Normalised mass violence has become the unmentioned subject of US school syllabi. Teacher’s meetings and academic retreats must be getting longer and more perturbed: How do those in a university setting cope with an armed assailant who will take a dozen lives in a short span, and then perish?

Twenty four hour reporting loves such phenomena. It is crack violence for whoring reporting. It seemed most appropriate that the 10 deaths, repeated aerial shots of provincial Umpqua Community College, police and control centres, should be run around the clock on Oregon, even as Russian bombings of supposed ISIL sites in Syria were taking place. The latter commanded outrage that Russia was destabilising an already perilous situation, potentially undermining US-sponsored anti-Assad groups.

The former, on the other hand, saw a rehearsed pattern, a Pavlovian dog scenario that plays out in the theatrical bloodbath of gun, massacre and response. What matters is that nothing changes. Each group has a role to play in the theatre of inaction.

From the start of the interview fest, UCC and its surrounds were idealised as America’s sweet retreat, the vast shield against a national darkness. The community college was depicted as an escapist place of learning in rural Oregon. In such an Eden, such events do not happen.

There are the convenient illusions, those suggesting that gun killings take place elsewhere, where social decay is inexorable. Gun free areas operate. Controls are accepted. All of these are the insensible measures based on the idea that mass murdering weapons in civilian communities can be managed.

The gunman, Chris Harper Mercer, burst this illusion in several, literal ways. There were thirteen weapons recovered in the aftermath of the shootings, six at the school, and seven at home. Mercer also had body armour to add to his guerrilla styled arsenal. He was also, it is claimed by some of the survivors, interested in ascertaining the religion of those he shot, delivering Christians from their earthly existence.

The language of regulation is also as confused as the sentiment, legitimising the shooting culture by distinguishing what is an “active” shooter to what is not. The shooter was considered “active” which presumes that he was one by profession, as millions of others. Repeatedly, this “active shooter” went from room to room.

Then come the social media scourers and the vultures hoping to understand the assailant. There, after all, must always be a reason, a deep, metaphysical underpinning as to why one kills. Did he leave a manifesto of worth? Did he give us a sense of his murderous credo in advance? He was deemed to have, like many of his generation, an unhealthy interest in social media platforms. He was on a “chat board”. He spoke about imminent mayhem which was ignored. The very nature of such discussions were desensitised.

While some analysts will be averse to examine the system behind the shootings, the anti-socialising context, if you will, is hard to ignore. Angst and ennui become manifestations of total, expressive violence. There are no genuine discouragements, because at its heart, the US loves guns. But even psychologists, notorious for stumbling on this subject, admit that separating the potential school shooter from the standard disaffected school student is nigh impossible.[1]

Those worried about the effects of American power may derive rueful satisfaction at the murderous elements that gun culture produces, even in learning communities. President Barack Obama has noted that the rate of such killings in the US is 297 times more than Japan, 49 times more than France, 33 times more than Israel.

The president’s fifteenth statement on mass shootings in America was also a reflection of automated response. The nature of such violence, he observed, has numbed the entire mechanism of response. The reporting is routine. Obama’s own response is routine. The conversation in the aftermath is routine. The gun lobby response is routine. He asked the gathered media to consider how many Americans had perished in terrorist attacks to those who had lost their lives to gun violence.

The securitisation of the learning environment is certainly one of the most conspicuous features of the gun violence culture. A criticism from the security fetishists regarding UCC was that it lacked a heavily armed presence. This reveals the great paradox of US gun culture: the only things that should be regulated are places where gun owners may be found, rather than the guns themselves. As Douglas County sheriff John Hanlin has previous claimed, gun control was an “indisputable insult to the American people.”[2]

Portland Police have already promised to add extra officers to area schools after the UCC shootings. And even as Obama gave his address, the routine re-exerted itself. Security poured in. The FBI and associated agencies crowded the campus. Chillingly, it resembled tactics of combating a resourceful insurgent.

The individual incentive means that this becomes a problem of individuals. All sides partake in this, hoping to peer into an individual mind in the hope of localising a problem, or to unearth what social element caused the being to implode. The most troubling feature of the UCC shootings, however, point to no distinct ideology, or understanding. In killing, shallowness can be just as vital as the greatest political and religious projects.

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

Notes

 [1] http://www.livescience.com/25666-mass-shooting-psychology.html

[2] http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/02/oregon-shootings-douglas-county-sheriff-john-hanlin

The two most anticipated speeches in the 70th annual United Nations General Assembly by U.S. president Barack Obama and Russian president Vladimir Putin lived up to their expectations. There were no surprises. As the world was watching, Obama gave a “jingoistic” speech flexing his military muscle while Putin gave a speech that was truthful and relatively speaking, straight forward. But I was really surprised that no delegates in the assembly had vomited during Obama’s speech. If you know the history of U.S. Empire since its inception everything that Obama said was a complete lie. Obama began talking about World War II and the “unthinkable power” of the atomic bomb:

Out of the ashes of the Second World War, having witnessed the unthinkable power of the atomic age, the United States has worked with many nations in this Assembly to prevent a third world war — by forging alliances with old adversaries; by supporting the steady emergence of strong democracies accountable to their people instead of any foreign power; and by building an international system that imposes a cost on those who choose conflict over cooperation, an order that recognizes the dignity and equal worth of all people

Obama was indirectly saying that the U.S. has the capability to unleash another scenario on its adversaries. It seemed that he was signaling to the world to “remember what the U.S. did to Japan during World War II, We can surely do it again! Japan is a vassal state with U.S. bases stationed in Okinawa and other areas. Is Japan a strong democracy without any foreign power that is accountable” to its people? or to those who live in the island of Okinawa? Maybe Obama should visit Okinawa and hear what the people have to say about “American-style democracy” with U.S. bases stationed on their land. Obama continued his speech with the audacity to talk about the “terrible conflicts” and how Washington has pushed forward the rule of law.

