the future of Syria is everything for us. I mean, even my future cannot be separate, as a citizen. As a citizen, if my country is not safe, I cannot be safe. If it’s not good, I cannot have a good future, so that’s self-evident. But again, if you want to put them against each other, it’s like saying “if the president is here, the future of Syria is bad. If the president leaves, the future of Syria is good.” That’s the Western propaganda. Actually, that’s not the case within Syria. Within Syria, you have people who support that president, you have people who don’t support that president, so when my future is good for Syria, if the Syrian people want me as president, the future will be good. If the Syrian people don’t want me, and I want to cling to power, this is where for me being as president is bad. So it’s very simple. So, we don’t have to follow the Western propaganda to answer according to that propaganda, because it’s disconnected from reality. I have to answer you according to our reality.

Journalist: Okay, thank you, Mr. President. Thank for this opportunity.

President Assad: Thank you for coming to Syria.

In uncertain times, “cash is king,” but central bankers are systematically moving to eliminate that option. Is it really about stimulating the economy? Or is there some deeper, darker threat afoot?

Remember those old ads showing a senior couple lounging on a warm beach, captioned “Let your money work for you”? Or the scene in Mary Poppins where young Michael is being advised to put his tuppence in the bank, so that it can compound into “all manner of private enterprise,” including “bonds, chattels, dividends, shares, shipyards, amalgamations . . . .”?

That may still work if you’re a Wall Street banker, but if you’re an ordinary saver with your money in the bank, you may soon be paying the bank to hold your funds rather than the reverse.

Four European central banks – the European Central Bank, the Swiss National Bank, Sweden’s Riksbank, and Denmark’s Nationalbank – have now imposed negative interest rates on the reserves they hold for commercial banks; and discussion has turned to whether it’s time to pass those costs on to consumers. The Bank of Japan and the Federal Reserve are still at ZIRP (Zero Interest Rate Policy), but several Fed officials have also begun calling for NIRP (negative rates).

The stated justification for this move is to stimulate “demand” by forcing consumers to withdraw their money and go shopping with it. When an economy is struggling, it is standard practice for a central bank to cut interest rates, making saving less attractive. This is supposed to boost spending and kick-start an economic recovery.

That is the theory, but central banks have already pushed the prime rate to zero, and still their economies are languishing. To the uninitiated observer, that means the theory is wrong and needs to be scrapped. But not to our intrepid central bankers, who are now experimenting with pushing rates below zero.

Locking the Door to Bank Runs: The Cashless Society

The problem with imposing negative interest on savers, as explained in the UK Telegraph, is that “there’s a limit, what economists called the ‘zero lower bound’. Cut rates too deeply, and savers would end up facing negative returns. In that case, this could encourage people to take their savings out of the bank and hoard them in cash. This could slow, rather than boost, the economy.”

Again, to the ordinary observer, this would seem to signal that negative interest rates won’t work and the approach needs to be abandoned. But not to our undaunted central bankers, who have chosen instead to plug this hole in their leaky theory by moving to eliminate cash as an option. If your only choice is to keep your money in a digital account in a bank and spend it with a bank card or credit card or checks, negative interest can be imposed with impunity. This is already happening in Sweden, and other countries are close behind. As reported on Wolfstreet.com:

The War on Cash is advancing on all fronts. One region that has hogged the headlines with its war against physical currency is Scandinavia. Sweden became the first country to enlist its own citizens as largely willing guinea pigs in a dystopian economic experiment: negative interest rates in a cashless society. As Credit Suisse reports, no matter where you go or what you want to purchase, you will find a small ubiquitous sign saying “Vi hanterar ej kontanter” (“We don’t accept cash”) . . . .

The Lesson of Gesell’s Decaying Currency

Whether negative interests will actually stimulate an economic recovery, however, remains in doubt. Proponents of the theory cite Silvio Gesell and the Wörgl experiment of the 1930s. As explained by Charles Eisenstein in Sacred Economics:

The pioneering theoretician of negative-interest money was the German-Argentinean businessman Silvio Gesell, who called it “free-money” (Freigeld) . . . . The system he proposed in his 1906 masterwork, The Natural Economic Order, was to use paper currency to which a stamp costing a small fraction of the note’s value had to be affixed periodically. This effectively attached a maintenance cost to monetary wealth.

. . . [In 1932], the depressed town of Wörgl, Austria, issued its own stamp scrip inspired by Gesell . . . . The Wörgl currency was by all accounts a huge success. Roads were paved, bridges built, and back taxes were paid. The unemployment rate plummeted and the economy thrived, attracting the attention of nearby towns. Mayors and officials from all over the world began to visit Wörgl until, as in Germany, the central government abolished the Wörgl currency and the town slipped back into depression.

. . . [T]he Wörgl currency bore a demurrage rate [a maintenance charge for carrying money] of 1 percent per month. Contemporary accounts attributed to this the very rapid velocity of the currencies’ circulation. Instead of generating interest and growing, accumulation of wealth became a burden, much like possessions are a burden to the nomadic hunter-gatherer. As theorized by Gesell, money afflicted with loss-inducing properties ceased to be preferred over any other commodity as a store of value.

There is a critical difference, however, between the Wörgl currency and the modern-day central bankers’ negative interest scheme. The Wörgl government first issued its new “free money,” getting it into the local economy and increasing purchasing power, before taxing a portion of it back. And the proceeds of the stamp tax went to the city, to be used for the benefit of the taxpayers. As Eisenstein observes:

It is impossible to prove . . . that the rejuvenating effects of these currencies came from demurrage and not from the increase in the money supply . . . .

Today’s central bankers are proposing to tax existing money, diminishing spending power without first building it up. And the interest will go to private bankers, not to the local government.

Consumers today already have very little discretionary money. Imposing negative interest without first adding new money into the economy means they will have even less money to spend. This would be more likely to prompt them to save their scarce funds than to go on a shopping spree.

People are not keeping their money in the bank today for the interest (which is already nearly non-existent). It is for the convenience of writing checks, issuing bank cards, and storing their money in a “safe” place. They would no doubt be willing to pay a modest negative interest for that convenience; but if the fee got too high, they might pull their money out and save it elsewhere. The fee itself, however, would not drive them to buy things they did not otherwise need.

Is There a Bigger Threat than a Sluggish Economy?

The scheme to impose negative interest and eliminate cash seems so unlikely to stimulate the economy that one wonders if that is the real motive. Stopping tax evaders and terrorists (real or presumed) are other proposed justifications for going cashless. Economist Martin Armstrong goes further and suggests that the goal is to gain totalitarian control over our money. In a cashless society, our savings can be taxed away by the banks; the threat of bank runs by worried savers can be eliminated; and the too-big-to-fail banks can be assured that ample deposits will be there when they need to confiscate them through bail-ins to stay afloat.

And that may be the real threat on the horizon: a major derivatives default that hits the largest banks, those that do the vast majority of derivatives trading. On November 10, 2015, the Wall Street Journal reported the results of a study requested by Senator Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Elijah Cummings, involving the cost to taxpayers of the rollback of the Dodd-Frank Act in the “cromnibus” spending bill last December. As Jessica Desvarieux put it on the Real News Network, “the rule reversal allows banks to keep $10 trillion in swaps trades on their books, which taxpayers could be on the hook for if the banks need another bailout.”

The promise of Dodd-Frank, however, was that there would be “no more taxpayer bailouts.” Instead, insolvent systemically-risky banks were supposed to “bail in” (confiscate) the money of their creditors, including their depositors (the largest class of creditor of any bank). That could explain the push to go cashless. By quietly eliminating the possibility of cash withdrawals, the central bank can make sure the deposits are there to be grabbed when disaster strikes.

If central bankers are seriously trying to stimulate the economy with negative interest rates, they need to repeat the Wörgl experiment in full. They need to first get some new money into the economy, money that goes directly to the consumers and local businessmen who will spend it. This could be achieved in a number of ways: with a national dividend; or by using quantitative easing for infrastructure or low-interest loans to states; or by funding free tuition for higher education. Consumers will hit the malls when they have some new discretionary income to spend.

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.

The recent massacres in Paris have so far produced predictable emotional reactions. President Hollande called for national unity and intensified bombardment in Syria. Citizens lit candles and commemorated the victims. Observers continued to mull over the content of the Koran, deploring “the alienation of Muslims from Judeo-Christian civilization”. The focus has shifted to essentialism, to cultural and religious nature of the perpetrators.

This kind of thought was in fashion back in the 19^th century when the social sciences were mobilized to buttress and justify Western colonial expansion. Today it appears incongruous how colonialism triumphed under the banner of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. Invasions of Asia and Africa were billed as mission civilisatrice or the White Man’s Burden. Those who resisted had to be pacified, i.e. imprisoned, exiled or killed. It was Britain’s air force, not Saddam Hussein, who was the first to use chemical weapons against civilians in Iraq. The purpose was to frighten people into submission, in other words, to terrorize them. State terrorism is no less terrorism that its home-spun variety.

