What is the Tesla factor?  It might be deemed a mixture of chance and selflessness, that inventive genius which works towards broader, holistic goals; a genius with the selflessness of a shaman and the morality of an ascetic.  Wherever one places Nikola Tesla in the canon of scientific discovers and inventors, there is little doubt he comes top of the tree, however vast that canopy tends to be.

Going through the small, though charming collection of items at the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade, one is struck by the man’s ascetic genius.  It is all frugality and dedication, a sort of priest of learning who also disseminates what goods he has.  The patents he took out, the discoveries he marketed, had everything to do with the commonweal and virtually nothing to do with his bank balance. It would come to cripple him later in life, a man who died impecunious and alone in Room 3327 of the Hotel New Yorker, having been injured in a hit and run.

His genius was one that was constantly plagued by a stretch of chance and ill-luck.  The museum features a sample of the Tesla coils which could transmit and receive radio signals at certain frequency, using electrical energy. But in 1895, chance intervened with a fire that destroyed his work, which would have featured the transmission of a signal 50 miles to West Point, New York.

The young Italian Guglielmo Marconi, who is still thought my some to be the pioneering inventor of the effective wireless radio system, took out the first wireless telegraphy patent in 1896.  To transmit signals across the English Channel, however, he had to make use of a Tesla oscillator.

The issue of patents would prove to be a running battle, with Marconi attempting to make inroads in the United States with applications that were rejected over the course of repeated applications over three years.  “Many of the claims are not patentable over Tesla patent numbers 646,576 and 649,621,” came the coolly dismissive language of the US Patent Office in 1903. Marconi had shown “pretended ignorance of the nature of the ‘Tesla oscillator’” which could only be regarded as “little short of absurd”.

Marconi was undeterred, and the Marconi Wireless Telegraphy Company shot up in stock value.  Investments poured in from Andrew Carnegie. Thomas Edison also contributed.  In 1904, buoyed by additional backing from J. P. Morgan, Marconi tried again. This time, the US Patent Office displayed a good deal of fickleness in reneging on its initial hostility to Marconi, awarding him the patent for the invention of radio.

To show that history has less reason than weasel-like cunning, the Nobel Prize committee decided to jointly award the prize in Physics to Marconi and Karl Braun in 1909.  The siding factor had been Marconi’s work in wireless communication.

That bout of scientific pugilism did not end there.  On June 21, 1943, months after Tesla’s death, the historical record was, at least to some degree, corrected by the US Supreme Court.  The patent rights for Marconi were declared invalid and awarded to Tesla.  The Marconi Company had sued the US government for using four patents in the US Court of Claims.  The four tuned circuits covered by Tesla’s patents were held to have preceded Marconi’s.  The inventor, John Stone, also gave Tesla priority.

The battle over radio was but one aspect of Tesla’s at times maligned work.  An even more formidable prospect remained Thomas Edison, putative inventor of the light bulb and phonograph.  Edison was the consummate pragmatist with good lashings of ruthlessness.  He was brilliant but threatened.  Money did matter – he had, after all, established the first investor owned entity in 1882.

Tesla, in contrast, seemed the antic dreamer, and one who saw concepts as structured totalities before pen and paper touched.  He was the true eidetic, reading Goethe’s Faust in Budapest and seeing before him the electrical field.  The brilliant Serb tended to operate in the world of the unseen – rays, currents, electromagnetic fields.

The “current wars”, as they came to be called, were bloody and toasty affairs. They featured Edison’s efforts to, if one can pun on this, short-circuit Tesla by a direct attack on the supposed evils of alternative current (AC).  Try it, Edison suggested, and die.  Edison believed that direct current (DC) – his envisaged world view of the electrical field – would dictate energy consumption.  Alternative current had to be discredited.

The tried recipe involved inflicting death on chosen animals. He had engaged on an orgy of electrical killings across a range of stray animals: dogs, cats, cows, horses.  Edison’s most famous casualty was the much abused elephant Topsy, which he electrocuted on January 4, 1903 in Luna Park with an enthusiasm verging on the fanatical.  Such murderous enthusiasm stood him in good stead to be the technology wizard behind the electric chair, the science of the grim reaper.

The Belgrade museum does not linger over scientific fractiousness, though it does introduce the theme. It rather chooses to see the oeuvre of electricity as one vast family of ambitious inventors stretching back to Thales. The Chicago Exposition saw Tesla’s thinking on alternative current transformed into material worth. It convinced the science heavies such as Lord Kelvin that AC was worth striving for. It also paved the way for the Niagara Falls Power Project and Tesla’s polyphase conductor.

Tesla’s vision would have terrified, as it already did then, the fossil fuel burners and the plunderers of the earth.  It was an envisaged world of free, and for the most part wireless electricity, transmitted via harnessing global points.

While he continued to investigate the possibilities of such a vision, one virtually impossible without colossal investment and good will, he was already noting humanity’s insatiable appetite for energy.  This is where the priestly side of Tesla came in, the preacher for economic, prudent use.

His calls fell on the deafest of ears and the heaviest of pockets.  J. P. Morgan, Wall Street’s indispensable representative, eventually ditched him. His laden pockets were also doing the talking. Accounts abound that Morgan did so because Tesla was not achieving his aims.  The contrary point is more plausible: Tesla’s success would have meant Morgan’s failure, an energy world without money.

The museum is filled with various models. The guide on this occasion resembled a pimply Keanu Reeves, and his tall, lean figure mechanically relayed the discoveries of Tesla and his various achievements. The Columbus egg device is particularly striking for children and children at heart.  Christopher Columbus showed how he could make an egg stand – by hard boiling it.  Tesla showed how electromagnetic fields could propel the fizzing egg upwards and move across the surface.  These were points of convergence four hundred years after the “discovery” of the Americas, though it is fair to say that both men has vastly different views about commerce and conquest.

Such museums tend to overcompensate in the practical department, encouraging participants to engage with certain exhibits.  The truth is that, for such a figure, more should be had.  Tesla’s entire life has become fragmented, and scattered through several museums with enthusiastic personnel who have persevered in keeping his role as a preeminent scientific genius alive.  The modern Serbian state struggles with adoring its cultural and scientific heroes. The sporting superstars tend to push the cerebral ones out, and into distant corners – Novak Djokovic tends to come first in all the stakes.

For all that, the compact space offers an intimate setting filled with a curious array of visitors.  The Tesla name continues to weigh heavily in the inventor’s world, though it should be heavier.  The crew today worshiping at his altar: fascinated Russians, a few gawky Americans on missionary work, a gaggle of intrigued Chinese, and an Aboriginal Australian jazz singer whose father so happened to be Serb.

A degree of chaos also prevails: tours for school students are also arranged.  Appointments are kept haphazardly.  The lack of organisation and punctuality is total in that regard. The staff seem disoriented and frazzled by some guests who expect more, be it in terms of minutiae or scientific gossip.  There are misunderstandings as to when Serbian and English sessions are to be held.

But the visitors, in the main, are seduced by the electric charge of Tesla’s world.  They come to sample the classic shock devices – generators where audience members can participate with fluorescent tubes to test the electromagnetic field.  Children squeal; adults sigh.  And they ask for more. This was always Tesla’s point: energy, to be sampled by all.

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

In an interview with Sputnik, eminent Turkish journalist Alptekin Dursunoglu voiced surprise about the US-led coalition’s reluctance to bomb Islamic State-controlled oil deposits in Syria, which he said are one of the key sources of income for the jihadist group. 

He referred to the Islamic State’s smuggling of oil to Turkey via an illegal pipeline, the existence of which has yet to be confirmed, according to Dursunoglu.

At the same time, he drew attention to the fact that the US-led air campaign never targeted the ISIL-controlled oil fields in Syria.

“This fact really makes [me] wonder, given that one of the steps of Obama’s plan to fight ISIL was the destruction of sources of the Islamic State’s income,” Dursunoglu said.

To find the answer, it is necessary to discern who ordered the US and its allies not to bomb ISIL’s oil fields, he said, referring to previous activities by local officials nominated by the US.

Commenting on thousands of oil tanks supplied by ISIL, Dursunoglu wondered why American drones failed to track the convoy of such a big scale.

He also said that the delivery of oil is not the only source of income for the Islamic State, which he recalled was part of al-Qaeda in 2012.

“This unified organization deliberately avoided being named al-Qaeda. This organization got the considerable share of money that was delivered by the Gulf States and Turkey under the pretext of helping the Syrian opposition,” Dursunoglu said.

He quoted local humanitarian workers as saying in 2012 that the money was sent in “bags, suitcases and sacks.”

Dursunoglu added that apart from illegal oil trading and racketeering, the smuggling of antiques and historical artifacts, as well as human trafficking and the organ trade add significantly to the Islamic State’s coffers.

The Obama administration is finally making sounds about a reasonable peace deal for Syria – accepting the principle that the Syrians should choose their own leaders – but words are cheap and a Saudi official makes clear that “regime change” remains the obsession, as Nicolas J S Davies explains.

The Vienna Communique — issued on Friday October by 17 countries, the United Nations and the European Union — provides a diplomatic framework for peace in Syria. In this document, the external powers who have poured weapons, fighters and money into a disastrous and failed “regime change” policy in Syria for more than four years have signed on to what could be a realistic basis for peace.

The agreement begins with a commitment to “Syria’s unity, independence, territorial integrity and secular character,” and then invites “the United Nations to convene representatives of the Government of Syria and the Syrian opposition for a political process leading to credible, inclusive, non-sectarian governance, followed by a new constitution and elections.” Critically, the agreement stipulates that, “This political process will be Syrian led and Syrian owned, and the people of Syria will decide the future of Syria.”

King Salman of Saudi Arabia and his entourage arrive to greet President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Jan. 27, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

But of course, that is exactly what nearly all these countries already agreed to in the Geneva Communique of June 30, 2012, under the leadership of former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. That proved to be Annan’s final peace effort after the U.S. and its allies had rebuffed and undermined the peace plan he unveiled in April 2012 (see my October 2012 article).

Instead of pressuring their proxies in Syria to agree to the Annan peace plan, the U.S. and its allies organized what French officials called a “Plan B,” the Orwellian “Friends of Syria” meetings, where they pledged an unconditional flow of money, weapons and diplomatic support to their proxy forces in Syria.

Annan expected the Geneva Communique to be formalized in a UN Security Council resolution within weeks. Instead, when the parties reassembled in New York, the U.S. and its allies resurrected their demands for President Bashar al-Assad’s removal. In an echo of the Iraq debates in 2002-2003, they rejected a Russian resolution based on the Geneva Communique and drafted one of their own that included provisions designed to set the stage for a UN authorization for the use of force.

But after watching the destruction of Iraq and Libya, Russia and China would not let the authority of the UNSC be co-opted to give a veneer of legitimacy to yet another murderous and destabilizing U.S.-led regime change.

Annan resigned as UN envoy, and the war ground on to kill at least 250,000 people, destroy much of Syria and turn 11 million people into desperate and homeless refugees.

Haytham Manna is the Paris-based spokesman for Syria’s National Coordinating Body for Democratic Change (NCB), a coalition of the mainly leftist opposition groups who launched peaceful protests in Syria during the Arab Spring in 2011. The NCB opposes both the Assad regime and the foreign-backed rebels in Syria, and it has remained committed to three basic principles: non-violence; non-sectarianism; and opposition to foreign intervention.

Haytham Manna spoke to Le Vif, Belgium’s largest French-language news magazine, in 2013. “The Americans have cheated,” Manna told Le Vif. “Two or three times they have withdrawn at the very moment an agreement was in the works. … Everything is possible, but that will depend mainly on the Americans. The French are content to follow. A political solution is the only one that could save Syria.”

Despite conciliatory statements by Secretary of State John Kerry that President Assad need not be excluded from a political transition, it is not clear yet whether the U.S. and its allies have really changed their position since 2012.

On the morning of the Vienna meeting, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir reiterated the Saudi position on Assad to the BBC’s Lyse Doucet, “He will go. There is no doubt about it. He will go. He will go either through a political process or he will be removed by force. There is no doubt that he will go.”

Doucet suggested to Jubeir that the U.S. and U.K. were adopting a more conciliatory position, but Jubeir was adamant that he was expressing “the consensus among the allied countries”:

“I believe the position of the countries in the coalition is really a unanimous one. … What we are saying is that, at the beginning of the process, it has to be clear to the Syrian people that Bashar Al-Assad will leave by a date certain. It can’t be probable, it can’t be possible, it has to be certain. And then that date will depend on how quickly one can transition power to the Governing Council and how quickly one can take over the security forces in Syria to ensure that the security forces don’t collapse and the civil institutions don’t collapse.”

Jubeir spoke in terms that U.S. officials would be careful not to use in public right now, but may well be using behind closed doors in discussions with allies like the Saudis. The picture he paints looks very much like post-invasion Iraq, complete with an unelected “Governing Council” and a plan to “take over” the security forces.

Such a plan, which Jubeir claims would prevent Syria’s collapse, reflects the self-serving and untested claims of U.S. neocons that the invasion of Iraq could have succeeded if only they hadn’t disbanded the Iraqi Army. A U.S.-Saudi attempt to “take over” the Syrian military, which has loyally defended Syria against their proxy forces for four years, weaves the neocons’ wishful thinking into a dangerous fantasy that could succeed only in igniting a further escalation of the war.

The apparent difference between the U.S. and Saudi positions raises difficult questions, ones on which the success or failure of the Vienna initiative may well depend. Veteran Middle East correspondent Charles Glass explained the analytical conundrum to Democracy Now last week,

“The U.S. seems to have lost some control over its allies in the region. On the surface, the United States is fighting against the Islamic State mainly because it went into Iraq. They didn’t seem to mind when they were just in Syria. But they’re still allowing Turkey to keep its border open for men and supplies to come into the Islamic State. And … they’re still allowing … the Islamic State and … other similar jihadist groups of al-Qaeda to receive weapons, including anti-tank weapons, from the Saudis. … (E)ither this is fine with American policy and consistent with it, or they’ve simply lost control over the course of events.”

So is this a case of the U.S. losing control over the course of events, or is the U.S. just playing “good cop” to the Saudis’ “bad cop” as part of a coordinated policy? Or are there elements of both at work? It is a U.S. priority to maintain its position as the leader of the Western and Arab royalist alliance in the Middle East, and that sometimes means positioning itself at the head of the parade rather than actually directing it.

But having staked its leadership on successfully removing President Assad from power, it has never before wavered on that ultimate goal, even as unanticipated events like the Islamic State’s move back into Iraq have made it much more complicated.

By fighting a “disguised, quiet, media-free” proxy war in Syria, U.S. officials have been able to invoke plausible deniability in the corrupt Western media. Many Americans see their government as guilty of inaction rather than of a murderous and destabilizing intervention in Syria.

Although over 250,000 war deaths in Syria have been spread among soldiers, rebels and civilians, (as of June 2013, an estimated 43 percent of the dead were Syrian soldiers and militiamen) U.S. domestic propaganda blames the Syrian government, or President Assad personally, for all the violence. Few Americans blame their own government or themselves, despite the well-documented U.S. role in supporting, prolonging and escalating the bloodshed.

While a political transition that led to free and fair elections would very likely bring new and different leaders to power in Syria, President Assad is not as unpopular as we have been led to believe. The Syrian army has fought loyally for four years, and a Qatari-funded YouGov opinion poll in December 2011 found that 55 percent of Syrians wanted Assad to remain in power, even as NATO planes were already flying in fighters and weapons from Libya to Turkey to overthrow his government.

So the U.S. and its allies may reasonably fear that a political transition which genuinely followed the roadmap laid down in Geneva and Vienna might leave important elements of the existing government in place.

On the other hand, when Le Vif asked Haytham Manna of the NCB about President Assad’s future in 2013, he replied, “He won’t stay. If the negotiations succeed, they will lead to a parliamentary regime. … But let me say this: when we are talking about massacres of minorities, and the president is a member of a minority, how can you ask him to resign or not to resign?

“Today, Western policy has reinforced his position as the defender of Syrian unity and of minorities. But having said that, nobody will be able to claim victory: the violence has become so blind that it will take an expanded front of the opposition and the regime to end it.”

If there are real differences between the U.S. and Saudi positions, the U.S. surely has leverage as the Saudi kingdom’s main weapons supplier and most important military ally to prevent it from derailing a diplomatic process that other countries support. But it seems more likely that the U.S. and the Saudis are still working together, as Jubeir implied, to take charge of a political transition in Syria and to try to ensure that their proxies end up in control of the country.

If the involvement of Russia, China and Iran prevents the U.S. and its allies from hijacking a political transition in Syria, will our leaders simply opt for carrying on with the war, as they did in July 2012? To paraphrase Haytham Manna, will the Americans cheat again?

On the heels of the Iran nuclear agreement, we are entering the beginning of yet another historic and fateful showdown between war and diplomacy, with the future of Syria – and maybe the future of U.S. foreign policy – on the line.

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

Russia’s president is a refreshing contrast to the liars who inhabit Western governments and Western media.  The agenda of the Russian government is peace and international cooperation under the rule of law.  Washington’s agenda is hegemony. 

President Putin endeavors to lead the world to peace, while the neoconservatives who control Washington’s foreign policy try to drive the world to war.

Contrast the crazed statements that flow from Washington comparing President Putin to Hitler, suggesting his assassination, and calling for shooting down Russian military aircraft with President Putin’s appeal that Washington abandon its hegemonic agenda and submit to international law and international cooperation. As President Putin has emphasized, for Washington “international cooperation” means submission to Washington’s will.

President Putin repeatedly states that governments must govern in accord with the people and not function as a decree-issuing body in accord with interest groups disrespectful of the people. Throughout the West we see the increasingly unresponsive behavior of government. In the United States careful studies conclude that, despite elections, the American people have essentially zero input into the policies decided in Washington.  In Greece, the government is coerced to impose on the Greek people policies dictated by large German banks supported by the German and EU governments.  In Portugal, the socialists who won the election were told by the conservative president that they would not be permitted to form a government.

In the UK, a senior military official stated that the military would not permit Jeremy Corbyn to form a Labour government should the Labour Party win the election.  The United States government threatens the governments of Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Argentina for representing the interests of the voters who put them in office instead of Washington’s interests.  The United States government has destroyed American civil liberty with its unconstitutional mass surveillance,  indefinite detention without charges, and murder of US citizens without due process of law. Dissent itself is in the process of being criminalized.

Just looking at the basic facts makes it impossible to conclude that the West has “freedom and democracy” or that Washington’s bombs and invasions have brought “freedom and democracy” to Africa and the Middle East.

Every American can get a conclusive lesson about where moral leadership resides by becoming familiar with Putin’s speeches.

Here are some examples:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/overcoming-the-logic-of-war-there-are-no-winners-in-a-global-conflict/5484131?utm_campaign=magnet&utm_source=article_page&utm_medium=related_articles

http://www.globalresearch.ca/vladimir-putin-on-france-and-europe-nato-member-states-have-renounced-their-sovereignty/5458734

The university students have been furious, as their cry “Fees must fall!” rang out on campuses and sites of political power across this society. An historic victory over South African neoliberalism was just won through the most intense three-week burst of activist mobilization since liberation from apartheid in 1994.

The liberation movement rulers in the African National Congress (ANC) have faced unprecedented socio-economic pressure and unrest. This is the most unequal of any major country, with a working class that the World Economic Forum last month judged to be the most militant on earth for the fourth straight year, and a deregulated corporate elite which enjoys the world’s third highest profits, yet which remains intent on looting the economy at a rate as fast as any. All these measures have amplified since the ANC took power in 1994. Suffering a 53 per cent official poverty rate, South Africa witnessed 2300 protests recorded by the police as ‘violent’ this year, a fifth more than last year.

The desperation flash point this month was the announcement of double-digit increases in university tuition fees. Students demonstrated not only against local managers at more than a dozen campuses. Their organizations united across the ideological spectrum, from socialist to nationalist to even the center-right student wing of the main opposition party, and hit national targets.

They began by storming the parliamentary precinct in Cape Town on October 21, then marched to the Johannesburg and Durban headquarters of the ANC on October 22 and 23, and finally demonstrated – tens of thousands strong – at President Jacob Zuma’s Union Buildings office in Pretoria on October 23.

There, restraining fences were torn down by some of the activists and tyres and latrines were burned, with police once again responding by using stun grenades, rubber bullets and water cannons. Refusing to come out to address the crowd, instead Zuma held a press conference where he unexpectedly conceded to the students’ main demand: no fee increase for next year (in spite of general price inflation around 5 per cent).

The Trajectory Through Race to Class

The current insurgency began late last month with sporadic acts of fury. At the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, small groups of students burned an administration building and cars, and students were then caught bringing human excrement on campus, a tactic that was used successfully six months earlier to catalyse the dismantling of a hated statue at the University of Cape Town.

That was the #RhodesMustFall movement. Within a few weeks of a “poo protest” in which excrement was hurled at the prominent likeness of 19th century colonial mining lord Cecil Rhodes, thousands cheered when the statue was removed from the scenic campus. But their other demands for university transformation and “decolonization” – racial equity, a different campus culture, curriculum reform, more indigenous African professors (there are only five out of more than 250 senior faculty at Cape Town) – were unsuccessful.

After a breather, at UCT and Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand (“Wits”), the country’s two traditional sites of ruling class reproduction, student protests revived this month. Of the dozen that erupted at tertiary institutions, these two were the best organized, most sustained and non-violent, mainly using the tactic of entrances blockages, then moving to the nearby arterial roads. Disciplined student leaders emphasized non-violent civil disobedience. Police brutality and occasional clashes with higher-income drivers who drove into the blockades did not deter the activists.

On October 21, inside parliament, the opposition Economic Freedom Fighters’ (EFF) support for their cause came before Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene delivered his medium-term budget speech, which EFF leaders ardently tried to postpone, before being forcefully evicted. Outside, courageous students nearly broke their way into the main hall where Nene was holding forth.

But although there is still plenty of scope for fiscal expansiveness, Nene’s budget was heartless: no new money for universities (just condemnation of “unconstructive” student protests), and a tokenistic $0.75 (U.S.)/month rise in grant payments to the poorest pensioners and disabled people (who currently receive $105 (U.S.)/month). Although the latter is less than 1 per cent, Nene dishonestly claimed that this plus a prior tiny raise offered in February are “in line with long-term inflation.” (The inflation rate for poor people is much higher than the norm due to the far higher share of faster-inflating food, housing and electricity costs in their budgets.)

Nene did find funds for a three-year $63-billion (U.S.) infrastructure program whose major projects promote, first, exceptionally destructive coal exports mainly by multinational corporations; second, the Durban port-petrochemical complex’s expansion; and third, iron-ore exports. Yet there is vast world over-capacity in coal, shipping and steel, with South Africa’s second major steel producer barely avoiding bankruptcy last month. But these White Elephant mega-projects continue to get the lion’s share of state, parastatal and private infrastructure funding.

The influence of big business on Nene’s budget team is blatant: for example, the world’s largest mining house, BHP Billiton, still gets electricity at 1/10th the price of ordinary consumers, and persistent corporate tax evasion and illicit financial flows are now notorious. Another pro-corporate investment that will be looked at with increasing suspicion by society the more it becomes active, starting next year, is the BRICS bank, whose target capitalization (spread among five countries) is $100-billion (U.S.).

Credit Rating Agencies and a “Communist” Minister

Whether seen through the eyes of students, workers, the poor, women and environmentalists, Nene’s budget was a recipe for intensified social struggle. Yet this was the first time since 1991, when Value Added Tax was imposed during apartheid at the behest of the International Monetary Fund, that a major spontaneous protest targeted the finance minister at such a sensitive moment. For Nene, the only objective appeared to be appeasing the banks’ credit ratings agencies.

As Reuters reported, Nene “downplayed the effect of university students storming parliament as he delivered his medium term budget on the credit rating of Africa’s most advanced economy. ‘What matters for the ratings agencies is our response as government in addressing these challenges,’ he said about the students’ demands to keep tuition fees unchanged.”

Government’s response was a combination of widely-condemned police brutality and ineffectual seduction by the ruling alliance’s left flank, especially the SA Communist Party whose leader Blade Nzimande is also Minister of Higher Education. He was shouted down by protesters outside parliament when he tried to explain why their demand was unrealistic and they would face a 6 per cent increase.

Nzimande’s 2013 Ministerial Committee for the Review of the Funding of Universities found “the amount of government funding is not sufficient to meet the needs of the public university system… Government should increase the funding for higher education, to be more in line with international levels of expenditure.” But Nzimande had refused to release a prior commissioned study favorable to the idea of free tertiary education.

A Boost to Anti-Austerity Activism

Students simply refused to accept Nzimande’s 6 per cent tuition rise, given that inflation is currently less than 5 per cent. So the march on Pretoria two days later – and threat of a full storming of Union Buildings – must have been the decisive factor in the state’s reversal. Although the cost of a deferring a tuition increase entirely will only be $150-million (U.S.), by making this concession Zuma has given encouragement to many more protests and Pretoria marches in future.

For those in the society watching and rooting for the students, this was a critical moment, perhaps ultimately as important as the breakthrough Treatment Action Campaign fight for free AIDS medicines fifteen years ago. For as Nene signalled, a more damaging period of austerity looms. South African GDP growth will be only 1.5 per cent this year and probably the same next year, lower than population growth. Thanks to Nene’s tight-fistedness, there will be a relatively small budget deficit (3.3 per cent of GDP), but financial commentators are full of threats about South Africa following Brazil’s recent downgrading to a junk-bond rating by Fitch, Standard&Poors and Moodys, the creditors’ cruel rating agencies.

The class war rages on. Other student demands remain outstanding: free tertiary education for poor and working people as the overall goal, and an end to labour casualization and outsourcing for low-paid university workers. Many such workers barely receive $100 (U.S.)/month, and with a poverty line of $60 (U.S.)/person/month, raising a family on starvation wages is impossible.

The task of retaining this visionary student-worker alliance in coming weeks and maintaining a national presence will be as difficult as is the multi-class ‘United Front’ organizing now underway. Difficult yes, but now, nothing seems impossible in this exceptional site of class struggle.

Patrick Bond is a political economist based at the University of KwaZulu-Natal School of Development Studies in Durban, where he directs the Centre for Civil Society. He is active with social movements in South Africa, Zimbabwe and internationally.

 In this short video,  the current Vice President of Veterans for Peace, Gerry Condon, denounces America’s bogus wars in Afghanistan and other parts of the world.

We are told US foreign policy is “a total failure” and that “it’s time for the US to seek other means other than military to seek their policy goals in the world.” For him, US imperialism, which carries on spreading like poison, must be tamed: “It’s a miracle we got through the Cold War without having a nuclear confrontation and we shouldn’t be reckless with tempting that possibility today.”

Here is the full interview :

A 27 de Outubro, o Secretário da Defesa dos EUA, Ashton Carter, anunciou que o Pentágono está a ponderar “uma acção directa no terreno” tanto no Iraque como na Síria, num esforço para combater o grupo terrorista do autoproclamado Estado Islâmico”. (Sputnik, 27 de Outubro,2015).

Contudo, a agenda não tão oculta não é “combater” mas sim “proteger e ir em socorro” do grupo terrorista Estado Islâmico.

Qual é a novidade? Estaremos a testemunhar um processo de escalada militar?

Os EUA e os seus aliados já têm botas no terreno na Síria. Não é oficial, trata-se de uma dita “operação encoberta” da qual já toda a gente sabe.

O Pentágono, juntamente com a OTAN, a Turquia e Israel, et al, têm despachado de modo rotineiro para o teatro de guerra sírio os seus conselheiros militares, forças especiais e operacionais dos serviços secretos. Estas forças estrangeiras têm trabalhado no seio das hostes rebeldes desde o início da guerra na Síria em Março de 2011.

Embora nem Washington nem a comunicação social de massas tenham reconhecido “oficialmente” a sua presença na Síria, há que compreender que essas forças especiais ocidentais têm levado a cabo funções rotineiras de comando no seio dos vários grupos terroristas correlacionadas com a coligação liderada pelos EUA-OTAN. Por outras palavras, são amplamente responsáveis pela coordenação de incontáveis operações terroristas do EIIL e do Al Nusrah contra civis no interior da Síria em favor da coligação liderada pelos EUA. Escusado será dizer, contam também com o apoio da campanha aérea dos EUA, que teoricamente tem atingido (em vez de “proteger”) os terroristas.

“A Responsabilidade de Proteger” (R2P) Os Terroristas

Em reacção aos bombardeamentos da Rússia contra o EIIL, Washington pondera agora anunciar “oficialmente” (aquilo que têm já feito nos últimos quatro anos) a sua resolução de colocar tropas no terreno numa extensa operação militar. Escusado será dizer, esta operação, caso seja levada a cabo sem o selo de aprovação do Conselho de Segurança da ONU, irá constituir uma violação da lei internacional (Nuremberga).

A administração dos EUA está a considerar a possibilidade de mobilizar para o terreno sírio um pequeno número de forças inserida nas tropas da oposição “moderada” curda, anunciou o The Wall Street Journal na quarta-feira, citando fontes oficiais dos EUA.

Os militares dos EUA também propuseram enviar um grupo de conselheiros de combate para a linha da frente com o exército iraquiano e, possivelmente, também com os rebeldes sírios. Contudo, esta proposta é qualificada pelo jornal como sendo a do cenário menos provável.

Mais, a Casa Branca irá examinar a opção de mobilizar um pequeno esquadrão de helicópteros ofensivos Apache para o Iraque para incrementar a luta contra o Estado Islâmico, afirmou o jornal. Esta medida implica mobilizar várias centenas de militares dos EUA para o Iraque, de acordo com o diário. Washington lidera a coligação que tem levado a cabo ataques aéreos contra as posições do EIIL na Síria e no Iraque desde 2014. Na terça-feira, o Secretário da Defesa dos EUA, Ashton Carter, afirmou que o Pentágono não excluía a realização de ataques no terreno contra os terroristas do EIIL. (Sputnik, 28 de Outubro, 2015)

Uma Zona de Voo Restrito

Outro desenvolvimento importante diz respeito à afirmação do Secretário da Defesa, Ashton Carter, de que embora “uma zona de voo restrito” não esteja a ser considerada pelo Pentágono no futuro mais imediato, não deixam de ser uma opção: “o presidente Barack Obama não ‘descartou’ a opção de uma zona de voo restrito na Síria”.

Entretanto, o Qatar anunciou estar a ponderar enviar tropas para o terreno na Síria. Esta revelação anunciada por Doha foi muito provavelmente formulado em Washington. De acordo com o ministro dos Negócios Estrangeiros do Qatar, Khalid al-Attiyah, o Qatar deve intervir militarmente em reacção à intervenção da Rússia em apoio ao governo de Bashar Al Assad. (CNN Arabic, 21 de Outubro):

“Para tudo aquilo que proteja o povo sírio e a Síria da divisão, não iremos poupar esforços em o desempenhar juntamente com os nossos irmãos sauditas e turcos, o quer que seja”.

Desde o início que o Qatar tem agido como intermediário dos EUA. Juntamente com a Arábia Saudita tem contribuído para o recrutamento, treinamento e financiamento dos terroristas ligados à Al Qaeda na Síria, incluindo o EIIL e o Al Nusrah.

Encontramo-nos numa Perigosa Encruzilhada

A diplomacia internacional colapsou. Os criadores da política externa dos EUA são ignorantes e corruptos, inconscientes quanto às implicações das suas acções.

Os ataques aéreos liderados pelos EUA estão a ser implementados simultaneamente com os da Rússia.

A ONU é um beco sem saída. O secretário-geral da ONU, Ban Ki-Moon (nomeado por Washington), apoia a guerra liderada pelos EUA sob a bandeira do humanitarismo.

Estas várias opções e ameaças por parte da coligação liderada pelos EUA – sem falar da taragelice que diz respeito à “opção da III Guerra Mundial” nos corredores do Congresso dos EUA – apontam para um cenário de escalada militar, com o potencial de levar a um confronto militar directo entre a coligação liderada pelos EUA e a Federação da Rússia.

Michel Chossudovsky

All five US network television interview programs featured the same individual Sunday: the newly elected speaker of the House of Representatives, Republican Paul Ryan. The Wisconsin congressman, who was Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential running mate in the 2012 election, was elected speaker Thursday. He succeeded John Boehner, who was forced out by a long-simmering rebellion of an ultra-right minority, the self-styled House Freedom Caucus.

Ryan was not portrayed, either in the Sunday interviews or the saturation media coverage of the previous week, as representing a further shift to the right in the US political establishment, although that is certainly the case. Rather, his interviewers treated him deferentially, even affectionately, while presenting him as someone who was generally well-liked among Democrats and Republicans and who was impressive both as a thinker and a policy maker.

The interviewers did not touch on Ryan’s record in his previous position as chairman of the House Budget Committee, where he authored a series of extreme-right budget proposals. These, as the New York Times summarized it, “have included transforming Medicare into a voucher program; partially privatizing Social Security; and abolishing the corporate income tax, the estate tax and the Alternative Minimum Tax.”

It is worth recalling that when Romney chose Ryan as his running mate, the selection was made to appease ultra-right-wing elements within the Republican Party who had backed Romney rivals such as former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. As theWorld Socialist Web Site wrote at the time, “the Ryan pick signals that the US ruling elite has decided on a frontal assault on key social programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.”

Now Ryan has been elevated to the highest position in the US Congress, placing him second in the line of succession to the presidency, after Vice President Biden, and making him the highest-ranking Republican. His political views, once considered so extreme that even most Republicans were reluctant to cast votes for his budget plans, are presented as “mainstream” or even “moderate.”

Much has been made of Ryan’s supposedly pleasant demeanor, as though cutthroat attacks on the poor and on working people were more palatable when accompanied by a smiling face. Liberal Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne gushed, “he is, from my experience, a genuinely nice and warm person…” Another Post writer, Dana Milbank, noted that as Ryan made his way to the speaker’s seat, he walked among the Democrats, shaking hands and accepting bear hugs and other congratulations. He “offers a glimpse of hope,” Milbank enthused.

The congressman’s treatment of working people is anything but “kinder and gentler.” He advocates the replacement of universal social benefits such as food stamps and Medicaid with vouchers whose value will automatically erode with inflation, distributed through state governments that already apply harsh eligibility restrictions and limit social benefits to absurdly low levels. (Alabama, to take one recent example, has slashed the duration of jobless benefits to a mere 12 weeks).

In his television interviews, Ryan repeated the theme that congressional Republicans had up to now been “bold” only in their “tactics” in dealing with the Obama administration—a reference to the 2013 federal government shutdown and other efforts to use fiscal deadlines to pressure the White House.

Going forward, he said, the Republicans had to be “bold in policy.” By that he means that over the next year, the Republican-controlled Congress must elaborate an ultra-right agenda for the next administration, whether headed by a Republican or Democrat.

He singled out tax policy as one main area of work, suggesting that Congress must prepare a sweeping tax cut for the wealthy and for corporations to be implemented by the next administration. Social entitlement “reform” plans would also be developed, Ryan has indicated.

Ryan’s plan for privatizing Medicare is very similar in structure to Obamacare. In place of the present Medicare program, where the government pays medical bills directly and guarantees certain benefits, recipients would be given a voucher to buy private insurance on exchanges established with government assistance. This is precisely the mechanism under Obama’s health care overhaul for dismantling employer-paid health insurance, slashing benefits, raising out-of-pocket costs, rationing health care and increasing the stranglehold of giant corporations over the health care system.

The goal in both cases is the same: to boost the profits of the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical giants and the hospital chains by providing them guaranteed markets while slashing the cost of health care for the government and private business.

Ryan was elected speaker one day after the House adopted a bipartisan budget plan that significantly boosts military spending while introducing major cuts in Social Security disability payments and Medicare reimbursements to hospitals and other providers. It also maintains the so-called “sequester” caps on domestic spending with only minor adjustments for the 2016 and 2017 fiscal years. The budget deal was ratified by the Senate early Friday morning and sent to Obama for his signature.

The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal backed the deal, noting that despite the small increase in domestic spending authorized in the agreement, “Still, this means the discretionary budget—everything except entitlements—will be $56 billion and $70 billion less, in 2016 and 2017 respectively, than the first Paul Ryan budget that the House passed in 2011.”

The American political structure under Obama has moved so far to the right that what was denounced in 2011 as right-wing radicalism provided for higher levels of social spending than the bipartisan compromise of 2015.

Ryan’s elevation as speaker is a warning to the working class: policies once thought completely out of bounds, politically too dangerous to enact because the American people would rise up in anger, are now considered not only possible, but absolutely necessary.

Driven by the deepening global crisis of capitalism, the US ruling elite is preparing to wipe out what remains of a social safety net and destroy programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps that are the only things protecting tens of millions of people from poverty, disease, hunger and an early death.

Israel’s endless war on Palestine continues unabated – pitting one of the world’s most powerful militaries against defenseless youths, children, women and others joining their liberating struggle.

