Global Research

A meeting between Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabia’s Defence Minister Prince Mohammed bin Salman (son of King Salman) ended on early Monday, October 12th. Agence France-Presse headlined “Vladimir Putin Meets Saudi Prince on ‘Political Solution’ in Syria,” and reported that, whereas the son of the Sunni fundamentalist Saudi King says that his father still insists on removing the Shiite secularist leader Bashar al-Assad from power in Syria and on ending Syria’s alliance with Shiite Iran, Prince Salman said that the Saudi King is “in favour of a political solution in Syria.” Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was more forward in his statement about the meeting. He said: “The two parties confirmed that Saudi Arabia and Russia have similar objectives when it comes to Syria. Above all, it is to not let a terrorist caliphate take over the country.”

Nothing was quoted from the Saudi side about any such opposition to ‘a terrorist caliphate,’ however; the Sauds have been the chief financial backers of Islamic jihad. (And here is what their followers in Syria are actually like.) However, the fact that the Saudi King sent his son to Russia to negotiate with Putin about Syria is yet another indication that the key player in settling the Syrian civil war is now Putin, not at all U.S. President Barack Obama.

The highly reliable German news-source, Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten (DWN), headlined on October 11th (translated here as) “Russia and Iran Assume Leadership Role in Iraq, without the U.S.,” and reported that Russia has, upon the request of the Iraqi government, already gone beyond its anti-jihadist operation in Syria, and has “extended the fight against terrorism into Iraq, with the express permission of the Iraqi government.” DWN goes on to say, “In early October, the Iraqi government gave a free hand to Russia to extend the attacks against ISIS into Iraqi territory. One of the conditions for this was prior coordination of the air strikes with Iraq’s government.”

That is the same arrangement Russia has had, since the end of September, with the Syrian government. And, so, a Joint Intelligence Coordination Center (JICC) was established by Russia in Baghdad. This was announced on September 29th, when Reuters reported that, “Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said … an information center was being established in Baghdad to share information between Russia, Iran, Iraq and Syria. Russia has also agreed a separate such mechanism with Israel.”

Israel too is therefore also recognizing the handwriting on the wall, the switch from the U.S. to Russia, and is doing what it must to defeat ISIS; it’s joining behind Russia’s leadership in the effort. However, because of Israel’s hostile relationships with the other non-Russian members of the JICC, Russia has agreed to wall-off, or separate entirely, Israel’s Russian alliance, from the other nations’ Russian alliance. Russia is in a position to do this, because Russia, with its space-satellites and its other global intelligence-gathering assets, is at the hub-position on this entire intelligence gathering wheel about Syria. All of the other nations that are participating trust Vladimir Putin’s intelligence operation, to keep each participant’s shared interests in defeating jihadists, separated from all other issues within the Russian alliance. The alliance with Russia will thus not affect their respective unrelated security-interests. This is in Russia’s interests, because it maximally empowers Russia to crush the Saudis’ international jihadist operation, an operation that started when the U.S. and its long-time ally the Saud family, were joined together by Zbigniew Brzezinski of the U.S. Jimmy Carter Administration, to crush the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, by funding, training, and arming, “mujahideen” or fundamentalist Wahhabist Sunni (that is, Saudi) fighters to go there to kill supporters of the pro-Soviet government and other secular or non-Sunni influences there. The Sauds’ main competitor in the international oil-markets has been the leading former Soviet country, Russia.

The U.S.-Saudi alliance began in earnest in 1945, when the U.S.-U.S.S.R. Cold War was just starting; and it has continued after the U.S.S.R.’s breakup, because Western oil companies and Sunni Arabic aristocrats (led by the Sauds, who had granted the Rockefellers’ oil companies the exploration-rights there) wanted the Cold War to continue even after Soviet Communism and the Soviet Union ended. This conflict is also a Western war against Shiite-majority nations, because the Sauds’ imperial ambitions are specifically jihad for a restoration of the Sunni Caliphpate but on a global level; and this is specifically the Saudi Wahhabist Salafist, the most aggressively fundamentalist, form of Sunni Islam. For examples: Al Qaeda, ISIS, and the Taliban, are all Wahhabist Salafist Muslims, and all have been funded mainly by Saudi royals.

The U.S. had started, in 1979, late in Jimmy Carter’s Administration, to arm the Saudi ‘mujahideen’ fighters who then were coming into Afghanistan to overthrow the pro-Soviet government there, so as to lure the Soviets into invading Afghanistan. “I wrote to President Carter, essentially: ‘We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war’,” Carter’s National Security Adviser, David Rockefeller’s protégée (and co-Founder along with Rockefeller, of the Trilateral Commission) Brzezinski, said in a 1998 interview. After Brzezinski had succeeded at that, and the Soviet Union and its communism ended, Brzezinski has continued to advise American Presidents on what he sees as constituting the need now, to defeat Russia — a ‘need’ that U.S. President Barack Obama has strongly endorsed, such as by officially designating Russia as being by far the most “aggressive” nation of all. (Lots more ‘aggressive,’ for example, than the U.S.)

DWN continues: “Sources close to the Iraqi armed forces leadership give the current mood in the Iraqi security forces: The Russian air strikes against ISIS produced in the first week alone, more success than those of the US-led alliance in the entire last year. The establishment of a joint [Iraqi-Syrian-Iranian-Russian] intelligence-gathering center in Baghdad [the Joint Intelligence Coordination Center, or ‘JICC’] is therefore an expression of disappointed Iraqi expectations regarding the United States. … So, the US has announced that it will restrict the exchange of information with Iraq’s security forces.”

In other words: Iraq is, in a sense, switching from the U.S. side to the Russian side, in America’s resumption of its Cold War against the Soviet Union (but this time being waged by America against Russia alone).

On October 10th, Iran’s PressTV bannered, “US pulls aircraft carrier out of Persian Gulf as Russian ships enter,” and reported:

The United States has pulled the USS Theodore Roosevelt – a massive, nuclear-powered aircraft carrier – out of the Persian Gulf as Russian warships have entered the area.    

For the first time since 2007, the US Navy has now no aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, according to NBC News.

The warship was withdrawn from the Persian Gulf on Thursday, a day after Russia fired 26 long-range cruise missiles from its Caspian Flotilla against terrorists in Syria, Pentagon officials said. 

US military officials claimed that the aircraft carrier, which houses about 5,000 sailors and 65 fighter jets, was withdrawn because it needed to undergo maintenance.

On October 3rd, I had headlined “The Western Alliance Is Crumbling,” and explained how the Obama Administration’s bombing campaigns in 2011 in pro-Russian Libya, and in 2013 in pro-Russian Syria, had created so many refugees now pouring into Europe, that it has ended up precipitating the end of the American Century, and the start of the end of the American empire, which had been rationalized until the breakup of the Soviet Union and the end of communism there, as having been instead an ideological conflict, but now is clearly exposed as having been and as still being actually an attempt to extend the American Empire (the “Western Alliance,” The Atlantic Council, NATO, CENTCOM), not only up to Russia’s borders, but into Russia itself, the juiciest natural-resources prize of all.

Obama therefore won’t likely now be able to deliver, to his financial backers, Russia and its resources, such as he had been hoping to achieve in his second term — to start privatizing Russia’s oil and other natural resources to America’s aristocrats.

Perhaps his Barack Obama Presidential Center won’t be quite as palatial as he has been hoping. Perhaps far fewer people will have to die now in order to get it up and running. Perhaps the U.S. and Saudi aristocracies won’t go to nuclear war against Russia, after all. Perhaps NATO, which should have ended when the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact did, in 1991, will now soon end.

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.

They are overwhelmingly white, rich, older and male, in a nation that is being remade by the young, by women, and by black and brown voters. Across a sprawling country, they reside in an archipelago of wealth, exclusive neighborhoods dotting a handful of cities and towns. And in an economy that has minted billionaires in a dizzying array of industries, most made their fortunes in just two: finance and energy.

Now they are deploying their vast wealth in the political arena, providing almost half of all the seed money raised to support Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. Just 158 families, along with companies they own or control, contributed $176 million in the first phase of the campaign, a New York Times investigation found. Not since before Watergate have so few people and businesses provided so much early money in a campaign, most of it through channels legalized by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision five years ago.

These donors’ fortunes reflect the shifting composition of the country’s economic elite. Relatively few work in the traditional ranks of corporate America, or hail from dynasties of inherited wealth. Most built their own businesses, parlaying talent and an appetite for risk into huge wealth: They founded hedge funds in New York, bought up undervalued oil leases in Texas, made blockbusters in Hollywood. More than a dozen of the elite donors were born outside the United States, immigrating from countries like Cuba, the old Soviet Union, Pakistan, India and Israel.

But regardless of industry, the families investing the most in presidential politics overwhelmingly lean right, contributing tens of millions of dollars to support Republican candidates who have pledged to pare regulations; cut taxes on income, capital gains and inheritances; and shrink entitlement programs. While such measures would help protect their own wealth, the donors describe their embrace of them more broadly, as the surest means of promoting economic growth and preserving a system that would allow others to prosper, too.

Mostly Backing Republicans

“It’s a lot of families around the country who are self-made who feel like over-regulation puts these burdens on smaller companies,” said Doug Deason, a Dallas investor whose family put $5 million behind Gov. Rick Perry of Texas and now, after Mr. Perry’s exit, is being courted by many of the remaining candidates. “They’ve done well. They want to see other people do well.”

In marshaling their financial resources chiefly behind Republican candidates, the donors are also serving as a kind of financial check on demographic forces that have been nudging the electorate toward support for the Democratic Party and its economic policies. Two-thirds of Americans support higher taxes on those earning $1 million or more a year, according to a June New York Times/CBS News poll, while six in 10 favor more government intervention to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor. According to the Pew Research Center, nearly seven in 10 favor preserving Social Security and Medicare benefits as they are.

Republican candidates have struggled to improve their standing with Hispanic voters, women and African-Americans. But as the campaign unfolds, Republicans are far outpacing Democrats in exploiting the world of “super PACs,” which, unlike candidates’ own campaigns, can raise unlimited sums from any donor, and which have so far amassed the bulk of the money in the election.

The 158 families each contributed $250,000 or more in the campaign through June 30, according to the most recent available Federal Election Commission filings and other data, while an additional 200 families gave more than $100,000. Together, the two groups contributed well over half the money in the presidential election — the vast majority of it supporting Republicans.

“The campaign finance system is now a countervailing force to the way the actual voters of the country are evolving and the policies they want,” said Ruy Teixeira, a political and demographic expert at the left-leaning Center for American Progress.

Like most of the ultrawealthy, the new donor elite is deeply private. Very few of those contacted were willing to speak about their contributions or their political views. Many donations were made from business addresses or post office boxes, or wound through limited liability corporations or trusts, exploiting the new avenues opened up by Citizens United, which gave corporate entities far more leeway to spend money on behalf of candidates. Some contributors, for reasons of privacy or tax planning, are not listed as the owners of the homes where they live, further obscuring the family and social ties that bind them.

But interviews and a review of hundreds of public documents — voter registrations, business records, F.E.C. data and more — reveal a class apart, distant from much of America while geographically, socially and economically intermingling among themselves. Nearly all the neighborhoods where they live would fit within the city limits of New Orleans. But minorities make up less than one-fifth of those neighborhoods’ collective population, and virtually no one is black. Their residents make four and a half times the salary of the average American, and are twice as likely to be college educated.

Most of the families are clustered around just nine cities. Many are neighbors, living near one another in neighborhoods like Bel Air and Brentwood in Los Angeles; River Oaks, a Houston community popular with energy executives; or Indian Creek Village, a private island near Miami that has a private security force and just 35 homes lining an 18-hole golf course.

Sometimes, across party lines, they are patrons of the same symphonies, art museums or at-risk youth programs. They are business partners, in-laws and, on occasion, even poker buddies.

No matter how you boil it down, the script is as sad as it is predictable. Once again international powers are using a conflict in a strategically located country to advance their own agendas and enrich their military contractors at the expense of the ordinary Yemeni.

It seems one of the riskiest things you can do in Yemen these days is get married. This past Wednesday two Saudi airstrikes on a wedding in Dhamar province, 50 miles south of the capital, Sanaa, killed between 23 and 30 people (depending on the report).

This just one week after Saudi airstrikes targeted a wedding party in Taiz province, killing 131. That strike was the deadliest single incident since the start of Saudi airstrikes against Yemen’s Houthi-led rebels in March.

But as horrifying as the civilian death toll numbers are — with the UN estimating 5000 civilian deaths since fighting began earlier this year, including 500 children — these numbers are only the most visible symptom of a much deeper problem. Many of the 131 civilians that died at the wedding in Taiz last week, died, according to Hassan Boucenine of Doctors Without Borders, “because the Mokha hospital is closed because of supply — no drugs, no fuel, no electricity, no nothing, so the staff left.” Instead, the injured had to be transported to Hodeida province in trucks typically used for transporting livestock, with many dying en route.

This problem is not isolated to Taiz. Across the country, more than 1.4 million people have had to flee their home due to the fighting and up to 10 million Yemeni children are at risk of death from preventable diseases due to lack of basic medical care.

Despite this unfolding disaster, the war in Yemen has been met with virtual silence in the west. Coverage of the latest deadly incidents are consigned to isolated, context-free reports and are generally confined to the back pages of the newspaper and the “world in brief” newsflashes on TV network news.

Amidst this deafening silence, at least a short form summary of the conflict is necessary for many in the west who have never had the story properly explained to them.

From the formation of modern-day Yemen in 1990 until the so-called “Arab Spring” of 2011, the country was formally ruled by Ali Abdullah Saleh, a Colonel in the North Yemeni Armed Forces who became president of the predecessor Yemen Arab Republic (the former North Yemen) in 1978. Informally, the actual running of the country came to settle on three men: Saleh; Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, an influential army general who helped set up the Islamist “Islah Party” with Saudi support; and Abdullah ibn Husayn al-Ahmar, the head Sheikh of the Hahsid tribal federation and main bagman for Saudi patronage payments to the Yemeni tribes.

The system they created was inherently corrupt, relying on patronage payments and a divvying up of the country’s economic benefits, but it remained relatively stable until the early 2000s, when Saleh began trying to steer some of the country’s lucre toward his son. As the delicate balance of power destabilized, factions formed not just within Yemen’s ruling elite, but outside it, too, with (Shiite) Houthi rebels and southern seperatists emerging to vie for power.

By 2011 Yemenis certainly did have a lot to complain about: living in the poorest country in the Middle East, the average Yemeni faced a bleak future with little hope of advancement, perpetual corruption among the ruling class, and Saleh’s new proposal to loosen presidential term limits, presumably so he could become President For Life. This culminated in an uprising that became part of the “Arab Spring” narrative, and like the rest of that narrative, here, too, the genuine rage of the Yemeni people was directed and channeled by key figures with help from foreign powers.

An example of this phenomenon is helpfully highlighted by the Royal Institute for International Affairs in their September 2013 report on the country. They point to the story of Atiaf al-Wazir, whom they refer to as “One of the voices of the uprising,” who just happened to be an ordinary, everyday Yemeni protester…who was flown to London by the British Government just before the uprising began to speak at a conference on online activism alongside co-speakers like Hillary Clinton and Carl Bildt. There she was given a tour of the ongoing Occupy London encampment and sent back to Yemen to tweet the play-by-play of the social media Twitter revolution “Day of Rage” as @WomanFromYemen for a foreign, English-speaking audience. Oh, and she worked for several years as a “Program Officer” for the National Endowment for Democracy. Yes, that National Endowment for Democracy.

Whatever the agenda behind the uprising, the end result was a transfer of power in early 2012 to Saleh’s deputy, Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi. Interestingly, Obama specifically pointed to the Yemeni transition as the “model” for what the US wanted to see happen to Assad in Syria.

But this nice, heart-warming, US State Department-approved Color Revolution-style fairy tale of oppressed-people-spontaneously-rising-up-against-a-dictator-and-appointing-an-American-approved-dictator was not to last. The country continued unraveling, with Houthi rebels, Islah members, and al-CIAda all vying for power. In September 2014 the Houthis attacked and captured Sanaa, forcing Hadi out of power and causing General Ali Mohsen to flee the country. In February of this year Hadi declared a provisional government in Aden, and in March of this year Saudi Arabia began their bombing campaign against Yemen, a country with no air defenses.

Let’s be clear: this conflict, like all conflict between would-be ruling warlord chieftains (aka politicians) does not have a “good” side and a “bad” side so much as two “bad” sides. Arguments over lesser-of-two-evils notwithstanding, one thing is certain: the Saudi bombardments are destroying the infrastructure of the country, displacing millions, and threatening the lives of an entire population. Whatever solution is going to come to this crisis, any rational observer can understand it is not going to come through bombing weddings, disrupting hospitals, ravaging cities and forcing millions to relocate.

The question, of course, is why the Saudis are leading this “coalition” against the Houthis and how they are able to do so.

The first question is best answered with slightly more nuance than the “Iran-Saudi Proxy War” narrative pumped by the mainstream western press. Although there are certainly ties and affinities between the Shiite Houthis and the Shiite Iranian government, and while the Houthis are from the northern area of Yemen on Saudi Arabia’s doorstep and have fought battles in Saudi’s southern Jizan Region, to say that this is simply an extension of Iranian-Saudi rivalry is too simplistic. After all, as Gareth Porter points out, the Houthis main source of arms and military support is not Iran, but deposed ex-dictator Saleh, who was himself armed by (who else?) the US. The west’s desperation to see the Houthis as Iran’s puppets is just another ploy to paint Iran as a dangerous threat to the region.

Instead, as Narwine Sharwani argues, it is more fruitful to consider this conflict as an extension of an overall regional struggle between two power blocs: the Neo-Colonial Axis of US/Israeli/British/France-backed governments and monarchies, and the Resistance Axis of the post-Iranian Revolution anti-imperialists. This power bloc thesis helps explain how forces are shaping up in the Syrian war (with Russia and China teaming up with Iran, Iraq and Syria to tackle the Saudi/Qatar/Turkey/US/Israeli ISIS boogeymen) and the conflict between the Saudis and Houthis in Yemen. Certainly one of the big winners in this bombardment of Yemen is the Saudi-spawned Al-CIAda, which continues to act as the terror boogeyman requiring US military involvement in the region and/or the CFR’s best friend as circumstances require.

Martha Mundy, an anthropologist with extensive experience in Yemen, muses in CounterPunch that the Yemen bombardment is a test run for a new type of conflict to emerge in this competition of the power blocs. In this thesis, the attempt is to run a “Neo-Colonial Axis” led Israeli-style aerial bombardment war without the bad press that followed Tel Aviv’s last bloodbath in Gaza.

If the results so far are anything to go by, they’ve certainly been successful at keeping their blatant war crimes under the table. Just last week the Saudis managed to squash a Dutch attempt for an independent probe into war crimes in the ongoing Yemen conflict and replace it with Saudi Arabia’s own plan. The move is particularly brash for the country that is directly responsible for the ongoing carnage, but was preictably supported by the US, who are the main underwriters of the Saudi bombardment.

No matter how you boil it down, the script is as sad as it is predictable. Once again international powers are using a conflict in a strategically located country to advance their own agendas and enrich their military contractors at the expense of the ordinary Yemeni.

If there is any hint of a ray of hope on the horizon for those beleaguered Yemenis, it’s that the Houthis have reportedly agreed to accept the terms of peace talks with the Saudis. Saudi Arabia, for its part, has yet to respond.

Let’s not hold our breath. The last attempt at a brokered peace agreement ended with the firing of the UN representative overseeing the plan and the cutting out of the Houthis from further talks. The Saudis are still calling the shots in this conflict, and now, as chair of the Orwellian UN Human Rights Council that lent “moral legitimacy” to the destruction of Libya, they are likely content to continue bombing weddings for the foreseeable future.

 A recent US Senate hearing regarding Russia’s ongoing air campaign in Syria plumbed dark depths when it was actually proposed by retired US Army General John M. Keane that “free zones” be established for armed militants, and populated with refugees to deter Russian attacks. In essence, General Keane’s plan is to use refugees as human shields, and leverage any attack on this established “free zone” as a means of manipulating public opinion.

The US Strategy Until Now The recent multinational anti-terror operation led by Russia at the request of the Syrian government has dealt the United States and its narrative regarding its own military intervention in Syria a severe blow.It has become abundantly clear that not only has the United States been arming and funding extremists inside of Syria, including groups operating in tandem with listed terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda’s Al Nusra Front, it also appears that the US has feigned its campaign against the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS/ISIL).While the US now poses as determined to “defeat” ISIS in Syria, just last year talking points circulatedabout instead “containing” the terrorist organization within Syria – essentially letting it ravage the country, degrade the fighting capacity of the Syrian government and hopefully, lead to the collapse of Damascus.

Within the pages of the Brookings Institution – a corporate-financier funded think-tank whose policymakers have helped engineer much of America’s plans now playing out on the global stage – was a report titled, “The Big Questions on ISIS.” It stated:

Should we defeat ISIS? Rather than defeat, containing their activities within failed or near-failing states is the best option for the foreseeable future. The United States has no desire to build nations, and without a stable Middle East, terror groups will continue to find safe haven; if not in western Iraq or Afghanistan, then in Yemen or Somalia. The Middle East and Africa have no shortage of ungoverned or poorly governed territories. The current strategy of prolonged engagement, development and training of local militias, logistic support and air strikes against real targets may be the best solution after all. 

However the instability the US claims ISIS is sustaining itself on was created by the US itself as it attempts to violently overthrow the Syrian government, intentionally dividing and destroying the country in the process. “Containing” ISIS in Syria is not unlike an assassin “containing” a poisonous snake under the covers of their sleeping victim until they are bitten and die.

But as abhorrent as it is to create, unleash, and “contain” a terrorist threat within a targeted nation to ravage it, the US seems ready to stoop lower still.

Using Refugees as Human Shields 

With Russia and its allies setting out to destroy all terrorist groups operating within Syria and making moves to cut them off from their foreign sponsors, the strategy of waging a proxy war as the US has been doing through Al Qaeda, Al Nusra, and ISIS is no longer viable.

At a recent US Senate hearing on Russian strategy and military operations, sitting US Senators, retired generals and representatives from various think-tanks and lobbying groups attempted to produce a response to Russia’s most recent move.

Rather than interpreting Russia’s actions as a welcomed addition to the supposed “War on Terror,” the hearing appeared to interpret the entire Syrian conflict as a mere pawn in a wider proxy war Washington clearly believes it is waging against Moscow. Those attending the hearing admitted to the deterioration of American foreign policy, its global legitimacy and credibility, and the diminishing returns US State Department media operations are having worldwide.

In this context, many of the solutions regarding Syria centered not on how to stop ISIS or restore peace and stability to the country, but rather how to foil Russia’s military operations aimed at terrorist organizations, how to humiliate and turn global public opinion against Moscow.

It was among these discussions that retired US Army General John Keane stated:

If we establish free zones – you know, for moderate opposition forces – but also sanctuaries for refugees, that gets world opinion support rather dramatically. If Putin is going to attack that, then world opinion is definitely against him.  You take this issue right off the table in terms of why he’s in Syria and if you’re doing that [attacking free zones] and contributing to the migration that’s taking place by your aggressive military actions, then world opinion will have some rather – I think – significant impact on him. 

One must wonder – if players among US policy circles believe Syrian refugees are pawns of potential use in turning public opinion against Russia in Syria itself, did they not also see them as pawns that could be used to flood Europe and turn public opinion in favor of waging wider and more direct war on the Syrian government itself?

While ISIS begins repositioning its weapons and fighters in mosques and other heavily populated areas to use human shields to evade Russian airstrikes, a prominent retired US general is suggesting CIA trained terrorists likewise be repositioned within protected “free zones” using refugees as human shields to also evade Russian airstrikes.

It should also be noted that America’s proposed “free zone” is located in precisely ISIS’ last remaining supply corridor leading from Turkey. Should Syrian and Russian forces finally seal off the border, ISIS’ fighting capacity within northern and eastern Syria would quickly collapse.

An abominable proposition echoing through the halls of one of America’s highest institutions, met with either nodding heads or silent approval, portend the next chapter of American intervention in Syria.

A Dangerous Policy Born of Desperation 

Keane’s testimony, provided by the official US Senate’s website (pdf), also includes the following points:

Putin has begun a proxy war with the U.S. when Russian combat aircraft struck, continuously, moderate rebel forces trained by the CIA. This was no accident, targets were provided by the Syrian regime and they were accurate. How can the U.S. stand by and do nothing? U.S. military should have been given the mission to retaliate. Options likely to be considered among others: crater the Al Assad runway, establish free zones that are sanctuaries for refugees, strike Assad’s helicopter fleet that is barrel bombing, just to name a few.

Similar testimony and agreement was also provided by retired US Marine Corps General and former USMC Commandant James Jones, as well as Heather Conley and Stephen Sestanovich representing a milieu of corporate-financier funded policy think-tanks. Their talking points can be heard echoing across the summation of American and European policy circles and in turn, repeated faithfully by the Western media.

Besides American hegemony, what purpose would “cratering” Russia’s airbase in Syria serve? Would that aid in the battle against ISIS? Would it be worth triggering a potential war with Russia to protect militants the entire world has come to understand are in fact terrorists no different or any less dangerous than the ISIS threat itself?

That US policymakers and politicians are not asking themselves these questions before they propose such “solutions” publicly gives the world some insight into the intellectual and moral deterioration taking place within America’s ruling elite itself – which has in turn directly fed the deterioration of American influence, power, and legitimacy globally.

Using refugees as human shields will most likely not turn world opinion against Russia. The practiced liars across the Western media that would be charged with doing the turning, have already entered a terminal crisis of credibility. Instead, General Keane’s suggestions, if taken seriously, will only further compound America’s unraveling global primacy.

For American policymakers, they may want to explore the qualities that actually make a nation great, rather than qualities useful in only creating the illusion of greatness.

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

(Please read previous section before this article)

This section examines how and why the two formerly most stable states in the Mideast (at least according to conventional Western understanding) have become the ones facing the greatest prospects of full-scale destabilization:

The Saudis Are Running Scared

Biting The Russian Hand:

The combined effect of the Coalition of the Righteous’ (COR) successes sends chills down the Saudis’ spine, since they’re watching their regional proxies get wiped out to the benefit of geopolitical rival Iran. The author had earlier tried to analyze the nature of the closed-door Russian-Saudi diplomacy that had been ongoing for most of the year, eventually coming to a conclusion that Moscow was trying to provide Riyadh with a ‘face-saving’ retreat from the Syrian battlefield. The tacit understanding here was that the withdrawn proxy forces could then be redeployed elsewhere, perhaps to Yemen, which is inarguably seen by the Kingdom as its number one security issue at the moment.

The proposal sounded good on paper, but the Saudis attempted to double-deal the Russians by instead contracting Gulf forces to bear the brunt of most of the War on Yemen’s brutal ground campaign, thus allowing them to leave their proxies in Syria as they continued to pursue their regime change ends there. As is now being seen in hindsight, the author’s assessment has been vindicated, since it’s now clear that Russia was indeed giving Saudi Arabia the opportunity to covertly withdraw its associated fighting forces prior to the coming onslaught, which they of course weren’t notified about before in advance. The House of Saud thought it could finagle some type of extra benefit by declining to call its associated armies out of Syria, leading to a major miscalculation that that is seeing the Kingdom’s proxies decimated in the course of a week and its strategic planners in full-blown panic mode.

Sinking In The Sand:

The entire Mideast was aware of the Russian-Saudi discussions, and now that Russia has assembled the COR and is directly fighting terrorism in the region, the Saudi’s proxy forces such as the “Army of Conquest” must now be asking themselves why their patron abandoned them as sitting ducks on the battlefield. It’s not realistically thought that Russia informed the Saudis in any way whatsoever of their coming military campaign, but for the Islamists on the ground being killed by Russian airstrikes, it sure seems like a possibility, and they may be seething with anger against the Saudis for being set up. Already, over 3,000 terrorists have already fled Syria for Jordan, likely en route back to Saudi Arabia, and the Kingdom’s security establishment must surely be aware of the threat this entails. Couple the returning jihadis with the homegrown ISIL terrorists that already struck in the country before, and a cocktail of domestic disaster is being mixed before the Saudis’ own eyes, and their military establishment is too bogged down along the Yemeni border to adequately focus on it. This dire state of affairs could be made even more severe if the Ansarullah are successful enough in their attacks against the ‘Arab NATO’ that some of its Gulf members (especially Qatar and the UAE) pull out, which would then force the Saudis to compensate with their own overstretched forces. Furthermore, their paranoid fantasies of “Iranian-Shia encirclement” are probably kicking into high gear right now, meaning that it can’t be guaranteed that the country will react rationally to any threats that it perceives. In connection with this, a heavy-handed crackdown, whether against suspected terrorists or Shiites, can’t be discounted, and this would obviously add to the country’s domestic destabilization.

From Supreme Power To Second-Rate State:

Approaching the country from an international perspective, it’s evident that Saudi Arabia’s regional influence is waning as the COR’s steps up its anti-terrorist campaign and drives its proxies out of Syria and Iraq. In the near future when ISIL and other terrorists are defeated in these states, the Saudis (if they’re still a unified country) will be forced to accept a second-rate status in the Mideast, nothing at all like the position they had enjoyed since 2003. Additionally, they will find themselves increasingly relying on Russia in order for Moscow mediate between the Kingdom and the Islamic Republic and help maintain the “cold peace” that’s expected to settle over the Gulf (as the authorpreviously forecast in his “Pivot of Pragmatism” scenario). The US’ diminished role in the Mideast will be a fait accompli by this point, signaling that the Saudis’ days of fully relying on it for its security guarantees will be long gone. Also, the energy war between the two might by that time have placed the Kingdom in a weakened economic position, especially if it’s not as successful as it hopes to be in diversifying its economy through financial instruments. Overall, the geopolitical forecast for Saudi Arabia looks quite gloomy, and it’s a sure bet that it’s moving towards what might be the hardest times its ever experienced in its history, which will present an existential challenge that will strain its government to the maximum.

Turkish Turmoil

The Current State Of Affairs:

The author forecast this scenario in his most recent article for The Saker, but it’s definitely worth citing again and exploring more in-depth because it looks ever more likely that it’ll transform into a reality. The gist of the idea is that Turkey is undergoing such strenuous domestic difficulties at the moment (civil war, left-wing terrorism, Islamist terrorist bombings [which may have been a false flag]) that there’s a real possibility that it could become ‘the next Syria’ of absolute destabilization if the government and/or military (through a coup) doesn’t regain full control soon. The situation was already precarious even before the COR’s anti-terrorist crusade, but now Turkey faces the very real prospect of its own Islamist proxies retreating northwards to their nest just as the Saudis’ are doing in the southern direction.

With the Turkish military focusing most of its attention on the Kurdish-dominated southeast, it’s dubious whether or not it even has the capability to fully secure its border now that it literally has the pressing security urge to finally do so. An influx of experienced terrorists into the Turkish heartland is literally the last thing that the security establishment needs during this already turbulent time, and depending on the level of political uncertainty after the snap November elections, it could very well be that the military decides to once more take matters into its own hands and restore order in the country. If that happens, then it might be the decisive moment needed to push the country towards a full-on Eurasian Pivot, which in that case would completely dismantle the US regional security architecture and send shockwaves through the rest of NATO.

The Unintentional Flank and Turkish/Balkan Stream:

Continuing with the topic of a Turkish military coup, the author feels the need to explain his forecast in detail so that it is properly understood by the reader, but in order to get there, some contextual information is necessary. To begin with, Russia’s military involvement in Syria has completed the unintentional fait accompli of flanking Turkey. In fact, if one uses this perceptive lense to reexamine the past three conflicts that Russia partook in, then it: (1) secured the Abkhaz coast and neutralized any future Georgian naval expansion, thus projecting Russian power across the entire eastern Black Sea; (2) secured Crimea and guaranteed Russian control of the northern part of the Black Sea; and (3) positioned Russian air assets south of the Turkish border. It is not at all to suggest that the pursuit of these results played any motivating influence whatsoever in guiding Russia’s role in these three conflicts, but the final facts are indisputable – Russian naval forces project power along Turkey’s northern coast, while its aerospace ones (and to an extent, certain naval ones as well) do the same along the southern border.

In this context, Turkish/Balkan Stream was an olive branch of friendship meant to reassure a strategic energy ally that Russia means no harm, and actually intends to peacefully strengthen bilateral relations, not weaken them, despite each side’s polar opposite approach to Syria. Despite this, talks on the project had stalled as of late, as Erdogan foolishly attempted to follow the Saudis’ lead by turning what could have been mutually beneficial and pragmatic diplomacy with Russia into some type of grand geopolitical game, and just like with King Salman, ‘Sultan Erdogan’ also failed in his gambit. Now that the country is unable to form a government at least until the November elections, the project has been frozen until December or January at the earliest, frustrating Russia’s plans to accelerate its Balkan Pivot, playing to the US’ relative advantage, and undermining Turkey’s business reputation similarly to how France’s was self-slurred by the Mistral affair (although not yet past that dramatic point of no return).

Erdogan’s Imaginary War Against Russia:

The geopolitical situation is a lot different today than it was a few months ago, however, with Turkey now mired in civil war and Russia having completed its unintentional flanking of the country through the basing of air units along its southern border. There’s no sane scenario where Russia would ever decide to launch a first strike against its NATO neighbor, but still, the present distribution of forces indicates that Russia certainly has acquired a strategic upper hand in any evebt. Turkey’s overreaction to the unintentional violation of its airspace by a Russian jet this week was due in large part to its political establishment’s increasing paranoia about this, played up of course by the US andNATO for their own strategic ends. Nevertheless, with the Turkish military being stretched between Kurdistan, the Syrian border, and every soft terrorist target in between, the last thing its top brass needs is to become entangled in Erdogan’s imaginary war with Russia. The more that the political leadership tries to press the point of Russian “aggression”, the more likely it is that the military will rebel against it and take steps towards an actual coup, since it, more than any other actor in Turkey, understands the falseness behind this claim and the absolute futility in pursuing it, especially in light of the existentially threatening circumstances that Erdogan has presently and completely unnecessarily gotten the Republic of Turkey into.

The Military’s Mindset:

The Turkish military is being gorged on the horns of a multisided dilemma. First off, it’s stuck fighting a bloody civil war in the southeast which was sparked by Erdogan’s failed pre-election ploy. Secondly, this conflict has already gone international, with limited Turkish ground and air strikes in Iraq, demonstrating the growing operational complexity of this mission. Thirdly, the Turkish military needs to counter the very real threat that thousands of retreating Syrian-based jihadis will return to their Turkish training base. On top of that, the political leadership is pressing it to simultaneously remain on standby in the event that an ill-fated decision is made to conventionally intervene in Syria. Already, these four simultaneous pressures (civil war, Iraqi intervention, “anti-terrorist” responsibilities, and Syrian standby) are pulling the Turkish military to the breaking point, and that’s not even considering the very real danger that Erdogan’s imaginary war with Russia could have on the country’s stability.

To explain the last point, Russia’s unintentional flanking of Turkey has put it in a position where it could inflict significant damage to the country if attacked, which, of course, is in nobody’s interests (not even Erdogan’s, as personally fickle and prone to temper tantrums as he is). So, in the event of any hypothetical Turkish antagonism against Russia (for example, over its anti-terrorist operations in Syria), then the feasible scenario arises where the Russian-Kurdish-Iranian members of the COR extend some form of tangible support to the Turkish-based Kurdish separatists, which might be enough to fatally tip the balance of power against the Turkish military and lead to its removal from the entire southeast portion of the (former) country. Rhetorically speaking, if Turkey can involve itself in Russia’s domestic affairs in Crimea (potentially even through militant means), there’s nothing at all stopping Russia from doing the same in Kurdistan, even if it doesn’t announce it as arrogantly as Erdogan did. Remember, this is a rhetorical/hypothetical situation – no proof exists that Russia has any intent to do this – but military strategists, in this case those from Turkey, as per their job responsibilities, must consider and plan for all scenarios, so it’s likely that this one has entered the minds of at least a couple of people in Ankara.

A Geopolitical Blessing:

Already stretched to the limit as it is, there’s no way that the Turkish military would also be able to manage an emboldened Kurdish insurgency that was strengthened by Russian, Iraqi Kurdish, and Iranian support, which would thus lead to the independence of the region and the dismantling of Turkey’s territorial integrity and Eurasian energy nexus plans. In the military’s mindset, it’s logically much better for Turkey to avoid provoking Russia and prompting it to play out this scenario, because as is obviously understood, it would quickly lead to the unravelling of Turkish statehood. This is why the Turkish military could realistically be pushed towards acting on any preexisting coup ideas it may have if Erdogan continues to press ahead with his provocations against Russia. In fact, a post-coup Turkey might actually be very beneficial for Russian-Turkish relations, since the country would finally have a capable enough leadership in power that understands the essence of the bilateral partnership and could seek to intensify it for maximum mutual advantage, notably by rapidly moving forward with Turkish/Balkan Stream and de-facto disengaging from NATO.

The reader must never fail to remember that Turkey is already very close to a military coup as it is, but that the anti-Russian agenda being pushed by the Erdogan government might very well be the point that breaks the military’s patience and pushes it to carry out its plans. The regime change would be entirely self-inflicted and with no external party to blame whatsoever (let alone Russia), but it could fortuitously become a geopolitical blessing if the military administration decides to follow the above recommendations and unyieldingly turn towards the multipolar community of Eurasia.

To be continued…

Andrew Korybko is the American political commentaror currently working for the Sputnik agency.

You know about President and General Dwight Eisenhower’s prescient warning about the “military-industrial complex” as he left the White House?

Well, it turns out that he was really warning about the “military-industrial-congressional” complex.

42-year CIA veteran Milton Goodman explains:

In the spring of 1961, I was part of a small group of undergraduates who met with the president’s brother, Milton Eisenhower, who was then president of Johns Hopkins University. Milton Eisenhower and a Johns Hopkins professor of political science, Malcolm Moos, played major roles in the drafting and editing of the farewell speech of January 1961.

The actual drafter of the speech, Ralph E. Williams, relied on guidance from Professor Moos. Milton Eisenhower explained that one of the drafts of the speech referred to the “military-industrial-Congressional complex” and said that the president himself inserted the reference to the role of the Congress, an element that did not appear in the delivery of the farewell address.

When the president’s brother asked about the dropped reference to Congress, the president replied: “It was more than enough to take on the military and private industry. I couldn’t take on the Congress as well.”

And see this:

Indeed, Congress members – part of the fatcat club which makes money hand over fist from war –  areheavily invested in the war industry, and routinely trade on inside information … perhaps even including planned military actions.

Over the past five years, the increasingly ridiculous propaganda against President al-Assad and the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) has ranged from the scripted (OTPOR fomented -“revolution“) “peaceful protesters under fire” rhetoric, to other deceitful lexicon like “civil war,” and “moderate rebels.”

As the intervention campaigns continue with new terrorist and “humanitarian” actors (literally) constantly emerging in the NATO-alliance’s theatre of death squads, it is worth reviewing some of the important points regarding the war on Syria.

Million Person Marches

On March 29, 2011 (less than two weeks into the fantasy “revolution”) over 6 million people across Syria took to the streets in support of President al-Assad. In June, a reported hundreds of thousands marched in Damascus in support of the president, with a 2.3 km long Syrian flag. In November, 2011 (9 months into the chaos), masses again held demonstrations supporting President al-Assad, notably in Homs (the so-called “capital of the ‘revolution’”), Dara’a (the so-called “birthplace of the ‘revolution’”), Deir ez-Zour, Raqqa, Latakia, and Damascus.

Mass demonstrations like this have occurred repeatedly since, including in March 2012, in May 2014 in the lead-up to Presidential elections, and in June 2015, to note just some of the larger rallies.

In May 2013, it was reported that even NATO recognized the Syrian president’s increased popularity. “The data, relayed to NATO over the last month, asserted that 70 percent of Syrians support” the Assad government. At present, the number is now at least 80 percent.

The most telling barometer of Assad’s support base was the Presidential elections in June 2014, which saw 74 percent (11.6 million) of 15.8 million registered Syrian voters vote, with President al-Assad winning 88 percent of the votes. The lengths Syrians outside of Syria went to in order to vote included flooding the Syrian embassy in Beirut for two full days (and walking several kilometres to get there) and flying from countries with closed Syrian embassies to Damascus airport simply to cast their votes. Within Syria,Syrians braved terrorist mortars and rockets designed to keep them from voting; 151 shells were fired on Damascus alone, killing 5 and maiming 33 Syrians.

For a more detailed look at his broad base of popular support, see Professor Tim Anderson’s “Why Syrians Support Bashar al Assad.”

The Reforms

Prior to the events of March 2011 Syrians did have legitimate desires for specific reforms, many of which were implemented from the beginning of the unrest. In fact, President al-Assad made reforms prior to and following March 17, 2011.