Western colonialism did not disappear peacefully as a result of soul-searching in European capitals. Massacres in India, Algeria, the Congo and Kenya, to name just a few, were perpetrated by the declining powers before they grudgingly conceded freedom to their colonial possessions. These memories are still alive.

Moreover, Western aggression did not end with colonialism. British, French and American intelligence services have fomented coups d’état, military uprisings and other forms of regime change ever since. They have created local outlets, usually recruited from the most reactionary and fanatical circles. This is the origin of Al-Qaida, ISIL and Hamas, to name just a few of the organizations sponsored by neo-colonialists intent on crushing modern secular forces opposed to Western domination by means of mobilizing local allies under the banner of Islam.

In recent years, Western interventions destroyed secular and modernized countries (Iraq, Syria and Libya), while allying themselves with retrograde obscurantist regimes such as Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. These latter countries have become generous clients of Western weapons industry. France under the socialist government has recorded the highest industrial growth in the arms sector, which accounts for one fourth of the country’s exports. The orders for French arms grew by 43% in 2013. Predictably, the shares of weapon-producing companies rose in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris. Export of Western democracy has been a lot less successful than export of arms.

Since 2012 France has armed islamists opposed to the government of Syria. American intelligence estimates that much of the French arsenal supplied to “moderate rebels” ended up in the hands of ISIS. However, this did not cool down France’s determination to overthrow the government in Damascus. It is in this context that one should understand, not justify, the recent outbursts of terrorism.

In order to uproot it one must recognize its origin and causes. Unfortunately, Western leaders often ignore causes and focus on symptoms of violence. Self-pity and self-righteousness prevail. “They hate our values and our freedoms” is the common emotional refrain echoing the rhetoric of 9/11.

One of the few leaders to react rationally to 9/11 was the then Prime Minister of Canada Jean Chrétien. He saw in the attacks on New York and Washington a reaction to Western greed and arrogance: “You cannot exercise your powers to the point of humiliation for the others.”

Similarly, well before the recent wave of ISIL-claimed violence Justin Trudeau had promised to end its military intervention in the Middle East in favour of training and humanitarian assistance to the long-suffering population. Even though Canadian air force so far continues its mission in the Middle East, in the aftermath of the Paris attacks the Prime Minister reiterated his intention to withdraw the military and focus on uprooting the real causes of violence. This shows the new government’s determination to avoid pitfalls of irrationality.

Watch Mr. Rabkin’s interview with CTV: 

https://www.facebook.com/CTVNewsChannel/videos/989392444455420/ 

Yakov M. Rabkin is a Professor of History at the Université de Montréal; the English version of his recent book Comprendre l’État d’Israël is due to appear shortly under the title What is the State of Israel?

Yemen’s humanitarian and human rights catastrophe continues to worsen, according to new UN figures which put the number of killed since late March at more than 5,700.

Speaking to reporters in Cairo by videoconference, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Yemen Johannes Van Der Klauww said that 830 of the dead were women and children. UN officials had earlier put the total number of civilians killed at more than 2,600.

As the death toll in the conflict pitting Saudi-led coalition forces against Shia Houthi rebels and their allies continues to rise, humanitarian conditions have only grown more dire, said the coordinator. 21.2 million people in the country – 82 percent of its entire population – are in need of some sort of humanitarian assistance.

“We currently estimate that over 14 million people lack sufficient access to healthcare,” said Van Der Klauww. “3 million children and pregnant or lactating women require malnutrition treatment or preventative services and 1.8 million children have been out of school since mid-March.”

320,000 children, he added, were acutely malnourished.

To read complete article click here

The Israeli PM and six other former ministers would be arrested if they set foot on Spanish soil.

“We consider it to be a provocation,” said an Israeli foreign ministry spokesperson. “We are working with the Spanish authorities to get it cancelled. We hope it will be over soon.”

Judge Jose de la Mata, who drew up the warrants, ordered the police and civil guard to notify them if any of the seven enter Spain.

Israeli Defence forces carried out a deadly attack on the Freedom Flotilla aid ship Mavi Marmara, which was attempting to bring supplies to Gaza, in contravention of an Israeli-imposed blockade.

Nine activists were killed during the raid that took place in international waters some 150km from Gaza, one more died of wounds later that month.

Autopsies revealed the nine Turkish men were shot with 30 bullets and five were killed with close-range bullets to the head.

The other Israelis who have been issued warrants are ex-foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, ex-defense minister Ehud Barak, ex-deputy prime ministers Moshe Ya’alon and Eli Yishai, former state minister Benny Begin, and Israeli Navy commander Eliezer Marom.

The investigation began after Spanish activists that were part of the flotilla filed a criminal complaint against the Israelis involved in the raid. In June this year, the five year investigation was put on hold, but can be reopened if any of the suspects visited Spain.

A UN report slammed the deadly IDF raid: “Israel’s decision to board the vessels with such substantial force at a great distance from the blockade zone and with no final warning immediately prior to the boarding was excessive and unreasonable.”

South African police have arrest warrants for four Israeli commanders involved in the Freedom Flotilla carnage. An alert was circulated to South African Border Control system in September.

South Africa will liaise with Interpol Turkey to extradite the Israelis should they arrive. A court in Istanbul issued arrest warrants for the four in 2014.

Gadija Davids, a South African journalist, first made the complaint about the attack in 2011. She says she was kidnapped and assaulted before being imprisoned in Israel after the IDF stormed the aid ship.

“This decision has allowed us to hold these commanders, now fugitives from justice responsible to answer for crimes that were committed in the high seas,” Davids said.

In 2012, GRAIN published “The great food robbery”, a collection of hard hitting articles showing how corporations are taking over the food system. As the December 2015 climate talks in Paris approached, we thought it was time to do a sequel.

In this new book, “The great climate robbery”, GRAIN has pulled together data to show how the industrial food system is a major driver of climate change and how food sovereignty is critical to any lasting and just solution.

We expose how corporate investors are pushing small farmers off their fields as they take control of land, water and seeds in many parts of the world to expand the more profitable industrial system. We show how they are pulling political strings through trade negotiations, standard setting and multilateral policy negotiations to secure legal and political security for their own model. Governments, in the meanwhile, are not dealing with the problem of how food and agriculture contribute to climate change and just towing the corporate line.

“For the sake of having a livable planet 50 years from how, this has to stop,” Ange David Baïmey, a GRAIN staff member in Africa, puts it. “People have to take action into their own hands.” In addition to all the incredibly inspiring work going on to stop bad energy projects, divest from fossil fuels and force a more democratic approach to political decision-making all around the world, we have to change the food system as well, GRAIN believes.

“We really hope this book will encourage people to get more involved in the struggle for food sovereignty as a real and urgent solution to the climate crisis,” said Henk Hobbelink, coordinator of GRAIN, ahead of the Paris talks.

Even after the Paris attacks, an elaborate false flag operation that saw well over a hundred innocent civilians brutally murdered by the hands of ISIS-linked NATO patsies (and apparently unwilling patsies), the French government is holding to the nonsensical line that Bashar al-Assad, the number one enemy of ISIS, must step down and relinquish power.

France’s President Francois Hollande recently stated that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could never be part of the solution because he was part of the problem, despite the fact that the problem was one that was created by the hands of NATO countries, notably France itself.

Indeed, before the crisis even got fully underway in Syria in 2011, France and the rest of NATO were already deeply engaged in divvying up the spoils of war in Libya, a country that NATO and France helped destroy and return to the living standards of a time before civilization.

Regardless, as Assad points out, it is an act of unmitigated arrogance to suggest that the government of France, which is not even popular at home, has the moral or legal right to deem and determine the government of the Syrian people, particularly when the Syrian people have demonstrated time and time again that Bashar al-Assad is their preferred leader.

Assad was also quite right to call out France and Hollande, as well as the entire Western world, on their crocodile tears being shed over the “Syrian people” and their “human rights” when these same nations are allies with some of the most brutal, autocratic, and un-democratic nations on the face of the earth such as the Gulf State Feudal monarchies of Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Furthermore, it is entirely hypocritical and intentionally deceptive for France to ever complain about anyone being part of the problem when it comes to the acts committed by ISIS since France itself has played a major role in the funding, arming, training, and directing of ISIS fighters on the ground in Syria under a myriad of names and guises.

It is this very reason that Assad responded to the question of what message he may have for Hollande and Foreign Minister Fabius by saying “My message to Hollande and Fabius – be serious when you talk about fighting terrorists.”

But, of course, Holland and Fabius are not serious about fighting terrorists and they never have been. If they were, they would never have funded them in Syria and they would never have demanded that Assad, the mortal enemy of ISIS, step down. Indeed, they would never have allowed ISIS terrorists to run rampant with their plans at Charlie Hebdo or the Bataclan when it was clearly within the power of French intelligence to stop the attacks. France would have long ago demanded that the Jarablus corridor in Northern Syria on the Turkish border be closed. But France, Hollande, and Fabius never did any of those things. In fact, they have consistently done the opposite, proving that France is serious about imperialism, not fighting terror.