State terrorism rages against courageous freedom fighters, an apartheid rogue state operating mercilessly, victims blamed for its high crimes.

On Saturday, another Palestinian youth died, murdered by Israel in cold blood, alleging another stabbing attempt, fabricated like most others – during what Israeli authorities called a “violent riot,” what Palestinians call resisting tyranny. They alone were injured during the incident, no Israelis.

Palestinian medics were blocked at gunpoint from aiding the victim, forced to leave. A witness told Maan News he saw multiple live rounds fired at a “young man…far from the main street.”

He threatened no one. Soldiers removed his body to an unknown location. Journalists witnessing what happened were assaulted, ordered out of the area.

As of Sunday morning local time, the Palestinian death toll stands at 72, including 12 children, two infants and a pregnant woman, other female fatalities included in the overall total – everyone victimized by Israeli viciousness.

Scores more resistance victims are being crammed into overcrowded Israeli prisons, already filled with thousands of Palestinian political prisoners.

Human rights groups condemned Israel’s “shoot-to-kill” policy, adopted by Netanyahu security cabinet officials in September. Palestinian freedom fighters are being ruthlessly gunned down in cold blood.

Others are being beaten and arbitrarily arrested, guilty of protesting for freedom. East Jerusalem neighborhoods are blockaded – no one let in or out without authorization and intrusive searches.

Open warfare against defenseless civilians is virtually ignored by Western officials, one-sidedly supporting Israeli viciousness, mindless of how many Palestinians die, how many others suffer horrifically.

Haaretz published former Israeli defense minister/US ambassador Moshe Arens’ Big Lie, rubbish calling Palestinian “violence” another example of “worldwide Islamic terror,” adding “terrorists cannot be appeased’ – outrageously blaming victims for state-sponsored high crimes.

Israeli media have been disgracefully one-sided throughout weeks of state-sponsored brutality. Most everything they report lacks credibility, mimicking US media scoundrels.

Virtually claiming all Palestinian youths are “knife wielding terrorists.” Brave Israeli soldiers murdering defenseless protesters are national heroes – decades of brutal occupation harshness entirely ignored, along with the right of long-oppressed people to live free from apartheid ruthlessness.

Washington’s partnership with Israel is the root cause of regional violence and instability – oppressive Israeli occupation harshness responsible for ongoing heroic resistance. We’re all Palestinians in a common struggle for freedom.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

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

Egypt’s representative at United Nations voted on Friday in support of Israel’s bid for membership of the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), Israeli media reported.

Since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and its acceptance to membership of the UN, Egypt had never voted in its favour at the UN before last Friday.

One hundred and seventeen countries voted in favour of Israel, 21 abstained, while only Namibia voted against the decision. Countries that abstained include: Qatar, Tunisia, Syria, Mauritania, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Kuwait, Iraq and Algeria.

Israeli sources said that they were accepted to this UN committee after “intensive diplomatic efforts” exerted at different levels.

Prior to the vote, spokesman for the Egyptian ministry of foreign affairs Ahmed Abu Zeid refused to comment on the matter. However, in the face of fierce domestic criticism, he said that voting for Israel was necessary in order to secure the membership of a number of Arab countries to the committee.

Egyptian politicians and activists widely rejected this move and severely criticised Egyptian Military President Abdul-Fattah al-Sisi.

In 1973, Egypt and Syria started a war against Israel that paved the way for peace talks between Egypt and Israel. It ended up with a peace treaty in 1979 that ended state of war between the two sides, reciprocal recognition and normalisation of ties.

Palestinians gather in the street to be registered in the Tel Rumeida neighbourhood in occupied Hebron.

It is being reported that the area will be closed off completely for people who are not residents of the area and who are not registered within the next few days.

“For the people living in the area, it will become like a prison. For people living in Hebron, the closure of Tel Rumeida will mean that the city will be split in two”, says local resident to international activists.

The names and ID-numbers of the people living in the area are being written down by soldiers on long lists, and there are dozens of Palestinians standing around Gilbert checkpoint waiting to hand over their information or be forced out. Even for the residents who will be allowed in the area, this will mean severe restriction of their movement. Every time Palestinian residents of Tel Rumeida & the area around Ibrahimi mosque (between checkpoints 209 and 29) cross a check point to get to their home, the soldiers will have to search the long list for the name.

It is not the first time the Israel has imposed such restrictions on the residents of the area. In 1994 after the Illegal settler extremist Baruch Goldstein committed a massacre in the Ibrahimi Mosque, similar measures were taken. At that time, Palestinian residents refused registration and were punished with a six month 24-hour-curfew and only allowed a few hours a week during which the residents could buy food.

Due to the increase in violence by army and settlers against Palestinians they do not dare to refuse registration this time.

Much has been reported and analysed about recent developments pertaining first to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s address to the United Nations General Assembly on September 28^th 2015 and shortly following that, the direct military action carried out by the Russian armed forces in relation to the conflict within Syria.

 Both events, it has been claimed, formally and decisively bring to an end the de facto post-Cold War state of affairs of unipolarity; that is, one which posits the United States of America as the sole geo-political superpower that has been able to exercise exclusive and unrestrained force in various parts of the world.

 It is also clear that the denunciation by Putin of longstanding American foreign policy as well as the projection of Russian power within the cauldron of Middle Eastern affairs has brought into sharp focus an aggregate of issues which taken together give the Russian leader the upper-hand, not only in regard to that geared toward the pursuit of his nation’s strategic interests, but also in the realms of moral authority and legal justification.

 It has left the United States reeling and presents a future laden with a mixture of threats and benefits. The threats relate to a re-ignition of a Russo-American Cold War replete with a formal drawing of global spheres of influence, the fighting of proxy wars and an ever-heightening danger of thermo-nuclear conflict.

 The benefits, on the other hand, would comprehend a framework for co-operation between the United States and the nations which it presently regards as the greatest threats to its global imperium: the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China.

 The masterful deconstruction Putin gave before the United Nations laid bare the failings of American foreign policy during the decades succeeding the ending of the Cold War. The Russian president correctly characterised it as one abounding in mischief, negativity and hubris – an analysis which has been bolstered by the widely favourable reaction of swathes of public opinion around the world towards Russian actions against anti-government insurrectionists in the Syrian theatre as well as the unimaginative and miserly reaction from the American government.

 Events have made it clear that only a genuine and unequivocal recalibration of American foreign policy rationales which have fostered coup d’etats, ‘colour revolutions’ and wars of destabilisation will serve the purpose of moulding the world into a far less dangerous place than it is at present.

Classic formulations of theories underpinning the security systems entered into by nation states often posit those representing ‘balance of power’ alignments or by an arrangement geared towards what is termed ‘collective security’.

 In the era of the Cold War which pitted the ideologically incompatible systems operated by the United States and the Soviet Union, each side established a military alliance of nations against the other.

 Aided by the threat of mutually assured destruction by thermonuclear exchanges, the parity of the military machineries respectively of the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact achieved what some referred to as a “balance of terror”.

 While the world was far from being a docile place, the prevailing circumstances meant that neither ‘superpower’ was prone to making rash decisions so far as interfering with the sovereignty of other nations within their immediate spheres of influence.

 The operation of the United Nations to which both superpowers belong provided more than a semblance of ‘collective security’ as was seen in regard, for instance, to the behind-the-scenes work of UN officials in combination with US and Soviet diplomats and statesmen in brokering armistices and peace accords in successive Arab-Israeli conflicts.

 But with the crumbling of the ‘Iron Curtain’ and the onset of what Francis Fukuyama referred to as “the end of history”, the previously existing international system of checks and balances became somewhat extinct.

 The dissolution of the Soviet Union and the succeeding chaotic transformation of Russia into a post-communist society provided those holding the levers of power in Washington with the raison d’etre to act on achieving an over-arching strategic goal; namely that of preventing the rise of another power which would challenge American dominance.

 That the American system had prevailed against the challenge offered by communism also granted it the right to remould the world, if not completely in its image, in a manner nonetheless which would serve the totality of its political and economic interests.

 It followed that the United States had the right to act unilaterally without cognisance of international treaty obligations or recourse to international systems of regulation while in pursuit of its aims. The ‘Wolfowitz Doctrine’  thus set the tone for an era of American militarism and imperialism.

 Predating the “catastrophic and catalyzing event” of the September 11 attacks in 2001 which kick started a programme of armed invasions, fomenting of colour revolutions and manoeuvres geared towards destabilization was the role played by NATO in the ultimate dismemberment of the former Yugoslavia.

 The United States, the undisputed leader of NATO, steered its member states into supporting its decision to stage the illegal invasion of Iraq. There was a continuum of this ethic after the expiration of the administration led by George W. Bush. The ‘backseat’ approach favoured by the Barack Obama presidency rode roughshod over the strict letter of the law and convention by aiding Islamist rebels in overthrowing the government of Colonel Gaddafi in Libya.

 Then, also in contravention of international law, Washington oversaw the recruitment, training and financing of armed Islamic fanatics –some of them transferred from the carnage of Libya- to another theatre of Jihadist insurrection; namely that of Syria.

 The consistent practice of American policy towards governments which did not consent to do the bidding of Washington was that of promoting destabilization. This has obviously been the case in regard to its relationship with Russia since that nation began charting a very different course to that which had been followed by Boris Yeltsin.

 But even prior to the ascent of Vladimir Putin to the helm of the Russian Federation, the American’s had breached an important protocol of the agreement to allow a unified Germany to join NATO. This entailed that there should be no expansion eastwards.

 NATO has nonetheless continued to admit former members of the Warsaw Pact into its ranks and has been behind provocations on Russia’s borders via the fomenting of conflicts in the former Soviet Republics of Georgia and Ukraine.

 These highly dangerous intrigues along with the policy of encirclement via the deployment of nuclear ‘defensive shields’ are in keeping with a vital counterpart of the Wolfowitz Doctrine, namely that espoused by Zbigniew Brzezinski, an influential political thinker whose ideas are apparently much admired by the incumbent Obama.

 Obama’s policy via the successful efforts of US intelligence assets in fomenting dissent and eventually overthrowing the democratically elected president of Ukraine, are consistent with Brzezinski’s strategy of pressuring and intimidating Russia with the end of reducing it to a vassal status by balkanising it and ensuring that it does not in concert with any other nation form a Eurasian power bloc that could challenge the economic domination of America and the Western European world.

 In many ways, Putin’s speech before the UN General Assembly, a brief and clear summation of the ills caused by the untrammelled exercise of American power, performed the feat of turning history on its head.

 Here after all was the leader of the successor state to the “Evil Empire” giving a moral lecture to the presumed leader of the “free world”. The “Evil Empire” phrase, coined by US President Ronald Reagan had a great degree of resonance because of the obvious failings of the Soviet system in terms of its poor record in guaranteeing individual freedom. The oppressive apparatus wielded by the Soviet state towards it own citizens extended to its iron-fisted response to dissent within its satellite states.

 Putin, a man often taken to task for his description in 2005 of the fall of the Soviet Union as the “greatest geo-political catastrophe of the twentieth century” was honest enough to admit the following:

 We should all remember the lessons of the past. For example, we remember examples from our Soviet past, when the Soviet Union exported social experiments, pushing for changes in other countries for ideological reasons, and this often led to tragic consequences and caused degradation instead of progress.

 His exposition on the failure of American policy was concise and difficult to contradict. The host of disasters which have followed in the wake of the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 are clear for all to see, just as is the reduction of Libya from a nation with Africa’s highest standard of living to the broken down rubble of warring militias that it is today.

 The fracture of civil society and creation of chaos in those nations is being replicated manifold in the tragedy of Syria that again is authored by the United States with the connivance of its NATO allies and friends in the Gulf Cooperation Council.

 As Putin put it:

 Instead of bringing about reforms, aggressive intervention rashly destroyed government institutions and the local way of life. Instead of democracy and progress, there is now violence, poverty, social disasters and total disregard for human rights, including even the right to life.

 The neoconservative idea of purportedly exporting democracy to Middle East through the barrel of a gun or bomb-bays of military aircraft continues, heedless of Robespierre’s warning about the fear and resentment inspired by “armed missionaries”.

 The United States has cynically utilised Sunni Islamist militias adhering to the ideology espoused by al Qaeda as its ‘shock troops’; a kind of a foreign legion tasked with bring down the secular regimes of the Arab world as well as the Shia powers not disposed to following the agenda set by Washington. This amounts an unholy alliance with groups of the sort that reportedly were at the root of the disaster of September 11, 2001.

 To this Putin offered the following:

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 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.

 Putin went on to plead for a re-institution of the collective security system. In other words, he called for an end to American unilateral action and a return to the co-operative basis on which the principles of the United Nations system for ensuring multi-state security is predicated.

 The reason for his call for cooperation is not hard to fathom. Russia as with China has sizeable Muslim populations which can pose internal security problems if the Islamic State strain of fanaticism is allowed to spread.

 An enduring Islamic State in the Levant which is subject to measures aimed at merely containing it provides a global threat to all; a threat to those Western European nations with rising Muslim populations and indeed Muslim states around the world.

 The inexorable logic behind the call for collective action must be obvious to all. Putin was clear in his plea for a break with the unipolar mode by not merely calling for the revival of the UN as a valid conduit for fostering international cooperation, but also specifically for a alliance of the sort last seen with the anti-Hitler coalition of the Second World War.

 Yet, the response from Washington has been largely marked by cynicism and continued hostility. On the one hand, such reaction confounds the mind of the objective bystander who cannot fathom why a common cause cannot be made against a dreaded foe such as the Islamic State.

 On the hand it is illuminating. The conclusion drawn by the objective observer is that the reluctance to create a unified and concerted effort against the Islamic State and other similar hued forces fighting against the Assad government is that the militants are serving the geo-strategic interests of the government of the United States.

 The abject failure in building a viable opposition political movement and a ‘Free Syrian Army’ are palpable when the official investment yield of a $500 million dollar investment is a paltry five guerrillas.

 Whereas in the past, the abstract principles governing the legality of intervention and non-intervention were sufficiently blurred by the legitimacy conferred on a genuine and sizeable anti-government movement, the situation in Syria does not permit this. The anti-Assad contingents of guerrillas are largely composed of imported Jihadis.

 Experts such as Professor Stephen Cohen insist that there are no credible entities which can be referred to as ‘moderate rebels’; an appellation which has been subject to much derision. Further, the Assad government has a great deal of support from the Sunni majority including that of the Grand Mufti of Syria.

 It needs to be reminded that it is the Assad government which has borne the brunt of fighting Islamist fanatics, and that his secular regime presents the only hope for maintaining a Syrian state which will protect religious minorities including Christians from an ominous fate under an Islamic State.

 Claims by Washington that the Assad government lacks legitimacy are not credible given that he won an election in June of 2014. The United States, of course, in 1864 underwent an election during its own civil war when the electoral votes of eleven Southern states were not counted.

 Neither can Washington’s contentious claims of the deliberate use by the Syrian Army of barrel bombs against civilian targets be used to argue the case for illegitimacy. It is an accusation reeking of hypocrisy given the numerous innocents killed by United States drone warfare, bombings and other military attacks, some involving the targeting of civilians with depleted uranium munitions.

 It is clear that Washington hopes that the demonization of Vladimir Putin for which much of the Western media has been complicit, will discredit his message.

 Putin it seems alternately inspires dread and hope: From anti-Russian Central and Eastern Europeans eternally unforgiving of the historical domination of their homelands by Russian and Soviet empires to the White Nationalists that tout him as the ‘saviour’ of the white race.

 From the archetypal ‘liberal’ Westerner inculcated with years of anti-Putin propaganda portraying him as the quintessential practitioner of a Russian brand of oriental despotism to the Western ‘Leftie’ still besotted with Russia or, at least, enduringly sympathetic to the role Russia played in attempting to set up a Marxist utopia.

 But whatever the point of view, the argument for a return to a collective security arrangement based on mutual interest is difficult to displace given that American dominance has not been exercised with benevolence. Putin has already demonstrated a high level of statesmanship in averting an American bombing campaign against Assad’s forces back in September of 2013 after the chemical attack in Ghouta.

 The negotiated programme for collecting and destroying Syrian chemical stocks alleviated the need for this, much to the relief of war-weary legislators and their constituents in both the United States and Britain.

 This was a noteworthy example of the benefits of multi-state co-operation of the sort which Washington has seemingly chosen to forswear. The suggestion by Putin of the formation of a Russo-American coalition against the Islamic State and other Islamist militias deserves consideration rather than contempt.

A re-orientating of the global patterns of power is long overdue. And given the state of the world after decades of effective unipolarity, it can only be for the better.

Adeyinka Makinde is a London-based law lecturer with an interest in intelligence and Security matters.

The reprehensible draft ‘resolution’ circulated by New Zealand (NZ), the present chair of the UN Security Council, is so blatantly biased against the Palestinian people that it proffers, in this instance, the correct diplomatic protocol to mind it’s own business….. particularly as NZ is an on-the-record, apologist and morally blind supporter of Israel. On July 22, 2014 as Israel’s vicious war on the people of Gaza raged relentlessly, Prime Minister John Key, repeated the zionist mantra that “Israel has a right to defend itself.”

In June this year, during a visit to Israel, NZ’s Foreign Minister Murray McCully ran the idea of the resolution by Netanyahu. So, sure enough, NZ, like all western governments, obsequiously replicated zionist propaganda in the ‘resolution’:

• NZ normalises Israeli atrocities by falsely presenting Israel and Palestine as equal perpetrators and equal victims and
• by pushing the demand that Palestine gives up its endeavour for justice in the International Criminal Court thus letting Israel off scott free for its monstrous war crimes and crimes against humanity.
• While NZ demands that Israel freezes its rapacious settlement expansion (in which NZ invests..see below), it absurdly promotes the farce of negotiations that expand settlements. There is no demand by NZ that the zionist infiltrators leave the present settlements that have illegally expropriated half of the remaining Palestinian West Bank.
• NZ obediently keeps up the pretence of a two state solution when Netanyahu has repeatedly ruled out Palestinian sovereignty:

At the height of the 2014 Gaza war, Netanyahu revealed that he doesn’t envision Palestinian sovereignty in the West Bank any time soon. “I think the Israeli people understand now what I always say: that there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan,” he said at a press conference in Jerusalem. In other words: no withdrawal and no Palestinian sovereignty, which means no state of Palestine.

A few months later, Netanyahu said, in a much quoted interview on the eve of the March 17 election, that, “indeed,” no Palestinian state would be created under his leadership.

• To add insult to hypocrisy, NZ does not act on its recommendations – it will not “make a move to first recognise the Palestinian state.”
• Then loading more inanity on the ridiculous, NZ calls on the same incompetent clowns “the Quartet (United States, Russia, United Nations and European Union), Security Council members and Arab states” to maintain the posturing of the nihilistic negotiations.

So what can the people of Palestine expect from a flunkey state that belongs to the Impunity- for- Israel’s- War- Crimes Club?

A state furthermore that owns a government body, the New Zealand Super Fund that invests in and profits from a number of Israeli companies integrally connected to the illegal settlements and/or Israel’s arms industry such as Israel Chemicals which supplies white phosphorus to the USA which in turn sells its white phosphorous munitions back to Israel which then fires them illegally on innocent Gaza children such as little Hamza Almidani, 3.

Palestinians can expect the same old bystander impunity that exacerbates their suffering caused by the ongoing betrayal of NZ’s own obligations as a High Contracting Party to the Geneva Conventions to protect and uphold Palestinian political and human rights.

This ‘resolution’ comes at a crucial time when Palestinian children and youth are being extrajudicially executed in the street for their courageous efforts to uphold their rights while NZ fails them and, in doing so, shames the decency of the people of New Zealand.

Dr. Vacy Vlazna is Coordinator of Justice for Palestine Matters. She was Human Rights Advisor to the GAM team in the second round of the Acheh peace talks, Helsinki, February 2005 then withdrew on principle. Vacy was convenor of Australia East Timor Association and coordinator of the East Timor Justice Lobby as well as serving in East Timor with UNAMET and UNTAET from 1999-2001. 

Since when did we decide that police officers should be above the law?

Two of the biggest police unions in the country are now on record in opposition to free speech. They are on record against constitutionally protected free speech that opposes the epidemic of police violence across America (more than 900 killed by police so far in 2015).

The current round of police union intimidation tactics started October 24, after filmmaker Quentin Tarantino spoke briefly to the “Rise Up October” protest, a “Call for a Major National Manifestation Against Police Terror.” The crowd of thousands marched peacefully up Sixth Avenue for two miles and included some 100 families impacted by police violence and killing. Police unions have reacted with violent rhetoric to Tarantino’s brief “speech,” which offered a non-specific truism (here in its entirety):

Hey, everybody. I got something to say, but actually I would like to give my time to the families that want to talk. I want to give my time to the families. However, I just do also want to say: What am I doing here? I’m doing here because I am a human being with a conscience. And when I see murder, I cannot stand by, and I have to call the murdered the murdered, and I have to call the murderers the murderers. Now I’m going to give my time to the families. [emphasis added]

The event centered on victims of police violence . There is no doubt that police have killed unarmed, innocent people. There is no doubt that a few cops have been convicted of murder. The reality of police violence is beyond dispute and longstanding. It goes with the territory, and responsible police leaders everywhere know perfectly well that part of their job is not only to keep their officers safe, but also, and arguably more important, to keep the public safe from their officers. The question is why they do so little about police violence.

In the aftermath of the Rise Up October rally, there were a reported 11 arrests, two of which on video show gangs of police roughing up single, unresisting men. Even though the demonstration was peaceful and had a lawful parade permit, police turned out in force. No police officers were reported hurt, except for their feelings.

Police union goes ad hominem with attack on First Amendment  

The day after the rally, Patrick Lynch, president of the New York police union (Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association) went on the offensive, as he often does. He ignore the vast substance of the Rise Up October group and chose instead to make an ad hominem personal attack on Hollywood director Tarantino and his right to free speech. Lynch’s press release in its entirety:

It’s no surprise that someone who makes a living glorifying crime and violence is a cop-hater, too. The police officers that Quentin Tarantino calls ‘murderers’ aren’t living in one of his depraved big screen fantasies — they’re risking and sometimes sacrificing their lives to protect communities from real crime and mayhem. New Yorkers need to send a message to this purveyor of degeneracy that he has no business coming to our city to peddle his slanderous ‘Cop Fiction.’ It’s time for a boycott of Quentin Tarantino’s films.

Actually the police officers that Tarantino calls “murderers” are in fact murderers, which is why Tarantino called them murderers – because, although they are but a small percentage of the total police cohort, they have murdered people, mostly without significant consequence to themselves. On October 30, Lynch sent another press release featuring Tarantino’s father saying, “Cops are not murderers, they are heroes,” which is the police union party line. In reality, it should go without saying, most cops are neither murderers nor heroes. Like the first press release, this one also ignored the complaints of police brutality, but it omitted the proposed boycott, too.

Whistling much the same tune, Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid, the New York Post, covered the protest with open hostility. The paper made the editorial choice to run a picture of a demonstrator giving a cop the finger. And its story suggested that years of police violence were somehow beyond objection because a police officer was recently killed in the line of duty, even though there was no connection between the recent murder and the years of police abuse:

Just four days after the on-duty murder of a hero NYPD street cop, a rally in Washington Square Park against ‘police terror’ devolved Saturday into a raucous, law-enforcement gripe-fest.

Los Angeles police claim victimhood, too, and backs boycott

Craig Lally, president of the LA police union, the Los Angeles Police Protective League, jumped on the boycott Tarantino bandwagon on October 27 in a somewhat more nuanced press release [in its entirety]:

We fully support constructive dialogue about how police interact with citizens. But there is no place for inflammatory rhetoric that makes police officers even bigger targets than we already are. Film director Quentin Tarantino took irresponsibility to a new and completely unacceptable level this past weekend by referring to police as murderers during an anti-police march in New York. He made this statement just four days after a New York police officer was gunned down in the line of duty. New York police and union leaders immediately called out Tarantino for his unconscionable comments, with union head Patrick Lynch advocating a boycott of his films. We fully support this boycott of Quentin Tarantino films. Hateful rhetoric dehumanizes police and encourages attacks on us. And questioning everything we do threatens public safety by discouraging officers from putting themselves in positions where their legitimate actions could be falsely portrayed as thuggery.

While this statement begins with support for “constructive dialogue about how police interact with citizens,” that very formulation betrays an imagined dichotomy between “police” and “citizens.” Police need to think of themselves as our fellow citizens. Worse, Lally immediately moves into his own unconstructive dialogue, mischaracterizing what Tarantino said, launching another ad hominem attack on Tarantino, and completely evading the substance of the Rise Up October protest.

Worst of all, Lally reinforces the police-as-victim trope, which is a form of psychological denial. It’s not “inflammatory rhetoric that makes police officers even bigger targets,” its inflammatory behavior by police officers. Given the spate of police horrors since 1999, when NY police shot unarmed Amadou Diallo 41 times, it’s fair to wonder why police departments everywhere aren’t showing a whole lot more humility. Instead, the NY chief of police has given one of the four killers his gun back (after all four were found not guilty by a jury).

Amadou Diallo’s mother, Katiatoo Diallo, was a speaker in the Rise Up October protest. What she said was in stark and humane contrast to the whining victimhood of the police unions:

We are not bitter. I told the world then, the day when they stood up and told me that the four cops who shot my son had done nothing wrong, that it was the fault of my son, I said to you, I say to you now, I said it then: We need change. Amadou has died. It’s too late for him. But we have to prevent this from happening again. When you have tragedies like that, you need to learn what went wrong and correct it….

Law enforcement community should know that we are not against them. We even feel for those who were shot just recently in Harlem. We are not against them. We are anti-police brutality. We are not anti-cop, because we know some of them are doing good job. But we need to root out those who are brutalizing our children for no reason.

What should a police union be doing, anyway?

The core issue with police unions, teacher unions, and all other public employee unions is how to manage the inherent tension between the good of union members and the good of the public that pays their salaries. Police unions, because their members are empowered to use lethal force, should be especially sensitive to the public perception of what is in the public good. That is almost never going to include killing innocent, unarmed civilians.

In December 2014, NY police union head Lynch actually blamed innocent, unarmed civilians for the ambush assassination of two police officers by a lone gunman. It was a breath-taking manipulation of reality and defiance of both logic and authority:

There is blood on many hands tonight — those that incited violence on the streets under the guise of protest, that tried to tear down what New York police officers did every day. That blood on the hands starts on the steps of City Hall, in the office of the mayor….

These comments set the stage for a symbolic police mutiny, as officers turned their backs on New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio at a press conference dealing with the assassination ambush. This is a direct challenge to civil order, open defiance of the mayor’s lawful authority over the police. And it is a gesture of arrogance, not only against non-violent protests of police killing, but in support of an above-the-law right to continue to execute civilians more or less randomly.

Who is more deserving of protection, police or public? 

The same day as the Rise Up October protest, The New York Times ran a front page story about FBI Director James B. Comey telling a Chicago Law School audience that increased scrutiny of police violence have led to an increase in violent crime, a theory for which he admitted he has no data. The data available does not support the claim. But Comey’s perception of “a chill wind that has blown through American law enforcement over the last year” is just a more sophisticated whine than the police unions use. For the head of the FBI to defend police officers from scrutiny for their actions, especially their violent or lethal actions, is little more than a defense of police criminality. As the Times reported:

Mr. Comey said that he had been told by many police leaders that officers who would normally stop to question suspicious people are opting to stay in their patrol cars for fear of having their encounters become worldwide video sensations. That hesitancy has led to missed opportunities to apprehend suspects, he said, and has decreased the police presence on the streets of the country’s most violent cities.

Wait a minute, that’s pure sophistry. If you have police officers afraid of becoming viral video villains, then you have police officers who are tacitly admitting that they are likely to behave illegally if not lethally. Police officers who act properly make boring videos that don’t go viral.

The Times did not cover any of the Rise Up October activities. But it did re-publish the FBI chief story on October 30, with the additional comment: “It’s not clear why Mr. Comey decided to wade into this issue now.”

On October 18, the Times ran a story in the business section based on FBI statistics of police killings. The story notes that the available data strongly shows pervasive racial bias in many areas of American life. Police behavior is no exception:

The data is unequivocal. Police killings are a race problem: African-Americans are being killed disproportionately and by a wide margin.

The same persistent pattern of racial bias in police traffic stops was found in North Carolina statistics, as reported by a long analysis in the Times October 25 – “The Disproportionate Risk of Driving While Black.”

The evidence of racial bias in American life remains powerful and its effects are cruel and unusual. Perhaps the nation is less bigoted than it was in the past, but it remains a long way from being a place where all people are treated equally. And one of the grosser reasons for perpetual racial oppression is the willingness of powerful police unions to deny reality and blame the victims. Police unions need to reflect on the healing words of Kadiatou Diallo and put aside their bitterness. Police unions need to protect and serve the public, not the perpetrators of violence and death.

How about: if you’re not careful enough to identify a toy gun in the hands of a child before you shoot to kill, then you’re not careful enough to be an armed police officer. That seems like a pretty low bar.

 William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Science

US move to install cameras at Jerusalem mosque overlooks Israeli ‘obstacle course’ barring Palestinian worship, say archaeologists

Despite claims it is seeking to calm tensions in Jerusalem, Israel is intensifying activities to encircle the al-Aqsa mosque and strengthen its control over the holy site, a group of Israeli archaeologists warned last week.

The group sounded the alarm as the United States oversaw moves at the mosque compound, known as the Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, intended to end weeks of Palestinian unrest focused on Jerusalem.

US Secretary of State John Kerry brokered an agreement last weekend between Israel and Jordan, the official guardian of the Haram, that will see cameras installed in the mosque compound.

But the archaeologists say the most pressing threats to the mosque, located on a raised plaza above the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City, will be invisible to the cameras.

They accuse Israel of making rapid changes to the physical landscape around al-Aqsa to obscure the area’s Islamic character and create an ever-more arduous “obstacle course” for worshippers.

“The big picture is that Israel is weakening the Muslim and Palestinian presence there so that Israeli Jews can believe they are the true owners of the site,” said Yonathan Mizrachi, head of Emek Shaveh, an organisation of Israeli archaeologists opposed to the use of archaeology for political ends.

Various Israeli archaeological activities, he said, had almost completed Israel’s encirclement of the al-Aqsa compound, isolating it from Palestinian neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem.

24-hour surveillance

Kerry has said he believes the cameras will persuade Palestinians that Israel is not violating a “status quo” agreement governing the site since Israel occupied East Jerusalem, along with the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza, in 1967.

The unwritten understandings are supposed to ensure that the religious administration of the compound remains solely with an Islamic authority known as the Waqf, while Israel controls policing at the site. Although Jews may visit the mosque area, they are banned from praying there.

Jews refer to the Haram as Temple Mount, arguing that the ruins of two ancient temples lie under al-Aqsa. The Western Wall, revered by religious Jews, is believed to be a retaining wall of the second temple, destroyed nearly 2,000 years ago.

Footage from the cameras will be broadcast around the clock, providing “comprehensive visibility and transparency,” according to Kerry.

In particular, the move is supposed to reassure Palestinians that ultra-nationalist Jews, who have been visiting in ever-larger numbers escorted by armed Israeli police, are not using the site for prayer.

Critics like Mizrachi say Washington’s narrow focus on Jewish prayer at al-Aqsa will fail to ease tensions because it ignores the wider injustices of Israel’s occupation, as well as limited access for Palestinians to the mosque and dramatic physical changes Israel is engineering immediately outside the compound.

“It is not just about what is happening on the plaza but what Israel is doing outside the compound to restrict access and prayer rights for Muslims, and to change the character and atmosphere of East Jerusalem and the Old City,” he told Middle East Eye.

The government and the settlers are working hand in hand to create the impression that the Old City is at the core of Jewish history and identity and must be under Israeli sovereignty.

Tighter entry restrictions

Palestinian leaders have long complained that Israeli barriers and checkpoints mean few Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza can still reach Jerusalem or its holy sites.

Increasingly even those living in Jerusalem or from Israel’s large minority of 1.6 million Palestinian citizens face entry restrictions.

Last year, according to official figures, the Israeli police imposed age restrictions 41 times, often preventing Palestinian men under 50 from entering.

For three weeks in late August and September, United Nations observers reported, Israel also denied entry to Palestinian women in the morning hours to allow Jewish groups access to the site. Some 500 Muslim children studying in the compound were refused entry too.

In addition, said Mizrachi, Israeli activities were cutting off the al-Aqsa compound from its Palestinian surroundings. Recent changes included:

• The extension of secretive excavations and tunnelling around the compound to create an “underground Jewish city” on the western and northern flanks of the Haram;
• The transfer of an archaeological park on the western and southern walls of al-Aqsa to an extremist Jewish settler organisation;
• The enforced closure of a historic but active Muslim cemetery, the length of the eastern side of the compound, denying Palestinian families access under the pretext that it falls within an Israeli national park.

Israel had also increased security restrictions for Palestinians on the main thoroughfare through the Old City’s Muslim Quarter to al-Aqsa, further limiting access, Mizrachi noted.

“The goal of all these changes is to emphasise the Jewish character of the environment around al-Aqsa, both above and below ground,” he said.

Pledge to stop Jewish prayer

Israeli officials have denied accusations that Islamic control at the site is being undermined. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed last month: “Israel is not the problem on the Temple Mount; it’s the solution. We maintain the status quo.”

Under pressure from Washington, Netanyahu’s office quietly issued a statement a week ago, late at night and only in English: “Israel will continue to enforce its long-standing policy: Muslims pray on the Temple Mount; non-Muslims visit the Temple Mount.”

Netanyahu has blamed the weeks of unrest in Jerusalem and in the West Bank on what he terms “incitement” by Palestinian leaders.

But there are indications of mounting concern in Europe and the United States that Israeli measures are weakening the status quo.

One of Kerry’s officials, John Kirby, caused a diplomatic storm by telling reporters last month: “Certainly, the status quo has not been observed, which has led to a lot of the violence.” Following Israeli complaints, he retracted the statement.

At the same time, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation approved a resolution condemning Israel for limiting freedom of worship for Muslims and for its management of holy sites under its control.

A French proposal to place international observers on the mosque plaza was blocked by Washington and Israel.

Many Palestinians fear that ultimately Israel wants either to physically divide the compound to create a prayer space for Jews or to insist on separate Jewish prayer times. Similar arrangements have been imposed by Israel on Hebron’s Ibrahimi mosque since the 1990s.

Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Tzipi Hotovely, added to concerns last week, telling Israeli TV: “My dream is to see the Israeli flag flying over the Temple Mount. It’s the holiest place for the Jewish people.”

Other ministers have called for a third temple to be built in place of al-Aqsa. The Haaretz daily noted last week that extremists calling for the destruction of the mosque now had “power hubs” in Netanyahu’s Likud party and its major coalition partner, Jewish Home.

Secret tunnelling

Mizrachi said al-Aqsa was not just threatened by the activities of a few ultra-nationalists but the combined actions of Israel’s political mainstream, archaeologists and Jewish religious authorities.

He said the government, the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Western Wall Heritage Fund were all working clandestinely on extensive excavations next to the mosque compound to create a network of underground spaces.

The purpose of the tunnelling was unclear, he said. “But it is inevitable that, when they are being conducted so secretively, they fuel concerns among Palestinians that the work could extend under the mosque or damage its foundations.”

He added that Israel was continuing with excavations on the western flank of the al-Aqsa compound that first came to public attention with the opening of the Western Wall tunnels in 1996, during Netanyahu’s first premiership. The opening of the tunnels led to clashes that resulted in dozens of Palestinian deaths and hundreds being injured.

In addition, an Israeli court ordered last month that control of an archaeological park, the Davidson Centre, on the western and southern flanks of the al-Aqsa compound, be handed over to Elad, a settler organisation.

Elad already controls large parts of the Palestinian neighbourhood of Silwan, south of the al-Aqsa compound, where it is developing a Jewish archaeological theme park called the City of David that is displacing Palestinian residents.

Mizrachi said Elad’s role at the Davidson Centre was “disturbing” because it brought the settler group to the foot of the Al-Aqsa compound. Elad, he added, was trying to connect its Silwan complex with the Davidson Centre, as a way to reinforce an exclusive Jewish narrative about ancient Jerusalem.

In September, Israel’s National Parks Authority sealed off with a barbed wire Bab al-Rahmeh, an ancient Islamic cemetery on the mosque’s eastern side, to prevent burials and access for Palestinians.

Emek Shaveh has warned that the move is the conclusion of “a long struggle between settlers and Palestinians over control of the eastern wall of the esplanade”.

During the recent weeks of unrest in Jerusalem, Israel has severely cracked down on Palestinian access to al-Wad Street in the Old City’s Muslim quarter. It is an area Jewish settlers have long targeted for a takeover as it also connects to the Western Wall.