Stephen Gowans noted some of those early reforms, including:

• Canceling the Emergency Law;
• Amending the the constitution and putting it to a referendum [8.4 million Syrians voted; 7.5 million voted in favour of the constitution];
• Scheduling, then holding, multi-party parliamentary and presidential elections

The constitution, according to Gowans, “mandated that the government maintain a role in guiding the economy on behalf of Syrian interests, and that the Syrian government would not make Syrians work for the interests of Western banks, oil companies, and other corporations.”

It also included:

• “security against sickness, disability and old age; access to health care; free education at all levels”
• a provision “requiring that at minimum half the members of the People’s Assembly are to be drawn from the ranks of peasants and workers.”

Political commentator Jay Tharappel further articulated:

The new constitution introduced a multi-party political system in the sense that the eligibility of political parties to participate isn’t based on the discretionary permission of the Baath party or on reservations, rather on a constitutional criteria….the new constitution forbids political parties that are based on religion, sect or ethnicity, or which are inherently discriminatory towards one’s gender or race. (2012: Art.8)

No surprise that NATO’s exile-Syrian pawns refused the reforms and a constitution which ensures a sovereign Syria secure from the claws of multi-national corporations and Western banks.

In his article, “Decriminalising Bashar – towards a more effective anti-war movement,” writer Carlos Martinez outlined Syria’s positives, including its anti-imperialist, socialist policies; its secularism and multiculturalism; and—poignantly—its continued support for Palestinians and anti-Zionist stance.

These are all points that contradict the lies spewed over the past nearly five years, and shatter the feeble justification for continuing to wage war on Syria.

Twisting the Numbers to Serve the War Agenda

The number and nature of Syrians killed varies depending on which list one consults. Many talking heads draw from one sole source, UK-based SyrianRami Abdulrahman of the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights(SOHR) (run out of his home and based on information provided largely by unnamed “activists”). Abdulrahman hasn’t been to Syria for 15 years, and, as Tony Cartalucci noted, is “a member of the so-called ‘Syrian opposition’ and seeks the ouster of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad.” Further, Cartalucci explained, “Abdul Rahman’s operation is indeed funded by the European Union and a “European country” he refuses to identify.” So not an impartial source.

In her February 2012 “Questioning the Syrian Casualty List“, political analyst Sharmine Narwani laid out the logistical difficulties of collating the number of deaths, including:

• Different casualty lists and difficulty confirming accuracy of any of them.
• Lack of information on: how deaths were verified and by whom and from what motivation.
• Lack of information on the dead: civilian, pro or anti government civilians; armed groups; Syrian security forces?”

She found that one early casualty list included 29 Palestinian refugees “killed by Israeli fire on the Golan Heights on 15 May 2011 and 5 June 2011 when protesters congregated on Syria’s armistice line with Israel.”

Jay Tharappel looked at two of the other prime groups cited regarding casualties in Syria: the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) and the Violations Documentation Center (VDC).

He noted that neither of the groups “are ‘independent’ in the sense that they function merely to provide facts, they’re all open about their agenda to overthrow the Syrian government…and for the imposition of a no-fly zone on behalf of the ‘moderate rebels’, whoever they are.”

Further, according to Tharappel, “the SNHR doesn’t provide any evidence to substantiate its assertions about the numbers killed by government forces. They claim to have ‘documented [victims] by full name, place, and date of death,’ however none of these can be found on their website.”

Regarding the VDC, he wrote, “there are good reasons to believe the VDC is listing dead insurgents as civilians, as well as mislabeling dead government soldiers as FSA fighters.”

One example he cited was the listing of a Jaysh al-Islam militant, ‘Hisham Al-Sheikh Bakri’, killed by the SAA in Douma (infested with Jaysh al-Islam terrorists), in February 2015, which al-Masdar News reported. The VDC alsolisted ‘Hisham Abd al-Aziz al-Shaikh Bakri’, “however this one is listed as an adult male civilian and not a Jaish Al-Islam fighter,” Tharappel wrote.

Even embedded war reporter Nir Rosen, Tharappel recalled, in 2012 wrote:

Every day the opposition gives a death toll, usually without any explanation of the cause of the deaths. Many of those reported killed are in fact dead opposition fighters, but the cause of their death is hidden and they are described in reports as innocent civilians killed by security forces, as if they were all merely protesting or sitting in their homes.

It would be an understatement to say there are considerable, and intentional, inaccuracies in the lists of these groups. In fact, most of the aforementioned groups fail to note what commentators like Paul Larudee did:

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.)

“Leftists” Keeping the Myths Alive

Public figures like Owen Jones, and pro-Palestinian sites like the Middle East Eye and the Electronic Intifada, have a following for their more palatable (and safe) solidarity stance on Palestine, but routinely spew rhetoric against Syria, which is then echoed by their well-intentioned, if very misinformed, followers.

Much of grassroots “Leftists”’ anti-Syria propaganda is as poisonous as corporate media. Routinely, at ostensibly anti-war/anti-Imperialist gatherings, the anti-Syria narrative is predominant.

For example, at the March 2015 World Social Forum in Tunis, some Syria-specific panels spun the fairy tale of “revolutionaries” in Syria, one panel alleging: “The protests in Syria were peaceful for almost six or seven months; 6-7000 unarmed people were killed; only then did ‘rebels’ eventually take up arms.”

Yet, it is known that from the beginning, in Dara’a  and throughout Syria, armed protesters were firing upon, and butchering, security forces and civilians. Tim Anderson’s “Syria: how the violence began, in Daraa” pointed out that police were killed by snipers in the March 17/18 protests; the Syrian army was only brought to Dara’a following the murder of the policemen. Additionally, a storage of protesters’ weapons was found in Dara’a’s al-Omari mosque.

Prem Shankar Jha’s, “Who Fired The First Shot?” described the slaughter of 20 Syrian soldiers outside Dara’a a month later, “by cutting their throats, and cutting off the head of one of the soldiers.” A very “moderate”-rebel practice.

In “Syria: The Hidden Massacre” Sharmine Narwani investigated the early massacres of Syrian soldiers, noting that many of the murders occurred even after the Syrian government had abolished the state security courts, lifted the state of emergency, granted general amnesties, and recognized the right to peaceful protest.

The April 10, 2011 murder of Banyas farmer Nidal Janoud was one of the first horrific murders of Syrian civilians by so-called “unarmed protesters.” Face gashed open, mutilated and bleeding, Janoud was paraded by an armed mob, who then hacked him to death.

Father Frans Van der Ludt—the Dutch priest living in Syria for nearly 5 decades prior to his April 7, 2014 assassination by militants occupying the old city of Homs—wrote (repeatedly) of the “armed demonstrators” he saw in early protests, “who began to shoot at the police first.”

May 2011 video footage of later-resigned Al Jazeera journalist Ali Hashem shows fighters entering Syria from Lebanon, carrying guns and RPGs (Hashem stated he’d likewise seen fighters entering in April). Al Jazeera refused to air the May footage, telling Hashem to ‘forget there are armed men.’ [See: Sharmine Narwani’s “Surprise Video Changes Syria “Timeline””] Unarmed protesters?

The Sectarian Card: Slogans and Massacres

What sectarianism we see in Syria today was delivered primarily by the Wahabi and Muslim Brotherhood (MB) regimes of Saudi Arabia and Qatar and by Turkey, with NATO’s blessing and backing. The cross-sect make-up of both the Syrian State and the Syrian army alone speaks of Syria’s intentional secularism, as well as the prevalent refusal of average Syrians to self-identify along sectarian lines.

On the other hand, from the beginning, the West’s “nonviolent protesters” were chanting sectarian slogans, notably, “Christians to Beirut, Alawis to the grave.” Other popular chants included: calling for the extermination of all Alawis; pledging allegiance to Saudi-based extremist Syrian Sheikh Adnan Arour and to extremist MB supporting Egyptian Sheikh, Yusuf al-Qardawi.

Qatar-based Qaradawi advocates killing Syrian civilians: “It is OK to kill one third of the Syrian population if it leads to the toppling of the heretical regime.” The inflammatory Arour said about Syria’s Alawis: “By Allah we shall mince them in meat grinders and feed their flesh to the dogs.”

The NATO alliance’s terrorists have committed numerous massacres of Syrian civilians and soldiers, many of which were intended to sow sectarianism, including:

• The June 2011 Jisr al Shugour, Idlib, massacre of up to 120 people (soldiers and civilians) by between 500-600 so-called FSA terrorists; blamed on the SAA as having killed “military deserters”. [see Prem Shankar Jha’s  article “Syria – Who fired the first shot?”]
• The Houla massacre of over 100 civilians on May 25, 2012, which only 2 days later the UN claimed—without an investigation— had been committed by the Syrian Army. [See Tim Anderson’s detailed rebuttal, “The Houla Massacre Revisited: “Official Truth” in the Dirty War on Syria” In the same article, Anderson also looked at the August 2012 Daraya massacre of 245 people and the December 2012 Aqrab massacre of up to 150 villagers.
• The August 2013 massacre of at least 220 civilians (including a fetus, many children, women, elderly) and kidnapping of at least 100 (mostly women and children) in villages in the Latakia countryside.
• The December 2013 massacre of at least 80 residents (many “slaughtered like sheep”, decapitated, burned in bakery ovens) in Adra industrial village.
• The continued terrorist-mortaring of civilian areas and schools; the repeated terrorist-car-bombing of civilian areas and schools. [see: “The Terrorism We Support in Syria: A First-hand Account of the Use of Mortars against Civilians”]

Yet, in spite of outside forces attempts to sow sectarianism in Syria, the vast majority of Syrian people refuse it. Re-visiting Syria in July 2015, Professor Tim Anderson recounted that Latakia alone “has grown from 1.3 million to around 3 million people – they come from all parts, not just Aleppo, also Hama, Deir eZorr, and other areas.” He also visited Sweida, a mainly Druze region, which has accommodated “135,000 families, mainly from Daraa – others from other parts”. Mainly Sunni families.

The Syrian “Civil War”?!

Given that:

• At least 80,000 terrorists from over 80 countries are fighting as mercenaries in Syria;
• Israel has repeatedly bombed Syria [examples here, here and here];
• Israel is treating al-Qaeda terrorists in their hospitals and enabling their transit back and forth into Syria, as well as arming them—even Israeli media have reported that Israel is providing aid to al-Qaeda terrorists; even the UN has reported on Israeli soldiers interacting with Jebhat al-Nusra in the occupied Syrian Golan;
• Turkey is not only arming and funneling terrorists into Syria but also repeatedly co-attacks Syria;
• the whole crisis was manufactured in imperialist think tanks years before the 2011 events;

…“Civil war” is the absolute last term that could be used to describe the war on Syria.

In 2002, then-Under Secretary of State John Bolton added Syria (and Libya, Cuba) to the “rogue states” of George W Bush’s “Axis of Evil,”…meaning Syria was on the list of countries to “bring democracy to” (aka destroy) even back then.

Anthony Cartalucci’s “US Planned Syrian Civilian Catastrophe Since 2007” laid out a number of pivotal statements and events regarding not only the war on Syria but also the events which would be falsely-dubbed the “Arab Spring.” Points include:

• General Wesley Clark’s revelation of US plans to destroy the governments of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.
• Seymour Hersh’s 2007 “The Redirection” on NATO and allies’ arming and training of sectarian extremists to create sectarian divide in Lebanon, Syria and beyond.

The 2009 Brookings Institution report, “Which Path to Persia?”, on plans to weaken Syria and Lebanon, to later attack Iran.

Further, Stephen Gowans reported:

• U.S. funding to the Syrian opposition began flowing under the Bush administration in 2005.
• Since its founding in October 2011, the Syrian National Council has received $20.4 million from Libya, $15 million from Qatar, $5 million from the UAE.

Former French Minister for Foreign Affairs, Roland Dumas, in a June 2013 TV interview spoke of his meeting (two years prior) with British officials who confessed that:

Britain was organizing an invasion of rebels into Syria. This operation goes way back. It was prepared, preconceived and planned.

More recent evidence of the NATO-alliance plot against Syria includes a June 2012 NY Times article noting the CIA support for “rebels” in Syria, including providing and funneling “automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and some antitank weapons” from Turkey to Syria. The article said:

A small number of C.I.A. officers are operating secretly in southern Turkey, helping allies decide which Syrian opposition fighters across the border will receive arms to fight the Syrian government, according to American officials and Arab intelligence officers.

In October 2014, Serena Shim, a US journalist working for Press TV, was killed in a highly suspicious car crash near Turkey’s border with Syria shortly after reporting she had been threatened by Turkish intelligence. Shim hadpreviously reported she had photos of “militants going in through the Turkish border…I’ve got images of them in World Food Organization trucks.”

Similar statements have been made. For example, testimony of a Turkish driver explaining “how vehicles would be accompanied by MİT agents during the trip, which would start from the Atme camp in Syria and end at the border town of Akçakale in Şanlıurfa Province, where the militants and cargo would reenter Syria.”

In July, 2015, Press TV reported that terrorists caught in Aleppo confessed to receiving training by US and Gulf personnel in Turkey.

As I wrote, “in a November 2014 report, the Secretary-General mentioned the presence of al-Nusra and other terrorists in the ceasefire area ‘unloading weapons from a truck,’ as well as a ‘vehicle with a mounted anti-aircraft gun’ and Israeli ‘interactions’ with ‘armed gangs.’”

Given all of this, and America’s plan to train up to 15,000 more “rebels” over the next three years, it is beyond ridiculous that the inappropriate term “civil war” continues to be propagated.

DA’ESH and Other Moderates

In June, 2015, Anthony Cartalucci wrote about a recently-released 2012 Department of Defense document which admitted that the US foresaw ISIS’ establishing a “Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want….”

He outlined the flow of weapons and terrorists from Libya to Syria, via Turkey, “coordinated by US State Department officials and intelligence agencies in Benghazi – a terrorist hotbed for decades,” as well as weapons from Eastern Europe.

Earlier “moderates” include the Farouq Brigades‘ (of the so-called “FSA”)organ-eating terrorist “Abu Sakkar,” and those numerous “FSA” and al-Nusra militants who committed the massacres listed above, to name but a portion.

“Human Rights” Front Groups Promoting War Rhetoric

Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Avaaz, Moveon, and lesser-known, newly-created groups like The Syria Campaign, The White Helmets, and Action Group for Palestinians in Syria, are complicit in war-propagandizing and even calling for a (Libya 2.0) no-fly-zone bombing campaign of Syria.

On HRW, geopolitical analyst Eric Draitser noted:

Human Rights Watch is undeniably an appendage of US foreign policy. It is in many ways part of the ‘soft power’ arm of US power projection, a means of delegitimizing, demonizing, and otherwise destabilizing countries that do not play ball with the US…

Vigilant Twitter users have called out HRW’s lying Ken Roth for tweeting a photo he claimed to be Aleppo’s destruction from “barrel bombs” but which was, in fact, Ayn al-Arab (Kobani) post-Da’esh attacks and US-coalition bombs. In another outrageous case, Roth tweeted a video of the flattened al-Shuja’iyya neighborhood of Gaza, devastated by Israeli bombing in 2014, purporting it to be Aleppo.

Again, he was called out, forcing a weak retraction. Post-retraction, he tweeted yet another image of destruction, again claiming it to be from “Assad’s barrel bombs” but which was according to the photo byline Hamidiyeh, Aleppo, where “local popular committee fighters, who support the Syrian government forces, try to defend the traditionally Christian district” against ISIS.

On Amnesty International, Anthony Cartalucci wrote:

Amnesty does take money from both governments and corporate-financier interests, one of the most notorious of which, Open Society, is headed by convicted financial criminal George Soros (whose Open Society also fundsHuman Rights Watch and a myriad of other “human rights” advocates). Suzanne Nossel, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, for instance, was drawn directly from the US State Department…

Highlighting just one instance of AI’s slick maneuvering, Rick Sterling, in hisMay 2015 “Eight Problems with Amnesty’s Report on Aleppo Syria” outed Amnesty for not only normalizing sending weapons to terrorists in Syria but suggesting how to do so in an underhand means. He emphasized:

This is an amazing statement, effectively sanctioning the supplying of arms to insurgents who agree to follow ‘humanitarian’ rules of war.

Sterling further noted that Amnesty:

• relied on groups “either based in, or receiving funds from, Turkey, USA or one of the other countries heavily involved in seeking overthrow of the Damascus government.
• did not seek testimonies from the “two-thirds of the displaced persons in Syria INSIDE Syria…people who fled Aleppo and are now living in Homs, Latakia, Damascus or in Aleppo under government control.”

In “Humanitarians for War on Syria” Sterling elaborated on the intervention campaign:

The goal is to prepare the public for a “No Fly Zone” enforced by US and other military powers. This is how theinvasion of Iraq began. This is how the public was preparedfor the US/NATO air attack on Libya.

The results of western ‘regime change’ in Iraq and Libya have been disastrous. …Avaaz is ramping up its campaign trying to reach 1 million people signing a petition for a “Safe Zone” in Syria.

Sterling wrote on the  “White Helmets”, “created by the UK and USA in 2013. Civilians from rebel controlled territory were paid to go to Turkey to receive some training in rescue operations. The program was managed by James Le Mesurier, a former British soldier and private contractor…” He noted the ties between WH and anti-Syria actors, including Jabat al-Nusra. One example of their propaganda: “Video of the recent alleged chlorine gas attacks starts with the White Helmet logo and continues with the logo of Nusra. In reality, White Helmets is a small rescue team for Nusra/Al Queda (sic).”

Vanessa Beeley’s “‘White Helmets’: New Breed of Mercenaries and Propagandists, Disguised as ‘Humanitarians’ in Syria” further flushed out the propaganda elements of the WH operation and their parroting of the MSM/HR industry anti-Syrian rhetoric.

The list of “humanitarian” actors is long, and the list of their war-propagating lies even longer. [see: “Human Rights” front groups (“Humanitarian Interventionalists”) warring on Syria]

The Yarmouk Card

A district of Damascus formerly housing over one million residents, of whom 160,000 were Palestinian refugees, according to the UN, the rest Syrians, theplight of Yarmouk neighbourhood has been used by “humanitarian” campaigners to pull at heartstrings and to further confuse supporters of Palestine on the subject of Syria and the State’s treatment of Palestinians. In fact, Syria has been one of Palestine’s greatest advocates and friends, providing Palestinian refugees in Syria with a quality of life equal to that of Syrians, including free education, health care and other social services. The same cannot even remotely be said of any of Palestine’s neighbouring countries, where Palestinian refugees languish in abysmal refugee camps and are denied the right to professional employment, and affordable and quality health care and education, much less dignity.

The United Nations, the HR industry, and the media obfuscate on Yarmouk, ignoring or whitewashing both the presence of various terrorist groups and the role of some Palestinian factions in enabling these groups entry, as well as fighting alongside them against the Syrian government. Talking heads also pointedly ignore the Syrian government-facilitated evacuations of Yarmouk residents to government, community, and UN provided shelters. They likewise ignore the documented repeated and continuous terrorists attacks on government and other aid distribution within the neighbourhood, as well as on anti-terrorist demonstrations held by Yarmouk residents.

One such demonstration occurred in May 2013, with UK-media Sky News’ Tim Marshall present as demonstrators came under so-called “rebel” fire. Hereported:

…Some screamed at us: “Please tell the world the truth! We don’t want the fighters here, we want the army to kill them!”… About 1,000 people were in the demonstration. …The shooting began almost immediately. A man went down, followed by others. …As they passed us a man stopped and shouted that he was sure the fighters were not Syrians but men paid to come to Damascus and kill people…

In his April 2015 “Who Are the Starving and Besieged Residents of Yarmouk and Why Are They There?” Paul Larudee asked:

Who are the remaining civilians and why are they refusing to evacuate to outside shelter like so many others? Local humanitarian relief supervisors report (personal communication) that some of them are not from Yarmouk and some are not Palestinian. They include the families of Syrian and foreign fighters that are trying to overthrow the Syrian government by force of arms, and some of them came from districts adjacent to Yarmouk, such as the Daesh stronghold of Hajar al-Aswad.

Larudee’s article further addressed the issues of:

• the Syrian government allowing food aid into the district: “…it has allowed the stockpiling of supplies on the edge of the camp and it has permitted civilians from inside to collect and distribute the aid….”
• the Syrian military’s siege tactic (combined with evacuation of civilians): “The objective is to remove the civilians from the area as much as possible and then attack the enemy or provoke surrender…”

Analyst Sharmine Narwani observed:

The Syrian government has every right to blockade the border areas between Yarmouk and Damascus to prevent extremist gunmen from entering the capital. I have been in Yarmouk several times, including last year, and have talked to aid workers inside the camp, including UNRWA. The Syrian government, in their view, assists in getting aid and food to refugee populations inside the camp – contrary to western narratives and those activists like the EI activists…most of whom appear not to have set foot inside Yarmouk since the early days of the conflict.

Although the figure of 18,000 remaining Palestinians in Yarmouk may have been accurate in October 2013, today, after the evacuation of thousands, anti-Syria publications continue to cite 18,000. Journalist Lizzie Phelan, whovisited Yarmouk in September 2015, says the number remaining is around 4,000.

Most media and HR groups are not reporting that there are Palestinian fighters fighting alongside the SAA, in Yarmouk and other parts of Syria, against the NATO-alliance’s fighters. Al Masdar News reported in June 2015:

…ISIS originally launched a successful offensive at the Yarmouk Camp District in the month of March; however, after a joint counter-assault by the PFLP-GC, Fatah Al-Intifada, the Palestine Liberation Army (PLA), and members of Aknef Al-Maqdis; ISIS was forced to withdrawal to the southern sector of the district, leaving only the southern axis under their control.

Sharmine Narwani’s “Stealing Palestine: Who dragged Palestinians into Syria’s conflict?” is essential reading, to understand the current situation in Syria vis-a-vis its Palestinian refugees. As for Palestinians themselves, the Syria Solidarity Movement published a statement which emphasized that “more than 1101 Palestinian groups and individuals declare their solidarity with the Syrian people and the Syrian state.” Signatories include Jerusalem’s Archbishop Atallah Hanna, the Palestinian Popular Forum, Yarmouk, and other Palestinian Yarmouk residents.

Serial Chemical Offenders Remain at Large

Israel has on more than one occasion used prohibited chemical and other weapons on the locked-down nearly 2 million Palestinians of Gaza. During the 2008/2009 Israeli massacre of Gaza, the Israeli army rained white phosphorous on schools sheltering displaced Palestinian families, on homes, and on hospitals (of which I gathered video, photo and witness evidence at the time). Israel also used DIME on the Palestinians of Gaza. Yet, Israel remains unpunished, and receives ever increasing billions of dollars and new weaponry every year. Nor has the US ever been held accountable for its widespread criminal use of CW, such as on the people of Vietnam, of Iraq.

The US and HR actors have repeatedly—and without evidence—accused Syria of using Sarin gas, then Chlorine, accusations which have been amply refuted.Seymour Hersh’s probe on the sarin attacks was so damning US mainstream media wouldn’t print it.

In rebuttal to the May 2015 accusation of chlorine attacks — as always followed with human rights groups’ calls for a No-Fly Zone —Stephen Gowanswrote:

As a weapon, chlorine gas is exceedingly ineffective. It is lethal only in highly concentrated doses and where medical treatment is not immediately available. It is far less effective than conventional weapons. Why, then, would the Syrian army use a highly ineffective weapon, which is deplored by world public opinion, and whose use would provide the United States a pretext to directly intervene militarily in Syria, when it has far more effective conventional weapons, which are not deplored by world public opinion, and whose use does not deliver a pretext to Washington to intervene? (See also Gowans’ “New York Times Complicit in Spreading False Syria Allegations”)

Tim Anderson investigated the August 2013 Ghouta attacks, pointing out:

• UN investigator Carla del Ponte had testimony from victims that ‘rebels’ had used sarin gas in a prior attack
• Turkish security forces sarin in the homes of Jabhat al Nusra fighters.
• Evidence of video manipulation in the Ghouta attacks.
• “Parents identified children in photos as those kidnapped in Latakia, two weeks earlier.”
• “CW had been supplied by Saudis to ‘rebel’ groups, some locals had died due to mishandling.”
• “Three of five CW attacks were ‘against soldiers’ or ‘against soldiers and civilians’.”

The Interventionalists have tried repeatedly to accuse the Syrian government of CWs usage; yet the real criminals remain at large.

Against Incitement, For Peace

Syria’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Dr. Bashar al-Ja’afari, in May, 2015, said that spreading incitement and lies on Syria is a blatant violation of UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolution No. 1624 for 2005 and of journalism ethics if any, SANA reported.

Syrian media, which attempts to report the reality of Syria under attack, has been repeatedly targeted, something the MSM refuses to acknowledge (See:Media Black-Out on Arab Journalists and Civilians Beheaded in Syria by Western-Backed Mercenaries).

As the NATO-alliance pushes for a “safe zone”…meaning a “no-fly zone” for the purpose of bombing Syria, anti-war activists and journalists must denounce the lies of anti-Syria governments and “human rights” groups, and must share the truth of Syria’s war against terrorism.

Since drafting this lengthy Syria-101 overview, there have been major shifts in Syria’s war against foreign-backed terrorism, namely Russia’s recent airstrikes against Da’esh and co. This increase in Russian support for Syria—with Russian planes destroying more Da’esh and other western-backed terrorists and their training camps in just a few days than the US coalition has over the past year—is a turning point in the war on Syria. Predictably, corporate media are pulling all the stops to demonize Russia‘s involvement, although Russia was invited by the Syrian government to do precisely what it is doing.

Those following Syria closely have echoed what Syrian leadership has said for years and continues to say: the way to stop ISIS and all its brethren terrorist factions, and to bring security to the region, is to cease arming, financing, training and funneling terrorists and weapons into Syria, silence the sectarian indoctrination coming from Gulf extremist sheikhs, and support the Syrian army and allies in their fight for security and stability in Syria.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian freelance journalist and activist who has lived in and written from the Gaza Strip, Syria, and Lebanon. Read other articles by Eva, or visit Eva’s website.

Note: This address was given at the Detroit Workers World public meeting held on Saturday October 10, 2015. 

This is yet another important public meeting on the fight for justice against the banks and corporations along with their surrogates in the state apparatus. In the areas of the auto industry, housing, education, environmental justice and the prison-industrial-complex related to the growth of militarization of the police, the crises in the current system is laid bare for all conscious people to witness.

United States capitalism and imperialism is the primary source of the wars of regime-change which are designed to perpetuate the dominate role of Washington and Wall Street globally. In order to maintain this position of hegemony internationally it is also necessary for the ruling class to wage a war against the working class, nationally oppressed and the poor on the domestic front as well.

However, before I discuss various aspects of the current crisis in Detroit and its broader significance and implications, I want to pay tribute to a leading fighter in the struggle for African Liberation and Socialism and that is Jorge Risquet of the Communist Party of Cuba who passed away just last week on September 28.

Risquet joined the revolutionary movement in Cuba in the early 1950s and traveled to Guatemala during the period of the siege engineered by the Eisenhower administration in 1954. He would serve in the youth wing of the nationalist and anti-imperialist movement aimed at overthrowing the neo-colonial regime of Batista who served as an agent of Washington.

The Communist Party of Cuba was formed through the merger of revolutionary nationalist and socialist forces in 1965. Risquet held leading positions in the Party where he participated as a volunteer in the Congo campaign of 1965 that was headed by Che Guevara. Although the Congo effort was not successful, a decade later Cuba’s role in Angola, beginning four decades ago, was critical in the total liberation of that oil-rich former Portuguese colony as well as the independence of the entire Southern Africa region.

Cuba sent over 300,000 of its own citizens to fight in Angola alongside the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and its military FAPLA in addition to the South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO) and its military arm of the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN). Risquet served in Angola and would lead the negotiating team in coalition with the MPLA Government against the racist apartheid regime in South Africa which was supported by U.S. imperialism under the Reagan and Bush administrations.

These negotiations backed up by the armed and organized masses of Southern Africa won the right of national independence in Namibia and the release of political prisoners in both Namibia and South Africa. Namibia received its independence on March 21, 1990 just over a month after Nelson Mandela was released from prison in South Africa.

The African National Congress (ANC) embarked upon negotiations with the apartheid regime, a process that lasted for over three years. In 1994, the ANC took power in South Africa after winning a solid majority in the first non-racial elections in April of that year. Nelson Mandela, who served over 27 years in the dungeon of the racist regime in South Africa, became president of South Africa. All of these monumental developments occurred with the interventions of peoples throughout the world in conjunction with the role of revolutionary Cuba.

U.S. Continues to Be on the Wrong Side of History

U.S. imperialism was on the wrong side of the Angolan and Southern African liberation movements and the African Revolution overall. As it was true then, it is so as well today.

The situation in Syria is a stark illustration of imperialism’s role in the contemporary period. Russian air and cruise missile strikes can only be viewed as defensive deployments aimed at strengthening the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus. The U.S. and its allies in NATO have been doing everything in their power to bring down the Assad administration.

This was the same policy as what transpired in the North African state of Libya where in 2015, after four years of neo-colonial war and destabilization, the once proud nation bears very little resemblance to its former self. Libya has gone from the most prosperous state in Africa to the one that is in complete chaos and a source of instability throughout the region.

Hundreds of thousands of migrants are being trafficked through Libya across the Mediterranean into Southern and Eastern Europe in a manner which some European Union leaders have described as being analogous to the Atlantic Slave Trade. Under the unchecked militarized foreign policy of Washington, this is the fate that awaits much of Africa, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific. Syria has four million displaced persons and refugees scattered from inside the embattled country into Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and other states.

In Yemen, the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is engineering another war that is almost completely hidden from the American people. Thousands of Yemenis have been killed and tens of thousands are wounded and injured. Millions more are without adequate supplies of food, water, medical care and social services while Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) coalition continues to bomb and conduct ground operations daily.

We must also mention recent developments in the West African state of Burkina Faso where a coup by military elites was defeated through the mass mobilization of the workers and youth along with pressure from the regional and international communities. Burkina Faso under Capt. Thomas Sankara, underwent a brief revolution during 1983-1987. Sankara was assassinated by Blaise Compaore with the assistance of other military figures that were leading figures in the presidential security regiment (RSP) that staged the recent coup.

The people of Burkina Faso are committed to holding their national elections and to disbanding the dreaded RSP.

Finally on the international scene, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in South Africa went out on strike in the coal industry two weeks ago. A national strike in solidarity with NUM involved hundreds of thousands of workers from broader sectors of the working class.

Consequently, the class struggle continues in Africa and the Middle East and other parts of the world. These movements have a direct impact on the situation in Detroit and throughout the U.S.

Detroit: The Political Economy of Post-Bankruptcy

In Detroit we have been shinning the light on the massive tax foreclosures, auctions and eminent evictions facing tens of thousands more residents who will be forced out of the city. The magnitude of the crisis is unprecedented in the history of Wayne County and the banks are at the source of the problem.

Our campaign earlier this year was successful in not only placing the housing crisis within a political context but also winning an extension of over two-and-a-half months allowing thousands to make arrangements to pay their property taxes. Nonetheless, this is a crisis that is totally unnecessary since the federal government had sent $500 million to Michigan as part of a purported “bailout program” in the aftermath of the worse financial downturn since the Great Depression.

These funds have been grossly misallocated and underspent. There is still another $200 million sitting in Lansing that could wipe out the entire delinquent tax bills in the city of Detroit. Yet the capitalist politicians will not raise the issue because their banker bosses would not appreciate them making such a suggestion.

These funds are being used to tear down homes rather than rehabilitate structures keeping neighborhoods intact and rebuilding them. A rare corporate media report this week pointed out that there is blatant corruption taking place in the demolition process where the costs are constantly rising through a rigged bidding process while the Duggan administration, working on behalf of Dan Gilbert, who chairs the Detroit Blight Removal Task Force, serves as front men for the so-called “developers and investors.”

This set of circumstances is proving deadly for the people of Detroit and Wayne County. The County is facing emergency management and possible bankruptcy like Detroit. Consequently, there is no reason for anyone to be thrown out of their houses particularly with federal funds at the disposal of the Snyder administration.

Obviously there is an agenda of forced removals for Detroit and other majority African American cities. This program is decades-old and is implemented through job losses, predatory lending, utility and water shut-offs, the closing of schools and community centers, the escalation of police terrorism, the denial of quality healthcare, adequate public transportation, social and public services.

The city cannot be rebuilt without its people. The capitalist system remains fragile some eight years after the collapse of 2007-2008. Major corporations are still announcing massive lay-offs and scandals within the auto industry have shaken the confidence in the capacity of the manufacturing sector to provide the quality and safety that they spend billions to advertise on a daily basis.

Although the federal government has found various banks engaging in deliberate misrepresentation and fraud, very few of the bankers have gone to prison. Moreover, these entities are still given a license to do business and to set the terms for the availability of capital in the U.S. and globally.

Every year the banks are handed over hundreds of billions of dollars by the Federal Reserve Bank, which is our money. The bailout of the banks continue through the appropriation of public tax dollars and public assets as is being done in Detroit and other cities for “prestige projects” such as sports arenas, housing gentrification projects, where the raising of rents is championed by the corporate media and the forced removal of African Americans and the poor is characterized as “progress.”

The police and the courts serve the interests of the banks and corporations. A recent spike in police killings of residents is reflective of the escalating levels of state repression. Every week there are reports on television, radio and the print media which hails the arrests of “gang members” for drug trafficking and other activities. Nevertheless, the real criminals in the ruling class who systematically deny the people the fruits of their labor are not arrested and shut down by law-enforcement and the courts.

Such a scenario is not unique to Detroit. It is endemic within the U.S. capitalist system itself. However, Detroit and the state of Michigan is bearing the brunt of the economic crisis and re-structuring due to the legacy of labor and national struggles over the last century-and-a-half.

Detroit was a major base for the Underground Railroad during the period of slavery in the 19^th century. The Great Migration brought hundreds of thousands of African Americans into the city and state during the early to middle decades of the 20^th century. The recognition of the UAW and other trade unions between the 1930s and the 1960s forced concessions from the bosses to the workers. All of these gains are being taken away in the 21^st century through attacks on the right to vote, the eight-hour day, equal pay for equal work, local control of government and housing rights.

I do not believe that we can vote our way out of this crisis. We defend the right of working people to exercise their democratic prerogatives. Nonetheless, history will show that labor recognition, African American and women’ rights, to the extent that they still exist, were not won at the ballot box but within the arena of mass and working class struggle in the streets, workplaces, schools and the communities where people live.

This is why we place great emphasis on the indispensable role of the workers and the oppressed organized and mobilized independently of the capitalist two-party system. This is what the ruling class fears and seeks to prevent.

This address was given at the Detroit Workers World public meeting held on Saturday October 10, 2015.

Other speakers at the event included Martha Grevatt, a UAW auto employee who analyzed the current situation involving the no vote on a contract proposal for Fiat Chrysler workers; David Sole of Moratorium NOW! Coalition gave an update on the transfer of Michigan political prisoner Rev. Edward Pinkney who is at present residing at the facility in Marquette; and Jeremy Royer, an indigenous activist reported on recent events in Michigan and nationally where Native American land rights are still being violated. The event was chaired by Debbie Johnson of the Detroit Branch of Workers World Party.

This is about increasing the ability of global corporations to source wherever they can at the lowest cost. Michael Wessel, The Guardian, Oct 9, 2015

Diplomats, trade officials and delegations of the twelve negotiating countries behind the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement were always doing one thing even as their respective masters were doing another. As the boardroom was carving out democracy and sovereignty, the executives were selling vassalage as well worth it. As President Barack Obama, mask off, was insisting on taking the globe, as far as it he could, further into an American trade orbit, free trade was being sold in all signatory countries as an automatic godsend.

Secret during the entire phase of negotiations, it has only been the workings of WikiLeaks that has enabled global citizens to get a glimpse about what exactly we are in for. The intellectual property chapter has now been released in three phases, the first in November 2013, and the final on October 9, 2015.[1]

The latter version, dated October 5, is the near, if not actual final product, one which will be sold to the twelve respective parliaments when respective ratification and domestic legislation will have to be enacted. In every sense of the term, it is a corporate seizure at the expense of a citizen’s worth, because obviously, having extended copyright terms, paying more for pharmaceuticals, extending the length of patents, and attacking the generic drugs industry is exactly what the general public need.

As the Electronic Frontier Foundation noted, the IP chapter “confirms our worst fears about the agreement, and dashes few hopes we held out that its most onerous provisions wouldn’t survive to the end of the negotiations.”[2]

Coming to the chapter with fresh eyes allows for an initially easy deception. The language in parts is bland and general, taking cognisance of the IP rules for the “mutual advantage of producers and users” to “facilitate the diffusion of information”. All this, it is suggested, is to aid access to the wonderful world of diversity that is the public domain.

The public domain, however, is evidently seen to be one heavily circumscribed by both the State and its corporate partners. The treaty entitles signatories to restrict information, for instance, through trial proceedings that would be “detrimental to a party’s economic interests, international relations, or national defence or national security”. Signatory states already have similar domestic restrictions designed to curb such information mechanisms as freedom of information.

Privacy is also shot through, be it in instances when authorities in signatory states can provide names and addresses of importers in violation to owners of that intellectual property. The entire chain of production and use is targeted, with information including “any person involved in any aspects of the infringement or alleged infringement”. Third persons said to be “involved in the production and distribution of such goods or services and of their channels of distribution” are also netted.

As the text is chewed further, the restrictions, notably in terms of public use, start mounting. In fact, the public seem to be a defanged, inconsequential presence. Copyright, for instance, is said to be matter for the parties to balance within their domestic regulations, but the agreement does not bind parties to aim for that goal. There is no mandatory fair use model provision to speak of.

As for how long such copyright terms would run, a protection period of 70 years is offered after performance or publication, and if not published within 25 years after creation, for 70 years after that creation. Better, though not by much, than the absurdly lengthy 120 year period initially proposed by the US Trade Representative.

Reduced then, to its barest form, only a few provisions identified by the EFF can be deemed to be less inhibitive than what was found in initial drafts. Extending copyright protections to “buffer” copies in a computer system was eventually dropped by the USTR. The parallel importation of cheaper versions of copyright works will be permitted, complemented by an express authorisation of devices that bypass regions (EFF, Oct 9).

Leaving aside the evident influence of Hollywood in the entire affair, the heft of the pharmaceutical industries was also made apparent. Stifling innovation in its name, the chapter effectively entrenches the most anti-competitive practices of all by enforcing oligopolies with the grace, or gracelessness, of law. “The TPP,” argues Peter Maybarduk, Public Citizen’s Global Access to Medicines Program Director, “would cost lives.”

The implications are extensive, but a few points should be noted. Patent Term adjustments (Article QQ.E.14), extensions which delay the entry of generic medicines while also limiting access to cheaper medicines, looms large. Speed is of the essence, with parties undertaking to “make best efforts to process applications for market approval of pharmaceutical products in an efficient and timely manner, with a view to avoiding unreasonable and unnecessary delays.”

The state parties are given considerable leeway in terms of making “available a period of additional sui generis protection to compensate for unreasonable curtailment of the effective patent term as a result of the marketing approval process.”

Stifling measures regarding the release of generic drugs into the market is provided by QQ.E.15, which enables parties to “adopt or maintain a regulatory review exception for pharmaceutical products”. In theory, this replicates provision in states where generic drugs are permitted as exceptions which enable them to be made in small quantities before the patent expires. Well and good, but for the fact that any such review must be mindful that the legitimate interests of the patent owner shall not be unreasonably prejudiced.

Furthermore, market exclusivity is granted for pharmaceutical products for “at least five years” – a means of ensuring that generic drug registration will be delayed for a designated period of time.[3] Third parties are not permitted to market the same or similar product using the same or other data regarding the safety and efficacy of that product. Even if the parties accept applications for generic medicines within those five years, marketing approval can only take place after the five year period has expired.

The insidious linking between the market, marketing approval and the patent, gleams with nefarious consequence before the sickbed of humanity. It will also be distressing to some US Democrats who had hoped to build upon the May 10, 2007 deal made under the Bush administration. The “May 10 Agreement” had taken umbrage with patent term extensions and longer marketing exclusivities.[4]

At this point in time, as the clock ticks over respective domestic enactments by the 12 parliaments and congressional bodies, the political classes within the party states will have to consider whether a corporate dictated subservience, legally sanctioned, is better than such alternatives where the commonweal can prevail.

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

Notes

[1] https://wikileaks.org/tpp-ip3/

[2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/final-leaked-tpp-text-all-we-feared

[3] https://wikileaks.org/tpp-ip3/pharmaceutical/Pharmaceutical%20Provisions%20in%20the%20TPP.pdf

[4] https://wikileaks.org/tpp-ip3/pcpressrelease/Public-Citizen-Statement-on-WikiLeaks-TPP-Publication.pdf

A number of Palestinian activists on social media have published anonymous messages with Arabic names, that are asking for “names of protesters,” especially in Jerusalem, saying that it’s only “to join them in the clashes.”