Below is the transcript of Assad’s interview with the French Magazine Valeurs Actuelles, so that readers may understand the position of the Syrian President and the cognitively dissonant nature of the propaganda coming from the West regarding both ISIS and Assad.

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Interview with Bashar Al-Assad of Syria with Valeurs Actuelles:

Question 1: I want to have your comment on this: when our President Mr. Hollande, said that President Assad couldn’t be the solution because he was part of the problem. Does this represent a general view for you, and how you see this? What’s your reaction?

President Assad: First, the first part of my reaction is: was Hollande assigned by the Syrian population to speak on their behalf? That is the first question. Would you as a French citizen accept a similar comment from any other politician in this world, to say that President Hollande shouldn’t be the French President? Isn’t it a humiliation to the French people? We look at it the same way. It’s a humiliation to the Syrian people when he says such a thing. Doesn’t it mean that he doesn’t recognize them?

Second, for France as a country that’s always proud of its traditions and the principles of the French Revolution and maybe democracy and human rights, the first principle of that democracy is that peoples have the right to decide who leads them. So, it’s a shame on him, for somebody who represents the French population, to do and say something which is against the principles of the French republic and the French people. Second, it’s a shame on him to try to humiliate a population with a civilized, long, deep history for thousands of years like the Syrian people. So, that’s my reaction, and I think it will not affect the facts in Syria, because the facts will not be affected by certain statements.

Question 2: If you had a message, one message, for Mr. Hollande and Mr. Fabius, especially after what happened yesterday in Paris? Is it “please cut your relations urgently with Qatar and Saudi Arabia?”

President Assad: My message to Hollande and Fabius.. be serious when you talk about fighting terrorists

First of all, this message has many aspects. The first part of this message is a question: are they independent to send them a message they can implement? Actually, the French policy these days is not independent of the American one. This is first. So, sending a message will lead nowhere. In spite of that, if I have a hope that there will be some political change in France, the first one is go back to the real, independent, friendly politics of France toward the Middle East and toward Syria. Second, be away from the American, how to say, methodology, of double standards. So, if you want to support the Syrian people – allegedly – regarding democracy and freedom, it’s better to support the Saudi people first.

If you have a problem about democracy with the Syrian state, how could you have good relations and friendship with the worst states in the world, the most underdeveloped states in the world which are the Saudi and Qatari states? So, this contradiction doesn’t give credibility.

Third, it’s natural for any official to work for the sake and interest of his people. The question that I ask in any message is: did the French policy during the past five years bring any good to the French people? What is the benefit? I’m sure the answer is no, and the proof of that answer is what I said a few years ago, that messing with the fault line in Syria is messing with an earthquake that will reverberate in the rest of the world, first of all in Europe because we are the backyard of Europe, geographically and geopolitically, so that time they said “are you threatening?” I didn’t, and Charlie Hebdo happened at the beginning of this year, and I said after that incident that this is only the tip of the iceberg, and what happened yesterday is another proof. So, they need to change their policy toward the interests of their people, and this is where we’re going to have the same interests with the French population, mainly fighting terrorism. So, the final message is: be serious when you talk about fighting terrorists. That’s my message.

Question 3: French experts say that terrorists are certainly being trained in the Middle East, and we have a lack of information. What would be necessary to have that kind of cooperation between Paris and Damascus?

President Assad: You need first of all seriousness. If the French government is not serious about fighting terrorism, we wouldn’t waste our time cooperating with a country, or a government, let’s say, with an institution that is supporting terrorism. First of all, you need to change your policy, to have one standard regarding this and not multiple standards, and to have that country be part of an alliance with countries that only fight terrorism, not countries that support terrorism and are fighting terrorism. This is a contradiction. So, these are the first basics of having any cooperation. We would like to have this kind of cooperation, not only with France, but with any country, but this cooperation needs an atmosphere. It needs certain criteria, and needs certain conditions.

Question 4: And in the future, if the government changes, would it be possible?

President Assad: In politics you don’t have friendship and emotions, you have interests. That’s my role as a politician, and that’s their role as politicians in your country. It’s not whether they like Assad or don’t like him, it’s not whether I like Hollande or not. It’s not about that. My job is about what is best for the Syrians, and what is best for the French, that’s our job. So, in the future we don’t have a problem. The problem is the policies, not the emotions.

Question 5: You just met President Putin. I mean, I don’t want to ask you what he said to you, but I want to ask you; when somebody said that Putin is the last guy who defends the West, would you say that? That Putin is the last head of state who defends the Christian-Western civilization?

President Assad: So he defends Western Europe?

Question 6: Exactly.

President Assad: When you talk about terrorism, it’s one arena; it’s not the Syrian, Libyan, Yemeni and French arenas. It’s one arena. So, the incentive behind the Russian coalition that they announced a few months ago before they sent their military to Syria, is that if we don’t fight terrorism in Syria, or maybe in other parts of the world, it will be hitting everywhere including Russia, so that’s correct. When you fight terrorism in Syria, you’re defending Russia and defending Europe and defending other continents. That’s correct. This has been our view for decades now, since we have been fighting against the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood in the 1970s and 1990s. We had that impression, we always asked for an international coalition for fighting terrorism because terrorism doesn’t recognize political borders, doesn’t care about procedures. No matter what procedure you took in France after Charlie Hebdo, what happened yesterday proves that theory. So, that’s correct and that’s very precise; whoever fights terrorism, not only Putin, whoever fights terrorism somewhere, will protect the rest of the world.

Question 7: There is a conference in Vienna about Syria, and also tomorrow in Ankara with the G20, and at several times different presidents have said “the solution is Bashar Assad has to leave Syria.” Are you ready, personally, to leave power if it could be the best solution to protect Syria?

President Assad: This is a two-part question. The first part, is there anything I have to do in response to any foreign request? My answer is no. I will not do it, no matter what that request is; small, big, important, not important, because they have nothing to do with the Syrian decision. The only thing they did so far is to support terrorists in different ways, by [providing an] umbrella and by direct support. They could only create problems; they are not part of the solution. Those countries, whoever supports terrorists, are not part of the solution in Syria. So, whatever they say, we don’t respond because we don’t care about them, to be frank.

Second, for me, as a Syrian, I have to respond to any Syrian will. Of course, when I talk about Syrian will, there must be a kind of consensus, the majority of the Syrians, and the only way to know what the Syrians want is through the ballot box. This is second. Third, for any president, to come and go, in any state that respects itself, respects its civilization and respects its people, is through a political process that reflects the constitution. The constitution will bring the president and the constitution will make him leave, through the parliament, through elections, through referendum, and so on. This is the only way for the president to come and go.

Question 8: What are all these talks about that the only solution not only for Syria; Iraq and Lebanon: partition? We hear much, you know, this is what you talk about, secular and sectarian. But there is a lot of talk everywhere, you know that better than us, about Syria with the coast, and Iraq too, and Lebanon. What is you feeling about that?

President Assad: The impression that they try to give in the Western media is that the problem in this region is a civil war between different components, religions, and ethnicities that don’t want to live with each other. So, why don’t they divide their country? This is where they can stay. Actually, the problem is not like this, because now, under the government’s control in Syria, you can see that all these components live with each other a normal life, a natural life. So, if you want to make division, you have to create clear lines between the components, whether between sects, or between ethnicities. In that case, if you’re going to have that situation, if the region reaches that situation, I will tell you that the situation is going to be small states fighting with each other, never-ending wars for maybe centuries. Any situation like this means constant wars. For the rest of the world it means more sources of exporting instability and terrorism around the world. That’s the situation. So, this is a very dangerous way of thinking. We don’t have the incubator now, the social incubator for such partition. Actually, if you ask any Syrian now, whether they are with the government or against the government, they will tell you that we are supporting the unity of Syria.

Question 9: You spoke about the constitution. In several months, you will have elections inside Syria. Are you ready to have international observers for these elections?

President Assad: Yes, but we said international observation doesn’t mean UN organizations that have no credibility, to be frank, because they are under the control of the Americans and the West in general. So, when you talk about international observation or participation or cooperation, it means certain countries around the world that were not biased during the crisis, that didn’t support the terrorists, didn’t try to politicize their position toward what’s happening in Syria. Those are the countries that can participate in such coordination or observation, but we don’t have a problem with the principle.

Question 10: We talked about Qatar and Saudi Arabia, but we didn’t talk about Turkey, and they let go in Europe hundreds of thousands of refugees, and it seems that they let go in Syria jihadists. So, what is the role of Turkey?

President Assad: The most dangerous role, in the whole situation, because Turkey offered all kinds of support to those terrorists, and all the spectrums of the terrorists. Some countries support al-Nusra Front, which is Al Qaeda, some other countries support ISIS, while Turkey supports both, and other groups at the same time. They support them with, how to say, human resources, they recruit. They support them with money, logistics, armaments, surveillance, information, and even the maneuvers of their military through their borders during the fights in Syria. Even the money that’s being collected from the rest of the world passes through Turkey, and the oil that ISIS sells is through Turkey, so Turkey is playing the worst part of our crisis.