“What is happening over time is that the Haram is getting ever more isolated from its Arab and Islamic surroundings,” Mizrachi said.

Palestinian leaders banned

The physical changes around al-Aqsa have been supplemented by ever-tighter Israeli restrictions on Palestinian political and religious leaders accessing the site, observers have noted.

The PA has been barred from any standing in Jerusalem since the outbreak of the second intifada in 2000. Last month, Netanyahu also ordered all members of the Israeli parliament, including representatives of Israel’s Palestinian minority, from entering the al-Aqsa compound.

Basel Ghattas, a Palestinian member of the Israeli parliament from the Joint List party who had to disguise himself last week to get past Israeli police and on to the plaza, told MEE: “I don’t take orders from Netanyahu about whether I can visit al-Aqsa.”

He added: “When Israeli police determine who gets into al-Aqsa and who doesn’t, it’s clear that they are the real masters, not the Waqf.”

Ghattas, like other Palestinian leaders, was concerned that Israel will use the new cameras to identify Palestinian activists and arrest them or ban them from the site. The cameras, he said, would give Israel control over al-Aqsa “24 hours a day”.

Israel has also repeatedly barred Muslim religious leaders from Jerusalem and al-Aqsa – most notably Sheikh Raed Salah, head of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel. Other religious figures in Jerusalem, including Hamas political leaders in the city, have been jailed or forcibly relocated to the West Bank.

Salah has made the status of al-Aqsa a key issue and has tried to bring thousands of Muslims from areas inside Israel to pray at the site as Palestinian worshippers from the occupied territories have dwindled.

Last month Prime Minister Netanyahu announced his intention to outlaw Salah’s Islamic Movement.

Zahi Njeidat, Salah’s spokesman, said the status quo at al-Aqsa was empty. “The reality is that Israel decides everything, both in the Haram and outside, because it is the occupier. That is the only status quo intended by Netanyahu and Kerry.”

Njeidat said there would be no calm at the site until the occupation of Jerusalem ended and Palestinians could freely visit and pray at al-Aqsa.

The Russian Presidency declared November 1 a day of mourning after Egyptian search and rescue teams reported that non of the 224 souls on board the ill-fated flight KGL9268 had survived the crash in Egypt’s North Sinai province. The majority of passengers were women and children. Egyptian and Russian teams are at the crash site.

Kogalmavia (Kogalymavia) Airlines flight KGL9268 from the Egyptian Red Sea resort Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg, Russia, crashed on Saturday morning, some 23 minutes after takeoff. Anxiety, hopes and fears turned into tragedy and tears when Egyptian rescue teams with some 45 ambulances arrived that the crash site and found no survivors.

Tragically 25 children were on board the Airbus A321 while the majority of the passengers were women. Most passengers were Russians. There were four Ukrainian and one Belarus national on board the plane.

Tragedy and tears at St. Petersburg Airport. Photo courtesy of Tass, Sergey Konkov.

Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to the tragic news, declaring November 1 a day of mourning.

Putin called on cultural institutions and broadcasters in Russia to cancel entertainment programs and to focus on the loss of lives instead. Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Isamil visited the Russian Embassy in Cairo Sunday morning to express his condolences, reports The Cairo Post.

Initial speculation and sensationalized reports about a Daesh (ISIS / ISIL) affiliated Egyptian group’s claim of responsibility for “having brought down the Russian airliner” were quickly discredited when experts arrived at the crash site and found that the plane had not disintegrated in flight, and that all four corners of the jet, including the fuselage that had been separated into two sections were at the same, spatially limited crash-site. Foul play can, however, only be fully excluded during the course of the investigation.

Egyptian authorities have, however, declared the crash site in Egypt’s North Sinai province, some 100 km south of Arish a “restricted zone” until the end of the investigation.

The Egyptian government and military have since the ouster of former president Mohamed Morsi in 2013, fought the Daesh associated Ansar Bayt Al-Maqdis (ABM) and other insurgencies. Arish is the hotbed of ABM activities.

The aircrew on board flight KGL9268 reportedly called Egyptian air traffic control to ask permission to deviate from the scheduled route and to conduct an emergency landing at Cairo Airport due to technical problems.

The reportedly 18 1/2 year-old Airbus A321 was airworthy and safe, claimed Kogalmavia (Kogalymavia)Airlines, also known as Metrojet. The airline had only suffered one other serious incident. In January 2011 a fire broke out on one of the airline’s Tupolev Tu-154B-2. Passengers and crew on flight RA-85588 were evacuated seconds before a flame-over in the fuselage. Three were killed and 43 were injured.

Debris Of Russian Plane Crashed Into Egypt’s Sinai Oct. 31, 2015- YOUM7

Russian and Egyptian investigators at the crash site have been joined by experts from Airbus and from the French aviation authority. The plane’s flight data and cockpit voice recorders have reportedly been recovered.

Initial results of the investigation suggest that the Airbus 321 had, depending on varying sources, reached a cruising altitude of some 28,000 – 31,000 ft before it suddenly lost altitude, briefly stabilized, and then crashed to the ground. There have been, so far not independently verified, reports that the aircrew complained about a technical issue before takeoff from Sharm el-Sheikh.

Ultimately, the flight data recorder, the cockpit voice recorder, radar and other data as well as evidence from the crash site may provide answers to the causes of the crash. nsnbc calls, as in all air crashes, for full transparency and for providing certified copies of the data from the black boxes to independent media. nsnbc will pursue this issue if necessary.

On Saturday the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations dispatched four planes, loaded with recovery teams, trucks and other equipment to Egypt. The teams have arrived at the crash site. Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov, Minister for Emergency Situations Vladimir Puchkov and the head of Rosaviatsia Federal Air Transport Agency, Alexander Neradko, were also heading to the crash site.

Egypt’s Minister of Tourism, Himam Zazou told the press that Egypt is ready to provide all possible assistance to repatriate the bodies of those who perished in the crash as soon as possible.

Relatives of passengers of crashed Russian A321 at Pulkovo airport. Photo courtesy of Alexander Demyanchuk/TASS

Meanwhile, a crisis center has been established at St. Petersburg Airport in Russia. The families and loved ones of those who perished in the crash have been informed. While some were waiting at the airport, others have been arriving at the crisis center from 13 Russian provinces.

Investigators and the bereft have embarked on the agonizing task to take DNA samples to help identify the remains. So far the remains of at least 175 of the 224 who perished have been recovered. Recovery efforts continue. The bereft have been afforded psychological, psychiatric and social services.

The Russian Emergencies Minister Vladimir Puchkov said the ministry kept in readiness an Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft for transporting the bodies to St.Petersburg, adding that “It’s a very important task laid upon the Emergencies Ministry – to pay homage to the victims.”

The Egyptian Minister of Tourism Himam Zazou said “Now we will conduct DNA tests on the bodies of the passengers. If you are ready to transport them to their home country, we are prepared to assist”.

Besides having the remains of loved ones repatriated, one of the most important factors for finding closure is full transparency with regard to the investigation, independently testable, verifiable or falsifiable evidence and data, results of an investigation and a report that are consistent with such evidence.

by Sayed Hasan

This article was originally published in June 2015

“As you know, the modern world, especially the Western world, is highly monopolised and many Western countries – whether they want to hear this or not – have voluntarily given up a considerable part of their sovereignty. To some extent, this is a result of the politics of blocs. Sometimes we find it very difficult to come to terms with them on geopolitical issues. It is hard to reach an agreement with people who whisper even at home for fear of being overheard by the Americans. This is not a joke or a figure of speech.” (Vladimir Putin)

Vladimir Putin denounces, more and more explicitly, the servility of France and Europe towards the United States, whether in the case of wire-tapping French leaders or that of the Mistral ships.

The publication by WikiLeaks of documents establishing the wire-tapping by the United States of three French Presidents was an open secret known since the revelations of Edward Snowden. Far from protesting against the flagrant violation of French sovereignty that the espionage of its top leaders constitutes, our government bravely hastened to hush up this scandal, as was expected by Lavrov and Putin. Let us remember that France prided herself in 2013 for having rejected the asylum for Edward Snowden, and that it is illusory to believe that these revelations could change anything : official France cannot but turn down flat Julian Assange’s calls.

While trade between the US and Russia is increasing, their European “allies” are forced to impose sanctions on Moscow and suffer alone its formidable repercussions: thus Vladimir Putin has renewed for one year the Russian embargo on food products from Europe.

Vladimir Putin recently said to Charlie Rose, an American TV star presenter who asked incredulously if Russia really aspired to gain respect (indeed, what a preposterous idea):

“You know, I hear this all the time: Russia wants to be respected. Don’t you? Who does not? Who wants to be humiliated? It is a strange question. As if this is some exclusive right – Russia demands respect. Does anyone like to be neglected?” To this rhetorical question, our French leaders respond ‘yes’ without hesitation and continue to whisper in their own homes for fear of prying ears (and microphones).

Instead of a rapprochement with Russia, a historic partner concerned about the respect of States and their sovereignty, in addition a rising great power and champion of the defence of international law, France and Europe prefer subjugation to the US, the superpower in irremediable decline with which they chain their destinies. It is easy to conceive the repulsion that Russian elites, despite their professionalism, must feel for our inglorious leaders. Probably to the extent of the felt more and more by their own peoples, whom Putin chooses to address directly.

Former arrogant colonial power and conqueror, then sovereignist Gaullist Republic, France is now relegated to the status of American sub-colony whose independence and national interests are routinely violated and trampled, as much by the stateless and spineless leaders in Paris, repeatedly guilty of the crime of high treason (abolished, thankfully for them), as by the imperial hawks in Washington.

Even a country like Algeria, a former French colony run by a corrupt and retrograde military regime, has at least leaders concerned of their national interests to the point of refusing any participation in the Saudi-American coalition against Yemen, while Hollands’ France was ready to pounce gleefully on a new crusade in Syria, which could have triggered World War III. One may ask, to use an expression of Norman Finkelstein, why prostitutes have such a bad reputation… Welcome to Western mediocracy!

Briefing session with permanent members of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, 25 June 2015

Source: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/49766

Transcript: 

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, colleagues,

Mr Lavrov will tell us about the consultations in Paris. Let’s start with this. Please, Mr Lavrov.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov: On the whole, it was not useless because even despite certain wrangling during the discussion, the main outcome was the acknowledgement of the fact that there is no alternative to complete fulfilment of the Minsk Agreements. First and foremost, the acknowledgement by our German and our French partners of the fact that the overwhelming part of the Minsk provisions should be implemented through direct dialogue between authorities in Kiev and Donetsk and Lugansk.
I can’t say that we have resolved all the problems because this should be done directly by the Contact group and the working subgroups created. I will report on that in more detail later, but on the day of our meeting, a report on the taps [by the United States of the French leadership] was published, and this gave rise to unrest in France so this was another thing that distracted our attention.

Vladimir Putin: How will this scandal end?

Sergei Lavrov: Frankly speaking, I think that Germany’s example [the US special services wiretapping the German leadership] gives the answer: I think that both sides will try to blanket the scandal and forget about it.

Vladimir Putin: That is what would happen.

Putin denounces the ‘submission’ of France: “Even without Mistral, we will survive” (English subtitles)

Direct Line with Vladimir Putin, April 16, 2015 

Source: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/49261   

Olga Ushakova: Let’s take another question from the audience – from Dmitry Shchugorev’s section this time.

Dmitry Shchugorev: We have Dmitry Abzalov here, the president of the Center for Strategic Communications. Please, go ahead.

Dmitry Abzalov: Good afternoon, Mr Putin. I have this nagging question about Mistral ships. This week, the second ship was tested and left for the French shipyard. What are the prospects? Will we push for having these ships delivered to us? Will we seek financing? In general, what will our military and economic partnership with the European Union and France, in particular, be like after what happened a year ago?

Vladimir Putin: The refusal to deliver ships under the existing contract is, of course, a bad sign. However, frankly speaking, it’s of little consequence for us or our defence capability. We signed these contracts primarily to support our partners and offer work to their shipyard. We planned to use the ships in the Far East. For us, this is not critical.

However, I believe that the leadership of France – and the French people in general – are honourable people and will return the money. We are not even going to demand any penalties or exorbitant fines, but we want all of our costs covered. This certainly means that the reliability of our partners – who, acting as part of the military-political bloc, in this case NATO, have lost some of their sovereignty – has suffered, and is now questionable. Of course, we will keep this in mind as we continue our military and technical cooperation.

Kirill Kleymenov: Our partners may find that it was an easy way for them to get off the hook.

Vladimir Putin: That’s all right, we’ll survive.

Vladimir Putin to the peoples of the West: Russia is not an imperial power, the US spy on NATO members (English subtitles)

Speech by Vladimir Putin on the integration of the Crimea to Russia, March 18, 2014 – With a reflection on this intervention dated April 22, 2014

Source : http://eng.kremlin.ru/news/6889

Transcript: 

[…]

Today, I would like to address the people of the United States of America, the people who, since the foundation of their nation and adoption of the Declaration of Independence, have been proud to hold freedom above all else. Isn’t the desire of Crimea’s residents to freely choose their fate such a value? Please understand us.

I believe that the Europeans, first and foremost, the Germans, will also understand me. Let me remind you that in the course of political consultations on the unification of East and West Germany, at the expert, though very high level, some nations that were then and are now Germany’s allies did not support the idea of unification. Our nation, however, unequivocally supported the sincere, unstoppable desire of the Germans for national unity. I am confident that you have not forgotten this, and I expect that the citizens of Germany will also support the aspiration of the Russians, of historical Russia, to restore unity.

I also want to address the people of Ukraine. I sincerely want you to understand us: we do not want to harm you in any way, or to hurt your national feelings. We have always respected the territorial integrity of the Ukrainian state, incidentally, unlike those who sacrificed Ukraine’s unity for their political ambitions. They flaunt slogans about Ukraine’s greatness, but they are the ones who did everything to divide the nation. Today’s civil standoff is entirely on their conscience. I want you to hear me, my dear friends. Do not believe those who want you to fear Russia, shouting that other regions will follow Crimea. We do not want to divide Ukraine; we do not need that. As for Crimea, it was and remains a Russian, Ukrainian, and Crimean-Tatar land.

I repeat, just as it has been for centuries, it will be a home to all the peoples living there. What it will never be and do is follow in Bandera’s footsteps!

[…]

Direct Line with Vladimir Putin – April 17, 2014

Source : http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/20796

Transcript:

[…]

Kirill Kleymenov: But before giving the floor to [our correspondent in Germany], I’d like to ask you to return to the speech that we discussed at the very beginning, the one that you made before signing the treaty on Crimea and Sevastopol’s accession to Russia. Many people were very impressed by it and compared it to your Munich speech. They even called it your best speech.

I’d like to ask you why you made this speech. First, the protocol didn’t demand it and, second, the format was very unusual – you addressed peoples rather than countries or governments.

Vladimir Putin: The format was chosen based on the importance of the event and the situation. This is an unusual event in the life of our people, our country and our state. This is why I considered it my duty to address the Federal Assembly and the people of the Russian Federation in the presence of members of the State Duma and the Federation Council. This is the first point.

Second. Why was the speech addressed to the peoples of other countries rather than their governments? As you know, the modern world, especially the Western world, is highly monopolised and many Western countries – whether they want to hear this or not – have voluntarily given up a considerable part of their sovereignty. To some extent, this is a result of the politics of blocs. Sometimes we find it very difficult to come to terms with them on geopolitical issues. It is hard to reach an agreement with people who whisper even at home for fear of being overheard by the Americans. This is not a joke or a figure of speech. Listen to me, I’m serious, I’m not joking. However, they are our main partners on economic and some other issues.

But I addressed the peoples of these countries primarily because an ordinary person from Germany, France or Italy will instantly sense whether a statement is false or not. Our position is absolutely open, honest and transparent, and for this reason it is easier to get it across to ordinary people than even to some leaders. It seems to me we succeeded to some extent. No matter what government rules a country, it will have to consider the opinion of its voters. This is why I addressed the people.

[…]

With reports emerging that China has signed on to Russia’s military coalition in Syria at the same time that the Chinese are signing new cooperation agreements with the US, the question is once again being raised:

What is the nature of China-US rivalry?

Today Michel Chossudovsky talks about the forces in both countries that are manipulating this conflict and what it means for the prospects of future war.

This is the GRTV Feature Interview with our special guest, Michel Chossudovsky.

–

With reports emerging that China has signed on to Russia’s military coalition in Syria at the same time that the Chinese are signing new cooperation agreements with the US, the question is once again being raised:

What is the nature of China-US rivalry?

Today Michel Chossudovsky talks about the forces in both countries that are manipulating this conflict and what it means for the prospects of future war.

This is the GRTV Feature Interview with our special guest, Michel Chossudovsky.

–

The human rights provisions of the EU­-Israel Association Agreement are being continuously violated by the supply of arms and military equipment from the UK and other member states which are used to implement both an illegal occupation of the West Bank as well as the six year illegal blockade of essential goods to 1.8 million civilians in Gaza. This is leading to increased violence and the threat of a bloody intifada that could see the Holy City in flames.

It is, of course, a complete tragedy that the US congress is in the pocket of Netanyahu and the Israel Lobby. This has resulted in the recent authorisation of more millions of dollars’ worth of arms and killing machines to the Israeli government for use by the infamous IDF against an unarmed civilian population in the Occupied Territories.

However, the European Union is not a lobby-­subservient American congress but a democratic, primarily Christian, union of 28 independent nation states. We should not be colluding in illegal occupations, settlements and blockades against a dispossessed, indigenous people of five million souls whether black, white, Muslim or anyone else.

It is now high time that the European Parliament enforced the human rights provisions of the EU Association Agreement with the Netanyahu government and implements an immediate ban on all arms trade with the Israeli military occupation.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/call-for-ban-on-arms-sales-to-israel/5485780

Since the beginning of its operation in Syria on September 30, Russian Air Force has carried out 1,391 sorties in Syria, destroying a total of 1,623 terrorist targets. In particular, Russian warplanes destroyed 249 ISIS command posts, 51 training camps, and 131 depots, Andrey Kartapolov, head of the Russian General Staff Main Operations Directorate said on Friday. According to him, militants in Syria are trying to redeploy forces from Iraq and other neighboring states, but their morale and training levels are very low.

For the last six days, ISIS has blockaded the Syrian Government’s only supply route to the provincial capital of the Aleppo Governorate. However, for the last 48 hours, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and Hezbollah have worked to restore the security of this vital highway that stretches across the Khanasser Plains of east Hama. The SAA and Hezbollah are currently less than 1km away from liberating the Khanasser-Ithriya highway.

Meanwhile, southwest of Ithriyah, ISIS launched another assault on the imperative hilltop of Tal Khayber, targeting the NDF positions at the southeastern perimeter of the hill. The assault was beaten back.

ISIS has recently shifted its focus from Khanasser-Ithriya Highway to the Salamiyah-Ithriya Road, where the SAA reinforces their soldiers at the crucial city of Ithriya. If it falls, the SAA at the latter city will be cutoff from their main supply line.

According to reports the leaders of the al-Nusra terrorist group operating in the Syrian province of Hama have decided to join forces with ISIS as the Syrian army continues its offensive.

Separately, the SAA and the NDF continued their advance to the Kuweires Military Airport, capturing several building blocks from ISIS inside the town of Sheikh Ahmad in the Deir Hafer Plains. Then they captured the Railroad barrier inside the eastern district of the town. This allowed for the Syrian Armed Forces to cross the Aleppo-Baghdad railroad that passes through the east Aleppo.

Press TV has conducted an interview with Ian Williams, a senior analyst with the Foreign Policy in Focus from New York, to ask for his take on an apology from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair over the 2003 war against Iraq.

Watch interview here.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: What does it mean in your perspective to apologize when we’re talking about the displacement of millions of people, the killings of hundreds of thousands and total chaos and disruption of life for the Iraqi people and for much of the region? How can an apology suffice?

Williams: Well, an apology doesn’t suffice. It’s not intended to suffice. It’s intended to have the head off. The impending Chilcot report and a week or so ago Colin Powell memo showed very clearly that Tony Blair had lied through his teeth to the Chilcot inquiry and not he had every intention of starting a war with Iraq even before the weapons of mass destruction issue, even before the question of a UN authorization for the invasion.

So, when he apologizes that he did mistakes, what he’s trying to do is to convert admission to a crime into a mistake. And an analogy that occurred to me is the famous Victorian murderer in Britain, Jack the Ripper, could have apologize because he was just trying out surgical techniques when he dismembered his victims.

And not something like what Blair is doing here. It is pure spin. He knows he’s on the ropes. And he is now trying to anticipate the results of Chilcot inquiry and convert it from a discussion of policy rather than a discussion of criminal behavior in waging a war without UN authorization, without the support of the people and without his own stated justifications.

Press TV: Well, is he on the ropes? Can we really expect him to pay the price for what he and his American counterpart George W. Bush had done?

Williams:  Unfortunately, we can’t count on it. But let’s say it’s increasingly serious enough to be worrying to him. And I think Tony Blair is rapidly joining Henry Kissinger and other people around the world.

Now, he’s got to consult international lawyers as well as travel agents, before he travels anywhere, because they may have a prima facie case for his prosecution either in British courts or foreign courts under universal jurisdiction or with the International Criminal Court, because there is clear evidence now that he is somebody who waged an illegal war of aggression, violating the United Nations’ charter and was responsible for all of those deaths.

On October 31, Kolavia Metrojet (commercial airliner) Flight 7K9268 crashed 23 minutes after takeoff from Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, heading for St. Petersburg, Russia – killing all 217 passengers and seven crew members aboard, including 25 children.

News reports called the crash the worst aviation disaster in Russian history. Putin declared Sunday a day of mourning for its victims.

A criminal investigation began by searching operator Kogalymavia’s offices, checking for possible violations of Russian airliner safety standards.

A separate investigation is underway to determine the cause of the crash, most likely a technical failure. Russia’s Air Transport won’t speculate on what happened until more is known – including decoding the recovered black boxes, containing invaluable information.

A Sinai, Egypt based group connected to ISIS claimed responsibility, saying:

Soldiers of the Caliphate were able to bring down a Russian plane above Sinai Province with at least 220 Russian crusaders aboard.

They were all killed, praise be to God. O Russians, you and your allies take note that you are not safe in Muslims lands or their skies.

The killing of dozens daily in Syria with bombs from your planes will bring woe to you. Just as you are killing others, you too will be killed, God willing.

Russian Transportation Minister Maxim Sokolov dismissed the claim, saying it “cannot be considered credible. We are in a close contact with our Egyptian colleagues, with the aviation authorities of this country. At the moment, they have no information that would confirm such fabrications.”

Air France and Lufthansa said they’ll reroute their flights around Sinai until further notice, a temporary precautionary move.

The Russian aircraft was flying at an altitude of 31,000 feet – way above the ability of ground-based terrorist groups to down it. Their shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles (SAMS), known as Manpads, threaten low-flying aircraft only, mainly helicopters – debunking their spurious claim. Expect investigation results to prove it.

French obtained weapons manuals recovered from North African Al Qaeda elements in 2013 showed they may have SA-7 and SA-7b SAMS – able to down taking off and landing aircraft, not the range to strike high-flying ones.

Reports from the crash site indicated debris scattered over at least a four mile area. It’s being closely examined to help determine the cause of the disaster.

Most passengers were Russian, three from Ukraine and one from Belarus. Sharm El-Sheikh is a popular resort town. Most likely they were tourists heading home.

Air traffic control said the plane began descending rapidly at 6,000 feet per minute before it disappeared from radar. Airline officials issued a statement, saying “(i)n 2014, the airplane has undergone factory maintenance in accordance with the factory specifications. All requirements of preflight technical maintenance were fulfilled in full and on time.”

Russian news reports said crew members recently complained about problems with one of the plane’s engines – so far without official confirmation.

RT International interviewed UK security/counterterrorism expert Charles Shoebridge. “As far as it’s known, Islamic State and its affiliate groups don’t have the capability to bring down aircraft flying at the height that this aircraft reportedly was, which is something around 10,000 meters,” he explained.

“That doesn’t mean to say though that at least theoretically they couldn’t bring the plane down by other means, for example by sabotage at the departing airport or a bomb on board.”Most likely,“mechanical failure of some sort (was) the most likely cause, as with most air accidents.” Terrorists like claiming responsibility for propaganda purposes, he added, especially targeting Russia for its ongoing Syrian campaign.

Egypt’s former civil aviation minister, Wail al-Madawi, told RT “(o)nly a state (has) such resources” to strike high-flying aircraft. Asked if a SAM could have downed the Russian plane he said: “No, it is out of the question.”

I am a former air force officer, and I have the expert knowledge that taking down a plane flying so high requires the kind of capacities only a state can have.

It requires some very significant resources: One would need search (three types of) radars, radars to locate the plane, radars to control the fire. Only a state can have such resources. No militant group like that can.

Addressing reports indicating the plane broke in two, he said “it’s impossible to define how exactly the ground impact occurred. It all depends on the kind of terrain at the impact site.”“For instance, if an aircraft were to hit some ridge on the ground, this could cause the plane to break into halves. So it all depends on the terrain.”

The main thing, however, is to establish why the plane started to lose altitude when it was flying so high. There is a database of air crashes with proven causes of the crash. Some were due to technical malfunction, some to human error, some even to the psychological state of the crew. So that means there are a lot of possibilities to study.

Once results of the ongoing investigation are revealed, we’ll know precisely what happened and why.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

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

The lion’s share of Islamic State illegal oil exports is conducted through Turkey and Kurdish areas. Although Washington could curb the illegal traffic, it has chosen to focus on other issues, a former CIA officer told the Sputnik news agency.

In India, genetically modified (GM) mustard is edging closer to becoming the first officially approved GM food crop to be placed on the commercial market. This is despite a series of official reports that recommend against introducing GMOs to India. The Technical Expert Committee (TEC) Final Report is the fourth official report exposing the lack of integrity, independence and scientific expertise in assessing GMO risk.

The four reports are: The ‘Jairam Ramesh Report’ of February 2010, imposing an indefinite moratorium on Bt Brinjal, overturning the apex Regulator’s approval to commercialise it; the Sopory Committee Report (August 2012); the Parliamentary Standing Committee (PSC) Report on GM crops (August 2012) and the TEC Final Report (June-July 2013).

The TEC recommends an indefinite moratorium on the field trials of GM crops until the government devises a proper regulatory and safety mechanism. Prominent campaigner Aruna Rodrigues argues that official regulators have hidden all data about GM mustard from the public and the independent scientific community, which is against constitutional provisions and the orders of the Supreme Court. She concludes this means one thing: mandatory rigorous biosafety protocols have not been carried out and the data pertaining to ‘mustard DMH 11’ therefore needs to be concealed.

Rodrigues asserts that the secrecy surrounding GM mustard exemplifies the appalling state of regulation and smacks of corruption. She concludes the Indian government is using underhand means to introduce GM crops into Indian agriculture and that there appears to be no place for science or transparency in this process.

The Coalition for a GM Free India is therefore demanding that the Union Minister for Environment, Forests and Climate Change, Prakash Javadekar, immediately intervenes to stop the processing and approval of this GM mustard and makes public all the information regarding the safety tests of the GM Mustard.

On the back of a news report confirming that an application for approval for commercialisation of GM mustard has been moved with the apex regulatory body GEAC (Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee in the Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change), the Coalition for a GM Free India has reminded the government about the serious consequences.

Rajesh Krishnan, Convenor of Coalition for a GM-Free India, says that the GM mustard hybrid has been created mainly to facilitate the seed production work of seed manufacturers, whereas farmers already have a choice of non-GM mustard hybrids in the market, in addition to high yielding mustard varieties. He also argues that, more importantly, there are non-GM agro-ecological options like System of Mustard Intensification yielding far higher production than the claimed yields of this GM mustard of Delhi University.

Krishnan says:

This GM mustard is also a backdoor entry for various other GM crops in the regulatory pipeline – while herbicide tolerance as a trait has been recommended against by committee after committee in the executive, legislative and judiciary-based inquiry processes in India related to GM crops, this GM mustard uses herbicide tolerance. Contamination is inevitable of all other mustard varieties, while India is the Centre of Diversity for mustard. This is clearly one more GMO that is unwanted and unneeded and is being thrust on citizens in violation of our right to choices, as farmers and consumers.

Kavitha Kuruganti, Convenor of Alliance for Sustainable & Holistic Agriculture (ASHA), has been seeking biosafety data pertaining to GM Mustard without any success. She argues that:

GEAC is functioning in a highly secretive fashion, and while the nation does not know what is happening inside the regulatory institutions with applications like this GM mustard, biosafety data is being repeatedly declined by the regulators. What are the regulators hiding and whose interests are they protecting?

She goes on to ask:

Why should the regulators be trusted for their safety assessment when in the case of both Bt cotton and Bt brinjal, the Supreme Court Technical Expert Committee (SC TEC) which took up a sample biosafety analyses in 2013 showed that the regulators were wrong in concluding the safety of these GMOs?

The Supreme Court in 2008 had ordered that biosafety data be placed in the public domain when petitioners argued that unless the toxicity and allergenicity data are made known to the public, the applicants and concerned scientists in the country would not be in a position to make effective representations to the concerned authorities.

An indefinite moratorium was placed on Bt brinjal (GM eggplant) in 2010. The regulators sought public feedback on that particular food crop and the Government of India took up public consultations before taking a final decision on Bt brinjal’s commercial cultivation fate in india.

Kuruganti continues:

However, this current Government seems to be keen to conduct regulatory processes in a secretive fashion. Our past requests to meet with the Environment Minister to share our concerns met with no success. As the government gets more secretive and opaque around regulation, the public has a right to know what are they afraid of, if everything is safe and scientific?

The claim is that GM mustard will provide yield increases of 25-30%. However, Aruna Rodrigues argues that higher yields are not the result of these particular transgenes but rather a direct result of hybridisation of normal crop genes. This is basically a case of deception: the use of high-yielding hybrids is a deliberate ploy to camouflage the yield attributable to the hybrid and assign it to the GM crop instead. She says that this is precisely the story that ensued with Bt cotton (which is now having disastrous consequences for many farmers) and that thread wove its way through Bt brinjal and now, openly for mustard. Rodrigues says that the fraud is unprecedented and the case surrounding GM mustard in India is evidence of unremitting regulatory delinquency.

The secrecy and regulatory delinquency that Rodrigues talks of is integral to the speeding up of the wider agenda of restructuring Indian agriculture for the benefit of an increasingly impatient Western agribusiness cartel. These companies are pushing an unsustainable and poisonous industrialised model of farming on India based on a never-ending stream of petro-chemical inputs, commodity crops and corporate (GM) seeds (see this).

This is already impoverishing farmers and driving them out of agriculture and will ultimately have tremendously negative consequences in terms of the nation’s food sovereignty and security as well as its health (see this).

In India, genetically modified (GM) mustard is edging closer to becoming the first officially approved GM food crop to be placed on the commercial market. This is despite a series of official reports that recommend against introducing GMOs to India. The Technical Expert Committee (TEC) Final Report is the fourth official report exposing the lack of integrity, independence and scientific expertise in assessing GMO risk.

The four reports are: The ‘Jairam Ramesh Report’ of February 2010, imposing an indefinite moratorium on Bt Brinjal, overturning the apex Regulator’s approval to commercialise it; the Sopory Committee Report (August 2012); the Parliamentary Standing Committee (PSC) Report on GM crops (August 2012) and the TEC Final Report (June-July 2013).

The TEC recommends an indefinite moratorium on the field trials of GM crops until the government devises a proper regulatory and safety mechanism. Prominent campaigner Aruna Rodrigues argues that official regulators have hidden all data about GM mustard from the public and the independent scientific community, which is against constitutional provisions and the orders of the Supreme Court. She concludes this means one thing: mandatory rigorous biosafety protocols have not been carried out and the data pertaining to ‘mustard DMH 11’ therefore needs to be concealed.

Rodrigues asserts that the secrecy surrounding GM mustard exemplifies the appalling state of regulation and smacks of corruption. She concludes the Indian government is using underhand means to introduce GM crops into Indian agriculture and that there appears to be no place for science or transparency in this process.

The Coalition for a GM Free India is therefore demanding that the Union Minister for Environment, Forests and Climate Change, Prakash Javadekar, immediately intervenes to stop the processing and approval of this GM mustard and makes public all the information regarding the safety tests of the GM Mustard.

On the back of a news report confirming that an application for approval for commercialisation of GM mustard has been moved with the apex regulatory body GEAC (Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee in the Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change), the Coalition for a GM Free India has reminded the government about the serious consequences.

Rajesh Krishnan, Convenor of Coalition for a GM-Free India, says that the GM mustard hybrid has been created mainly to facilitate the seed production work of seed manufacturers, whereas farmers already have a choice of non-GM mustard hybrids in the market, in addition to high yielding mustard varieties. He also argues that, more importantly, there are non-GM agro-ecological options like System of Mustard Intensification yielding far higher production than the claimed yields of this GM mustard of Delhi University.

Krishnan says:

This GM mustard is also a backdoor entry for various other GM crops in the regulatory pipeline – while herbicide tolerance as a trait has been recommended against by committee after committee in the executive, legislative and judiciary-based inquiry processes in India related to GM crops, this GM mustard uses herbicide tolerance. Contamination is inevitable of all other mustard varieties, while India is the Centre of Diversity for mustard. This is clearly one more GMO that is unwanted and unneeded and is being thrust on citizens in violation of our right to choices, as farmers and consumers.

Kavitha Kuruganti, Convenor of Alliance for Sustainable & Holistic Agriculture (ASHA), has been seeking biosafety data pertaining to GM Mustard without any success. She argues that:

GEAC is functioning in a highly secretive fashion, and while the nation does not know what is happening inside the regulatory institutions with applications like this GM mustard, biosafety data is being repeatedly declined by the regulators. What are the regulators hiding and whose interests are they protecting?

She goes on to ask:

Why should the regulators be trusted for their safety assessment when in the case of both Bt cotton and Bt brinjal, the Supreme Court Technical Expert Committee (SC TEC) which took up a sample biosafety analyses in 2013 showed that the regulators were wrong in concluding the safety of these GMOs?

The Supreme Court in 2008 had ordered that biosafety data be placed in the public domain when petitioners argued that unless the toxicity and allergenicity data are made known to the public, the applicants and concerned scientists in the country would not be in a position to make effective representations to the concerned authorities.

An indefinite moratorium was placed on Bt brinjal (GM eggplant) in 2010. The regulators sought public feedback on that particular food crop and the Government of India took up public consultations before taking a final decision on Bt brinjal’s commercial cultivation fate in india.

Kuruganti continues:

However, this current Government seems to be keen to conduct regulatory processes in a secretive fashion. Our past requests to meet with the Environment Minister to share our concerns met with no success. As the government gets more secretive and opaque around regulation, the public has a right to know what are they afraid of, if everything is safe and scientific?

The claim is that GM mustard will provide yield increases of 25-30%. However, Aruna Rodrigues argues that higher yields are not the result of these particular transgenes but rather a direct result of hybridisation of normal crop genes. This is basically a case of deception: the use of high-yielding hybrids is a deliberate ploy to camouflage the yield attributable to the hybrid and assign it to the GM crop instead. She says that this is precisely the story that ensued with Bt cotton (which is now having disastrous consequences for many farmers) and that thread wove its way through Bt brinjal and now, openly for mustard. Rodrigues says that the fraud is unprecedented and the case surrounding GM mustard in India is evidence of unremitting regulatory delinquency.

The secrecy and regulatory delinquency that Rodrigues talks of is integral to the speeding up of the wider agenda of restructuring Indian agriculture for the benefit of an increasingly impatient Western agribusiness cartel. These companies are pushing an unsustainable and poisonous industrialised model of farming on India based on a never-ending stream of petro-chemical inputs, commodity crops and corporate (GM) seeds (see this).

This is already impoverishing farmers and driving them out of agriculture and will ultimately have tremendously negative consequences in terms of the nation’s food sovereignty and security as well as its health (see this).

A shocking video has emerged recording a loud verbal threat from the Israeli military to residents of Aida refugee camp near Bethlehem. As a military jeep rolls down an empty quiet street a threatening voice comes over the loudspeaker:

 “You throw stones and we will hit you with gas until you die.”

The words spoken seem almost unfathomable.

Middle East Eye (MEE) reports the video was recorded on October 29 by a youth, 17-year-old Yazan Ikhlayel, on his iPhone. Ikhlayel was at Aida’s community center with a clear view of the road below. As Ikhlayel recorded the scene the jeep slows and then come to a halt as the threats continue. You can begin to see stones being thrown at :28 in the video. The threat also warns they were holding a person “one of you” and if they didn’t stop throwing stones they would slaughter the person:

Transcript:

People of Aida Refugee camp we are the occupation army. You throw stones and we will hit you with gas until you all die. The children, the youth, the old people, you will all die, we won’t leave any of you alive. And we have arrested one of you, he is with us now. We took him from his home and we will slaughter and kill him while you are watch if you keep throwing stones. Go home or we will gas you until you die. Your families, your children, everyone we will kill you. Listen to me, all of you go home, it’s better for you.