He said “Over seven decades, terrible conflicts have claimed untold victims. But we have pressed forward, slowly, steadily, to make a system of international rules and norms that are better and stronger and more consistent.”  First and foremost, the U.S. is responsible for most of the conflicts in the past 70 years since World War II. Here is a list compiled by author and activist William Blum which can be found atwilliamblum.org “Instances of the United States overthrowing, or attempting to overthrow, a foreign government since the Second World War. (* indicates successful ouster of a government):

China 1949 to early 1960s, Albania 1949-53, East Germany 1950s, Iran 1953 *, Guatemala 1954 *, Costa Rica mid-1950s, Syria 1956-7, Egypt 1957, Indonesia 1957-8, British Guiana 1953-64 *, Iraq 1963 *, North Vietnam 1945-73, Cambodia 1955-70 *, Laos 1958 *, 1959 *, 1960 *, Ecuador 1960-63 *, Congo 1960 *, France 1965, Brazil 1962-64 *, Dominican Republic 1963 *, Cuba 1959 to present, Bolivia 1964 *, Indonesia 1965 *, Ghana 1966 *, Chile 1964-73 *, Greece 1967 *, Costa Rica 1970-71, Bolivia 1971 *, Australia 1973-75 *, Angola 1975, 1980s, Zaire 1975, Portugal 1974-76 *, Jamaica 1976-80 *, Seychelles 1979-81, Chad 1981-82 *, Grenada 1983 *, South Yemen 1982-84, Suriname 1982-84, Fiji 1987 *, Libya 1980s, Nicaragua 1981-90 *, Panama 1989 *, Bulgaria 1990 *, Albania 1991 *, Iraq 1991, Afghanistan 1980s *, Somalia 1993, Yugoslavia 1999-2000 *, Ecuador 2000 *, Afghanistan 2001 *, Venezuela 2002 *, Iraq 2003 *, Haiti 2004 *, Somalia 2007 to present, Honduras 2009, Libya 2011 *, Syria 2012, Ukraine 2014 *

Professor Noam Chomsky’s once said” (…) since 1945, the US has attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, has grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries and has dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 others”. Obama also said that:

Technologies that empower individuals are now also exploited by those who spread disinformation, or suppress dissent, or radicalize our youth. Global capital flows have powered growth and investment, but also increased risk of contagion, weakened the bargaining power of workers, and accelerated inequality

This sounds like something the National Endowment for Democracy (NED, the U.S. based International Monetary Fund (IMF) , the World Bank, Wall Street and the main-stream media in the U.S. and the U.K. (BBC) have been doing since their inception.

There are those who argue that the ideals enshrined in the U.N. charter are unachievable or out of date — a legacy of a postwar era not suited to our own. Effectively, they argue for a return to the rules that applied for most of human history and that pre-date this institution: the belief that power is a zero-sum game; that might makes right; that strong states must impose their will on weaker ones; that the rights of individuals don’t matter; and that in a time of rapid change, order must be imposed by force.

On this basis, we see some major powers assert themselves in ways that contravene international law. We see an erosion of the democratic principles and human rights that are fundamental to this institution’s mission; information is strictly controlled, the space for civil society restricted. We’re told that such retrenchment is required to beat back disorder; that it’s the only way to stamp out terrorism, or prevent foreign meddling

“Might makes right” is what the US Government has been doing for the last 70 years. In fact, the U.S. has or has attempted to impose their will on sovereign nations since the end of the Spanish American War of 1898. Obama is not the first nor will be the last president to talk about imposing their form of “democracy” on the planet.

This is where Putin’s speech challenges Washington’s foreign policy strategies. Putin’s speech was mainly about the situation in Syria with the U.S. Backed “moderate” rebels and the Islamic State including other terrorist groups. However, Putin mentioned a recent historical fact about the U.S./NATO intervention in Libya and the start of the Syrian civil war which created social and political chaos in the Middle East and the North African region:

What is the meaning of state sovereignty, the term which has been mentioned by our colleagues here? It basically means freedom, every person and every state being free to choose their future. By the way, this brings us to the issue of the so-called legitimacy of state authorities. You shouldn’t play with words and manipulate them. In international law, international affairs, every term has to be clearly defined, transparent and interpreted the same way by one and all. We are all different, and we should respect that. Nations shouldn’t be forced to all conform to the same development model that somebody has declared the only appropriate one. We should all remember the lessons of the past. For example, we remember examples from our Soviet past, when the Soviet Union exported social experiments, pushing for changes in other countries for ideological reasons, and this often led to tragic consequences and caused degradation instead of progress.

It seems, however, that instead of learning from other people’s mistakes, some prefer to repeat them and continue to export revolutions, only now these are “democratic” revolutions. Just look at the situation in the Middle East and Northern Africa already mentioned by the previous speaker. Of course, political and social problems have been piling up for a long time in this region, and people there wanted change. But what was the actual outcome? Instead of bringing about reforms, aggressive intervention rashly destroyed government institutions and the local way of life. Instead of democracy and progress, there is now violence, poverty, social disasters and total disregard for human rights, including even the right to life. I’m urged to ask those who created this situation: do you at least realize now what you’ve done? But I’m afraid that this question will remain unanswered, because they have never abandoned their policy, which is based on arrogance, exceptionalism and impunity

Putin was right on point with historical facts when it came to Libya and Syria while Obama sold “Propaganda” on the world stage. According to Obama and every US president before him, the U.S. is exceptional; therefore their place in the world is to impose “democracy” on every nation on earth.  Obama said:

A politics and solidarity that depend on demonizing others, that draws on religious sectarianism or narrow tribalism or jingoism may at times look like strength in the moment, but over time its weakness will be exposed. And history tells us that the dark forces unleashed by this type of politics surely makes all of us less secure. Our world has been there before. We gain nothing from going back

When Libya was “liberated”, at least according to Washington, chaos soon followed. Before the U.S. orchestrated invasion by NATO, Libya was one of the most developed nations in the continent of Africa. Syria is now the focus of regime change for the Obama administration. Russia stepped into the war and now threatens Washington’s plan for Syria, which is to create more chaos in the region that would ultimately threaten Iran’s borders. Washington wants to impose their will on Syria just like they did in Libya and the results were indeed catastrophic. Libya was a sovereign nation that was trying to free Africa from the U.S. dollar with a gold dinar, an idea that lead to the death of Muammar Gaddafi in a violent coup which was planned by the Neocons from the Bush administration after 911. Obama is following the Neocon plan as Syria maintains its legitimate right to defend itself against the Islamic State with Russia’s military and political support. If Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is removed from power by the Islamic State, Syria will be destroyed and that will enable the U.S., Israel and their allies to launch an all out war against Hezbollah and Iran.

Maybe Obama should listen to his own speech. Obama said that by “demonizing” their enemies leads to “tribalism or jingoism.” Obama’s speech was full of “jingoism.” In fact, the US government has been following a “warlike” foreign policy since the end of World War II. Putin was the true statesman while Obama spoke in a typical “jingoist” fashion. Obama made it clear with his speech that the future will be marred with war and violence and that is something Putin wants to avoid. Can Russia, China and Iran collaborate and stop Washington’s aggressive behavior towards the world? Call me optimistic, but I believe they can.

“What we are pressing for is not the power to be Big Brother, watching everyone from above, but rather a flock of Little Sisters, watching government from below. All that the Wikileaks phenomenon adds to that effort is the ability to share information beyond the control of any one government’s laws limiting that effort.” -Micah L. Sifry [1] 

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As these remarks are being written, leaders from twelve Pacific Rim countries, including Canada, are meeting in Atlanta Georgia in order to hammer out an Agreement-in-Principle on the largest economic treaties ever contemplated, the so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP.) 

As was disclosed on a previous program, the TPP has been drafted with an unprecedented degree of secrecy, and has been criticized by environmental and social justice groups for compromising health care access, food safety, the environment, labour rights and a whole battery of areas of concern affecting the wider citizenry.