Second, that’s related directly to Erdogan himself and Davutoglu, because they both reflect the real ideology that they carry in their hearts, which is the Muslim Brotherhood ideology.

Question 11: You think he is Muslim Brotherhood?

President Assad: Not necessarily to be organized, but the mentality, a hundred percent. He cares a lot about politicized Islam which is the opportunistic part of Islam which is not Islam actually. That’s how we look at it, because you shouldn’t politicize religion. So, it’s related directly to him, to his will to see the Muslim Brotherhood governing in the rest of the Arab world so that he can control them as a sultan, but actually more as an imam, not a sultan. That is what Turkey is playing.

Question 12: You know we are in a situation right now, yesterday night and before, Charlie Hebdo, and before and before. You said that, but I want your confirmation; you think that France cannot fight terrorism if it stays with its links with Qatar and Saudi Arabia?

President Assad: Yes. In addition, you cannot fight if you don’t have relations with the power that’s fighting ISIS or terrorism on the ground. You cannot fight terrorism while you follow or pursue the wrong politics that, at the end, in the end result, support terrorism directly or indirectly. If you don’t have all these things, no, you cannot, and we don’t think that they can, so far.

Journalists: Thank you very much, Mr. President, for this interview.

President Assad: Thank you for coming.

Brandon Turbeville – article archive here – is an author out of Florence, South Carolina. He has a Bachelor’s Degree from Francis Marion University and is the author of six books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 and volume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, and The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President. Turbeville has published over 500 articles dealing on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s podcast Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV. He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.

US Department of State spokesperson Eric Toner said the United States has not accepted the Russian government’s conclusion that the Metrojet crash in the Sinai Peninsula was a terrorist act and has yet to make its own conclusion.

The United States has not accepted the Russian government’s conclusion that the Metrojet crash in the Sinai Peninsula was a terrorist act and has yet to make its own conclusion, US Department of State spokesperson Eric Toner said.

“In our view this is an Egyptian-led investigation and we have not made our own determination about the cause of this incident nor, do I believe has the Egyptian government,” Toner said on Tuesday when asked whether Washington agreed with Russia about the cause of the crash.

However, Toner acknowledged that the US government “cannot rule out” the possibility that the October 31 crash, which killed all 224 passengers and crew on board, was caused by “terrorism and an explosion on board.”

Once Egypt concludes its investigation, the United States will “weigh in” based on its own intelligence, Toner added.

On Tuesday, the official investigation into the crash concluded the airplane was downed as a result of a terrorist act. Russian President Vladimir Putin said during an official meeting on the investigation’s conclusions the country will track down those responsible and punish them.

It is essential that we get off the chemical treadmill that the modern industrial urban-centric food and agriculture system is based on. It is essential in terms of our health, the environment and sustainability and not least in terms of food security and supporting rural economies and smallholder farmers, who comprise the backbone of global food production.

Nevertheless, promoters of chemical-intensive agriculture and GMOs are fond of telling us all that traditional approaches to agriculture will not be able to produce enough food to feed the world. For example, the former UK environment minister flew to South Africa earlier this year to praise the apparent success of the ‘green revolution’ and to promote the supposed wonders of genetically modified (GM) crops. Paterson warned that a food revolution that could save Africa from hunger is being held back.

He rounded on opponents of GMOs and chemical-intensive agriculture by stating:

Not since the original Luddites smashed cotton mill machinery in early 19th century England, have we seen such an organised, fanatical antagonism to progress and science. These enemies of the Green Revolution call themselves ‘progressive’, but their agenda could hardly be more backward-looking and regressive… their policies would condemn billions to hunger, poverty and underdevelopment. And their insistence on mandating primitive, inefficient farming techniques would decimate the earth’s remaining wild spaces, devastate species and biodiversity and leave our natural ecology poorer as a result.

Proponents of GM crops constantly claim that we need such technology to address hunger and to feed a growing global population. We are told by the GMO biotech lobby that GM crops are essential, are better for the environment and will provide the tools that farmers need in a time of climate chaos. By seeking to denigrate traditional forms of agriculture, however, Paterson is attempting to close off these in favour of promoting external input intensive ‘solutions’ and proprietary technologies, such as GMOs, on behalf of global agribusiness corporations.

Some months ago, in defence of Owen Paterson’s claims, Professor Tony Trewavas of Edinburgh University, who specialises in plant physiology and molecular biology, stated in an open letter to me:

If agroecological approaches can currently match yield that can be attained by using modern farming methods then by all means use it. But if not and my understanding is that currently it cannot, then they should not be the farming method of recommended choice at present… When Africa has got its population increases under control and producing sufficient to feed everybody then alternatives like agroecology may come to the fore. No-one with any concern for humanity or the welfare of its population should currently consider any other alternative. The groups that campaign for this kind or that kind of farming method and destroy crops to try and bounce others into their point of view have lost that fundamental concern for their own species.

The claims and assertions of Paterson and Trewavas are wrong on many levels, as I have described in previous articles (see this, this and this). Smears, rhetoric and emotional blackmail are no substitute for rational debate. They are no excuse for ignoring reality either.

New research by the Oakland Institute shows the actual reality. It has released a report on 33 case studies that shed light on the success of agroecological agriculture across the African continent in the face of climate change, hunger and poverty.

Agroecology combines sound ecological management, including minimising the use of toxic inputs by using on-farm renewable resources and privileging endogenous solutions to manage pests and disease, with an approach that upholds and secures farmers’ livelihoods.

Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute, says:

Released just two weeks ahead of the COP21 Conference in Paris, these case studies provide irrefutable facts and figures on how agricultural transformation – respectful of the farmers and the environment – can yield immense economic, social, and food security benefits while ensuring climate justice and restoring soils and the environment.

Owen Paterson says that Africa needs a new green revolution, more synthetic fertilizers and genetically modified crops, and the Gates Foundation as well as big agribusiness concerns such as Monsanto are pushing hard for this.

In response, Frederic Mousseau, Policy Director of the Oakland Institute, who coordinated the Oakland Institure research, states:

These case studies debunk these myths and highlight the multiple benefits of agroecology, including affordable and sustainable ways to boost agricultural yields while increasing farmers’ incomes, food security and resilience.

The research highlights the wide variety of techniques and practices used to achieve these benefits, including plant diversification, intercropping, the application of mulch, manure or compost for soil fertility, the natural management of pests and diseases, agroforestry and the construction of water management structures.

The case studies show that agroecology is not a one-size-fits-all set of practices. Rather, techniques are adapted to meet specific needs and ecosystems. Indeed, farmers who practice agroecology are innovators and experiment to find the best solutions for themselves.

It is worth noting that agriculture, forestry, and other land use are responsible for nearly a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions from human activity. The International Panel on Climate Change noted that emissions from these sectors have almost doubled over the past 50 years and could increase by an additional 30 percent by 2050. The use of synthetic fertilizers is the fastest growing source of agriculture GHG emissions, having increased 37 percent since 2001.

Ibrahima Coulibaly, President of CNOP-Mali and Vice President of the ROPPA (Network of Farmers’ and Agricultural Producers’ Organisations of West Africa), says:

Our governments must now take decisive steps to actually support agroecological practices instead of promoting industrial food production systems that are contributing to climate change while making farmers poorer and more vulnerable to market fluctuations and weather hazards. We need our governments to ensure our children a future in which they can feed themselves with nutritious food in a healthy environment.

Since 2006, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has funded the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) to the tune of almost $420 million. This strategy for agriculture in Africa is a flawed attempt to impose corporate-controlled industrial agriculture at the expense of more ecologically sound approaches.

AGRA is part of a global trend that is being driven by big agribusiness corporations that seeks to eradicate the small farmer and subject countries to the vagaries of rigged global markets (see this and this). Smallholder farmers are being displaced across the world and are struggling to preserve their indigenous seeds and traditional knowledge of farming systems. Agritech corporations are being allowed to shape government policy by being granted a strategic role in trade negotiations. They are increasingly setting the policy/knowledge framework by being allowed to fund and determine the nature of research carried out in public universities and institutes. And they continue to propagate the myth that they have the answer to global hunger and poverty, despite evidence that they do not (see this and this).

The Gates Foundation, Monsanto and Western governments are placing African agriculture in the hands of big agribusiness for private profit and strategic control under the pretext of helping the poor. And they are side-lining local farmers and organisation and using taxpayers’ money to help do it (see this).

Numerous official reports have argued that to feed the hungry in poorer regions we need to support diverse, sustainable agro-ecological methods of farming and strengthen local food economies: for example, see this official report, this report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food and this report by 400 experts which was twice peer reviewed.

It is after all small farms and peasant farmers (more often than not serving local communities) that are more productive than giant industrial (export-oriented) farms and which produce most of the world’s food (see this report from GRAIN). The experience with GM crops shows that the application of GM technology is more likely to actually undermine food security and entrench the social, economic and environmental problems created by industrial agriculture and corporate control (see this other report from GRAIN and this article by Helena Paul documenting ecocide and genocide in South America due to the imposition of GM crops there).