The Middle East Eye spoke with Ikhlayel, “The most important thing I want people to see when they watch this video is to realise what the Israeli ‘democracy’ really is”.  He also insisted this will not stop the protests:

They have said it for us now, they are an occupation – they said ‘we are the occupation army’. It is proof, this is an apartheid country, it is not democratic at all.

“This is the first time I heard them say something like that over a speaker for everyone to hear,” Ikhlayel continued.

The young people aren’t accepting what the soldiers are doing particularly now. They’re going to the streets [to protest] everyday, and they aren’t stopping. They aren’t scared of them.

When asked if he thinks the soldier’s message would scare the youth enough to stop the protests, Ikhlayel shook his head adamantly.

“This will not stop until the occupation ends,” he insisted.

Yazan Ikhlayel speaks to MEE (MEE/Abed al-Qaisi)

MEE also interviewed filmmaker and photo journalist Mohammed al-Azza, who has been targeted and attacked by Israeli forces in the past.  Like Ikhlayel, al-Azza also emphasized the soldier’s (unusual) self identification as  “occupation” forces:

“It’s been a long time since we’ve seen the soldiers get on a speaker like that,” al-Azza said.

But really we were surprised by one word – usually they call themselves the IDF (Israel Defence Forces), they don’t say the IOF (Israeli Occupation Forces) like we do, but that is something good for us, and for people outside the country to hear. They said it to us, ‘we are the occupation’….

Usually when we talk about Palestine we are telling people abroad what happened, and it’s usually after the Israelis have done whatever they did, but now it’s good that the people can hear it from the soldiers. They said ‘we are going to kill you and we are going to do this and that’ in their message. It’s very important for international people to hear this sort of stuff that we are hearing all the time from them.

Ma’an News reports: Israeli soldiers tell Palestinians: ‘We will gas you until you die’:

In this statement, we see — among a range of potential criminal offences — a public threat to kill Palestinian civilians, and to execute a prisoner,”Simon Reynolds, Legal Advocacy Coordinator at the BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, told Ma’an.

Though such threats are appalling, they are not necessarily surprising. In light of the mounting civilian death toll among Palestinians, such threats merely add words to the deed.

What we are seeing is an apparent policy of lawlessness in which Israeli forces can wield deadly force with virtual impunity. Especially troubling is that this is a policy that seems to have, at the very minimum, the tacit acceptance of the highest levels of government.”Numerous rights groups have publicly condemned Israel’s disproportionate military response while policing demonstrations and responding to alleged attacks.

Indiscriminate or deliberate firing on observers and demonstrators who pose no imminent threat violates the international standards that bind Israeli security forces,”Kenneth Roth, executive director of Humans Rights Watch said on Oct. 11, after a HRW research assistant was shot and injured while observing a demonstration near Ramallah.

 Annie Robbins is Editor at Large for Mondoweiss, a mother, a human rights activist and a ceramic artist. She lives in the SF bay area. Follow her on Twitter @anniefofani 

One point we’ve been particularly keen on driving home since the beginning of Russian airstrikes in Syria is that The Kremlin’s move to step in on behalf of Bashar al-Assad along with Vladimir Putin’s open “invitation” to Washington with regard to joining forces in the fight against terrorism effectively let the cat out of the proverbial bag. 

That is, it simply wasn’t possible for the US to explain why the Pentagon refused to partner with the Russians without admitting that i) the government views Assad, Russia, and Iran as a greater threat than ISIS, and ii) Washington and its regional allies don’t necessarily want to see Sunni extremism wiped out in Syria and Iraq.

Admitting either one of those points would be devastating from a PR perspective. No amount of Russophobic propaganda and/or looped video clips of the Ayatollah ranting against the US would be enough to convince the public that Moscow and Tehran are a greater threat than the black flag-waving jihadists beheading Westerners and burning Jordanian pilots alive in Hollywood-esque video clips, and so, The White House has been forced to scramble around in a desperate attempt to salvage the narrative. 

Well, it hasn’t worked.

With each passing week, more and more people are beginning to ask the kinds of questions the Pentagon and CIA most assuredly do not want to answer and now,  US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is out calling Washington’s effort to oust Assad both “counterproductive” and “illegal.” In the following priceless video clip, Gabbard accuses the CIA of arming the very same terrorists who The White House insists are “our sworn enemy” and all but tells the American public that the government is lying to them and may end up inadvertently starting “World War III.”

For more on how Russia and Iran’s efforts in Syria have cornered the US from a foreign policy perspective, see “ISIS In ‘Retreat’ As Russia Destroys 32 Targets While Putin Trolls Obama As ‘Weak With No Strategy‘”

The Guardian, 1 November 2001

Press conference: PM and President Assad of Syria

[transcript of the joint press conference in Damascus by Syria’s President Assad and British Prime Minister Tony Blair on October 31, 2001]

Number10.gov.uk (official website of the British government) via European Security & Defence website

Editorial note:  This press conference was held 24 days after the launch of the Anglo-American-led invasion of Afghanistan.

The day after his visit to Damascus, Mr Blair met Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Jerusalem. (emphasis added)

PRESIDENT ASSAD (via interpreter):  I am welcoming Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister of Britain and the accompanying delegation in Syria and I would like to indicate that it is the first visit of senior British officials at this level since the independence of Syria in the 1940s and certainly before then, decades before then, and this has many indications and many importance and many meanings and it indicates the development of the relations between Syria and Great Britain.

Despite the fact that the visit is very short the talks were very rich and we had time to discuss many issues and many topics. We agreed on many of the analyses that we discussed in the talks and there were many points of understanding and there was also some points that each undertook to the other.

The main issues that we discussed during these talks, of course we concentrated on the issue of terrorism and the peace process and the Middle East, of course. We talked quickly about the bi-lateral relations and we agreed to consolidate these relations through the ideas which were discussed between Syrian and British officials whether in Syria or in Britain. As for the issue of terrorism, there was a sound condemnation of what had taken place on 11 September in the United States and, I think this goes without saying, I don’t think there is any country in the world that would say it agrees with terrorism. It is a principle for all countries.

But the condemnation that Syria has announced was not only a result of what had taken place on 11 September, but it is an outcome of our principles, all the principles throughout our history in Syria, social principles, it was an outcome to our religious principles that are here in our Arab region, whether as Arabs or as Muslims or as Christians. It is a result of our suffering from terrorism, especially during the mid-1970s and the consequent period, and of course, at the same time, we differentiated – and I personally differentiated – between resistance and terrorism and between Islam and terrorism.

There is a difference between resistance as a social right, as a religious right, it’s a legal right, and it is a right that is safeguarded through the United Nations’ resolutions. 

Of course Islam and all holy religions have the same source and they were sent to people by the same God. These religions were not sent for war but they were sent for peace and for the combating of terrorism.

We talked about the root causes of terrorism and I mentioned many causes. But I mentioned particularly one important cause of terrorism and it is a reason that many citizens in the Arab or Muslim regions feel; it is a feeling of the difference and the human value between the citizen in this region and the human values of the citizen in the West. Especially as terrorism is there for a long time in Syria, since 1985, the late President Hafez Al-Assad sent Syrian senior officials to Western European countries to ask for convening an international conference to combat terrorism. So the issue of combating terrorism is very old for Syria, and although the combating of terrorism came quite late, it is better late than never. The important point is that combating terrorism should have started before, and many people in the region feel there is a gulf that the Western people should fill, that the human person is a human person anywhere and terrorism is terrorism anywhere, whether it is in the Middle East or Europe or in Asia and everywhere in the world.

We spoke about combating terrorism and I said that combating terrorism should start by defining this again. We can’t fight an enemy without knowing who this enemy is, what shape is he, where is he, is he North, East, West or South. We have to define our enemy first and we have to specify its appearance and its existence and then we have to analyse the reasons which brought this terrorism. Therefore, in order to combat terrorism, we have to address the root causes and not the effect. Until now only the effects of terrorism are being addressed but the root causes are not being addressed or it is at the beginning of being addressed. Addressing the root causes of terrorism, as I have said, should be first political, it should be cultural, it should be media, informative, security and intelligence addressed. And the terrorism works as a network; it doesn’t have a certain head whether it is a person or an organisation. It is a network, terrorism is a network that could be found anywhere, and therefore combating terrorism and fighting its causes should come through international co-operation and not through having one side or one country that fights terrorism. Terrorism is there everywhere and therefore combating terrorism should be done by every country in the world.

We spoke about peace in the Middle East. As we say always, Syria did not change its stand towards peace. Reaching a just and comprehensive peace in the region was always our principle, despite all the difficult circumstances, despite all the setbacks that the peace process has suffered from, the Syrian stand towards peace has not changed because it is a strategic position and not a tactical position, but Israel as far as we are concerned, is proving every day that it is against this peace, and therefore the desire for peace cannot coincide with the desire for killing. The list for assassinations cannot be an expression of a desire to reach peace and stability in this region.

We also spoke in the peace process about the international consensus in the world, especially after 11 September events, about the necessity of achieving peace in the Middle Eastern region, and I said that this international consensus is a golden opportunity that might not be repeated in the future. It is an opportunity for the world, but it is to a large extent an opportunity for the American administration that could move without taking into account the domestic pressure that might influence its neutral role as co-sponsor of the peace process.

We did not differentiate in our talk (inaudible) that peace and terrorism. Some people linked the issue of the Middle East to terrorism directly and it is understood as if the Middle East is a source of terrorism, and this is not correct. Despite our point of view as Arabs, because Israel is practising the state terrorism regularly and this is definite, but the Middle Eastern region often influences activating terrorism, because terrorists always need a cover. This cover could be a national issue, it could be a pan-national issue, it could be a social issue, and therefore closing the hot areas in the world will deprive these terrorists of the cover they always seek.

Of course we — and the last point I would like to say about peace is that in Syria we cannot see with one eye as some people see. We cannot separate the issue of terrorism that we see every day and we live every day that Israel is practising against the Palestinians. We cannot separate between this kind of terrorism and the terrorism that is taking place in the world, and we can’t really look with one eye. Some people see with one eye, some people see with closed eyes and we cannot, we look at the issues with wide-open eyes in order to see what has taken place, and in order to see things from a very realistic perspective.

And therefore no one can say small details can see small details without seeing the big issues, and the closer issues. People in the Arab region, and in the Muslim world cannot see the international terrorism without seeing Israeli terrorism, and therefore addressing this kind of terrorism is one.

Some people say that achieving peace will make a big step for combating terrorism, this is correct. But also combating terrorism in Israel would help to reach (5 second break in audio) highly appreciate what I have heard from Mr Prime Minister, because of his high appreciation and his great respect to Islam as a religion, and his high respect to the Muslim people in Britain. I am going to leave the floor to Mr Prime Minister to address you.

PRIME MINISTER BLAIR:  Mr President, first of all can I thank you for hosting me here in Syria, and say how much I welcome the talks that we have had this morning and I know we will continue later.

And as you said right at the very outset this is candid dialogue. But it is a dialogue I would like to think could be pursued by us both as people trying to reach an understanding of each other’s perspectives. And trying to work together as partners for the greater good of the wider world.

And there are two main issues obviously that we discussed. The first was the attacks of the 11 September in the United States of America. And I very much welcomed the strong statement of condemnation that you have made to me, and repeated again now Mr President. I think that is important that the entire world knows that the world community is united in condemning what happened on the 11 September as an atrocity.

The second thing is that that attack was carried out by extremists who do not represent in any way, shape or form, the true faith or voice of Islam. And your strong statement to that effect is also most welcome.

I believe it is important therefore that we send out a very clear message and signal that there is a strong international coalition against terrorism. And in Syria, and indeed the countries in this entire region are united as part of that coalition.

In respect of the Middle East peace process, whatever the differences of perspective, we both understand the importance of restarting the Middle East peace process properly, of getting back to a situation in which differences are resolved by a process of talking and dialogue. And that in that regard violence from whatever quarter is equally unhelpful, and what we require is the space and the time to get people talking together again.

And the objective that we seek, and I believe again this is shared by you, and shared by people in this region, is a situation where Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side in peace together. That is in the end the only possible long-term solution.

So Mr President I thank you for inviting me here today, I have very much welcomed the talks together. I know that for you as you were saying to me earlier, there is a relationship not just between Britain and Syria that is part of our history, but a personal relationship for you, since you have lived and worked in Britain.

And I hope that the candid dialogue that we have begun today can strengthen over time. Because there are huge differences in understanding between West and Islam, between west and the Arab world.

And yet if one can come out of the terrible events of the 11 September, it is an attempt to bridge that gulf of misunderstanding, and create the right circumstances for partnership in the future, and I believe that that is possible.

And so I hope that the dialogue we have begun today can continue over time, so that we achieve the objectives we both want to achieve. Which is an end to terrorism in all its forms, wherever it exists, and a proper and lasting peace and solution for the province of the Middle East. Thank you. 

QUESTION:  Could I ask (inaudible) if they discussed the current action in Afghanistan during their talks? Whether any pledges, promises, guarantees, anything of that nature were sought by President Assad, and given or not by Prime Minister Blair.

PRIME MINISTER BLAIR:  Well of course we have discussed the current situation in Afghanistan. And I think that the most important thing to emphasise is that people accept that what happened on the 11 September was wrong, and that it is necessary for the international community to act.

Now we are acting in Afghanistan, we have set out our objectives there very, very clearly. And I think that the desire of everyone is to make sure that we bring that action to a successful conclusion as swiftly as possible. That is our desire I think that is the desire of all people in this region and elsewhere.

PRESIDENT ASSAD (via interpreter):  As far as we are concerned in Syria we (inaudible) appreciate that we announced our stand right from the beginning. A very clear stand that we condemn terrorism, and with an international coalition for combating terrorism. But we should differentiate between combating terrorism, and between war.

We did not say we support an international coalition for launching a war, we are always against war, it is a point of principle, because wars have always a negative effect on societies. And we believe that combating terrorism cannot be done through war, but it can be done through political cultural intelligence cooperation amongst relevant countries.

And therefore, at least we do not like to see more wars taking place in the world, because we have suffered from many wars, especially as we see some civilians, innocent civilians falling every day.

QUESTION:  And Mr Prime Minister Tony Blair, and the American President George Bush, and your Excellency have announced your support to establishing a Palestinian, independent Palestinian state to establish the ability in the region. How do you see the execution of the (inaudible) in the light of the dangerous (inaudible) of pulling down houses, expanding settlements, and ignore all international requests, including your request, and the request of the American administration.

PRIME MINISTER BLAIR:  What is necessary if we are going to restart the peace process in the Middle East is that two things happen. First of all we have got to agree what the fixed points of principle are. And those fixed points of principle to my mind are that Israel is entitled to exist, has its right to exist, and be confident of its own peace and security within its own borders.

And secondly that alongside the state of Israeli there is a Palestinian state where there is justice and equality for people. Now I believe that based on that, based on the United Nations resolutions, it is possible to restart a proper process that can achieve those aims.

The second thing however that is necessary, as well as agreement on those fixed points of principle, is that we have an end to violence of all sorts, in order to give space and time for a peace process to begin again. Because whilst violence is continuing, of whatever nature, it is difficult for the political process to work, and if I can say to you, certainly to borrow from the process of peace in Northern Ireland, which, in a very different context, has some similarities in terms of divided communities and great bitterness and hostility, it is vital, in order for the political process to work, that violence ends, of all types, because it is the people of violence that want to displace the political process, and what I would like to see is, based on those six points of principle, based on the United Nations Resolution, a peace process begin again that allows us to take back control of the situation for politics and not for violence.

QUESTION:  Can I ask the Prime Minister whether you did discuss the situation of the terrorist groups which the Americans believe were operating in this country, whether you asked the President to restrain them, and may I ask the President whether you are prepared to take action against those groups, in particular the one that has claimed responsibility for the recent assassination in Israel? 

PRIME MINISTER BLAIR:  First of all, if I can say that, as I just made clear a moment or two ago, it is our belief that all groups involved in violence must cease their activities, so that the political process is given a chance to work. Now, there are going to be differences in perspective and views about the issue, both of the Middle East peace process, about the action that we take in respect of Afghanistan. But what I think is important is to recognise that unless we can bring about the situation in which the violence really does cease in the Middle East and the political process begin to work, then it is very difficult to see how we are going to get a just, negotiated solution to the problems that we face, and as I say, whatever the differences in perspective are – and we said it was a candid dialogue – whatever the differences in perspective, I think that is accepted by both of us. We both want to see a situation where the violence ends and ends completely, on all sides, so that the peace process can get started again. 

PRESIDENT ASSAD (via interpreter):  I would like to give a comment about this question. Of course the issue of the Middle East issue is for the countries concerned and one of the first countries who are concerned and we are more capable to decide the nature of the organisations and the people who are in the region. As I said in the beginning, resisting occupation is an international right nobody can deny, and therefore we have many organisations, many people who support the liberation and who support the resistance fighters who seek to liberate their lands. The act of resistance is very different from the act of terrorism. As I said, we differentiate. In the west you have one example in France, for example, one of the most important personalities or one of the symbols is President de Gaulle, who fought for liberating the French land. Can any one of you accuse President de Gaulle of being a terrorist? No way, because what President de Gaulle did is the same thing that’s being done by the resistance fighters in this region, and therefore it’s the same measure that should be applied.

QUESTION:  Mr Prime Minister Tony Blair, the peace process was started ten years ago and peace has not been achieved at a time when violence was not there in the region, and the peace was not achieved due to the Israeli policies. Is there any initiative or intention by the Europeans or by international community to restart the peace process (inaudible) according to the United Nations Resolution and the land for peace principles (inaudible) for the region’s (inaudible)?

PRIME MINISTER BLAIR:  Well of course there’s an intention to do that. It’s precisely what we want to achieve. We want the process to begin again so that there is the possibility, through dialogue, of resolving the issues in the Middle East. But in order for that to happen, what is important is that there is an end to all forms of violence, where there is restraint, an end to violence, and the opportunity then to get people to talk about the issues, and over the last ten years, as you know, there have been many, many attempts to get the peace process moving ahead. Now those attempts have not yet succeeded, but my message to people in whatever part of the region I will be over the next couple of days is there is no alternative. When all the killing and the bloodshed stops, people will have to come back and try and resolve their differences through dialogue. There is no alternative to that, just as there is no realistic alternative to a situation where the right of Israel to exist, confident in its own security, and the right of the Palestinians to their own state, is accepted as the basic principles of that dialogue.

Now I believe that can happen, but it needs the space and the time, as I say, to do it and even before the 11 September — sometimes I know in this part of the world it has been said that people like myself and President Bush were only interested in the issue of the peace process in the Middle East once the 11 September had occurred. This is not true. When I met President Arafat a few days ago in London, that was my eleventh meeting with him. Before the 11 September we already had the Tenet (?) Plan, the Mitchell Plan; as you know the Americans were preparing a new process in order to try and restore some momentum to the Middle East peace process. So we have, right from the very beginning, understood the importance of this issue, but we need the help of everybody, of all countries in this region, in order to get it done, and the single most important thing that will allow us to get it done is an end to violence from whatever quarter, in whatever form.

QUESTION:  It seems that the focus now is to implement the Mitchell Plan and the Tenet Plan to cement the shaky ceasefire between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Do you think that’s a good start? Is it enough of a start? And would you, at some point, encourage what you perceive as legitimate resistance to halt their attacks to give the Mitchell Plan a chance?

PRESIDENT ASSAD (via interpreter):  We have our perspective about the Mitchell Report. We did not participate in it and Syria was not consulted about it, but the failure of many attempts did not take into account the necessary requirements for the peace (inaudible) including the rights of the Palestinian people, and the people in the region have proven that our perspective, our point of view, was correct, so the right thing is that the ceasefire, agreement for a ceasefire, but it is not the terms of reference for a peace process. The terms of reference for a peace process is the Security Council Resolution and the Madrid terms of reference. When we speak about initiatives regardless of the names of these initiatives, or when we speak about negotiations, all these are the means, but the important thing is justice; justice is peace.

We have to put one rule for the elements and for the objective, in order to achieve this objective. When we want to say — or let us assume that there’s an initiative, and the Palestinian citizen is going to ask, “What is the objective of this initiative? Is it to stop violence?” Stopping violence is perhaps necessary to reach peace, but it is not everything; the more important thing is what this citizen is going to achieve, what are the rights he is going to achieve when the peace process ends, when — any initiative depends on United Nations Resolutions, on Madrid terms of reference, and so directing the peace process, or the co-sponsor should be neutral, should be an honest broker, and this is what was not achieved during the last ten years, and that’s why peace has failed, and that’s why all the attempts have failed. If you don’t have the right way to conduct the peace process through the means and through the objectives we are going to meet in press conferences with other senior officials ten years from now to speak about launching a peace process.

PRIME MINISTER BLAIR:  I’d like to just respond to that if I might, for a moment. Sorry, let me just respond to that for a moment please. I think the President said something that is very important there, that the Tenet and the Mitchell plans are valid plans in order to bring about a different security situation and end the violence. But I agree that is the first step, it is not the end of the process. What must then happen is that we resolve the actual issues that are outstanding. And I think that what he said there too, in respect of the UN resolutions and the Madrid conclusions is also important. And I hope very much there will come a point in time when Syria is able to resume negotiations also with Israel in order to get the outstanding issues between them sorted out.

So I agree with the fact that the end to violence is the context in which the key issues can be resolved. It’s not the resolution of the issues themselves. So we’ve got to end the violence and then go on to resolve those key issues. And I think that if there is agreement on that and if there is an agreement, as I say, on those two fixed points of reference – on Israel and on the Palestinian state – I think that we could start to make a great deal more progress. Sorry, sir.

QUESTION:  Mr Prime Minister, Tony Blair, many Arabs and Moslems feel a kind of frustration and oppression and injustice because of the non-implementation of Israel into the United Nations resolution and because of the double standards. Do you, Mr Prime Minister, have a plan, especially the European Union, to address this issue – this very sensitive issue — and which really is the source of tension in the region? Thank you.

PRIME MINISTER BLAIR:  Well, first of all, I want to say this very directly to public opinion here – and we should never forget, coming from my country, that public opinion in your country may be in a different place from public opinion in Britain or Europe or the United States of America – but I hope whatever part of the world we’re in we can agree on this: what happened on 11 September cannot be excused and neither can those that carried out the 11 September attack, in which, I may say, thousands of innocent people — Christians, Jews, Moslems, people of no faith at all — died. That cannot be excused on the basis of any court and, as the President said a moment or two ago, there are always people — the extremists always want to use a cause as cover for the extremist acts that they carry out.

Now, it is also important — so I hope that condemnation is accepted by everyone and that no one should think that the people that carried out the 11 September attack represent, in any shape or form, true Arab or Moslem opinion. And that’s an important statement. But of course we understand that there is legitimate concern about the breakdown of the Middle East Peace Process and a desire to get that started again. And we understand that and what you have got to understand from us is that we know there is a serious issue here that must be resolved. And we are willing to put all our energy and ability into trying to resolve it.

Now it’s not for me to come here and issue plans and so on but it is for me to come here and say to people very clearly, “We want to try and resolve this issue. We want to get the Middle East Peace Process started again. Give us the opportunity of doing that by making sure that the conditions in which people can talk again, and of which dialogue is the way forward, can be created.” And that’s why I say to you that the violence from whatever quarter has to end. And I understand the different perspectives there will be between Syria and Britain or between Syria, obviously, and Israel. There will be fundamental differences of perspectives. But we both, in the end, know there is no alternative but to us sitting down and working out these differences, not by violence or by terrorism of whatever form but by partnership and by trying to resolve the issues constructively. And I think that can happen. And one of the reasons for us coming here – and I say this to you again, absolutely openly – it is difficult because of the history and the differences to come here, to have a press conference such as this but I happen to believe that if anything good can come out of the terrible events of the 11 September, it is an attempt to find new understanding and a new way forward to resolve the differences that we have. Now maybe we won’t be able to but let’s at least try. And let’s at least try doing so, understanding the perspective from which the other person comes. 

Okay? Yeah, I don’t mind. Yeah — I can take another one, if you want. Well, this lady here. I should say this is the generosity of the president that is allowing this! (laughter)

QUESTION:  Mr Prime Minister, I was very interested in what you said about the military action in Afghanistan. Are you now requesting, British Prime Minister, to stop the military action and would you go so far as to define it, in a way, as a form of terrorism?

PRESIDENT ASSAD (via interpreter):  We are not asking for anything and we are not a party to it in order to ask for putting an end to it but we have a perspective, we have a point of view, a general point of view about this war and about any other war. The history of Syria stretches for 6,000 years, 4,000 years before Christ, and the Assyrians were great fighters and that then since that time until no, there is a defence of Syrian territory. But there was — that Syria was never an aggressor or an occupier of any other country or killing of any innocent citizens. This is a principle, a Syrian principle. But, at the same time, we cannot accept what we see every day on television screens, killing the innocent civilians [in Afghanistan]. There are hundreds now who are dying every day. I don’t think anybody in the West accepts or agrees to that.

QUESTION:  (Several inaudible words) Mr Prime Minister, some voices in Europe after 11 September are asking for closing the frontier in the way of Arabs and Moslems. How do you see these races called and what are you doing towards them?

PRIME MINISTER BLAIR:  Well, as you probably know, just as Syria has some 2 million Christians, we have many, many Moslems in Britain. Millions of Moslems live in Europe and we defend, absolutely and totally, their rights to exist free from racism or stigmatising of any kind at all. There are many, many Moslems indeed, who live in the United States of America and I think what is important is that one of the common values that we should stand for in the aftermath of the 11 September is a complete rejection of all forms of racism, of religious intolerance, of discrimination against people, whatever their race or religion or creed.

Just to say, in respect of the action in Afghanistan, we understand as well the issue and opinion here about the nature of the action we take but I would just like to say this to you: the action that we take is designed, in so far as we possibly can, to minimise civilian casualties. The action that was taken on the 11 September was action designed to maximise the number of civilian casualties. So whatever the differences again of perspective there, we too want to see this action brought to an end as swiftly as possible but it can be done at any point in time that the Taliban regime and the al-Qaida network shut down the network of terror there.

PRESIDENT ASSAD (via interpreter):  We thank you very much and, as I said to Mr Prime Minister at the end of our meeting, however bloody the picture might be, we can extract some light out of it if we enjoin (?) the will (?) and the media can participate in that directly and in a helpful way, particularly in the West, so we would like the media in the West to play a very effective role in this crisis. Thank you very much.__________________________________

source:  Rifkind attacks Blair’s ‘unwise’ mission to the Middle East, Daily Telegraph, 3 November 2001

Flashback to 2003:

“[W]e have maintained the understanding that in bad days the two allies need to act shoulder-to-shoulder. Turkey has indeed been alongside the United States in nearly every major military conflict, from Korea to the Gulf War, from Bosnia to Somalia, Kosovo and Afghanistan.  (*)

Based on an urgent U.S. request on March 19, [2003] we reapplied to the National Assembly [i.e. Turkey’s parliament] to get authorization for the opening of Turkish air space to the coalition forces led by the U.S. The Assembly approved this request on March 20, the day the war began in Iraq. Turkish airspace was made available to the coalition forces on the very next day.”[Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, My Country Is Your Faithful Ally and Friend , Wall Street Journal, 31 March 2003.Mr Erdogan’s article was published 11 days after the launch of the Anglo-American-led invasion of Iraq.]

(*)  Mr Erdogan refers to Turkey’s participation in U.S.-led wars against Korea (1950), Iraq (1991-), Bosnia (1994), Somalia (1993), Serbia (1999) and Afghanistan (2001-)

Related:

Propaganda alert:  Cameron: ‘British air strikes on Syria would be legally justified’

by Cem Ertür, Indybay, 7 September 2014

President Bashar al-Assad sworn in for a new term, addresses Syrians in milestone speech

[transcript of the inauguration speech by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad]

SANA, 17 July 2014

Flashback to 2003: “Major combat in Iraq is over, U.S. warns rogue Syria”

propaganda alert by Cem Ertür, Indybay, 16 April 2014

Flashback to 2003: President Assad: US seeks war on Iraq in order to redraw the map of Middle East

by Cem Ertür, Indybay, 20 June 2014

This excerpt was first published on WhoWhatWhy

As you watch, perhaps with alarm, while thousands of refugees from Muslim countries make their way through Europe in a seemingly endless parade, you may be wondering if some of them will end up living near you, and how this might affect your life.

If you step back and look at the bigger picture, you will see the situation in reverse: how much the dominating presence of those from the western world has affected the daily lives of people living in Muslim countries.

What the colonial powers have done in Muslim countries is well known. Less well known are the machinations of Allen Dulles and the CIA in one of these colonial powers, France.

President Charles de Gaulle Motorcade. Photo credit: Gnotype / Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Without the knowledge or consent of President John F. Kennedy, Allen Dulles orchestrated the efforts of retired French generals, rightwing French, Nazi sympathizers, and at least one White Russian, to overthrow Charles de Gaulle, who wanted to give Algeria its independence. Dulles et al feared an independent Algeria would go Communist, giving the Soviets a base in Africa.

And there was another reason to hang onto Algeria: its natural resources. According to the US Energy Information Administration, it is “the leading natural gas producer in Africa, the second-largest natural gas supplier to Europe outside of the region, and is among the top three oil producers in Africa.”

We note with great interest that the plot to bring down Charles De Gaulle — the kind of people involved, the role of Allen Dulles, the motive behind it — all bear an eerie similarity to the circumstances surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy. But that is another story.

As we have said earlier, Dulles’s job, simply put, was to hijack the US government to benefit the wealthy.  And in this fascinating series of excerpts from David Talbot’s new biography on Dulles, we see how his reach extended deeply into the government of France.

WhoWhatWhy Introduction by Milicent Cranor

This is the third of a three-part series of excerpts from Chapter 15 (“Contempt”) of  The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the,  Rise of the American Secret Government. HarperCollins Publishers, 2015.  Go here and here to see Parts 1 and 2. Previously, we presented excerpts from Chapter 20, and to see them, go here, here, andhere.

PURGES AND MORE PURGES

After the failed coup, de Gaulle launched a new purge of his security forces. He ousted General Paul Grossin, the powerful chief of SDECE, the French secret service, and he shut down its armed unit, the 11th Choc (Shock Battalion), which he suspected of being a breeding ground for the coup. Grossin, who was closely aligned with the CIA, had told Frank Wisner over lunch that the return of de Gaulle to power was equivalent to the Communists taking over in Paris.

The 11th Choc had grown into a dangerously unhinged killing unit, targeting representatives of the Algerian independence movement and their European supporters, even on the streets of France.

Those branded enemies of the French empire were gunned down, blown up, or poisoned by SDECE’s action arm. Aided by ex-Nazi agents of Reinhard Gehlen’s organization, the 11th Choc’s assassination campaign reached the point where “liquidations [were] an almost daily routine,” according to Philippe Thyraud de Vosjoli, a veteran SDECE agent who served as the liaison to the CIA.

Shortly after pushing out Grossin, de Gaulle also jettisoned his security adviser, Constantin Melnik, Dulles’s close ally. Late into his life, Melnik continued to insist that the CIA was always a friend to de Gaulle — which would have come as a surprise to the French president.

Writing in his 1999 memoir, Politically Incorrect, Melnik flatly declared, “I can testify that … despite suspicious yelping by Gaullist camp followers … the CIA always was a faithful ally of General de Gaulle, even of his often torturous Algerian policies.” After de Gaulle dumped Melnik, Dulles — who by then had also been fired — immediately offered to hire him for a new private intelligence agency he was planning in the Third World. But Melnik declined, instead pursuing a career in French publishing and politics.

Continuity in Washington was no longer the new president’s concern. Shaken by the traumatic events in Cuba and France, JFK was ready to remake his government.

For the rest of his ten-year presidency, which ended with his retirement from politics in 1969, de Gaulle continued to take strong counter-measures against forces he regarded as seditious threats. In 1962, he expelled CIA station chief Alfred Ulmer, a gung ho veteran of Dulles’s Cold War battlegrounds. In 1967, de Gaulle evicted NATO from France to regain “full sovereignty [over] French territory” after discovering that the military alliance was encouraging Western European secret services to interfere in France’s domestic politics.

Parade of the 13th DBLE Legionnaires through Roman ruins in Lambaesis, Algeria.
Photo credit: Richard Bareford / Wikimedia

THE DAY OF THE JACKAL

Following the Algiers putsch, de Gaulle remained an assassination target — particularly during the explosive months before and after he finally recognized Algerian independence in July 1962. The most dramatic attempt on his life was staged the next month by the OAS — an ambush made famous in the Frederick Forsyth novel and movie The Day of the Jackal.

As de Gaulle’s black Citroën sped along the Avenue de la Libération in Paris, with the president and his wife in the rear seat, a dozen OAS snipers opened fire on the vehicle. Two of the president’s motorcycle bodyguards were killed — and the bullet-riddled Citroën skidded sharply. But de Gaulle was fortunate to have a skilled and loyal security team, and his chauffeur was able to pull the car out of its spin and speed to safety, despite all four tires’ being shot out. The president and his wife, who kept their heads down throughout the fusillade, escaped unharmed.

DE GAULLE’S OWN SECRET ASSASSINS

The French president demonstrated that he was willing to fight fire with fire. According to de Vosjoli, de Gaulle loyalists in SDECE even recruited their own secret assassins — including a particularly violent group of Vietnamese exiles — who blew up cafés in Algeria frequented by enemies of de Gaulle and kidnapped, tortured, and murdered other OAS combatants deemed a threat to the president. Democracy in France in the early 1960s was sustained as the result of a vicious underground war that the old French general was willing to fight with equal ferocity.

Because of the severe security measures he took, Charles de Gaulle survived his tumultuous presidency. He died of a heart attack the year after he left office, just short of his eightieth birthday, slumping over quietly in his armchair after watching the evening news.

A SUBJECT TO AVOID

President Kennedy met with de Gaulle on his state visit to Paris at the end of May 1961, a month after the failed coup. The president and First Lady were feted at a banquet in Élysée Palace, where the old general — dazzled by Jackie — leaned down closely to hear every breathy word she spoke to him, in fluent French.

During the three-day visit, the two heads of state discussed many pressing issues, from Laos to Berlin to Cuba. But Kennedy and de Gaulle never broached the touchy subject of the coup, much less the CIA’s involvement in it. As French journalist Vincent Jauvert later observed, “Why wake up old demons who had barely fallen asleep?”

KENNEDY’S GENTLE PURGES

Kennedy knew that he would have to resume wrestling with those demons as soon as he returned home. He would have to decide how deeply to purge his own security agencies, as de Gaulle had already begun to do in France. Kennedy knew there would be steep political costs involved in taking on the CIA and Pentagon. But, as Walter Lippmann had told Schlesinger, “Kennedy will not begin to be President until he starts to break with Eisenhower.”

Continuity in Washington was no longer the new president’s concern. Shaken by the traumatic events in Cuba and France, JFK was ready to remake his government.

A few weeks after the Bay of Pigs and the foiled French coup, JFK asked Jackie to invite Dulles for drinks or tea at the White House. Charlie Wrightsman and his wife were also dropping by, and Kennedy wanted to make a point. The Florida tycoon had self-righteously told Kennedy that he was not going to be seeing his old friend Dulles during his trip to Washington — his way of snubbing the spymaster for bungling the job in Cuba.

The president was “disgusted” by Wrightsman’s disloyalty to Dulles, according to Jackie, so he went out of his way to include the disgraced CIA leader in the White House’s get-together. By now, enough time had elapsed since the disasters of April, and with Dulles on his way out, Kennedy was feeling magnanimous toward the Old Man.

“[Jack] was so loyal always to people in, you know, trouble,” the First Lady later recalled. “And he made a special effort to come back from [the Oval Office] and sit around with Jayne and Charlie Wrightsman, just to show Charlie what he thought of Allen Dulles. And, I mean, it made all the difference to Allen Dulles. I was with him about five [or ten] minutes before Jack got there. He just looked like, I don’t know, Cardinal Mindszenty on trial,” she said, referring to the Hungarian prelate who was sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of treason by a Soviet-run show trial.

By mid-January 1962, the “retired” spymaster was writing an old comrade, “As you know, I am not much of a believer in either retirement or long vacations.” The house on Q Street was already on its way to becoming the seat of a government in exile. Dulles had been deposed, but his reign continued.

You know, just a shell of what he was. And Jack came and talked — put his arm around him … Well, wasn’t that nice? It was just to show Charlie Wrightsman. But it shows something about Jack. I mean, he knew [that] Dulles had obviously botched everything up. [But], you know, he had a tenderness for the man.