It was the whistle-blower upload platform Wikileaks which provided some exposure of sections of this agreement. Back in November of 2013, it released the 95 page, 30,000-word draft text of the Intellectual Property Rights Chapter. This IP chapter detailed wide-ranging measures which would modify laws affecting patents on drugs and other goods, trademarks, copyright, and industrial design. These provisions would have wide-ranging consequences for individual rights, civil liberties, internet providers, publishers, and internet privacy within TPP member countries.

Two months later, Wikileaks disclosed the draft text of the Environment Chapter. The draft Consolidated Text appears to contain no mandated clauses or meaningful enforcement mechanisms for resolving environmental disputes arising out of the treaty’s subsequent implementation. 

In her analysis of the Environmental Chapter, Professor Jane Kelsey of New Zealand notes that the environment is threatened by the industrial activity of corporations. [2] The Investment Chapter, if investor protection provisions in similar trade agreements are any indication, would empower foreign investors to sue governments attempting to move or enforce environmental laws which could theoretically cost those companies profits. The Investment Chapter therefore would seemingly override the comparatively toothless mechanisms in the Environment Chapter. This effectively prioritizes profit-making over the welfare of the planet. 

Wikileaks has therefore served as a valuable mechanism for providing transparency into secretive dealings by State authorities. 

Are there fundamental differences between these sorts of grassroots watchdog mechanisms and the more traditional “top-down” instruments, such as Freedom of Information laws? 

Melbourne, Australia based lecturer Binoy Kampmark has made this question the focus of a recent paper entitled: The Transparency Movement in Geopolitical Economy: WikiLeaks, Economic Diplomacy and the Redistribution of Power. In this week’s episode of the Global Research News Hour, Dr. Kampmark elaborates on the merits of this emerging form of hactivism using the TPP as a case study.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He is currently a Senior Lecturer in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, teaching within the Bachelor of Social Science (Legal and Dispute Studies) program. He spoke to the Global Research News Hour October 2, 2015 while in Winnipeg, Canada to present at an International Geopolitical Economy Research Group Conference.

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

The  show can be heard on the Progressive Radio Network at prn.fm. Listen in every Monday at 3pm ET.

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

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Notes:

1) Micah L. Sifry (February, 2011) Wikileaks and the Age of Transparency (p. 164)

2) http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/21372-wikileaks-on-the-trans-pacific-partnership-environment-chapter-toothless-public-relations-exercise

Podcast interview: (26 mins)

Lars Schall talked for Matterhorn Asset Management with Folker Hellmeyer, one of Germany’s most outspoken senior bankers. Hellmeyer points out why he thinks it’s impossible for the US Federal Reserve to raise interest rates.

Moreover, he discusses his optimism for gold and “the invisible hand” of the Plunge Protection Team.

Folker Hellmeyer, born 1961 in Hamburg, is a banking professional who started his career as foreign exchange trader with Deutsche Bank in Hamburg (1984 – 1987) and London (1988 – 1989).

From 1990 to 1995, he worked as an OTC broker in the interbank foreign exchange market at Bierbaum & Co. GmbH & Co. OHG. In 1995, he went to Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen GZ (Helaba) in Frankfurt as a senior analyst. Since April 2002, he is the chief analyst at Bremer Landesbank, where he is responsible for the Foreign Exchange and Money Market Sales department.

There has been so much attention on Greece in recent weeks, but the truth is that Greece represents only a very tiny fraction of an unprecedented global debt bomb which threatens to explode at any moment.  As you are about to see, there are 24 nations that are currently facing a full-blown debt crisis, and there are 14 more that are rapidly heading toward one.  Right now, the debt to GDP ratio for the entire planet is up to an all-time record high of 286 percent, and globally there is approximately 200 TRILLION dollars of debt on the books.  That breaks down to about $28,000 of debt for every man, woman and child on the entire planet.  And since close to half of the population of the world lives on less than 10 dollars a day, there is no way that all of this debt can ever be repaid.  The only “solution” under our current system is to kick the can down the road for as long as we can until this colossal debt pyramid finally collapses in upon itself.

As we are seeing in Greece, you can eventually accumulate so much debt that there is literally no way out.  The other European nations are attempting to find a way to give Greece a third bailout, but that is like paying one credit card with another credit card because virtually everyone in Europe is absolutely drowning in debt.

Even if some “permanent solution” could be crafted for Greece, that would only solve a very small fraction of the overall problem that we are facing.  The nations of the world have never been in this much debt before, and it gets worse with each passing day.

According to a new report from the Jubilee Debt Campaign, there are currently 24 countries in the world that are facing a full-blown debt crisis…

■ Armenia

■ Belize

■ Costa Rica

■ Croatia

■ Cyprus

■ Dominican Republic

■ El Salvador

■ The Gambia

■ Greece

■ Grenada

■ Ireland

■ Jamaica

■ Lebanon

■ Macedonia

■ Marshall Islands

■ Montenegro

■ Portugal

■ Spain

■ Sri Lanka

■ St Vincent and the Grenadines

■ Tunisia

■ Ukraine

■ Sudan

■ Zimbabwe

And there are another 14 nations that are right on the verge of one…

■ Bhutan

■ Cape Verde

■ Dominica

■ Ethiopia

■ Ghana

■ Laos

■ Mauritania

■ Mongolia

■ Mozambique

■ Samoa

■ Sao Tome e Principe

■ Senegal

■ Tanzania

■ Uganda

So what should be done about this?

Should we have the “wealthy” countries bail all of them out?

Well, the truth is that the “wealthy” countries are some of the biggest debt offenders of all.  Just consider the United States.  Our national debt has more than doubled since 2007, and at this point it has gotten so large that it is mathematically impossible to pay it off.

Europe is in similar shape.  Members of the eurozone are trying to cobble together a “bailout package” for Greece, but the truth is that most of them will soon need bailouts too…

All of those countries will come knocking asking for help at some point. The fact is that their Debt to GDP levels have soared since the EU nearly collapsed in 2012.

Spain’s Debt to GDP has risen from 69% to 98%. Italy’s Debt to GDP has risen from 116% to 132%. France’s has risen from 85% to 95%.

In addition to Spain, Italy and France, let us not forget Belgium (106 percent debt to GDP), Ireland (109 debt to GDP) and Portugal (130 debt to GDP).

Once all of these dominoes start falling, the consequences for our massively overleveraged global financial system will be absolutely catastrophic…

Spain has over $1.0 trillion in debt outstanding… and Italy has €2.6 trillion. These bonds are backstopping tens of trillions of Euros’ worth of derivatives trades. A haircut or debt forgiveness for them would trigger systemic failure in Europe.

EU banks as a whole are leveraged at 26-to-1. At these leverage levels, even a 4% drop in asset prices wipes out ALL of your capital. And any haircut of Greek, Spanish, Italian and French debt would be a lot more than 4%.