The messages started flowing on Friday, according to PNN, and there have been several warnings not to reply, accept friend requests, or give out any type of information.

Media sources said that Israeli intelligence have launched these accounts to monitor the protesters.

The accounts have Palestinian flags as their cover photos, with Arabic names, local numbers, and use the Arabic language.

Israel has long used social media, especially Facebook, to monitor activists and indeed arrested a number of people for their “anti-Israel” posts.

Violence ripped through Israel and the occupied territories as protests rocked the West Bank and Gaza 

Violence spiralled in Israel and the occupied territories on Saturday, as protests rocked the West Bank and Gaza and several knife attacks were reported in Israel.

The casualty list of Palestinians rose rapidly on the day, with at least two teens shot dead in Gaza, two protestors killed in East Jerusalem and two men who reportedly attacked Israelis shot dead.

In total, the Palestinian health ministry has confirmed that seven Palestinians were killed by Israeli security forces. On the Israeli side, three civilians and two policemen were stabbed.

The Red Crescent said that more than 400 Palestinians were injured on Saturday alone as protests hit parts of northern Israel and the West Bank.

Ibrahim Awad, 27,  from Bet Omar near Hebron, also died in hospital. He had been shot in the head on Thursday by Israeli soldiers.

The situation had been tense for days, but several sources on the ground told Middle East Eye that Saturday marked a tipping point.

“I have lived and worked in Jerusalem and know the city well. I can’t remember a similar atmosphere to this in almost 20 years,” a Palestinian citizen of Israel, who did not want to be named, told MEE.

We feel like we are in a war zone. Shops are closed. The military is in every corner ready to shoot. Everyone here feel targeted by Israel.

As night fell on Jerusalem’s Old City on Saturday, the streets were quiet and a heavy police presence was visible. Earlier in the day shoppers, residents, tourists and worshipers could be seen milling around.

Overnight, bloody clashes took place at the Shoufat refugee camp in East Jerusalem. Three youths were injured, and one later died of his injuries. Israeli security forces said the 22-year-old had opened fire at police, but anger in the often-volatile neighbourhood simmered and at his funeral later on Saturday fresh clashes broke out.

Later in the morning, Israeli authorities said that a 16-year-old Israeli had been moderately injured by an Israeli attacker who was later arrested closer to the Old City in Jerusalem.

A few hours later, the streets close to the Old City saw fresh violence as a 16-year-old Palestinian stabbed two ultra-Orthodox elderly Israelis, who were lightly to moderately injured. The Palestinian teen Ishaq Badran, was quickly shot and killed by Israeli security personnel, but varying accounts of the incident soon began to emerge.

A Palestinian witness at the scene told Middle East Eye on the condition of anonymity that he had heard Jewish Israelis shout racist slogans at Badran before he attacked them.

“This is a vandal. This is a terrorist, kill him, kill him!'” the man said, imitating the settlers he heard.

MEE contributor Faiz Abu Rmeleh, a photojournalist, was at the scene shortly after the attack. He said that police prevented Red Crescent ambulances from reaching the scene for nearly three hours, ensuring that Badran bled out on the ground.

Abu Rmeleh claims that even after the attack, settlers gathered at the scene and tried to encourage the police to arrest or shoot Palestinians passing by.

Abu Rmeleh was among several members of the press hurt in Saturday’s violence.

He was chased and pushed to the ground by Israeli security forces for trying to cover the stabbing, with a fellow journalist capturing the scene on film. Another Palestinian journalist was reportedly shot in Shoufat in East Jerusalem and a third, Essam al-Reemawi, was shot with a rubber bullet near Ramallah as he covered the protests.

“They are just trying to stop us from covering the events on the ground,” Rewani told MEE. “But they won’t scare us.”

As the afternoon wore on, a fresh knife attack rocked East Jerusalem, very close to Damascus Gate, one of the main entrances to the city. A Palestinian man seems to have charged at police officers. He then stabbed them before he was shot dead at the scene.

Eyewitness accounts said that six shots were fired. One civilian was seriously injured when a stray bullet hit him.

After this, the entrance to the old city was closed off, with panic spreading as residents feared a further police crackdown and wider restrictions on movement and travel. Residents claim that the police fired shots at anyone trying to approach.

The Israeli authorities have vowed a tough response to any further attacks. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Public Security Gilad Erdan approved the placement of hundreds of reserve army units in Jerusalem, Channel 2 reported.

Jerusalem District Police Chief Moshe Adri also told reporters that his officers were “doing the job in the best way”.

“As we expect from the police force, any one who stabs a Jew or an innocent person we want to kill [and] neutralise him,” he said.

Meanwhile, several Israeli political parties – from both left and right – have called for Netanyahu’s resignation.

According to the Jerusalem Post, the secular party Meretz called for his resignation during a protest in front of his official residence in Jerusalem.

Party chairwoman Zehava Gal-On urged the prime minister to negotiate with the Palestinians instead of “managing the conflict”.

“Whoever doesn’t recognize this threat and continues to play the victim, finding excuses for refusing [to negotiate] and blabbering about Iran, and bribing his friends with natural gas or a casino in Eilat, is a failed prime minister who is not worthy of being prime minister and has to go home,” she said at a Meretz demonstration near the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem.

“The whole country is on fire, and instead of voicing hope and calm, what we hear are messages of hatred, incitement and racism from rabbis, from organizations that already committed hate crimes in the past and from right-wing politicians,” she added.

Kinesset member (MK) Yoel Hasson of the conservative Zionist Union said that many leaders said that Netanyahu did not know how to fight “against terrorism”.

“For six years, Netanyahu has been prime minister and didn’t do anything to create a diplomatic horizon. For six years he abandoned the Palestinian arena and the result is dozens of terrorist attacks in recent days. Netanyahu is not using a strong enough hand against terrorism and isn’t presenting a diplomatic horizon. Today, the nation knows Netanyahu is not a leader,” Hasson stated.

In contrast, MK Eitan Broshi, also of the Zionist Union, said he backs the policies of the prime minister.

West Bank turmoil

Tensions in the Old City, where many analysts and commentators believe the latest bout of violence originated over a growing number of Israelis entering the al-Aqsa compound, have also continued to escalate.

Bethlehem, Ramallah and Hebron all saw clashes break out between mainly young Palestinian protestors and Israeli police. Hundreds were injured, mainly by tear gas, the Red Crescent said.

Large-scale protests have also gripped the northern Israeli town of Nazareth, where more than 1,500 people took to the streets in a largely peaceful protest to denounce what they say claim as a heavy-handed respose by the Israeli police. On Friday, a 30-year-old woman from Nazareth was shot dead by Israeli police in Afula. The authorities claim that she was trying to stab people but the woman appears to have been unarmed and had no previous political connections.

Protests that were due to happen on Thursday in the city never materialised after police blocked the streets and allegedly prevented buses from other Palestinian towns and villages from reaching the town.

Protests took place in several different Arab villages and cities inside Israel. Locals told MEE that the police stormed into several houses and arrested at least 27 youths, according to Arab 48.

Protests were also staged in Nazareth, Um Alfahem, and Tamra.

Kholud abu Ahmed, a student and activist from Nazareth told MEE that she never witnessed such a situation in her city before.

She added that hundreds of Israeli police in an east neighborhood of Nazareth had tried to stop the protests by shooting at the demonstrators.

Palestinian authorities have urged Palestinians to not participate in any violence.

Adnan Dmiri, spokesperson for Palestinian Authority security forces, told MEE that he was doing everything “to stop an armed Intifada”.

“We tried that before and we paid dearly for it,” he said. “At the same time we are with the people’s vision for what they are doing by protesting against Israel’s violations at the al-Aqsa Mosque”.

The youth, however, have on the whole taken a more confrontational tone.

One young protester said he had been attending the protests until Israel, which has controlled the West Bank since 1967 withdrew and stopped allowing Israelis to entre the highly contentious al-Aqsa compound, known as Temple Mound to Jews.

“The protests in Bethlehem and all over Palestine will keep happening everyday and I will keep coming out to protest tomorrow and the next day and the day after that – I don’t see things calming down at all,” a young protestor from Bethlehem, who did not want to give his name for security reasons, told MEE.

Gaza, however, has seen some of the worst violence, with two teenagers shot and 10 people wounded by Israeli fire during clashes on Saturday at the Gaza border fence, emergency medical services in the coastal enclave said.

Marwan Barbakh, 13, and Khalil Othman, 15, were killed east of Khan Yunis camp in southern Gaza.

The Israeli army said they were killed during a “violent riot” in the southern Strip, “Palestinians entered the perimeter along the security fence, approached the fence, hauled rocks and rolled burning tyres at it”.

Soldiers fired warning shots in the air, but when that failed to stop the Palestinians, “they fired toward main instigators”, a spokesperson said.

The deaths come a day after similar clashes killed seven Palestinians and wounded 145. These clashes mark the bloodiest fighting in the territory since the summer 2014 War with Israel.

Additional reporting by Sheren Khalel and Jacob Powell

Pundits and politicians are already looking for a convenient explanation for the twin Middle East disasters of the rise of Islamic State and the humanitarian catastrophe in Syria. The genuine answer is politically unpalatable, because the primary cause of both calamities is U.S. war and covert operations in the Middle East, followed by the abdication of U.S. power and responsibility for Syria policy to Saudi Arabia and other Sunni allies.

The emergence of a new state always involves a complex of factors. But over the past three decades, U.S. covert operations and war have entered repeatedly and powerfully into the chain of causality leading to Islamic State’s present position.

The causal chain begins with the role of the U.S. in creating a mujahedeen force to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Osama bin Laden was a key facilitator in training that force in Afghanistan. Without that reckless U.S. policy, the blowback of the later creation of al-Qaida would very likely not have occurred. But it was the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq that made al-Qaida a significant political-military force for the first time. The war drew Islamists to Iraq from all over the Middle East, and their war of terrorism against Iraqi Shiites was a precursor to the sectarian wars to follow.

The actual creation of Islamic State is also directly linked to the Iraq War. The former U.S. commander at Camp Bucca in Iraq has acknowledged that the detention of 24,000 prisoners, including hard-core al-Qaida cadres, Baathist officers and innocent civilians, created a “pressure cooker for extremism.” It was during their confinement in that camp during the U.S. troop surge in Iraq 2007 and 2008 that nine senior al-Qaida military cadres planned the details of how they would create Islamic State.

The Obama administration completed the causal chain by giving the green light to a major war in Syria waged by well-armed and well-trained foreign jihadists. Although the Assad regime undoubtedly responded to the firebombing of the Baath Party headquarters in Daraa in mid-March 2011 with excessive force, an armed struggle against the regime began almost immediately. In late March or early April, a well-planned ambush of Syrian troops killed at least two dozen soldiers near the same city. Other killings of troops took place in April in other cities, including Daraa, where 19 soldiers were gunned down.

During the second half of 2011 and through 2012, thousands of foreign jihadists streamed into Syria. As early as November 2011, al-Qaida was playing a central role in the war, carrying out spectacular suicide bombings in Damascus and Aleppo. Obama should have reacted to the first indications of that development and insisted that Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar keep external arms and military personnel and funding out of Syria in order to allow a process of peaceful change to take place. Instead, however, the administration became an integral part of a proxy war for regime change.

Seymour Hersh reported last year that an unpublished addendum to the Senate Intelligence Committee report on Benghazi revealed a covert CIA operation to arm Syrian rebels, in cooperation with Sunni allies’ intelligence services. In early 2012, Hersh reported, following an agreement with Turkey, then-CIA Director David Petraeus approved an elaborate covert operation in which Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar would fund the shipment of weapons to Syrian rebels from stocks captured from the Gadhafi government. The scheme employed front companies set up in Libya to manage the shipments of arms in order to separate the U.S. government from the operation. An October 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency report released by the Department of Defense to Judicial Watchconfirmed the shipments of Libyan weapons from the port of Benghazi to two Syrian ports near Turkey beginning in October 2011 and continuing through August 2012.

A larger covert program involved a joint military operations center in Istanbul, where CIA officers worked with Turkish, Saudi and Qatari intelligence agencies that were also providing arms to their favorite Syrian rebels groups, according to sources who talked with The Washington Post’s David Ignatius.

By November 2012, al-Qaida’s Syrian franchise, al-Nusra Front, had 6,000 to 10,000 troops—mostly foreign fighters—under its command and was regarded as the most disciplined and effective fighting force in the field. The CIA’s Gulf allies armed brigades that had allied themselves with al-Nusra—or were ready to do so. A Qatari intelligence officer is said to have declared, “I will send weapons to al-Qaeda if it will help” topple Assad.

The CIA officials overseeing the covert operation knew very well what their Sunni allies were doing. After the U.S. shipments from Benghazi stopped in September 2012 because of the attack on the U.S. diplomatic post there, a CIA analysis reminded President Obama that the covert operation in Afghanistan had ended up creating a Frankenstein monster. Even the now-famous account in Hillary Clinton’s 2014 memoirs about Obama rejecting a proposal in late 2012 from CIA Director Petraeus for arming and training Syrian rebels does not hide the fact that everyone was well aware of the danger that arms sent to “moderates” would end up in the hands of terrorists.

Despite this, after rejecting Petraeus’ plan in 2012, Obama approved the covert training of “moderate” Syrian rebels in April 2013. As the Pentagon has been forced to acknowledge in recent weeks, that program has been a complete fiasco, as the units either joined al-Nusra or were attacked by al-Nusra. Meanwhile, as Vice President Joe Biden pointed out in October 2014, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were pouring “hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons” into Syria that were ending up in the hands of the jihadists.

Unfortunately, Biden’s complaint came two and a half years too late. By October 2014, more than 15,000 foreign fighters, including 2,000 Westerners, were estimated to have gone to Syria. Islamic State and al-Nusra Front emerged as the two major contenders for power in Syria once Assad is overthrown, and the Saudis and Qataris were now ready to place their bets on al-Nusra. In early 2015, after King Salman inherited the Saudi throne, the three Sunni states began focusing their support on al-Nusra and its military allies, encouraging them to form a new military command, the “Army of Conquest.” The al-Nusra-led front then captured Idlib province in March.

Obama, focusing on the Iran nuclear agreement, has given no indication that he is troubled by his allies’ approach. If the Bush administration destabilized Iraq in order to increase U.S. military presence and power in the Middle East, the Obama administration has countenanced a proxy war that has destabilized and Syria because of his primary concern with consolidating the U.S. alliances with the Saudis and the other Sunni regimes.

Although it has been almost a rigid rule that pundits must ascribe U.S. fealty to its Saudi alliance to oil interests, oil is far from the top of the list of U.S interests today. More important to our national security state is the interest of the Pentagon and the military services to protect the military bases they have in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE. Their need to preserve those alliance relationships is intensified by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) cornucopia of military contracts for U.S. arms manufacturers that assures enormous profits will continue to flow for the foreseeable future. One estimate of the total at stake for the Pentagon and its private allies in military relationships with the GCC is $100 billion to $150 billion over two decades.

Those are crucial bureaucratic and business stakes for the U.S. national security state, which is usually driven by the bottom lines associated with different courses of action. Especially given the administration’s lack of a coherent geopolitical perspective on the region, the security state’s interests offer a persuasive explanation for Obama’s effectively farming out the most important element of its Syria policy to regional allies, with disastrous results.

Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and winner of the 2012 Gellhorn Prize for journalism. He is the author of the newly published Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.

Does Syria have the right to defend its sovereignty from imperialist conquest and its population from the total chaos of sectarian warfare and ruin? Does Syria have the right to seek assistance?

Washington and the European Union countries have spent more than four years in an orchestrated effort of “regime change” in Syria. Now they howl in protest because on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, Russia carried out its first airstrikes in Syria against forces trying to overthrow Syria’s government.

Since March 2011, the U.S. and the EU have made relentless demands that the government of President Bashar al-Assad and the Baath Party must step down, resign their positions and hand over power to a regime of Washington’s choice. According to U.S. officials, by authorizing outside invading armies of mercenaries, like those that have brought total destruction to Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, to step into the vacuum, you bring democracy.

U.S. imperialism has been the primary power coordinating a program to fund and equip military units in Syria whose aim is solely destruction. This effort  began long before the supposed uprising or rebellion of the Arab Spring in 2011.

On U.S. ‘hit list’ since Sept. 11

Because of its independent economic and political policies and because of its decades of support for the Palestinian struggle, Syria was on the “hit list” slated for U.S. conquest since the George W. Bush administration. That’s what retired four-star General Wesley Clark told Democracy Now! listeners in a March 2, 2007, interview.

Gen. Clark said that soon after the Sept 11, 2001, events, a general called to tell him that the U.S. was going to invade Iraq and would “take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”

The Washington Post of April 16, 2011, described how at the beginning of the Syrian “uprising” that “Washington has funneled money to right-wing Syrian opposition groups since at least 2005.”

WikiLeaks posted 7,000 secret U.S. diplomatic reports that confirm from 2006 to 2010 the U.S. spent millions of dollars to support and instigate opposition to the Syrian government.

Julian Assange’s book, “The WikiLeaks Files: The World According to U.S. Empire,” describes how the released files confirm that Washington, while publicly opposing Islamic terrorists, saw their existence as an opportunity it could use to destroy Syria. The files confirm that it was U.S. policy to foster Shia-Sunni tension to destabilize Syria, as the U.S. did in Iraq.

For more than four years Syria has fiercely resisted this foreign aggression. But the destruction has left almost half the population homeless and more than 10 million Syrians internally displaced.

At the same time U.S., Turkish, Saudi, Jordanian and the EU were developing plans for an even more intense push to dismember Syria. Those plans have been pushed back by the developments of the past two weeks. Russia’s ministry of defense announced on Oct. 2 the deployment of its navy cruiser Moskva to Latakia. The Moskva is armed with a complement of 64 S-300 ship-to-air missiles, Russia’s most powerful anti-aircraft weapon.

The Oct. 5 Financial Times reports, “The Russian forces now in place make it very, very obvious that any kind of no-fly zone on the Libyan model imposed by the U.S. and allies is now impossible, unless the coalition is actually willing to shoot down Russian aircraft,” writes Justin Bronk, research analyst at the Royal United Services Institute.

In a Sept. 27 interview with Charlie Rose on CBS News, Russian President Putin explained his view that there is no other solution to the Syrian crisis than strengthening the effective government structures and providing help in fighting terrorism.

Coordinated assistance

The Sept. 27 announcement that Russia, Syria, Iran and Iraq were to cooperate on security issues against the Islamic State took the U.S. war planners totally by surprise. According to the Sept. 27 Wall Street Journal, the Iraq Defense Ministry’s announcement that the country had signed an intelligence and security cooperation pact with Russia, Iran and Syria was a challenge to U.S. influence in the Middle East.

There are also rumors, still unconfirmed by public statements from the various governments, that China will join forces with Syria and, in coordination with Russia and Iran, will participate in the effort to combat the Islamic State.

Washington’s plans are unraveling. But much will depend on how the Pentagon responds to the failure of its plans and to growing international assistance to Syria. An even more dangerous escalation may lie ahead.

Although the 2016 presidential election is a year away, the media is abuzz with the candidates – the Republican and Democratic candidates, that is. When CBS’s Stephen Colbert posed comedically with a collage of the 18 or so declared hopefuls, the Green Party’s candidate, Dr. Jill Stein, was noticeably absent from his photo. Only outlets like Democracy Now!, PBS and RT News feature the good doctor.

What choices do progressives have?

Hillary Clinton leaves a lot to be desired. She does favor a woman’s right to choose and has recently come out in support of marriage equality. Clinton supports comprehensive immigration reform but also backs stepped-up border enforcement. A former member of the board of Walmart, she is cozy with Wall Street and voted for the Patriot Act. Clinton has been called a “focus group Democrat,” often accused of believing what polls and focus groups tell her she should believe.

Dr. Jill Stein speaking at the Global Climate Convergence March in Madison, Wisconsin, in April, 2014.
(Photo: Light Brigading / Flickr)

On foreign policy issues, Clinton is a first-class hawk. As Robert Scheer wrote on Truthdig: “Clinton, in rhetoric and action, will never allow a Republican opponent to appear more hawkish than herself. In the general election, she will burnish her record of support for every bit of military folly from George W. [Bush]’s invasion of Iraq to her own engineering of the campaign to overthrow all secular dictators in the Middle East who have proved to be an inconvenience to the Saudi theocracy.”

“During her tenure in the Obama administration,” Scheer added, “Clinton, by her own frequent boastful admission, was the hawk in the Cabinet pressuring the president to be even more aggressive in his drone assassinations and murderous air wars, which have destabilized the region and created what the pope recently termed the worst refugee crisis since the Second World War.”

Joe Biden is contemplating whether to enter the race. He is more likable and more trusted than Clinton. But his positions on the issues are very similar to hers.

Meanwhile, Democratic Party candidate Bernie Sanders appears to be giving Clinton a run for her corporate money, so progressives may have a viable alternative to Clinton. But although Sanders’ positions on economic inequality, jobs, education, climate change, immigration, marriage equality, women’s right to choose, health care and surveillance (he voted against the Patriot Act) give us hope for serious change, Sanders’ foreign policy strongly resembles that of the hawks in both major parties.

Domestic and foreign policy are inextricably linked. George W. Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost US taxpayers upward of $4 trillion, and the price of Barack Obama’s drone wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya and Yemen continues to rise.

And Obama sends Israel $8 million a day, money it uses to fund its brutal occupation of Palestinian lands. Sanders favors continued aid to Israel. He supported Israel’s 2014 massacre in Gaza, during which the United Nations Human Rights Council documented the deaths of 2,251 Palestinians, including 1,462 civilians (299 women and 551 children), and the injuring of 11,231 Palestinians, including 3,540 women and 3,436 children. Ten percent of the children suffered a permanent disability as a result of violence inflicted during that massacre, and more than 1,500 Gazan children were orphaned.

Quoting “official Israeli sources,” the UN Human Rights Council reported, “rockets and mortars hit civilian buildings and infrastructure, including schools and houses, causing direct damage to civilian property amounting to almost $25 million.” In addition, the UN Council found 18,000 housing units were totally or partially destroyed; much of the electrical, water and sanitation infrastructure was incapacitated; and 73 medical facilities and several ambulances were damaged. Twenty-eight percent of the Palestinian population was displaced.

Sanders voted against the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but he voted for the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force in Afghanistan. And he has spoken out strongly in favor of providing military aid to Ukraine and mounting airstrikes against ISIS.

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s domestic policies are nearly indistinguishable from Sanders’. But Stein, who is also Jewish, opposes military assistance to Israel that is used to “fund a government which is basically committing war crimes against the Palestinian people, violating human rights, violating international law with the occupations,” she told Tavis Smiley on PBS. In 2012, Stein noted on Democracy Now! that she “would not be funding the weapons used in the massacre of Gaza.” Stein said, “We need to start raising the bar for Israel and holding them to an equal standard for supporting human rights and international law and ending occupations and illegal settlements and apartheid.” Stein also opposes the provision of weapons to Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Sanders, on the other hand, has taken a more consistently militarist position. “I believe the United States should have the strongest military in the world,” he declared on ABC News. “We should be working with other countries in coalition. And when people threaten the United States, or threaten our allies, or commit genocide, the United States with other countries should be prepared to act militarily.”

Sanders knows you have to talk tough to get elected. After all, since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the US government has kept Americans in a constant state of fear. The United States maintains a culture of war. Indeed, Sanders said, “I supported the use of force in Afghanistan to hunt down the terrorists who attacked us.” But none of the hijackers hailed from Afghanistan. Fifteen of the 19 were from Saudi Arabia, a close US ally.

Sanders supports the use of drones “selectively.” However, as Stein told Smiley, Obama says he is using them selectively. But by killing so many innocents, Obama is creating even more enemies for the United States.

Sanders supports the United States’ $3 trillion weapons program, including the controversial F-35 fighter jets, which brings jobs to his state of Vermont. And he supports US efforts to bomb ISIS in Syria, which have exacerbated the violence in that country.

Stein, meanwhile, criticized US attacks in Syria for perpetuating a “cycle of violence that has no end” during her appearance on RT’s “Watching the Hawks.” “Doing more of what caused ISIS is not going to be the solution of solving ISIS,” she said. “When you can trace this problem back to more bombing and violence … that just creates more violence.”

Stein advocates a foreign policy based on diplomacy, international law and human rights. She wants to “end the wars and drone attacks, cut military spending by at least 50 percent, and close the 700+ foreign military bases that are turning our republic into a bankrupt empire.” And she seeks to “stop U.S. support and arms sales to human rights abusers, and lead on global nuclear disarmament.”

Stein has no chance of winning the election. So why do her positions matter? She is the declared candidate of the Green Party. If Stein’s voice is included in the national debates, the other candidates will be publicly challenged and forced to respond on critical foreign policy issues.

When Stein ran for president in 2012, she was arrested at one of the debates “simply for showing up.” Stein told Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman that she was then “sent to a dark site, surrounded by 16 Secret Service and police, handcuffed tightly to metal chairs for about eight hours, until the crowds had gone home.” Why? “They were afraid that word would get out that people actually have a choice that reflects their deeply held beliefs and values.”

The League of Women Voters ran the presidential debates through the 1984 election. In 1987, the Republican and Democratic parties created the Commission on Presidential Debates to set rules to exclude third parties and independents from the debates. The Commission controls every aspect of the debate – the questions, the audience and the press. But although the League was invited to sponsor the 1988 debate, it pulled out due to complex rules and restrictions, stating the League had “no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public” and calling it a “fraud.”

The Commission on Presidential Debates is, Stein informed Smiley, “a front group for the Democratic and Republican parties,” noting, “50 percent of Americans don’t identify as Republican or Democratic.” But, she observed, half the delegates at the conventions are superdelegates not accountable to voters. Thus, she said, they won’t let Sanders be nominated. “The Democratic Party,” according to Stein, “continues to march to the right and become more of a corporatist party, more of an imperialist party, more of a militarist party.”

The Commission allows only those candidates who demonstrate at least 15 percent support in the polls. But Stein noted on RT you can’t get to 15 percent without corporate sponsorship. The Republican and Democratic parties, she added, “are sponsored by big banks, fossil fuels, and war profiteers.”

The Green Party has joined the Libertarian Party and Level the Playing Field, the successor group to Americans Elect, in lawsuits seeking to open the debates. They are suing the Federal Election Commission and the Commission on Presidential Debates, alleging First Amendment and antitrust violations.

We would do well to heed the admonition of John Adams: “There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”

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

The confluence of Columbus Day Weekend and the Kunduz hospital bombing has us thinking about the deep levels of cultural violence in the United States and what can be done to change it. How does the US move from a country dominated by war culture to one dominated by a humanitarian culture? And, how do we do it in time to avoid war with China and Russia, which both advanced closer this week.

What does Celebrating Columbus say About the Character of the United States?

Popular Resistance has reported on the the legacy of Columbus. Howard Zinn describes the true history of Columbus and the Indigenous people of North America. There is a great need for the Columbus myth to be revised with realities. When the truth is understood, it is evident the US is celebrating a brutal war criminal and that it is time to abolish Columbus Day.

After-all, Columbus lost at sea, “discovered” a continent, or an island near it, where up to a hundred million people already lived. He enslaved the indigenous peoples, treating them as workhorse animals and sex slaves; he fed live natives to his dogs and cut off the hands of those who did not work hard enough; he slaughtered tens of thousands, beginning a process of ethnic cleansing across the continent, and his son was one of the originators of the African slave trade.

Many Indigenous peoples of North America do not celebrate Columbus Day because the reality of his human rights violations make it a celebration of a brutal war criminal. Cities are renaming Columbus Day as Indigenous People’s Day, or after local Indigenous Peoples. The most recent are Albuquerque and multiple cities in Oklahoma. Others include Seattle, Bellingham, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Berkeley, Portland, Lawrence, and Santa Cruz. Alaska, Hawaii, Washington and Oregon, do not recognize Columbus Day, which did not become a US federal holiday until 1937.

This is an international movement. In 1977, the International Indian Treaty Council, the international arm of the American Indian Movement, called for the global end of the celebration of Columbus Day and declared instead the International Day of Solidarity and Mourning with Indigenous Peoples.  Throughout the years we have seen aggressive protests in Latin American countries over Columbus Day. In 2013 15,000 protesters, organized by Indigenous Peoples in Chile, called for an end to Columbus Day and the police turned water cannons on them. Thousands more marched in 2014 in Chile and the police attacked Columbus Day protesters with tear gas and water cannons. The Columbus protests are tied up with disputes between the largest Indigenous community over rights to the ancestral lands. This July, in Argentina after years of protest, a statute of Columbus was taken down and replaced by a female freedom fighter central to their fight for independence. Progress has come with conflict:

“In 1982, Spain and the Vatican proposed a 500-year commemoration of Columbus’s voyage at the UN General Assembly. The entire African delegation, in solidarity with Indigenous peoples of the Americas, walked out of the meeting in protest of celebrating colonialism-the very system the UN was supposed to end. The commemoration was crushed, and the UN declared a celebration of the World’s Indigenous Peoples Day and the Decade for the World’s Indigenous Peoples, which began in 1994. The second Decade was declared in 2005, and the UN adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007.”

The Vatican continues to show ongoing blindness on Indigenous issues. The Pope failed to denounce  “The Right Of Conquest” which provided legal justification for colonization and stealing of land and resources from Indigenous Peoples.  Pope Francis, in his visit to the United States, canonized a California missionary, Junipero Serra, some now call the Saint of Genocide. He refused to meet with 50 Indigenous Nations to discuss the issue.  People protested the canonization by replacing Serra’s name on street signs with the name Toypurina, an Indigenous woman who led a revolt against Serra for his treating Indigenous as slaves, destroying cultural rights and actions which led to the deaths of thousands.

It is not just about renaming the day, it is about ending discrimination against Indigenous peoples. Albuquerque’s Indigenous People’s Day proclamation declares the day “shall be used to reflect upon the ongoing struggles of Indigenous peoples on this land.”  The reality is that Indigenous men aged 20 to 24 are the group most likely to experience police violence. There is a massive, inadequately addressed reality of missing and murdered woman, especially in Canada. Indigenous people continue to fight for the survival of their culture and to stop the sale of sacred artifacts. And, they continue to fight to keep their land and rivers and against extraction of energy, minerals and resources from their land.  At the root of many problems with the ongoing ethnic cleansing is the failure to recognize treaty rights.

The US Way of War

The United States has conducted war in brutal ways since before the country was founded. In the “Indigenous People’s History of the United States,” Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, writes about the origins of the ‘US Way of War:’ “This way of war, forged in the first century of colonization – destroying Indigenous villages and fields, killing civilians, ranging and scalp hunting – became the basis for the wars against the Indigenous across the continent into the late nineteenth century.”

This week the US military received intensive worldwide criticism for bombing a Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF or Doctors Without Borders) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan.  The DoD has changed its story multiple times, after MSF refuted each version, evolving from a mistake, to that the Afghans requested it, to that it was ordered in the US chain of command in violation of US rules of engagement. When Margaret Flowers, MD was sitting in the audience before the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing and General John Campbell walked in to testify, she wanted to make sure he heard the anger of people over the Kunduz bombing and she said “Bombing hospitals is a war crime. Stop the bombing now.” Sen. John McCain ordered her arrested for making this statement.

The DoD will be investigating itself, so we know how that will turn out before it even begins. An independent investigation is needed. The DoD’s latest is to deny a congressional request for the audio and video cockpit tapes of the bombing. A request for the tapes was made in closed door congressional hearings this week. DoD acknowledged they had reviewed the tapes which provided important evidence but refused access to Congress because of the ongoing investigation. Edward Snowden first suggested these tapes would provide valuable evidence and Wikileaks has offered a $50,000 reward to find out. DoD should release the audio and video tapes of the bombing run. Sign our petition to President Obama demanding release of the tapes so the truth about the bombing can be known to all.

The Kunduz bombing and recent US wars are all consistent with the “US Way of War” which includes terrorizing communities, killing civilians of all ages, denying them healthcare and even food. We see the latter two in tactics like economic sanctions that increase poverty or make prescription drugs unavailable. These tactics go back to the founders.

George Washington ordered the Six Nations of the Indigenous Peoples in New York attacked with orders to kill or capture civilians of all ages:

The immediate objects are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements, and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more. I would recommend, that some post in the center of the Indian Country, should be occupied with all expedition, with a sufficient quantity of provisions whence parties should be detached to lay waste all the settlements around, with instructions to do it in the most effectual manner, that the country may not be merely overrun, but destroyed. But you will not by any means listen to any overture of peace before the total ruinment of their settlements is effected.

In Vietnam does anyone think that the widespread use of napalm did not result in mass killings of civilians? From 1965 to 1973, eight million tons of napalm bombs were dropped over Vietnam. And, Agent Orange, the chemical poison that not only kills people, causing serious health problems for generations, but poisons the land was also used.  Between 1962 and 1971, the United States military sprayed nearly 20,000,000 gallons of Agent Orange over Vietnam. By 1971, 12 percent of the total area of South Vietnam had been sprayed with defoliating chemicals, at an average concentration of 13 times the recommended level of use. Five million acres, 20 percent of forests and 24 million acres of agricultural land were destroyed.

And, Tom Hayden asks in Democracy Journal whether people remember “the US bombing of Hanoi’s Bach Mai hospital on December 22, 1972, when 28 doctors and nurses lay dead among the civilian casualties? That sparked American and global outrage, caused the Pentagon to go into a defensive crouch, and spurred the mass movement for medical aid to Indochina [MAI].”

During the Iraq War, when the US attacked Fallujah, days after George Bush won re-election, health services were the initial targets of attack.

By Saturday, November 6, the assault on Falluja began. U.S. rockets took out their first target: the Hai Nazal Hospital, a new facility that was just about ready to open its doors. A spokesman for the First Marines Expeditionary Force said, ‘A hospital was not on the target list.’ But there it is, reduced to a pile of rubble. Then on Sunday night the Special Forces stormed the Falluja General Hospital. They rounded up all the doctors, pushed them face down on the floor and handcuffed them with plastic straps behind their backs. With the hospital occupied, those wounded by the U.S. aerial bombings headed to the Falluja Central Health Clinic. And so at 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday, November 9, U.S. warplanes bombed that clinic as well, killing 35 patients, 15 medics, 4 nurses, 5 support staff and 4 doctors, according to a doctor who survived (The Nation, 13 December). U.S. fire also targeted an ambulance, killing five patients and the driver.

Jon Schwarz of the Intercept provides a series of examples of the bombing of civilian facilities since 1991 including: Infant Formula Production Plant, Abu Ghraib, Iraq (January 21, 1991), Air Raid Shelter, Amiriyah, Iraq (February 13, 1991), Al Shifa pharmaceutical factory, Khartoum, Sudan (August 20, 1998), Train bombing, Grdelica, Serbia (April 12, 1999), Radio Television Serbia, Belgrade, Serbia (April 23, 1999), Chinese Embassy, Belgrade, Serbia (May 7, 1999), Red Cross complex, Kabul, Afghanistan (October 16 and October 26, 2001), Al Jazeera office, Kabul, Afghanistan (November 13, 2001), Al Jazeera office, Baghdad, Iraq (April 8, 2003), and the Palestine Hotel, Baghdad, Iraq (April 8, 2003).

Throughout the Obama presidency and during the end of the Bush presidency, the US has been using drones to bomb multiple countries. There have consistent reports of drones killing civilians including Obama killing at least 8 Americans. This week the Obama administration took these killings a step further, trying to deny legal access to the victims’ families by seeking dismissal of their case. The US is seeing protests even in allied Germany against their use of drones. Efforts to bring transparency to the use of drones have resulted in blacked-out responses to FOIA requests.

This week the US moved toward direct confrontation with Russia and China. In Syria, the US is engaged in an unauthorized war supposedly against the Islamic State in Syria, but also to achieve its long term goal of putting in place a US friendly government in Syria. There is a lot of misinformation and confusion about this war, which has now been joined by Russian aerial attacks. Unlike the US, Russia was asked by the Syrian government to help prevent terrorist attacks in Syria. The US has been covertly using the CIA for ground operations with supposed moderate Syrian terrorists while also conducting an aerial campaign. There are widespread deaths of civilians and a massive exodus of refugees. Rhetoric is escalating, former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski is calling for retaliation against Russia while Senator John McCain says the US is in a proxy war with Russia. Talks in Geneva, without any preconditions as to the status of President Assad, are urgently needed.

Regarding China, last week the US announced that within the next two weeks it was going to send US war ships inside the 12-nautical-mile zones that China claims as territory around islands it has built in the Spratly Chain. The next day China responded that it would not tolerate violations of its territorial waters and told the US not to take any provocative actions. This sets up a potential conflict that the US has been stoking in the region, using allies like the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Vietnam as proxies for conflicts with China over the Islands.

War Is Not the Answer, Time to End US War Culture

Ralph Nader points to the recent war losses in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria and says there are lessons for the United States. The US has been unrestrained by international law and used “military power anywhere and everywhere, regardless of national boundaries and the resulting immense civilian casualties.” The US has created “wonton destruction and violent chaos” and destroyed functioning governments.

Nader describes the blowback caused by “reckless slaughter of civilians – wedding parties, schools, clinics, peasant boys collecting fire-wood on a hillside – from supposedly pinpoint, accurate airplanes, helicopter gunships, drones, or missiles. Hatred of the Americans spreads as people lose their loved ones.” As a result, the US is perceived as “invaders on a rampage” resulting in countries producing an endless supply of “motivated fighters” and “suicide bombers.” US wars’ “’blowback’ policies are fueling the expansion of al-Qaeda offshoots and new violent groups in over 20 countries.”

Nader points out that “all this could have been avoided” as there were scores of retired military officials who warned all-out war was a mistaken course. Further, al-Qaeda, the Taliban and their off shoots are not winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of the people with their brutal policies but their promise of law and order is better than the chaos of US militarism.

These war policies seeking to achieve full spectrum dominance have also had negative effects at home. Nader points to “the harm to and drain on our soldiers, our domestic economy, the costly, boomeranging, endless wars overseas and what empire building has done to spread anxieties and lower the expectation level of the American people for their public budgets and public services.”

How do we get out of these depraved quagmires of our own self-creation? Nader gives an answer – a change in approach to the world, an end to war culture and a move toward a humanitarian culture. As Nader says it:

Not repeatedly doing what has failed is the first step toward correction. How much better and cheaper it would be if years ago we became a humanitarian power – well received by the deprived billions in these anguished lands.

Let’s stop repeating the mistakes that have been with us since Columbus.Let’s end the American culture of war.

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers co-direct Popular Resistance. This article first appeared as the weekly newsletter of the organization.

The major influential western print media are engaged in a prolonged, large-scale effort to demonize Russian President Putin, his politics and persona. There is an article (or several articles) every day in which he is personally stigmatized as a dictator, authoritarian, czar, ‘former KGB operative’ and Soviet-style ruler; anything but the repeatedly elected President of Russia.

He is accused of hijacking Russia from the ‘road to democracy’,as pursued by his grotesquely corrupt predecessor Boris Yeltsin; of directing the bloody repression of the ‘freedom loving Chechens’; of jailing innocent, independent and critical oligarchs and robber barons; of fomenting an uprising in the ‘democratic, newly pro-Western’Ukraine and seizing control of Crimea; of backing a ‘bloody tyrant’ in Syria (elected President Bashar Assad) in a civil war against ISIS terrorists; of running the Russian economy into the ground; and of militarily threatening the Baltic and Eastern European NATO member countries.

In a word, the media have propagated an image of an ‘out-of-control autocrat’, who makes a mockery of ‘democratic’ norms and ‘Western values’, and who seeks to revive the ‘Soviet (aka Evil) Empire’.

The corollary is that ‘Western powers’, despite their peace-loving propensities and fraternal attempts to bring Russia into the democratic ‘fold’, have been ‘forced’ to now surround Russia with NATO military bases and missiles; to finance a violent coup in the Ukraine (on Russia’s frontier) and arm the Ukrainian putsch government and neo-fascist militias to ‘restore democracy’ and violently suppress ethnic Russian ‘separatists’ in Eastern Ukraine. We are told that US and EU sanctions against Russia were carefully crafted ‘diplomatic’ measures designed to punish the Moscow ‘aggressor’.

In reality, the Western media has relentlessly demonized Vladimir Putin in a campaign to further NATO military expansion and undermine the Russian economy and its national security. The goal is ultimately to force a ‘regime change’, restoring the neo-liberal elites who had pillaged Russia’s economy during the 1990’s and whose brutal economic policies led to the premature death of over 6 million Russians due to deprivation and the collapse of the healthcare system.

Putin: Demon or Realist, Autocrat or Democrat, Vassal or Independent Leader?

The Western media has backed every oligarch, gangster and fraudster who has gone on trial and been convicted during Putin’s term in office. The propagandists tell us the reason for this affinity between the Western media and the gangster-oligarchs is that these convicted felons, who claim to be ‘political dissidents’ and critics of Putin’s rule, have been dispossessed, and jailed for upholding ‘Western values’.