SLOW BURNING FURY

But “poor Allen Dulles,” as Jackie took to referring to him, was likely untouched by the president’s gesture. The CIA director’s resentment of Kennedy was growing by the day, as his fingers slowly lost their grip on power. Feeling the young man’s arm wrapped paternally around his shoulder would have chilled Dulles, not warmed him. The spymaster had served every president since Woodrow Wilson. And now, here he was, being comforted by this weak pretty boy who did not belong in the same company as the great men who preceded him. It was appalling that he, Allen Dulles, should be consoled by such a man.

Though Dulles himself kept his fury carefully concealed, his most loyal aides and political allies freely vented their feelings against the Kennedy White House on the Old Man’s behalf. Howard Hunt, who worked as the CIA’s political liaison with the volatile Cuban exile community on the Bay of Pigs, called Dulles and Bissell “scapegoats to expiate administration guilt.”

Hunt, whose anti-Communist passions equaled those of his militant Cuban compadres, was deeply moved by the way his boss comported himself during his slow fadeout at the CIA. “As a member of Dulles’s staff,” Hunt remembered, “I lunched in the Director’s mess, seeing him return from each [Taylor] Committee session more drawn and gray. But on taking his place at the head of the table, Mr. Dulles’s demeanor changed into hearty cheerfulness — a joke here, a baseball bet there, came from this remarkable man whose long career of government service had been destroyed unjustly by men who were laboring unceasingly to preserve their own public images.”

The summer following the Bay of Pigs, Prescott Bush — the CIA’s man in the Senate — and his wife, Dorothy, invited Dulles to dinner at their Washington home. The spymaster showed up with John McCone in tow — the  Republican businessman and former Atomic Energy Commission chairman Kennedy had just privately tapped as Dulles’s replacement. Bush, who was still unaware that Dulles had been officially deposed, was surprised to see McCone, “whom,” he later recalled in a letter to Clover, “we had not thought of as a particular friend of Allen’s. But Allen broke the ice promptly, and said that he wanted us to meet his successor. The announcement came the next day.”

The dinner conversation around the Bush family table that night was awkward. “We tried to make a pleasant evening of it,” Bush wrote, “but I was rather sick at heart, and angry too, for it was the Kennedy’s [sic] that brot [sic] about the fiasco. And here they were making Allen seem to be the goat, which he wasn’t and did not deserve. I have never forgiven them.”

President John F. Kennedy Presents the National Security Medal to Allen Dulles,
retiring director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Photo credit: Robert Knudsen. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston

On November 28, 1961, Dulles was given his formal sendoff at the CIA, in a ceremony held at the agency’s brand new headquarters, a vast, modernist complex carved out of the woods in Langley, Virginia. It was a day of clashing emotions for Dulles.The gleaming new puzzle palace, which Dulles had commissioned, was seen by many as a monument to his long reign — but he would never occupy the director’s suite. Now some agency wits were snidely christening the Langley edifice “The Allen Dulles Memorial Mausoleum.”

President Kennedy was gracious in his farewell remarks, as he bestowed the agency’s highest honor — the National Security Medal — on Dulles. “I regard Allen Dulles as an almost unique figure in our country,” he told the crowd gathered in a sterile, fluorescent-lit theater, including a somber-faced Clover and Eleanor Dulles, and an equally stern-looking General Lemnitzer and J. Edgar Hoover, who almost certainly were wondering when they would be next to go. “I know of no man,” the president continued, “who brings a greater sense of personal commitment to his work — who has less pride in office — than he has.”

This last piece of flattery was particularly overblown, as Kennedy well knew, because there were few men in his administration brimming with as much self-admiration as Allen Dulles. The departing CIA director had made sure that invitations to his medal ceremony were sent out to a who’s who list of Fortune 500 executives, including the chiefs of General Electric, General Motors, Ford, DuPont, Coca Cola, Chase Manhattan, US Steel, Standard Oil, IBM, CBS, and Time Life. He kept copies of all the flowery farewells that poured in from the corporate world, including letters from 20th Century Fox movie mogul Spyros Skouras, and conglomerate tycoon J. Peter Grace, who wrote, “It is almost unbelievable that one family could produce two men of the caliber of yours and your late, sorely missed, brother.”

But, after the ceremony, Dulles looked a bit lost and forlorn as he waved to Kennedy’s departing helicopter from the front steps of the headquarters he would never occupy. The following day was even more melancholy for Dulles as JFK swore in McCone at the old CIA building on E Street.

Clover dropped him off at the ceremony in the family car, since Dulles was no longer entitled to a CIA limousine and driver. “Clover, I’ll be home later in a taxi,” the Old Man told his wife as he climbed out of the car. He was overheard by Lawrence “Red” White, the agency’s efficient, nuts and bolts administrator, who insisted that Dulles be driven home in an official car. Dulles made a show of protesting but accepted the kind gesture — one of the few bright spots in what colleagues described as a very dark day for the espionage legend. “His morale,” White recalled, “was pretty low on his last day as DCI [Director of Central Intelligence].”

Retired at home in Georgetown, the old spymaster’s funereal mood did not lift as Kennedy proceeded to rid his administration of remnants of the fallen Dulles dynasty. First to go were the Dulles deputies most closely associated with the Bay of Pigs, Dick Bissell and Charles Cabell.

Then Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, his brother’s vigilant watchman, tracked down Eleanor Dulles, who was still working quietly on German affairs in Foggy Bottom, and had Secretary of State Rusk fire her. “I don’t want any more of the Dulles family around,” the attorney general was heard to say. Eleanor took it hard. “It was silly, I suppose,” she later remarked. “I was 66 years old, and a lot of my friends asked why I should want to go on working. Well, I had psychological and financial reasons. My job at State was a valuable thing to cling to. Besides, I had debts. I had put two children through college, and I needed a salary.”

Over at the Pentagon, JFK had already begun to purge Dulles Cold Warriors like Arleigh Burke, who was drummed out of the Navy in August. Next to go was Lemnitzer, who was replaced as Joint Chiefs chairman by Maxwell Taylor in November, the same month Dulles himself was shown the door.

Kennedy took further steps to signal that the Dulles era was over and that the CIA would no longer be allowed to run wild; he placed overseas agents under the control of US ambassadors and shifted responsibility for future paramilitary operations like the Bay of Pigs to the Pentagon. It was the Kennedy brothers, not the Dulles brothers, who now ran Washington.

IN EXILE, DULLES RULES

Dulles found it hard to adjust to life on the political sidelines. “He had a very difficult time to decompress,” said Jim Angleton, his long time acolyte. But it soon became clear that the Dulles dynasty was not entirely dismantled.

In truth, the Kennedy purge had left the ranks of Dulles loyalists at the CIA largely untouched.

James Jesus Angleton was CIA Counterintelligence Chief
from 1954 to 1975. Photo credit: Unknown

Top Dulles men like Angleton and Helms remained on the job. And the Old Man’s shadow knights never abandoned their king. They continued to call on him in Georgetown, with Angleton visiting two or three times a week. They consulted with him on agency affairs, as if he were still DCI, and not John McCone. They collaborated with him on plans for books and film projects. They continued to kneel before Allen Dulles, their banished commander, and kiss his ring. And soon, Dulles began to emerge from his gloomy refuge, ready for action.

By mid-January 1962, the “retired” spymaster was writing an old comrade, “As you know, I am not much of a believer in either retirement or long vacations.” The house on Q Street was already on its way to becoming the seat of a government in exile. Dulles had been deposed, but his reign continued.

Appel du général Challe (1961) Guerre d’Algérie.
 Video credit: Entertainment-Education WebTV / YouTube

In Part I of this essay entitled Big Pharma Dangerous Drugs and “Drug-Injured Patients, I wrote about some of the ethical concerns that I have had with the modern medical profession. Over my 40 years of practicing medicine I have experienced increasing frustration with its direction, mainly because the business of medicine has been increasingly distorting the ethics I was taught in medical school. The profession has become increasingly difficult to recognize over the 40 year span.

Big Pharma Dangerous Drugs and “Drug-Injured Patients”By Dr. Gary G. Kohls, October 29, 2015

Like many other physicians who have tried to take the Hippocratic Oath seriously (“first do no harm”), I also tried to resist the increasing corporate influences that eventually made the once-honorable practice of medicine into a crass profit-making industry. I makes me sad to report that outside forces have gradually made us physicians into computer bound high class technicians that are largely prescribers/providers of Big Pharma’s often toxic and always unaffordable drugs. In the current profit-above-all-else era, it is not even remotely possible for us physicians to be the compassionate healers of the long-gone era that I knew.

Way too often, the money-making Big Business of medicine is being controlled by institutional shareholders  (who demand increasing dividends or increasing shareholder value) whose CEOs are often amoral Masters of Business Administration graduates who are equally at home leading Wall Street banks, tobacco companies, weapons manufacturers or brothels – or big clinics or hospitals. In this era the term “business ethics” (just like “military justice”) is an oxymoron.

Fraudulent Marketing and Hiding Serious Adverse Effects

In fact, every major psycho-pharmaceutical company has been taken to court by thousands of injured and deceived patients over fraudulent marketing, fraudulent advertising and/or fraudulently hiding the serious adverse effects that the drug companies didn’t reveal to the FDA, prescribing physicians or the public.

The “chump change” multibillion dollar, usually out-of-court settlements (always with “gag rules” so that the plaintiffs couldn’t say anything about the awards) didn’t convince Lilly to take those three hugely profitable drugs off the market, nor did the FDA ban the drugs. The permanent damages done to unsuspecting patients – including many suicides and other deaths – were regarded by the drug companies and their CEOs as just another cost of doing business.

I mention this because every major psycho-pharmaceutical company has been guilty of similar legal entanglements because their synthetic drugs and neurotoxic, heavy metal-laden (mercury and aluminum) vaccines are inherently dangerous, especially when given in batches. Lilly (who also invented neurotoxic vaccine preservative Thimerosal – which was in so many vaccines during the explosion of autism that occurred in the 1990s) was the company that had done the most damage to my unaware patients’ brains and bodies, and they had gotten away with it. It was also Lilly that was the first drug company to seduce me – as a naïve med student – into falsely believing that the psycho-pharmaceutical drug industry was a force for good in the world. Be assured that Pfizer, Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Roche, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Novartis, AstraZeneca, Janssen, Bayer, Abbott, Sanofi Aventis, et.al. have all been as guilty of malfeasance as Lilly.

Cognitive Dissonance and the Drug Industry

I implore concerned readers to Google some of my fellow whistle-blowing medical heretics like Peter Breggin, David Healy, Russell Blaylock, Robert Whitaker, Joseph Glenmullen, Loren Mosher, Peter Gotzsche, Gary Null, Martha Rosenberg, and then, starting with http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9I6_BkqjWN8, watch the many YouTube videos that expose some of the unwelcome truths about Big Pharma’s psych drugs. Also consider watching some of my video-interviews on YouTube by typing in ‘gary kohls’ after accessing the YouTube site. Www.cchrint.org is a valuable website that contains a number of powerful and very well-made documentaries about the dangers of psychotropic drugs.

Cognitive dissonance is the psychological discomfort that most people experience when their deeply held beliefs are contradicted by new information that disproves their old beliefs. Since it is impossible for truly thinking persons to simultaneously hold two mutually exclusive beliefs, anxiety and confusion can result. I am happy to say that, given my personal and professional experiences with Big Pharma’s dangerous drugs, I had no cognitive dissonance when my patients were telling me the stories about the medications that had sickened them.

Denial, Ad Hominem Attacks, and Killing the Messenger

However, cognitive dissonance, especially in people (or doctors) that might have been brain-washed from childhood in dogmatic systems (such as religion or medical school), often causes the sufferer to go into denial concerning the new facts, or they may ignore of become hostile to the bearer of the new information. The hostile reaction against the bearer of the new information often takes the form of “ad hominem attacks”.

Attacking the messenger of a new unwelcome truth, rather than rationally dealing with the truth, is a commonly used tactic when the new information can’t be refuted using logic.

Unfair and endlessly repeated verbal attacks against whistle-blowers (including peacemakers, environmentalists, feminists, human rights/anti-racism/antiwar activists -and some physicians) often succeed in angering-up the listener-supporters of talk show host celebrities like Rush Limbaugh (whose devotees proudly call themselves “DittoHeads”). These blinded and blinkered supporters of half-truths are then distracted from hearing all sides of an important issue. So uninformed conclusions are drawn that then become rigid, unexamined doctrinal beliefs that make the believers in the false propaganda ripe for refusing to deal with the truth. Politics in America have been deeply polarized lately because of the cognitive dissonance and anti-democracy realities of mud-slinging and name-calling.

But cognitive dissonance is also rampant among America’s psychotropic drug prescribers, psychotropic drug consumers, the corporate drug-makers and the corporate-controlled media. Whenever these groups are confronted with the fact that the drugs they once trusted and profited from are not as safe or as effective as they had previously believed, they go into denial. Or as Upton Sinclair once said:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Big Pharma and many of their willing and eager partners in the many medical industry trade groups that profit from quick-fix drug treatments have done cunningly effective, mass media work in discrediting potentially curative, non-drug approaches like psychotherapy, psychoeducation, nutritional therapy, naturopathy, massage therapy, etc, all of which are regarded by Big Pharma as dangerous competitors that need to be crushed.

Over 90% of the drug research in America has, for decades, been designed, funded, ghost-written, published and totally controlled by the pharmaceutical industry, in whose interest it is to ensure – by hook or by crook – that its wholly-owned company researchers and company statisticians will massage the numbers enough so that they will get the FDA to approve the drug for marketing.

Mainstream medical journal editors are often beholden to the drug companies that so generously subsidize their magazines. Mainstream medical journals have large numbers of drug companies and medical device companies that advertise in them. Journal articles that promote the drugs or devices from these companies are often published, but the mainstream medical journal editors rarely allow any space for peer-reviewed articles that contradict the pro-drug reports from the companies that advertise in the journals.

The same conflicts of interest are on display at most major medical conventions and conferences. These so-called educational conferences are heavily subsidized by the drug industry. Most thinking physicians are appalled at the large numbers of pharmaceutical companies that give out free trinkets and food in order to attract physicians to their tables so that they can pitch their newest, unaffordable blockbuster drug.

I have also observed that medical meetings that are dependent on pharmaceutical company money do not invite researchers who want to present information about non-drug alternatives that go up against drug and medical industry dogma. Whistle-blowers and medical heretics are not welcome at such medical conventions. Truth-tellers rain on Big Pharma’s parade and so they are excluded.

Whatever Happened to Fully Informed Consent?

I was taught in my medical school training that before prescribing a treatment, the physician was ethically and medico-legally obliged to fully inform the patient about the potential hazards of a drug (or a surgical procedure). Then the patient was to be given an opportunity to refuse or accept the recommended prescription or procedure. Consent to surgical procedures was to be signed and the signature witnessed. Alternatives to the suggested treatment program were also to be offered.

Unfortunately, and often tragically, obtaining fully informed consent before prescribing a drug no longer seems to be the standard of care in the Big Business of modern medicine, where high productivity, high patient turnover and high income-generation for the clinic is the norm. Such “efficiencies” often short-change thoroughness and quality time that should be spent listening to the concerns of the patient. Stopping to fully discuss the potential dangers of medications is often replaced by the handing out of computer-generated lists and a coerced signature from the patient that (falsely) states that she has been fully informed of the pros and cons of the treatment. Medical malpractice lawyers assure us physicians that such short-cuts to consent hold up in court.

Most of the patients that came to me in my holistic mental health care practice, did so because they knew that they had become addicted to and simultaneously sickened by their psychiatric drugs (usually involving combinations of two or more drugs that had never been thoroughly tested for safety or efficacy – even in the animal labs).

Most of those patients had already failed in their attempts to get off their offending drugs because of the terrible withdrawal symptoms that had occurred when they had tried to cut down the dose. Withdrawal syndromes always involved totally new symptoms that hadn’t been there prior to starting the drug – no matter what the original diagnosis had been.

I saw hundreds of patients in my practice who were totally unaware that their drug could cause permanent tardive dyskinesia, dementia, brain damage, permanent drug-induced disabilities, temporary or permanent sexual dysfunction, akathisia, violence, aggression, homicidality, suicidality, Parkinsonism, depression, mania, psychotic reactions, atrophy (shrinkage) of the brain, diabetes, obesity, insomnia, hyperlipidemia, loss of IQ points, loss of memory, etc, etc, all of which they or their physicians could have read about in the pharmacy’s prescription handouts or in the PDR (Physician’s Desk Reference).

It is important to point out that the above short list of serious – even life-threatening – adverse drug effects have been documented again and again in the medical literature but likely were not mentioned by the too-busy prescribing physician. Most importantly, my patients had never been fully informed that they could become dependent on those substances and therefore could suffer serious withdrawal symptoms when trying to go stop their drug.

Obtaining fully informed consent is a time-consuming problem for modern medical practitioners, and it always has been. But, given 1) the millions of drugs that are being prescribed today just in America (many of which can cross the blood brain barrier and enter the brain), 2) the 3,600 virtually unreadable fine print pages in the PDR and 3) the enormous numbers of adverse effects from the drugs that had been ingested for weeks, months or years, the problem has to be far worse now than when I was prescribing drugs early in my career (the toxic natures of which I had also been kept unaware). Knowing what I know now, I shudder to think of the harm that my choices in prescribing did to my unsuspecting patients in decades past.

It’s an increasingly dangerous road for physicians to travel, but it is even worse for their patients. If my medical heresy has come about because of my truth-seeking and my ethical concern for patients, I accept the label gladly.

DISCLAIMER: Readers who are interested in reducing their psych drug use should consult their prescribing physician and not suddenly stop them. Stopping drugs suddenly can be more dangerous than starting them. They should consult a physician knowledgeable in neuroscience, brain nutrition and with experience in helping people safely discontinue psychiatric medications.

Dr Kohls is a retired physician who practiced holistic, non-drug, mental health care for the last decade of his family practice career. He now writes a weekly column for the Reader Weekly, an alternative newsweekly published in Duluth, Minnesota, USA.

For elaboration on some of the statements above, please consider reading some of his past columns archived on Global Research

Young children treated as brutally as adults. On October 19, soldiers abducted three Palestinian children from their homes pre-dawn. They’re being held uncharged for at least six months, an unprecedented move in East Jerusalem according to human rights groups.

Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCIP) accountability program director Ayed Abu Eqtaish expressed outrage, saying:

We are deeply disturbed that Israeli authorities have approved the detention of these three boys without charge or trial. Administrative detention must never be used as a substitute for criminal prosecution where there is insufficient evidence to obtain a conviction.

We believe this is unprecedented by Israeli authorities to put children from East Jerusalem under administrative detention. It’s part and parcel of the ideology and policies of Israeli authorities to suppress the Palestinian people who are living there.

Abducted were Fadi Hasan Abassi, Kathem Mahmound Sbaih and Mohammad Saleh Ghaith (all aged 17). They’ve undergone brutal interrogations amounting to torture – accused without formal charges lodged of stone-throwing, accusations they deny, no evidence proving them.

Automatic guilt by accusation for Palestinians suffices. The three youths are indefinitely detained. Israel can hold them interminably. if it wishes – uncharged and untried.

In 1948, a state of emergency was declared, remaining in force, authorizing arbitrary detentions of Palestinians based on secret evidence or none at all.

East Jerusalem’s Emergency Powers law permits them. Anyone Israel calls a threat to public order and security is vulnerable, no evidence required, a classic police state practice.

According to Maan News, “at least 94 administrative detention orders (were) issued against Palestinians” since October 1, 24 in East Jerusalem – a futile attempt to curb justifiable resistance. An entire generation of youths is involved, demanding freedom, accepting nothing less.

Israel denied the three youths the right to counsel during brutal interrogations, keeping them isolated from outside contacts, including family members, customary police state policy.

Every Palestinian youth and child is suspect, subject to harassment and/or arrest any time for any reason. Police claimed the three children arrested posed an “immediate and severe threat to the national security of Israel.”

DCIP’s advocacy officer Bashar Jamal said “Israel is trying to restore security, but children are losing their freedom and are being denied liberty and their human rights. It violates Israel’s international and domestic obligations.”

Children are falling victim to the situation. It’s an escalation in the violation of children’s rights. Their rights are violated on a regular basis, but there has been an escalation in October.

It’s open season on targeting them, soldiers and police involved. They’re either being injured, killed or abducted and imprisoned – uncharged, untried, on their own under horrific conditions, including denial of treatment for any wounds sustained.

Israeli Military Order 1651 permits administrative detentions of Palestinians for up to six months. Indefinite renewals may follow.

Israel flagrantly violates the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It prohibits depriving children of their liberty arbitrarily, longstanding Israeli practice, assuring greater resistance than already.

Jewish lives and welfare alone matter. It’s always open season on brutalizing Palestinians, especially a new generation of youths and children wanting freedom from occupation harshness.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

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Movements on the right and left are changing the political culture. Their impact can be seen in the Democratic and Republican primaries, but the media does not report it.

BALTIMORE — Confusion reigns in the Democratic and Republican primaries. Huffington Post political reporters write, “It’s Time To Admit: Nobody Knows Anything About The 2016 Campaign,” now that “the old ‘rules’ of presidential politics no longer seem to apply.”

Why the confusion? Media pundits have not given credit to the popular movements on both the right and left. This election cycle is showing the impact of social movements on the primary campaigns — both in the polling results and in the candidates’ rhetoric.

Tea Party and Occupy change the political culture

On the Republican side, Tea Party anger is showing itself. Republicans co-opted this movement, but its members are dissatisfied with elected Republicans and are turning to non-politicians. Why are they angry? Because the core of Washington politics continues: crony capitalism, wherein government writes the rules and doles out the cash for their big business donors.

One example of many was giving President Barack Obama fast track trade authority to negotiate deals that undermine our democracy, economy and sovereignty. Voters know that these crony capitalist trade deals, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is larger and farther-reaching than NAFTA, have been bad for the U.S. economy. Speaker John Boehner was forced to resign because of his heavy-handedness in insisting Republicans support fast track for Obama and punishing those who led opposition to it.

Occupy Wall Street protesters.

The role of corporate Democrats has been evident in the Democratic Party for a long time. The Democratic Leadership Council, founded by Bill Clinton, Al Gore and others, was successful at destroying Howard Dean, an insurgent, but definitely not a radical one. The DLC has evolved into the Third Way Democrats, whose donors are funding former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and will seek to ensure the defeat of Sen. Bernie Sanders.

The Democratic Party needs a complete overhaul away from its pro-corporate, “Third Way” stance if it wants to be in synch with the grassroots. The Occupy movement and its offshoots — Fight for $15, Black Lives Matter, OUR Walmart, Strike Debt, and United We Dream, among others — hold views opposite from corporate Democrats.

Tea Party activists cheer during the “Exempt America from Obamacare” rally, on Capitol Hill, September 10, 2013 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Tea Party activists cheer during the “Exempt America from Obamacare” rally, on Capitol Hill, September 10, 2013 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Occupiers were never part of the Democratic Party because the Democrats are in bed with Wall Street, while Occupy saw Wall Street as a root of corruption. The Sanders campaign could not have existed without Occupy changing the corporate political culture. Clinton has had to mould her rhetoric to fit the new political reality. Again, the TPP is one example of many where the “gold standard” TPP has now become unacceptable to the former Secretary of State. Why? The movement that has developed against it is so broad that the TPP is “Toxic Political Poison.”

More revolts are coming as Washington continues on the same corrupt path.

Movements and electoral politics

Police remove activist Margaret Flowers for protesting the Trans-Pacific Partnership during a Senate hearing in January. (Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)

Mass movements need an electoral arm, one that comes out of the movement with candidates who are accountable to the movement. In fact, to help achieve that, Margaret Flowers, co-director of Popular Resistance, will be taking a leave of absence as she seeks the Green Party nomination for the U.S. Senate in Maryland.

The movement needs to build an alternative to challenge the United States’ mirage elections and pro-corporate parties. U.S. elections consist of two corporate candidates running against each other. The two political parties rig the system to prevent insurgent challenges inside the duopoly and to stop third alternatives outside the duopoly.

Movements have a lot of work to do to create real democracy; basics include universal voter registration, uniform ballot access, verifiable voting systems and public funding of public elections. Much more needs to be done to create a representative democratic system that allows for minority parties to have a voice in the legislature, i.e. proportional representation, as well as a break from monopoly voting districts to protect the duopoly. We also need to build more direct democracy like voter initiatives and participatory budgeting. These are a few examples of how the U.S. badly needs to update its electoral system to catch up with world experience.

Experiences outside the US

The U.S. is the most ingrained two-party system in the world; that is not a compliment but a description of a system that does all it can to prevent alternatives to the two corporate parties.  People in the U.S. can look at Spain, Greece and even Canada to see how alternatives to the two corporate parties can advance and represent the interests of the people.

In Canada, people were astounded earlier this year to see a third party elected to lead Alberta, the oil capital of Canada. Writing for EcoWatch, David Suzuki describes how the voters gave the New Democratic Party a strong majority in response to austerity measures taken by the Conservative Party that reigned for 44 years in Alberta. The NDP is a long-time third party in Canada that was born out of the labor movement in 1961 and is credited with bringing Medicare to all Canadians. Its first leader, Tommy Douglas, remains the most popular Canadian in history. He explains the futility of two-party politics in this video.

Spain recently held local and regional elections that produced astounding results. The elections took place in 13 of Spain’s 17 regions and included more than 8,000 towns and cities. The ruling parties lost power in many major cities as smaller parties, for the first time, challenged the two dominant parties. Writing for radical online journal ROAR Magazine, Carlos Delclós reported in May:

“On Sunday, May 24, the two parties that have ruled Spain since the country’s transition to democracy in the late 1970s were dealt yet another substantial blow, this time in regional and municipal elections. Nationwide, the ruling Popular Party saw support fall from the nearly 11 million votes they received in 2011 to just under 6 million this year.”

This means that candidates from the Indignado Movement will actually govern. In Barcelona, a “prominent anti-evictions activist Ada Colau won the city’s mayoral race.” In many of the largest cities the mayor will not belong to either of the two major parties. How did these parties build their power? Delclós reported:

“. . . [T]heir roots in prominent local struggles, their independence with respect to the established parties and their willingness to spearhead bottom-up processes seeking a confluence between new or smaller parties, community organizations and political independents around a set of common objectives determined through radical democratic participation.”

The Spanish elections, like the Greek elections earlier this year, are an example of bottom-up, grassroots organizing and power-building. The roots of this success are longer than is often discussed:

“In Catalonia, the Popular Unity Candidacies of the left-wing independence movement have had a notable presence in smaller towns for several years (they also quadrupled their 2011 results on Sunday, for what it’s worth). At the southern end of the country, the Andalusian village of Marinaleda is a well-documented experiment in utopian communism that has been going on for over three decades now.”

The new electoral movement is a “municipal movement,” participants tell their story in a video that provides a “recipe” for such a movement.

People arrive to the main square of Madrid during a Podemos (We Can) party march in Madrid, Spain, Saturday, Jan. 31, 2015. Tens of thousands of people, possibly more, are marching through Madridís streets in a powerful show of strength by Spainís fledgling radical leftist party Podemos (We Can) which hopes to emulate the electoral success of Greeceís Syriza party in elections later this year. Supporters from across Spain converged onto Cibeles fountain before packing the avenue leading to Puerta del Sol square. Podemos aims to shatter the countryís predominantly two-party system and the ìMarch for Changeî gathered crowds in the same place where sit-in protests against political and financial corruption laid the partyís foundations in 2011. Andres Kudacki/AP

As we have seen with Syriza’s election in Greece, governing in a new way is no easy task. In an interview with Alexandros Orphanides for In These Times, Frances Fox Piven, a social movements scholar, discussed the complex challenges in Greece as being “not so much to do with Syriza but with the ability of a nation-state, especially of a small nation-state, and its elected political rulers to determine its own economic policy in a very interconnected and global world, in which the centers of financial power are very ominous and powerful.”

In discussing Syriza, Piven talks about the differences between movements and electoral politics:

“Anybody who is running for an election wants to win enough votes to take the seat for which she or he is campaigning. To do that, they tend to be conciliatory; they don’t want to make any enemies. They want to win just enough to get over the electoral barrier. They tend to be consensual, they tend to not want to make trouble. They want to keep everyone that voted for them last time and add the few more that they need to get over the hump.

Movements are very different. They are dynamic. How they grow, how they succeed is very different. Protest movements in particular do two things. They identify issues that politicians want to ignore, because the politicians want to paste together a coalition that can win. Movement leaders, on the other hand, want to identify the issues that can mobilize people. They don’t care about voting, because we don’t know a movement exists by the number of votes it can get—we know by how many people it can pull into the streets. So movement leaders are attracted to contentious issues that make trouble for the parties.

And movements often have a capacity for disruption, for withdrawing cooperation, for bringing things to a halt, for various kinds of strike actions. Parties don’t do that.”

And that is why many recognize the importance of continuing to build an independent movement even if movement candidates win elections. There continues to be a need to disrupt the system to pressure other forces that seek to block progress.

In Spain, a group of militants who see the declining numbers of people in the streets because of electoral progress are seeking to build new street actions. The group, Apoyo Mutuo (Mutual Aid), has doubts about the electoral path and wants to return to popular horizontalism outside of government. They see their work as parallel to Podemos, not in reaction to it but because “politics cannot be limited to the election of representatives at the ballot box every four years. We can’t delegate our responsibility; as a pueblo we need to be active agents in the decision-making process.”

The US electoral system

The U.S. is very different from Europe. Each country in Europe is the size of one state in the U.S. Countries in Europe have systems where even parties that get a minority percentage of votes can be represented in parliament. While many countries have two parties that dominate the political system, there is a greater possibility of participation.

This June an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that 50 percent of Americans consider themselves independent and fewer than 30 percent align with either major party. A 2015 Gallup poll similarly found arecord high number of Americans — 43 percent — consider themselves independents, with only 30 percent considering themselves Democrats and 26 percent considering them Republicans.

The independent nature of U.S. voters is not reflected in elections, which makes it very difficult for alternatives to the duopoly to participate. At the same time, elections are funded by a shrinking group of the extremely wealthy. The U.S. is now widely recognized as an oligarchy, where big business and moneyed interests rule, and where democracy is a mirage.

There have been some recent examples at the local level where people from outside of the duopoly have won elections. Most notable is Kshama Sawant, the Seattle City Council member, who Chris Hedges describes asthe “most dangerous woman in America.” Sawant ran with Socialist Alternative, winning 93,000 votes in a citywide race. Sawant came out of the Occupy Movement, fought housing foreclosures and made the Fight for $15 her signature issue. Sawant is up for re-election on Nov. 3 this year; she won the first round of voting in August with 52 percent.

In 2013, Ohio showed a break between the Democrats and labor. Two dozen city councilors were elected on an“Independent Labor” ticket. Lorain County AFL-CIO President Harry Williamson explained: “When the leaders of the [Democratic] Party just took us for granted and tried to roll over the rights of working people here, we had to stand up.”

In 2007, Richmond, California, elected a Green mayor, Gayle McLaughlin, with Greens, independents and progressive Democrats controlling the City Council through the Richmond Progressive Alliance. Big Oil failed in its attempts to defeat them in last year’s elections.

The confusion of the Bernie Sanders campaign

Bernie Sanders, a lifelong independent, is running for president in the Democratic primaries and pledging to support whomever the Democrats nominate if he is not elected. He has entered a rigged Democratic primary system that has successfully blocked insurgent candidates in every election in the last 35 years. The rigging begins with super delegates who make up 20 percent of the delegates needed for nomination, it includes the frontloading of primaries so there are 23 states voting in March requiring hundreds of millions of dollars. And this year they limited debates to only six, when in 2008 there were more than two dozen. This is all designed to stack the primary in favor of establishment candidates like Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, right, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, speak during the CNN Democratic presidential debate Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2015, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)

Howie Hawkins, the recent New York Green Party gubernatorial candidate, writes in “Bernie Sanders is No Eugene Debs” that Debs, the five-time Socialist Party presidential candidate between 1900 and 1920, understood that it is essential for a movement to have its own political vehicle as a matter of principle. Hawkins recognizes that Sanders is good on most domestic issues (not as good on foreign policy) but:

“… [H]is positions on the issues is secondary to the question of whether his politics are helping the working class act for itself or subsume itself under the big business interests in charge of the Democratic Party. By entering the Democratic primaries with the promise of supporting Clinton as the lesser evil to the Republicans, Sanders is not helping the working class to organize, speak and act for itself.”

Sanders has called for a revolution against the billionaire class, but accomplishing that inside a political party owned by Wall Street and other big business interests is an absurdity.

While Sanders is misleading people to stay inside the Democratic Party, he is doing useful education on domestic economic issues. This is valuable to the movement’s task of building national consensus. But, when Sanders loses, which is a near certainty in the rigged Democratic Party primaries, people need to understand the problem is not his positions on the economy but the corruption of the Democratic Party. People need to flee the party and support a third-party alternative like Jill Stein, who is likely to be the strongest third-party candidate in 2016. This is not a wasted vote — though the media will try to convince people that it is. It is voting for what you want and help building an alternative to the corporate duopoly.

How independent movements and third parties have won transformational change

In his article, Howie Hawkins points out that from the 1840s to the 1930s there was a series of independent parties tied to movements to end slavery, secure voting rights for women, allow the development of unions, empower workers, and break up monopolies. The combination of an independent movement and independent electoral politics built power. In 1936, the unions decided to work within the Democratic Party, undermining both independent politics and the union movement.

Ralph Nader in his campaign vehicle during his 2008 presidential bid. (AP/Lisa Poole)

The Nader campaigns of 2000, 2004 and 2008 raised the banner of the “Tweedledum” and “Tweedledee” nature of the two parties. Now the American public is catching on, with a majority being independent of the corporate duopoly. The combination of an independent mass movement and independent electoral politics is once again on the horizon. We already see the movement creating confusion in the duopoly; if the movement continues to grow, an independent electoral movement will follow to accomplish the task of the era – end corporate rule and bring economic, racial and environmental justice.

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers co-direct Popular Resistance, @PopResistance.

The following resolution was passed by the National Lawyers Guild unanimously at its 78th convention, in Oakland, California, on October 24, 2015, reiterating its call to fully end the blockade on Cuba and also demanding an end to the IRS proceedings against the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO) and other threats against organizations and people working to end the blockade on Cuba.

Full text below and online at IFCO’s website

Urgent call for US administration to cease impending punitive actions and to instead act consistently for normalized relations with Cuba

The NLG welcomes the recently announced policy of the US government to normalize relations with Cuba, pursuant to simultaneous to declarations by President Barack Obama and Raul Castro. This includes mutual openings of embassies and full diplomatic recognition, the release of the Cuban five and other prisoners, and the subsequent removal of Cuba from the unilaterally maintained US list of nations that supposedly support terrorism.

Despite this, the US economic blockade of Cuba still continues. While full repeal of the statutory authority for these economic sanctions can only be done by Congress, the Obama administration has so far not used its expansive authority to allow Cuba to sell to the US, or to generally allow US suppliers to sell or provide goods and services to Cuban entities, including urban and rural cooperatives. We call for an immediate end to these restrictions, by both administrative and legislative
action.

We also call on all levels of the administration to act consistently with the announced policy of President Obama, and accordingly to cease all obstructive and punitive actions, specifically:

1) The Internal Revenue Service should cease all attempts and proceedings to revoke the 501(c)3 non-profit status of IFCO, the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization, based on its long history of using civil disobedience to challenge US restrictions on travel to and trade with Cuba;

2) the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) should cease all impending threats and prosecutions of US persons based on their previous travel to Cuba, including the threatened re-institution of “trials for travel” in Washington DC; and

3) the US State Department should immediately cease its continuing practice of unreasonably withholding or delaying issuance of non-immigrant visas to mainstream Cubans invited to visit the US by academic and professional organizations including the NLG and for this convention.

Implementation will be done by the NLG Cuba subcommittee, which will forward copies of this resolution and background information to all chapters and relevant committees, requesting supportive action on their part.

Millions of Americans believe that President Obama has normalized relations with Cuba and ended over 50 years of U.S. efforts to strangle its economy. They might have been puzzled when the United States stood up against every other nation save one, in opposing the UN General Assembly resolution which passed, 191-2, on October 27, 2015. That resolution condemned the continuing U.S. commercial, economic and financial embargo against Cuba. According to the Christian Science Monitor, “when the vote lit up on the screen many diplomats jumped to their feet in a standing ovation.” The U.S. ambassador was not among them.

The UN resolution welcomed the re-establishment of diplomatic relations and recognized “the expressed will” of Obama to work for the elimination of the embargo. But the world community clearly does not think that intentions are enough. Every year since 1992, the United States has unsuccessfully opposed these resolutions, ignoring the international consensus. In 2015, the U.S. deputy ambassador Ronald Godardsaid it was “unfortunate” that the text “falls short of reflecting … the spirit of engagement President Obama has championed.”