Things in Asia look quite ominous as well.

According to Bloomberg, debt levels in China have risen to levels never recorded before…

While China’s economic expansion beat analysts’ forecasts in the second quarter, the country’s debt levels increased at an even faster pace.

Outstanding loans for companies and households stood at a record207 percent of gross domestic product at the end of June, up from125 percent in 2008, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

And remember, that doesn’t even include government debt.  When you throw all forms of debt into the mix, the overall debt to GDP number for China is rapidly approaching 300 percent.

In Japan, things are even worse.  The government debt to GDP ratio in Japan is now up to an astounding 230 percent.  That number has gotten so high that it is hard to believe that it could possibly be true.  At some point an implosion is coming in Japan which is going to shock the world.

Of course the same thing could be said about the entire planet.  Yes, national governments and central banks have been attempting to kick the can down the road for as long as possible, but everyone knows that this is not going to end well.

And when things do really start falling apart, it will be unlike anything that we have ever seen before.  Just consider what Egon von Greyerz recently told King World News…

Eric, there are now more problem areas in the world, rather than stable situations. No major nation in the West can repay its debts. The same is true for Japan and most of the emerging markets. Europe is a failed experiment for socialism and deficit spending. China is a massive bubble, in terms of its stock markets, property markets and shadow banking system. Japan is also a basket case and the U.S. is the most indebted country in the world and has lived above its means for over 50 years.

So we will see twin $200 trillion debt and $1.5 quadrillion derivatives implosions. That will lead to the most historic wealth destruction ever in global stock, with bond and property markets declining at least 75 – 95 percent. World trade will also contract dramatically and we will see massive hardship across the globe.

So what do you think is coming, and how bad will things ultimately get once this global debt crisis finally spins totally out of control?

Propaganda wars precede hot ones – then continue once fighting starts. Putin is a master chess player, a patient one, a careful strategic planner.

He’s got Obama flummoxed, besting him at his own dirty game. He’s engaged in the war on terrorism in Syria Obama only pretends to wage, fighting Assad, not ISIS.

Putin’s commitment is real. The anti-Russian lying machine wants people to believe otherwise. Believe nothing US officials say or what go-along presstitutes report.

Their job is supporting imperial objectives, suppressing its most dangerous enemy – truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Longstanding US Middle East policy is no secret. Eliminate all independent leaders. Replace them with pro-Western puppets. Achieve unchallenged regional control.

Redraw the regional map by balkanizing Iraq, Syria, Iran, Lebanon and perhaps other countries for easier control, especially its oil and gas resources.

Above all, banish Russian and Chinese regional influence along with returning Iran to its bad old days, run by a US-installed despot.

Washington’s Middle East objective complicit with Israel is an agenda only a hegemon would love – total subjugation, prohibiting democracy, wealth and power interests alone benefitting at the expense of everyone else, including US taxpayers financing the ugly scheme, denied essential social services in the process.

Most Americans are too dumbed down by media-proliferated propaganda and too preoccupied with bread and circuses to realize how much they’re harmed – scammed by their government, consistently lied to, manipulated to believe the opposite of what’s true.

The “bewildered herd” is easily seduced by lunatics in Washington getting away with the highest of high crimes because of their indifference – aided by media scoundrels proliferating their Big Lies, a daily onslaught of rubbish.

It keeps coming because most people believe it – the self-styled newspaper of record New York Times a key agent of wealth and power interests, representing them exclusively, willfully lying to its readers, disgracing the profession of journalism, absent from its pages.

On October 1, it headlined “Vladimir Putin Plunges Into a Caldron (sic): Saving Assad,” saying “there is little question that Russia is determined to re-establish President Bashar al-Assad as Syria’s leader.”

“Re-establish” what’s already a fact? Assad was popularly reelected in June 2014 by an overwhelming majority – a process judged open, free, and fair by independent international monitors, what The Times never explained, spreading malicious lies, claiming he’s a despot, ignoring how warmly he’s greeted when showing up in public.

Of course, Putin supports him and his government. They’re fighting for Syria’s survival, for its people to be free from outside control, or worst of all an ISIS caliphate, lopping off heads of nonbelievers, the way close US ally Saudi Arabia operates.

The vast majority of Syrians want none of it. They back Assad because he’s going all-out to prevent the worst possible outcome of ongoing conflict – now with vital Russian help, and unverified reports about Iran possibly getting involved with ground forces joining their Syrian allies against a common enemy.

The Times explains none of this, its reporting entirely one-sided, spreading misinformation and Big Lies, suppressing important hard truths, a disgraceful example of misrepresentation.

Claiming “Assad…is vilified by many” Syrians is polar opposite truth. So is the myth about “indiscriminate(ly) us(ing) barrel bombs and other indiscriminate weapons against an insurgency that began with political protests.”

Fact: So-called “political protests” were US-instigated violence, the beginning of Obama’s war to oust Assad, using imported death squads, repeating the scheme used against Libya’s Gaddafi, turning Syria into another cauldron of endless violence and instability, its society entirely destroyed along with important historic sites, replaced by dystopian harshness.

Whether Russia’ involvement becomes a game-changer remains to be seen. For sure it changes the equation. US regional policy for the first time since the Soviet Union is being challenged, to what degree we’ll learn as events play out.

For now, it’s only day three of Moscow’s involvement. It’ll take time to evaluate its effectiveness.

The Washington Post headlined “Russia defends Syria airstrikes amid claims of blows to US-backed rebels,” irresponsibly saying “Russian troops” may be deployed – despite Putin categorically ruling out their use.

Throughout four-and-a-half years of conflict, he’s been out in front urging a political solution, now involved against ISIS – America’s ally, not enemy, an ugly truth Western media systematically suppress.

WaPo repeated the Big Lie Obama officials want people to believe, claiming Russian aircraft are targeting so-called US supported moderates, not ISIS.

Virtually all anti-Assad fighters are terrorists – ISIS, Al Qaeda, Al Nusra and other groups. So-called moderates are nonexistent or too few in number to matter.

On Thursday, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook lied, claiming Russian aircraft “do not appear to be hitting targets in areas where ISIL is operating” – repeated by media scoundrels without fact-checking or concern about accurate reporting.

Sergey Lavrov hit home hard telling reporters: “If it looks like a terrorist, if it acts like a terrorist, if it walks like a terrorist, if it fights like a terrorist, it’s a terrorist!”

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov questioned the so-called Free Syrian Army’s existence, asking: “Is there a Free Syrian Army? Does it still exist? Have not the majority of its fighters switched sides and joined ISIL?”

The Wall Street Journal claimed Russian aerial attacks “may be a prelude to (more) sweeping operations against all of Mr. Assad’s foes,” citing unnamed “analysts,” the usual state-sponsored propaganda sources.