What Paterson and the agritech cartel offer is more of the same by tearing up traditional agriculture for the benefit of corporate entities. The current global system of chemical-industrial agriculture and World Trade Organisation rules that agritech companies helped draw up for their benefit to force their products into countries (see here) are a major cause of structural hunger, poverty, illness and environmental destruction. By its very design, the system is parasitical, sucking the life from people, nations and the planet for profit and control (see here).

Forwarding some bogus technical quick-fix will not put things right. It represents more of the same. The globalised industrial food and agriculture system is failing to feed the world and is driving some of the world’s most pressing crises.

The success stories from Africa highlighted by the research discussed here indicate that agroecology puts farmers, including many women farmers, in charge their own future. Moreover, development is placed firmly in the hands of farmers themselves. However, while agroecology promotes low use of external inputs, it is a very knowledge-intensive system.

The Oakland Institute thus notes that transmission of this knowledge, adaptation to local contexts and appropriation by farmers and government technicians are essential for farmers and communities if they are to reap the benefits of agroecology. The case studies demonstrate how the expansion of agroecological practices can generate a rapid, fair and inclusive development that can be sustained for future generations. They also highlight just where investment should be going and where priorities should ultimately lie.

As I have stated elsewhere, the environment, the quality of food and our health are being sacrificed for corporate profit. The type of agriculture being pushed by the likes of Paterson an his agribusiness backers represents a form of looting based on what we can loosely call ‘capitalism’. The solution involves a shift towards agroecology and a reaffirmation of indigenous models of farming.

Just has I had been predicting for a couple of weeks, Russia did dramatically increase the pace of her anti-Daesh operations.

The major goal of Washington and allied nations is to destroy the Syrian government, not to defeat the Islamic State, a prominent Canadian international criminal lawyer told Sputnik Thursday.

The question of how the Islamic State funds its sprawling caliphate has been discussed in the past: we first broke down the primary driver of ISIS revenue well over a year ago, in September 2014, when we explained that “ISIS uses oil wealth to help finance its terror operations.”

Daily Signal’s Kelsey Harkness explained the breakdown as follows:

According to the Iraq Energy Institute, an independent, nonprofit policy organization focused on Iraq’s energy sector, the army of radical Islamists controls production of 30,000 barrels of oil a day in Iraq and 50,000 barrels in Syria. By selling the oil on the black market at a discounted price of $40 per barrel (compared to about $93 per barrel in the free market), ISIS takes in $3.2 million a day.

The oil revenue, which amounts to nearly $100 million each month, allows ISIS to fund its military and terrorist attacks — and to attract more recruits from around the world, including America.

Most importantly, we added that to be successful in counterterrorism efforts, “the U.S. and its allies must “push the Islamic State out of the oil fields it has captured and disrupt its ability to smuggle the oil to foreign markets.”

None of this was surprising to anyone, but what was quite surprising is that it took the allied forces over a year to take the oil revenue threat seriously and begin targeting the Islamic State’s oil infrastructure in earnest.

Today, in an article titled “Why US Efforts to Cut Off Islamic State’s Funds Have Failed” Bloomberg tries to explain just how it is that despite a more than a year long campaign, ISIS funding remains as strong as ever, and notes that “the latest round of airstrikes are directly related to the administration’s new math. “You have to go after the oil, and you have to do it in a serious way, and we’ve just begun to do that now,” citing Benjamin Bahney, an international policy analyst at the Rand Corp., a U.S. Department of Defense-funded think tank.

To be sure, there are other sources of revenue: Bloomberg correctly notes that “even if the U.S. finally weakens the group’s oil income, Bahney and other analysts in the U.S., the Middle East, and Europe contend, Islamic State has resources beyond crude—from selling sex slaves to ransoming hostages to plundering stolen farmland—that can likely keep it fighting for years.”

Still, without a doubt, the dominant source of funds for the terrorists is oil, and not just oil, but a well-greased logistical machine that keeps thousands of barrels moving from unknown pumps to even refineries, and ultimately to smugglers who operated out of Turkey and other countries.

Here is Bloomberg:

Most often refined in Syria, the group’s oil is trucked to cities such as Mosul to provide people living under its black banner with fuel for generators and other basic needs. It’s also used to power the war machine. “They have quite an organized supply chain running fuel into Iraq and [throughout] the ‘caliphate,’  ” says Michael Knights, an Iraq expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, using the militant group’s religiously loaded term for itself. Because the U.S. apparently believed the real money for Islamic State came primarily via selling refined oil, rather than crude, last year’s strikes heavily targeted refineries and storage depots, says Bahney. He and other experts say that strategy missed an important shift: Militants increasingly sell raw crude to truckers and middlemen, rather than refining it themselves. So while Islamic State probably maintains some refining capacity, the majority of the oil in IS territory is refined by locals who operate thousands of rudimentary, roadside furnaces that dot the Syrian desert.

Here is where it gets interesting: Bloomberg cites Pentagon officials who acknowledge “that for more than a year they avoided striking tanker trucks to limit civilian casualties. None of these guys are ISIS. We don’t feel right vaporizing them, so we have been watching ISIS oil flowing around for a year,” says Knights. That changed on Nov. 16, when four U.S. attack planes and two gunships destroyed 116 oil trucks.

So any qualms about vaporizing “innocent civilians” promptly disappeared when the Pentagon realized that its 1+ year long campaign had been an epic debacle, that a suddenly surging ISIS was stronger as ever, and most importantly, that its critical revenue lifelines had been largely untouched for years. Perhaps they weren’t innocent civilians after all.

It is still unknown if this recent crackdown on “dumping oil”, or crude which dramatically lowers the price of oil in global markets – it certainly is an odd coincidence that the price of Brent and WTI began its tumble last fall, just when the Islamic State made its dramatic appearance on the world scene – will have an effect and cut off the primary source of funds to ISIS.

But what we have been wondering for months and what we hope some enterprising journalist will soon answer, is just who are the commodity trading firms that have been so generously buying millions of smuggled oil barrels procured by the Islamic State at massive discounts to market, and then reselling them to other interested parties.

In other words, who are the middlemen.

What we do know is who they may be: they are the same names that were quite prominent in the market in September when Glencore had its first, and certainly not last, near death experience: the Glencores, the Vitols, the Trafiguras, the Nobels, the Mercurias of the world.

To be sure, funding terrorist states is not something that some of the most prominent names in the list above have shied away from in the past.

Which one (or ones) are the guilty parties – those who have openly breached terrorism funding laws – we don’t know: it may be one, or more of the above, or someone totally different.

At this point, however, three things are certain: whoever the commodity trading house may be that is paying ISIS-affiliated “innocent civilians” hundreds of millions of dollars for their products, they are perfect aware just who the source of this deeply discounted crude is. Crude so deeply discounted, in fact, it results in massive profits for the enterprising middleman who are engaging in openly criminal transactions.

The second certainty: whoever said middleman is, it is very well known to US intelligence services such as the NSA and CIA, and thus to the Pentagon, and thus, the US government.

The third certainty is that while the US, and Russia, and now France, are all very theatrically bombing something in the Syrian desert (nobody really knows what), the funding of ISIS continues unabated as someone keeps buying ISIS oil.

We wonder how long until someone finally asks the all important question regarding the Islamic State: who is the commodity trader breaching every known law of funding terrorism when buying ISIS crude, almost certainly with the tacit approval by various “western alliance” governments, and why is it that these governments have allowed said middleman to continue funding ISIS for as long as it has?

President Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday received a letter from U.S. Senator for the State of Virginia Richard Black (pictured left), a letter in which he said “I was pleased by the Russians’ intervention against the armies invading Syria. With their support, the Syrian Army has made dramatic strides against the terrorists.”

“I was delighted by Syria’s resounding victory over ISIS at the Kuwairis Airfield. My compliments to those who heroically rescued 1,000 brave Syrian soldiers from certain death. I am convinced that many such victories lie ahead,” Black added.

The Senator asserted that the war on Syria was not caused by domestic unrest, saying “It was an unlawful war of aggression by foreign powers determined to force a puppet regime on Syria. General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander Europe, revealed that by 2001, Western powers had developed plans to overthrow Syria. Yet after fifteen years, of military subversion, NATO, Saudi Arabia and Qatar still cannot identify a single leader who enjoys popular support among the Syrian people.”

“Foreign powers have no right to overturn legitimate elections and impose their will on the Syrian people. Syrians alone must determine their destiny, free of foreign intervention. I am disappointed that the UN has turned a blind eye to the unlawful interference in Syria’s internal affairs,” he added.

He went on to note that “Before the war began, Syria had the greatest religious freedom and women’s equality of any Arab people. Many Americans are surprised to learn that the Syrian Constitution provides for free elections, religious freedom, women’s rights, and the Rule of Law. Before criticizing Syria, the U.S. might first insist that our allies – Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE and Kuwait – grant similar freedoms to their own people.”