Cuba’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez, called for concrete action instead. “The lifting of the blockade will be the essential element to give some meaning to the progress achieved over the past few months in the relations between both countries and shall set the pace towards normalization,” he told the General Assembly. Rodriguez said the blockade is “a unilateral act of the United States and should be lifted unilaterally, without asking anything in return.” He was critical not only of the U.S. Congress but also of Obama’s failure to take executive action to ease the blockade.

This criticism of Obama’s actions may surprise those who simply blame Congress’s inaction for continuing the economic blockade. Just three days earlier, the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) unanimously adopted a resolution that criticized actions by the administration which seem to fly in the face of Obama’s proclaimed “spirit of engagement.”

According to U.S legal experts, most of the legislation over the last 55 years gives the administration the authority to block trade with Cuba — or not to. For example, the president could allow Cuba to sell its products to the U.S. market, but nothing has been done in that regard. Likewise, the U.S. Commerce Department’s January 2015 regulations generally only allow U.S. manufacturers to supply to private enterprises in Cuba, and only if they will then be utilized for privately owned property.

This is a crude attempt to impose privatization on Cuba. A Commerce Department spokesperson explained that a U.S. producer seeking to supply a private enterprise in Cuba with heating and air conditioning equipment to service a Cuban hospital could not do so under the new regulations, because Cuban hospitals are publicly owned.

The new U.S. regulations are also much more liberal regarding telecommunications than for trade generally. These arbitrary restrictions undercut the administration’s suggestion that Congress must act before the economic blockade can be lifted, although all agree that a full repeal requires congressional action.

The NLG resolution also noted three areas in which federal officials appear to be sabotaging attempts to normalize relations with Cuba:

1) The Internal Revenue Service is apparently moving ahead with its plans to revoke the 501(c)3 non-profit status of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization/Pastors for Peace (IFCO/PFP), based on its long history of using civil disobedience to challenge U.S. restrictions on travel to and trade with Cuba — even though the unit with responsibility to enforce these restrictions has not acted against IFCO/PFP.

2) The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has renewed its threats and prosecutions against U.S. persons based on previous travel to Cuba, four and five years ago, and has threatened to revive holding the “trials for travel” in Washington D.C. George W. Bush had instituted those trials but abandoned them in 2006.

3) The U.S. State Department has continued its pattern of unreasonably delaying or withholding issuance of non-immigrant visas to mainstream Cubans invited to visit and speak in the United States by academic and professional organizations. For example, when the American Sociological Association invited a gay Cuban doctor, who had headed Cuba’s program of comprehensive treatment for transgender people, to speak to its August 2015 convention in Chicago, it took the offices of Sen. Tammy Baldwin, and U.S. Reps. Gwen Moore, John Conyers and Barbara Lee to pry loose his visa, which was issued only at the last minute, making him miss most of the convention. As a result of these congressional efforts, he was then also able to speak at the Milwaukee LGBT Community Center and appeared on Chicago public television. This is the same experience of many invited Cubans, most recently a leading Cuban labor lawyer invited to speak at the October NLG convention, and this has happened year after year. Both of these Cuban experts have received U.S. visas in the past and visited here without incident, although each time they have had to wait until or after the very last minute to book their flights, often missing much of the conventions they were invited to attend.

Obama hopes to go down in history as having ended the half-century of U.S. hostility toward Cuba and its revolution. We do not know what the next administration will bring. We must pressure Obama to act decisively now to realize his promise to truly normalize relations with Cuba.

Art Heitzer ([email protected]) is an attorney and chair of the Cuba Subcommittee of the National Lawyers Guild. For more information and actions you can take, visit www.wicuba.org or call 414 273-1040 ext. 12.

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, past president of the National Lawyers Guild, and deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. See www.marjoriecohn.com.

Trident Juncture: NATO’s Largest Military Exercise since Cold War. The “Fictitious Target” is Russia

By Christopher Black, October 31 2015

Russia’s intervention in Syria changed the dynamic on the ground and regionally, potentially with global implications, a major geopolitical development, the most important one in decades.

In the Foreign Policy Shadow of Dr. Brzezinski: Obama, Islamic Fundamentalism and Russia

By Bruno Adrie, October 31 2015

Would the new America [Dr. Brzezinski] vowed for reject the absurd choices made by the big-headed and unqualified Donald Rumsfeld, considered as an American disaster by his biographer Andrew Cockburn?

Russia’s Military Intervention in Syria Has Changed the “Middle East Dynamic”. Agreement to Disagree in Vienna on Syria

By Stephen Lendman, October 31 2015

Russia’s intervention in Syria changed the dynamic on the ground and regionally, potentially with global implications, a major geopolitical development, the most important one in decades.

Russia’s Anti-Terrorist Campaign in Syria. Moscow’s Broader National Security Interests

By William Hawes, October 31 2015

By acting on invitation from al-Assad’s government, Russia has intervened (however cynically it may be viewed in the West) within the framework of international law. By fighting terror at its root source, the Russian government has usurped the role of providing security in the Mideast from the US.

Shouldn’t the U.S. Compensate Syria for Invading?

By Eric Zuesse, October 31 2015

On Friday the 30th of October, U.S. President Barack Obama announced that he will send 50 U.S. Special Forces soldiers into Syrian territory, though Syria has presented no threat to U.S. national security and has not invaded any country. In fact, Syria is fighting against Islamic jihadists who present a threat also to the United States and Europe.

Russia’s intervention in Syria changed the dynamic on the ground and regionally, potentially with global implications, a major geopolitical development, the most important one in decades.

Washington is desperate to keep its imperial agenda on track and unchallenged – why John Kerry met with 17 of his counterparts plus EU and UN envoys in Vienna on Friday, following US, Russian, Turkish and Saudi foreign ministers meeting there on Thursday, Syria so far excluded from discussing its own future.

Washington’s intentions remain unchanged – replacing Assad with a US controlled puppet. Sending special forces to northern Syria (illegally without Security Council or Damascus authorization) with likely more to follow, solely to aid terrorist elements against Assad, along with continued lawless bombing of infrastructure targets, not ISIS as claimed.

It shows Obama wants war, not peace.

More Vienna talks planned for mid-November may go nowhere, a thinly veiled scheme to convince Russia Washington turned a new leaf – aiming to stop its air campaign, devastating ISIS and other takfiri terrorists, wrecking US hegemonic plans, Moscow determined to defeat the scourge of terrorism, not about to be pressured by America to back off.

Sergey Lavrov clearly stated Russia’s position, saying “(w)e have a common enemy, and we must not let this enemy gain power in Syria nor in any other state.”

“If a ceasefire is declared, no terrorist organizations should be subjected to it” – combating them to continue until they’re neutralized and destroyed.

Russia remains fully committed to fighting their scourge in full accord with international law principles, polar opposite how America operates, ignoring them altogether, risking global war in the process.

Moscow rejects US demands for Assad to go, Lavrov clearly saying “(t)he Syrian people (alone) should define the future of their country, including Assad’s fate.”

The statement issued following Friday’s meeting was largely meaningless rhetoric – sounding very much like earlier high-minded Geneva communiques accomplishing nothing.

A Final Comment

In one month of bombing ISIS and other terrorists in Syria, Russia flew around 1,400 sorties, destroying over 1,600 targeted sites – including 249 command posts, 51 training camps, 131 ammunition and fuel depots, and 786 field bases, according to General Staff Col. Gen. Andrey Kartapolov.

Air strikes killed 28 “most odious” terrorist leaders, he added. Syrian ground forces liberated over 50 towns and villages, comprising about 350 square km.

ISIS losses are massive, their forces in disarray, “complete victory” not yet achieved. Much work remains. Terrorists are clearly on the defensive – pummelled by Russian air power and Syrian ground forces.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

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

For part 1, click here

“If there is any doubt concerning the nefarious undertones of subversiveness in these NGO dealings, [National Endowment for Democracy] NED founder reportedly said the following in the 1990s: ‘A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.’ What was once done at night under the cloak of ‘imperialism’ is now done during the day under the guise of ‘humanitarianism.’” ~ The Wrong Kind of Green

Hindsight is a generous provider of absolution of the guilt from falling for the sophisticated western government or state propaganda and their media sleights of hand that so often deceive us into believing the narrative they present, one that’s so often designed to justify military intervention.

Invariably this is a narrative that all but ensures the massacre of innocent people under the pretext of ‘liberating’ them, or introducing ‘democracy’ that always promises to erase some perceived grievance of an western-backed opposition movement. Western nation-builders normally prescribe the same treatment every time: cutting a swathe through the host country’s society and culture either via proxy armies of foreign mercenaries under the guise of various terrorist factions or with an onslaught of bombs and assorted mass destruction or chemical weapons (including depleted uranium) which can render their land barren for decades and result in birth defects, increased cancer rates and a multitude of devastating side effects for generations after. While all this is going on, a parallel government has already been formed by the west, laying in waiting in some five star hotel in Paris or London.

HUMANITARIAN HOAXERS: Original disaster photo posted on  April 14, 2013, before it was recycled by Syria’s White Helmets on Aug 20, 2015.

Despite such hindsight and the universally accepted knowledge that it was in fact pure fiction that took us to war in both Iraq, and in Libya too, there is still a huge degree of cognitive dissonance at play over the Syria commentary. The lies regarding Syria, lies which are designed to justify western military intervention and arming proxy militants, are ongoing. Even today the New York Times provided a key Washington propaganda talking point in its headline which reads, “Violence in Syria Spurs a Huge Surge in Civilian Flight“, with the important subheading which states: “Government Offensives and Russian Strikes Are Catalysts”, essentially blaming Russia’s three week old air campaign for the “surge” of refugees entering Europe through Greece, all the while neglecting to mention most of these originate from the pool of almost 2 million who have been languishing in Turkey from as early as 2012. Like clockwork, western propaganda mills continues, all day, every day.

Disbelief is invariably registered when it is demonstrated that Syria is undergoing the same ‘truth laundering’ treatment as Libya and Iraq underwent previously, or that Syria’s resistance of the West’s open attempt at regime change attempts for nearly 5 years now is the reason for repeated spikes in propaganda. We’ve seen many different versions of the West’s creative narrative at any give moment, especial when Syria or its allies persistently thwarts the Colonialist vision for the region. Failed policies never play well on CNN or the BBC in real time, with any serious criticism reserved until a decade has passed and it’s safe for media operatives to comment because the politicians who sold those failed policies have since retired or have been cycled out of foreign policy decision-making positions.

Lethal Weapon: NGO Soft Power

“Along with military invasions and missionaries, NGOs help crack countries open like ripe nuts, paving the way for intensifying waves of exploitation and extraction”  ~ Stephanie McMillan

The NGO ‘soft power complex’ is now one of the most destructive global forces.  It is employed as an interface between civilians of a target nation, with government, economic or military structures of the colonialist force intent on harnessing any given nation’s resources or undermining its geopolitical influence. The Democratization process, or the path to regime change is facilitated by these undercover government or corporate proxy employees who, once embedded into a society, set about producing the propaganda that will justify intervention, either economically, politically or militarily. NGO propaganda will often employ slick social media marketing which is underpinned by advance applied behavioural psychology and advanced NLP-based ‘social enterprise’ sales pitches.

A recent piece by researcher Eva Bartlett entitled, “Human Rights Front Groups [Humanitarian Interventionalists] Warring on Syria“, provides a detailed insight into how this new breed of weaponized politics is being deployed right now in the Middle East.

The perception of a ‘non profit’ complex who purport to be “working for the betterment and improvement of humanity” can be a difficult nut to crack, but it must be done. In the west. charities, not-for-profits and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) are seen as “do gooders” and so they rarely fall under public scrutiny. Western governments know the general public has an inherent faith in their perceived integrity and this provides an ideal cover for western government and intelligence agencies to operate through their NGO and aid organisations.

Syria: Under Seige

As Paul Larudee states in his article, Mythology, Barrel Bombs and Human Rights Watch:

“The Syrian army relies on loyal soldiers defending their country and their homes from a heavily subsidized, markedly foreign incursion, including many mercenaries paid by the Gulf monarchies and trained by the US.  And the army is loyal because they know that although great sacrifices will be asked of them, they will be defending, not sacrificing, their families and loved ones.  The rest of the world that supposedly cares about Syria can start by making it unnecessary for them to make such sacrifices.”

Much of the propaganda surrounding Syria and the “conflict” is indeed, mythology spun-up by western agents of influence.  A mythology created and disseminated by the NGO complex working diligently on the ground in Syria and remotely in the labyrinths of power, ensures that a steady flow of misinformation continues uninterrupted, one that is custom designed to alter public perception about the situation in Syria and drive us towards supporting the identical mistakes made in Iraq and Libya.

It is no error or oversight that the media barely mention Libya these days as it is plunged deeper and deeper into anarchy, where warlords occupy the terror vacuum created by the NATO’s deceptive intervention in 2011.  Perhaps if people were confronted by images of the daily horrors endured by the people of Libya these day, they would be more reticent about the passive-aggressive re-creation of that same scenario in Syria.

MARKETING: The familiar baby motif is been a hallmark of western cointel pro regime change marketing ever since the incubators in Kuwait.

The White Helmet Myth

The NGO hydra has no more powerful or influential serpentine head in Syria than the Syria Civil Defence aka The White Helmets who, according to their leader and creator, James Le Mesurier, hold greater sway than even ISIS or Al Nusra confabs over the Syrian communities.

As we pointed out in Part I of this exposé, The White Helmets humanitarian front is mainly financed by the British Foreign Office. According to Richard Spencer of the London Telegraph:

“The Foreign Office is currently the largest single source of funding. It is an irony that if Britain does effectively become an ally of Assad, and starts raids against Isil in Syria, it will be bombing from the air and paying for the bodies to be dug out on the ground. The White Helmets are also operating in at least one Isil-held area.”

In a speech given by Le Mesurier in Lisbon June 2015, entitled “Act 1: Witnesses to history in the making”, Le Mesurier informed his rapt audience that in a recent US Government survey conducted across a “diverse spectrum” of Syrian communities, 67% of those asked, nominated the White Helmets as the most influential community organisation. This, despite, their non-inclusion in the 15 respondents to the survey, that comprised ISIS, Al Nusra, & other political or armed groups. This is a bizarre claim on two fronts:

1.  That the White Helmets should be included, by James Le Mesurier, in group that promotes themselves to be “unarmed”, apolitical and neutral, when it is obvious that they are politically biased and armed (see details below).

2.  That the White Helmets can lay claim to this influence, despite the fact that when asked, the majority of Syrian people have never heard of them, except perhaps for those in Al Nusra, ISIS or [the dwindling] Free Syrian Army held territories.

Clearly, what Le Mesurier is attempting to create is the myth of an organic, nonaligned and independent  humanitarian organisation, when it’s really a synthetic covert intelligence and forward-operating disinformation asset which is being funded by the British government, and headed by one of the UK’s very best military operatives in Le Mesurier.

It is important to analyse the White Helmet mythology, all generated by an incredibly slick and high-gloss media and marketing apparatus, overseen and driven by a George Soros partnered PR company called Purpose.

The following is a direct quote from the White Helmet website:

“The volunteers save people on all sides of the conflict – pledging commitment to the principles of “Humanity, Solidarity, Impartiality” as outlined by the International Civil Defence Organisation.  This pledge guides every response, every action, every life saved – so that in a time of destruction, all Syrians have the hope of a lifeline”

“The White Helmets mostly deal with the aftermath of government air attacks.  Yet they have risked sniper fire to rescue the bodies of government soldiers to give them a proper burial”

As part of the myth-building process, White Helmet members who are repetitively described as ‘ordinary people’, specifically, “bakers, tailors, engineers, pharmacists, painters, carpenters, students”, and are relentlessly depicted as heroes, miracle workers, saints and super-humans scaling the “Mount Everest” of war zones with impartiality and neutrality. “Unarmed and unbiased” is their strapline, as they sacrifice themselves for the “Syrian People”.  Indeed, those same Syrian people who have never heard of them. The myth-making continues…

“When I want to save someone’s life I don’t care if he’s an enemy or a friend.  What concerns me is the soul that might die” ~ Abed, the White Helmets.

“After the bombs rain down, we rush in to dig for survivors. Our motto, “to save one life is to save all humanity,” is what drives us on.” ~ Raed Saleh, White Helmet leader and UN spokesperson.

Can an organisation rightly called an ‘independent relief organisation’ when it is being funded by a foreign government who is directly involved in the military over-throw of Syria’s government? Most intelligent people should have no problem answering that question.

The Myth Exposed: ’Moderate’ Terrorists

Neutrality

In previous articles we have exposed the White Helmets’ associations with the terrorist group Al Nusra Front and their presence in known ISIS strongholds in Syria. We have also explored, in depth, their donor base and demonstrated how impartiality is a hard claim to justify when taking into account that their finance sources consist of hard-line regime changers, hell-bent on removing the Syrian Government and portraying President Bashar al Assad as the devil incarnate.

These donors include, the British Government, known US regime change facilitators USAID, and the US and NATO-backed ‘Syrian National Council’, a parallel government in-waiting which the west claims represents the Syrian opposition. This is discussed in depth in: White Helmets: War by way of Deception Part I

Time now to observe the White Helmets in action and question their impartiality on the ground in Syria…

This video below reveals a White Helmet operative describing the “throwing of Shabiha bodies in the trash”.  Shabiha is a derogatory term for Syrian Government militia or state-employed security forces but is liberally applied by terrorist aka “rebel alliance” factions to any member of the Syrian military, irrespective of whether they are Alawite, Sunni, or Shia. Let’s remind ourselves of White Helmet claims on their websites of how its ‘aid workers’ “have risked sniper fire to rescue SAA bodies to give them a proper burial.”

Watch this shocking video here:

This same neutral White Helmet operative goes on to pledge allegiance to the terrorist forces in the region stating:

“They are our role models, the best of people and we have the honour to serve them”“SERVE THEM [armed terrorists, Al Nusra/Al Qaeda]”, curious turn of phrase for a neutral, impartial humanitarian “moderate” organisation? Watch here:

VIDEO STILL: ‘Neutral’ White Helmet operatives flash the victory sign as they cart off dead Syrian Army corpses.

 Moving on to another video, this time revealing White Helmet operatives standing on the discarded dead bodies of SAA [Syrian Arab Army] soldiers and giving the victory sign.  This display of support for the Al Nusra extremist terrorists who have just massacred these soldiers once again demonstrates where their true allegiances lie. Watch here:

We also know via reports from within Aleppo city that it was the Al Nusra terrorists who massacred hundreds if not thousands of civilians before dumping their bodies into the River Queiq:  The Truth from inside Syria’s Terrorist Underworld rendering the water supply to Aleppo’s civilian population toxic and undrinkable.

Were these SAA bodies which have been piled-up unceremoniously, one on top of the other, and trampled upon by these same White Helmets who a sold as “saints and neutral saviours”, added to others flung before them, into the disease infested waters of the River Queiq? It appears so.

“Moderate” Rebels Targeting Civilians in Syria

This is one example of how powerful western propaganda can invert reality. For years now, there’s been a tsunami of western government and media talking points which claim that “Assad is targeting his own people indiscriminately”, and these round-the-clock allegations are always backed up by the same pro-opposition news source – the self-styled ‘Syrian Observatory For Human Rights‘ (SOHR) which until recently, was being run by Syrian ex-convict, Osama Ali Suleiman, whose uses the media stage name of “Rami Abdul Rahman”. He runs his dubious organisation (see his website here) from his flat in Coventry, England, and is said to travel frequently to Turkey as part of his operation. SOHR has received funding from the EU and like the White Helmets, has been openly affiliated with the British Foreign Office, being summoned to private meetings there.

The SOHR has been the “go to” source for all civilian casualty numbers in Syria, even though the numbers put forth cannot be independently corroborated or are not check at all for their veracity.

The SOHR and western media completely ignore (and cover-up) regular incidents of s0-called “moderate” rebels, supported directly by the US and its CIA, who regularly target civilian areas. They are targeting civilians and then blaming these on the Syrian government through the same ‘activist’ media channels.

Where is the claimed ‘neutrality’ in the White Helmet reporting in these same conflict areas where they are embedded?  We hear incessantly of the “regime barrel bombs”, but we never hear one mention of the flesh tearing ‘Hell Cannon’ fired indiscriminately upon Aleppo civilians, in a hail of mortars and rockets that regularly rain down upon civilian areas, including into Damascus, from terrorist cells embedded in suburbs.

MODERATE TERRORISTS: Aleppo “Rebels” fill gas canisters with nails and high explosive to be fired from the Hell Cannon.

Likewise, we are never told about the car bombs that have devastated civilian areas in Homs and Latakia, including schools and hospitals. When do we hear about the tunnels dug under civilian homes and streets by the terrorists that are detonated – as a distraction to divert the SAA into ambushes and sniper fire?

These neutral humanitarians would do well to talk about the terrorist snipers who kill and maim civilians on a regular basis. Instead, they ignore atrocities committed against the Syrian army, an army which, unlike the foreign mercenary “rebel alliance” terrorists, is comprised of actual Syrian citizens.

For additional details on atrocities commits by terrorists against Syrian citizens, read: Al Houta Abyss, Raqqa: Terrorist dumping ground for the dead & the living.

A genuinely neutral report or analysis should surely take all of these factors into account, or are these “other” Syrian civilians not to be registered as such in the western electorate minds and hearts? If so, why not?

“The UN estimates 220,000 deaths thus far in the Syrian war.  But almost half are Syrian Army soldiers or allied local militia fighters, and two thirds are combatants if we count opposition fighters.  Either way, the ratio of civilian to military casualties is roughly 1:2, given that the opposition is also inflicting civilian casualties.  Compare that to the roughly 3:1 ratio in the US war in Iraq and 4:1 in the Israeli attack on Gaza in 2008-9.  (The rate of Palestinian to Israeli casualties was an astronomical 100:1.)” ~ Paul Larudee – Mythology, Barrel Bombs and Human Rights Watch.

AMERICAN PROXY: A “moderate rebel” fighter takes position behind sandbags in Aleppo’s Al-Ezaa neighbourhood – May 20, 2015. REUTERS/Hosam Katan

“In April and June 2014, I spent a cumulative month in Syria, in various areas of Damascus, with visits to Latakia, Homs, and Ma’aloula. At the time, Damascus was being intensely shelled by mortars, frequently in my vicinity, including just behind the hotel housing the Peace Delegation which I accompanied for the first week (photo). This attack killed three civilians and one Syrian soldier. We saw some of the 60 plus children injured in the April 15 shelling of a school, not an isolated occasion, an attack which also killed one child. Mortars rained down at close-proximity on many occasions in different areas of the Old City where I had then found lodging.” ~ Eva Bartlett

This is a statement from an Aleppo citizen.  Another Syrian civilian who has never heard of the White Helmets.

“The terrorists are using mortars, explosive bullets, cooking-gas cylinders bombs and water-warming long cylinders bombs, filled up with explosives and shrapnel and nails, in what they call “Hell Canon”.  Google these weapons or see their YouTube clips. The cooking-gas cylinder is made of steel, and it weighs around 25 kg. Imagine it thrown by a canon to hit civilians? And imagine knowing that it’s full with explosives?… Yet, the media is busy with the legendary weapon of “barrel bombs”! They came to spread “freedom” among Syrians! How dare they say that Syrian army shouldn’t fight them back?” ~ from Syria, welcome to Hell. 

‘Moderate’ rebel Hell Cannon, in Aleppo.

How can the White Helmets make a claim of neutrality while providing simplistic, largely unverified,  biased and prejudicial reports that reflect only a percentage of the reality of this complex conflict and blatantly further the objectives of their donors in the region while ignoring the sacrifice being made by the Syrian Arab Army to defend their families and homeland from the invading NATO-supported death squads.

“The Syrian Army is the Syrian people.” ~ Mother Agnes Mariam 

From our same civilian contact in Aleppo:

“Aleppo city has shrunk to a fifth of its original size, and became so crowded with refugees that fled their areas after they fell into terrorist hands. I walk everyday in the city. I see children, young girls without limbs because of a terrorist mortar  or shrapnel  that targets them randomly and causes  terrible wounds and horrific memories that will never leave them. The girl who lost one leg is standing on her good leg and selling bread, while the little boy who lost one arm is selling chewing gum. Those are the “injured” people who are mentioned fleetingly in the news, just numbers in one line of a report, after each attack from the terrorists. “Injured” doesn’t mean scratched or having a bleeding finger; it means someone lost his eyes or her limbs.”

Finally, the photo below was taken shortly after Russia had legally entered the conflict in Syria by invitation of the Syrian Government.  Does it not seem a strange message to be conveyed by a neutral, unbiased humanitarian organisation with a self-proclaimed mandate to protect ALL Syrian people?  The White Helmets will not kneel? They are neutral are they not, to whom would they kneel or not kneel if indeed they serve all Syrians regardless of “race, religion, gender or political affiliation”, or so the marketing language goes…

White Helmets: Execution Facilitators

There is an entire library of White Helmet propaganda images that have been proven to be recycled, fake or at best, inaccurate, but perhaps the most shocking and most widely publicised was the footage of what appears to depict their participation in an Al Nusra execution of a civilian in Hreitan, Northern Aleppo.

This is perhaps one of the most damning indictments of White Helmet collusion with the terrorist group.

‘MODERATES’: Video stills here show White Helmets ‘cleaning up’ after Al Nusra execution in Aleppo dated 5/5/2015.
This video was wiped from most channels by the White Helmets immediately after its release, however the website Liveleak has managed to keep a protected copy which has escaped YouTube communitarian-style censorship.

Live Leak says: “As expected, youtube deleted this very incriminating video of the s-called “White Helmets” working hand in hand with Al Qaeda. Another CIA fail, trying to sell us these “White helmet” as civilian workers and volunteers, while they are simply Nusra jihadists. What to think of theri claims about ‘chlorine’?”

WARNING: Graphic content below, not suitable for children.

Source: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=fd8_1430900709

The White Helmets were forced to release a statement explaining the events in this video. According to their own admission here, the sequence of events on the day, 5^th May 2015 were as follows:  Al Nusra called the White Helmets 25 minutes prior to the execution. White Helmets arrived on the scene at 11.35 am, 5 minutes BEFORE the execution was carried out at 11.40.  These impartial humanitarian workers did NOTHING to prevent this execution, they appear a full 5 minutes prior to this murder at the behest of the executioners and they are ushered into shot immediately after the victim is shot twice at close range in the head, to collect the body.

Are these really neutral humanitarians at work saving every Syrian civilian “irrespective of race, religion, gender or political affiliation”?

This is also taken from the White Helmet official statement AFTER their execution facilitation had gone viral on social media:

“We unequivocally condemn the killing of civilians no matter who the perpetrator.”

The perpetrator is clearly Al Nusra Front, and it seems as if the White Helmet are avoiding naming the group, and readers would be right to ask why not. So where is their condemnation of this and countless other executions of civilians by Al Nusra – in those White Helmet reports to the UN?

Here are more responses by the White Helmets to the highly controversial video:

“The discussion over the video from Hreitan has highlighted the absence of a published code of conduct to which civil defence volunteers can be held accountable. The leaders of Syria Civil Defence commit to the development and publication of a code of conduct for members and its public posting on the www.SyriaCivilDefence.Org website in English and Arabic within one month.”

We are now coming up to November 2015, and there has still been no amendment to their “code of conduct”.  These humanitarians upon whose testimony, hangs the entire Western intervention policy in Syria, have not been officially investigated or even questioned over their suspected role in the “clean up” of a summary execution of a Syrian civilian by terrorist groups in Syria.

Armed or Unarmed?

“Unpaid Unarmed Lifesavers in Syria.” ~ New York Times headline Feb 2015.

“The White Helmets are unpaid and unarmed, and they risk their lives to save others…….. Wearing simple white construction helmets as feeble protection from those “double-tap” bombings, the White Helmets are strictly humanitarian. They even have rescued some of the officers of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad who are bombing them.”

ARMED: Screenshot from video shot in Aleppo clearly showing White Helmet members automatic combat rifles.

Video clearly showing armed White Helmets on the streets of Aleppo:

Meet another confused, ‘impartial and unarmed’ White Helmet, Muawiya Hassan Agha based in Sarmine, Idlib [scene of the recent alleged Russian Air Force bombing of a ‘civilian hospital’].

‘MODERATE HELMETS’: Muawiya Hassan Agha’s Twitter page.

It appears that Agha plays a dual role in Syria’s conflict, White Helmet by day, and Al Nusra armed terrorist by night, seen here on his own Twitter page posing on board an Al Nusra tank, gun in hand.

Here is a very clear case of the lines between unarmed humanitarian and armed terrorist mercenary being more than a little blurred. In one photo Agha is seen clearly celebrating with Al Nusra wearing his White Helmet tabard. In the stills taken from the alleged Russian hospital bombing in Sarmine, Idlib, he is spotted emerging from the “bombed” building.  Again, contrary to White Helmets public claims of neutrality, his association with Al Nusra and his brazen show of armed affiliation yet another White Helmet who’s role in this conflict and it is far removed from that of an impartial, unarmed ‘humanitarian’.

Here, the immortal words of Russian Foreign Minsiter, Sergei Lavrov, spring to mind:

“If it looks like a terrorist, if it acts like a terrorist, if it walks like a terrorist, if it fights like a terrorist, it’s a terrorist, right?”

Top left: Musawiya Agha Hassan in White Helmet mode. Top Right: As Al Nusra mercenary on tank in Idlib [taken from his Twitter page profile]. Bottom left: celebrating with Al Nusra terrorists. Bottom right: Screen shot from alleged Russian air strike on hospital in Sarmine, Idlib.

A very cursory scroll down Agha’s Facebook page also reveals very recent photos of SAA corpses accompanied by a number of celebratory, albeit disturbing comments.

In this report, we have only touched on a small percentage of the available archives of White Helmets deception and its misleading and highly prejudiced propaganda campaigns, but the examples presented here should begin to confront the highly effective Purpose built marketing campaign that so far has portrayed these men as benign, unprejudiced saviours of beleaguered civilians, when in fact many of them are actually paid mercenaries, impostors and agents for regime change – a drama which is unfolding in areas known to be terrorist strongholds and often, virtually devoid of civilian populations.

As Syrian nun Mother Agnes Mariam stated unequivocally in her recent interview, 90% of IDPs [internally displaced persons] in Syria have actually taken refuge in Government held areas.

In Summary

The success of the White Helmet and NGO complex propaganda is dependent upon the skewing of our moral compass by using the media and government institutions that are proven experts at “nudging” public opinion towards any particular policy.

If we really want to support Syria in this battle against such a complex array of interventionist forces, we must locate that compass and allow it to point us squarely towards the truth, however hard that truth is to accept and however remote might appear from the mainstream narrative. In fact I would go as far as to say, the further away you get from the mainstream naarative, the closer you get to the truth.

One final example of White Helmet propaganda at work:

“White Helmets claim to have rescued an SAA soldier who had in reality been captured by Al Nusra terrorists 10 days previously. In the Al Nusra version, this soldier is described as a “Shia pig” and was most probably summarily executed as an apostate according to Wahabi doctrine. Hard to imagine how the White Helmets then rescued him, unless of course they dug up his body for publicity purposes.”

Above: on the left hand side is apost dated Oct 16, 2014 from the Syrian Civil Defense Facebook page, the White Helmet ‘rescue’ version , while the right hand side is from an earlier Oct 4, 2014 Twitter post shows Al Nusra Front’s likely ‘execution’ version of the same event.

At this point, the question should really be asked, are these two groups working together (or are they one in the same)?

END OF PART II 

Author Vanessa Beeley is a contributor to 21WIRE, and since 2011, she has spent most of her time in the Middle East reporting on events there – as a independent researcher, writer, photographer and peace activist. She is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Syria Solidarity Movement, and a volunteer with the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine. See more of her work at her blog The Wall Will Fall.

A statement signed by Belgian development and solidarity organisations have called for a ban on the sale of arms to Israel and the suspension of the partnership agreement between Tel Aviv and the European Union in the wake of the recent wave of violence in the Palestinian territories.

In a statement released yesterday the groups said Article II of the Arms Trade Treaty allows for the suspension of the agreement in the event of human rights violations.

The organisations expressed concern about the escalating “wave of violence” in the Palestinian territories, especially in Jerusalem, saying the provocation policy practiced by Israeli settlers backed by the army in Al-Aqsa Mosque is the main reason for the wave of violence.

The Belgian organisations described what is happening in Jerusalem as part of the persecution suffered by four million Palestinians in the Palestinian territories due to the Israeli occupation including the war on Gaza in 2014.

They demanded the Belgian government and the European Union take all necessary measures to stop the Israeli occupation and exclude the Israeli settlements from all bilateral relations between Belgium and Israel.

The statement demanded the Belgian government request the Israeli government cancel the administrative detention of Palestinian prisoners and reform its judicial system to allow for a fair trial for Palestinians

Professor Tim Lenton (Chair in Climate Change/Earth Systems Science, University of Exeter) provided one of the many positive outcomes of this summer’s climate change conference in Paris.

You may have missed this major admission from Professor Lenton which we originally broke in our Paris Report, so we revisit it here and round off with a little more discussion.

His “revelations” occurred on day 2 of the climate change conference in Paris that ran from 7th to 10th July, 2015.

As you will see from the transcript and video excerpts, below, Professor Lenton initially denied that geoengineering activities were already occurring but, when pressed further, he threw in the towel and conceded that the geoengineering of our skies was indeed already happening.

For any newcomers to this topic, we are officially told by Her Majesty’s Government that geoengineering – which includes releasing vast amounts of toxic substances into the sky from aircraft in a supposed bid to block out the sun and reduce ‘global warming’ – is just a proposal, and that any current geoengineering “experiments” are being performed only on a “small scale.”

Transcript of Geoengineering-related Discussions

Olga Raffa, Chemtrails Project UK: My name’s Olga Raffa, from ClimateChangeSense.org. I represent a large group of people who are wondering why programmes such as weather modification and ongoing geoengineering programmes throughout the World have not been taken into consideration with a lot of the research done. And we notice, on a daily basis, that our environment is being tipped through the aerosols being dumped into the atmosphere blocking our sun. And there seems to be a lot of aluminium in the environment – within the bees now have aluminium, and it’s destroying their, well, there’s a bee collapse obviously with the insects and the biodiversity. Aluminium… found in whales. So we recognise this is a military programme. And the EMFs – so you’ve got your cell towers, your HAARP… which is putting heat into the atmosphere, into the ionosphere and seems to be moving the jet streams. Have you done any research and published on the tipping points that this is doing and will cause in the future. Thank you.

Prof. Tim Lenton, University of Exeter: Not precisely on those interventions, but I am someone who’s obviously worked on tipping points and also on trying to evaluate these… well, I would think of them more as proposed, existing proposals for geoengineering inverventions – either in the camp of sunlight reflection methods or large-scale carbon removal methods. I’ve been on my own journey with my thinking about that but, as I’ve said publicly and in the literature, I’m now of a view that the risks posed by large-scale attempts to reflect sunlight back to space… far outweigh the potential benefits in terms of reducing risk of higher temperatures and associated tipping points. So I still feel that there’s a space for and there’s a need, in fact, to look at the options for carbon removal as I think we may need that later this century. But that’s not what you’re most concerned about.

The next Q&A covers another subject raised by another attendee, before the geoengineering topic is rekindled by Dr. Colin Pritchard.

Dr. Colin Pritchard, University of Edinburgh: My question is again for Tim. Colin Pritchard, Edinburgh University. Hi, Tim. Thank you very much for your very cogent explanation. I would basically agree with you on geoengineering – except, may I infer that you prefer an enormous global-scale uncontrolled experiment in geoenginerring as opposed to a small-scale uncontrolled [sic] one. At the moment we are in the former. And it seems to be a little bizarre to prefer the former to the latter.

Prof. Tim Lenton, University of Exeter: I’m certainly not preferring carrying on with our current uncontrolled experiment. And I’m not – what’s the right word – I’m not monolithically set against things that are being discussed under the banner of geoengineering. So it’s quite a nuance… I think that’s quite a nuance discussion to have, perhaps over lunch, because it really depends on the options you’re considering. So you’ve got some things which would be reflective roofs and road surfaces that are very practical, local adaptation options against urban heat islands that, if you did on a large enough scale, could have some measurable effect on regional climate and I think are very sensible. So we have to just be… I think we have to be nuanced on specific proposals, specific technologies. But I think we can perhaps all agree that certainly none of us want to continue the current uncontrolled experiment. I guess, knowing the numbers, we realise that we would like the strongest mitigation efforts possible but we now know that additional things including carbon removal from the atmosphere may… we may want to develop that capability because we may need it as part of the risk management portfolio.

Video Excerpt

Lasting 4 minutes 24 seconds (if you cut out the interjecting question/answer by skipping from 1:26:16 to 1:29:59), here are the above exchanges from the official footage:

The original, full video from this session last 1 hour 39 minutes 43 seconds.