Without explaining virtually “all of Mr. Assad’s foes” are terrorists. It bears repeating. No so-called “moderate” elements exist in numbers to matter. Claiming otherwise is a ruse – along with circulating Big Lie about “Moscow…carrying out ‘indiscriminate military operations’ in areas where (ISIS) isn’t operating.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry is very clear about targets struck, with photographic evidence backup – unlike fabricated reports of civilian casualties.

On day two of Russia’s involvement, its Defense Ministry announced the “total destruction” of terrorist targets in Idlib province – including an ISIS command post and training camp.

An ammunition warehouse was struck, destroying “military hardware” and munitions. Follow-up attacks prevented ISIS from restoring its Hama command post.

Overnight strikes targeted an Idlib ammunition depot, a Hama headquarters, and a car-bomb making plant north of Homs. More results will be released once intelligence data processing is completed.

One thing is clear. Washington’s regional strategy now faces formidable opposition. The front line battleground is Syria, Russia involved to weaken ISIS as a fighting force – hopefully neutralize it, working jointly with Syrian and allied ground forces.

An unverified report circulated by Reuters, Al Jazeera and other media claim hundreds of Iranian troops, weapons and equipment arrived in Syria, saying more will follow – joined by Iraqi and some Afghan forces to battle ISIS. Events as they unfold bear close watching.

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.

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Like falling dominoes, more and more European Union countries have decided to stamp out the growth of genetically modified (GMO) crops within their borders.

According to Greenpeace, as the Oct. 3 deadline to notify the European Commission approaches, at least 14 European Union countries and three regions—which represent 65 percent of the EU’s population and 66 percent of its arable land—are in the process of banning the cultivation of GMO crops in its territories.

As of today, Austria, Croatia, France, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Poland as well as one regional administration (Wallonia, in Belgium) have formally notified the commission of their intention to ban GMO crop cultivation, Greenpeace said.

There are impending notifications from Bulgaria, Denmark, Germany, Italy and Slovenia, as well as and three regional administrations—Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in the UK, Greenpeace noted.

These governments have chosen the “opt-out” clause of a European Commission rule passed in March that allows its 28-member bloc to abstain from growing GMO crops, even if they are already authorized to be grown within the union. Wales and Bulgaria were the most recent to join the growing ranks.

This wave of GMO-bans across Europe signify a distrust of EU GMO crop approvals, Greenpeace noted.

“At least half of the EU’s governments are rejecting the commission’s drive for GMO crop approvals. They don’t trust EU safety assessments and are rightly taking action to protect their agriculture and food.” Greenpeace EU food policy director Franziska Achterberg explained in a statement.

“The only way to restore trust in the EU system now is for the commission to hit the pause button on GMO crop approvals and to urgently reform safety testing and the approval system,” Achterberg concluded.

Many of these countries already have stringent laws against GMOs out of public health and environmental concerns. All 28 nations in the EU require GMO labeling, for instance.

After Scotland decided to take the opt-out (the first in Europe to do so), Scotland’s Rural Affairs Secretary Richard Lochhead spoke about the state of Europe’s GMO-distrust.

“The Scottish Government has long-standing concerns about GMO crops—concerns that are shared by other European countries and consumers, and which should not be dismissed lightly,” he said in a statement.

In another example, France is already strongly against GMOs and prohibits the cultivation of any variety of genetically modified maize. When France (which happens to be Europe’s largest grain grower and exporter) announced it was also opting out of GMO cultivation, the mostly symbolic move appeared to be singling out Monsanto’s MON 810 maize, the only GMO crop grown in Europe, and is currently under review at the European level.

Monsanto has faced a spate of bad press in recent months. Six months ago, the World Health Organization’s cancer arm famously classified that the chemical glyphosate in Monsanto’s flagship herbicide, Roundup, was a possible carcinogen. In recent news, the company was alsoslapped with two lawsuits, with the plaintiffs both claiming that the weedkiller caused their cancers.

Monsanto maintains the safety of its products and has also spoken out on the anti-GMO EU wave. After Latvia and Greece requested to not grow GMO-crops earlier this month, the biotech giant told Reuters that the two countries were ignoring science and refusing GMOs out of “arbitrary political grounds.”

In a statement, Monsanto said that the move from the two countries “contradicts and undermines the scientific consensus on the safety of MON810.”

Greenpeace said in its press release that it expects several more EU countries to follow in the GMO-ban wave as the deadline approaches.

Although it is not a part of the EU, Russia, as we previously covered, decided to stamp out any GMOs in its entire food production.

The ‘decision to cut out ID services to almost all counties with a majority black population is discriminatory and wrong,’ says ACLU of Alabama.

Some observers say that Alabama’s move to close dozens of drivers license offices is a discriminatory move that could trigger a civil rights probe.

Here’s why: in 2011 lawmakers approved a voter ID law requiring a government-issued ID to vote, and the 31 offices the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency set for closing—which the agency said was due to the $11 million cut in the new General Fund appropriation—will take a disproportionate hit on counties that are majority African-American.

Columnist John Archibald writes that “Alabama just took a giant step backward.”

“Every single county in which blacks make up more than 75 percent of registered voters will see their driver license office closed,” writes columnist John Archibald. (Photo: Denise Cross Photography/flickr/cc)

“Every single county in which blacks make up more than 75 percent of registered voters will see their driver license office closed. Every one,” he continues, writing that the state “might as well just send an invitation to the Justice Department.”

“It’s not just a civil rights violation,” Archibald writes. “It is not just a public relations nightmare. It is not just an invitation for worldwide scorn and an alarm bell to the Justice Department. It is an affront to the very notion of justice in a nation where one man one vote is as precious as oxygen. It is a slap in the face to all who believe the stuff we teach the kids about how all are created equal.”

Columnist Kyle Whitmire makes similar charges, writing:

Depending on which counties you count as being in Alabama’s Black Belt, either twelve or fifteen Black Belt counties soon won’t have a place to get a driver’s license.

Counties where some of the state’s poorest live.

Counties that are majority African-American.

[…] When the state passed Voter ID, Republican lawmakers argued that it was supposed to prevent voter fraud. Democrats said the law was written to disenfranchise black voters and suppress the voice of the poor.

Maybe, maybe not.

But put these two things together — Voter ID and 29 counties without a place where you can get one — and Voter ID becomes what the Democrats always said it was.

A civil rights lawsuit isn’t a probability. It’s a certainty.

On its Facebook page, the ACLU of Alabama writes that the “decision to cut out ID services to almost all counties with a majority black population is discriminatory and wrong.”

“Before the Supreme Court struck down key provisions in the Voting Rights Act last year, something like this would have had to be reviewed by the Department of Justice. This is why we need to stand together and show our lawmakers that we need an update to the Voting Rights Act, and we need it now,” the organization continued.

In its Health of State Democracies assessment issued in July, which includes voting equality among the criteria, the Center for American Progress Action Fund ranked Alabama dead last, giving the state an “F” for how it fared on accessibility of the ballot.