Black voiced disappointment that the United States answered the Russian assistance for Syria by sending anti-tank TOW missiles to terrorists, which would only prolong said, criticizing the folly of arming “good terrorists” and withholding weapons from “bad terrorists,” adding that the irresponsible deployment of TOW missiles threatens aviation around the world, as ant-tank weapons have long range and can target and destroy passenger planes that are taking off.

He said that as a Senator for Virginia, he feels worry because such missiles can find their way to remote areas near airports like Reagan National Airport and Dallas International Airport, adding that he relayed these concerns to the American President.

Black went on to note that “Jaish al-Fateh” terrorist organizations, which he referred to by “Army of Conquest,” the literal translation of its name, has received more American military support, pointing out that this terrorist organization includes Jabhat al-Nusra which has sworn allegiance to Al Qaeda, which means that the United States is arming the same terrorist organization responsible for killing 3,000 Americans in 9/11, considering this to be a betrayal of those victims.

The Senator went on to say that it is becoming clear to people that the terrorists in Syria are receiving military support from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, who are allies of the U.S., and that Turkey is the most loyal backer of ISIS as it represents the main channel for the flow of jihadists, weapons, and trade, adding that Turkey also hasn’t offered anything significant to the performance of the proposed alliance against ISIS despite being a member of it.

He said that Turkey and Saudi Arabia seek to impose a religious dictatorship on the Syrian people, and if they succeed in that then Christians and other minorities would be murdered or sold into slavery, and many good-hearted Sunni and Shia Muslims will also fall victim along with them.

But the Senator noted that world opinion is turning against terrorism and their supporters, adding “The cruel treatment of captured Syrian soldiers by armed groups is appalling. Many Americans find the behavior of these so-called ‘moderates’ morally abhorrent.”

“I bled, fighting to defend this nation’s honor. I will oppose American support for terrorists, like the Army of Conquest and ISIS that threaten Syria. Many Virginians join in praying that the Syrian Arab Army and its allies will triumph over the forces of evil, and that peace will soon return to Syria,” he said, concluding the letter by adding:

“Thank you for protecting the lives of Christians and of all good people of Syria.”

The Islamist theocracy Saudi Arabia is getting heavy ammunition equaling billions of dollars from the United States. It remains to be seen whether this economic booster shot for the U.S. defense industry will lead to consequences in Syria. The Saudis are fighting covertly against the Russians.

The U.S. government has approved a multibillion dollar arms deal with Saudi Arabia. In order to strengthen its air force, the Islamist monarchy wants to purchase more than 19,000 bombs, which would total up to 1.29 billion dollars (1.19 billion euros).  This was confirmed by the State Department in Washington on Monday. Although the final word from the U.S. Congress is still pending, it’s likely that the approval will go through.

Saudi Arabia is one of the United States’ key allies in the Middle East. The agreement on Iran’s nuclear program has caused tension in the relationship. Saudi Arabia is engaged in a power struggle with Tehran for control in the Gulf. The Saudi Arabian air force is launching air attacks in Yemen, whose government is not accepted by the Saudis. These attacks are recognized by the international community as unlawful.

The Saudis play a special role in Syria. They sit at the table at the Syrian peace talks in Vienna, when in fact, it is they who support the terrorists who are in a fight against the Russians. It’s unclear whether the Saudis are acting on behalf of the Americans. In any case, it can’t be ruled out that those U.S.-provided bombs will eventually be used in Syria, too.

In Saudi Arabia, human rights apply only in the context of a religious fundamentalist theocracy. Up to this point, protests out of the EU and the U.S. have been only scarcely perceived.

The arms shipment includes some 12,000 bombs with a combat weight of 500 to 2000 pounds, 1500 bunker-busting bombs, and more than 6,000 laser-guided precision bombs. According to Washington data, bomb arsenal from the Saudi Arabian armed forces will be heavily taxed by “the high level of deployment in several anti-terrorist operations”. Saudi Arabia participates in the U.S.-led air strikes against the Islamic State jihadi militia in Syria.

Originally appeared at German Economic News. Translated by Susan Neumann.

It sometimes happens in the middle of a dark night, when I don’t expect it, when I think that I am sound asleep but am not, or when perhaps I really am but not completely. I don’t know. All that I witnessed and overheard, all that I thought I forgot but couldn’t, all that I tried so desperately to forget comes back, first in spasms, then in full force.

I often think that the West went mad. Totally, irreversibly! It turned into a monster itself, and it keeps manufacturing new, smaller but equally toxic brutes all over the world. It rolls, smashing all that stands on its way. And I am not sure whether it still could be stopped.

Those horrid US military bases on Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands… those Israeli occupation forces choking the Syrian Golan Heights, those helicopter gunships firing at civilian vehicles in Gaza… bombed and burned villages near Mosul, Iraq… images of people slaughtered by pro-Western terrorists in Iran… men who were tortured savagely, and whose wives and daughters were brutally raped in “India-administered” Kashmir, clinging to each other desperately, whispering their stories in some godforsaken villages near the border with Pakistan.

Here, in this essay, I will not, cannot go through the entire catalogue of horrors that has already penetrated my brain, deciding to stay, most likely, forever. The list is too long – almost endless.

Except that it’s not just a list, but a mosaic of true events that occurred to hundreds and thousands of human being in all corners of the world, often in front of my own eyes.

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I hear people screaming.

I try to work, write books and essays, and make films. I usually don’t allow myself a luxury of talking to others about those nights.

But this time I will. Many of you asked what is fueling my writing; what keeps me going. And why do I dare doing what others don’t, and going where almost no one goes.

Let me reply once and for all. Let me share at least few personal moments with my readers.

***

I met a Syrian girl inside a small, informal and unnamed refugee camp, in Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, near the city of Zahlah. She was a refugee, perhaps five or six years old. At first she was scared when I tried to take her photograph, but then she smiled. Eventually, she showed me her tongue, and moved it, cheekily, to one side of her mouth. She was standing there, in the middle of anonymous camp, with her older sister.

Then, a few moments later, she cautiously came closer to me and touched my hand.

Winter was approaching. Some refugees were freezing, and the girl was suffering from malnutrition. Her natural behavior, her innocence and her obvious oblivion of the war touched me tremendously.

A few weeks later, I drove back with sweets and toys. But the girl had already left. I was told that her family took her north to Aarsal, near the Syrian border where Hezbollah is locked in an epic battle with the ISIS. Yes, the same ISIS that were originally trained and armed by NATO in Turkey and Jordan.

I printed her photo and glued it to my refrigerator. I think about her often, almost every day. I don’t know why.

In a way, her image, that of a simple girl, of a child standing in the middle of some horrid refugee camp near a war zone, is a symbol of insanity of the world in which we are forced to live.

In a way, she is a symbol of resistance against savagery of the Empire, a symbol of longing for something normal, longing for sanity in the middle of lunacy.

The conflict, the war in her country, Syria, is so “unnecessary”, so bizarre, so obviously triggered by the West and its vile allies and interests.

Through her youth and eyes full of curiosity and hope, life was managing to prevail over death and dark destructive nihilism. But for how long could it last? In Zahlah the girl was still winning, with her smile and her determination to live, to stay alive. But she is in Aarsal now, where war is ranging, mercilessly. I worry about her. I worry about her so much. And I curse the Empire.

***

Of course I saw plenty of things that could not be allowed to appear even on the pages of the publications with “tough”, “hardened readership. Some things were so horrible that they would break in half even someone as strong as a bull; things that should not have been seen by anyone, and especially happen to anyone.

Imagine a “refugee camp” near Goma, East Kivu, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where an insane, stoned militia armed and supported by two closest allies of the West in the region – Rwanda and Uganda – had already raped almost all female inhabitants, from tiny babies to old grandmothers.

Imagine coltan and uranium and diamonds being smuggled from the DRP, shamelessly, under the direct supervision of the UN soldiers, so called “peacekeepers”.

Imagine visiting several villages in Iraq, near Mosul, villages that were first attacked by the ISIL and then bombed, mercilessly, by the USAF. Imagine that you have photographs, as you had photographs of those plundered and raped East Timor villages two decades ago, but frankly, nobody gives a fuck.

And you live with all this, day and night.

Say you saw several Palestinian men after being shot in their balls by Israeli soldiers. You have those images, too, from Shifa Hospital in Gaza. You have plenty of things like that, in your memory drives and in your head.

People without faces, people burned beyond recognition, still alive, still moving, still clinging to life.

It is an “all you can eat” medley of horrors and misery, brought to you by global capitalism, Western imperialism, and Christian fundamentalism!

Then what do you do with it, at night?

When you are very young and see all this shit for the first time, you simply want to puke. And you puke, actually. Later, you stop puking and if you have balls or ovaries, you fight!

As time passes and most battles are becoming “uphill ones”, you desperately want to be able to trust people or at least one person, one that had earlier came to you, offering to “share all this, and to fight by your side, forever”. But your courage, as well as your dedication, outrage, zeal, desperation and longing gain you nothing, really. You are betrayed, again and again, perhaps because the stakes are too high, the burden too heavy, or simply because your life is actually excessively intense and totally different from lives of other people.