Conclusion

It’s Happening

Professor Lenton’s U-turn on whether geoengineering activities are already underway, although spectacular, is actually quite understandable.

Geoengineers proposing to spray aerosols from aircraft to block out the sun when the same effects, we’re told, are already being achieved with “ordinary condensation trails” is the ludicrous scenario currently being served up by Her Majesty’s Government (HMG) – one that does not merit the vast amounts of taxpayers’ money that has already been invested in geoengineering.

It appears the fine line being walked by Professor Lenton and company is that, on one hand, they must not be seen emboldening ridiculous claims such as the “ordinary condensation trails” one made by HMG but, on the other hand, trying not to bite that same hand that is feeding them financially. I believe it is this dilemma that we witness Professor Lenton struggle with as it best explains his initial denial then later admission that geoengineering is already occurring.

It is reasonable, therefore, to conclude that the money received by these establishments is adversely affecting the quality of their work. They are compromised.

So too the media, creating their nonsensical ‘pro-environmental’ fanfare for the IPCC as they set about hammering the final few nails into our New World Order coffin, with virtually no mention of the real scientists and the real campaigners who, with no financial incentive, continue to spread the truth about the underlying ‘phenomenon’ of global warming.

Such individuals – those with the intelligence, independence and decency to stand against the mainstream deception – are ensuring that the cracks of Agenda 21 and the NWO continue to progress…

…until the whole system is inevitably exploited for what it is.

It’s Being Ignored

The second major issue that is confirmed for us by Professor Lenton (and as confirmed elsewhere) is that these geoengineering activities – that we now agree exist – have not been taken into account in the IPCC’s climate models or in other mainstream climate research.

With the warming effects that persistent aircraft trails can have on surface temperatures already acknowledged by the IPCC but not included in their climate models, scientists such as Professor Lenton must realise that the geoengineering elephant in the room must now be addressed if these scientists – and their work – is to emerge with any credibility whatsoever.

The question we witnessed Dr Pritchard raising was especially helpful as it ultimately caused Professor Lenton to concede, but one is left wondering to what extent other institutions are benefiting from adopting the flawed stance that “the climate is changing due to human activity, but let’s ignore the climatic effects of years of geoengineering.”

More specifically, if UK universities are being ‘rewarded’ with vast amounts of research money to facilitate the nonsense of geoengineering, then how lucrative must be the benefits of upholding the underlying global warming alarmism that we already know to be flawed? To look at it another way, how many millions would it cost them if they allowed the wheels to come off the global warming bandwagon? Ethics aside, it is clear why their main incentive is to promote the paired issues of global warming and geoengineering. Money talks.

By way of contrast, consider the 30,000 independent US scientists (of which 9,000 had PhDs) that signed the Oregon Petition:

We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.

With no financial motivation for these scientists, what prevailed was the opportunity for truth and transparency. No threat required. No spotlight required.

Learn more about the global warming deception that is facilitating the geoengineering crime at our sister site, Climate Change Sense.

There’s No Way Forward

For Professor Lenton himself, now that he has conceded geoengineering is contributing to climate change, is he going to continue his absurdly flawed promotion of geoengineering also being a solution to climate change?! Or will he find the necessary resources to investigate geoengineering and chemtrails as a causal factor of climate change – and maybe even reconsider his stance on global warming? With no financial incentive, such a change in direction may appear unlikely but, given his own admission, how else can his work be taken seriously?

The same questions, of course, apply to all mainstream climate scientists and the IPCC, because what Professor Lenton’s words have done is invalidate his work, his department’s work and that of the IPCC. This is because we now have official acceptance that geoengineering is happening and it’s effects are not being taken into account, which is rendering the whole ‘anthropogenic global warming’ claim an utter shambles.

For Professor Lenton and every other climate scientist now unable to plead ignorance, without the necessary change in direction, will their work eventually be subject to charges of fraud?

We know we live in a World rife in corruption and there is no reason to presume the scientists, politicians and journalists involved in the global warming and geoengineering scandals should be any exception to the rule. Shamefully, the only sacrifice they appear willing to make is to permit the current, growing threat to their own children and grandchildren’s physical health.

Such sacrifice appears to be made for the purpose of simply securing their own personal salaries and livelihoods. In today’s climate of financial hardship and debt, it can be understood how simply getting themselves over the line may be a priority for the ‘me’ generation, but any assumption that their offspring may enjoy a net benefit seems especially shortsighted.

Sadly, all too often, cash is king. But if their ultimate motive does boil down to financial security, you would expect these intelligent people to engage their foresight and acknowledge the imminent ramifications of being so closely associated with and facilitating what may deservedly go down as the greatest crime of modern history. A crime that, by their own admission, is now unfolding before us.

May this article serve as a call for these scientists to turn their attentions to the bigger picture and to change their course of action accordingly, so they are no longer:

• Damaging the health of themselves and their own families.
• Risking prosecution for accepting the known-fraudulent offerings of the IPCC whilst laying the foundations for and/or promoting geoengineering crimes.
• Paving the way for the One World Government / New World Order that permeatesUnited Nations’ Agenda 21 and as promoted by the Pope.
• Standing by and watching the destruction of our wildlife, plant life, human life, our food, our water, our land and our oceans. Facilitating the attempted destruction of Mother Nature.

This article has been written to urge these scientists and others in positions of influence to make proper, responsible use of their opportunity – to no longer stand aside and facilitate but to stand strong, to break the hush and to do what they can to bring these disastrous geoengineering crimes to an end. Be the change the World so desperately needs.

To read more:

CRACKED! Top Climate Scientist Admits to Ongoing Geoengineering

Daily Israeli atrocities continue,  Palestinians are being murdered daily – the latest victim an 8-month-old baby boy. The PA health ministry said Ramadan Mohammad Faisal Thawabta died from toxic tear gas inhalation – another victim of Israeli state terror.

Since October 1, Israeli forces murdered 71 Palestinians in cold blood, including women (one pregnant), over a dozen children and two infants.

Three died on Friday alone:

• the 8-month-old infant;
• East Jerusalem youth Ahmad Hamada Qneibi, shot multiple times at point blank range, left to bleed to death, medics prevented from aiding him; and
• Qabatia youth Qasse Saba’na, another phony attempted stabbing incident claimed.

Stop the Wall activist Jamal Juma said Israel’s ethnic cleansing scheme and plan to judaize al-Quds (Jerusalem) is being “hit strongly in the heart by the Palestinian youth uprising.”

It changed the whole equation. The whole Israeli calculation toward what is happening in the West Bank (and East Jerusalem) has been hit in the heart.

Israel never learns from history, Juma explained. “In all the Intifadas…the thing that makes (them) bigger and bigger…is Israeli violence.”

This is not going to stop the Palestinians. The more there’s crime, the more the Palestinians will go out to the streets and their resistance will be increasing.

Senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahhar urged all Palestinians to unite against Israeli state terror. Ongoing resistance restores the stature of the Palestinian cause, he said.

“The Al-Quds intifada has ended all the occupation’s attempts to divide the Aqsa Mosque temporally and spatially,” he added.

Israel’s Channel 10 said Israeli Tel Aviv-Ariel line bus drivers prohibit Palestinians from boarding. Passengers without Israeli IDs are diverted elsewhere.

Segregation thrives in Israel. Even in US Jim Crow south, African Americans travelled on the same buses as whites, consigned to back row seats.

One Israeli driver was heard telling a Palestinian: “I’m not negotiating with you. Go down” – later saying “(t)here’s no such thing as a good Arab. Even one who looks so nice, so quiet, he isn’t. There’s no such thing.”

Ariel settlement mayor Eliyahu Shaviro agreed with keeping Palestinians off buses with Jews, saying:

Today we’re in a reality that anyone can pick up a knife and stab. Would you, or anyone else who watches us, would any father or mother who have a boy or a girl and on a certain bus there are 90 percent Palestinians, would he send his kid on that bus?

Last May, Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon suspended plans to have Jews and Palestinians travel on different West Bank buses after high-level criticism.

President Reuven Rivlin called the proposal “unthinkable.” Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein said separation presented legal challenges. Zionist Union head Isaac Herzog called “separating Palestinians and Jews on public buses a warrantless humiliation, (fanning the flames) of hatred toward Israel around the world.”

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

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

A Russian plane carrying over 220 people from Egypt to Russia disappeared from radars, and crashed in central Sinai, according to Russian and Egyptian authorities.

Kolavia Flight 7K9268, an Airbus A321, went off radar 23 minutes after taking off from Sharm El-Sheikh International Airport, Sergey Izvolskiy told the media citing preliminary data.

The plane was carrying 217 passengers and 7 crewmembers, he added. Seventeen of the passengers were children.

The Russian embassy in Egypt initially said all on board were Russian citizens. Later, the Belorussian embassy said one of the passengers was Belorussian. Egyptian authorities said three of the victims were Ukrainian, but Kiev didn’t immediately confirm that.

Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail confirmed that the Russian plane did go missing over Sinai and said a cabinet-level crisis committee has been convened to deal with the incident.

The crash site was discovered hours later in a desolate mountainous area of central Sinai, Egypt’s aviation ministry reported.

The plane was destroyed and all passengers and crewmembers were killed in the crash, Egyptian military and rescue officials told AP. Earlier, media reports suggested there might have been some survivors.

The Egyptian military told RT access to the crash site may be difficult for the press due to the volatile security situation in the Sinai. Large parts of the peninsula are dangerous due to the presence of militants, with only coastal areas in the north and south adequately guarded by security forces. The crash site is in the Hassana area 35 km south of Arish, the largest city in the Sinai.

The flight was traveling from the Egyptian resort to St. Petersburg. It belonged to the Kogalymavia airline, which also uses the brand name Metrojet, an operator popular among Russian tourists going to Egypt. The plane was supposed to contact air traffic in Turkish Cyprus’ Larnaca after leaving Egypt’s airspace, but failed to do so.

The tourist operator Brisco charted the ill-fated flight. The company is a business affiliate of Metrojet and they said the captain of the Airbus was an experienced pilot familiar with the aircraft.

“The captain was Velary Nemov, who has 12,000 flight hours under his belt, so he is definitely an experienced man. Of those, some 3,800 hours he spent piloting Airbus 320s. So we don’t have any reason to suspect human error from the crew,” a spokesman for Brisco said.

The plane climbed to its designated altitude of over 10,000 meters before rapidly losing speed, dropping and then vanishing from radar. Some reports in the Egyptian media cited eyewitnesses as saying the plane was on fire as it fell.

A source at Sharm El-Sheikh Airport told RIA Novosti the pilot of the missing plane requested a change of course, saying the jet would have to land in Cairo. The source said the crew of the crashed plane had complained to the airport’s technical service that the jet had engine problems.

The rapid drop the Airbus 321 reportedly experienced before crashing indicates pretty unusual circumstances and would suggest an emergency descent maneuver conducted by the crew, Captain Richard Woodward, former vice-president of the Australian and International Pilots’ Association (AIPA), told RT.

“If engines had failed, that would give you a dramatic loss of speed initially, but the crew would have lowered the nose and commit what is called a glide descent,” he explained. “My initial thought was that it might have been an emergency descent by the crew because they had a pressurization problem or dare I say perhaps a bomb on board.”

Russia has declared Sunday a day of national mourning for the crash victims.

Metrojet had a fatal incident in 2011, when one of its planes caught fire on a runway in Surgut Airport in Russia’s Urals. Three people died and 40 were injured as the plane burned out in just 10 minutes.

The last large-scale Russian airline incident happened in November 2013, when Tatarstan Airlines Flight 363 crashed at Kazan International Airport while attempting to land. Fifty people died in the incident.

Another flu death of an otherwise healthy person after receiving the flu vaccine has been reported in Wisconsin. WISN in Wisconsin is reporting that 26-year-old Katherine McQuestion has died from flu complications, after she received the flu shot. Katherine was reportedly a newlywed, and was required to receive the flu shot as part of her employment. She was a radiology technician and worked at St. Catherine’s Medical Center in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin according to WISN.

McQuestion’s mother said her daughter was healthy, beautiful and smart. She married in September, and her funeral was held on Tuesday. (Source.)

A health official interviewed by WISN stated that this is “rare”, and that everyone should get their flu shot. She apparently failed to mention that the CDC has stated that this year’s flu shot is mostly ineffective against the current influenza strains.

Are Flu Deaths After Vaccination Really “Rare”?

So how rare are these flu deaths following flu vaccinations? Can we really trust the health officials who are saying they are “rare” and encouraging everyone to receive the flu shot even when it is known it is not very effective?

In covering these flu deaths following flu vaccinations in the mainstream media, I have yet to see any truly investigative reporting showing any science or facts to back up health officials’ claims that these deaths are “very rare.” So let’s take a look at a few facts that can actually be verified.

Flu Vaccine Injuries and Deaths are by Far the Most Compensated in Vaccine Court

A review of the quarterly reports issued by the Department of Justice showing cases in which the government has paid out damages for vaccine injuries and deaths clearly shows that the majority of cases are awarded to flu vaccine victims. This information is never published in the mainstream media, but Health Impact News publishes it. You can read the most recent report from December 2014 in which the government paid out damages to 80 people who were injured or killed by the flu vaccine: Government Pays Compensation to 80 Flu Vaccine Injuries and Deaths.

Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) is the most common side effect and injury due to the flu vaccination. It is listed as a side effect with a warning in the flu vaccine package insert. The CDC and other sources claim that the incidence of GBS from the flu shot is about 1 or 2 per 1 million shots. Death rates from the flu are not given, but one must assume it is far lower than GBS.

And yet, we have seen a rash of media reports this flu season reporting that otherwise healthy individuals who received the flu shot died from flu complications. For some of the other stories, see:

Could the Ineffective Flu Shot be Causing More Severe Flu Outbreaks, Including Deaths?

Is the Science Behind Flu Vaccines Exempt from Scrutiny?

Is not one death from the flu in a healthy individual after receiving the flu vaccination worthy of an investigation into the safety of flu vaccines, and the supposed science behind them? When multiple deaths occur, when health officials call it “rare” after healthy individuals die from the flu after receiving the flu shot, does that not qualify as an “epidemic?” More people have now died from the flu after the flu shot in the United States than from Ebola.

One doctor who has sounded the alarm on the supposed science behind the annual flu vaccine is Dr. Mark Geier:

In this video, Dr. Mark Geier explains the fraud behind the flu vaccine. Dr. Geier is NOT anti-vaccine. He is an MD and has a PhD in genetics. He spent 10 years working at the National Institute of Health, and was a professor at Johns Hopkins University as a geneticist. He is also the author of over 150 peer-reviewed publications.

He worked on vaccine safety and efficacy for more than 30 years. He was one of four scientists who worked to replace the DTP vaccine, a vaccine that caused every child to become sick with a high fever at the time of vaccination, with the DTaP vaccine, which is an attenuated vaccine and causes illness due to fever in only 3% of those vaccinated.

In the video above, he explains that the flu shot causes Guillain-Barré Syndrome, and that the flu shot is not very effective in preventing the flu. He also explains that the CDC does not follow the law for vaccines in requiring long-term safety testing for the influenza vaccine like they do with other vaccines, as it is impossible to test a vaccine that changes every year. So the flu vaccine is basically an experimental vaccine that they want to give out to 300 million people every year. There are also no studies showing the safety of giving the flu vaccine to the same person every single year. However, Dr. Geier points out that the CDC is in the business of distributing flu vaccines, because they represent 300 million doses per year, whereas all the childhood vaccines together only number 20 million.

Dr. Geier goes on to explain that flu is “the wrong thing to vaccinate against” because you have to keep re-vaccinating against it every year, unlike childhood infectious diseases, such as smallpox, that are only vaccinated for once. Dr. Geier points out how ridiculous it is spend billions of dollars on a vaccine that might, at its best, save about 50 lives a year, when there are far more serious problems causing death that are more worthy of that kind of expenditure.

Be informed, don’t become a statistic of those damaged or killed by the flu vaccine! There are many other less dangerous ways to protect oneself from influenza.

Online petition campaigns were launched this week to stop Wal-Mart from selling Israeli soldier Halloween costumes and to get Wheaties cereal to start putting U.S. soldiers on its cereal boxes — boxes known for featuring photos of outstanding athletes.

The two campaigns have no relation to each other. Wheaties has not, to my knowledge, indicated the slightest interest in doing what the petition asks it to do.

I’d like Wal-Mart and every other store to stop selling all (not just Israeli) military and every other sort of armed, killer costume, including science-fiction futuristic Star Wars and any other. Sure, it’s a particular problem that the U.S. government gives Israel billions of dollars in free weapons every year with which to attack civilians, and that presidential candidates in the United States behave as if they’re campaigning to represent Israel. But if you oppose celebrating murder, including organized state-sanctioned uniformed murder, then you oppose everything that normalizes and encourages it.

So, of course, I also oppose glorifying “our troops” on cereal boxes. For one thing, it conflates the idea of an athlete with the idea of a soldier (which I use here as shorthand for sailor, Marine, airman, drone pilot, mercenary, special force, etc., etc.). An athlete doesn’t kill anyone, maim anyone, turn anyone’s house to rubble, traumatize any children, overthrow anyone’s government, throw any regions of the world into chaos, produce radical violent groups that hate my country, drain the public treasury of $1,000,000,000,000 a year, justify the stripping away of civil liberties in the name of wars for freedom, devastate the natural environment, drop napalm or white phosphorus, use DU, imprison people without charge, torture, or send missiles into weddings and hospitals killing one vaguely-identified victim for every 10 people murdered. An athlete plays sports.

Note that I’m also not proposing that we put troops on cereal boxes with devil horns inked onto their heads, blaming them for the faults of the whole society into which they were born. Sure, I blame them. Sure, I’d rather celebrate conscientious objectors. But there is an almost universal delusion in our culture which holds that when you blame someone for something, you exonerate everyone else. So, although it makes not the slightest sense, people interpret blaming a soldier for participating in a war as un-blaming the presidents, Congress members, propagandists, profiteers, and everyone else who helped make that war happen. In reality, blame is a limitless quantity, and everyone gets some, including me. But in the fantasyland we live in, you can’t go around blaming anyone for something done by many people, unless you are allowed a paragraph of explanation. And, besides, I’d start with all the presidents, Congress members, etc., as war criminals before reaching any rank-and-file in the list of candidates for cereal box condemnation.

Also, “our troops,” are simply not our troops, not collectively. Many of us vote against, petition against, demonstrate against, write against, and organize against the use and the expansion and the existence of the military. One wishes it were needless to say, but this does not suggest some sort of hatred for the individuals who are soldiers, the majority of whom say that economic option limitations was one big factor in their joining up, and many of whom believe what they are told about doing good for the places they invade. Nor of course does opposition to militarism imply some sort of twisted support for the militarism of some other nation or group. Imagine disliking soccer and consequently being denounced for supporting some other soccer team. Opposing war is the same way — it actually means opposing war, not routing for the “team” opposed by someone else.

“Team” is a horrible metaphor for a military. The military can involve lots of teamwork, but it has been a century now since a war involved two teams competing on a battlefield. In World War II and ever since, wars have been fought in people’s towns, and the majority of the victims have been civilians not signed up on any team. When groups like Veterans For Peace speak out against further participation in war, on the grounds that war is the unjustifiable, counter-productive slaughter of men, women, and children, they do so out of love for soldiers and potential future soldiers. Of course, many other veterans do not share that belief, or do not voice it aloud or publicly if they do. Perhaps not unrelated is the fact that the leading cause of death of U.S. soldiers sent into recent and current wars is suicide. What more profound statement that something is amiss could be made than that? What could I possibly say to even approach it?

Here’s the text of the petition in favor of putting troops on cereal boxes:

The Wheaties Box is an iconic image in America. It celebrates our best, our brightest, and those achieving high honors on the athletic field. Isn’t it time to honor another set of American heroes? Our troops who served their country and gave their all, deserve the same honor as our great athletes.

In fact our brightest and most creative intellects are not honored at all on Wheaties. Neither are our firemen and women, our emergency crews, our environmentalists, our teachers, our children, our poets, our diplomats, our farmers, our artists, our actors and actresses. No. It’s just athletes. If you think troops deserve an honor, clearly it is not, in fact, the same as athletes. And what of those of us who agree with President Kennedy (“War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today”) — Should we get our heroes on cereal boxes, too?

Imagine the national pride of seeing a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor on the Wheaties box. General Mills, proud maker of Wheaties, can make this a new tradition. Next to the sacrifice these heroes and their families have made, it’s a small honor. But in our celebrity-obsessed culture, it can be a new tradition we all can be proud to share.

It’s just not true that we would all be proud. Some of us would deem it fascistic. Of course, we could just choose not to buy that cereal, while Anderson Cooper and anyone else who despises conscientious objectors could just not buy any cereal box honoring that tradition. But this petition is not proposing to force Wheaties to honor soldiers, just recommending it. Well, I’m just recommending against it.

General Mills, we are asking you to please add servicemembers [sic] who have been honored for their distinct service and heroism, to your rotation of those recognized on the Wheaties Box. We don’t do enough to honor those who served, especially those people who gave the ultimate sacrifice on the battlefield. And while an image on a box of cereal may not seem like much, it’s a gesture that says so much about what we value. It’s the type of gesture we need to see happen more often. We hope General Mills will show us that these men and women are worth recognizing on their iconic brand. Please sign and share the petition telling General Mills to place our honored heroes from the military on their Wheaties box.

The U.S. military spends a fortune in public tax dollars advertising itself on race cars and in ceremonies at football games, and so on. Were Wheaties to pick up on this idea and profit from it by making the military pay, that would be bad enough. Doing it for free would be worse. But I don’t think the military would pay for it. The military advertises the generic faceless troop, not an actual specific soldier. Many veterans are essentially abandoned by the military, denied healthcare, left homeless, and — again — in many cases doomed to suicide.

During the war on Vietnam, recipients of medals of honor, angrily threw them back, rejecting what they had been part of. Any actual specific war hero could do that. And then where would Wheaties be?

Once in recent years the military tried to honor a particular flesh-and-blood soldier, and at the same time to merge its image with that of athletes. The soldier’s name was Pat Tillman. He had been a football star and had famously given up a multi-million dollar football contract in order to join the military and do his patriotic duty to protect the country from evil terrorists. He was the most famous actual troop in the U.S. military, and television pundit Ann Coulter called him “an American original — virtuous, pure, and masculine like only an American male can be.“

Except that he came to no longer believe the stories that had led him to enlist, and Ann Coulter stopped praising him. On September 25, 2005, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Tillman had become critical of the Iraq war and had scheduled a meeting with the prominent war critic Noam Chomsky to take place when he returned from Afghanistan, all information that Tillman‘s mother and Chomsky later confirmed. Tillman couldn‘t confirm it because he had died in Afghanistan in 2004 from three bullets to the forehead at short range, bullets shot by an American.

The White House and the military knew Tillman had died from so-called friendly fire, but they falsely told the media he‘d died in a hostile exchange. Senior Army commanders knew the facts and yet approved awarding Tillman a Silver Star, a Purple Heart, and a posthumous promotion, all based on his having died fighting the enemy. They would no doubt have also approved his photo for a Wheaties box.

And then where would the Wheaties thank-a-warrior campaign have been when the truth about Tillman’s death and the truth about Tillman’s views came out? I say: Wheaties, do not risk it. The Pentagon has not risked it since Tillman. Its generals (McChrystal, Petraeus) inevitably attract the spotlights and inevitably disgrace themselves. No rank-and-file troops are put forward as “icons.” They’re just used to justify massive spending “for the troops” that goes to weapons profiteers and not to one single troop.

The thought of blood just doesn’t go with breakfast cereal, Wheaties, and even the thought that this proposal came from somewhere in this country is enough to make me slightly nauseated.

* Thanks to D Nunns for calling the Wheaties thing to my attention.

The US State Department has falsely accused Russia of striking hospitals in Syria during their fight against ISIS, despite a rejection of the claims by the medical staff at Medecins Sans Frontieres and the Red Cross. 

The embarrassing contradictions to US claims will strike a blow to the US propaganda machine, who have tried desperately to downplay Russia’s ever-increasing important role in defeating ISIS in the Middle East.

Sputnikenews.com reports:

Dounia Dekhili said that MSF hospitals have no information on which to base the US allegations that Russia is responsible for the destruction of hospitals.

On Thursday, the medical organization reported that 12 hospitals had been targeted in Syria, six of them MSF institutions. However, MSF declined to assign responsibility for the attacks.

“It is difficult to determine who is responsible for the air strikes that led to the destruction of the hospitals,” said Dekhili. “We were not witnesses, so we cannot be precise on that.” Dekhili explained that many areas of Syria are inaccessible, and the organization relies on reports from medical personnel on the ground, none of whom have said that Russia carried out an airstrike against a hospital.

The interview Dounia Dekhili gave to French Sputnik.

Dekhili expressed the medical professionals’ despondency at the violence which had left medical facilities and countless other civilian structures devastated in the course of the conflict, explaining that for years its institutions have reported being targeted by aerial bombardment.

“Regardless of who the parties to the conflict are, there is a total violation of medical and civilian structures.”

On Thursday, spokesman for the US State Department John Kirby was asked to provide sources to substantiate its grave allegations that Russia was responsible for damaging hospitals.

Kirby said that “we have seen some press reporting to that end,” and referred to “Syrian civil society groups” and “other operational information” which led the US administration to make the allegations, but was unable to provide any evidence.

Kirby was asked for substantiation after Red Cross Director Dominic Stillhart said that its personnel on the ground had not reported any airstrikes by Russian planes on civilian targets, including hospitals.

On October 3, MSF stated that a US airstrike on its hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, had left 22 people dead and resulted in 37 being injured.

On October 29, the organization said it was “beyond doubt” that  the Saudi-led coalition carrying out bombings in Yemen, had hit its hospital in Haydan on October 26.

 Earlier this week, a Monsanto research facility in France was burned to the ground. Monsanto and investigators suspect an arsonist was responsible for the blaze.

Monsanto representative Jakob Witten told Reuters that investigators“strongly suspect it was a crime as no electrical or other sources were found.”He added that “No Monsanto sites in Europe have so far been the victim of fires of criminal origin, this is unprecedented violence.”

The fire had multiple points of origin, meaning it is unlikely the fire was caused by an electrical malfunction or other natural causes. Investigators also noticed a strong smell of gasoline in different areas of the site.

France announced in June that it was banning sales of Roundup, Monsanto’s flagship herbicide, amid public pressure and the World Health Organization’s announcement that the product is probably carcinogenic. Further, last month the country announced it was strengthening its ban on genetically modified crops. Monsanto is one of the most hated corporations on the planet and faces particularly strong resistance in France. If the fire is confirmed to have been arson, it is possible this vociferous opposition might have been a motivating factor.

Nevertheless, the recent fire is merely the tip of the iceberg with regard to Monsanto’s recent problems.

The company recently moved to close three different research facilities to save money in the face of declining profits. As Reuters reported last week, Monsanto research centers in Middleton, Wisconsin, Mystic, Connecticut, and Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, will soon be closed to cut costs.

Last month, the infamous company announced it would be cutting 2,600 jobs — 12% of its workforce — in order to lower costs. Monsanto also announced a loss of 19 cents per share in the most recent quarter. Profits are expected to remain low throughout the year.

The Associated Press reported that Monsanto lost $156 million in the final quarter of last year alone, and this year is expected to be even worse.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki has submitted a fresh dossier of evidence on Israeli war crimes in the occupied West Bank and Gaza to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Following a Friday meeting with ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda in The Hague, Maliki told reporters that the new dossier, the third he has submitted this year, contains evidence of “extrajudicial killing, home demolition, [and] collective punishment” by the Israeli forces.

The submission of the dossier comes at a time when tensions in the occupied Palestinian territories have dramatically escalated in recent weeks.

Maliki added that “examples of cases that have really occurred in the last 40 days of Israeli aggression against innocent Palestinians around occupied territory” were also included in the document.

Israel declares parts of al-Khalil as military zone

On Friday, the Israeli military issued an order to turn several neighborhoods in central al-Khalil (Hebron) into a closed military zone. The Israeli regime has informed Palestinians that they will be given special permits that will allow them to enter and exit their homes.

The order was issued following a series of violent clashes between Palestinian youths and Israeli forces in several towns across the occupied West Bank after the Friday prayers.

Palestinian protesters run for cover from teargas fired by Israeli forces during clashes at the entrance of the Palestinian town of al-Bireh on the outskirts of Ramallah in the West Bank on October 30, 2015. (AFP photo)

At least 72 Palestinians have been killed by Israelis since the beginning of October. Some 7,200 others have been injured either in direct confrontation with the Israelis or during protests.

The fresh wave of tensions in the occupied territories was triggered by the Israeli regime’s imposition of restrictions on the entry of Palestinian worshipers into the al-Aqsa Mosque in August. Palestinians say the Tel Aviv regime seeks to change the status quo of al-Aqsa.

Russia’s anti-terrorist campaign began with a bang on September 30^th. ISIS and al-Nusra positions were hammered by Russian fighters in northeast and northwestern Syria, respectively.

Within days, reports came in confirming many rebel terrorists had fled Syria into Iraq, and many more had abandoned the field altogether by escaping south into Jordan. Having secured a buffer zone around Latakia, Su-30 and Su-34 bombing runs are still ongoing at a brisk pace in northern Syria. The Kurdish YPG is eager to work with Russian forces and provide coordinates of ISIS strongholds. Targets in Raqqa have already been hit by Russian jets. Further, elite Iranian IRGC troops have publicly committed to help with ground units, most likely with Shiite militias from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanese Hezbollah. The US has scaled back operations to avoid any confrontations, but is still operating clandestinely in Syria, with commando raids and arms airdrops.

One month in from the start of Russian intervention, world leaders are still recovering from the aftershock. The Russian Federation has willingly stepped in as the guarantor of security in Syria. Rumors are already floating over future Russian airstrikes in Iraq, and how soon allied ground forces can retake key nodes from ISIS control. What is clear is this: Russia has special interests in Syria and the Middle East which it simply cannot ignore, look away from, or turn its back on. Specifically, Russia worries about the spread of ISIS into the Caucasus region and Central Asian states. This is Russia’s “soft underbelly” that Western geo-analysts had often discussed during the Cold War.

The Russian provinces of Dagestan, Chechnya, and Ingushetia suffer from a Caucasian emirate loyal to ISIS and are responsible for numerous terror bombings, high poverty, and Islamist firebrand mullahs who radicalize vulnerable youths, and the disaffected and deranged. Abroad, ISIS has set up camps in northern Afghanistan and threatens to infiltrate Tajikistan, where Islamists and former military have already begun attacks and where Russian troops offer key support. In Ankara, Turkey, President Erdogan, in his unholy alliance with the Gulf monarchies, now has brought death back to his own country, with the Oct. 10^th bomb blasts tied to ISIS killing over 100 innocents.

In the US, Obama has continued to parrot his “no combat troops in Syria” line, even as Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter publicly refuses to rule out the use of troops. Clearly, this disconnect reveals the growing polarization between US policy elites. Even the buffoonish Republican candidate Donald Trump approves of Russia’s intervention and Obama’s new hands-off policy in Syria, while the rest of the war-hawk Republicans and Hillary Clinton are eager to denounce Russia and escalate the conflict. Violence and conflict is all they know of politics, just as they were willing to engage in the atrocious interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, three countries still embroiled in civil war and anarchy.

Expect Russia and Putin to gain more respect and international clout as Federation airstrikes continue to pound Islamist terrorists to dust in Syria. If NATO ever finally accepts the mendacities and duplicity of its Gulf monarchy allies, it can begin to further disentangle itself from the region, which the world would greet with welcome relief. Syria has a violent and fractious history as a nation, and Russia certainly has built up intelligence assets from the Soviet-era alliance with Damascus. The US and the West must be satisfied as junior partners in any future coalition, as it is Moscow’s combination of a shared culture of fighting Islamism, deep intelligence work, and warrior ethos that is winning in Syria, not NATO’s half-hearted coalition with Gulf nations, or its self-proclaimed military and economic supremacy.

By acting on invitation from al-Assad’s government, Russia has intervened (however cynically it may be viewed in the West) within the framework of international law. By fighting terror at its root source, the Russian government has usurped the role of providing security in the Mideast from the US. This is a direct challenge to US imperium, of assuming the mantle of global security, so we shouldn’t expect Washington to go quietly anytime soon.

The US-Turkish-Saudi-Gulf alliance, by funneling arms to the Syrian “moderate resistance” and escalating what is now a four-year long civil war, has proven it is willing to team up with barbaric jihadists in order to achieve its imperial ambitions, further the Gulf States’ Sunni oil/gas pipeline political agenda, take out Assad, and stymie Iranian and Russian power in the region. As to whom the rogue states are, the ones contravening international agreements and supplying terrorists with weapons, it is plain for the world to see.

William Hawes is a writer specializing in politics and environmental issues. You can reach him at [email protected].

Where is the rationale? How can it be possible that various idealists ­ some students; some mid­-career and others just retired, convince themselves that they will find peace, happiness and fulfilment in one of the most dangerous places anywhere in the world ­ certainly for a Jew to live?

How is it possible that such otherwise sensible individuals believe that by giving up good jobs, homes, friends and security for a fantasy script written by political propagandists working for a foreign government ministry ­ that they will find happiness when, in reality, what they will find is a society ridden with guilt, and increasingly suffering from PTSD in the face of killings, stabbings, shootings and mayhem as its occupying military force tries to keep the lid on a persecuted, occupied indigenous people?

To swallow the myth in the face of incontrovertible fact can only be explained by understanding the power of the sect, or tribe. Logic and reason have no place within faith. Nor should they. More than half the population of the world subscribes to one faith or another.  But often religious zeal causes war and a propensity to isolate, persecute or even kill those who are seen as non­ believers. Only the faithful few are the chosen ones of God. But which God?

On Friday the 30th of October, U.S. President Barack Obama announced that he will send 50 U.S. Special Forces soldiers into Syrian territory, though Syria has presented no threat to U.S. national security and has not invaded any country. In fact, Syria is fighting against Islamic jihadists who present a threat also to the United States and Europe.

The U.S. is invading Syria (first with bombers, and now even with its first troops) to overthrow Syria’s elected President, whom even Western-allied polling shows still to be supported by a majority of Syrians. When America’s ally the Qatari regime, which funds al-Nusra (al-Qaeda in Syria), hired a polling firm in 2012 to survey Syrians, the finding was that 55% of Syrians wanted Assad to remain as President. Then, as I reported on 18 September 2015, “Polls Show Syrians Overwhelmingly Blame U.S. for ISIS,” and those recent polls were from a British firm that has ties to Gallup.

Russia, in contrast to America, hasn’t invaded Syria at all, but was instead urged to assist the elected government in its defensive war against the invading islamic jihadists and American bombers; and Russia is now providing the requested assistance.

What right does the U.S. have to invade Syria, and to assist Sunni forces to overthrow the Shiite President of Syria, whom polls show to be still supported even by a majority of Syria’s Sunnis? None that I can see. Consequently, shouldn’t the Syrian Government be seeking compensation from the United States? When will the request come? How will the request come? The damages from U.S. bombing of Syria’s infrastructure are already enormous.

The U.S. asserts that it is supporting ‘democracy’ but is actually allied here with two dictatorial totalitarian theocratic-royal regimes, trying to overthrow the Assad government, which is neither totalitarian nor theocratic, nor even royal, though the current leader (Bashar al-Assad) wouldn’t have come to power if his father’s party hadn’t chosen him to become their leader. That’s not quite the same thing as in Saudi Arabia and in Qatar, which are absolute monarchies and entirely dependent upon the clerics for their right to rule. But the U.S. allies with them, against Assad.

The U.S. is, of course, trying to help the Sunni royal families, the Sauds of Saudi Arabia, and the Thanis of Qatar, impose a Sunni government also on Syrians, so that Syria can then become a pipeline-route for Qatari (or Thani) gas and Saudi (specifically King Salman’s) oil, to flow into the EU, which the United States wants because the U.S. Government is trying to force Russia’s (extremely popular) President Vladimir Putin out of office, and is trying to choke the Russian economy in order to make that happen — and strangulating Russia’s oil-and-gas sales to Europe is an important part of that strategy.

The U.S. aim is a failed Syrian state, so Russia will lose an ally. Thus, on October 13th, Brandon Turbeville headlined, “As Russia Bombs ISIS, US Bombs Syrian Civilian Power Stations.” The U.S. is trying to destroy Syria; Russia wants to salvage Syria. So: while Russia bombs ISIS and other jihadists, the U.S. bombs Syria’s infrastructure. A nation without the infrastructure to hold it together is a failed state — America’s goal.