The Western media conveniently ignore the well-documented studies on the source of the gangster-oligarchs’ wealth: The violent and illegal seizure of multi-billion dollars-worth of natural resources (aluminum, oil and gas), banks, factories, pension funds and real estate. During the Yeltsin period the oligarchs controlled thousands of armed gangsters and engaged in internal warfare during which thousands were killed, including top government regulators, police officials and journalists who dared to oppose or expose their pillage and property grabs.

Putin’s prosecution of a mere fraction of the most notorious oligarch-gangsters has won the support of the vast majority of Russian citizens because it represents a return to law and order and the return of stolen public wealth.

Only the Western media has dared to refer to these convicted felons as ‘political victims and reformers’. They did so because theoligarchs had become the most loyal and submissive assets in the US and EU governments’ efforts to convert Russia into an irreversibly weak vassal state.

The Western media constantly refer to President Putin as the‘authoritarian ruler’, despite the fact that he has been repeatedly elected by large majorities in competitive elections against Western backed and funded candidates. His popularity is attested to by opinion polls conducted by Western agencies.

In 2015, President Putin’s support soared to over 85%.  The pro-Western Russian neo-liberal politicians scored in the low single digits according to the same independent polls.

Clearly the Russian public does not want to return to the poverty and chaos of the Western-backed gangster politics of the 1990’s.

Whatever reservations working and middle class Russians have over President Putin’s style of decision-making, they clearly value his crackdown on gangster-controlled elections, Chechen terrorism, and his restoration of Russian military defense of its frontiers, including the annexation of Crimea, following the US-engineered coup in Ukraine.

Every day, the Western media recycle reports of the ‘decline and demise’ of the Russian economy, blaming ‘statist’ mismanagement of the economy by Putin. They claim ‘declining living standards’, the ‘negative growth’ of the economy and the ‘growing isolation’ of an ‘expansionist’ Russia in the face of Western sanctions.

These media claims are laughable. Readily available data demonstrate that living standards of the vast majority of Russian citizens have significantly increased under President Putin’s administration, especially after the utter collapse under the free marketers of the1990’s. Russian workers receive their pay, pensioners their pensions, enterprises their loans – on time. During the ‘free market’ days of Boris Yeltsin, workers went up to a year without pay, pensioners were selling their heirlooms in the street to survive and enterprises paid extortionate interest rates to oligarch-gangster controlled banks! Comparative data, easily obtained, are deliberately ignored by the mass media because it doesn’t fit the demonological narrative.

The mass media present the neo-liberal ‘opposition’ and ‘liberal critics’ as Russian democrats defending ‘Western values’. They forget to mention that these ‘liberal critics’ have been directly funded by Western foundations (National Endowment for Democracy, Soros Foundation, etc.) and Russian non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) with longstanding ties to US and EU governments, intelligence agencies and exiled Russian billionaires. The so-called ‘Russian’ democratic opposition revealed their abject servility to Western interests when they openly supported the Ukrainian coup and Kiev’s bloody assault on ethnic Russian-Ukrainians in the eastern ‘Donbas’ regions of Donetsk, Luhansk and Odessa. Whatever shreds of respectability and credibility the ‘democratic opposition’ retained with the Russian public, up to that point, was lost. They were seen for what they are: propaganda arms of Western imperialism and mouth-pieces for neo-fascists.

The Western mass media charge Putin’s government with the same crimes that their own governments commit. After the US State Department’s Victoria Nuland admitted to channeling $5 billion to fund the 2014 coup in Ukraine and after the Polish regime boasted of training far right street fighters, whose mob violence served as a pretext for the coup, and after neo-fascist coalition partners in Odessa of burned alive four dozen ethnic Russian-Ukrainian citizens opposed to the coup, the Western mass media accused Putin of ‘intervening’ in Ukraine. This was because Russia had convoked a referendum in Crimea, in which over 80% of the electorate voted to secede from the illegitimate Ukrainian coup regime and rejoin Russia.

In truth, the Putin government is a victim of the Western power grab in the Ukraine, with Russia having to absorbed hundreds of thousands of ethnic Russian refugees driven out of the Donbas, yet the Western media portray Putin as the executioner. Meanwhile the Western coup-makers and their far-right allies are depicted as victims… forced to bomb and decimate the Donbas region.

The charade continued. The Western media portray the subsequent punitive, economic sanctions imposed by the expansionist US and EU on Russia as a result of Putin’s ‘aggression’, referring to Russia’s defense of Crimea’s self-determination and the rights of the millions of bilingual ethnic Russian citizens of Ukraine.

The absurdity and convoluted nature of Western demonological propaganda has reached new even more bizarre heights with their hysteria against Russia’s military support of the secular Syrian government against ISIS and other jihadi terrorists.

The Western mass media have launched a global campaign charging that the Russian air force bombs ‘non-ISIS military bases’, presumably the bases of Western-backed ‘friendly’ jihadi terrorists. This ridiculous ‘reportage’ and its accompanying ‘photos’ were published before the Russian air strikes even took place!!

Apparently timing doesn’t matter in Washington’s ‘alternative universe of lies’!

NATO passed its political line to the media that Russian support for the legitimate regime of President Assad must be discredited; that the Russian presence is ‘provocative’ and responsible for ‘creating tensions’ in the region – after years of Western-sponsored jihadi terrorism against Syria!

Obedient to its masters, the Western media breathlessly ‘reported’ that the Russians were ‘really’ engaged in Syria in order destroy the pro-Western ‘fighters’ leaving ISIS alone.

No credible evidence for this propaganda was ever presented. They trotted out aerial photos of wreckage, which had likely been lifted from previous US bombings.

The media’s clumsy execution of the Pentagon’s line managed to embarrass even the US Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, who backed off of such claims and called for an explanation from Russia. Even Secretary Kerry, who now seeks to secure Putin’s military support for the US against ISIS while withdrawing Russia’s political backing of President Assad, has cautioned the media to modify its line, now that the US favors ‘greater coordination’ with Russia – but under US leadership. The media has recently conformed to this line, although it has not managed to explain how Washington could now work with the demonic President Putin.

Conclusion

Western media is engaged in an intense long-term propaganda campaign to demonize President Putin. Its role is to convince world public opinion and world leaders to blindly follow the US and EU, as well as their ‘allies’ and vassal states, in a campaign to degrade and undermine Russia, and consolidate a unipolar empire under US tutelage.

The Western mass media is important; but it must be remembered that the media is an instrument of imperial state power. Its lies and fabrications, its demonization of leaders, like President Putin, are one part of a global military offensive to establish dominance and to destroy adversaries.

The more intense the imperial campaign, the riskier the power grab, the greater the need to demonize the victims.

This explains how the escalation of the rabid anti-Putin propaganda campaign coincides with the single biggest Western power grab – the Ukraine coup (‘regime change’) – since West Germany annexed East Germany, and NATO and the EU incorporated the Baltic States, Eastern Europe and the Balkans into the West’s strategic alliance. The West’s bloody break-up of the Yugoslav federation was part of this strategic program.

The problem with the Western demonization of adversaries, whether it is Russia, Iran andChina today, or earlier Cuba, Libya and Yemen in the past, is that Washington and the EU face severe economiccrises at home and military defeats abroad by armed Islamic and nationalist resistance movements.

The US had invested hundreds of billions of dollars to prop up a shaky puppet regime in US-occupied Iraq, yet the US-trained and supplied Iraqi Army fled as the Baathist-Islamist ‘ISIS’ quickly over-ran half the country.

US troops have occupied Afghanistan for fourteen years, losing tens of thousands of lives and limbs and yet the nationalist-Islamist Taliban can easily take over Afghanistan’s third largest city, Kunduz (population 300,000), and occupies three quarters of the rest of the countryside.

Libya and Somalia are a disaster. And still Washington allocates a half billion dollars to train pro-Western mercenaries to overthrow Syria’s President Assad – mercenaries who give up their arms or join ISIS the moment they cross the border from Jordan or Turkey. The US trained mercenaries have handed over untold millions of dollars worth of heavy and light weapons and armored carriers to ISIS and Al Qaeda. The EU and the US face the dismal reality that Libya, Somalia and Syria are over-run by anti-Western Islamic fighters.

In Asia, China is demonized in the Western media, portrayed as being on the verge of collapse, facing a hard landing, even as China grows at 7%. The Western media wring their collective hands over the crisis in China while Beijing finances two new international development banks for $100 billion, raises its contribution to the IMF and brings 50 countries, including most of the EU but minus the US and Japan, into a new infrastructure lending institution.

Two big questions face the US and EU:

Why do the Western media launch a campaign of demonizationthat doesn’t correspond to reality? What is the goal of such demonization, which objectively undermines the possibility of forming tactical alliances to end the US’ military losses, political defeats and diplomatic isolation? The US needs Russia to defeat ISIS.

For Moscow, the fight against ISIS is crucial to Russian national security: Thousands of Chechen terrorists (some trained by the US) are fighting with ISIS and threaten to return to the Caucuses and terrorize Russia. Unlike the US public’s opposition to Washington’s role in forcing ‘regime change’ in Syria, the Russian public supports Moscow’s military support for the Syrian government because the Chechens’ campaign of terror within Russia, especially the 2004 massacre of hundreds of school children, teachers and parents in Beslan, is seared into their memory – a fact conveniently ignored by Western media when it ‘sympathizes’ with Chechen ‘freedom fighters’.

In reality, Washington should have a common interest to ally with Russia in the fight against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. However Obama is committed to ousting Assad (Russia’s ally) to expand US dominance in the Middle East in partnership with Israel and Saudi Arabia. Clearly there are insurmountable contradictions between short-term military objectives (fighting ISIS) and strategic imperial political imperatives (consolidating US-Israeli hegemony over the Middle East and Iran).

Washington has moved to end its isolation in Latin America by re-establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba. Meanwhile, Washington retains the economic blockade of Cuba and its huge US military base in Guantanamo. Cuba is seen as a tactical political ally in ‘moderating’ the leftist government of Venezuela and pressuring the Colombian FARC to disarm, even as Washington deepens its military presence in the continent.

Obama signed off on a nuclear agreement with Iran (but the crippling sanctions and blockade remain in place) in order to secure Tehran’s support for the war against ISIS in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Temporarily, the Western mass media has ‘toned-down’ its demonological reporting on Iran and Cuba, for tactical purposes.

The Obama regime has adopted a ‘good cop/bad cop’ (or schizophrenic) posture with Russia on Syria – Secretary of State John Kerry speaks of joint co-operation with Moscow while Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter proposes to militarily confront ‘Russian aggression’. The media hasn’t made the switch because they don’t know which orders to obey or which line to ‘parrot’.

In the meantime, the domestic economic crisis deepens, ISIS advances, the Taliban approaches Kabul, the Russians are arming and defending President Assad and millions of refugees, fleeing the war zones, have over- run Europe. European border wars are raging. And Obama wrings his hands in impotence. Demonology offers no allies, no solutions and no positive path to peace and co-existence.

India and EU would soon resume negotiations on the stalled India-EU free trade agreement. In a joint statement issued by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in New Delhi on Monday, both leaders expressed their “strong commitment to the EU-India Broad Based Trade and Investment Agreement and committed to bring about a resumption of the negotiations as soon as possible.” With political leadership now backing the proposed agreement, the trade negotiators will sit down at the table again to thrash out the remaining issues.

The joint statement was released just hours before the US, Japan and 10 other Pacific Rim nations reached final agreement on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the largest regional trade pact in history as these economies together account for 40 percent of global GDP and one third of world trade.

Like the TPP, India-EU FTA has undergone more than dozen rounds of negotiations between 2007 and 2013. Thereafter, a change of government in Delhi as well as EU’s negotiations with the US on Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreement delayed the negotiating process. The negotiations were expected to resume this year but got stalled in August 2015 when the EU imposed a ban on the sale of 700 drugs clinically tested by GVK Biosciences, an Indian drug company.

A Highly Ambitious Agreement

In the case of India, the proposed FTA with EU is the most ambitious bilateral pact as it covers higher levels of commitments in trade in industrial goods and agricultural products, services and investment liberalisation, intellectual property rights and government procurement. In comparison, India’s existing FTAs are far narrower in scope.

The India-EU FTA would cover 1.7 billion people, almost 20 percent of the world population, and therefore the potential impacts (both positive and negative) would be far reaching than other agreements signed by India. That’s why, it has evoked much public scrutiny. In India, civil society groups as well as business associations (such as Society of Indian Automobile Manufactures – representing car and vehicle industry) have expressed concerns over this agreement being negotiated in deep secret and lack of public consultations.

The EU’s Broad-based Agenda

The proposed agreement has been facing hurdles on several contentious issues. To begin with, India is resisting demands from the EU to drastically cut tariffs on automobiles, wines and spirits, and dairy products. The EU is seeking greater market access in the services sector such as banking, retail trade, telecommunications, legal and accounting services. In the banking sector, for instance, EU is seeking removal of barriers to market access (commercial presence, cross-border supply and consumption) and grant of national treatment commitments.

The European firms and service providers are interested in the opening up of government procurement markets but India has only committed transparency in the conduct of government procurement processes.

A stringent intellectual property rights regime is another contentious issue as New Delhi has apparently not accepted TRIPS-plus provisions sought by Brussels. Besides, India is reluctant to include labour and environment standards under the proposed agreement.

Narrow Economic Gains for India

Under this FTA, India is largely expecting gains in the services, especially IT and ITeS. India is seeking a significant relaxation for the movement of its skilled professionals (for short-term assignments) within the 28-nation bloc. This would enable Indian IT and ITeS industry to move professionals freely from one country to another within the EU. Currently the EU does not offer a work permit with validity for the entire EU. India is also seeking 50000 extra working visas a year for its citizens but the EU is unlikely to accept this demand due to higher youth unemployment rate, which reached 23 percent in 2013.

In addition, New Delhi wants the EU to recognize India as a “data secure” nation which would immensely help the country’s IT industry to gain greater access to the European markets. But the EU is unlikely to accept this demand.

The Investment Conundrum

Apart from these long-pending issues, some new ones have cropped up recently which would further delay the negotiating process. Take the case of investment protection measures which represent almost the other half of this agreement. India has substantially revised its Model investment protection treaty text early this year after several foreign investors served arbitration notices to India for the alleged breach of its bilateral investment treaties. Now onwards, India would negotiate its future bilateral investment treaties and FTAs based on this new Model text.

The draft new Model text adopts a narrower definition of investments (limiting it to only FDI), removes MFN clause, and restricts the scope of national treatment and fair and equitable treatment clauses. It only allows investors to initiate international arbitration once they have pursued domestic legal remedies to resolve the investment dispute. In all likelihood, the EU would be reluctant to re-negotiate the entire investment chapter of the FTA as per India’s new Model text.

A Win-Win Deal?

Domestically, the Indian government will find it difficult to sell this agreement as a win-win deal and in the best interest of farmers, workers and producers. One cannot deny the fact that the larger gains from lowering tariffs on agricultural and industrial goods will be made by Europe due to higher import duties imposed by India. While Indian products are unlikely to gain much by further reduction of import duties by EU. In the case of cars, for instance, India’s import duty range from 60 to 100 percent while the EU charges a flat rate of 10 percent on imported cars.

In addition, this FTA would have profound implications on local employment and manufacturing in India. The cheaper import of agricultural and manufactured goods due to lowering of import tariffs will negatively affect several labour intensive sectors. Unlike Europe, 93 percent of India’s workforce is employed by unorganised sector with abysmally low wages and no social security.

The cheaper import of finished goods will also undermine local value addition which drives employment growth and promotes enterprise development. Needless to say, India badly needs both. In many important ways, the proposed FTA would run counter to ‘Make in India’ initiative launched with much fanfare by the present government. Hence, the Indian authorities need to undertake a holistic overview of the potential gains and losses from the proposed FTA with the EU and initiate consultations with all stakeholders.

Whither Geo-political Gains?

Is India pursuing FTAs with the EU and other nations purely for trade and investment? Are there other policy objectives? Since 2004, the successive Indian governments have maintained that their FTA strategy helps in the pursuit of geo-political objectives, without elaborating any further. During the past years, no efforts have been made by the authorities to explain how India stands to gain geo-politically by engaging in bilateral trade and investment pacts.

Some commentators argue that there is nothing per se wrong in pursuing geo-political objectives through bilateral trade and investment agreements but where is the evidence to substantiate that India’s enhanced geo-political rise in the world over the past decade has been made possible largely due to such agreements?

Kavaljit Singh is Director of Madhyam, a policy research institute based in New Delhi.

Over the years various researchers and investigations have suggested, even asserted at times, that as Vice President [H. W.] George Bush, along with some of his national security advisers, maintained close ties with a secret air-re-supply operation in El Salvador during the Reagan years. In October 1986, a week after the Nicaraguan government shot down a plane carrying supplies for the Contras, front page press reports actually announced that the operation led to both the CIA and Bush.

When it was revealed that Contra resupply project Chief Felix Rodriguez met several times with Bush and a key aide, the VP claimed they didn’t discuss Nicaragua. That actually worked! But here’s where it gets really interesting: the trail also led to the vice president’s son, Jeb. According to the Manchester Guardian, Jeb Bush “long acted as a liaison man with the fiercely pro-Contra, anti-Cuban and Nicaraguan settlers in Miami.”

Yes, this is the Republican “establishment choice” for 2016.

When the Iran-contra scandal began to break in October 1986, mainstream sources like CBS Evening News and the Miami Herald quoted unnamed officials as saying that Jeb Bush had served as his father’s chief point of contact with the contra rebels. Jeb’s denials were narrow. He didn’t deny being his father’s liaison to the contras, only the idea that he had participated “directly” in the illegal contra resupply effort directed from the White House.

And yet, like Keyser Soze, such stories just vanished. George Bush, by then heir apparent to Reagan, was insulated from probing questions as he campaigned for president for the next two years. The one person who connected the CIA, NSA and the mercenary forces on the ground. Instead of being investigated he became president.

Robert Parry, an Associated Press reporter who investigated the Reagan-Bush administration’s secret support for the Contras, confirms Jeb Bush’s association with Contra supporters operating out of Miami. More recently, he recalled that one Nicaraguan businessman with close ties to both Jeb and the Contras told Parry that Jeb Bush was involved with a pro-Contra mercenary named Tom Posey, who was organizing groups of military advisers and weapons shipments. In 1988, Posey was indicted along with several other individuals on charges of violating the Neutrality Act and firearms laws. The charges were dismissed in 1989 when a federal judge ruled that the US was not “at peace” with Nicaragua.

Jeb was also integral in securing a number of “pardons” of Cubans involved in terrorist acts. A prominent example was his intervention to help release Cuban terrorist Orlando Bosch from prison and grant him US residency. A notorious figure, Bosch was convicted of firing a rocket at a Polish ship en route to Cuba and was implicated in many other acts of terrorism, including the 1976 mid-air bombing of a Cubana Airlines plane, which killed 73 civilians.

The Cubana Airlines bombing and several other major acts of terrorism by Cuban right-wingers occurred while George H.W. Bush was CIA director and was working closely with anti-communist Cuban exiles employed by the CIA, including Rodriguez, a close associate of Bosch’s alleged co-conspirator in the Cubana bombing Luis Posada Carriles.

Bosch’s release, often called a pardon by media, was the result of pressure by hardline Cubans in Miami — with Jeb Bush as their point man. In July 2002, while he was Florida’s governor, Bush nominated Raoul Cantero, grandson of Cuba’s deposed dictator Batista, as a Florida supreme court judge despite his lack of experience. Cantero had previously represented Bosch and acted as his spokesman, once describing Bosch on Miami radio as a “great Cuban patriot.”

Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana recounts that in 1984 Jeb “began a close association with Camilo Padreda, a former intelligence agent under the Batista dictatorship, overthrown by Fidel Castro. Jeb was then the chairman of the Dade county Republican party and Padreda its finance chairman.” Later, Padreda was convicted of defrauding the housing and urban development department of millions of dollars.

With baggage like this, it’s hard to imagine Bush making it through the race — or just the primaries — without opening up his shady past. And as for improving relations with Cuba, at least Trump would just want his name on a casino.

The U.S. criticized Russia for killing civilians in Syria.

But just last week, the U.S. intentionally bombed one of the only hospitals in Northeastern Afghanistan (run by Nobel prize-winner Doctors Without Borders), killing hundreds.  This occurred 3 months after U.S.-backed Afghani special forces raided and threatened the hospital, and after the hospital had repeatedly given its gps coordinates to the U.S. military … and repeatedly called saying they were under attack.

And the Washington Post notes that incendiary bombs may have been used:

The AC-130U plane, circling above in the dark, raked the medical compound with bursts of cannon fire, potentially even using high explosive incendiary munitions, for more than an hour. The assault left at least 22 people dead, some of them burned to death.

It’s a war crime to bomb a hospital without giving adequate warning so patients can leave:

This is not the first time the U.S. has bombed civilian targets:

• In 1969 and 1970, the U.S. bombed several hospitals and a Red Cross facility in Cambodia

• On February 13, 1991, the U.S. purposefully targeted an air raid shelter near the Baghdad airport with two 2,000-pound laser-guided bombs, which punched through 10 feet of concrete and killed at least 408 Iraqi civilians.

• On April 23, 1999, NATO intentionally bombed a Serbian television station, killing 16.   President Clinton said of the bombing: “Our military leaders at NATO believe … that the Serb television is an essential instrument of Mr. Milosevic’s command and control. … It is not, in a conventional sense, therefore, a media outlet. That was a decision they made, and I did not reverse it.” U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke said right after the attack that it was “an enormously important and, I think, positive development.” Amnesty International noted it was “a deliberate attack on a civilian object and as such constitutes a war crime.”

• On October 16, 2001, the U.S. attacked the complex housing the International Committee of the Red Cross in Kabul, Afghanistan. After detailed discussions between the U.S. and the Red Cross about the location of all of its installations in the country, the U.S. bombed the same complex again two weeks later. The second attack destroyed warehouses clearly marked with the Red Cross emblem containing tons of food and supplies for hungry refugees

• On November 13, 2001, the U.S. bombed the Al Jazeera television bureau in Kabul.

• On April 8, 2003, the U.S. bombed the Al Jazeera bureau in Baghdad, killing a reporter. The British home secretary at the time subsequently revealed that – a few weeks before the attack – he had urged Prime Minister Tony Blair to bomb Al Jazeera’s transmitter in Baghdad.

• Also on April 8, 2003, a U.S. tank fired a shell at the 15th floor of the Palestine Hotel, where most foreign journalists were then staying. Two reporters were killed.  The Committee to Protect Journalists found that the attack “was avoidable”

The U.S. has also carried out numerous war crimes by killing civilians with drone strikes. This includes “double tap” strikes which target rescuers attempting to save those injured by drone strikes, and “signature strikes” that kill people whose identities aren’t even known, based on metadata on their phones or their proximity to war zones. And the U.S. has committed a slew of other war crimes, including:

• Carrying out terrorism … literally

• A widespread torture program specifically aimed at producing false confessions to justify the war

• Chemical weapons attacks against civilians (which greatly increased the rate of birth defects)

• The use of depleted uranium, which can cause cancer and birth defects for decades (see this, this,this, this, this and this)

• The Pentagon sent one of the main US creators of the death squads in El Salvador into Iraq to set up paramilitary death squads and torture centers

None of this is intended to excuse any civilian casualties inflicted by Russia.   But America should not throw stones in glass houses …

Public services in the EU are under threat from transatlantic trade agreements that could endanger citizens’ rights to basic services like water, health, and energy for the sake of corporate profits, according to a new report released today by an international group of NGOs and trade unions.

The study shows how the EU’s Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) deal with Canada, and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) under negotiation with the US, could lock public utilities into irreversible commercialisation and remove governments’ ability to regulate services.

Exposing systemic collusion between big business and European Commission officials in drawing up CETA and TTIP, the report shows how negotiators are doing the work of the EU’s most powerful corporate lobby groups in pushing an aggressive corporate agenda of far-reaching market opening in the public sector.

Pia Eberhardt, researcher and campaigner with lobby watchdog Corporate Europe Observatory:

“Corporate lobby groups have their fingerprints all over CETA and a similarly dangerous agenda is being pursued in the ongoing TTIP talks. The consequences include proposals for excessive investor rights which mean corporations could sue governments for regulations that affect their profits, potentially leading to multi-billion Euro payouts in compensation. Citizens must come together to stop this!”

Jan Willem Goudriaan, general Secretary of the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU):

“The corporate sector is pushing an agenda that threatens citizens and workers as a vast array of public services are set to be subject to liberalisation under the provisions of these agreements. What is at stake is our right to vital services, and the ability of public services to function in the public interest.”

The report states that what is at stake is our right to vital services and more; it is about our ability to steer services of all kinds to the benefit of society at large. If left to their own course, trade negotiations will eventually make it impossible to implement decisions for the common good. As long as TTIP and CETA do not protect the ability to regulate in the public interest, they must therefore be rejected.

The report highlights the aggressive agenda of corporations with regards to TTIP and CETA. And it shows how those in charge of EU trade negotiations are rolling out the red carpet for the services industry, with both the consolidated CETA agreement published in September 2014, as well as drafts of TTIP chapters and internal negotiation documents that reflect the wishlists of corporate lobbyists.

The key findings:

1. TTIP and CETA are being influenced by the EU’s most powerful corporate lobby group BusinessEurope and the European Services Forum, a lobby outfit bringing together business associations as well as major companies such as British Telecommunications and Deutsche Bank.

2. The European Commission actively stimulates business lobbying around its trade negotiations. In other words, there is systemic collusion between the Commission and business circles.

3. CETA is set to become the first EU agreement with the ‘negative list’ approach for services commitments: all services are subject to liberalisation unless an explicit exception is made. The same could happen in TTIP.

4. Big business has successfully lobbied against the exemption of public services from CETA and TTIP as both agreements apply to virtually all services. This effectively limits the governmental authority exemption to a few core sovereign functions such as law enforcement, the judiciary, or the services of a central bank.

5. Under investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), thousands of US and Canadian corporations (as well as EU-headquartered multinationals structuring their investments through subsidiaries on the other side of the Atlantic) could sue the EU and its member states over regulatory changes in the services sector diminishing corporate profits, potentially leading to multi-billion euro taxpayer payouts in compensation.

6. The different reservations and exemptions in CETA and TTIP are inadequate to effectively protect the public sector and decision making over how to organise it.

7. The European Commission follows industry demands to lock in present and future liberalisations and privatisations of public services. This could threaten the growing trend of remunicipalisation of water services, energy grids and transport services. A roll-back of some of the failed privatisations of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) to strengthen non-profit healthcare providers might be seen as violations of CETA/TTIP – as might nationalisations and re-regulations in the financial sector such as those seen during the economic crisis.

8. Giving in to corporate demands for unfettered access to government procurement could restrict governments’ ability to support local and not-for-profit providers and foster the outsourcing of public sector jobs to private firms, where staff are often forced to do the same work with worse pay and working conditions.

9. Both CETA and TTIP threaten to liberalise health and social care, making it difficult to adopt new regulations in the sector. The UK’s TTIP services offer explicitly includes hospital services. In the CETA text and recent TTIP drafts no less than 11 EU member States liberalise long-term care such as residential care for the elderly (Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and the UK).

10. The EU’s most recent draft TTIP services text severely restricts the use of universal service obligations (USOs) and curbs competition by public postal operators, mirroring the wishes of big courier companies such as UPS or FedEx. USOs such as daily delivery of mail to remote areas without extra charges aim at guaranteeing universal access to basic services at affordable prices.

11. TTIP and CETA threaten to limit the freedom of public utilities to produce and distribute energy according to public interest goals, for example, by supporting renewables to combat climate change. Very few EU member states have explicitly reserved their right to adopt certain measures with regard to the production of electricity and local energy distribution networks in the trade deals.

12. The US is eyeing the opening up of the education market via TTIP – from management training, and language courses, to high school admission tests. US education firms on the European market such as Laureate Education, the Apollo Group, and the Kaplan Group could benefit as much as German media conglomerate Bertelsmann, which has recently bought a stake in US-based online education provider Udacity.

13. The US film industry wants TTIP to remove European content quotas and other support schemes for the local film industry (for example, in Poland, France, Spain, and Italy). Lobby groups like the Motion Picture Association of America (MPPA) and the US government have therefore opposed the exclusion of audiovisual services from the EU’s TTIP mandate, fought for by the French Government. They are now trying to limit the exception as much as possible, for example, by excluding broadcasting from the concept of audiovisual services – seemingly with the support of EU industry groups like BusinessEurope and the European Commission.

14. Financial investors such as BlackRock engaged in European public services could use TTIP and CETA provisions on financial services and investment protection to defend their interests against ‘burdensome’ regulations, for example, to improve working conditions in the long term care sector. Lobby groups like TheCityUK, representing the financial services industry based in the UK, are pushing heavily for a “comprehensive” TTIP, which “should cover all aspects of the transatlantic economy”.

15. US services companies are also lobbying for TTIP to tackle ‘trade barriers’ such as labour regulations. For example US company Home Instead, a leading provider of home care services for seniors operating franchises in several EU member states, wants TTIP to address “inflexible labour laws” which oblige the firm to offer its part-time employees “extensive benefits including paid vacations” which it claims “unnecessarily inflate the costs of home care”.

The full report can be accessed here.

Editor’s note: In light of the recently-introduced Anti-terrorism Act (Bill C-51), and the upcoming Canadian federal election, an investigation into the history of the Arab community in Canada is necessary. Bill C-51 could be used arbitrarily in derogation of civil rights of  Canadians belonging to the Arab Community. The following article was originally published in November 2014.

Introduction: The Beginning

Exactly a century and a quarter ago, amid the numerous immigrants then pouring into Canada, a 19-year-old youth landed in Montreal. It was 1882, just 6 years after the establishment of Canada as a federal state, and Abraham Bounader from Zahle, a small town in The Lebanon (then part of Syria) overlooking the fertile Beka’ valley, had become Canada’s first Arab immigrant. By 1901, there were 2,000 others of Arab origin in Canada, by 1941 this number had grown to about 12,000 persons, and today it is estimated that there are about 600,000 Canadians of Arab origin (i.e., about 1.8% of Canada’s total population).

Syrians (including Lebanese) have sailed forth from their relatively small, resource-poor land for many thousand of years. Their perpetual Odyssey has led them to the farthest parts of the earth. If one knows how to identify them, he can find Lebanese (and Syrians) in almost every country, in almost every major city. And so they came eventually to Canada; from one rocky shore to another. Gradually they make a new home; gradually they took root and grew. As they did, they transformed both themselves and their new country.

They voyaged not only to political liberty and stability and better economic opportunities although these were important motives. They voyaged, too, for adventure, for excitement, for the taste of something new. Their ancestors, the Phoenicians, sailed and traded throughout the ancient world and established colonies in several locations (Cadiz in Spain, and Carthage in Tunisia, are two famous examples). It is not known for certain what caused the Phoenicians to adopt their commercial role, but it is likely that their region’s poverty in natural resources and the raggedness of its terrain were contributing factors. Certainly, these factors were of great importance in 19^thand 20^th century emigration from Lebanon.

Virtually all early Arab immigrants to Canada came from the regions included in the contemporary states of Lebanon and Syria. The earliest migrants from the Fertile Crescent were not distinguished as Syrians or Lebanese. Until 1956, Canadian immigration statistics grouped the two together.

Anecdotes of Arab immigrant pioneers reflect the importance of the steamship lines factor. One Colorado pioneer had jumped ship in Canada, and traveled south; a group of travelers rejected in New York in 1885 returned to Halifax, and from there traveled overland to New York. Mr. Howar, builder of the famous Islamic Centre of Washington, D.C., journeyed by chance from his home in Palestine to Egypt, India, and England before arriving in the United States around the turn of the last century. He went to Washington because that was where the President lived. According to historical records, the first Lebanese to settle in Canada came via New York. In those early years, it was only the very adventurous few, mostly Lebanese and Syrian, who left home and ventured to seek their fortune in distant lands. The majority went to the United States, but few made it to Canada.

The immigration patterns of these early years illustrate clearly the factors that determined the rate at which immigrants, Arabs and others came to Canada. Immigration legislation provides excellent insight into the prevailing values and beliefs of the day. In the 19^th and early 20^th century, the salient view among most English Canadians was that the values and way of life of the “white race” were superior to all others. Preference was therefore given to British and American immigrants, followed by immigrants from western and northern Europe, then from the rest of Europe. Asians and Blacks were the least preferred of all immigrants and were allowed in only when there was a demonstrated need for their labour (e.g., building the Canadian Pacific Railroad in the 1890s allowed thousands of Chinese immigrants into Canada. Yet during the next 50 years, when “orientalphobia” was widespread among Anglophiles, less than a 100 Chinese were admitted into the country).

It was only in the second half of the 20^th century that discriminatory restrictions on immigration began to ease. The Second World War forced Canadians to re-examine their view of immigrants. In the years leading up to the war, Canadians had become guilty of excessive human rights violations against local minorities, the most infamous of which was the treatment of the Japanese in 1942. But other groups suffered as well (e.g., Germans and Italians). The injustices committed against these minorities became all the more pronounced because the Second World War was to a larger extent a war against the concept of racial superiority. Canada’s joining of the United Nations in 1945 was the final blow to a long history of discriminatory practices against non-whites, and to the preferential treatment given to Anglophiles. It was then only a matter of time before artificial barriers to immigration had to come down even though old attitudes and beliefs persisted for a while longer and have occasionally surfaced since then.

The Post World War II Period

With each change in immigration laws and regulations, it became easier for Arabs to immigrate to Canada, mostly through sponsorship. The post WWII period witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of Arab immigrants to Canada. Unfavourable conditions in their home countries, coupled with more liberal immigration policies in Canada made Canada a choice destination for many an Arab immigrant.

The period following the War was one of social tranquility and economic prosperity in Canada. In the Arab world, this same period saw nothing but one disaster after the other (Al-Nakba in Palestine in 1948, the Suez War of 1956 following the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, the Six-Day-War of June 1967, the 1973 War, the Civil War in Lebanon, the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88, the 1991 Gulf War and subsequent invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, the Civil Wars in Sudan, Somalia and Algeria, and the continuing Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories). It was these “push factors” that largely determined the origin, religion and other socio-economic profile of Arabs who immigrated to Canada.

Canada Egyptians are a case in point. Starting in the mid-1950s there was a significant upsurge in the number of Arab immigrants from Egypt even though their number in Canada until 1954 was relatively insignificant. Yet within a period of less than twenty years, (1956-1974), over 17,000 Arab immigrants who came to Canada gave Egypt as their country of origin. Today, Egyptians (as well as Iraqis) are only second to the Lebanese in making up the Canadian Arab population.

The Egyptian immigrants of the 1950s and 1960s were largely Copts and middle class Muslim Egyptians who were disaffected with the socialist transformation of their country by President Nasser. Concerned about religious and economic freedom, they left their country in search of better living conditions elsewhere. Many came to Canada.

The same was, and still is, true for immigrants from other Arab countries, especially Iraq, Palestine, Sudan, and the North African states of Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, and Morocco. The precarious balance that had kept in check volatile and explosive religious and political forces in the Lebanon came apart with horrendous consequences for the Lebanese people in the mid-seventies. A civil war erupted with a level of destruction not seen anywhere in many generations. Tens of thousands of Lebanese came to Canada where many of them had relatives who could either sponsor or nominate them. Some came under the new immigration category of business investors while other came as refugees. Many, in the latter group, were probably of Palestinian origin.

More recently, the human catastrophe that has befallen Iraq precipitated a massive wave of Iraqi immigrants to Canada. The same can be said about the Palestinians. These people have been direct victims of the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, the subsequent Israeli expansionist policies in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and scapegoats for Arab conflicts. The number of Palestinians in Canada is significantly higher than those reported by either the Census or immigration statistics. Because they do not have their own state, Palestinians hold the citizenship of various Arab and non-Arab countries, so that when they come to Canada, Palestinians are likely to be counted as nationals of the countries from which they have just arrived (e.g., Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates), or of countries whose citizenship they hold (e.g., Jordan and Syria).

The Changing Profile of Arab Canadians

The period following WWII, particularly the last five decades, has witnessed not only a substantial growth in Arab immigration to Canada, but also significant changes in the socio-economic characteristics and national origins of Arab immigrants.

Prior to 1954, virtually all Arab immigrants to Canada were from Syria and Lebanon, the majority of them were Christians who came from the many villages and towns that dot the Lebanese and Syrian mountains. After 1945, the national origins of Arab immigrants became far more diversified; their composition in Canada became more representative of the Arab world by region, religion, and social class.

Arab Canadians can be found in virtually all Canadian provinces and major urban centres. However, Ontario, and to a lesser extent Quebec, have always been the provinces of choice for immigrants from the Arab world since the 1950s. According to the most recent Census figures, Ontario is now home to more than 40% of the total Arab population in Canada. The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) alone is home to almost half of Ontario Arabs and close to one-fifth of all Arab Canadians. Such residential concentration has proven to have quite an impact on social and institutional development. It has resulted in the formation of Arab cultural niches. In Toronto, for example, one can drive along a two-kilometre stretch of Lawrence Avenue and find Arab stores dotting both sides of the street; supermarkets whose shelves stock all kinds of Arabic (and Middle Eastern) food and other products, a bakery that produces and sells thousands of pita bread daily, confectionery/sweet shops whose colourful delights match – in sight, if not always in taste – the best that is produced anywhere in the Arab world. There are also a number of restaurants, which in recent years have been responsible for introducing Canadians to such Arabic foods asFalafel, Hummus, Couscos, Tabouleh and so forth. On a typical Saturday, the parking lot of what must be dubbed the “Nasr Plaza” is crowded with people who speak different dialects of Arabic and exchange pleasantries, gossip, and news about the local community and their home countries. The same developments have occurred elsewhere in Mississauga, Montreal, Ottawa, Edmonton, London, Windsor, Hamilton, Halifax and other major urban centres throughout Canada.

Age and Sex Composition

The age and sex composition of an ethnic group has social, economic, and even political consequences. Masculinity ratios – number of males per 100 females – for example, may have an impact on the rate of mixed marriages. Also, the age profile of a group will have an effect on such economic factors as participation in the labour force, and the demands that are placed on such social services as health, education, and employment benefits.

Arab Canadians, when compared with other Canadians, tend to have a younger age profile. This may be due to the fact that the great majority of the Arab Canadian population is made up of recent immigrants who tend to be younger in age. Initially, they also maintain the relatively high fertility rate of the Arab world.

The net effect of this age distribution is that (1) the per capita demands made on government health and other support services for seniors of Arab origin is less than that of the average for the total Canadian population; and (2) that the relatively younger profile of the Arab Canadian population will contribute positively to future entrants into the labour force.

For the Arab community in Canada, there are considerably more males than females. As a result, masculinity rates for Arab Canadians are quite high, especially when compared with national averages. A shortage of females within one’s own ethnic group will, out of necessity if nothing else, force eligible males to seek marriage partners from outside the group. Some may overcome this problem by finding a mate from the “old country”, but the majority will be left with no option but to seek a mate outside their own ethnic group.

Religious Affiliation and Diversity

Although the great majority of Arabs, well in excess of 90%, are Muslims, the religious affiliation of the first wave of Arab immigrants to Canada which lasted until the WWII was predominantly Christian. They brought with them a version of Christianity which, at least in name, was not all that easily recognizable to the average Canadian Catholic or Protestant. They were mostly Melkites, Syrian Orthodox and Maronites.

In the post-Second World War period, the proportion of Muslim Arabs immigrants increased dramatically with the upsurge of immigration from the Arab world. Those Arab immigrants who came from Egypt in the 50s and 60s were largely Christian. They brought with them a version of Christianity known as Coptic, a Christian sect with deep historical roots in Egypt. The same can be said about Christian immigrants from Iraq who belong to the Assyrian and/or Chaldaean branch of Christianity.

In Canada, the early history of the Arab Muslims goes back to the last half of the 19^th century when a few began to immigrate to North America from the Greater Syria area. According to the Canadian Census, in 1871 there were only 12 Muslims in Canada – all living in Ontario. In 1931, there were 645 Muslim residents, probably mostly Arab, spread throughout different regions of Canada. Small size and relatively even geographical spread underlay the slow development of Mosques and related Muslim institutions. In 1938, as many as 20 families residing in Edmonton, Alberta, built the first Canadian Mosque – declared a historic site in 1978 – in that city.

After the Second World War, the Muslim population increased rapidly, mostly in Ontario. Today, there are well over 1.2 million Muslims in Canada – about 33% being of Indo-Pakistani origin, followed closely by Somalis and other Arabs. There are also a good number originating from East and South Africa, the Caribbean, Iran, Turkey, and Europe – principally from Albania, Bosnia and Croatia. Canada is home to roughly 1.2 million Muslims Canadians (about 3.6% of Canada’s total population).

By far the largest Islamic religious education and community services are concentrated in the Greater Toronto Area. In this prosperous Canadian city, the Muslims have established a series of religious institutions to cater to the nearly 300,000 members of these Toronto Islamic organizations. To meet the expanding need, old mosques are being expanded and new ones are continuously being built.