The 142,000 September payroll jobs reported today (2 Oct 2015) by the Bureau of Labor Statistics is too small to be consistent with the still high stock averages or the alleged economic recovery. Moreover, the BLS says that it over-estimated the July and August payroll jobs by 59,000. The average workweek declined to 34.5 hours. The labor force participation rate fell further and is now the lowest in about 40 years. This is especially damning when we remember that in those long ago years many more households could exist as one-earner households.

The 5.1 percent reported unemployment rate is inconsistent with the collapse of the labor force participation rate and stands at 5.1 percent only because it includes not a single one of the millions of discouraged workers. The way BLS gets a low and comforting rate of unemployment is not to include most of the unemployed.

Were were the new jobs? If you can believe the numbers, despite the absence of retail sales growth, retail stores hired 23,700 new workers. Ambulatory health care services and hospitals hired 28,400, and 20,700 jobs were created for waitresses and bartenders. None of these jobs produce exportable goods and services.

My coauthor Dave Kranzler gives a good accounting of the shaky status of the economic part of the Matrix in which the public is kept by uninquisitive financial media. Here is Dave’s report:

http://investmentresearchdynamics.com/non-farm-payrolls-theres-not-enough-lipstick-in-the-world-to-pretty-up-this-pig/

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.

October 1 – the New York Times reported that “Russian aircraft carried out a bombing attack against Syrian opposition fighters on Wednesday, including at least one group trained by the CIA, eliciting angry protests from American officials and plunging the complex sectarian war there into dangerous new territory.” The article goes on in a silly state of surprise “American officials said the attack was not directed at the Islamic State but at other opposition groups fighting against the government of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, whom Mr. Putin has vowed to support.”

So it is alright for the CIA to train anti- Assad terrorists, but not for Russia to fight them on behalf of a democratically elected leader of a sovereign country? – An election won some 15 months ago by President al-Assad by a landslide of almost 90% (88.7%), confirmed by a large delegation of international observers, representing more than 30 countries – obviously not Washington and its European puppets, who barked the election was a farce. Nobody barked at George Bush’s two farce elections, the results of which by now are proven were fraudulent and brought us the endless ‘war on terror’ – and so far an estimated 10 to 12 million deaths.

How dare the Syrians elect a President whom a foreign nation – the US of A – wants to remove by it’s traditional ‘regime change’ approach for reasons of (US) ‘national security’ – what an outright BS! – It is no longer a secret that the PNAC (Plan for A New American Century) needs Syria to fall into equal disarray and chaos as did Iraq and Libya – and Sudan, Somalia, Central Africa; Lebanon and of course Iran – and on goes the list – for the ultimate goal: America’s absolute hegemony.

The Iran nuclear ‘deal’ is a great achievement especially for Iran. No matter what Obama’s successor or a right-wing Israel influenced Congress will do with it, Iran has ‘reestablished’ itself in the international arena, even though there was effectively never a reason to accuse and sanction Iran for the pursuit of nuclear arms – which was never in her plans. Washington knows it very well, as it was reported in 2012 by the 15 most important US intelligence agencies; a fact of course, quickly silenced by the western media. The Iran nuclear arms threat was a mere monster-propaganda item to put Iran under pressure by sanctions and – what else – to provoke a ‘regime change’. It failed miserably.

An abrogation of the deal initiated by the United States in the face of the P5+1 agreement, would no doubt displease ever more of Washington’s fading group of ‘allies’ – let’s call them allies of fear. One day the fear will evaporate and convert into self-assertion and opposition. We can only hope that day will come soon. Every day lost on the way to empire’s demise claims thousands of lives by guns, bombs and weapons of mass destruction directly applied by the empire and NATO or supplied by it to its minions in the Middle East and Europe. Regardless of the ‘deal’ per se, an increasing number of fearless allies of Iran will eventually bring Iran back to where it belongs, into the world arena of free, respected and sovereign nations with strong social values for their people.

Back to the NYT article: What an almost unbelievably asinine arrogance it displays on behalf of the exceptional nation, even shamelessly admitting US interference in Syria by the CIA, long before Russia’s consideration to put an end to this atrocious and endless killing by American forces and its bowing servants.

What’s wrong with you guys at the NYT; with the MSM at large? – What is it that not even now, you the media, let alone Washington-Pentagon-NATO in their final throes can see the light – and join an effort of peace? Wouldn’t history be kinder when at least before the bitter end the empire would show some grace with a conscious effort to bring about a different world – one where people can trust each other again and where marriages of all races and creeds would re-emerge as happy family events?

Instead, as reported by Robert Parry, the Saudi air force was bombing last Monday a wedding party on Yemen’s Red Sea Coast, killing more than 130 people, including women and children. An event hardly reported on, just drowned by the steady rumbling of guns and bombs across a devastated Middle East. The Saudi’s acting with more than a tacit nod from Washington, rather as empire’s proxies, are massacring a population that has had enough of Washington imposed dictators over the last 40 years, wanting to choose as a sovereign nation their own sovereign government – which happens to be a moderate group of Moslems, the Houthis, a socially and religiously conscious movement of the 1990s, preaching tolerance and peace, eventually seeking more social justice by the Sana’a Government.  The White House sledge-hammer approach to democracy could indeed not tolerate a movement of independence – and that with a socialist leaning – in one of the most strategic locations of the Middle-East, the Gulf of Aden.

One surviving relative of the wedding party said, it was difficult to determine the exact number of dead because the bodies were blasted into so many bloody pieces. “I saw no body intact,” said the uncle of one of the victims.

Such abject slaughter is what Russia intends to avoid, first for Syria, and hopefully eventually for the entire Middle-East. Mr. Putin is not seeking ‘regime change’, nor expansion of territory, as western pundits would like you to believe, but stability in a part of the world that has suffered over the last sixty years endless atrocities at the bloody hands of the Anglo-Zionist empire.

Yes, it is also a region awash in energy- hydrocarbons that today’s world still depends on, and with neoliberal values, he who controls energy, controls the flows of money and ultimately the people – the world – and who shall live and who shall die.

When comparing Obama’s and Putin’s recent speeches before the UN General Assembly, it is sickening to listen to Obama’s pathetic almost pity invoking lies-upon- lies-upon lies which he must deliver by orders of his military corporate and Wall Street financial masters. By contrast President Putin laid down the hard facts. Without mentioning names referring to the’western colleagues’ interfering in other sovereign nations – Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Iraq – to name just a few, creating chaos, devastating them to rubble, causing uncountable dead and misery; and ultimately responsible for the current flood of refugees – now used by the US-think-tankers (sic)  strategists as a weapon to destabilize Europe, to make it more vulnerable, moldable, easier to control and subdue – just in case one or the other of the puppet governments may wake up and change sides

(http://www.globalresearch.ca/refugees-as-weapon-and-germany-shifting-alliances/5476544 ).