The lonelier it gets, the more determined you become. There is no going back. The world is in flames. You know it. Not many others realize it. You understand how things are functioning. You have to fight; it is your duty and obligation. And you fight. But there are those nights…

You may be tough as a stone in the middle of terrible battlefields and other most horrendous situations, but at night, you are totally vulnerable and most likely alone.

***

When I reached Eritrean port city of Massawa, almost one year ago, I felt thoroughly exhausted and burned out. I could hardly move, after working few days earlier just a few kilometers from Mosul, Iraq, and right after that in Lebanon. I felt confused after being crashed and insulted by someone I trusted and fully relied on.

My Eritrean hosts got me a room in some old and terribly run down hotel.

Then, close to midnight, the electric generator gave up the ghost for the rest of the night. No one else was staying on my floor.

I clearly realized that real hell was ahead of me.

For 2 hours I was using the screen of my Mac Book Pro. After it went blank, my phone lasted a little bit longer. Then it was around 3:30AM and pitch dark.

The “procession” began.

I already described such situations in what will be, one day, my 1,000-page novel. But in my book, the victims are passing, night after night, through the secondary border post covered by deep snow, high in the mountains, between Argentina and Chile. They are passing on board old trucks, and in the morning, only deep holes in the virgin snow, holes created by warm streams of blood, could remain the main character about the events of the previous night.

In Eritrea, the victims of the Empire were passing only through in my mind, in my memory. They were passing one by one. Peruvian victims, Colombian victims; victims from Indonesia, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Philippines, the DRC, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Somalia, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Turkey, Ivory Coast, Ukraine, Serbia, Nicaragua, Honduras… victims from dozens of other countries, mainly women; because women always suffer the most. Unnecessary deaths – people who just perished for no particular reason; only because the Empire could not stop looting, murdering, aiming at absolute control over the world.

At some point I gave up: I opened my eyes, staring into the darkness, fists clenched.

Everything inside the room was static. Only my memory was alive.

This was the price of knowing.

I was willing to pay anything; I was never known to be stingy. No price was too high for me.

***

Fighting against the Empire, exposing its barbarity, learning about its deeds – it all is tremendously overtaxing. Because the Empire is sick, because the Western culture turned long time ago into a pathology, because too many human beings are dying or are having their lives ruined, just so the excessive needs and appetites of the rulers of the world, of their global regime, are satisfied.

A few months after that dreadful night on the coast of Eritrea, I was invited to speak at the 14th International Symposium on the Contributions of Psychology to Peace, in Johannesburg and Pretoria, South Africa.

Few hours after delivering my presentation on the topic of absolute destruction of the African continent by the Western imperialism, I found myself facing several top psychologists from all corners of the globe:

“How do you manage to survive all that you just described, psychologically and physically?”

I told them that I am not managing at all, but I have no choice. Someone has to do what I am doing. Otherwise no alternative, no real information could flow.

They asked me to take a break, to rest, for at least several months. I nodded. Then we all began to laugh. Psychologists are known to have great sense of humour.

“I am absolutely devastated”, my dear friend Binu Matthew, a legendary editor of the most important Indian left wing news site, Countercurrents, told me couple of months earlier, as we were driving through his state of Kerala. “I am coping with all those horrors that imperialism is spreading all over the world. It all goes through me. I suffer because of each piece of terrible information that is published by my site. It puts me through tremendous psychological strain.”

***

When things get tough, I imagine a few people; men, women and children, from all corners of the world; people who touched me, who suffered immensely, and who are still most likely in distress.

Their faces, their tears, even their screams, motivate me to keep working.

The Syrian girl from a refugee camp in Bekaa Valley is one of them. I have no right to stop, to back down and to fail her.

It is tremendous shame, disgrace, the hard bottom that our civilization managed to hit: profits over people, superiority dogmas, and above all – the Western fascism.

But the battle is on.

My 1,000-page novel had been, for some time, delayed, but I incorporated many of its stories into my huge 820-page book, Exposing Lies Of The Empire.

One day, hopefully soon, humanism will win over dark nihilism; people will live for other people and not for some cold profits, religious dogmas and “Western values”. Imperialism will be defeated once and for all.

One day we will be building enormous monuments to those who vanished, to those who suffered immensely, to “un-people” whose tears most of us do not even see, whose screams of horror and pain are muzzled by horrendous lies, deranged pop music and movie soundtracks, by whoring mass media, and by formal education which is distributed to everyone like a poison, like sedatives, like a tool that makes most of the people on this scarred Earth disappear from our consciousness.

[originally posted on Global Research on May 30, 2012]

US military doctrine envisages the central role of  “massive casualty producing events” in which innocent civilians are killed.

The killings are deliberately carried out as part of a covert operation. The enemy is blamed for the resulting atrocities.

The objective is to justify a military agenda on humanitarian grounds. The doctrine dates back to 1962: Operation Northwoods.

Under a secret 1962 Pentagon Plan entitled Operation Northwoods, civilians in the Cuban community in Miami were to be killed as part of a covert operation. The objective was to trigger a “helpful wave of indignation in US newspapers”. The killings and “acts of terrorism” were then to be blamed on the Cuban government of Fidel Castro.

The objective of this sinister plan –which Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and  President J. F. Kennedy– refused to carry out, was to drum up public support for a  war against Cuba:

“In the early 1960s, America’s top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.

Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.

The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba’s then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.

America’s top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: “We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba,” and, “casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.”

…. The documents show “the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved plans for what may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government,” writes Bamford. (U.S. Military Wanted to Provoke War With Cuba – ABC News emphasis added. This Secret Pentagon document was declassified and can be readily consulted (See Operation Northwoods, See also National Security Archive, 30 April 2001)

The Northwoods 1962 document was titled “Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba”. ”The Top Secret memorandum describes U.S. plans to covertly engineer various pretexts that would justify a U.S. invasion of Cuba. These proposals – part of a secret anti-Castro program known as Operation Mongoose – included staging the assassinations of Cubans living in the United States, developing a fake “Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington,” including “sink[ing] a boatload of Cuban refugees (real or simulated),” faking a Cuban airforce attack on a civilian jetliner, and concocting a “Remember the Maine” incident by blowing up a U.S. ship in Cuban waters and then blaming the incident on Cuban sabotage.”
(http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/doc1.pdf, emphasis added)

Flash Forward, Cuba 1962, Syria 2012… 

While the implementation of Operation Northwoods was shelved, its fundamental premise of using civilian deaths (described by the Pentagon as a “massive casuality producing event”) as a pretext for intervention (on humanitarian grounds) has been applied on several occasions in the post 9/11 era.

The fundamental question: Were the May 2012  killings of civilians in the city of  Houla part of a carefully planned covert operation, with the intent to drum up public support for a war on Syria.

The deaths are blamed on the Al Assad government, with “casualty lists in U.S. newspapers causing a helpful wave of indignation.”.  Meanwhile, several European countries, Canada and Australia have cut off diplomatic relations with Syria.  This decision  to isolate Syria was carried similtaneously by several governments. It was taken prior to the conduct of an investigation.

A military intervention by NATO –which is already on the drawing board– is now being contemplated, following the statement of France’s newly elected president Francois Hollande.

An outright war on Syria could potentially evolve towards a broader regional war extending from the Eastern Mediterranean to Central Asia. It is, therefore, crucial that World public opinion take cognizance of the media lies and war propaganda pertaining to the Houla massacre, not to mention the insidious role of the US-NATO sponsored death squads.

Was the Houla massacre part of a sinister covert operation bearing the fingerprints of Operation Northwoods?

There is absolutely no evidence that the Syrian government was behind these killings.

There are indications as well as documentary evidence that, from the outset of the insurgency in the border city of Daraa in mid-March 2011, terrorists supported by foreign powers have been involved in the killings of innocent civilians. Israeli intelligence sources (August 2011) confirm an organized process of recruitment of terrorist fighters by NATO:

NATO headquarters in Brussels and the Turkish high command are meanwhile drawing up plans for their first military step in Syria, which is to arm the rebels with weapons for combating the tanks and helicopters …

Also discussed in Brussels and Ankara, our sources report, is a campaign to enlist thousands of Muslim volunteers in Middle East countries and the Muslim world to fight alongside the Syrian rebels. The Turkish army would house these volunteers, train them and secure their passage into Syria.  (DEBKAfile, NATO to give rebels anti-tank weapons, August 14, 2011,  emphasis added)

COVER PAGE OF THE NORTHWOODS DOCUMENT AND PAGE 7

read the entire original document online:
http://archive.org/stream/OperationNorthwoods/operation_northwoods#page/n0/mode/2up

or download pdf:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/doc1.pdf

ANNEX Excerpts from Operation Northwoods

(click link to read the original declassified document).

(page 7-8 of actual Joint Chiefs report)

A series of well coordinated incidents will be planned to take place in and around Guantanamo to give genuine appearance of being done by hostile Cuban forces.