The Arab Canadian community has undergone a remarkable degree of institutional development involving religious, social, and secular organizations. The most prominent of secular and pan-Arab Canadian organization is the Canadian Arab Federation (CAF) that was founded in 1967 as a direct by-product of the Six Day War of June of that fateful year. Currently, there are numerous newspapers and other types of popular Canadian Arab media outlets. Both the religious and secular ethnic institutions have provided a link with the ancestral land, reinforcing the maintenance of cultural and linguistic identity. At the same time, they have played an important role adaptive role, encouraging acculturative change and integration with the host society.

A Socio-Economic Profile of Arab Canadians

The first wave of Arab immigrants to Canada which lasted until the WWII was characterized by people who were mostly uneducated and unskilled. They were quite young, single, and primarily interested in making money (A good example of that generation is the family of Leon’s Furniture Stores). Handicapped by their limited knowledge of North American culture and the English language, they sought jobs that did not require familiarity with either of these. The majority of them made a living working as industrial labourers, as peddlers or as shopkeepers.

The more recent immigrants from the Arab world, however, have been better educated, more professionally qualified and more adept at coping with the demands of modern society. Add to this the emphasis that Arabs have traditionally placed on education, and the result is an Arab community in Canada whose members, on average, enjoy high levels of educations, of income, and of occupational status.

The economic adaptation of the early Arab immigrants was often linked with a keen desire for economic and occupational success. (The story of Clair Haddad and her remarkably successful career in the fashion industry could be used as an example). Many of the early Syrian immigrants entered the labour force through peddlery, an independent but relatively low status occupation. Through devotion to hard work, frugality and reciprocal support, the three elements of what can be described as the “Levantine Ethic”, peddlers often experienced a steady rise in their economic fortunes and a broadening of their entrepreneurial functions (The story of the founders of Leon’s Furniture stores is an excellent example).

The post-war immigrants entered Canada with higher average educational and occupational qualifications and the majority of them planned to follow professional and other white collar careers. Thus the economic/occupational characteristics of the typical Arab immigrant have been changing.

Economic adaptation is a central life concern, relevant not only to the material but also the social, psychological and spiritual well-being of the individual immigrant and his/her ethnic community. Throughout the years, Arab immigrants and their descendants have entered all levels of the occupational hierarchy, some of them achieving renown in their respective fields (Clair Haddad: Fashion designer, Leon’s Furniture; the late Joe Ghiz, former premier of PEI is a powerful symbol of how Prince Edward Island’s Lebanese community has overcome prejudice and won the respect of the Islanders; virtually every Canadian university has one of more faculty member who is of Arab origin).

Adaptation to Canadian Life

The successful adjustment of Arab immigrants requires both linguistic and psychological adaptation. It requires that they learn or improve their knowledge of one or both of Canada’s official languages and, as well, that they develop new attitudes and commitments, which may be reflected in such things as acquiring Canadian citizenship, deciding to make Canada a permanent home and developing a general liking for Canadian society and culture.

The acculturation experience, how an ethnic group adapts to the host society, is greatly influenced by (1) how it is perceived by the other dominant groups; (2) how it perceives the other groups; and (3) how it perceives itself.

It is generally accepted that the higher is the level of education or occupational status, the easier it is for the immigrant to cope with the challenges of entering a new society. Among other things, education provides a person knowledge, language and conceptual skills, and problem solving tools that enable him/her to deal better with the demands of acculturation. Good occupational qualifications also make it easier for the immigrant to deal with one of the most pressing practical problems upon entry, finding a job.

There has been a strong tendency for immigrants from the Arab world to be favourable to permanent residence in Canada and to the acquisition of Canadian citizenship. There is no doubt about their generally positive feelings towards the new way of life, despite attachment to certain aspects of the Arab heritage. Having experienced both East and West, and having chosen the West, Arab immigrants see acculturative change, in the form of integration, as desirable, yet they and their descendants have continued to maintain links with the ancestral heritage.

Whether or not an Arab Canadian knows Arabic, links with the ancestral heritage can be, and have been, maintained through such things as Arabic food, music, dances, mass media exposure, visits to the Old Country (or homeland), and correspondence with friends and relatives left behind.

Arab cultural identity in Canada is not likely to be reduced to a uniform configuration among Arab Canadians, and we will probably always encounter patterned variations in its strength. Because of the relative youthfulness of the immigrant generation, coupled with its numerical dominance, Arab ethnicity will continue to be vigorously manifested, especially with continued immigration from the Arab world. Also, the federal government’s policy of multiculturalism and relatively tolerant public attitude towards ethnic differences, if continued, will enhance the development and preservation of ethnic identity without diminishing loyalty to Canada as the chosen land. Pluralism is one of Canada’s foundational values. It is based on the recognition that our diversity is a source of strength and that every individual and community has an equal voice and can, and should, use that voice to participate as a full member of the Canadian society.

For Arab Canadians, living in Canada has meant the adoption of many Canadian norms and values. To be sure, they have also retained, in varying degrees, their ethnic identity and elements of the cultural heritage; but the demands of the new socio-cultural system have necessitated the development of new orientations and modes of behaviour. As a consequence, they now have in common the experience of having abandoned, or even rejected some of the ways of the Old Country, in the process of embracing the ways of the new land. This process appears to intensify with each succeeding generation and with economic advancement.

At the same time, there are also pressures towards the maintenance of ethnic identity, reflected in part in a moderate degree of institutional development within the Arab Canadian community. The ethnic institutions developed include churches, mosques, secular associations, newspapers, radio and TV programs. In addition, the Arab-Canadian family has played a role in maintaining aspects of the ancestral heritage. In all other spheres, Arab Canadians have been, and still are, integrated with the institutions of the larger society.

The Future

We have already pointed out the major reasons why Arab immigrates to Canada: wars, population displacement, political instability, religious persecution (real or imagined), economic deprivation, and the existence of attractive conditions in Canada. Unfortunately, there is little reason to believe that the political and social conditions in the Arab world is likely to improve in the foreseeable future.

Economically, the Arab world is in dire straits. The widening gulf between rich and poor is festering a growing frustration among millions of the Arab masses. Many of them can easily become convinced that Arab wealth, in the form of oil, is being squandered by the few in collusion with a decadent West. Increases in population size coupled with improvements in education have produced a large class of qualified and energetic young people who have very limited employment prospects in the Arab countries. Furthermore, the initial optimism that characterized the earlier phase of the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks, there is now the realization that peace is not likely to break out soon.

The festering Arab-Israeli conflict with its destabilizing effects on the whole region, combined with the dangerous situation in the Gulf (i.e., the conflict with Iraq), and the mounting social and political problems throughout the Arab world, will no doubt put pressure on Canada to admit more, rather than less, immigrants from Arab countries.

In conclusion one may be justified to say that the Canadian Arab community (1) is growing in numbers and influence; (2) is diverse but culturally unified; (3) has an integrationist mode of acculturation; and (4) is a misunderstood community.

There is video and audio. It exists. The Pentagon says it’s critically important. Congress has asked for it and been refused. WikiLeaks is offering $50,000 to the next brave soul willing to be punished for a good deed in the manner of Chelsea Manning, Thomas Drake, Edward Snowden, and so many others. You can petition the White House to hand it over here.

The entire world thinks the U.S. military intentionally attacked a hospital because it considered some of the patients enemies, didn’t give a damn about the others, and has zero respect for the rule of law in the course of waging an illegal war. Even Congress members think this. All the Pentagon would have to do to exonerate itself would be to hand over the audio and video of the pilots talking with each other and with their co-conspirators on the ground during the commission of the crime — that is, if there is something exculpatory on the tapes, such as, “Hey, John, you’re sure they evacuated all the patients last week, right?”

All Congress would have to do to settle the matter would be to take the following steps one-at-a-time until one of them succeeds: publicly demand the recordings; send a subpoena for the recordings and the appearance of the Secretary of “Defense” from any committee or subcommittee in either house; exercise the long dormant power of inherent contempt by locking up said Secretary until he complies; open impeachment hearings against both the same Secretary and his Commander in Chief; impeach them; try them; convict them. A serious threat of this series of steps would make most or all of the steps unnecessary.

Since the Pentagon won’t act and Congress won’t act and the President won’t act (except by apologizing for having attacked a location containing white people with access to means of communication), and since we have numerous similar past incidents to base our analysis on, we are left to assume that it is highly unlikely that the hidden recordings include any exculpatory comments, but more likely conversation resembling that recorded in the collateral murder video (“Well it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle.”)

There isn’t actually any question that the U.S. military intentionally targeted what it knew to be a hospital. The only mystery is really how colorful, blood-thirsty, and racist the language was in the cockpit. Left in the dark, we will tend to assume the worst, since past revelations have usually measured up to that standard.

For those of you working to compel police officers in the United States to wear body cameras, it’s worth noting that the U.S. military already has them. The planes record their acts of murder. Even the unmanned planes, the drones, record video of their victims before, during, and after murdering them. These videos are not turned over to any grand juries or legislators or the people of the “democracy” for which so many people and places are being blown into little bits.

Law professors that measure up to the standards of Congressional hearings on kill lists never seem to ask for the videos; they always ask for the legal memos that make the drone murders around the world part of a war and therefore acceptable. Because in wars, they imply, all is fair. Doctors Without Borders, on the other hand, declares that even in wars there are rules. Actually, in life there are rules, and one of them is that war is a crime. It’s a crime under the U.N. Charter and under the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and when one mass-murder out of millions makes the news, we ought to seize that opportunity to draw attention, outrage, and criminal prosecution to all the others.

I don’t want the video and audio recordings of the hospital bombing. I want the video and audio recordings of every bombing of the past 14 years. I want Youtube and Facebook and Twitter full, not just of racist cops murdering black men for walking or chewing gum, but also of racist pilots (and drone “pilots”) murdering dark-skinned men, women, and children for living in the wrong countries. Exposing that material would be a healing act beyond national prejudice and truly worthy of honoring Doctors Without Borders.

2007 — Yangtze River Dolphin, Lipotes vexillifer

(Source: “Lipotes vexillifer” by Alessio Marrucci)

2004 — Po’o-uli, Melamprosops phaeosoma

(Source: “Poʻouli” by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

2002 — Vine Raiatea Tree Snail, Partula labrusca

(Source: Islandbiodiversity)

To Read Complete Article (with photos) click below

http://www.pixable.com/article/heres-every-single-animal-that-became-extinct-in-the-last-100-years-photos-67674/

When it comes to official and media opinion on Obama’s crowning trade “achievements”, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade And Investment Partnership (TTIP), the party line is united. As previously noted, Barack Obama has assured the population that this treaty is going to be wonderful for everyone:

 In hailing the agreement, Obama said, “Congress and the American people will have months to read every word” before he signs the deal that he described as a win for all sides.

“If we can get this agreement to my desk, then we can help our businesses sell more Made in America goods and services around the world, and we can help more American workers compete and win,” Obama said.

The mainstream media’s chorus of support for these trade deal is likewise deafening: here are some indicative headlines from this past Monday:

• Time Magazine: “Pacific Trade Deal Is Good for the U.S. and Obama’s Legacy”
• The Washington Post: “The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a trade deal worth celebrating”

The far less popular opposing view, one repeatedly presented here, is that like with every other “free trade” agreement that the U.S. has entered into since World War II, the exact opposite is what will actually happen: the outcome will be that the US trade deficit (which excluding petroleum is already back to record levels) will get even larger, and we will see even more jobs and even more businesses go overseas, thus explaining the secrecy and the fast-track nature of the TPP and TTIP’s passage through Congress.

And while the US population, which is far more perturbed by what Caitlyn Jenner will wear tomorrow than D.C.’s plans on the future of world trade, has been mute in its response to the passage of the first part of the trade treaty, the TPP – after all the MSM isn’t there to tell it how to feel about it, aside to assure it that everything will be great even as millions of highly-paid jobs mysteriously become line cooks – other countries are standing up against globalist trade interests meant to serve a handful of corporations.

Case in point Germany, where today hundreds of thousands of people marched in Berlin in protest against the planned “free trade” deal between Europe and the United States which they say is anti-democratic and will lower food safety, labor and environmental standards.

TTIP critics fear that it would lead to worse safeguards in Europe, bringing down standards for consumer safety, food and health or labor rights down to those in America. European nations have stricter regulations for things like genetically modified foods or workers benefits than the US does. There is also discontent with the secretive nature of the negotiations, which prompts skeptics to assume the worst about the document they would eventually produce.

The organizers – an alliance of environmental groups, charities and opposition parties – claimed that 250,000 people were taking part in the rally against free trade deals with both the United States and Canada, far more than they had anticipated.

As many as 250,000 protesters gathered in Berlin, according to organizers
 

“This is the biggest protest that this country has seen for many, many years,” Christoph Bautz, director of citizens’ movement Campact told protesters in a speech.

According to Reuters, “opposition to the so-called Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) has risen over the past year in Germany, with critics fearing the pact will hand too much power to big multinationals at the expense of consumers and workers.”

Popular anger appears to be focused on the encroachment by corporations into every corner around the globe:

“What bothers me the most is that I don’t want all our consumer laws to be softened,” Oliver Zloty told Reuters TV. “And I don’t want to have a dictatorship by any companies.”

Other are mostly concerned about the secrecy covering the treaty and its negotiations: “Dieter Bartsch, deputy leader of the parliamentary group for the Left party, who was taking part in the rally said he was concerned about the lack of transparency surrounding the talks. “We definitely need to know what is supposed to be being decided,” he said.”

As Deutsche Welle adds, the EU and US aim to conclude the negotiations, which began in 2013, by sometime next year. The next round of negotiations is set to begin later this year. Once completed, TTIP would create the world’s largest free-trade zone, home to some 800 million consumers.

Campaigners are particularly concerned about a provision in the deal that would allow companies to sue governments in special tribunals. Such an arrangement, they fear, would lead to an erosion of labor and environmental protections . TTIP’s supporters dismiss such thinking and argue that the deal would boost the EU’s economy by removing tariffs and creating common standards.

Gerhard Handke, who heads the Federation of German Wholesale, Foreign Trade and Services, told DW that TTIP would even help uphold such standards. Europe, he explained, would soon be overshadowed by other economic players, such as India and China. “Now is the time to set standards, rather than have other countries dictate them later on,” he said. “Otherwise, one day, we’ll have Asia setting those standards, without anyone asking us what we think.”

Those gathered in Berlin, though, take a very different view. “We have heard these promises before, these promises of jobs and prosperity and growth,” Larry Brown, a trade unionist from Canada – which is negotiating a similar trade deal with the EU – shouted into a microphone on Saturday as demonstrators clapped and cheered and several police looked on. “They are lies. They have to be stopped.”

* * *

Oddly, few in the US aside from the fringe media, share any of these concerns.

In Germany however, the marchers banged drums, blew whistles and held up posters reading “Yes we can – Stop TTIP.”

As Reuters adds, the level of resistance “has taken Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government by surprise and underscores the challenge it faces to turn the tide in favor of the deal which proponents say will create a market of 800 million and serve as a counterweight to China’s economic clout.”

And just like in the US, the government is scrambling to soften the popular opposition before the deal is scuttled:

 In a full-page letter published in several German newspapers on Saturday, Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel warned against “scaremongering”.

“We have the chance to set new and goods standards for growing global trade. With ambitious, standards for the environment and consumers and with fair conditions for investment and workers. This must be our aim,” Gabriel wrote.

“A fair and comprehensive free trade deal promotes growth and prosperity in Europe. We should actively participate in the rules for world trade of tomorrow,” Ulrich Grillo, head of the BDI Federation of German industries, said in a statement.

Businesses hope the trade deal will deliver over $100 billion of economic gains on both sides of the Atlantic.

Which, naturally, is jargon for millions in cost-cuts and layoffs, meant to boost profitability and shareholder equity.

For now the U.S. public remains largely inert to the TPP and TTIP concerns sweeping the globe; we expect that to last until the next major round of layoffs hits the US, just in time for the NBER to admit the country has been in a recession for at least 6 months.

This is how the protest looked like covered by social networks and other non-US media outlets:

The steel barricades that surrounded this year’s Tory party conference in Manchester are gone. They were torn down not long after all the political VIPs departed this city to turn the speeches of the home secretary, the chancellor and the prime minister into policies that will effect not only this country, but the EU and the Middle East.

By all accounts and no matter how much Tory policy wonks gild the lilly, Britain will be subjected to more austerity according to the speeches uttered by this government’s ministers. Between euphemism and rancour, the words this week of George Osborne and Theresa May has promised Britain: unsustainable devolution to economically disadvantaged cities and a draconian response to a refugee crisis not seen since the end of the Second World War.

Both the democratic rights of trade unions, along with the rights of senior citizens to dignity in old age free of want were held in contempt by ministers at fringe events that were more a celebration of unmitigated capitalism rather than good governance.

Still, no matter the right-wing excess displayed at the Tory party convention from ministers and delegates − which made it appear more like a tribal feast celebrating the return of hunters who had great success in stalking and killing deadly prey that had threatened their village, than a political event − this conference would not have been unique, save for David Cameron’s leader’s speech.

It was in that address that the prime minister mixed in with mellifluous words of a Greater Britain with broken shards of glass for Jeremy Corbyn. David Cameron did more than attack a political opponent in his speech, he crossed the line from partisan politics to the nefarious McCarthyism of the 1950s.

Cameron’s attack on Jeremy Corbyn resurrects the politics of the Cold War, when people of good will, politicians, activists, gays, artists and ordinary citizens were deemed enemies of the state because they opposed colonialism, racism and nuclear weapons or embraced their sexual orientation in a time of homophobia.

In those days, whether here or in the United States, when political demagogues attacked their opposition by smearing them as unpatriotic or sympathetic to communism or socialism it was done not through jurisprudence but as a witch-hunt whose only purpose was to diminish the democratic rights of a free people.

So, when a 21^st century British prime minister spends a portion of his leader’s conference speech characterising his political opponent as a man who doesn’t love his country and is a threat to the security of this nation, we must grow concerned for this new Tory politics. It is as if David Cameron and the Conservative party want to draw an iron curtain around fair play and common sense in a cynical attempt to maintain power through fear.

The question that now must be asked is if the Tories believe Jeremy Corbyn is unpatriotic, does that mean that those who support his policies on the environment, on the EU and on the Middle East are also unpatriotic and a threat to this country’s security?

In his speech the prime minister spoke of what is not written but he should also remember what is written and that is our nation’s history both noble and ignoble. Britain’s legacy is glorious and also fraught with great misdeeds but it does teach us that great politicians, political movements and societies aren’t built upon propaganda, rancour and discord.

Great politicians, like great societies, stem from discipline, prudence, empathy and vision that invites all of its citizens to enjoy the benefits and responsibilities of democracy. But the politics envisioned by Cameron suggests that over the next five years Britain will see a Conservative party push its ideological agenda of austerity and privatisation with the cruelty of zealots to the detriment of our democratic institutions and many of this country’s citizens.

Harry Leslie Smith is a 92-year-old Second World War veteran, activist and writer. His first book, Harry’s Last Stand, was published in June 2014 and his second, Love Among the Ruins, is out now. Check out www.harryslaststand.com and follow him on Twitter at @Harryslaststand

The world is beginning to realize that a seachange in world affairs occured on September 28 when President Putin of Russia stated in his UN speech that Russia can no longer tolerate Washington’s vicious, stupid, and failed policies that have unleashed chaos, which is engulfing the Middle East and now Europe. Two days later, Russia took over the military situation in Syria and began the destruction of the Islamic State forces.

Perhaps among Obama’s advisors there are a few who are not drowning in hubris and can understand this seachange. Sputnik news reports that some high-level security advisors to Obama have advised him to withdraw US military forces from Syria and give up his plan to overthrow Assad. They advised Obama to cooperate with Russia in order to stop the refugee flow that is overwhelming Washington’s vassals in Europe. The influx of unwanted peoples is making Europeans aware of the high cost of enabling US foreign policy. Advisors have told Obama that the idiocy of the neoconservatives’ policies threaten Washington’s empire in Europe.

Several commentators, such as Mike Whitney and Stephen Lendman, have concluded, correctly, that there is nothing that Washington can do about Russian actions against the Islamic State. The neoconservatives’ plan for a UN no-fly zone over Syria in order to push out the Russians is a pipedream. No such resolution will come out of the UN. Indeed, the Russians have already established a de facto no-fly zone.

Putin, without issuing any verbal threats or engaging in any name-calling, has decisively shifted the power balance, and the world knows it.

Washington’s response consists of name-calling, bluster and more lies, some of which is echoed by some of Washington’s ever more doubtful vassals. The only effect is to demonstrate Washington’s impotence.

If Obama has any sense, he will dismiss from his government the neoconservative morons who have squandered Washington’s power, and he will focus instead on holding on to Europe by working with Russia to destroy, rather than to sponsor, the terrorism in the Middle East that is overwhelming Europe with refugees.

If Obama cannot admit a mistake, the United States will continue to lose credibility and prestige around the world.

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

If you really think we live in a free and independent society, think again. What sovereignty are we left with, when we have already forfeited our birthright to multinationals?

What freedom are we talking about when a private company can challenge our laws in court, according to the various so-called free-trade agreements, negotiated by our governments in secret: NAFTA, the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement between Canada and the European Union (CETA) and now the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)?

Trade is the new euphemism for a Bill of Rights for Corporations.

The Obama administration Friday announced an “operational pause” of the disastrously failed Pentagon program for arming and training “vetted rebels” in Turkey and sending them back across the border into Syria.

Instead, Pentagon and White House officials indicated, the focus will now shift to cementing ties with leaders of existing “rebel” militias, consisting overwhelmingly of Sunni Islamist forces with connections to Al Qaeda. US backing to these groups will apparently include both arms and ammunition as well as close air support from warplanes deployed by the US and its so-called coalition.

The policy shift follows the revelation last month by General Lloyd Austin, the commander of US Central Command, that only “four or five” individual US-trained fighters were then on the ground in Syria, and barely 100 more were undergoing training. This, after the allocation of $500 million for the Pentagon to train over 5,000 such fighters within the first year.

Austin’s revelation was followed within weeks by the Pentagon being forced to retract its initial denial of verified reports that a group of US-trained fighters sent into Syria had immediately turned over its vehicles and weaponry to the al-Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate.

The change in strategy also follows a first week of Russian airstrikes against Islamist forces in Syria, including some that had previously received arms shipments organized by the CIA. Beginning in 2011, the US spy agency set up a clandestine station in Turkey and organized the funneling into Syria of weaponry from Libyan stockpiles after the US-NATO war for regime change had succeeded in toppling and murdering Muammar Gaddafi.

Both Washington and Moscow claim to be waging their respective military campaigns in Syria for the purpose of destroying the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), an Al Qaeda offshoot that is the direct product of the unleashing of death and destruction against Iraq, Libya and Syria itself by the US military and CIA.

In reality, however, the US and Russian governments are fighting for opposite aims: Washington, to topple the government of President Bashar al-Assad and install an American puppet regime; and Moscow to prop up the Assad government, its sole Middle Eastern ally.

The administration has come under increasing criticism from Republican opponents and sections of the US military and intelligence complex for its supposed “inaction” in the face of the Russian offensive in Syria. This found expression Friday in a column published under the joint byline of Obama’s former defense secretary, Robert Gates, and former Bush administration national security adviser Condoleezza Rice entitled “Countering Putin.”

It calls for actions to “create a better military balance of power on the ground,” including the creation of “no-fly zones” as well as “robust support” for various anti-regime forces and an effort to “solidify our relationship with Turkey,” a principal sponsor of the Islamist militias inside Syria.

The Obama administration’s announcement was also preceded by a letter sent to the White House, the Pentagon and the CIA by a bipartisan group of Senate critics of the administration’s Syria policy calling for an end to the “rebel” training program.

“The Syria Train and Equip Program goes beyond simply being an inefficient use of taxpayer dollars. As many of us initially warned, it is now aiding the very forces we aim to defeat,” stated the letter, which was signed by Democratic senators Tom Udall (New Mexico), Joe Manchin (West Virginia) and Chris Murphy (Connecticut) along with Republican Mike Lee (Utah).

The shift in policy announced Friday will not alter this aspect of the program, but only remove the fig leaf of “moderate” Syrian forces, with the handing over of weapons directly to the Islamists who constitute the dominant force among the anti-Assad “rebels.”

The Pentagon has acknowledged that among the principal obstacles to its training program was the vetting process that was supposed to have excluded those whose views were close to Al Qaeda’s, and the requirement that they engage ISIS as the main enemy, rather than the Assad government. It was unable to find such recruits in anywhere near the numbers projected.

President Barack Obama acknowledged in a press conference last week that the Pentagon’s train-and-equip program “has not worked the way it was supposed to.” He added, “And part of the reason, frankly, is because when we tried to get them to just focus on ISIL,” i.e., ISIS.

It appears that the administration’s answer to this failure is to drop these previous restrictions, providing direct US military aid to forces fighting for the overthrow of the Syrian government, including Islamists who would have been excluded from the Pentagon training program.

In the first announcement of the new program, Defense Secretary Ash Carter, speaking in London following a meeting with his British counterpart, Michael Fallon, said that it would be modeled on “the work we’ve done with the Kurds in northern Syria … That’s exactly the kind of example that we would like to pursue with other groups in other parts of Syria going forward. That is going to be the core of the President’s concept.”

The US coordination with the Kurds, particularly during the ISIS siege of the Syrian city of Kobani, on the Turkish border, involved Kurds providing ground forces, while identifying targets and calling in airstrikes by US warplanes.

As part of the new program, Pentagon officials said that the US military would train “enablers,” leading members of various militias, who would be instructed in how to coordinate with American warplanes in targeting and striking forces on the ground.

The Kurdish “example” has been rendered problematic by Washington’s alliance with Turkey, which has allowed US airstrikes to be launched from Incirlik Air Base and other bases inside Turkey in return for Washington’s tacit approval of Turkish bombing of the Kurds.

The identity of the “other groups” with whom Washington wants to replicate this strategy is far from clear. Some media reports named the “Syrian Arab Coalition” as a likely recipient of US weapons and close air support. Prior to Friday’s announcement, however, no one had ever heard of this coalition, which appears to be something that the Pentagon hopes to cobble together from existing “rebel” groups.

The dominant forces fighting the Assad government consist of ISIS, which Washington claims to be committed to destroying, the al-Nusra Front, which is on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, and Ahrar al-Sham, another Islamist group whose founders came out of Al Qaeda. Other smaller factions are largely fighting in alliance with these forces.

To the extent that the US military provides air support to these militias, it may well come into direct conflict with Russian warplanes that are bombing them.

Far from a tactical retreat, it appears that the suspension of the Pentagon’s train-and-equip program is only setting the stage for a far bloodier war inside Syria, while heightening the real danger of a military clash between the world’s two largest nuclear powers, the United States and Russia.

Two F16 aircrafts belonging to the so-called US-led coalition violated the Syrian airspace on Saturday, targeting the infrastructure and destroying two power plants in al-Rudwaniya area to the east of Aleppo city, a military source said.

According to the source, the two aircrafts violated the Syrian airspace at 10:00 AM Saturday morning.

The source considered the incident a “breach of the international law.”

The attack caused power outage in the targeted area, the source added.

Russia doesn’t want to fight a war with Turkey, so Russian generals devised a simple, but effective plan to discourage Turkey from taking any action that could lead to a clash between the two nations.

Last week, Russian warplanes intruded into Turkish airspace twice. Both incidents caused consternation in Ankara and send Turkish leaders into a furor.  On both occasions, officials in Moscow politely apologized for the incursions claiming they were unintentional (“navigational errors”) and that they would try to avoid similar intrusions in the future.

Then there was a third incident, a more serious incident, that was not a mistake. It was clearly intended to send a message to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.  Here’s a short summary of what happened from an article at the World Socialist Web Site:

Turkish officials claimed a third incident on Monday, when an unidentified MiG-29 fighter jet locked its radar for four and a half minutes on eight Turkish F-16 jets that were on patrol on their side of the border, in apparent preparation to open fire.

(“US, NATO step up threats to Russia over Syria“, World Socialist Web Site)

This was no mistake. The only time a fighter pilot adopts these protocols is when he plans to take down an enemy plane. This was a message, and while it might have been over-the-heads of the politicians and the media but, I assure you, every general in the Turkish High-Command knows what’s it means. This is a wake-up call.  Moscow is indicating that there’s a new sheriff in town and that Turkey had better behave itself or there’s going to be trouble. There’s not going to be any US-Turkey no-fly zone over North Syria, there’s not going to be any aerial attacks on Syrian sites from the Turkish side of the border, and there certainly is not going to be any ground invasion of Turkish troops into Syria.  The Russian Aerospace Defence Forces now control the skies over Syria and they are determined to defend Syria’s sovereign borders. That’s the message. Period.

This is a good example of how “preemption” can actually prevent conflicts rather than starting them. By firing a shot over Turkey’s bow, Moscow has dampened Erdogan’s plan to annex part of N. Syria and declare it a “safe zone”. Turkey will have to scrap that plan now realizing that any attempt to seize-and-hold Syrian territory will trigger a swift and powerful Russian retaliation. Seen in this light,  Russia’s incursion looks like an extremely effective way to prevent a broader war by simply telegraphing to potential adversaries what they can and can’t do. Simply put: Putin has rewritten the rules of the game in Syria and Erdogan had better comply or else. Here’s more on Turkey from Patrick Cockburn in The Independent:

A Turkish ground invasion into Syria, though still a possibility, would now be riskier with Russian aircraft operating in areas where Turkey would be most likely to launch an incursion.

The danger for the Turks is that they now have two Kurdish quasi-states, one in Syria and one in Iraq, immediately to the south. Worse, the Syrian-Kurdish one…is run by the Democratic Union Party (PYD) which is effectively the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which has been fighting the Turkish state since 1984. Any insurgency by the PKK in Kurdish areas in south-east Turkey in future will be strengthened by the fact that the PKK has a de facto state of its own.

It appears that Turkey’s four-year attempt to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad has failed. It is unclear what Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan can do about this since support from Nato is at this stage purely rhetorical. As for Turkey’s relations with Russia, Mr Erdogan says that any attack on Turkey is an attack on Nato and that “if Russia loses a friend like Turkey with whom it has co-operated on many issues, it will lose a lot.” But in Syria, at least, it appears that it is Turkey that is the loser.

(“Russia in Syria: Russian Radar Locks on to Turkish Fighter Jets“, The Unz Review)

Poor Erdogan. He rolled the dice and came up snake-eyes. He figured he could expand his would-be Ottoman Empire into Northern Syria, and now his dream is in a shambles. Should he deploy his warplanes to N Syria and openly challenge the Russian airforce?  No, he’s not that foolish. He’s going to stay on his side of the border, stomp his feet, and lash out at “evil Putin”, but at the end of the day, he’ll do nothing.

And Washington’s not going to do anything either. Yes, Hillary and McCain have been calling for a no-fly zone over Syria, but that’s not going to happen. Putin won’t allow it and neither will the Security Council. And, on what pretext anyway? Is Obama really going to request a no-fly zone on the basis that Putin is killing “moderate” terrorists along with the “extreme” terrorists? That’s not a very compelling argument, in fact, even the American people are having a hard time swallowing that one. If Obama wants something from Putin, he’s going to have sit-down at a bargaining table and hash out a deal. So far, he has refused to do that, because he still thinks regime change is within his grasp. There are signs of this everywhere like this article in Turkey’s Today’s Zaman titled “İncirlik base to increase capacity by 2,250 to accommodate new personnel”:

A tent city within İncirlik has been undergoing reconstruction for modern prefabricated houses, which will host 2,250 US military personnel, the Doğan news agency reported on Friday. During the Gulf War of 1991, a tent city was established to accommodate military personnel serving with Operation Provide Comfort (OPC) and was shut down with the end of the OPC.

On Aug. 20, work began to transform the site of the tent city into a new area named “Patriot Town.” After construction is completed, the İncirlik base will have the largest capacity among the US bases in Europe…

The expansion of the İncirlik base’s capacity comes at a time when Russia has launched the biggest intervention in the Middle East in decades….Moscow’s intervention means the conflict in Syria has been transformed from a proxy war.. into an international conflict in which the world’s main military powers… are directly involved in fighting.

(“İncirlik base to increase capacity by 2,250 to accommodate new personnel“, Today’s Zaman)

This article smacks of US ambitions in the Middle East. As readers can plainly see,  Washington is gearing up for another war just like it did in 1991.  And the US air war is going to be launched from “Patriot Town” at Incirlik just like we’ve been predicting since July when the deal was finalized. Here’s more background from an article at Hurriyet:

U.S. Air Force Central Command has started deploying search and rescue helicopters and airmen at Turkey’s southeastern Diyarbakır Air Base in order to help with recovery operations in neighboring Iraq and Syria, it has announced….

NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe and the commander of U.S. European Command, Gen. Phillip Breedlove, has said the mission will be temporary.

“We will be guests of the government of Turkey at Diyarbakir Air Base. There are no plans for a permanent U.S. presence at this location … This marks yet another successful cooperative effort between the Turkish and U.S. militaries,” Breedlove said.

(“US deploys recovery aircraft in Turkey’s southeast“, Hurriyet)

“US Search and rescue helicopters” just a couple miles from Turkey’s southeastern border?

Yep.  In other words,  if an F-16 is shot down somewhere over Syria while trying to impose an illegal no-fly zone, then– Presto– the search and rescue helicopters are just 20 minutes away.

How convenient.

So you can see that– even though Putin has thrown a wrench in the works–  the Obama team is still moving ahead with its “Topple Assad” plan.  Nothing has changed, the Russian intervention just makes the future much more uncertain which is why frustrated geopolitical strategists, like Zbigniew Brzezinski, have begun to pop-up in the op-ed pages of leading newspapers blasting Putin for sabotaging their plans for regional hegemony. It’s worth noting that Brzezinski is the spiritual godfather of Islamic extremism, the man who figured out how religious nutcases could be used to foment hysteria and advance US geopolitical objectives around the world. Thus, it’s only natural that Brzezinski would want to offer his advice now in a desperate effort to avoid a legacy of failure and disgrace. Check out this clip from Politico:

The United States should threaten to retaliate if Russia does not stop attacking U.S. assets in Syria, former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in a Financial Times op-ed published Sunday, urging “strategic boldness,” with American credibility in the Middle East and the region itself at stake….And if Russia continues to pursue non-ISIL targets, the U.S. should retaliate, he added.

“In these rapidly unfolding circumstances the U.S. has only one real option if it is to protect its wider stakes in the region: to convey to Moscow the demand that it cease and desist from military actions that directly affect American assets,” he said.

(“Brzezinski: Obama should retaliate if Russia doesn’t stop attacking U.S. assets“, Politico)

The people who Brzezinski breezily refers to as “American assets” in Syria are terrorists. It’s that simple. Putin doesn’t distinguish between the “moderate” terrorists and the “radical” terrorists, the good terrorists and the bad terrorists. It’s a joke. They’re all in the same pool and they’re all going to meet the same fate. They all have to be rooted out, apprehended or killed. End of story.

By tweaking the war on terror narrative in a way that supports some, but condemns others, the Obama administration has backed themselves into an ideological cul de sac from which there is no way out. What they are doing is wrong and they know it is wrong. And that’s why it’s going to be so difficult to make the case for war. In a recent “must see” interview, Putin called out Obama on this very point. Here’s what he said:

President Obama frequently mentions the threat of ISIS. Well, who on earth armed them? And who created the political climate that facilitated the current situation?  Who delivered arms to the area? Do you really not know who is fighting in Syria? They’re mercenaries mostly. They are paid money. Mercenaries work for whatever side pays more. We even know how much they are paid. We know they fight for awhile and then see that someone else pays a little more, so they go there…..

The US says “We must support the civilized, democratic opposition in Syria”. So they support them, arm them, and then they join ISIS. Is it impossible for the US to think one step ahead?  We do not support this kind of policy at all. We think it’s wrong.

(Putin explains who started ISIS, you tube, 1:38 to 4:03)

See? Everyone knows what’s going on. Barack Obama is not going to initiate a confrontation with Russia to defend a fundamentally immoral CIA program that has gone south.  He will, however, do what the US always does when dealing with an adversary that can actually defend itself.  He’s going to hector, harass, threaten, demean, demonize, ridicule, and bully. He might launch another attack on the ruble, or fiddle with oil prices or impose more economic sanctions. But he’s not going to start a war with Russia,  that’s just not going to happen.

But don’t give up hope just yet, after all, there is a silver lining to this fiasco, and all of the main players know exactly what it is.

It’s called Geneva. Geneva is the endgame.

Geneva is the UN-backed road map for ending the war in Syria. Its provisions allow for the “establishment of a transitional governing body”, the  “participation of all groups… in a meaningful national dialogue,” and “free and fair multi-party elections.”

The treaty is straightforward and uncontroversial. The one sticking point, is whether Assad will be allowed to participate in the transitional government or not.

Putin says “Yes”.  Obama says “No”.

Putin is going to win this battle. Eventually, the administration will cave in and withdraw their demand that Assad step down. Their plans for regime change through the use of jihadi-proxies will have failed, and Putin will have moved the Middle East one step closer to a lasting peace and genuine security.

That’s the silver lining and that’s how the war in Syria will end.

Bravo, Putin.

The sheer hubris of a bully would not allow him to acknowledge defeat and give up a botched plan to loot, hurt or murder. Instead, in the face of failure or a precarious position, he would try to wiggle his way out of the adverse situation in order to regain strength and prepare for another attack in an opportune time.

The U.S. call in recent weeks for negotiations in Syria follows a similar pattern: in the face of the debacle of its policy in Syria, it is now signaling to shift the gears of its war machine from the plan to overthrow the Syrian government to “negotiations and a political settlement”!

From the time it embarked on the criminal mission of regime change in Syria nearly five years ago, the U.S. and its puppet and mercenary allies rejected all attempts to negotiate with the government of President Bashar Al-Assad or its geopolitical allies Russia and Iran. Now, all of a sudden, it is calling for negotiation with these same adversaries in pursuit of “de-escalation” and a political deal that would not include President Assad’s immediate removal from power. The long-term strategic goal of removing him from power, however, remains unchanged; it is simply postponed. It would be fulfilled consequent to a negotiated political settlement, or at the end of a “transitional period.”

Why the change of tactics? What prompted the shift of the gears of the war juggernaut?

A major factor behind the Obama administration’s call for negotiation is the disastrous failure of its policy to overthrow the government of President Assad by proxy forces that are armed, trained and funded by the U.S. and its allies. While the number of its mercenary forces, the so-called “moderate” opposition, is dwindling to literally a handful, the ranks and reach of the Frankenstein (the ISIS) that the U.S. and its partners have created are expanding. And while the anti-Assad coalition has recently been significantly weakened following the refugee crisis and hesitations of European “partners” to continue with the agenda of regime change in Syria, the position of the Assad government and its Russian, Iranian and Hezbollah supporters has been strengthened.

These humiliating developments were recently acknowledged by (among others) the head of U.S. Central Command General Lloyd Austin in a congressional testimony in which he admitted that a year after it was launched at a cost of $500 million, the Pentagon’s program to recruit and train a “moderate” U.S. proxy fighting force in Syria had been able to field a grand total of “four or five” fighters inside the country.

Another factor behind the Obama administration’s call for negotiations has been the realization that even if the Assad government is overthrown, the successor powers would most probably be much worse than those now roaming Libya following the criminal overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi.

A further factor that has contributed to the U.S. readiness for negotiation is the refugee crisis. The crisis—The heart breaking scenes of death and desperation, the daunting task of resettling the refugees and the resulting tensions that have been created in Europe and other “host” countries—has effectively exposed to the entire world the brutality of the U.S. policy of regime change as the culprit of the incalculable disaster.

An additional contributory factor to the U.S. call for negotiations seems to be its plan or hope to coopt the Western-oriented government of President Rouhani of Iran, thereby weakening or undermining the support for the Syrian government. Considering the Rouhani administration’s eagerness to please the U.S. and other Western powers, this is not a far-fetched hope or plan on the part of the United States.

The U.S. claims that its direct interference in Syria nearly five years ago was prompted by the defense of a “democratic” uprising against the “dictatorial” rule of the Assad government. Irrefutable evidence shows, however, that plans of regime change in Syria (and elsewhere in the region) had been drawn much earlier. Let us take a brief look at those earlier plans of regime change.

A Brief Historical Background

Under the two-camp, or two-bloc, world order of the Cold War era most of the world counties were divided between the U.S. and Soviet camps. Accordingly, a number of the Arab/Muslim countries in the broader Middle East and North Africa that aspired to independence from colonial/imperial domination of their countries aligned themselves with the Soviet Union, overthrew the old monarchical allies of Western powers, adopted the Soviet “Non-capitalist” or “Arab socialist” paths of economic development, and instituted extensive welfare state programs. These included Syria and Iraq under the Baathist regimes, Egypt under the late Jamal Abdel Nasser and Libya under Muammar Gaddafi.