The NYT infers that it is OK for the exceptional nation to organize Color Revolutions, a euphemism for ‘regime change’, but not for Russia to help an ally to defend itself against proven US – Saudi – NATO armed, trained and financed ISIS/L – Daesh terrorists. – What planet are you living on?

Mr. Putin has clearly defined the two legal options to interfere in an independent sovereign country, (i) with a UN Security Council Mandate, or (ii) at the request of the official and legal Government.

The Syrian Government asked the Russian Federation for support against the foreign sustained terrorist insurgency. The Duma, Russian Parliament, gave green light to its government to help Syria fight against this western created terror, called at times ISIS/L or Daesh, al-Nusra or even Al Qaeda, you name it, whatever suits best the moment, when confusion is needed and shades of lesser or stronger terror are defined to justify US intervention. An intervention never, but never with the objective of bringing about peace and stop the killing, but always-always to produce chaos, disaster, destruction, massive death – and ultimately regime change – in the case of Syria to unseat the elected President Bashar al-Assad, who still today – after the western sponsored ‘civil war’ claimed more than 300,000 dead and more than 3 million refugees and mounting – enjoys a popularity among Syrians of more than 75%.

None of the western interferences meet the international criteria of legality, as defined by the Charter of the UN and cited by Mr. Putin – the request of an officially elected sovereign government, and / or the mandate of the UN Security Council. None, absolutely none, of the countless US war-mongering intrusions in sovereign contraries around the globe correspond to these principles.

Mr. Putin has called for an international coalition to join Russia to fight and eliminate the destructive and destabilizing terror forces that are threatening not only Syria, but the entire Middle-East, and make no mistake, ultimately these nefarious killing organizations may also threaten Russia, especially acting as well-armed and funded front-army for Washington. Nobody will blame Russia for defending her national interests.

The coalition so far includes Iraq, which hosts an international intelligence center, Iran, Syria and Russia – and lately, to the detriment of and as a serious set-back to the empire, it looks like China may also join the alliance to protect the region and stop the expansion of western-made atrocities carried out by the extremist Islamic State movements. Washington and its European vassals would, of course, never join an alliance that is bound to defend the livelihoods of populations of sovereign nations – and less so when the idea of such a coalition comes from and is led by Russia.

Enters the ultimate spineless non-character, France’s François Hollande, the epitome of Washington boot-licking. France’s air force is bombing Mr. Assad’s ground troops, so that the ‘moderates’ – aka, the different shades of the Islamic State, can advance towards Damascus. They may have a tough time. Mr. Putin has warned them – all the western ‘colleagues’-  to be careful and not to interfere in the paths of Russian fighter planes, lest to risk a clash among ‘colleagues’.

The kaleidoscope of shades looks at the outset like a mosaic of western and Mid-Eastern belligerent forces – all pursuing their own interests to the detriment of millions of lives and livelihoods – and all – Washington Gulf cronies, the European spineless marionettes, the hosts of NATO – with the ultimate goal to help the emperor achieve Full Spectrum Dominance, a buzz word of the PNAC – and maybe, just maybe earn a few kudos, some meager crumbs of the spoil, for having been good boys.

What becomes increasingly likely – as the western media’s mass propaganda are demolishing Putin and his peace seeking mission – is the emergence of a proxy-war between the two super powers. The US needs war to sustain its economy, as it did before entering the two WWs. We can just hope that common sense and Mr. Putin’s wisdom will prevent Washington’s aggression from turning the world into rubble.

It may not happen. The Russia-China alliance, expanded by the other BRICS states (Brazil, India, South Africa) and the SCO nations (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) are demonstrating an alternative more peaceful co-habitation among sovereign countries. After all, they comprise at least half of the world’s population and about one third of our globe’s economic output – and their door is open for any country to join – not by force, but by free will – as the dawn on the eastern horizon demarks clearly a new socioeconomic and political future; a new all-encompassing Eastern Silk Road.

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

“We can no longer tolerate the state of affairs in the world.” President Vladimir Putin

Last Wednesday (28 Sept 2015) the world saw the difference between Russia and Washington. Putin’s approach is truth-based; Obama’s is vain boasts and lies, and Obama is running out of lies.

By telling the truth at a time of universal deceit, Putin committed a revolutionary act. Referring to the slaughter, destruction, and chaos that Washington has brought to the Middle East, North Africa, and Ukraine, and the extreme jihadist forces that have been unleashed, Putin asked Washington: “Do you realize what you have done?”

Putin’s question reminds me of the question Joseph Welch asked witch-hunting Senator Joseph McCarthy: “Have you no sense of decency?” Welch’s question is attributed with initiating the decline of McCarthy’s career.

Perhaps Putin’s question will have the same impact and bring the reign of “American Exceptionalism” to an end.

If so, Putin has launched a revolution that will overthrow the world’s subservience to Washington.

Putin stresses the legality of Russia’s intervention in Syria, which is at the request of the Syrian government. He contrasts Russia’s respect for international law with the intervention in Syria of Washington and France, governments that are violating Syria’s sovereignty with unrequested and illegal military action.

The world sees that it is Washington and its vassals who “violate international norms” and not Russia.

The sanctimonious self-righteousness, behind which hides Washington’s self-serving unilateral actions, is revealed for all to see.

Washington relies on its arsenal of lies. Washington’s media-based disinformation apparatus was too hot to trot. Just as the BBC’s TV reporter announced the premature destruction of World Trade Center Building 7 with the building clearly still standing in the background, Washington’s lie service announced the first civilian casualties of Russian air strikes “even before our planes got in the air,” noted President Putin in his comments on Washington’s disinformation warfare.

As a consequence of their subservience to Washington, the puppet states of Europe are being overrun by refugees from Washington’s wars that Europe so mindlessly enabled. As the cost of being Washington’s vassals comes home to Europeans, the standings of European political parties will be affected. New parties and ruling coalitions are likely to follow more independent paths in order to protect themselves from the costs of the enormous mistakes that flow from Washington’s arrogance and hubris.

The breakup of the Empire is on the horizon.

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 are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.

The Labour Party conference this week closed with a row between shadow cabinet members over the renewal of the Trident nuclear WMD system.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn sanely asserted he would never launch nuclear weapons if he became prime minister. But shadow defence secretary Maria Eagle and shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn said that such affirmations were “unhelpful” — thereby indicating that they might support pressing the nuclear button, and immolating several million people in a split second.

At the beginning of June in his first parliamentary speech as Labour’s new shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn made some important observations and arguments.

Adorned in the garb of a great social liberal, he marked the 50th anniversary of the suspension of capital punishment in Britain, which was followed by its abolition four years later, by saying: “The most important human right is the right to life,” adding that “we oppose the use of the death penalty in all circumstances.”

But oddly in the same speech he opined: “The ultimate responsibility of government is to defend the nation, and we remain committed to a minimum credible independent nuclear capability delivered through continuous at-sea deterrence while supporting global, multilateral disarmament negotiations and further reductions in stockpiles and numbers of weapons.”