The U.S. doesn’t announce this as its goal. Instead, the U.S. says simply, that Syria’s President, Bashar al-“Assad must go,” or, “the time has come for President Assad to step aside” so that there will be “a new government, without Bashar Assad.” This is like George W. Bush’s constant demands for “regime change in Iraq.” Who gave the U.S. the right to replace nations’ leaders and still claim that doing this doesn’t constitute an international crime, of aggression, if not of aggressive invasion — the war-crime for which Nazis were hung at Nuremberg?

By what right does the U.S. do any of this? Why isn’t the International Criminal Court publicly (very publicly) seeking jurisdiction to investigate that?

Will one of the U.S. news editors (there are over a hundred of them) who receive each of my news reports and commentaries submitted for publication but who have never published any of them, please now publicly address this question in their news-reporting? I here ask each of them: if you think that the U.S. possesses the right to do this, then will you please publicly explain why?

Or, if you won’t, then will you please publish this article that poses this question, so that your readers or audience may consider the question?

This article is being sent to virtually the entire U.S. news-media. Let’s see if any of them publish it — or else explain why they support the U.S. invasion of Syria.

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

As previously warned about in June of 2015, the United States has announced that it will officially begin ground operations in Syria through the use of special forces. The Washington Post in its article, “Obama seeks to intensify operations in Syria with Special Ops troops,”would report that:

President Obama is sending a small number of Special Operations troops to northern Syria, marking the first full-time deployment of U.S. forces to the chaotic country. 

The mission marks a major shift for Obama, whose determination to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has been balanced by an abiding worry that U.S. troops not be pulled too deeply into the in­trac­table Syrian conflict. 

The latest deployment will involve fewer than 50 Special Operations advisers, who will work with resistance forces battling the Islamic State in northern Syria but will not engage in direct combat, Obama administration officials said.

Admission of Special Forces in Syria is Just the Beginning 

click on the image to enlarge

While the US claims this move is to “defeat the Islamic State (ISIS),” it is instead clearly a move to establish long-sought “buffer zones” or “safe zones” in Syria where the Syrian government can no longer operate. US airpower will also undoubtedly be used to cover these special forces, creating a defacto no-fly-zone wherever they operate.

The map accompanying the Washington Post article clearly shows ISIS territory straddling the last remaining supply corridor being used to supply the terror group as well as others including Al Qaeda’s al Nusra Front from NATO-member Turkey’s territory. US special forces will likely begin operating in these areas, and zones carved out as US operations expand.

The eventual outcome, if these operations are successful, will be the division and destruction of Syria as a nation-state. This is more than mere speculation – this is a conclusion drawn by signed and dated policy papers produced by the Brookings Institution, who has called for such zones since as early as 2012, but under different contrived pretexts.

In the March 2012 Brookings Institution”Middle East Memo #21″ “Assessing Options for Regime Change” it is stated specifically (emphasis added):

An alternative is for diplomatic efforts to focus first on how to end the violence and how to gain humanitarian access, as is being done under Annan’s leadership. This may lead to the creation of safe-havens and humanitarian corridors, which would have to be backed by limited military power. This would, of course, fall short of U.S. goals for Syria and could preserve Asad in power. From that starting point, however, it is possible that a broad coalition with the appropriate international mandate could add further coercive action to its efforts.

More recently, in a June 2015 Brookings document literally titled, “Deconstructing Syria: A new strategy for America’s most hopeless war,” it is stated that (emphasis added):

The idea would be to help moderate elements establish reliable safe zones within Syria once they were able. American, as well as Saudi and Turkish and British and Jordanian and other Arab forces would act in support, not only from the air but eventually on the ground via the presence of special forces as well. The approach would benefit from Syria’s open desert terrain which could allow creation of buffer zones that could be monitored for possible signs of enemy attack through a combination of technologies, patrols, and other methods that outside special forces could help Syrian local fighters set up.

Were Assad foolish enough to challenge these zones, even if he somehow forced the withdrawal of the outside special forces, he would be likely to lose his air power in ensuing retaliatory strikes by outside forces, depriving his military of one of its few advantages over ISIL.Thus, he would be unlikely to do this.

Unfortunately for US policymakers, it is no longer only Syria that US special forces and accompanying airpower must worry about. Russia, by invitation of Damascus, is now operating militarily across Syria, including along Turkey’s border where the US has long sought to establish its “safe zones.”

The US has openly committed to the invasion and occupation of Syrian territory. It does so with the intent of carving Syria up into a series of dysfunctional, weak zones to literally “deconstruct” Syria as a functioning nation-state. It is doing this unable to cite any credible threat Syria poses to US national security and without any semblance of a mandate granted by the United Nations. It also does so with the prospect of triggering direct war with nuclear-armed Russia in a region Russia is operating legally.

A Desperate Move to Save a Bankrupt Foreign Policy Agenda 

America’s latest actions are a desperate move sought by an increasingly hysterical political and corporate-financier establishment in Washington and on Wall Street. Recent hearings conducted by the US Senate Committee on Armed Services have struggled to produce a credible response to America’s unraveling criminal conspiracy aimed at Syria, particularly in the wake of Russia’s recent intervention. The committee and witnesses brought before it, have struggled to formulate a response – however – no-fly-zones and US troops on the ground have been discussed at length.

It is a poorly calculated bluff. The presence of US special forces and US airpower operating illegally in and above Syria, meant to deny Syria access to its own territory will take time to implement. The official number of US special forces being sent into Syria is said to not exceed 50. Syria and its allies could insert an equal or larger number of forces into these same areas to essentially create a “safe zone” from “safe zones.” Bringing America’s illegal actions before the UN would also be a sound measure ahead of potential confrontations with US forces operating uninvited in Syria.

The premise that ISIS must be fought and defeated by striking them in Iraq and Syria is betrayed by America’s own admission that the organization has already spread far beyond the borders of either nation. ISIS is clearly not supporting itself on the limited resources found within either country. Were the US truly interested in stopping ISIS, it would strike at its sponsors in Ankara and Riyadh. Of course, it was clear, well over a year ago, that the appearance of ISIS would be used intentionally to accomplish US geopolitical objectives in both Syria and Iraq, serving as a pretext for wider, long-sought after direct Western military intervention.

The myth that dividing and destroying Syria while deposing its sitting government will somehow alleviate the violence in Syria and reduce the ongoing migrant crisis Europe faces, is betrayed by the fact that a similar premise used to sell intervention in Libya has only led to greater chaos in North Africa, and the creation of the migrant crisis in the first place.

If the world, including Europe, seeks to prevent the spread of ISIS and the expansion of an already growing migrant crisis, stopping the United States and its partners before they create another “Libya” in the Levant must become top priority. And while it is unlikely that Europe will show any resolve in doing so, it would be hoped that Syria and its allies realize the consequences of failing now, at this juncture, and to whom’s borders the chaos will attempt to cross over into next.

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

The Netanyahu government has conveniently and consistently separated the occupation of the West Bank from the repeated eruption of violence, insisting that the Palestinians’ unrest is a result of incitement by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, when in fact he has been attempting to reduce the tension.

Not once has any Israeli official suggested that nearly 50 years of occupation might have brought the Palestinians to a boiling point. Any incident could have ignited a new violent flare-up, and the conflict over the Temple Mount/Haram el-Sharif provided the spark that led to the current fire, regardless of whose side was at fault.

The most troubling issue is that successive Israeli governments remained blind and refused to connect much of the Palestinian violence to the occupation; what is worst is that the Israeli public has largely bought into the fallacy of this argument.

They are persuaded by the pervasive and misleading official narrative that even if Israel were to evacuate the West Bank, the Palestinians will not end their violent resistance to Israel’s very existence.

They insist that the Palestinians are determined to take over all of Mandatory Palestine rather than establishing a Palestinian state limited to the West Bank and Gaza, to live side-by-side Israel in peace.

Ironically, whereas this charge against the Palestinians is deeply ingrained among right-wing Israelis, they cheer the fact that many members of the Israeli government categorically reject the establishment of a Palestinian state on any part of the Jews’ ‘biblical homeland.’

To make the case against the withdrawal from the West Bank, Israeli officials point to Israel’s evacuation of Gaza in 2005, its subsequent takeover by Hamas, and the violence emanating from it.

Netanyahu and his ultra-conservative cohorts argue that Israel must learn from this experience and thus should not withdraw from the West Bank, which is far closer than Gaza to Israel’s urban centers.

They further argue that should Israel evacuate the West Bank, Hamas will certainly take over and turn it into another staging ground from which to launch rocket attacks, cut Israel in half, and inflict incalculable losses in lives and property.

Ironically, this suggests that Palestinian radicalism can be contained under occupation when in fact the occupation itself is the prime cause behind the intensified Palestinian extremism.

Brigadier General Guy Goldstein, Deputy Director of Government Activities in the Territories no less, stated only yesterday: “It’s a rebellion of…terror that comes from pain and frustration.” But then leave it to the hypocrites in Netanyahu’s government to justify continuing the occupation, presumably to stem the rise of violent extremism.

Indeed, if Israel were to precipitately and unilaterally withdraw from the West Bank, as it did from Gaza, a similar result could theoretically reoccur. As such, the withdrawal from Gaza offers a different kind of lesson from which Israel must learn.

Unlike the conditions that existed in Gaza, the PA has begun in earnest to build the foundations of a state with schools, clinics, a network of roads, and private and government institutions. They were even praised by Israel’s top security officials for their full cooperation with Israel on all security matters, even in times of increased tension between the two sides, as is currently the case.

What is most worrisome, however, is that neither Netanyahu nor any of his coalition partners know where Israel will be if the occupation continues for another five to ten years, how many more Palestinian uprisings will occur, and what will be the death toll and destruction both sides sustain?

I believe that the Israelis who have been traumatized by the violent events of the past few weeks should ask themselves a simple question:

If a handful of Palestinians have managed to cause such havoc with the entire Israeli security apparatus in place and thousands of Israeli troops stationed throughout the West Bank, by what logic can any honest person say that the occupation bolsters Israel’s national security?

If anything, the occupation has been and will continue to be the very evil that Israel needs to rid itself from, and they must do so for their own sake rather than the Palestinians’, as the occupation poses the greatest threat to Israel’s future well-being.

To remove this perpetual threat, Israelis must examine this disastrous state of affairs and demand the withdrawal from the West Bank under terms and conditions consistent with Israel’s requirements to ensure the safety of its citizens.

The Gaza experience in a way was positive and instructive in that it has shown the mistakes that the late Prime Minister Sharon made, and how to avoid similar mistakes in any future disengagement from territories in the West Bank.

The Palestinians, with the support of the Arab states and the international community, will never give up their aspiration to establish a state of their own.

Israel should sooner than later accept this fact, particularly because of its unchallenged military prowess and that it is in a perfect position to withdraw from the West Bank, with some land swaps, without risking any aspect of its legitimate national security concerns.

The Israeli withdrawal should be based on a number of agreed-upon phases to be implemented over a period of ten years or more, and entail well-defined reciprocal measures by both sides to be executed on a schedule with monitoring mechanisms to ensure full compliance.

In fact, a withdrawal based on preconceived security plans and collaborative economic developments will prompt the Palestinians to develop vested interests and give them the incentive to preserve it and in return, it would dramatically enhance rather than undermine Israel’s security.

More importantly, the Palestinians know only too well that should they threaten Israel by violating such an agreement, Israel is and will remain in a position to reoccupy the land almost at will, except this time Israel will have a solid moral and tangible ground to stand on that potentially engenders the support of the international community.

Is this a risk worth taking by any Israeli government? I believe the answer is clear. The occupation is not sustainable; it is costly both in blood and treasure, Israel’s national security will remain at risk, and the country will become ever more internationally isolated while risking its very identity as a Jewish state.

I am not naïve enough to suggest that the current Netanyahu government will ever be willing to end the occupation. It is now up to the Israelis to seek new leaders who will, because it is they who will pay the ultimate price that the evil of occupation will exact.

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.

[email protected]

Web: www.alonben-meir.com

The battle for east Aleppo has recently intensified between the pro-government forces and ISIS, as both forces have exchanged large-scale offensives in this tug-of-war fight for control of the areas in Syria’s northern countryside.

On Thursday, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), the National Defense Forces (NDF) and Kataebat Al-Ba’ath advanced on the terrorists’ positions at the mounds of Sheikh Ahmad. According to reports, the Syrian forces were able to advance inside the southern neighborhoods of Sheikh Ahmad. Nonetheless, they still have a long way to go before being able to impose full control over this town near the Kuweries Military Airport.

Pro-Syrian sources argue that the next 48 hours in this sector will be critical for both the Syrian Armed Forces and ISIS, as the former attempts to lift the two year long siege on the Kuweries Military Airport. In turn, we expect a continuation of the heavy fighting in the settlements’ building blocks. It will be likely resulted in impossibility of the both sides to gain a momentum to get a significant success at the frontline in a short time.

The SAA’s 66th Brigade of the 11th Tank Division has been taking part in fierce clashes against the ISIS militants for control of the Khanasser-Ithriya Highway. It leads to the Syrian Government controlled areas of the Aleppo province. On account of this battle, the pro-government forces have been forced to abandon their southern Aleppo offensive in order to reopen this strategic supply route. On Thursday, the Syrian Arab Army’s 66th Brigade received a much needed boost when a contingent from Hezbollah arrived from the town of Khanasser to purge militants from this area.

Hezbollah fighters took control of the integral hilltop at Tal Ithriya after a series of intense firefights. This has allowed the SAA to concentrate some of their units to the Sheikh Hilal front, where they confronted another ISIS assault on this town located along the Raqqa-Salamiyah highway. In turn, ISIS terrorists pushed north towards the town of Sheikh Hilal. ISIS attacks were fixed near the town of Al-Sa’an. Northeast of al Safira, ISIS attempted to infiltrate into the town of Al-Aziziyah for the second time in 72 hours. The SAA servicemen repelled this attack in a fierce firefight.

Despite the pro-government forces’ efforts, the Khanasser-Ithriyah highway is still closed due to the ISIS presence. If it still remains closed, the Syrian Government will have to rely on airdrops in order to resupply their forces in Aleppo.

According to Oil Ministry spokesman Assem Jihad, the Iraqi authorities have liberated almost all oilfields captured by ISIS in the country.

The army and security forces managed to drive ISIS out of the Saladin province. Thus, terrorist groups are controlling only a small amount of developed oilfields in the Nineveh province. He added ISIS was unable to develop oilfields in the Nineveh province as it required technical experience. ISIS has been reliant on funds raised from selling crude originating in Iraq and Syria. Last year, they captured the country’s largest oil refinery in Baiji. The Iraqi military reportedly retook the facility earlier in October.

Longstanding Israeli policy calls for inflicting maximum pain and suffering on the entire Palestinian population – collective punishment, making conditions unbearable, a shocking indictment of a vicious Arab-hating state, waging war against defenseless people.

Since October 1, deaths and injuries increased daily. According to the PA Health Ministry, the toll through Thursday includes:

• 68 Palestinians murdered in cold blood, including 13 children;

• 921 injured from live fire, another 855 from rubber or plastic coated steel bullets at times lethal;

• 208 suffering fractures and other injuries from assaults and beatings;

• 14 burned from tear gas and concussion grenades; and

• well over 5,000 harmed by toxic tear gas inhalation.

On Thursday, Israeli forces stormed Palestine’s Al-Makassed Hospital for the third time this week – this time using tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets inside the premises, turning a medical facility into a war zone.

Dozens of patients and medical staff were injured. Witnesses said soldiers fired “indiscriminately” inside the hospital compound. Director Rafis al-Hussieni said undercover Israeli forces rampaged throughout the facility – insulting patients and staff before demanding medical records.

He refused, saying “(i)t is not our job to give any information about anyone who comes to hospital or to take any personal information. Our job is only to help them and provide them with medical treatment.”

Many times Palestinians are treated for injuries without collecting information on them or creating files.

Al-Husseini expressed outrage, adding “(t)he hospital has become desecrated by Israeli troops. Israeli violations against the Palestinian hospital are against the law, and…we cannot find anyone to protect the hospital, the patients, and the staff.”

On Friday, an Israeli jeep struck a Palestinian youth. Soldiers were prevented from reaching him. Journalists attempting to film areas violence were assaulted. Israel wants its high crimes concealed.

It continues blaming Palestinians unjustly. More draconian measures are being imposed, certain to increase violence, not curb it, why action is being taken.

Palestinian males aged 15 – 25 are being targeted, their movements more greatly restricted, forced to endure more intrusive security checks – measures designed to intimidate and terrorize, escalate resistance so Israeli forces can strike back harder.

Israel claims it’s instituting tougher measures because of many stabbing attacks. Since October 1, eight Israelis died, only two from stabbings. Sweeping accusations of knife wielding Palestinians are willful Big Lies, made to justify daily killings and other abuses.

More ruthless draconian measures imposed on Palestinians is part of longstanding Israeli apartheid policies, separating Jews from Arabs, forced segregation, violently enforced, including with shoot-to-kill orders.

Israeli media reported Netanyahu may establish a special court for security issues, perhaps a military one – handling arbitrary revocations of citizenship, illegal administrative detentions, punitive home demolitions, and anything Israeli officials call “terrorism.”

His scheme, if implemented, is about persecuting Palestinians more viciously than already – longstanding police state practice – brutalizing people for political reasons, fabricating charges, wrongfully imprisoning targeted individuals.

On Friday, Maan News reported Israel’s Jerusalem District Court indicted 13-year-old Palestinian Ahmad Manasra with attempted murder for an alleged stabbing incident.

He was seriously injured at the scene of the alleged crime, kicked and beaten, run over by a car, no charges filed against his assailants.

A video showing him lying injured and bloody on the ground went viral online. An Israeli is heard shouting: “Die, son of a whore! Die!” Another Israeli is heard telling a soldier to shoot Ahmad.

It’s unclear what, if anything, he did. At a hearing, lawyers representing him, Tareq Barghout and Lea Tsemel, said he had a knife but stabbed no one. When arrested, he told investigators he “didn’t stab anyone because I don’t like blood.”

While hospitalized, Barghout said he’s been treated badly. Israeli security guarding him threatened to kill him. They constantly yell at him.

Treatment of Palestinians is notoriously harsh, guilt by accusation assured. Military courts afford no justice. Ahmad could be imprisoned for years, once tried and convicted when he turns 14 in January.

He’ll be held at a closed facility until prosecuted. The Convention on the Rights of the Child defines childhood as anyone under age 18.

So do UN Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty. Israel willfully breaches all international laws, treating children like adults, brutally and inhumanely, including imprisoning them unjustly.

Israeli initiated violence continues raging throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Soldiers stormed the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem.

Residents were threatened over a loud speaker, one soldier yelling in Arabic: “We will gas you all until you die.”

Customer outrage got Walmart to pull its Israeli soldier kids costume and Sheik Fagin Nose, being sold for Halloween.

Author Max Blumenthal tweeted “Walmart is promoting occupation and the killing of innocent children this Halloween” – along with a photo of a Palestinian child receiving emergency medical care.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (AAADC) blasted Walmart, calling the costumes “offensive and racist,” saying “(s)uch…symbol(s) of fear and violence…should not be used for entertainment purposes.”

Anything for a buck in America – no matter how outrageous.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

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

During the last days a large attack on the Syrian government supply line to Aleppo city was carried out by Jabhat al-Nusra (aka al-Qaeda in Syria) and the Islamic State (ISIS) seemingly in coordination with the U.S. military.

During September the U.S. anti-IS coalition carried out an average of 4.2 airstrikes on IS in predominately east Syria. This after an average of 6.8 per day in August. The rate in October was about the same as in September until Thursday October 22. Then, according to the U.S. Military Times, the strike rate decreased markedly:

~4 strikes per day up to Oct 20
4 – Oct 20 Tuesday
8 – Oct 21 Wednesday
1 – Oct 22 Thursday
0 – Oct 23 Friday
0 – Oct 24 Saturday
0 – Oct 26 Sunday
1 – Oct 27 Monday
0 – Oct 28 Tuesday
0 – Oct 29 Wednesday

The Islamic State used the lull in airstrikes in east Syria to move hundreds of fighters and heavy equipment towards the supply line that connects Damascus with the government held areas (green) of Aleppo.

bigger

After two days of no U.S. airstrikes in east Syria the Islamic State (purple) attacked the government supply corridor from the east while at the same time and at the same main point Jabhat al-Nusra (orange) attacked the supply corridor from the west. The attacks started with suicide car bombs against Syrian army checkpoints which suddenly had to defend themselves to the front and the rear.

On Saturday October 24 Almasdar news reported:

For the first time in three months, the Syrian Arab Army’s (SAA) main supply route along the Khanasser Highway was closed due to an obstruction by the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS); this chaotic situation forced the pro-government forces to call on hundreds of reinforcements from the Aleppo Governorate to help push back the encroaching terrorists.Initially, the Syrian Armed Forces were successful in repelling both ISIS and the Syrian Al-Qaeda group “Jabhat Al-Nusra” after they attacked from different axes in the Hama Governorate; however, ISIS regrouped near the Al-Raqqa Governorate border in order to launch another massive assault on the Khanasser Highway.

ISIS’ second assault on the Syrian Armed Forces’ defensive positions proved successful, as they cutoff the Khanasser Highway and pushed further west towards the strategic city of Ithriyah in east Hama.

The Islamic State fighters killed about a dozen government troops and captured several armed vehicles (gruesome photos here).

The Syrian army send reinforcements from the Palestinian resistance militia Liwaa Al-Quds to help clear the road. This was only somewhat successful as bad weather and a sandstrom on the 25th prevented air support.

The operations room in Damascus was not too unhappy with the situation even though the road was still cut. The thought was that having IS and Nusra fighters concentrated in an otherwise wide open rural area would help to eliminate them. On the 26th and 27the Russian and Syrian air forces flew some 90 attacks within 24 hours against the enemy held parts of the road.

These attacks cleared the IS held parts of the road but the Islamic State concentrated more forces on another part of the road further north and on October 27 it suicide-bombed another government checkpoint and again blocked the road. Additional support from Hizbullah arrived during the next days and the road is now mostly cleared though still endangered.

The closed supply route led to hardship for the nearly two million people in the government held parts of Aleppo as prices for produce and gasoline exploded.

The operations room in Damascus where Syria, Iran, Russia and Hizbullah coordinate the intelligence and operations in Syria suspects that the attack on the supply corridor was coordinated at a higher level than just between Nusra and the Islamic State.

The total cessation of U.S. air attacks on east Syria allowed the Islamic State to move hundreds of fighters and heavy equipment like tanks and cannons from its stronghold in Raqqa city to the west of Syria. At the same time Jabhat al-Nusra brought hundreds of fighters from other fronts south-eastward for its part of the attack. It is difficult to believe that these were just unrelated coincidences.

The NATO war machine is now engaged in its biggest military exercises since the end of the Cold War. Exercise Trident Juncture began on September 28 and continues through to November 6 with exercises taking place in all NATO countries but with major field operations taking place in Portugal, Spain and Italy. The exercises, involving 35,000 personnel, over 200 aircraft and 50 warships is taking place as the confrontation between the United States of American and its dependencies in the NATO war alliance on the one hand and Russia and its allies on the other continues to develop in a very alarming way on two fronts, Syria and Ukraine.

The NATO media centre states that the exercise is based on a “fictitious training scenario” termed SOROTAN, developed by the Joint Warfare Centre in Norway and is commanded by German Army Major General Reinhard Wolski, commander of the Centre. They state that the objective is to “assess NATO’s ability to meet projected operational challenges through 2020. What these “projected operational challenges” are, is not stated but we can read the text and subtext of the battle scenario they are using and come to a definite conclusion. That scenario consists of “rising political instability, ethnic tension, and persisting socio-economic challenges in a certain country that are climaxed by a blatant invasion of one state’s territory by another and results in a UN mandated NATO-led response…in a region far from NATO’s home territory” a region they call Cerasia.

The fact that OTAN in French and backwards in English means NATO and that SOR becomes ROS, close to RUS, strongly indicates, along with the exercise scenario, that this exercise is aimed at Russia and the real setting is meant to be Ukraine.

A few weeks ago an American general stated that NATO can expect Russian “hybrid warfare” operations to take place in the Baltic, and that this was “inevitable.” Since Russia has no motive or interest to conduct such actions this means that we can expect false flag operations by NATO in the Baltic, including violent street demonstrations, destabilization, propaganda and terrorism all of which will be presented as operations conducted by Russia. We can expect similar actions in eastern Ukraine, which best fits the scenario being used in Trident Juncture.

Since these exercises are not defensive in nature but openly aggressive, as were a series of other NATO exercises conducted in Europe all spring and summer of this year, these exercises must be condemned by all the peoples of the world.

The UN Charter, Chapter VI, Article 33 states that,

“The parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice. The Security Council shall, when it deems necessary, call upon the parties to settle their dispute by such means.”

Article 39 states that,

“The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security.”

There can be no other conclusion but that Trident Juncture is a preparation for aggressive war and is therefore a threat to the peace, a breach of the peace and constitutes an act of aggression. Therefore, the non-NATO members of the Security Council have every right to bring this to the attention of the Security Council and the people of the world and demand that these war preparations be stopped.

The exercises are even a breach of the NATO treaty, Article I of which states that,

“The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.”

Article 3 states that NATO can only act when its member states suffer an armed attack. But in the Trident Juncture scenario there is no armed attack on a NATO country and therefore under the NATO Treaty NATO cannot act.

Further, Article 7 States that,

“This Treaty does not affect, and shall not be interpreted as affecting in any way the rights and obligations under the Charter of the Parties which are members of the United Nations, or the primary responsibility of the Security Council for the maintenance of international peace and security.”

NATO Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow said in relation to Trident Juncture that NATO is concerned about “Russia’s military build-up” from Kaliningrad through the Black Sea, Crimea, to Syria and Turkey.” In other words the NATO overlords are concerned that their aggressive moves in Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere, all directed ultimately at Russia, are being met with resistance and this the western military mafia cannot tolerate.

Just a few days after the Trident Juncture exercise began Russian planes began hitting ISIL targets in Syria. On October 7th the NATO mafia were completely surprised by the cruise missile strike launched from the Caspian Sea. A few days later the US aircraft carrier USS Roosevelt, which was supporting the claimed US air strikes on ISIL targets in Syria, left the Persian Gulf, claiming on its website that is mission was over and was a success. A poor cover story but for the first time in a long time, the movement of the Roosevelt out of range of Russian cruise missiles meant there was no American carrier task force stationed in the Gulf. No doubt the Joint Warfare Centre did not take this new scenario into account when planning this massive exercise and we can only hope it upset their plans.

Bur what does all this mean for the rest of us? It means escalating anxiety, fear, and insecurity and we seem helpless to do anything about it. But there is a ray of hope and it is coming from Italy. Finally, the moribund anti-war movement seems to be coming to life, and in a significant way.

On Saturday October 24th an anti-NATO demonstration was held in Naples organized by the “NO TO NATO” Movement in Italy comprised of dozens of Italian citizens, citizen groups, musicians, writers, artists, civil society groups, the Communist Party, and other communist formations, various anti-fascist committees, women’s organizations and anti-imperialist formations and intellectuals. Another anti-NATO demonstration follows on Monday October 26 in Rome.

I quote here the letter of Andros Kyprianou of the Progressive Party of Working People (AKEL) in Cyprus, to the No To NATO Committee, as I could not say it better,

“Dear friends,

I salute today’s initiative undertaken by the “No Guerra,” No NATO” Committee which is taking place at the same time as the NATO exercise “Trident Juncture” is underway. The holding of this huge exercise in essence is a provocative show of strength and an attempt to intimidate the Russian Federation and the rest of the world.

This represents another step towards the militarization of Europe. NATO is the driving force that is pushing for the continuous militarization of the world and international relations. Indeed, at the same time as the peoples in Europe are suffering from the economic crisis and the implementation of austerity policies, NATO is demanding from its members that they increase their military expenditure and armaments.

It is obvious that NATO’s aggressiveness has intensified dramatically, with incalculable dangers for peace and security, particularly in Europe and the Middle East. It is for this reason that this initiative in Rome is particularly important. ….. It is our firm belief that the peace-loving, anti-war movements must mobilize European societies so that a wall of resistance is built to NATO aggression and that this military alliance will eventually be dissolved once and for all.”

I wish to add my voice to his call for the support of the No To NATO Movement by the citizens of every NATO country, not just in Europe, but in Canada, the United States, and by the citizens of every country, everywhere, who will be the victims of any world war that results from NATO’s continued aggression against the peoples of the world.

Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto, he is a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada and he is known for a number of high-profile cases involving human rights and war crimes, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Political repression and violence are allegedly incompatible with Western liberal democratic values. Respect for human rights, freedom of expression, and protection of the rights of minorities are all purportedly the hallmarks of “free societies,” the goals toward which all nations should be striving. And yet, such standards of freedom and democracy are only selectively applied, and only when beneficial to the Western (US-UK-EU-NATO) agenda.

Western media and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are quick to highlight abuses, both real and imagined, in countries where it is politically useful to do so, such as in North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, Russia, and China. However, when it comes to the US-EU project in Ukraine, magically the liberal democratic values and human rights are no longer of central importance. Indeed, were one to read the Western media coverage of Ukraine, not only is political repression and violence not concerning, it’s downright funny.

The Real Story

An article published in the exalted liberal pages of Britain’s The Guardian ran with the headline The force awakens (in Ukraine): Darth Vader statue replaces Lenin monument (23 October 2015). The story highlighted the transformation of a statue of Lenin in the city of Odessa, into the Star Wars villain Darth Vader by Ukrainian artist Alexander Milov. The lighthearted tone of the piece, with tongue-in-cheek references to “the Force” (a Star Wars plot point) of the WiFi being radiated from the statue’s head belies the seriousness of the issue – the intimidation and violent repression of political forces in the ‘New Ukraine’ – which the author conveniently downplays.

The story makes only passing mention of the “decommunization laws” – conspicuously referenced in parentheses with a hyperlink, as if they were an afterthought – under which this statue has now legally been defaced and destroyed. In fact, the “controversial decommunization laws” were not merely an attempt to erase the symbols of Soviet history, but part of a broader process of political repression that has included violence, kidnappings, and death. In fact, the appropriation of the Lenin statue is merely an outgrowth of the repeated attacks upon the Communist Party and its grassroots organizers all throughout Ukraine, as the pro-fascist government and police systematically attacked, and ultimately dissolved the entire Party which had been traditionally one of the most popular in the country.

In a grossly dishonest bit of writing, the author of the article noted that, “Darth Lenin is in a factory in the Black Sea port city, which has been the location of clashes between separatist and pro-Ukraine forces, and recently saw pro-western former Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashvili installed as governor of the region.” Note the twin distortions embedded in the excerpt.

First, describing the infamous May 2, 2014 massacre of leftist activists at the Trade Unions House in Odessa (which left at least 43 dead and remains the single most heinous act of repression since the war began) as “clashes,” is yet another attempt towhitewash the pogrom. Such language seeks to both obscure the fact that the fascists presented to western audiences as “nationalists” and “patriots” were little more than Nazi thugs, and to present the illusion of equivalence between the two sides. This was no clash, it was a one-sided slaughter. But by continuing to present the incident as “clashes,” The Guardian merely upholds the political and editorial line of the Western political establishment which desperately tries to justify its continued support for the oligarch-fascist government in Kiev.

Secondly, the author completely distorts the undemocratic, dare I say fascist, nature of the appointment of Mikheil Saakashvili as governor of Odessa. One sees here Saakashvili described as “pro-western” because, as The Guardian understands perfectly well, in the context of Ukraine and Russia, the term “pro-western” is supposed to be synonymous with goodness and justice, while “pro-Russian” is evil and sin; Russophobia is still deeply embedded in the collective psyche of Westerners.

Of course, the author fails to mention that Saakashvili is a fugitive from justice, having fled Georgia rather than face charges ofcorruption and human rights violations stemming from his brutal crackdown on political protesters while he was president. Unsurprisingly, there is no mention of the fact that Saakashvili, close friend and ally of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, David Petraeus, John McCain and the entire neocon establishment, is directly responsible for egregious war crimes in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, namely unprovoked aggression which sparked the 2008 Russia-Georgia war.

Indeed, The Guardian itself reported back in 2009 on the EU-commissioned report into that war:

An investigation into last year’s Russia-Georgia war delivered a damning indictment of President Mikheil Saakashvili today, accusing Tbilisi of launching an indiscriminate artillery barrage on the city of Tskhinvali that started the war… the conclusions will discomfit the western-backed Georgian leader, Saakashvili, who was found to have started the war with the attack on Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, on the night of 7 August last year, through a “penchant for acting in the heat of the moment”…The war started “with a massive Georgian artillery attack”, the report said, citing an order from Saakashvili that the offensive was aimed at halting Russian military units moving into South Ossetia…Flatly dismissing Saakashvili’s version, the report said: “There was no ongoing armed attack by Russia before the start of the Georgian operation … Georgian claims of a large-scale presence of Russian armed forces in South Ossetia prior to the Georgian offensive could not be substantiated … It could also not be verified that Russia was on the verge of such a major attack.”

So, it should not be a secret to anyone, least of all the staff at The Guardian, that Saakshvili is a war criminal who has simply not yet been convicted of his crimes. And yet, The Guardian thought it not worth commenting on, instead choosing to simply note that he is the “pro-western former Georgian leader.” Imagine referring to Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, guilty of having committed countless crimes including crimes against humanity, simply as the “pro-American former Chilean leader,” or Somoza as the “pro-American former Nicaraguan president.” It would be considered dishonest at best, downright contemptible at worst. And yet that is precisely how The Guardian presents Saakashvili, a man who is not even Ukrainian.

The only hint of criticism in the sentence is an implication, using the word “installed” to describe how Saakashvili came to power in Odessa. However, such an implication certainly does not do justice to the reality of the situation, one in which non-Ukrainians loyal to Washington and NATO are installed alongside Ukrainian quislings to do the bidding of the Kiev regime’s sponsors in the US and Europe.

And it is just such examples of deliberate obscurantism over Ukraine that has to a large extent discredited many Western media outlets when it comes to the continuing conflict in the country.

Odessa and the Real Dark Side of the Force

A serious journalist writing about Odessa, and using the metaphors of “Darth Lenin” and Star Wars might have explored the truly sinister forces at work in Ukraine’s all-important port city. A hotbed of political activism and site of the infamous May 2nd massacre, Odessa has been the scene of some of the worst, but by no means exceptional, political repression. Activists, journalists and bloggers have been deliberately targeted for physical attacks, kidnapping, and arbitrary imprisonment, all under the watchful eye of the allegedly ‘democratic’ government in Kiev, backed by the US-NATO powers.

In late 2014 and early 2015, editors at the important anti-Kiev website infocenter-odessa.com were intimidated and arrested for various so-called ‘crimes,’ including being in possession of video evidence of illegal shelling by Ukrainian military, and of a list of names of political prisoners held without trial in Odessa. One would think that Western journalists, in the interests of their Ukrainian colleagues, and in defense of the Geneva conventions protections for journalists, would perhaps consider such information worthy of publication. Alas, not.

Aside from journalists, a large number of activists have been detained, kidnapped, and/or tortured by Ukrainian authorities and their fascist goons. Key members of the Borotba (Struggle) leftist organization have been repeatedly harassed, arrested, and beaten by the police. So too have been communist activists and party members such as Pavel Shishman and Nikolai Popov, among many others. These courageous men and women are the real victims of the “decommunization” laws and, unlike the Lenin statue, their persecution and repression cannot be trivialized as a mere humorous footnote.

Aside from these shameful attacks on leftist formations, multicultural institutions in Odessa have also been repressed under the pretext of “Russian separatism.” A multiethnic, multi-nationality organization known as the Popular Rada of Bessarabia (PRB) was founded in early April 2015 in order to push for regional autonomy and/or ethnic autonomy in response to the legal and extralegal attacks on minorities by the Kiev authorities. It was reported that within 24 hours of the founding congress, Ukraine’s SBU (security services) had detained the core leaders of the organization. Within two weeks 30 more PRB activists were arrested, including founding member Vera Shevchenko. Perhaps such egregious political repression should have found its way into the pages of The Guardian? Alas, no.

It is plainly obvious that The Guardian, like all Western corporate media, intends to continue to distort the true nature of the situation in Odessa, and in Ukraine generally. Of course, the argument in this case could be that the article simply was covering a kitschy pop culture story, rather than a deeply political issue. But such a response is pure deflection. Everything in Ukraine is political in this time of civil war and instability. And to gloss over the repression and violence is to tacitly approve of it.

Naturally, this is simply par for the course for Western media, be it of the liberal or conservative variety. But, increasingly each day, these outlets are discrediting themselves by showing just how hypocritical they are. They’ll run a light-hearted story about a Lenin statue, but make no mention of the murder of journalists, or of the Nazi rallies in support of the murderers in the very same city.

This is shameful. This is embarrassing. This is Western propaganda at its finest.

Eric Draitser is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City, he is the founder of StopImperialism.org and OP-ed columnist for RT, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.