Other Muslim/Arab regime, however, survived the anti-colonial, anti-imperial national liberation movements of the 1920s–1960s years and continued to remain in the U.S. camp. These included all of the current U.S. allies in the region, as well as Iran until the 1979 revolution, which overthrew the U.S.–allied monarch, known as the Shah of Iran.

Taking advantage of the Soviet support, the “enlightened dictators” in Damascus, Baghdad and Tripoli implemented extensive nationalizations of the infrastructural or strategic industries and put in place wide-ranging social safety-net welfare programs. They also challenged the imperialistic agendas of Western powers in the region. In addition, they challenged the expansionist policies of the Zionist regime in Israel and called for its withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories. These pro-Soviet modernizing nationalist leaders also often poked fun at the unreformed, incorrigible kingdoms and sheikhdoms such as Saudi Arabia for being historically obsolete and politically dependent on the imperial Powers of the West.

Not surprisingly, all these three groups of countries—the Western powers, their Arab/Muslim allies in the region and the colonial settler state of Israel—intensely detested the pro-Soviet nationalist leaders ruling Syria, Iraq and Libya. However, they could not do anything about it as long as the Soviet Union was in existence.

Also not surprisingly, soon after the demise of the Soviet Union, that is, in the early 1990s, the U.S. began to draw plans of replacing these “unfriendly,” “rogue states” with  “friendly” or “moderate” ones—hence the official entry of the terms “rogue states” and/or “regime change” into the lexicon of the U.S. foreign policy.

The demise of the Soviet Union and demands for the so-called peace dividends in the United States, that is, demands for the conversion of a portion of the military to non-military social spending, provided an added urgency for the beneficiaries of war dividends to find or invent new “threats” in place of the “communist threat” of the Cold War era in order to fend off peace dividends. Beneficiaries of war and militarism, the military-industrial-intelligence-security complex, argued that the new, post-Cold War threats came from “rogue states,” “global terrorism,” “enemies of democracy,” and “radical Islam” which, they contended, were more “dangerous” than the communist threat of the Soviet era, as they were unpredictable and unreliable.

Early in 1990, the White House unveiled a new National Security Strategy before the Congress that focused on “unpredictable turbulent spots in the Third World” as new sources of attention for the U.S. military power in the post-Cold War era: “In the new era, we foresee that our military power will remain an essential underpinning of the global balance . . . that the more likely demands for the use of our military forces may not involve the Soviet Union and may be in the Third World, where new capabilities and approaches may be required” [1].

Proponents of war and militarism unabashedly offered the strategy of regime change, especially in the Middle East and North Africa, as an effective way to counter the “threats” of the post-Soviet multi-polar world.

In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, a number of militaristic think tanks (such as The American Enterprise Institute, Project for the New American Century, America Israel Public Affairs Committee, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, National Institute for Public Policy, and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs) published a number of policy papers that clearly and forcefully advocated plans for border change and/or regime change in the Middle East.

For example, in 1996 an influential Israeli think tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, sponsored and published a policy document titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” which, among other things, presented a plan whereby Israel would “shape its strategic environment,” beginning with the removal of Saddam Hussein and the installation of a Hashemite monarchy in Baghdad, to serve as a first step toward eliminating the anti-Israeli governments of Syria, Lebanon and Iran [2].

It follows from this brief historical overview that Powerful beneficiaries of militarism need war and military adventures abroad in order to win the financial war at home, that is, the war over budgetary allocation of tax dollars, or the national/Federal budget.

However, while the beneficiaries of war dividends need military adventures, wars of regime change and geopolitical convulsions, they also need to keep such wars and military adventures manageable, that is, to keep them under control at the local or regional levels so that they would not become cataclysmic world wars on the scale of WW I or WW II, as this would destroy or paralyze global financial/economic markets, thereby hurting the war-mongers’ own vital interests.

This explains the occasional imperialist calls for negotiations with their nemeses when their wars of choice threaten to get out of hand and place global markets and international business in jeopardy—hence, the recent U.S. call for negotiations in Syria.

The Purpose of Negotiations

As already noted, the United States’ new approach to the war in Syria is essentially tactical: the long-term or ultimate strategy of regime change remains unchanged.

Reflecting the purely tactical nature of the change in the approach to Syria, the New York Times reported on 28 September 2015 that “There are intense discussions underway on how long that transitional period should be and how many in Mr. Assad’s close circle would have to go, several United Nations Security Council diplomats said.”

In a similar vein, President Obama recently indicated (in his 90-minute talk with President Putin in New York) that while any long-term arrangement had to include the removal of Assad from power, he can for now remain as president during an unspecified “transitional period.”

In essence, what President Obama is asking President Assad (through the proposed negotiations) boils down to this: “since we could not or cannot overthrow your government by force, we will put off that task for now until we are ready to do so at a later date. In the meantime, we can negotiate and explore various ways of how best to accomplish this”!

Although no details of the proposed negotiations are revealed, one can fairly confidently surmise what the U.S. would offer or try to accomplish during the envisioned negotiations and/or transitional period. It would most probably offer a period of ceasefire, or “cessation of hostilities,” during which time the Syrian government forces would be asked to pull back from their strategic or advantageous positions at the war front. However, while asking government forces to de-escalate, the U.S. and its allies would not agree to disarm and disband the various mercenary groups they have been training, arming and funding.

At the same time the U.S. would also try to undermine or weaken the Russian and Iranian support for the Assad government by promising them some vague or unspecific economic sanctions relief. This strategy could prove to be somewhat successful as both President Rouhani of Iran and President Putin of Russia, especially President Rouhani, seem to be quite susceptible to falling for such promises or prospects of sanctions relief.

In the meantime, as the Syrian government and its supporters are kept busy with these and similar agendas of negotiations, the U.S. and it allies would surreptitiously regroup, reinforce and prepare for another attack—an attack that would more likely focus on the use of “soft-power” tactics or tools to overthrow the government of President Assad. Such an attack could take the form of a color-coded revolution, a bogus elections ritual funded and orchestrated from abroad, and the like.

That’s the essence or the goal of the proposed U.S. negotiations. And that has, indeed, been the pattern of its negotiations ever since it supplanted the British imperialism as the world’s bully.

Ismael Hossein-zadeh is Professor Emeritus of Economics (Drake University). He is the author of Beyond Mainstream Explanations of the Financial Crisis (Routledge 2014), The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (Palgrave–Macmillan 2007), and the Soviet Non-capitalist Development: The Case of Nasser’s Egypt (Praeger Publishers 1989). He is also a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion.

References

[1] Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004), pp. 20-21.

[2] Stephen J. Sniegoski, “The War on Iraq: Conceived in Israel,” http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/snieg_conc1.htm; see also Ismael Hossein-zadeh, The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (Palgrave-Macmillan 2007), Chapter 6. 

Netanyahu’s premeditated state terror against defenseless Palestinians continues. Multiple Israeli provocations began things. Palestinians responded in self-defense as expected and justified. Israel calls it terrorism.

The latest incident involved murdering six Gazan youths on Friday, wounding 60 others, 10 in serious condition.

Scores of Palestinians protested Israeli West Bank violence by throwing stones across the heavily guarded barbed wire fencing, separating Gaza from Israel.

Israeli soldiers responded with live fire, committing cold-blooded murder. Clashes continued Fridaythroughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) reported 1,640 Palestinians injured so far – 101 from live fire, hundreds more from rubber-coated steel bullets, many from toxic tear gas inhalation. Another 31 bystanders were brutally beaten by soldiers.

Separately, Israeli border police murdered a Palestinian youth. Hours earlier, soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian woman. Israel claimed it foiled an attempted stabbing incident. Video footage showed she threatened no one.

At an emergency Thursday evening press conference, Netanyahu declared war on Palestine, vowing tougher tactics than already against “inciters and attackers,” blaming Palestinians for Israeli crimes.

Saying Hamas and PA officials instigated “wild and mendacious incitement,” ignoring his own mandate, ordering state terror unleashed throughout the Occupied Territories.

Palestinian Stop the Wall activists said “rebellion unfolding in the West Bank and increasingly across the Green Line is a direct response to Israel’s intensified ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and its almost seven decades old regime of occupation, apartheid and settler colonialism.”

“(M)urderous attacks by Israeli forces and settlers” continue. On Friday, tens of thousands of Palestinians filled Ramallah’s entire city center for Muhannad Halabi’s funeral – murdered by Israeli soldiers in cold blood.

Slogans were shouted condemning Oslo and urging a third intifada – Palestinians saying they’ll sacrifice and march in millions for justice. Palestinian women joined the fight with their male counterparts.

Justifiable Palestinian anger is more intense than any time since the early days of the Second Intifada. It’s too early to know if a third began.

No known leadership is directing ongoing resistance. Lacking it may cause activist energy to wane. For now, it remains intense, thousands of Palestinians involved throughout the Territories. Many more thousands may join them. A bloodbath may follow. Israel is notoriously merciless, like its US paymaster.

The New York Times is notoriously pro-Israeli, disdainful of Palestinian rights. Its latest headline shows it, saying “Israeli Officials Struggle to Contain Spate of Violent Attacks” – instead of accurately accusing Israel of inciting violence, murdering and brutalizing Palestinians responding in self-defense.

Jodi Rudoren reports from Jerusalem, blaming Palestinians for Israeli crimes, substituting government and IDF press releases for legitimate journalism, accusing Palestinians of “a spate of…stabbings” instead of saying they threatened no one. Israeli soldiers and police murdered them in cold blood, using live fire on defenseless civilians.

She quoted Israeli officials calling for tougher crackdowns than already – at the same time, citing aFriday Yediot Aharonot propaganda piece, claiming 17 Jews were detained on suspicion of involvement in terrorist attacks.

Rubbish! Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon admitted knowing which settlers killed three Dawabsha family members by immolation but refuses to arrest them.

They’re free to kill again like many other Zionist zealots infesting Israel’s illegal settlements, protected by soldiers and police, allowed to commit near-daily violence and vandalism against defenseless Palestinians including young children, virtually never arrested or held accountable for their crimes.

B’Tselem has video footage documenting Israeli soldiers accompanying Yitzhar settlement zealots rampaging violently – attacking Palestinians freely, vandalizing their property.

Soldiers protecting them “used crowd-control weapons against” victimized Palestinians, said B’Tselem, calling the incident “(t)he most blatant example of the tacit support of the settler rampage by forces on the ground, as well as the shirking of the military’s obligation to provide protection (for) Palestinians…”

It filmed another “large scale settler attack,” involving setting Palestinian agricultural land ablaze and vandalizing olive trees. Soldiers witnessing the crime did nothing to stop it – instead “fired tear gas and rubber coated bullets at the Palestinian youths who came to the olive groves to defend their property.”

Western media largely ignore Israeli violence, blaming Palestinians instead for instigating it – instead of explaining they respond in self-defense. They’re not militants or terrorist. They’re viciously persecuted people fighting for the lives and welfare.

In a separate article, Rudoren disgracefully accused “Hamas Islamists (of) egg(ing) on the attackers.” They’re viciously persecuted human beings courageously fighting for their rights against one of the world’s most ruthless regimes – fully supported by fascist neocons running America.

Rudoren quoted IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner’s Big Lie, claiming “(o)nly after firing warning shots in the air (do) we fire at the main instigators to get them to stop.”

Fact: Israel uses live fire indiscriminately against unarmed Palestinian civilians – aiming for upper body areas with intent to kill or seriously injure. ThroughFriday, over 100 Palestinians sustained bullet wounds, many in serious condition.

At least 14 Palestinians were killed, including women and children. Video evidence showed soldiers viciously beating Palestinian youths.

Teenager Shrouk Dowiyyat is one of many Palestinian victims – shot by an Israeli settler, now in a coma, required surgery to try saving her. She remains in critical condition.

Israel outrageously blames her for the incident, saying she’ll be tried in military court when out of coma. Palestinians are unjustly accused of terrorist attacks – Israel’s invented pretext for violent rampaging and murdering them in cold blood.

Obama’s silence is deafening, his full support for Israeli viciousness a high crime against humanity.

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 1PMCentral time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

Next to secret warfare, new militarism has involved a selected range of major and overt “quickie” interventions…

Western militarism constitutes, next to climate change and poverty, the world’s greatest scourge. As internationally acclaimed Canadian academic Michel Chossudovsky has pointed out, NATO’s aggressive expansion into Eurasia and the Middle East has brought about the possibility of a “World War Three scenario.”

Since the Second World War, the USA and UK have deployed troops nearly every year: Between 1950 and 1991 the USA used or threatened to use force about 500 times. The 1982 Falklands War constituted the 88th deployment of British troops since 1945, in a total of 51 countries.

Most of these interventions have occurred in secret. Traditional militarism of the type seen during World War II and the Vietnam War posed various problems for Western elites. During World War II, the centralisation of the economy and mass conscript participation helped to advance the power of organised labour. As a consequence, the “free-enterprise” economic model preferred by corporate business elites came under challenge from progressive working class activism. During the Vietnam War, broad mass movements exposed the aims and effects of Western militarism and challenged the foundations of the social order. The “New Left” exposed the USA as a rogue aggressor state. For Western elites, this became to be known as the “Vietnam Syndrome.” As a counter measure, new militarist strategies were implemented in order to avoid extensive military adventures and their socio-political repercussions.

At the heart of what scholar Richard Keeble, in his book Secret State, Silent Press, terms “new militarism” has been the Low Intensity Conflict (LIC) strategy. LIC involves the use of special-forces, secret services, proxy armies, air raids and modernised war technology together with diplomatic, economic, trade, social and cultural forms of warfare which are largely applied in secrecy. According to Keeble, LIC was “developed in response to the perceived threats to vulnerable US strategic interests,” to avoid unpopular “mass participatory warfare” and act without declaring war in order to keep political aspects and gruesome details about conflicts off the public agenda.

As John Stockwell has argued in his book The Praetorian Guard, the CIA had already by 1990 been secretly involved in 3,000 major and 10,000 minor operations, which were “all illegal, and all designed to disrupt, destabilize, or modify the activities of other countries.”

Examples of post-Cold War LIC policies include the 1990s sanction regime imposed on Iraq as well as US/Coalition “counter-insurgency” policies during the occupation that fuelled a Sunni/Shia civil war and the rise of ISIS. Another more recent case of LIC constitutes Western support for “rebels” in Syria and Libya which also strengthened ISIS and further led to the fragmentation and destruction of the region. Remote controlled warfare, such as US President Barack Obama’s Drone programme, is also an essential part of LIC.

Next to secret warfare, new militarism has involved a selected range of major and overt “quickie” interventions against Iraq, Somalia, the Former Republic of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Libya among other countries. These constituted manufactured, media-hyped “operations” against vulnerable enemy states or movements who were depicted as existential threats. According to Keeble “these ‘operations’ are then spectacular, essentially PR, events providing the theatre in which the US and its allies can claim their so-called ‘victories’” – despite the devastating consequences for the target countries which have largely been ignored by the mainstream news media.

In 2012, annual military spending in the USA had increased to about $1 Trillion (see Robert W. McChesney, Digital Disconnect). Western militarism has been driven by this war economy. The funds invested in the military-industrial complex must be redistributed. The vast military machine needs to be dismantled. This can only be achieved by the concerted and peaceful efforts of an international grass roots movement.

As US attempts to extort a settlement in Syria built on regime-change, US senators and generals conspire to arm and back a new terrorist army aimed at Iran. 

An October 7, 2015 hearing before the US Senate Committee on Armed Forces (SASC) titled, “Iranian Influence in Iraq and the Case of Camp Liberty,” served as a reaffirmation of America’s commitment to back the terrorist organization Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK) and specifically 2,400 members of the organization being harbored on a former US military base in Iraq.

Providing testimony was former US Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, former US Marine Corps Commandant and former Supreme Allied Commander Europe General James Jones, USMC (Ret.), and Colonel Wesley Martin, US Army (Ret.).

All three witnesses made passionate pleas before a room full of nodding senators for America to continue backing not only MEK terrorists currently harbored on a former US military base in Iraq, but to back groups like MEK inside of Iran itself to threaten the very survival of the government in Tehran.

In the opening remarks by Lieberman, he stated:

It was not only right and just that we took them off the foreign terrorist organization list, but the truth is now that we ought to be supportive of them and others in opposition to the government in Iran more than we have been.

Lieberman would also state (emphasis added):

Here’s my point Mr. Chairman, we ought to compartmentalize that agreement also, that nuclear agreement. We ought to put it over there, and not let it stop us from confronting what they’re doing in Syria. Continuing the sanctions for human rights violations in Iran in support of terrorism. And here’s the point I want to make about the National Council of Resistance of Iran and other democratic opposition groups that are Iranian – we ought to be supporting them. 

This regime in Tehran is hopeless. It’s not going to change. There’s no evidence … every piece of evidence says the contrary. So I hope we can find a way, we used to do this not so long ago, supporting opposition groups in Iran. They deserve our support, and actually they would constitute a form of pressure on the government in Tehran that would unsettle them as much as anything else we could do because it would threaten the survival of the regime which from every objective indicator I can see is a very unpopular regime in Iran. 

The United States, unrepentant regarding the arc of chaos, mass murder, terrorism, civilizational destruction it has created stretching from Libya to Syria, now seeks openly to extend it further into Iran using precisely the same tactics – the use of terrorist proxies – to dismantle and destroy Iranian society.

While Lieberman, General Jones, and Colonel Martin all failed categorically to accurately describe the true nature of the MEK terrorists they seek to support in a proxy war with Iran, the US policy papers these three lobbyists are reading from have done so and in great detail.

MEK is a Listed Terror Organization for a Reason

MEK has carried out decades of brutal terrorist attacks, assassinations, and espionage against the Iranian government and its people, as well as targeting Americans including the attempted kidnapping of US Ambassador Douglas MacArthur II, the attempted assassination of USAF Brigadier General Harold Price, the successful assassination of Lieutenant Colonel Louis Lee Hawkins, the double assassinations ofColonel Paul Shaffer and Lieutenant Colonel Jack Turner, and the successful ambush and killing of American Rockwell International employees William Cottrell, Donald Smith, and Robert Krongard.

Image: MEK terrorists in Iraq, 1997. Saddam Hussein used MEK terrorists to wage proxy war on Iran. Ironically despite accusing Hussein of state-sponsored terrorism for just such a policy, the US eagerly inherited the terrorist organization and has since then aspired to use MEK in a similar fashion.

Admissions to the deaths of the Rockwell International employees can be found within a report written by former US State Department and Department of Defense official Lincoln Bloomfield Jr. on behalf of the lobbying firm Akin Gump in an attempt to dismiss concerns over MEK’s violent past and how it connects to its current campaign of armed terror – a testament to the depths of depravity from which Washington and London lobbyists operate.

To this day MEK terrorists have been carrying out attacks inside of Iran killing political opponents, attacking civilian targets, as well as carrying out the US-Israeli program of targeting and assassinating Iranian scientists. MEK terrorists are also suspected of handling patsies in recent false flag operations carried out in India, Georgia, and Thailand, which have been ham-handedly blamed on the Iranian government.

MEK is described by Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Ray Takeyh as a “cult-like organization” with “totalitarian tendencies.” While Takeyh fails to expand on what he meant by “cult-like” and “totalitarian,” an interview with US State Department-run Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty reported that a MEK Camp Ashraf escapee claimed the terrorist organization bans marriage, using radios, the Internet, and holds many members against their will with the threat of death if ever they are caught attempting to escape.

Not once is any of this backstory mentioned in the testimony of any of the witnesses before the senate hearing, defiling the memories of those who have been murdered and otherwise victimized by this terrorist organization. The de-listing of MEK in 2012 as a foreign terrorist organization by the US State Department is another indictment of the utter lack of principles the US clearly hides behind rather than in any way upholds as a matter of executing foreign policy.

American Support of Anti-Iranian Mercenaries a Prelude to Wider War 

MEK has already afforded the US the ability to wage a low-intensity conflict with Iran. MEK’s role in doing so was eagerly discussed in 2009, several years before it was even de-listed as a terrorist organization by the US State Department in the Brooking Institution’s policy paper “Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy Toward Iran” (PDF).

The report stated (emphasis added):

Perhaps the most prominent (and certainly the most controversial) opposition group that has attracted attention as a potential U.S. proxy is the NCRI (National Council of Resistance of Iran), the political movement established by the MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq). Critics believe the group to be undemocratic and unpopular, and indeed anti-American.

In contrast, the group’s champions contend that the movement’s long-standing opposition to the Iranian regime and record of successful attacks on and intelligence-gathering operations against the regime make it worthy of U.S. support. They also argue that the group is no longer anti-American and question the merit of earlier accusations. Raymond Tanter, one of the group’s supporters in the United States, contends that the MEK and the NCRI are allies for regime change in Tehran and also act as a useful proxy for gathering intelligence. The MEK’s greatest intelligence coup was the provision of intelligence in 2002 that led to the discovery of a secret site in Iran for enriching uranium.  

Despite its defenders’ claims, the MEK remains on the U.S. government list of foreign terrorist organizations. In the 1970s, the group killed three U.S. officers and three civilian contractors in Iran. During the 1979-1980 hostage crisis, the group praised the decision to take America hostages and Elaine Sciolino reported that while group leaders publicly condemned the 9/11 attacks, within the group celebrations were widespread.

Undeniably, the group has conducted terrorist attacks—often excused by the MEK’s advocates because they are directed against the Iranian government. For example, in 1981, the group bombed the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party, which was then the clerical leadership’s main political organization, killing an estimated 70 senior officials. More recently, the group has claimed credit for over a dozen mortar attacks, assassinations, and other assaults on Iranian civilian and military targets between 1998 and 2001. At the very least, to work more closely with the group (at least in an overt manner), Washington would need to remove it from the list of foreign terrorist organizations.

Proof that Brookings’ policy paper was more than a mere theoretical exercise, in 2012 MEK would indeed be de-listed by the US State Department with support for the terrorist organization expanded. The fact that former senators and retired generals representing well-funded corporate think tanks even just this week are plotting to use MEK to overthrow the Iranian government should raise alarms that other criminality conspired within the pages of this policy paper may still well be in play.

Lieberman himself suggests that proxy war and regime-change should proceed regardless of the so-called “nuclear deal” – with the 2009 Brookings report itself having stated that (emphasis added):

…any military operation against Iran will likely be very unpopular around the world and require the proper international context—both to ensure the logistical support the operation would require and to minimize the blowback from it. The best way to minimize international opprobrium and maximize support (however, grudging or covert) is to strike only when there is a widespread conviction that the Iranians were given but then rejected a superb offer—one so good that only a regime determined to acquire nuclear weapons and acquire them for the wrong reasons would turn it down. Under those circumstances, the United States (or Israel) could portray its operations as taken in sorrow, not anger, and at least some in the international community would conclude that the Iranians “brought it on themselves” by refusing a very good deal. 

Clearly, both Brookings in 2009, and Lieberman this week have conspired to use the so-called “Iranian Nuclear Deal” as cover for betrayal and regime change.

For those wondering why Russia has intervened in Syria in the matter that it has, it should be plainly obvious. The US has no intention to stop in Syria. With Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya behind it, and Syria within its clutches, it is clear that Iran is next, and inevitably this global blitzkrieg will not stop until it reaches Moscow and Beijing.

Image: Russia is not in Syria to merely “prop up” the Syrian government – it is in Syria to stop a global blitzkrieg that has consumed several nations before Syria, and will consume all nations after Syria, including Russia itself.

Even as the US adamantly denies the obvious – that is has intentionally created and is currently perpetuating Al Qaeda, the so-called “Islamic State,” and other terrorist groups in Syria, it is openly conspiring to use another army of terrorists against neighboring Iran, live before a US Senate hearing. Should the US succeed in Syria, it would not be the end of the conflict, but only the end of the beginning of a much wider world war.

The 2015 Canadian federal election is right around the corner.  On October 19, the incumbent Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, will either be voted out of power or re-elected by the Canadian populace.

There are good, bad, and ugly features in every political system. The prudent voter is aware of this reality. However, mainstream news in Canada does not incite prudence; a great deal of media outlets have omitted to mention the coverup and fraud instigated by the Conservative Party in the 2011 election, not to mention its complicity with the US war agenda in the Middle East. The Canadian media in this regard is in the business of concealing a corrupt system that merely buys and sells pseudo-politicians.

Global Research brings to the attention of its readers a selection of articles that highlight these examples of political corruption in the country.

SELECTED ARTICLES:

Harper’s Conservatives and Canada’s 2011 Voter Suppression Scandal. “Suppressing Our Knowledge of Voter Suppression”

By Prof Michael Keefer, October 10, 2015

That 2011 voter-suppression scandal, the “robocalls” fraud: it was all smoke and mirrors, right? So how could Harper’s Conservatives have organized a fraud that never happened? 

Canada: The 2011 Voter Suppression Fraud Instigated by Harper Conservatives, Gravely Underreported (Part 2)

By Prof Michael Keefer, October 10 2015

Next week, October 19, Canadians go the polls. It is important for Canadian voters be fully aware of what is known and documented, namely that Conservative Party and the outgoing Prime minister of Canada Stephen Harper were involved in a carefully engineered rigging of the 2011 parliamentary elections.

Canada’s Elections: PR Strategist Lynton Crosby Retained by Stephen Harper

By Binoy Kampmark, October 08, 2015

Lynton Crosby has a full schedule. He is the modern electoral PR hitman for parties in dire straits. He is hired to stir the pot of resentment and undermine hopes for change. His very existence suggests that democracies are shadows of their actual function, operating on traditional platforms of populism when required.

Taking the Leap: Climate Policy and the Canadian Election

Global Research News Hour episode 114

By Michael Welch and Dahr Jamail, October 01, 2015

The warning signs of abrupt climate disruption are evident to anyone willing to look…Given the gravity of the situation, and the stakes for humanity, Canada’s policy on addressing the climate catastrophe warrants serious attention in the country’s federal election. Sadly, none of the major political parties appear to do much more than offer lip service in the face of a global dilemma that threatens the future of humanity.

Note: This article was originally published in 2014.

On occasion a reader will ask if I can give readers some good news.  The answer is: not unless I lie to you like “your” government and the mainstream media do.  If you want faked “good news,” you need to retreat into The Matrix.  In exchange for less stress and worry, you will be led unknowingly into financial ruin and nuclear armageddon.

If you want to be forewarned, and possibly prepared, for what “your” government is bringing you, and have some small chance of redirecting the course of events, read and support this site.  It is your site.  I already know these things.  I write for you.

The neoconservatives, a small group of warmongers strongly allied with the military/industrial complex and Israel, gave us Granada and the Contras affair in Nicaragua. President Reagan fired them, and they were prosecuted, but subsequently pardoned by Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush.

Ensconced in think tanks and protected by Israeli and military/security complex money, the neoconservatives reemerged in the Clinton administration and engineered the breakup of Yugoslavia, the war against Serbia, and the expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders.

Neoconservatives dominated the George W. Bush regime. They controlled the Pentagon, the National Security Council, the Office of the Vice President, and much else.  Neoconservatives gave us 9/11 and its coverup, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the beginning of the destabilizations of Pakistan and Yemen, the U.S. Africa Command, the invasion of South Ossetia by Georgia, the demise of the anti-ABM Treaty, unconstitutional and illegal spying on American citizens without warrants, loss of constitutional protections, torture, and the unaccountability of the executive branch to law, Congress, and the judiciary.  In short, the neoconservatives laid the foundation for dictatorship and for WW III.

The Obama regime held no one accountable for the crimes of the Bush regime, thus creating the precedent that the executive branch is above the law. Instead, the Obama regime prosecuted whistleblowers who told the truth about government crimes.

Neoconservatives remain very influential in the Obama regime.  As examples, Obama appointed neoconservative Susan Rice as his National Security Advisor.  Obama appointed neoconservative Smantha Power as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Obama appointed neoconservative Victoria Nuland as Assistant Secretary of State. Nuland’s office, working with the CIA and Washington-financed NGOs, organized the U.S. coup in Ukraine.

Neoconservatism is the only extant political ideology.  The ideology is “America uber alles.” Neoconservatives believe that History has chosen the United States to exercise hegemony over the world, thereby making the U.S. “exceptional” and “indispensable.”  Obama himself has declared as much.  This ideology gives neoconservatives tremendous confidence and drive, just as Karl Marx’s conclusion that history had chosen the workers to be the ruling class gave early communists confidence and drive.

This confidence and drive makes the neoconservatives reckless.

To advance their agenda neoconservatives propagandize the populations of the U.S. and Washington’s vassal states.  The presstitutes deliver the neoconservatives’ lies to the unsuspecting public:  Russia has invaded and annexed Ukrainian provinces; Putin intends to reconstitute the Soviet Empire; Russia is a gangster state without democracy; Russia is a threat to the Baltics, Poland, and all of Europe, necessitating a U.S./NATO military buildup on Russia’s borders; China, a Russian ally, must be militarily contained with new U.S. naval and air bases surrounding China and controlling Chinese sea lanes.

The neoconservatives and President Obama have made it completely clear that the U.S. will not accept Russia and China as sovereign countries with economic and foreign policies independent of the interests of Washington.

Russia and China are acceptable only as vassal states, like the UK, Europe, Japan, Canada, and Australia.

Clearly, the neoconservative formula is a formula for the final war.

All of humanity is endangered by a handful of evil men and women ensconced in positions of power in Washington. 

Anti-Russia propaganda has gone into high gear. Putin is the “new Hitler.”

Daniel Zubov reports on a joint conference held by three U.S. think tanks.

The conference blamed Russia for the failures of Washington’s foreign policy. Read this article:  to see how neoconservatives operate in order to control the explanations.  Even Henry Kissinger is under attack for stating the obvious truth that Russia has a legitimate interest in Ukraine, a land long part of Russia and located in Russia’s legitimate sphere of influence.

Since the Clinton regime, Washington has been acting against Russian interests. In his forthcoming book, The Globalization of War:  America’s Long War against Humanity, Professor Michel Chossudovsky presents a realistic appraisal of how close Washington has brought the world to its demise in nuclear war.  This passage is from the Preface:

“The ‘globalization of war’ is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The US military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

“Under a global military agenda, the actions undertaken by the Western military alliance (US-NATO-Israel) in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, Ukraine, Syria and Iraq are coordinated at the highest levels of the military hierarchy. We are not dealing with piecemeal military and intelligence operations. The July-August 2014 attack on Gaza by Israeli forces was undertaken in close consultation with the United States and NATO. In turn, the actions in Ukraine and their timing coincided with the onslaught of the attack on Gaza.

“In turn, military undertakings are closely coordinated with a process of economic warfare which consists not only in imposing sanctions on sovereign countries but also in deliberate acts of destabilization of financial and currency markets, with a view to undermining the enemies’ national economies.

“The United States and its allies have launched a military adventure which threatens the future of humanity. As we go to press, US and NATO forces have been deployed in Eastern Europe. US military intervention under a humanitarian mandate is proceeding in sub-Saharan Africa. The US and its allies are threatening China under President Obama’s

‘Pivot to Asia’.

“In turn, military maneuvers are being conducted at Russia’s  doorstep which could lead to escalation. “The US airstrikes initiated in September 2014 directed against Iraq and Syria under the pretext of going after the Islamic State are part of a scenario of military escalation extending from North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean to Central and South Asia.

The Western military alliance is in an advanced state of readiness.

“And so is Russia.”

As I have often remarked, Americans are an insouciant people.  They are simply unaware.  Suppose they were aware, suppose that the entire population understood the peril, could anything be done, or have the insouciant Americans fallen under the control of the police state that Washington has created?

I don’t think there is much hope from the American people. The American people cannot tell genuine from fake leadership, and the ruling private elites will not permit real leaders to emerge.  Moreover, there is no organized movement in opposition to the neoconservatives.

The hope comes from outside the political system.  The hope is that the House of Cards and rigged markets erected by policymakers for the benefit of the One Percent collapses.  David Stockman regards this outcome as a highly likely one. The collapse that Stockman sees as being on its way is the same collapse about which I have warned.  Moreover, the number of Black Swans which can originate collapse are even more numerous than the ones Stockman correctly identifies.  Some financial organizations are worried about a lack of liquidity in the fixed income (bonds) and derivatives markets.  Barbara Novack, co-chair of Black Rock, is lobbying hard for a derivatives bailout mechanism.

David Stockman’s article is important.  Read it until you understand it, and you will know more than most everyone. http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/12/david-stockman/duck-and-cover%E2%80%A8/

Many will ask:  If the wealth of the One Percent is vulnerable to economic collapse, will war be initiated to protect this wealth and to blame the Russians or Chinese for the hardships that engulf the American population?  My answer is that the kind of collapse that I expect, and that David Stockman, Nomi Prins, Pam Martens, Dave Kranzler, and no doubt others expect, presents government with such social, political, and economic insecurity that organizing for a major war becomes impossible.

Whereas the political impotence of the American people and the vassalage of the Western World impose no constraints on Washington, economic collapse brings revolutions and the demise of the existing order.

As hard as collapse would make it for people to survive, the chances for survival are higher than in the event of nuclear war.

High-level security advisors to US President Barack Obama recommended that the US should withdraw its military forces from Syria and abandon plans of Assad’s resignation, DWN wrote.

 A massive blast has killed at least 30 and injured over 100 more in NATO-member Turkey’s capital of Ankara. The blast appears to have targeted the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) who was holding a peace rally at the moment of the explosion.

CNN would report in their article, “30 killed in bombing near main train station in Turkey’s capital,” that:

At least one powerful bomb hit near the main train station in the Turkish capital Saturday morning, killing 30 people,authorities said, making it the deadliest attack in Ankara in recent memory.

It would also claim that:

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, though suspicion immediately fell on the ISIS terrorist group or on Kurdish separatists in Turkey. 

Turkey avoided, for quite some time, any conflict with ISIS, perhaps in exchange for the release earlier this year of dozens of Turkish hostages seized in the Iraqi city of Mosul. No details of those negotiations have been released. 

However, Turkey recently changed its stance and allowed the U.S. to launch strikes on ISIS from the Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey.

While CNN attempts to portray Turkey as holding a generally hostile stance toward the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS), it finally admits toward the end of its report that:

New reports have said that many Turks have joined ISIS’ ranks and that Turks, many of whom have been recruiting in Ankara, may make up a third of ISIS’ ranks.  (Emphasis added)

Image: Via Germany’s DW – despite Ankara’s attempts to portray itself as an enemy of ISIS, it has intentionally left its borders open, across which flow literally 100’s of supply trucks a day destined for ISIS forces. This explains the otherwise inexplicably vast fighting capacity ISIS has displayed as it fights the combined forces of Syria, Iran, Iraq, and now Russia.

Indeed, with nearly a third of ISIS composed of Turkish terrorists, with Turkey being a regional, even global state-sponsor of terrorism targeting as far afield as China and Thailand, and with Turkey allowing its borders to remain open and feed what is clearly ISIS’ primary supply corridor just north of the Syrian city of Aleppo, it is clear that if “ISIS” was behind the blasts – it was Ankara itself who organized and executed them, and who will attempt to leverage them for maximum benefit.

Terrorism as a Tool: To What End?

The bombing comes just as the US attempts to answer Russia’s recent and expanding anti-terror operation being carried out within Syria with the cooperation of the Syrian government itself, Iran, and Iraq.

The US counterstroke was revealed in the Washington Post’s article, “US abandons Pentagon’s failed rebel-building effort in Syria,” which reported that:

The Obama administration is overhauling its approach to fighting the Islamic State in Syria, abandoning a failed Pentagon effort to build a new ground force of moderate rebels and instead partnering with established rebel groups, officials said Friday.

The Washington Post reveals transparently that American support of “rebels” in Syria is aimed not at ISIS, but admittedly at the Syrian government. The Washington Post also suggests the the US is considering options to provide military protection for these terrorists from Russian military operations. It reported (emphasis added):

The change also reflects growing concern in the Obama administration that Russia’s intervention has complicated the Syrian battlefield and given new life to President Bashar Assad. Russian airstrikes have raised questions about whether and how the U.S. would protect rebel groups it is working with if they are hit by Russian bombs. 

Meanwhile, the CIA has since 2013 trained some 10,000 rebels to fight Assad’s forces. Those groups have made significant progress against strongholds of the Alawites, Assad’s sect, but are now under Russian bombardment. The covert CIA program is the only way the U.S. is taking on Assad militarily.

Clearly instead of actually fighting ISIS which would most effectively be done by simply cutting their supply lines in Turkey running right out of NATO territory, the US plan involves directly confronting the Russian-backed offensive aimed north – which itself seeks to cut ISIS’ supply lines. In order to do so, the US will require a significant commitment from Turkey who itself has proposed and advocated the US policy of establishing “safe havens” also sometimes referred to as “buffer zones” or “free zones” within seized territory in northern Syria. However, Turkey has lacked the justification and internal political support to do so.

Image: The US and its ally Turkey would have the world believe “accidental” arm transfers have sustained ISIS’ otherwise inexplicably vast fighting capacity – “accidents” including the transfer of scores of brand new Toyota trucks by the US State Department now in the hands of ISIS fighters.

The bombing may have possibly been a means of justifying direct Turkish involvement in Syria under the guise of retaliating against ISIS, all while establishing the long-planned “safe haven” to preserve ISIS’ primary supply corridor, check Russian military operations, and from there, expand toward the division, destruction, and eventual overthrow of Syria as a nation-state.

It should be noted that those targeted by the explosion are in fact linked to Kurdish groups the Turkish government is currently also waging war on, in addition to its proxy war with Syria.

The true culprits behind the bombing in Ankara may never be revealed – because the use of violence is so widespread among many of Turkey’s prominent political factions. However, how the terrorist attack is leveraged, and for whom it ends up benefiting the most will surely reveal the primary suspects. If “ISIS” claims responsibility or is blamed, suspicion will be raised regarding the current government’s direct

It is reported today that: ‘Tensions have surged in 11 days of violence in which four Israelis and 17 Palestinians ­ including several Palestinians shot by police, have been killed in Jerusalem, the Israeli­-occupied West Bank, Gaza and in Israeli cities.’

This violent unrest has been provoked by the Israeli government’s apparent attempt to change the long-established and sensitive, religious control by Muslim elders of the al­-Aqsa mosque compound, Islam’s third holiest shrine. This action has clearly been pre­meditated by a Likud government with full knowledge of the inevitable consequences.

One point is certain: until there is a regime change in Israel to an administration that will genuinely sue for peace ­ then there is an inevitability that there will be a new regional conflict that will escalate beyond anyone’s control. The dangers ­ not only to the region but also to Europe, are too disastrous to contemplate.

Israel’s mentor, military supplier, funder and political principal, the United States, must intervene now to avoid what can be a cataclysmic catastrophe in the Holy City, and the Middle East, that will make ISIL almost an irrelevance.

Russian warplanes in Syria have bombed 29 terrorist field camps and other facilities of the militant group Islamic State in the past 24 hours, the Russian Defense Ministry reported.

En sus discursos públicos, la presidenta de la Reserva Federal, Janet Yellen, ha evitado tocar los graves problemas que padece la economía estadounidense. Cuando a mediados de septiembre el Comité Federal de Mercado Abierto (FOMC, por sus siglas en inglés) tomó la decisión de mantener la tasa de interés de los fondos federales (‘federal funds rate’) entre cero y 0,25 por ciento, el blanco de las preocupaciones de Yellen se dirigió hacia China y el endeudamiento de las economías emergentes.

De acuerdo con la presidenta de la Reserva Federal, el proceso de recuperación de la economía norteamericana se venía consolidando con fuerza desde mucho tiempo antes. Y, por lo tanto, si el FOMC no elevó el costo del crédito se debió sobre todo, a su elevado nivel de “compromiso” y “responsabilidad” con el resto del mundo.

Sin embargo, la verdad es que la economía de Estados Unidos no se caracteriza precisamente por gozar de plena salud. Sucede que los datos del mercado laboral publicados durante los 12 meses previos a marzo de 2015 no son tan robustos como presumió la Reserva Federal: el Departamento del Trabajo reconoció recientemente que sobrestimó en por lo menos 255.000 los empleos producidos por el sector privado.

Por otra parte, durante el mes de septiembre la nómina no agrícola sumó únicamente 143.000 empleos, muy por debajo de los 200.000 esperados. El mayor revés lo padecieron los sectores vinculados con el comercio exterior y la energía. El alza del dólar, la caída de los precios de las materias primas (‘commodities’) y la extrema debilidad de la demanda global precipitan el deterioro estructural de la economía estadounidense.

Las malas noticias no terminan ahí: las cifras de los puestos de trabajo generados en julio y agosto también se revisaron a la baja. Ahora se sabe que en agosto solamente se crearon 136.000 empleos, y no 176.000 como se apuntó originalmente; mientras que en el mes de julio se generaron 21.000 empleos menos de los que se contabilizaron en la revisión previa.