A. Incidents to establish a credible attack:

(1) Start rumors (many). Use clandestine radio.

(2) Land friendly Cubans in uniform “over-the-fence” to stage attack on base.

(3) Capture Cuban (friendly) saboteurs inside the base.

(4) Start riots near the base main gate (friendly Cubans).

(5) Blow up ammunition inside the base: start fires.

(6) Burn aircraft on air base (sabotage).

(7) Lob mortar shells from outside of base into base.

(8) Capture assault teams approaching from the sea or vicinity of Guantanamo City.

(9) Capture militia group which storms base.

(10) Sabotage ship in harbor; large fires – naphthalene.

(11) Sink ship near harbor entrance. Conduct funerals for mock-victims.

A “Remember the Maine” incident could be arranged: We could blow up a US ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba. Casualty lists in US newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.

We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington.

(page 10 of actual Joint Chiefs report)

Hijacking attempts against civil air and surface craft should appear to continue as harassing measures condoned by the government of Cuba.

It is possible to create an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civil airliner enroute from the United States. The destination would be chosen only to cause the flight plan to cross Cuba. The passengers could be a group of college students off on a holiday.

An aircraft at Eglin AFB would be painted and numbered as an exact duplicate for a civil registered aircraft belonging to a CIA proprietary organization in the Miami area. At the designated time the duplicate would be substituted for the actual civil aircraft and would be loaded with selected passengers, all boarded under carefully prepared aliases. The actual aircraft would be converted to a drone.

The drone aircraft and the actual aircraft will be scheduled to allow a rendezvous south of Florida. From the rendezvous point the passenger-carrying aircraft will descend to minimum altitude and go directly into an auxiliary field at Eglin AFB where arrangements will have been made to evacuate the passengers and return the aircraft to its original status. The drone aircraft meanwhile will continue to fly the filed flight plan. When over Cuba the drone will be transmitting on the international distress frequency a “MAY DAY” message stating he is under attack by Cuban MIG aircraft. The transmission will be interrupted by destruction of the aircraft which will be triggered by radio signal.

The following Infographics is by Professor Tim Anderson

It summarizes detailed information regarding the ISIS, which is contained in a forthcoming book entitle The Dirty War on Syria

Kiev will not pay Russia the $3 billion debt owed to it, unless other conditions of the restructuring are applied. This was stated by Arseniy Yatsenyuk. 

“I said to other lenders there are other conditions to be met or you will not receive the debt. The basic condition is reducing debt by 20%, the transfer of all debts of four years. If you do not like this, then you will receive the decision of the government of Ukraine via a moratorium on paying Russia the $3 billion. It is very easy to explain to our neighbours and the aggressor state: we will not pay $3 billion “,— quotes “RIA Novosti” citing the Prime Minister of Ukraine

The Minister of Finance of Ukraine Natalia Jaresko allowed for the possibility of default of Ukraine in case of non-payment of this debt. “If we don’t make the payment — Yes. But I think that it is too early to think about what we will do, what they will do… It will be speculation and with ours and their party, we are prepared for all possible”, — said earlier the head of the Ukrainian Ministry of Finance. She also said the reason why Kiev refuses to pay its obligations: Expenditures of Ukraine is limited to the program of the International monetary Fund, adding that the IMF is ready to help Kiev to pay the debt Moscow.

Jaresko has also expressed its readiness to negotiate this matter with the Minister of Finance of Russia, Anton Siluanov. Earlier it became known that the American rating Agency Fitch downgraded the Issuing rating of Kiev in foreign currency to default level D. The Reason given in the press release published on the Agency’s website: the city has not made a regular payment on Eurobonds to the amount of 250 million euros. Meanwhile, Russia is now looking at ways of blocking the next tranche of IMF to Ukraine if Kiev will still allow a default, says Bloomberg. Siluanov had previously reported that Moscow may exercise its right to a sovereign borrower, and to require the Foundation to declare invalid a financing program for Ukraine, reports RIA Novosti.

Earlier Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit in Antalya said that Russia is ready to provide a three-year delay Ukraine’s debt payment of $3 billion if the U.S., the EU or the international monetary Fund (IMF) agrees to provide guarantees for the full payment thereof.

On 13 November, Ukraine completed the restructuring part of the debt, which affected securities to $ 15 billion, of which $ 3 billion was written off. Russia did not participate in the restructuring, as they believed Ukrainian debt to be sovereign and not commercial.

Moscow offered Kiev to restructure the debt of $ 3 billion, allowing it to repay $1 billion in 2016-2018, subject to the provision of guarantees for it from the authorities of the United States or the EU, or one of the international financial institutions.

Translated by Ollie Richardson for Fort Russ.

Original source

http://politikus.ru/events/63346-arseniy-yacenyuk-zayavil-chto-ukraina-ne-namerena-otdavat-rossii-3-mlrd.html

Scientists at Wageningen UR (University & Research centre) have demonstrated that the same clone of the Fusarium fungus is infecting Cavendish bananas in several countries dotted across the globe. This shows that this Fusarium clone, also known as Tropical Race 4, is continuing to spread despite the quarantine measures, with disastrous results for banana growers. The results from the research appeared today in the scientific journal PLOS Pathogens.

Panama disease is caused by the Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. cubensefungus. One of the Fusarium strains is called ‘Tropical Race 4’ (TR4) and infects many local banana varieties as well as the widely exported Cavendish banana, which is very susceptible to this strain. The soil-borne fungus enters the banana plant through the root and eventually kills the entire plant. Banana-growing plots infested with the fungus remain contaminated for many years. It is then no longer possible to cultivate bananas on such a plot of land, as new banana plants become infected too. Large areas of banana plantations in countries such as Jordan, Mozambique, China, the Philippines, Pakistan and Australia are no longer suitable for banana farming, as they have become infested with the Panama disease fungus. There are currently no means of combating the disease; only quarantine measures can prevent banana plantations from becoming infested.

DNA investigation

The researchers at Wageningen UR analysed the DNA of many fungus specimens from eight countries where the fungus has recently been identified, including Jordan, Lebanon and Pakistan, in order to trace how Panama disease has come to spread to different locations across the globe. The research highlighted that the strains of the fungus, which were collected are genetically identical. The strains are clones. Gert Kema, banana expert at Wageningen UR, says: ‘This research demonstrates that the quarantine measures and information provided around the globe apparently have not had the desired effect.’

A tale of two clones

Not only the TR4 fungus strain is a clone: all Cavendish bananas also share the same genes. Kema explains: ‘The Cavendish banana is very susceptible to TR4. Therefore, the fungus can spread easily due to the worldwide monoculture of Cavendish bananas. That’s why we have to intensify awareness campaigns to reach small and large-scale growers in order to help them with developing and implementing quarantine measures preventing the fungus from continued spreading.’

Worldwide approach needed to stop further spreading

To stop further spreading, Kema’s team is working with a large number of partners in different locations across the globe to develop short-term solutions for Panama disease management. Kema continues: ‘We are gaining more and more insight into the scope of the issue. The ability to quickly identify infected banana plants and infested soils is extremely important in this respect. However, eventually we have to come up with long-term solutions, particularly host resistance, which can only be developed in strong multidisciplinary alliances with various partners and industry.’

The research was carried out by Wageningen UR in cooperation with the University of Queensland and Diversity Arrays Technology Pty Ltd in Australia and the University of Florida in the United States.

Copyright wageningenur.nl, 2015

About 500 ISIS fuel tanker vehicles transporting illegal oil from Syria to Iraq for processing have been destroyed by the Russia’s Air Forces, Russian General Staff spokesman Colonel General Andrey Kartapolov said.

This week, Russia has dramatically increased its military operations in Syria. Russia is using long-range aviation bombers – Tu-22M3, Tu-95MC and Tu-160 – to target terrorist positions. Also, on Tuesday, the Russian cruiser Moskva fired a number of cruise missiles from the Mediterranean Sea and the militants’ positions at the ISIS Syrian capital, Raqqa.

This was just the start. Russian army Gen. Valery Gerasimov has announced that Russia is allocating 25 strategic bombers for the Syrian mission. Separately, Russian Air Forces will be strengthened with advanced 37 aircraft, including eight Su-34 bomber jets and four Su-27 fighter jets. Thus, Moscow is more than doubling the strike potential of the Russian Air Force in the region.

Moreover, the Russian Armed Forces will organize joint military operations with the French Navy to combat terrorists in Syria. According to chief of the main operations directorate of Russian army’s General Staff Andrey Kartapolov, it becomes possible with the arrival of the Charles de Gaulle warship to the Syrian shore. The sides are working on a draft plan for joint action on the sea and in the air.

France has also ramped up their air campaign against ISIS over the past days. Francois Hollande will meet Putin in Moscow on Nov. 26. A public idea of the event is to discuss how the countries’ militaries might work together.

The joint fight against ISIS may cause Russia and the West, as a first step France, to collaborate more closely in Syria. There are still limits to that cooperation because too many sides have different interests in the region. But it will become a step on the way to find a diplomatic solution of the crisis.