Por lo tanto, con los datos actualizados por el Departamento del Trabajo, en Estados Unidos se registraron un promedio de 167.000 nuevos empleos entre julio y septiembre, un monto que representa menos del 65 por ciento de los 260.000 que se crearon mensualmente durante el último año.

Las políticas de la Reserva Federal no son capaces de sacar adelante por sí solas a la economía. Yellen apostó todo a que si la población desocupada disminuía, entonces los grandes empresarios se verían presionados a incrementar los salarios, con lo cual, aumentarían también el poder adquisitivo de las familias y el nivel de precios (inflación).

Sin embargo, eso aún no ha ocurrido. Mientras que la tasa de desempleo cayó del 5,7 al 5,1% entre enero y septiembre del año en curso, las remuneraciones salariales por hora apenas se incrementaron un 2,2 por ciento en términos anuales el mes pasado, todavía muy lejos de los niveles alcanzados antes de la crisis, cuando se registraban aumentos por encima del 4 por ciento. La inflación, por su parte, no ha conseguido alcanzar el 2 por ciento en más de 3 años, el objetivo del banco central estadounidense.

Por lo tanto, hoy está claro que la caída de la tasa de desocupación de los meses recientes obedece más a la disminución de la tasa de participación laboral –como consecuencia de la desesperanza de miles de estadounidenses–, y menos a la creación de empleos de calidad y a largo plazo: el viernes 2 de octubre se anunció que en septiembre 350.000 personas abandonaron la búsqueda de trabajo. No hay vuelta atrás: en Estados Unidos el crecimiento del empleo se sumergió en el estancamiento.

Amplamente documentado mas raramente mencionado em reportagens e notícias é o fato do Estado Islâmico ser uma criação dos serviços de inteligência dos EUA com seus membros tendo sido recrutados, treinados e financiados pelos Estados Unidos e seus aliados o que aqui incluiria a Inglaterra, França, Arábia Saudita, Qatar, Turquia e Jordânia.

Até recentemente o Estado Islâmico tinha sido conhecido como Al-Qaeda no Iraque (AQI). Em 2014 essa veio a ser denominada como Estado Islâmico (Estado Islâmico do Iraque e Síria, Estado Islâmico do Iraque e do Levante).

A Rússia está agora envolvida na Guerra Contra o Terrorismo

Uma grande virada na dinâmica da guerra Síria-Iraque está se desenrolando agora porque a Rússia está ficando diretamente envolvida na campanha do contra-terrorismo em coordenação com os governos da Síria e do Iraque.

Mesmo que Washington tenha reconhecido essa resolução de Moscou ele se põe agora a reclamar que os russos estão perseguindo os “terroristas maneiros” e bem comportados, apoiados por Washington.

Saindo diretamente da “Boca do Cavalo”

De acordo com o Wall Street Journal:

Ataques Aéreos da Rússia na Síria miram CIA-Apoiados Rebeldes, dizem EUA-Oficiais

Uma das áreas atingidas teria sido uma localização ocupada principalmente por rebeldes recebendo fundos, armas e treinamento da CIA e seus aliados.

Um importante dado de informação não mencionado pela reportagem do WSJ é que a CIA está apoiando os terroristas como meio de engatilhar uma “mudança de regime” na Síria, o que implica a condução de operações secretas no território da Síria:

“A agência de espionagem dos EUA tem armado e treinado rebeldes em Síria desde 2013 para lutar contra o regime de Assad” (WSJ, 30 de setembro de 2015, ênfases acrescentadas, nota do autor: o apoio secreto vem sendo dado aos terroristas desde o começo da guerra, em março de 2011)

O acima apresentado é conhecido e bem documentado, mas também um assunto praticamente não tocado pelos principais meios de comunicação.

Al Nusra: Os “ Bons Terroristas ”

Conquanto o Pentágono francamente reconheça agora que a CIA está apoiando grupos afiliados a Al-Qaeda na Síria, incluindo Al Nusra, ele ainda deplora o fato de que a Rússia esteja supostamente perseguindo os “terroristas maneiros”, apoiados por Washington:

Um dos ataques [russos] atingiu uma área principalmente ocupada por rebeldes apoiados pela Agência Central de Inteligência e serviços secretos aliados, disseram oficiais dos EUA, . . .

Entre as sete áreas que a mídia estatal síria apresentou como alvos dos ataques russos, só uma–área, a do leste da cidade de Salamiyah, na província de Hama–tem uma conhecida presença de combatentes. As outras áreas apresentadas são em grande parte dominadas por frações moderadas ou grupos islâmicos como Ahrar al-Sham e a Fronte Nusra, afiliada da Al-Qaeda. (WSJ, 30 de setembro de 2015, ênfases acrescentadas)

Al Nusra é uma organização “jihadista”, afiliada a Al-Qaeda, financiada pelos Estados Unidos, e responsável por inúmeras atrocidades. Desde 2012, AQI e Al Nusra — ambas apoiadas pelos serviços de inteligência dos EUA– estiveram trabalhando, como mãos numa luva, em muitos empreendimentos terroristas na Síria.

O governo da Síria identificou em desenvolvimentos recentes suas próprias áreas de prioridade da campanha aérea do contra-terrorismo, prioridade síria essa que consiste essencialmente em focalizar na Al Nusra. Al Nusra é apresentada, e caracterizada, como a ala terrorista do Exército Livre da Síria (FSA).

Conquanto Washington tenha categorizado Al Nusra como uma organização terrorista (no começo de 2012), ele ainda assim apoia Al Nusra, e seus ditos “rebeldes moderados”, em forma de fornecimento de armas, treino, apoio logístico, recrutamento, etc. Esse ajuda substancial é canalizada não só pelos aliados dos Estados Unidos no Golfo Pérsico, o que incluiria Qatar e Arábia Saudita, mas também por Turquia e Israel.

É ironico que o Conselho de Segurança da ONU tenha decidido, em maio de 2012, “a pôr  Fronte al-Nusra na Lista Negra como um álias da al-Qaeda no Iraque”, nomeadamente então – ISIL [Estado Islâmico]:

essa decisão iria submeter o grupo a sanções incluindo embargo de armas, proibição de viagens, e congelamento de bens, foi dito então por diplomatas.

A missão dos Estados Unidos para a ONU tinha declarado que nenhum dos 15 membros do conselho tinha levantado qualquer objeção a acrescentar Al-Nusra como um álias da Al-Qaeda no Iraque, na de então quinta-feira.

Al-Nusra, uma das forças mais efetivas lutando contra o Presidente Bashar al-Assad, jurou no mês passado fidelidade ao líder da al-Qaeda Ayman al-Zawahri. (Al Jazeera, May 2012)

A Rússia está agora sendo acusada de atacar uma entidade terrorista que não só está na Lista Negra do Conselho de Segurança da ONU, como também tem vínculos declarados com o grupo Estado Islâmico (EI).

Qual seria o significado dessas acusações?

Conquanto a narrativa midiática reconheça que a Rússia tenha aprovado a campanha de contra-terrorismo, na prática a Rússia está (indiretamente) combatendo a coalisão EUA-OTAN de quando apoiando o governo sírio na luta contra os terroristas, que se apresentam na realidade como os soldados rasos da aliança militar ocidental. O que na prática a Rússia está combatendo são terroristas apoiados pelos Estados Unidos.

A proibida verdade é que através de dar ajuda militar tanto a Síria como ao Iraque a Rússia está (indiretamente) confrontando os Estados Unidos.

Moscou estará apoiando esses dois países em sua guerra por procuração contra ISIL, Estado Islâmico esse, que por sua vez é apoiado pelos Estados Unidos e seus aliados.

Michel Chossudovsky

Artigo em inglês : Obama Accuses Russia of Going After America’s “Good Guy Terrorists”, 1/10/15

Artigo em francês : Obama accuse la Russie de s’en prendre aux « bons terroristes », 7/10/15

Traduzido por Anna Malm – https://artigospoliticos.wordpress.com para Mondialisation.ca

America’s celebration of the death of Iranian General Hossein Hamedani is a call to arms for the entire civilized world. 

The death of a top Iranian military commander in Syria this week has dealt a “psychological blow” to elements backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, according to a U.S. intelligence official.

Brig. Gen. Hossein Hamedani was killed outside Aleppo, Syria, where he was advising the Syrian army in its fight against extremists, Iranian state media reported Friday.

The United States and Iran both say they are fighting ISIS terrorists, but in practice they have different goals: The United States is supporting rebels trying to oust Assad, while Assad’s close ally Iran became involved to defend his regime.

“I’m not sure it’s the Iranian objective to beat ISIS,” said Gerecht. “I think the primary Iranian objective is to ensure that Assad does not fall.”

Image: Just another happy coincidence. While the US Treasury dishonestly inquiries into where ISIS has gotten fleets of brand new Toyota trucks, it is a matter of record that the US State Department and the UK have been sending them into Syria since at least as early as 2013, just ahead of  the “sudden” emergence of ISIS.

The loss of General Hamedani also reveals that indeed the Russian-led Syrian-Iranian-Iraqi anti-terror coalition is fighting ISIS in tandem with other terrorist groups – who despite claims by the United States – are ideologically, tactically, strategically, and politically indistinguishable from ISIS itself.

Monster Revealed – A Call to Arms of the Civilized World 

Again, the prophetic words written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his 2007 New Yorker article titled, “The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?” must be recalled (emphasis added):

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

With a senior Iranian general dead, and ISIS and America’s “rebels” who are obviously also ISIS edging in on the Syrian government, the world should now finally see clearly what was planned as early as 2007 and what many have suspected since the beginning of Russia’s recent intervention in the conflict is now unfolding completely in the open. The United States and its regional allies have created this force of mass-murdering terror to intentionally direct against its enemies.

The death of General Hossein Hamedani and America’s celebratory mood in its wake is a call to arms ofthe entire civilized world. Stop the US and it’s now transparent, naked evil in Syria now – shoulder-to-shoulder with the Russian-Syrian-Iranian-Iraqi coalition – or fight them by yourself inevitably in the future.

America Finds its “Power Move” to Counter Russia 

Many articles in the US press have speculated at length in an attempt to define a new ideology called “Putinism.” The pieces serve as an attempt to fit Putin into an outdated Cold War narrative, as if some new ideology in the Russian Federation is playing the role that Marxism-Leninism once played in the Soviet Union, though the current Russian constitution forbids this.

The notable leaders of history are rarely ideologues. History judges people mainly by what they achieve, not what they write or say. As Chinese President Xi Jinping recently put it: “The worth of any plan is in its implementation.”

Putin has continued to play a specific role in the history of his country and the world. It is in his role as a leader of Russia that we can really define “Putinism.” However, when examining his achievements, Putin’s role and methods are not so different from those utilized by some well loved leaders in the history of the United States.

What has Putin achieved?

The dismantling of the Soviet Union, presided over by the pro-western Wall Street puppets in the Yeltsin regime, had catastrophic consequences. Ripping apart the state-run planned economy cast Russia and the surrounding countries into desperate ruin throughout the 1990s. There had been almost 100% employment during the Soviet period, but soon millions of Russians found themselves unemployed, with little social safety net. The medical system of the country, which had been one of the best in the world during the Soviet era, also descended into chaos.

Other problems that had been almost nonexistent during the Soviet period, such as narcotics, sex trafficking, and terrorism, also re-emerged with a vengeance. Organized crime, with roots in the underground economy of the Soviet period, suddenly became titanic and lethal. As the life expectancy and standard of living dropped, millions of Russians fled the country.

The only group that benefited during this post-Soviet chaos was a small group dubbed the “oligarchs.” The privatized industries and natural resources ended up in their hands, and they proceeded to loot the country with almost no governmental restraint. Many of the wealthiest Russian capitalists refused even to pay taxes, as the government seemed powerless to enforce even basic laws.

Meanwhile, takfiri Islamist forces in Chechnya, who had been funded by the United States and NATO to fight the Soviet Union, escalated their horrific killings, kidnappings, and mass murders.

It was in this context that Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer, stepped up to lead the country. He began to battle the oligarchs and restore order. He directed the courts to prosecute some of the richest people and enforce the law. He oversaw the expansion of government-owned oil and natural gas corporations. In 2005, Putin launched the “National Priorities Project,” using government funds to build up the country’s education, healthcare, agriculture, and housing.

The results of Putin’s policies have been tremendous for the average Russian. During the first eight years of the Putin administration, the average wage in Russia has more than doubled. Unemployment has been drastically reduced. The rate of poverty has been reduced to 14%.

While the United States is suffering from the horrors of de-industrialization, Russia has been rapidly re-industrializing. During the first eight years of the Putin administration, industrial output increased by 125%, with overall industrial expansion higher than 70%. By 2007, Russia’s industrial output had reached the level of 1990, meaning after 17 years, Russia had finally been able to recover from the disastrous restoration of capitalism.

Between 2007 and 2014, the Russian Gross Domestic Product increased from $764 billion to $2096.8 billion. Putin has stabilized the country by standing up for everyday Russians against the rich and powerful. Polls in Russia show that upwards of 80% of Russians have a favorable view of Vladimir Putin.

It was recently announced that Russia’s crude oil production has now reached the highest level since the Cold War. An article from the October 6th edition of the Wall Street Journal quotes John Browne, the CEO of BP describing Russia’s economy saying “No country has come so far, in such a short space of time.

Internationally, Putin has united with China, ending the tragic divide that began with the 1961 “Sino-Soviet Split.” Putin has embraced the Bolivarian movement of Latin America and expanded trade with Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador. Russia has joined the BRICS initiative for a new currency, and has become a close ally of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Putin has attempted to remain on friendly terms with the United States, many times meeting with US presidents and often speaking highly of the United States in his speeches. However, as Russia becomes more stable, the United States has become more hostile to it. NATO is rapidly expanding, and a virulently anti-Russian regime has been installed in Ukraine.

Currently, Putin is in the process of attempting to destroy the Islamic State, or ISIS, in Iraq and Syria. The United States and its allies in the Gulf States have poured billions of dollars into an attempt to facilitate the violent overthrow of the Syrian Arab Republic. ISIS, which sprang up in 2014, has its roots in the Free Syrian Army, the Al-Nusra Front, and other US-supported extremist organizations.

Putin has made clear the Syrian Arab Republic is the country’s legitimate government, and that US-funded “regime change” is undesirable. Since the US toppled the governments of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, the countries have only become more impoverished and unstable. While the United States continues to fund the anti-government militants, Putin seeks to help the Baath Arab Socialist Party restore order to Syria so the refugee and humanitarian crisis can end, and the entire region can become safer.

Fighting Slavery and the British Empire

Putin is absolutely Russian, and his style of leadership draws from the vibrant and unique history of his country. However, some key aspects of his leadership style are not foreign to the United States. Two leaders, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, could certainly be described as “Putinists,” if such a thing as “Putinism” exists.

Lincoln led the Republican Party when it was considered to be a radical Third Party in the mid-1800s. The Republican Party had taken its name because of the French Revolution and the republican revolutions that swept Europe in 1848. The slogan of the Republicans was “Free Land, Free Labor, and Free Men.”  The Republican Party was the party of labor unions, abolitionists, small farmers, recent immigrants, and advocates of women’s rights. The New York City Republican Party newspaper, the New York Tribune, hired Karl Marx as its London correspondent.

Much like Vladimir Putin, Abraham Lincoln took office not as a firebrand but as a compromiser and moderate. Lincoln was reluctant to run for public office, only agreeing to enter politics when persuaded by friends and admirers. As a Christian, Lincoln was morally opposed to the practice of slavery, but he was not an “abolitionist” because he did not think that moving to directly outlaw the practice was practical in the existing political context. Like Putin, Lincoln did not rise to power looking for a fight. When a fight presented itself, however, he did not back down — and won the love of millions for his strength.

The response of the slave-owners to Lincoln’s election was immediate hostility. Both the Russian oligarchs who oppose Putin and the slaveholders who opposed Lincoln had a powerful ally: Wall Street. Unlike the rising industrial capitalists, the financial elites of the New York Stock Exchange had a real material interest in continuing slavery, as they made profits from cotton exports and insuring slave ships and plantations.

When the southern plantation owners announced that they were seceding from the United States, Lincoln mobilized the country to fight against the slave-owners and restore economic and political order. Lincoln was not afraid to stand up to the bankers, and with his eloquent speaking style and brilliance as an organizer, he led a broad anti-slavery coalition to victory.

Lincoln, like Putin, was called a “tyrant” and “human rights violator.” Lincoln suspended many civil liberties in the context of a violent insurrection directed by some of the wealthiest people. Lincoln’s famous “Emancipation Proclamation” abolishing slavery in the southern states was an Executive Order that did not follow constitutional procedure. In the 1864 presidential election, people living in states controlled by the slaveholders were not given an opportunity to vote against him.

When it appeared that the British Empire may enter the war in support of slavery, which saw as a source of cheap cotton for their emerging textile industry, the Russian Czar announced that he would defend the United States. The Russian navy sent two fleets to American waters in the Atlantic Ocean to defend the United States from a potential British attack. The Russian Empire had recently abolished a slave-like form of serfdom, and was eager to support the United States in a similar endeavor.

Like Putin, Abraham Lincoln was not a Marxist or a socialist, but was still highly critical of capitalism and happy to align with dedicated, trustworthy left-wingers and radicals. Lincoln honored labor unions as an essential element in a democratic society, saying “Thank God we live under a system where men have the right to strike!” at the famous Lincoln-Douglas debate. Lincoln utilized the labor unions and craft guilds as key in strengthening the Union Army and its war effort. Lincoln happily accepted the endorsement of the International Workingmen’s Association in the 1864 election, with his office sending a letter of gratitude directly to Karl Marx in London. Lincoln’s army, which defeated the slaveholders, had among its highest ranks many self-described communists such as General August Willich and Colonel Joseph Weydemeyer.

The language currently used by the Wall Street media of the United States to describe Vladimir Putin is very similar to that used by the pro-slavery press and historians of the United States and Britain to describe Lincoln. Long after the Civil War, Hollywood films like “Gone With The Wind” and “The Birth of a Nation” demonized Lincoln and glorified the southern slavocracy. Regardless of all who have worked to malign him, Lincoln is still widely remembered as one of the greatest presidents in US history. He may have initially been a reluctant abolitionist, even consciously racist — but history assigned him the position of the “Great Emancipator” and he fulfilled it tremendously.

Resisting “Government By Organized Money”

In 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office, much like Putin, with his country in a state of economic ruin, reeling from the after-effects of the 1929 stock-market crash. Roosevelt’s inaugural address made clear who was to blame, decrying the “unscrupulous practices” of high finance.

Like Putin, Roosevelt mobilized the government sector to rescue the economy. Roosevelt passed the Glass-Steagall Act, preventing bankers from gambling with other people’s money. Roosevelt began heavily taxing the wealthiest people in the United States, using the funds to hire the unemployed.

Similar to Xi Jinping’s vision of the “New Silk Road,” which Putin has fully cooperated with, Roosevelt’s vision for economic development in the United States involved massive government-funded construction. During the Roosevelt Administration, post offices were built across the country. Hydro-electrical power plants were also constructed. The government subsidized the “National Theater Project,” providing entertainment to schoolchildren and low-income people.

The unemployed youth hired into the Works Progress Administration wore bright green uniforms. They were not treated as “moochers” or “bums” for seeking government employment in a time of economic crisis, but rather as heroes, patriotically working for the good of the country. Towns often honored the “Boys in Green” with big parades as they arrived to pave the local roads, carve out parks, and otherwise beautify and develop the heartland of the United States.

Much like the opposition to Putin in Ukraine, the big bankers funded an openly pro-Hitler and fascist movement against Roosevelt. Much like the Right Sector and the Azov Battalion in the Ukraine, the American Liberty League, the Silver Legion of America, the German-American Bund, and the America First Committee were led by unapologetic Nazis. They saw repressive military dictatorship as favorable to Roosevelt’s plan of mobilizing the people and consciously organizing the economy. In 1933, US Marine Corp General Smedley Butler revealed the infamous “business plot.” Wall Street bankers had approached him about leading a military coup and forcibly deposing Roosevelt.

However, any attempted coup against Roosevelt would have failed, because like Putin, Roosevelt was loved by the everyday people of his country. Roosevelt’s allies were not in corporate boardrooms, but on picket lines, hunger marches, and sit-down strikes. Roosevelt aligned himself with the “People’s Front” coalition of socialists, communists, liberals, and progressives. When sit-down strikers occupied their Flint Michigan auto plant in 1937, Roosevelt sent in the army to protect the strikers from the local police and company thugs.

Like Lincoln and Putin, Roosevelt rejected Russophobia and did not want to pursue a deadly conflict with a huge Eurasian power. Roosevelt recognized and established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union in 1935. His closest advisors like Joseph Davies went to the Soviet Union and studied the “Five-Year Plans” which were rapidly industrializing the country. Roosevelt and famed physicist Niels Bohr worked hard, but were unable to convince Winston Churchill to back down and allow the Soviet Union to join the Manhattan Project.

Roosevelt was not a communist, but he had a clear understanding of problems of capitalism and the need to restrain the wealthy elite. During his 1936 election campaign, he proclaimed: “Government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob.” When Roosevelt went to greet textile workers in South Carolina, one of them famously shook his hand and said the president was “the first man in the White House to know that my boss is a son of a bitch.” Prior to his death, Roosevelt proposed adding to the US Constitution a “New Bill of Rights” that would ensure everyone the right to jobs, housing, and healthcare.

Though Roosevelt had a big heart and deep love for working people, he was not afraid to lead them into battle. From 1941 to 1945, the United States stood shoulder to shoulder with the Soviet Union, the Chinese Communist Party’s “Red Army,” the peoples of Britain and France, and the armed partisan resistance groups in Japan, Germany, and Italy. Roosevelt and his political allies were always clear that fascism and its wealthy sponsors were far dangerous to the national security of the United States than were the peoples of Russia or China.

Roosevelt, like Lincoln and Putin, has been widely maligned. Half a century after his death, the likes of Glenn Beck still describe him as a “socialist” and a “traitor.” However, like Lincoln, Roosevelt is still widely popular among the people. During his lifetime, Roosevelt was more popular than any other US president had ever been. After Roosevelt’s 1945 death, term limits were added to the US constitution, preventing anyone else from being elected as US president four consecutive times.

Will American “Putinism” Re-Emerge?

It seems that just months ago, Barack Obama was lecturing the world about the evils of ISIS in order to justify his drone strike program and violations of Syria’s territorial integrity. However, now that Vladimir Putin has escalated his support for the legitimate Syrian government which is scoring real victories against the ISIS menace, Obama is filled with outrage.

The reality is that the wealthy ruling class of the United States has no interest in defeating ISIS. The real objective of US policy in Syria since long before 2011 has always been to overthrow the Syrian Arab Republic, a stable, anti-imperialist country with a heavily planned economy. ISIS originated as a faction among the anti-government terrorists who were funded by the United States and its Gulf State allies. While ISIS and the US may officially be enemies, Washington and its allies still fund the terrorists in Al-Nusra, and the Israeli government provides medical care to ISIS and other takfiris.

The supposed anti-ISIS airstrikes carried out by the US have been virtually meaningless, and were done without the permission of the Syrian government. Obama had attempted to justify airstrikes against the Syrian government a year earlier in response to allegations of chemical weapons, but failed to convince the international community. The US continues to openly call for the overthrow of the Syrian government, which controls the territory in which 80% of Syria’s population is currently living, and was recently re-elected in a nationwide vote.

Unlike US and Turkish airstrikes, Russia’s intervention in Syria is done with the full cooperation of the Syrian state. It cannot be described as “imperialism” or “foreign intervention.” The Russian military is assisting the Syrian Arab Army as it battles a barrage of foreign terrorists, imported to their country with the help of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, Qatar, France, Britain, and the United States.

Russia is not alone in wanting to defend the Syrian Arab Republic and smash the scourge of takfiri terrorism, created by the United States and its Gulf State allies. China is sending its forces to Syria. Hezbollah fighters are standing with the Syrian government. Communist Party militias and armed Christian brigades have been formed in Syria. Germany has even announced that it is happy to work with the Syrian government as well as Russia, Iran, China, and other countries to remove the scourge of ISIS.

Just as 70 years ago, a real united front of anti-fascists was formed to defeat the Wall Street-spawned scourge of Nazism, Russia is at the center of a broad coalition to defeat the oil bankers’ latest monstrosity.

Christians, Islamists, communists, Baathists, and Russian nationalists are coming together and cooperating against a common foe. Putin is a leader who is rallying the world around the battle to improve peoples’ livelihoods, defeat terrorism, and stand up to the source of so much evil, the wealthy global banking elite.

Such qualities of leadership currently displayed by Putin are not foreign to US shores, and if things in the country are to improve, those qualities must emerge in some form once again. Another leader of the caliber of Roosevelt, Lincoln, and Putin is desperately needed in the United States. A mass movement against the crimes of the rich, one that can produce and support such a leader, as the country and world become even more dangerous, is the greatest necessity of the hour.

Not only is the phenomenon widely described as “Putinism” not foreign to the United States. It is likely to return.

Caleb Maupin is a political analyst and activist based in New York. He studied political science at Baldwin-Wallace College and was inspired and involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

On October 7^th, Reuters headlined,«Iraq Leans Toward Russia in War on Islamic State», and reported, from Baghdad, that, «Iraq… wants Moscow to have a bigger role than the United States in the war against the militant group, the head of parliament’s defense and security committee said on Wednesday».

Earlier, in an interview in English, with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, telecast on October 2nd, France24 TV asked him how he would view an extension of Russia’s anti-ISIS bombing campaign into Iraq, and he said (7:54), «I would welcome it».

This isn’t merely a culmination of U.S. President George W. Bush’s overthrow of Iraq’s leader Saddam Hussein in 2003 — an event twelve years back, and so this is a twelve-year culmination on that count alone — but it is also an unequivocal statement from the majority-Shiite nation of Iraq, that the U.S. is too heavily committed to the rabidly fundamentalist Sunni royal family of Saudi Arabia (whoprovide the overwheling bulk of the funding for Al Qaeda and other jihadist movements), to be willing to do what must be done in order to defeat in Iraq the Sunni extremists who have destroyed Iraq, and who are nowpossibly turning Iraq into a failed state, like Libya has become after NATO’s bombing campaign there in 2011.

The Reuters report went on: «‘In the upcoming few days or weeks, I think Iraq will be forced to ask Russia to launch air strikes [in Iraq], and that depends on their success in Syria,’ Hakim al-Zamili, a leading Shi’ite politician, told Reuters in an interview… ‘We are seeking to see Russia have a bigger role in Iraq… Yes, definitely a bigger role than the Americans,’ Zamili said».

On Tuesday 10 February 2015, Iraqi News, whose claim to fame is non-alliance with any political party, bannered, «Parliamentary Commission on Security and Defense reveals documents on coalition aircrafts aiding ISIS», and reported:

The Parliamentary Commission on Security and Defense revealed Tuesday, that there are many documents and photographs confirming that the international coalition aircrafts delivered aids, weapons and supplies to ISIS using parachutes…

Committee Chairman MP Hakim Zamili said in a press conference at the House of Representatives… «Our armed forces, volunteer fighters, Peshmerga and tribesmen have achieved victories against the ISIS organization in all operations», noting that, «Meanwhile, we keep finding documents, pictures, and information confirming that the coalition aircrafts violate the Iraqi sovereignty and the international norms in order to prolong the war with ISIS by providing it with aid by air or on land».

«We have been receiving this information continuously from many sources, documented in photos and reports to prove that the planes did land at some airports in Mosul, Tal Afar, Al Kiara, and Araf Lahib areas in Kara Tepeh in Diyala and Yathrib, in addition to Dhuluiya village, Fallujah Stadium in Anbar desert», Zamili stated.

«The monitoring reports and available photos show ammunition, weapons and supplies being delivered by parachutes», he added.

Already on 20 January 2015, the astute Michael Snyder had managed to lay out the case that, «We have the most sophisticated military on the entire planet and yet we drop weapons into the hands of the enemy by mistake? Come on».

The United States Government, which had invaded Iraq and killed its former leader, Saddam Hussein, blames the success of ISIS in Iraq, on the failures of Iraqis. Not at all on anything that’s wrong with U.S. operations — not even on the ‘errors’ in dropping weapons into ISIS territory.

But, America had created ISIS; Iraqis had not. Saddam Hussein had prevented ISIS; he blocked all jihadists from operating in Iraq — they all wanted to overthrow him. ISIS had not even existed prior to 2006 (three years after the U.S. invasion), when it was started by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Sbu Ayyub al-Masri. (Zarqawi was Jordanian; Masri was Egyptian. There was also a fictitious third founder, Abu Omar al Baghdadi, in order to provide a mythological Iraqi root to this ‘Iraqi’ — actually Saudi — political ‘movement’). According to the Washington Post, Zarqawi «served as Osama bin Laden’s proxy in Iraq, attracting hundreds if not thousands of foreign fighters under the al-Qaeda banner».

Of course, the Saudi royals had co-founded al-Qaeda (working through the CIA and Osama bin Laden) in order to defeat the pro-Russian Afghan government of Nur Muhammad Taraki back in 1979. (Russia is perhaps Saudi Arabia’s chief competitor in international oil-and-gas markets; the U.S.-Saudi alliance is an anti-Russian alliance.) And, so, the Saudi royals massively fund the jihadist movement (the same movement that finally expelled Russia from Afghanistan), which the U.S. secretly supplies.

This ‘Western’ support of Sunni extremists is antagonizing Shiites in the predominantly Shiite nation of Iraq. The Iraqi public are now the angriest and almost saddest of any nation on Earth.) Therefore, Zamili has publicly invited Russia into Iraq, and invited America out of Iraq. America in Iraq was even more disastrous than America in Iran had been.

(Both cases generated surging fundamentalism, which means catastrophe anywhere.)

Although Zamili is Shiite, and Saddam was a nominal Sunni but actually committed to keeping religion out  of politics altogether, Zamili is facing the same enemy that Saddam did, which is the U.S.-Saudi alliance.

Secularism is at the core of the Ba’ath Party, which ruled in both Syria and Iraq. Here is an example of that, from Karsh & Rautsi, 1991 Saddam Hussein: A Political Biography (Diane Books), p. 142:

A few months later [in 1978], Saddam delivered a speech in which he vehemently rejected calls for compromising the [Ba’th] Party’s staunch secularism as a means of accommodating the growing Islamic sentiments. «What we must do», he argued, «is to oppose the Revolution’s intrusion into religion. Let us return to the roots of our religion, glorifying them — but not introduce it into politics».

One of the reasons why Saddam loathed the Shiite fanatics who were rooted in Iran and who took over there in 1979 (after America’s dictatorship under the Shah ended) was that they were fundamentalists. He was at war against all fundamentalists, of all faiths. The only difference between Shiite fundamentalists and Sunni fundamentalists is that only the Sunni fundamentalists believe in ‘restoring’ ‘the Caliphate’ — a potentially global Islamic empire, so that everyone in the world will bow down in the direction of Mecca, Saudi Arabia. For a Shiite to suppport that worldwide Islamic government would be equivalent to that person’s converting to the Saudi version of Islam, especially its Wahhabist or Salafist form, which is the royal family’s form.

So: the United States is allied with the Saudi royal family’s political movement, against Russia, and against Iran — and, therefore, against Ba’athist Syria, which allies with both Shiite Iran and secular Russia. (NOTE: When nations are at war against one-another, it’s actually their respective aristocracies that are at war; their publics are just cannon-fodder to be fed propaganda and bullets for the enterprise, killing one-another. Only for an authentic democracy is war actually the last resort — after all, it’s no aristocracy  at all. But aristocratically controlled countries seek out war, in order to extend their empires — the only ‘first resort’ there will be insincere diplomacy, so as to achieve the conquest as cheaply as possible: without war if possible, but with war if conquest can be attained in only that way; i.e., if diplomatic deception can’t suffice alone.)

An Iraq that has moved more firmly into the Iranian camp is moving toward Russia and away from the United States; and that’s today’s Iraq.

On 24 May 2015, U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, said, «Iraqi forces showed no will to fight», though they «vastly outnumbered the opposing force». Obama was now openly contemptuous of the Iraqi people. However, on both sides (U.S. and Iraq), the heads of state were not talking publicly about the crumbling relations.

So, now, Iraq is, in fact, turning to Russia, which U.S. President Barack Obama has in his second term been treating as America’s main enemy (despite having campaigned for President against  Mitt Romney’s calling Russia «our number one geopolitical foe»).

He calls Russia the main aggressor in the world for its having accepted the results of the Crimean referendum to switch from Ukraine to Russia.

On September 25th, Fox News issued an exclusive news report headlined, «Russians, Syrians and Iranians setting up military coordination cell in Baghdad»; and, instead of denying it, Russia’s Sputnik News simply bannered,«Russia, Iran, Syria Reportedly Set Up Joint Center in Baghdad to Fight ISIL», and cited this Fox News report as its source. The only difference between the two articles is that Fox’s was slanted against Russia, and it presented two retired sources within the U.S. government as making the assertions (including their framing it with anti-Russian propaganda), whereas Sputnik’s version stripped out Fox’s anti-Russian propaganda and focused only on the fact, which was stated in both headlines (theirs and Fox’s).

So, the only quotable sources on this allegation were the U.S. government retirees who spoke to Fox (based on their inside sources), but the Russian government transmitted the allegation — the fact itself — with no modifications, thus confirming the fact that was alleged. It’s more tactful to do it this way, instead of having heads-of-state, in Iraq, Iran, and Russia, step in and proclaim publicly that the American Century is over.

Ashton Carter was equally arrogant about Russia. On October 7th, the Wall Street Journal bannered, «U.S. Rules Out Strategic Collaboration With Moscow in Middle East», and quoted Carter as saying: «We are not prepared to cooperate in strategy which, as we explained, is flawed, tragically flawed, on the Russians’ part. The U.S. is not cooperating with Russia in that regard». Insulting Iraqis wasn’t enough. Russian officials weren’t speaking in similarly contemptuous language about the U.S., as U.S. officials were speaking about Russia — and also about Iraq. It seemed that U.S. bullies were peevishly responding to getting trounced by a party (Russia) they constantly assaulted but couldn’t even get a rise out of.

This doesn’t mean that the American public cannot recover; it means that the American aristocracy can’t — unless, perhaps, this sort of thing can turn matters around, not on the political battlefieds, but on the economic ones. (The only trouble there is that the more the U.S. aristocracy wins there, the more defeated the global publics will be, everywhere — and this would include Russia, China, and every nation, including the U.S. itself. This would be a terrifying global empire, achieved entirely by diplomacy. Tyranny can enter even on cats’ paws, not only with lions’ roars.)

Tyranny that enters via diplomatic means can be just as tyrannous, though perhaps less destructive, than one which enters via nuclear war (the end-point that Putin’s tactics thus far seem to be successful at averting — but, given his peevish opponents, might not be able to continue doing so).

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.

When the ethical arm of FIFA decides to lift its withered self from slumber, a sense of the unusual is in the air. In many ways, the committee members had little choice. The external forces – prosecuting teams in both the US and Switzerland – had become so intrusive and determined, that a response was needed on the corruption charges that have spread through the organisation like an algae bloom.

The FIFA ethics committee decided to get down and busy in issuing temporary bans – initially 90 days – on Sepp Blatter, Michel Platini and Jérôme Valcke. Ex-FIFA Vice-President, Chung Moong-joon, was another casualty, receiving a ban for six years. The hue surrounding Blatter and Platini had darkened after allegations of a £1.3m criminal payment made by the FIFA President to UEFA’s number one.

It was then further revealed to the Telegraph Sport that Blatter and Platini may actually face life bans as full misconduct proceedings against the two take place (The Telegraph, Oct 9). This changes the nature of the FIFA President contest considerably, knocking out an overwhelmingly potential favourite ahead of the October 26deadline for potential candidates.

Platini may well have been a stellar footballer in his prime, deft and graceful on the field, but he has fallen down to earth in the all consuming muck of football administration. The only resort he has now, along with his co-charged, is the Court of Arbitration for Sport, or the appeals committee of FIFA itself.

With all the optimism on the part of the anti-corruption brigade, a note of caution, if not outright scepticism, needs to be sounded. Institutional diseases are hard to remove, and antidotes have to be dramatic. When they are issued from within the organisation, a degree of ineffectualness should be expected.

And things start looking absurd when large pots such as the International Olympic Committee start calling the FIFA kettle black. “Enough is enough,” moralised the IOC President, Thomas Bach. “FIFA must realise that this is now about more than just a list of candidates. This is also a structural problem and will not be solved simply by the election of a new president” (BBC News, Oct 8).

Within the bureaucratic halls of football governance, institutional fall in and resistance is bound to happen. Take, for instance, the response from UEFA regarding its stance on Platini. Europe’s governing body had “full confidence” in their current president and “saw no need” for a replacement (BBC News, Oct 8). Those officials see few problems in the wings.

Then comes the issue of whether the ethics investigation will throw up anything worth writing home about. Consider, for instance, that FIFA’s fudging head judge, Hans-Joachim Eckert, will be the one having Blatter and Platini before him. He is hardly a sterling figure of transparency himself, having been, less a judge than a sterling defender of FIFA’s tainted honour.

It was FIFA’s governing ethics committee that decided, after an 18-month investigation by former New York district attorney Michael Garcia into suggestions of corruption behind the award to host the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, or the 2018 tournament to Russia, that any breaches of the rules had been of “very limited scope”.

Eckert did a spectacular abridgment of Garcia’s 430-page report, reducing it to a mere 42-page summary of whitewash. Needless to say, it smacked of considerable dilution. “In particular, the effects of these [minor] occurrences on the bidding process as a whole were far from reaching any threshold that would require returning to the bidding process, let alone reopening it” (The Guardian, Nov 13, 2014).

The ethics committee refused to release the entire report, citing, naturally, that it would be unethical for the general public to know exactly what was unearthed by Garcia’s plough. Even the vast complex of corruption can have defenders on ethics committees.

Despite the burying of the report, the bidding scandal, one that involved former Asian Football Confederation president Mohamed bin Hammam, seemed to be the writing on the wall for FIFA’s very well padded fat cats. Despite the determination on the part of the entire FIFA hierarchy, from Blatter to the body’s own ethics apparatchiks, Garcia’s report found that Hammam did make “several improper payments” to various African football officials, and funnelled $1.2 m to Jack Warner, former FIFA executive committee member.

The latest moves have been deemed of such an order that a decision may be made to scrap the February 26extraordinary elective congress. This has the backing of such individuals as Britain’s FIFA vice-president David Gill, and the Football Association itself.

That would essentially place the acting FIFA president Issa Hayatou in charge for a longer period of time, which would still prolong the ancien regime. A new election will enable someone from outside the fold to move in, a person, argues former FA Chairman David Bernstein, who should be of the stature of former athlete Seb Coe, “a man of great reputation”. Letting outsiders in, notably of the scrupulous variety, has never been FIFA’s strong suit but time may be running out.

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

Russian prosecutors have charged a prominent Ukrainian politician with inciting terrorism, after he called for Islamic State to attack Russian pilots involved in the campaign against ISIS in Syria.

Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, shared a message from a Facebook “friend”who wants to help ISIS militants take revenge against Russian forces in Syria “in accordance with Sharia law.”

Gerashchenko said he received a message on Facebook which said that “Russian propaganda channels” and Russian army in almost every report “show off” their military personnel in Syria.

The post, as well as Gerashchenko’s Facebook page, were unavailable for several hours. But later the post, as well as Gerashchenko’s page, reappeared. An image of the post can be viewed, however, thanks to a screenshot.

© Anton Gerashchenko / Facebook

 

“I think that their faces [on TV] will be enough, so that Islamic State militants and their supporters in Russia, the majority of whom are in the Caucasus region, could then find them and take revenge [on them] under Sharia law,” the Facebook user wrote to Gerashchenko.

Gerashchenko, who also attached an RT video showing Russian military jets in Syria in his post, seemed to be inspired by the idea. He urged everyone who has any information about Russian servicemen fighting ISIS in Syria to report the data on the volunteer-made Mirotvorec (Peacekeeper) website. For such information, there would be a special section, entitled “Putin’s crimes in Syria and Middle East.”

The majority of Gerashchenko’s Facebook friends supported the idea, calling it “brilliant” and “effective.” However, not everyone got motivated by such a call.

“Anton [Gerashchenko] is already supporting Islamic State?” “Has Ukraine already solved its own problems” “Anton Gerashchenko, are you nuts?” asked users in the comments under the post.

The Mirotvorec (Peacekeeper) website, which is supported by Gerashchenko, posts very thorough data on anyone who oppose the current Kiev authorities – journalists, activists, MPs and, of course, self-defense forces fighting against the government in eastern Ukraine. They are all labeled “terrorists” or “supporters of federalization.”

The personal information include their addresses, social media account links, a substantial biography and any mentions in the Ukrainian press. It has its own social media account, which frequently tweets cryptic messages of “successful missions.”

Several of those mentioned on the website, with the most high-profile ones like opposition politician Oleg Kalashnikov and opposition journalist Oles Buzina, were killed shortly after their personal details turned up on the website.

LISTEN MORE:

 

Ex Labour and British Prime Minister Tony Blair stands accused of War Crimes pertaining to Britain’s role in the Iraq war were it is estimated by some observers, that more than 1,000,000 people died and a further 4.000,000 were displaced or injured and their homes destroyed, the majority of them being civilians. Tony Blair sickeningly calls the atrocities committed in the Iraq war against mostly women and children “collateral damage”, a popular term now used by his replacement, Tory PM David Cameron, to describe his own war crimes in Libya. The Chilcot inquiry’s publication is continually kicked into the long grass in the hopes that the public s wrath will dissipate over time and the crimes forgotten about.

In November 2011 the  Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal purportedly exercised universal jurisdiction to try in absentia former US President George W. Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, convicting both for crimes against peace because of what the tribunal concluded was the unlawful invasion of Iraq.

So what do you think, should Tony Blair face trial in the Hague for war crimes?

Dear President Putin,

As members of the global reality-based community, we’d like to extend our appreciation and support for the Russian Federation’s decision to provide humanitarian and military assistance to Syria, its armed forces and its democratically elected leader, President Bashar al-Assad, in their fight against international US-backed terrorists.

The launch of airstrikes directed against ISIL terrorists in Syria comes at a critical time,¹ just as did Russia’s pivotal role in preventing a Western military intervention in 2013. As a voice of reason and a force for justice, you have the thanks and support of Syrians, Russians and all people of conscience around the world.

Since 2011, Western leaders have been determined to turn Syria into a failed state. They have gone to the extent of providing funding, training and weaponry to foreign mercenaries who have waged a brutal campaign of terror on the Syrian people and their legitimate government.² These terrorist forces and religious fanatics do not represent the will of the Syrian people, the majority of whom support President Assad. As you said in your speech at the United Nations General Assembly, it is for the Syrian people and only the Syrian people to decide who should lead them.

In 2013, when the West was primed to launch a military campaign on Syria, Russia stepped in to broker a peaceful, diplomatic solution. In a sane world, this would be the natural response to international problems, and Russia would not stand alone. Unfortunately, the West continues its dead-end policy of supporting violence, coercion and illegal intervention in the affairs of sovereign nations.

While the West pushes for destabilization, war and chaos, Russia stands firm in its commitment to dialogue, cooperation, international law and order. Your reaction to the crisis in Syria demonstrates exactly that.

Like you, President Assad has proven himself to be a man of intelligence, courage and good will. And like most public figures who possess such qualities, he has been relentlessly defamed and slandered by Western governments and media. One example is the Houla massacre in May 2012, in which 108 Syrians were killed, including 49 children. The Syrian military was blamed for this atrocity but it was later revealed that the massacre was perpetrated by forces aligned with the US-backed ‘Free Syrian Army’ (FSA), and that the victims were supporters of the Syrian government.³ Later in 2012, the FSA was observed killing kidnapped civilians and off-duty soldiers.⁴

This is the ‘moderate opposition’ group that Western government officials support in their illegal aggression against Mr. Assad, and whom they now accuse Russia of targeting with airstrikes. These facts and others show clearly that the US government and its allies merely profess to fight terror when in fact they directly create and support it in a futile attempt to secure US global hegemony. They do this without the support of the United Nations and without the support of the legitimate governments of the countries they attack.

The second Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjold, whom John F. Kennedy considered the greatest statesman of his time, clearly saw the problems facing not only the UN, but the world at large. In 1958 he wrote:

“The conflict to different approaches to the liberty of man and mind or between different views of human dignity and the right of the individual is continuous. The dividing line goes within ourselves, within our own peoples, and also within other nations. It does not coincide with any political or geographical boundaries. The ultimate fight is one between the human and the subhuman. We are on dangerous ground if we believe that any individual, any nation, or any ideology has a monopoly on rightness, liberty, and human dignity.”⁵

We are on dangerous ground. The United States’ self-professed monopoly on rightness, liberty, and human dignity has led to wrongness, oppression and suffering on a massive scale. The Western mentality on display in Libya and Syria is truly subhuman⁶ — psychopathic⁷ — embracing the basest aspects of human nature.⁸

Naturally, the subhuman is reflected in the results of U.S. policy in Ukraine and Syria. In Ukraine, neo-Nazis are members of Parliament and form battalions which have tortured and murdered men, women and children in the Donbass, with the sanction of the government in Kiev. In Syria, the West’s policy of destruction and the support of terrorism have resulted in ISIL and other terror groups whose methods are publicly condemned but privately supported by Western leaders.⁹ This is not the vision humanity is desperate to embrace. This is not the vision we seek.

As long as world leaders continue to submit to the will of political psychopaths, humanity will never build a world of peace.¹⁰ We pray that more people will follow your example, by speaking truth to power, by acting firmly on their convictions and by refusing to be controlled by fear and ignorance. We hope that by doing so, we may all do our part to create a truly multipolar world free from the destructive influence of psychopaths and fanatics, and the toxic political structures they create that make peace impossible.

Sincerely,

So far 73,756 people have signed the letter.

YOU CAN SIGN THE LETTER!

Sources:

1. Russia establishes ‘no fly’ zone for NATO planes over Syria, moves to destroy “ISIS” – Pentagon freaks out
2. The Syrian Diary documentary: Who is responsible for turning a paradise into hell?
3. Houla massacre carried out by Free Syrian Army, according to Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
4. The Houla Massacre Revisited: “Official Truth” in the Dirty War on Syria
5. “The Walls of Distrust”, Address at Cambridge University, June 5, 1958
6. NATO Slaughter: James and Joanne Moriarty expose the truth about what happened in Libya
7. Political Ponerology website
8. Global Pathocracy, Authoritarian Followers and the Hope of the World
9. Pentagon report predicted West’s support for Islamist rebels would create ISIS
10. The Authoritarians Website

Dear President Putin and Russian People,

Please accept our apologies for the behavior of our Governments and Media. Western Nations, led by the United States, seem determined to start a war with Russia. A sane person would recognize the terrible consequences of such a war and would do everything in their power to avoid it. In fact it appears that this is exactly what you are doing. In the face of an endless stream of lies and provocations you have managed to keep Russia from being drawn into a nuclear war.^1, 2

Events surrounding the war in Ukraine are twisted to represent you as an aggressor when the facts clearly show otherwise. Neo-Nazi gangs commit atrocities against the citizens of Novorussia on a daily basis and they receive political and financial support from Western governments. The Ukrainian army has attacked Russian checkpoints and towns and regularly bombs refugees attempting to flee the country. Russia was blamed for the destruction of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, even though the evidence suggests that the flight was shot down by the Ukrainian army. You offer humanitarian aid to the people of Luhansk and you are accused of smuggling weapons into Ukraine.³

Why are you the target of these lies and provocations? The pathological criminals of the West are pushing for war with Russia because they need an external enemy. As long as the people are focused on “Russian aggression” they remain unaware of those truly responsible for the decline of the American economy and social system. In Europe, with its history of brutal wars sparked by arrogance and greed, European leaders have undergone a complete moral collapse and have naively fallen into line behind the USA’s policy of imperial aggression. The last great president of the United States, John F Kennedy, described our common enemy in 1961:

We are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence–on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day.

It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations… Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed.⁴

Since that time the government of the United States and other Western nations have been infiltrated by this “ruthless conspiracy”. While it is not necessarily unified we believe that its leaders think and act without the burden of a normal human conscience. This is why they are willing to sacrifice the lives of millions or billions of people.They supply Israel with weapons that are used for the wholesale slaughter of thousands of Palestinians. They militarize police in places like Ferguson, MO to protect and strengthen their power over the people. They lie to start wars that take the lives of millions of people to increase their political power. They are despicable.^5, 6

Like JFK, you have a military background, so you are bound by a sense of duty to protect and serve the people of Russia. It appears that like him you recognized the madness of nuclear war and have turned towards peace.⁷ You refuse to endorse the American empire and you are working to undermine its power without engaging in direct military conflict. Instead Russia has developed closer relationships with many countries through organizations like BRICS, has forgiven old debts and worked with its partners to meet goals that serve the interests of the people. The idea of international partnerships has been called a multipolar approach and it contrasts sharply with the unipolar, imperialist policies of the US where all countries’ resources are controlled to benefit a powerful few–and at the expense of We the People.

We reject the greed, hatred and lust for power displayed by our “leaders”. We are outraged and horrified by the killing of millions of innocent people in the name of freedom and self defense. We want peace and justice for all people. We want a real and lasting peace, the kind of peace that JFK once spoke of:

What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children–not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women–not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.⁸

True peace and justice are impossible as long as the “ruthless conspiracy” rules the United States and other nations from the shadows. We pray that through our mutual efforts we may defeat the power-hungry and ruthless criminals who seek to enslave us all. We pray that we may instead foster a genuine peace that makes life on Earth worth living.

Sincerely,

So far 73,756 people have signed the letter.

YOU CAN SIGN THE LETTER!

Sources:

1. Is Putin incorruptible? U.S. insider’s view of the Russian president’s character and his country’s transformation
2. Putin is trying to save the world from war by Paul Craig Roberts
3. Putin Blamed for #MH17 to Launch Attack on BRICS World Bank
4. Commencement Address at American University, June 10, 1963
5. Political Ponerology (A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes) by Andrew M. Lobaczewski
6. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein
7. JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters by James W. Douglass
8. The President and the Press, April 27, 1961
9. An open letter from the Netherlands to President Putin
10. The NATO Syndrome, the EU’s Eastern Partnership Program, and the EAU
11. No-Bluff Putin – Anyone who says Russia is losing in Ukraine doesn’t understand how this game is played.
12. Putin: Ukraine is a Battlefield for the New World Order
13. Global Pathocracy, Authoritarian Followers and the Hope of the World

Download PDF (English)

Thirteen years ago, the intelligence community concluded in a 93-page classified document used to justify the invasion of Iraq that it lacked “specific information” on “many key aspects” of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs.

But that’s not what top Bush administration officials said during their campaign to sell the war to the American public. Those officials, citing the same classified document, asserted with no uncertainty that Iraq was actively pursuing nuclear weapons, concealing a vast chemical and biological weapons arsenal, and posing an immediate and grave threat to US national security.

Congress eventually concluded that the Bush administration had “overstated” its dire warnings about the Iraqi threat, and that the administration’s claims about Iraq’s WMD program were “not supported by the underlying intelligence reporting.” But that underlying intelligence reporting — contained in the so-called National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that was used to justify the invasion — has remained shrouded in mystery until now.

The CIA released a copy of the NIE in 2004 in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, but redacted virtually all of it, citing a threat to national security. Then last year, John Greenewald, who operates The Black Vault, a clearinghouse for declassified government documents, asked the CIA to take another look at the October 2002 NIE to determine whether any additional portions of it could be declassified.

The agency responded to Greenewald this past January and provided him with a new version of the NIE, which he shared exclusively with VICE News, that restores the majority of the prewar Iraq intelligence that has eluded historians, journalists, and war critics for more than a decade. (Some previously redacted portions of the NIE had previously been disclosed in congressional reports.)

The fact that the NIE concluded that there was no operational tie between Saddam and al Qaeda did not offset this alarming assessment.

For the first time, the public can now read the hastily drafted CIA document [pdf below] that led Congress to pass a joint resolution authorizing the use of military force in Iraq, a costly war launched March 20, 2003 that was predicated on “disarming” Iraq of its (non-existent) WMD, overthrowing Saddam Hussein, and “freeing” the Iraqi people.

A report issued by the government funded think-tank RAND Corporation last December titled “Blinders, Blunders and Wars” said the NIE “contained several qualifiers that were dropped…. As the draft NIE went up the intelligence chain of command, the conclusions were treated increasingly definitively.”

An example of that: According to the newly declassified NIE, the intelligence community concluded that Iraq “probably has renovated a [vaccine] production plant” to manufacture biological weapons “but we are unable to determine whether [biological weapons] agent research has resumed.” The NIE also said Hussein did not have “sufficient material” to manufacture any nuclear weapons and “the information we have on Iraqi nuclear personnel does not appear consistent with a coherent effort to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program.”

But in an October 7, 2002 speech in Cincinnati, Ohio, then-President George W. Bush simply said Iraq, “possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons” and “the evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.”

One of the most significant parts of the NIE revealed for the first time is the section pertaining to Iraq’s alleged links to al Qaeda. In September 2002, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld claimed the US had “bulletproof” evidence linking Hussein’s regime to the terrorist group.

“We do have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al Qaeda members, including some that have been in Baghdad,” Rumsfeld said. “We have what we consider to be very reliable reporting of senior-level contacts going back a decade, and of possible chemical- and biological-agent training.”

But the NIE said its information about a working relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq was based on “sources of varying reliability” — like Iraqi defectors — and it was not at all clear that Hussein had even been aware of a relationship, if in fact there were one.

“As with much of the information on the overall relationship, details on training and support are second-hand,” the NIE said. “The presence of al-Qa’ida militants in Iraq poses many questions. We do not know to what extent Baghdad may be actively complicit in this use of its territory for safehaven and transit.”

The declassified NIE provides details about the sources of some of the suspect intelligence concerning allegations Iraq trained al Qaeda operatives on chemical and biological weapons deployment — sources like War on Terror detainees who were rendered to secret CIA black site prisons, and others who were turned over to foreign intelligence services and tortured. Congress’s later investigation into prewar Iraq intelligence concluded that the intelligence community based its claims about Iraq’s chemical and biological training provided to al Qaeda on a single source.

“Detainee Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi — who had significant responsibility for training — has told us that Iraq provided unspecified chemical or biological weapons training for two al-Qai’ida members beginning in December 2000,” the NIE says. “He has claimed, however, that Iraq never sent any chemical, biological, or nuclear substances — or any trainers — to al-Qa’ida in Afghanistan.”

Al-Libi was the emir of the Khaldan training camp in Afghanistan, which the Taliban closed prior to 9/11 because al-Libi refused to turn over control to Osama bin Laden.

Last December, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a declassified summary of its so-called Torture Report on the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” program. A footnote stated that al-Libi, a Libyan national, “reported while in [redacted] custody that Iraq was supporting al-Qa’ida and providing assistance with chemical and biological weapons.”

“Some of this information was cited by Secretary [of State Colin] Powell in his speech to the United Nations, and was used as a justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq,” the Senate torture report said. “Ibn Shaykh al-Libi recanted the claim after he was rendered to CIA custody on February [redacted] 2003, claiming that he had been tortured by the [redacted], and only told them what he assessed they wanted to hear.”

Al-Libi reportedly committed suicide in a Libyan prison in 2009, about a month after human rights investigators met with him.

The NIE goes on to say that “none of the [redacted] al-Qa’ida members captured during [the Afghanistan war] report having been trained in Iraq or by Iraqi trainers elsewhere, but given al-Qa’ida’s interest over the years in training and expertise from outside sources, we cannot discount reports of such training entirely.”

All told, this is the most damning language in the NIE about Hussein’s links to al Qaeda: While the Iraqi president “has not endorsed al-Qa’ida’s overall agenda and has been suspicious of Islamist movements in general, apparently he has not been averse to some contacts with the organization.”

The NIE suggests that the CIA had sources within the media to substantiate details about meetings between al Qaeda and top Iraqi government officials held during the 1990s and 2002 — but some were not very reliable. “Several dozen additional direct or indirect meetings are attested to by less reliable clandestine and press sources over the same period,” the NIE says.

The RAND report noted, “The fact that the NIE concluded that there was no operational tie between Saddam and al Qaeda did not offset this alarming assessment.”

The NIE also restores another previously unknown piece of “intelligence”: a suggestion that Iraq was possibly behind the letters laced with anthrax sent to news organizations and senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy a week after the 9/11 attacks. The attacks killed five people and sickened 17 others.

“We have no intelligence information linking Iraq to the fall 2001 attacks in the United States, but Iraq has the capability to produce spores of Bacillus anthracis — the causative agent of anthrax — similar to the dry spores used in the letters,” the NIE said. “The spores found in the Daschle and Leahy letters are highly purified, probably requiring a high level of skill and expertise in working with bacterial spores. Iraqi scientists could have such expertise,” although samples of a biological agent Iraq was known to have used as an anthrax simulant “were not as pure as the anthrax spores in the letters.”

Paul Pillar, a former veteran CIA analyst for the Middle East who was in charge of coordinating the intelligence community’s assessments on Iraq, told VICE news that “the NIE’s bio weapons claims” was based on unreliable sources such as Ahmad Chalabi, the former head of the Iraqi National Congress, an opposition group supported by the US.

“There was an insufficient critical skepticism about some of the source material,” he now says about the unredacted NIE. “I think there should have been agnosticism expressed in the main judgments. It would have been a better paper if it were more carefully drafted in that sort of direction.”

But Pillar, now a visiting professor at Georgetown University, added that the Bush administration had already made the decision to go to war in Iraq, so the NIE “didn’t influence [their] decision.” Pillar added that he was told by congressional aides that only a half-dozen senators and a few House members read past the NIE’s five-page summary.

David Kay, a former Iraq weapons inspector who also headed the Iraq Survey Group, told Frontline that the intelligence community did a “poor job” on the NIE, “probably the worst of the modern NIE’s, partly explained by the pressure, but more importantly explained by the lack of information they had. And it was trying to drive towards a policy conclusion where the information just simply didn’t support it.”

The most controversial part of the NIE, which has been picked apart hundreds of times over the past decade and has been thoroughly debunked, pertained to a section about Iraq’s attempts to acquire aluminum tubes. The Bush administration claimed that this was evidence that Iraq was pursuing a nuclear weapon.

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice stated at the time on CNN that the tubes “are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs,” and that “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”

The version of the NIE released in 2004 redacted the aluminum tubes section in its entirety. But the newly declassified assessment unredacts a majority of it and shows that the intelligence community was unsure why “Saddam is personally interested in the procurement of aluminum tubes.” The US Department of Energy concluded that the dimensions of the aluminum tubes were “consistent with applications to rocket motors” and “this is the more likely end use.” The State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research also disagreed with the intelligence community’s assertions that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program.

The CIA’s 25-page unclassified summary of the NIE released in 2002 did not contain the State or Energy Departments’ dissent.

“Apart from being influenced by policymakers’ desires, there were several other reasons that the NIE was flawed,” the RAND study concluded. “Evidence on mobile biological labs, uranium ore purchases from Niger, and unmanned-aerial-vehicle delivery systems for WMDs all proved to be false. It was produced in a hurry. Human intelligence was scarce and unreliable. While many pieces of evidence were questionable, the magnitude of the questionable evidence had the effect of making the NIE more convincing and ominous. The basic case that Saddam had WMDs seemed more plausible to analysts than the alternative case that he had destroyed them. And analysts knew that Saddam had a history of deception, so evidence against Saddam’s possession of WMDs was often seen as deception.”

According to the latest figures compiled by Iraq Body Count, to date more than 200,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed, although other sources say the casualties are twice as high. More than 4,000 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq, and tens of thousands more have been injured and maimed. The war has cost US taxpayers more than $800 billion.

In an interview with VICE founder Shane Smith, Obama said the rise of the Islamic State was a direct result of the disastrous invasion.

“ISIL is a direct outgrowth of al Qaeda in Iraq that grew out of our invasion,” Obama said. “Which is an example of unintended consequences. Which is why we should generally aim before we shoot.”

Iraq October 2002 NIE on WMDs (unedacted version)

Next week, October 19, Canadians go the polls. It is important for Canadian voters be fully aware of what is known and documented, namely that Conservative Party and the outgoing Prime minister of Canada Stephen Harper were involved in a carefully engineered rigging of the 2011 parliamentary elections.

In the first essay in this series, I implied that the failure of Maclean’s political editor Paul Wells to mention the 2011 electoral fraud in his book on Stephen Harper qualified him for inclusion among “Harper’s Helpers.” Wells has himself confirmed the point.

When he suggested on Twitter (the same day) that journalists “might just want to ask other questions” rather than digging into government scandals, singer-songwriter Raffi Cavoukian replied: “It’s the Harper #elxn42 [2015 election] run that ought to be in question — a lawless, rogue [prime minister] running again — that’s the issue.” Raffi added that the Harper Conservatives were “convicted of wrongdoing in each of last [three] elections. That’s a huge issue.” Wells responded, Tweeting, “The Governor General, Elections Canada and the Constitution disagree with you, you flatulent crank.”

But the person, the agency and the abstraction cited by Wells are as irrelevant to the underlying facts as his schoolyard name-calling. It’s no stretch to call a PM who has twice been found in contempt of Parliament a lawless rogue and the electoral wrongdoing is proven and acknowledged — witness the “In and Out” scandal, the edifying spectacle of Harper’s ethics spokesman, Dean Del Mastro, being led off to prison in chains and the resignation of Peter Penashue [who is once again standing as the Conservative candidate for Labrador –Ed.].

Wells is not alone in wanting to ignore Harperite electoral fraud scandals. When for several weeks in early 2012 the 2011 “robocalls” vote suppression scandal was front page news, Michael Coren of Sun Media scoffed at people getting excited over “a few silly phone calls,” while The Globe and Mail’s Margaret Wente found it “ridiculous to think there was some massive cheating scheme engineered by higher-ups” in our “boring little democracy.”

But Canada is less boring and less of a democracy than Wente thought — silly or not, there were more than a few fraudulent calls. Two polls conducted in the spring of 2012 give an indication of the scale of telephone fraud in the 2011 election. Ipsos Reid, sampling over 3,000 voters primarily in Ontario, found that four per cent of respondents (which would mean about a million voters nationwide) reported having received calls giving false information about the location of their polling station.

Ekos Research, with a larger sample of nearly 4,800 voters drawn from 113 ridings across Canada, found that in six intensely robocalled ridings, an average of 3.8 per cent of voters had received misinformation calls, while across the country an average of 2.3 per cent — or in round terms, 550,000 people — had received calls of this type. (This seems a more reliable conclusion, though the Ipsos Reid survey would suggest that the fraud was more intense in Ontario.)

However, two distinct kinds of telephone fraud were practised nationwide during our 2011 election. On April 19, 2011, The Toronto Star, CBC News, and Maclean’s reported that over the preceding week late-night calls supposedly from Liberal Party campaigns had been infuriating voters in at least ten Ontario ridings, as well as elsewhere. Questions in Parliament ensued — in response to which Harper indignantly denied his party’s involvement, while Del Mastro suggested the calls were simply evidence of Liberal incompetence.

The harassment calls were seriously underreported. But when Elections Canada’s final tally of substantiated complaints was made public in Yves Côté’s Summary Investigation Report on Robocalls in April 2014, the figures were surprising. Of a total of 2,448 complaints, 1,241 (51 per cent) were about harassment calls, and 1,207 (49 per cent) about misinformation or misdirection calls. If we can take this as an indication that there were nearly equal numbers of the two kinds of calls, it would follow, given Ekos’s findings about misinformation calls, that the total number of fraudulent calls must have exceeded 1.1 million — and that harassment calls must have been made in most of the 261 ridings in which telephone fraud occurred.

It’s hard to judge the impact of these harassment calls. But it would appear that for every person who recognized them as fraudulent, many others were deceived. Anthony Rota, a network specialist and university administrator as well as former Liberal MP whose hair’s-breadth defeat in Nipissing-Temiskaming can be ascribed to telephone fraud, has told me he initially thought the late-night calls were by some appalling mistake being sent into his riding by Liberal headquarters in Ottawa. Rota was quickly undeceived — but most voters who were awakened at 2 a.m. by calls claiming to be from the local Liberal campaign and arrogantly suggesting, as one recipient has said, “that my support for them was a given,”  were simply angry.

It may not be coincidental that after a week of the telephone harassment campaign, Liberal support in Ontario dipped for the first time in the campaign to below 30 per cent, and on the national level began a steady decline in the polls from the upper to the lower 20s, ending finally at 18.9 per cent of the vote on election day.

Other factors were also in play: Michael Ignatieff’s workmanlike but not stellar performance in the TV debates on April 12 and 13, Liberal passivity in the face of unrelenting Conservative attacks and smears and the inspiring campaigning of Jack Layton. Nonetheless, it seems clear that the more than half a million harassment calls contributed to the Liberals’ decline.

Whatever the precise interplay of causes may have been, the Liberal ship took on water during the last two weeks of the campaign, and on election day, May 2, came close to going down with all hands. But would the appropriate comparison be to the Lusitania rather than the Titanic? To what extent was the disaster due to the captain’s poor judgment, and to what extent to the impact of torpedoes hitting below the water-line?

 Nobel Committee members long ago lost credibility. War criminals or other undeserving honorees win peace prizes. Past recipients included a rogue’s gallery of miscreants – Obama, Henry Kissinger and three former Israeli prime ministers most notably, all unindicted war criminals. Maybe Netanyahu is next.

Selection is entirely politicized. Legitimate peace advocates are shunned. Mahatma Gandhi was nominated five times, never awarded the coveted prize.

Deserving candidates like peace champion Kathy Kelly, whistleblowers Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning are consistently ignored. So are Vladimir Putin and Sergey Lavrov’s all-out efforts for peace in Ukraine and Syria – drawing condemnation, not the high praise they deserve.

This year’s most notable nominees included Angela Merkel, Pope Francis and John Kerry – two unindicted war criminals and a pontiff representing wealth and power. Don’t let his rhetoric fool you.

Nobel Committee members announced the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet as recipient of this year’s prize “for its decisive contribution to the building of a (nonexistent) pluralistic democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the (so-called) Jasmine Revolution of 2011,” – part of Washington’s orchestrated and manipulated phony Arab Spring, assuring business as usual remained unchallenged, including in Tunisia.

It’s a democracy in name only. President Beji Caid Essebsi is a longtime Tunisian politician, a former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Prime Minister for the repressive Bourguiba and Ben Ali regimes respectively.

Now 88 years old, his mandate is business as usual. In May 2015, he met with Obama at the White House, invitations reserved solely for pro-Western officials shunning democracy, notably Middle East ones, mostly governed by ruthless despots, all close US allies.

Essebsi’s runoff December presidential win was hailed as the culmination of Tunisia’s transition to democracy. Not by some observers, accusing him of continuing repressive Ben Ali policies.

His Nidaa Tounes party is infested with Ben Ali cronies. Tunisian engineer Neid Ben Hamza called last December’s electoral result “really disappointing.” Tunisians have “short memories,” he said.

A repressive old guard member now leads the country. Educator Ali Toudi said he “fear(s) for our liberties, especially as the same political party will have such overarching powers.”

“Essebsi talks about counter-terrorism and the prestige of the state. I’m afraid of a return to repressive practices in their name.” Musician Ben Amor said “the fight goes on and we will never give up.”

Last April, Essebsi met with French President Francois Hollande in Paris. Tunisia is a former French colony. He declared “France is our top partner. We are open to every kind of collaboration – economic, political, social and even on security.”

His regime continues repressive old guard policies with a smiling face – supporting wealth and power exclusively at the expense of social justice. Hollande praised his nonexistent “exemplary track record regarding democracy.”

Conditions for ordinary Tunisians are deplorable. Poverty increased 30% since 2011. High unemployment affects youths and women hardest. Workers lucky to have jobs earn poverty or sub-poverty wages.

Tunisia closed its main border crossing with Libya because of violence and instability. It’s the only land escape route for tens of thousands trying to flee – victims of US imperial lawlessness.

Following the 2015 Sousse attacks, killing 38 mostly British tourists, Essebsi promised harsh counterterrorism steps in response. He imposed draconian state of emergency diktats, saying an “exceptional situation required exceptional measures.”

Police state antiterrorism legislation followed, trashing human rights while falsely claiming to respect them. Terrorism now includes damaging property during legitimate protests.

Police can hold suspects up to 15 days, isolated with no legal representation or outside contacts. Capital punishment is an option for disseminating information alleged responsible for loss of life in terrorist attacks.

Essebsi heads a police state. It bears repeating. Nobel Committee members honored the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet “for its decisive contribution to the building of a (nonexistent) pluralistic democracy…”

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 1PMCentral time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

On Friday, Defense Department publication Stars and Stripes (S&P) headlined “Pentagon plans new approach to train Syrian rebels.” More on this below.

Fact: None exist. Anti-Assad forces are virtually all imported death squads from scores of other countries – US armed, funded, trained and directed, including ISIS, Al Qaeda, and Jabhat Al Nursa elements among others, used as proxy foot soldiers to terrorize Syrians, part of Washington’s scheme to replace Assad with a pro-Western puppet.

S&P lied claiming the Pentagon plans “a new approach to equip Syrian rebels…relying more on…Kurdish forces in” northern Syria.

“The work we’ve done with the Kurds in northern Syria is an example of an effective approach. We have a group that is capable and motivated on the ground,” Defense Secretary Carter claimed.

So that is exactly the kind of example we’d like to pursue with other groups in other parts of Syria going forward.

Carter and Pentagon commanders have no effective strategy to counter Russia’s intervention against ISIS and other terrorist groups. Effective blitzkrieg continues destroying their weapons, munitions, and facilities, as well as decimating their ranks.

Thousands fled cross-border for safety or took refuge in residential communities. They’re no match against powerful Russian weapons, sophisticated technology and Putin’s determination to crush them, a righteous undertaking the entire free world applauds.

BBC News reported Saudi Arabia intends sending more weapons to beleaguered “rebel” groups – aka ISIS and other terrorist ones despite Riyadh claiming otherwise.

After one week of operations, Russia’s Defense Ministry said it launched 120 combat sorties, hitting 110 targets, destroying:

• 71 armored vehicles

• 30 other vehicles

• 19 command facilities

• 2 communications centers

• 23 fuel and ammunition depots

• 6 facilities for making IEDs, including car bombs

• several artillery pieces, and

• several training camps

Escalated activities in the last 24 hours included 67 sorties, targeting 60 terrorist facilities with devastating force – killing two senior ISIS commanders and hundreds of fighters, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported.

Riyadh can supply weapons but not the will to fight. Most terrorists will stay the course to win, not die from Russia’s devastating onslaught, including powerful bunker-buster bombs able to destroy underground facilities, no longer safe havens.

On Friday, Russian General Staff Deputy Chief Lt. Gen. Igor Makushev said “(m)ilitants are sustaining substantial losses under the strikes of Russian aircraft and have to change their tactics, to scatter their forces, to carefully disguise and hide in settlements.”

In these circumstances the Russian Aerospace Forces continue systematic air strikes and increase their intensity to effectively destroy the targets.

Claims of civilian casualties are fabricated, part of Washington-led anti-Russian propaganda. Moscow has photographic evidence of each target struck, no civilian ones or near them.

Washington’s so-called rebel-training program was a complete hoax, $500 million wasted, maybe $1 billion or more. Pentagon officials notoriously conceal waste, fraud and abuse – trillions of dollars unaccounted for post-9/11 alone.

Expect continued US support for ISIS and other terrorist groups to continue. Recruiting may not be as easy with Russia involved.

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 1PMCentral time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

 The October 8, 2015 US Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing titled, “Russian Strategy and Military Operations,” gave viewers an instructive snapshot at the current state of America’s dwindling power.

Enter the American Empire

The hearing is one of many interfaces between corporate-financier funded policy think tanks and the politicians who will ultimately rubber stamp their schemes and designs into law. It consists of a panel of bought-off, self-serving senators, listening to think-tank academics with no practical experience along with retired generals drawing paychecks by keeping big-defense, big-oil, big-ag, big-finance, and others well fed.

Image: Western governments have their populations cowering in fear over “refugees” invading and destroying their “Western culture,” successfully distracting them from true cross-border invaders – multinational corporations whose unwarranted power and influence has done more to destabilize, destroy, steal, plunder, and ruin global populations than any boatload of refugees could hope to accomplish.

This particular hearing included Heather Conley of the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) (donors here),  Stephen Sestanovich of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) (donors here), General James Jones (USMC ret.) now of the Brent Scowcroft Center On International Security of the Atlantic Council (donors here), and Generael John Keane (US Army, ret.) of the Institute For The Study Of War (ISW) (donors here).

Image: This Tomahawk cruise missile was brought to Libya by, Raytheon – a corporate sponsor of the Atlantic Council, CSIS, and CFR – all of whom helped engineer, sell, and execute the war in the first place.

Each witness providing testimony is a member of a corporate-financier funded and directed policy think tank. Looking through their donors and boards of directors, one sees several common denominators – big-oil, big-defense, big-agriculture, big-pharma, big-finance, and other big-businesses forming the foundation of Wall Street and Washington’s current power structure.

Considering that the issues being discussed before the US Senate Committee on Armed Services revolve around the application of military force throughout the world toward achieving not the territorial defense of the United States, but defending what are called US “interests” abroad – including the encirclement, containment, and eventual overthrow of geopolitical and socioeconomic competitors – immense conflicts of interest are obvious. In fact, it is clear that these corporate-financier interests are the primary force driving US foreign policy and military planning.

Corporations like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman are all well represented. With war and confrontation constantly peddled before the committee, including the senseless expansion of NATO along Russia’s borders, it is clear who stands to benefit whether or not a sound long-term strategy can be achieved, or even for that matter, developed and articulated properly in the first place.

Image: F-35 – the most expensive weapons program in human history.

Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning Joint Strike Fighter program alone will cost nations around the world well over a trillion dollars – making it the most expensive weapons program in human history – all justified by the conflicts and confrontations dreamed up in the halls of various corporate-financier funded think-tanks and sold to the US Senate by witnesses like General Jones, General Keanes, Sestanovich, and Conley.

Likewise, the sponsorship and direction of Exxon, BP, Chevron, Shell, and others involved in discussions about how to disrupt European-Russian relations to cut off and isolate Russia’s gas export industry has less to do with defending peace and stability globally, and more to do with defending and expanding the monopolies of Western energy-giants – even at the cost of global peace and stability.

A Snapshot of American Megalomania 

During the hearing the four witnesses established the threat they claimed Russia posed to US interests abroad and more specifically the need to expand NATO to confront this threat. Rather than welcomingRussia’s involvement in Syria aimed at destroying terrorist forces operating there, the witnesses portrayed the deterioration of US primacy in the region and in the world while pleading with an agreeing Senate committee that America must reassert itself.

To illustrate just how irrational and absurd US foreign policy has become, at several points General Keane suggested that the US create “free zones” inside Syria for US-backed militants to seek shelter from Russian airstrikes. To ensure Russia will not strike them anyway, General Keane suggested that refugees also be placed in these zones. In other words – use the refugees as human shields against Russian attacks.

That he shared this plan in front of a committee full of nodding US Senators reveals US foreign policy to be reduced to almost a tropism – no longer rationally examining itself and the world it fits into – but rather simply attempting to grow as large as possible like a blind force of nature.

A grand strategy for how the US imagines the world  in the future and how it fits into that world was noticeably absent as the witnesses traversed the global map from the Arctic to the Mediterranean scheming on how best to defeat Russian President Vladimir Putin. It constitutes a strategy not toward any pragmatic or sustainable goal or world outlook, but rather the naked pursuit of power – of hegemony.

Hegemony is a self-serving pursuit. It requires that the US establish proxies, not partners – and that those proxies remain weak and dependent on their patron – two characteristics few national leaders would aspire toward or be satisfied with for long.

It also requires justification at home, since few taxpayers would willingly support a ruling elite who sought hegemony and all the benefits it entailed for themselves while passing on costly wars, social neglect, and all related expenditures to the average citizen. Therefore, the pursuit of hegemony also requires massive amounts of unsustainable deception, both at home and abroad – and explains why the media also plays a prominent role within the think-tank-government equation.

Despite the committee hearing the witnesses and senators were all in agreement that Russia was the problem and that wider war and confrontation was needed to meet it, they acknowledged the ineffectiveness of all available mechanisms to actually achieve that.

They acknowledged Russia’s domination of the information war, America’s shrinking military, and a rudderless domestic energy policy. Not once did the witnesses or senators discuss the idea of looking inward for strength, with all solutions seemingly revolving around disrupting, undermining, targeting, or confronting others.

And while these senators were all technically elected by the American people to represent their best interests, it was clear they were far more interested in what the corporate-financier funded think-tanks had to say about America’s future.

Mulipolarism – Searching for an Exit 

Russia has confounded American aspirations toward primacy not because it possesses a larger military or a stronger economy. It certainly does not have more resources to fund its media operations. Instead, it has studied, understood, and applied the basic fundamentals of war.

Russia possesses at the moment the moral imperative – it is widely seen around the world as confronting American hegemony, meddling, warmongering, and domineering. It has successfully exposed the methods with which the US has waged proxy war on Syria and Libya, and highlighted the betrayal of America’s alleged allies in Iraq. In essence, while Russia has been the principle agent leveraging these developments, it was the US itself who provided the fulcrum.

Russia’s concept of a multipolar world gives those who have been offered a place among America’s unipolar world as a proxy, the alternative of a partnership underpinned by national sovereignty, self-determination, and a prevailing balance of power between nations rather than entangling interdependence over which the US and its international institutions arbitrate.

Russia, Iran, Syria, and others who have found themselves on the wrong end of American-driven globalization have learned the merits of national self-sufficiency and self-reliance. It would be hoped that these good habits carry themselves over should this multipolar world emerge.

Localize – Your Exit from the American Empire 

While Russia and its allies attempt to create a wider balance of power across the world on the global stage, it is important for people to understand that unless fundamental changes are made regarding what a nation is and how it fits into the wider geopolitical world, the world runs the risk of trading one hegemony in for another inevitably in the future.

A balance of power between nations is not enough. A balance must then be struck within each nation, on a provincial or state level. Further still, that balance must be established locally.

Technology has made it possible for a wider range of modern social, political, and economic processes to be carried out by fewer and fewer people. The ability for nations to nationalize economic activity that they once depended on immense multinational monopolies to do for them is an example of this trend on the larger end of the spectrum. Russia, China, and Iran have in many areas reached parity with the US military industrial complex regarding key technologies – as admitted by the witnesses before the US Senate Armed Services Committee.

Nations developing their own domestic car manufacturing companies, pharmaceutical production, and telecom and IT solutions are also examples of this.

On a more local level, technology has made it possible for communities and even individuals to engage in social, economic and political activity that once required immense amounts of capital and manpower. The Internet alone allows writers to access millions of readers with free, open source tools. A half-century ago, a printing press, TV studio, or radio station requiring huge amounts of money and manpower would have been required to do the same. The same could be said of the widening proliferation of personal manufacturing technology like computer-controlled mills, lasers, water jets, and 3D printers.

Looking again at the US Senate Committee on Armed Forces and the immense corporate-financier interests selfishly, almost blindly pushing US foreign policy along from one war to the other like a swarm of locust, Americans must realize that no matter who they vote in, until that nexus of unwarranted power and influence is removed from the equation, nothing else can or will change.

Many communities today – regardless of what country they are in – depend on many of the corporate-financier interests driving US foreign policy. By moving away from these corporate-financier monopolies, and replacing them permanently with local alternatives, we begin to drain the swamp where special interests and the many disease they carry breed. In addition to putting in check runaway foreign policy,building stronger communities upon a foundation of local industry and entrepreneurship is an effective way to take the wealth horded by Wall Street and put it back into the hands of the people more evenly.

Images: Local car manufacturing, urban organic food production, leveraging technology like drones and personal manufacturing tools like 3D printing, and local farmers’ markets all form the growing foundation of modern, local industry, economy, and even local institutions. This phenomenon will help balance power within any given state, just as the emerging multipolar world represents a balance of power between states.

Stronger communities then have a greater say in the destiny of their provinces or states, and more say in the destiny of their country. They have a greater say because they have greater socioeconomic leverage to put pressure on political parties and representatives who have thus far been content listening only to policymakers furnished by the Fortune 500.

And while this seems like a distant dream, the world should understand that this change is already underway. The number of national businesses around the world able to compete and dilute the monopolies of Wall Street and London have already contributed to the deterioration of American primacy on the global stage.

General James Jones while answering questions during the recent hearing noted that America’s position in the world was not based solely on military power, but also included political and economic components. The key to repositioning  America in the world – preferably back behind its own borders and regional spheres of influence – also must include political and economic components in addition to the very obvious military component now being exercised by Russia and its allies in Syria.

While the military and political components include a relatively limited number of direct participants, the economic component includes literally every worker on the planet. Where and how they choose to spend their money effects directly the Fortune 500, their wealth and influence, and those competitors that threaten to upset and dilute their still overwhelming monopolies.

Some may believe their individual contribution is too insignificant to matter, but it is a fact that millions of these “insignificant” individual contributions have already made a difference and each contribution is no less significant than the actions of any single soldier fighting on a battlefield.  Individually they may seem insignificant. Collectively, they add up to victory.

The bottom line is that you are not a spectator. A single act has an effect on the vector sum of global events – however insignificant. By building up stronger communities, through local organic agriculture, through the proliferation and use of personal manufacturing and IT technology, and by the creation of local businesses and institutions that permanently replace domineering national and multinational corporations, we can begin adding up our individual acts into a final exit from the American Empire.