Any use of nuclear weapons of mass destruction would result in the deaths, not of individuals by judicial fiat, but tens of millions of innocent civilian men, women and children, by political direction. Yet Benn argues in favour of this system to “defend the nation.”

His father, the great teacher and orator, long-time MP and minister, the late Tony Benn, had diametrically opposite views on the nature of nuclear weapons to his curiously misguided son.

Hilary Benn was very sensitive to criticism, especially calling his late father’s socialist and humanitarian views to attention, when I emailed him recently after his advocacy of Trident nuclear WMD in Parliament.

Here are just a few (of hundreds) denunciations of nuclear WMD by his father.

What’s the point of nuclear weapons? You can’t use them … multilateralism … It’s an illusion. (Total Politics 2009.)

You see, I resigned from the front bench 50 years ago because I was a defence spokesman, the first shadow job I had, because I couldn’t contemplate circumstances where we would ever be able to use nuclear weapons. Interviewed by Andrew Neil.)

Under the arrangements that Britain has with the US that allow us access to their nuclear technology in the Trident programme, America has long insisted that it should have access to all our intelligence material.  (The Guardian 2005.)

In Tony Benn’s Letters to my Grandchildren, published in June 2010, he argues against developing Trident.

He describes how our nuclear weapons are dependent on the US — because we use their technology — and thus the “nuclear deterrent” is far from independent.

He questions whether nuclear weapons work as a deterrent for war anyway, and cites the Falklands war and various others. He also mentions the vast sums of money spent on Trident and the planetary disaster of a nuclear war, explaining that any person with good sense would not sanction the use of nuclear weapons.

In response to this, a prime minister who supports nuclear weapons would have to reassure everyone that he or she would be prepared to use nuclear weapons.

That is, the prime minister would be reassuring us that he or she is prepared to approve the killing of millions of people.

Hilary Benn, Maria Eagle and fellow nuclear travellers in the shadow cabinet should reconsider this betrayal of humanity they currently now advocate, in backing Trident nuclear WMD and their renewal at a cost of £100 billion to British taxpayers.

Corbyn is right on this life-and-death matter.

Dr David Lowry is former director of the European Proliferation Information Centre.

Here’s how Israeli justice works. Extremist settlers set a Palestinian family’s home ablaze, immolate three of its members in cold blood, seriously burn a fourth, and remain free to kill again because they’re not arrested – despite Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon admitting authorities know who’s responsible.

Settlers terrorize Palestinians daily, commit violence and vandalism, desecrate Islam’s third holiest site (the Al Aqsa Mosque) at their discretion, aided by rampaging soldiers and police, and remain free to commit more criminal acts.

Palestinian children throwing stones in self-defense, responding to Israeli security forces or settlers’ violence, face up to 20 years in prison, their families subject to stiff fines they can’t afford to pay.

On Thursday, a shooting incident killed two settlers, a husband and wife in their car. Their children with them at the time weren’t harmed. They’re orphaned like countless nameless, faceless Palestinian children no one gives a damn about, many of them maimed by Israeli aggression.

One or more assailants responsible for Thursdays incident remain unknown – Palestinians automatically blamed despite no evidence proving it or the precise motive for the attack.

Was it a random crime? Were both parents targeted? If so, why? Whenever an incident like this happens, Israeli hysteria follows. Security forces rampage through Palestinian communities violently, making random arrests, imposing curfews and lockdowns, terrorizing thousands of innocent people.

Netanyahu ignored his full responsibility for racist persecution, outrageously blaming “Palestinian incitement” for what happened. He ordered Defense Secretary Ya’alon to deploy hundreds of soldiers – turned loose to terrorize Palestinian communities, one of many examples of lawless collective punishment.

Following the incident, dozens of extremist settlers attacked Palestinian homes in areas south of Nablus. Some shouted Death to Arabs.”

Israeli soldiers invaded Huwware, Beit Forik and Beit Dajan, clashing with Palestinian youths. Roads were blocked south and southeast of Nablus. Many Palestinians were prevented from returning home.

Settlers attacked Palestinian vehicles near Shilo and Yitzhar settlements, as well in areas around the Huwwara and Zatara checkpoints.

Ya’alon threatened Palestinians, saying Israel will spare no effort “to place our hands on the murderers and their sponsors” – for sure one or more Palestinians to be charged no matter who’s to blame.

Witch hunt searches are well underway – continuing at least until someone is blamed, guilty or innocent. Once charged, it’s too late. Guilt by accusation suffices. Israeli justice for Palestinians works this way.

Meanwhile, they’re being attacked, unprotected against Arab-hating settlers and soldiers. After promising no longer to observe Oslo principles, Mahmoud Abbas remains silent, doing nothing to protect Palestinians from abuse.

“(I)ntensive (police state) search(es)” continue. Homes are invaded and ransaked, property damaged or stolen, family members seized for brutalizing interrogations.

An unverified report said a Fatah Abdel Qader al-Husseini Brigades member claimed responsibility. European foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini extended condolences to aggrieved family members – never showing concern when Palestinians are abused, killed by security forces or imprisoned unjustly for political reasons.

Whoever was responsible for Thursday’s incident, Israel bears full responsibility. Violence begets it in return.

Expect dozens of arrests to follow, detainees tortured for information they don’t have. These incidents never have good endings. Palestinian suffering continues. Israeli brutality shows no mercy.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

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

The arc of instability amid the oil rich Southern Caspian and the Middle East made the South Caucasus region another stage for geopolitical struggles. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is a small, but a key block of this arc. Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia have been involved in conflict since its very beginning. Initially, between 1988-1994, Armenia gained the upper hand and contributed to the establishment of the so-called Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.

It’s an independent, but unrecognized state established on the basis of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous region, populated by mainly Armenians, of the former soviet Azerbaijan republic. As a result, Yerevan wants to maintain control of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan seeks to regain control however, even by military means. Russia’s direct interest is to avoid escalation in the conflict near the southern border.

Moscow systematically calls for negotiations between the two sides. However, there are a number of crucial differences between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Armenia has a modern history of the cooperation with Russia and 5,000 Russian troops are deployed in the Russian military base in the country. In the new millennium Azerbaijan had been moving closer to Turkey and the US. Simultaneously, Azerbaijan made all efforts and used a good share of oil revenue to build up the national military forces.

Baku’s defense expenditures rose to the point that they eclipsed Armenia’s entire national budget. Azerbaijan made reclaiming Nagorno-Karabakh an official priority, but refrains from military operation because of Russian response in the full-scale peace-enforcement action in the region. In recent times, the relations between Azerbaijan and the EU became cooler and Baku even allowed itself diplomatic demarches. The relations with the US are friendlier. On the one hand, Baku seeks from the US money, political support, and technologies. On the other hand it can’t abandon domestic stability, fruitful relations and trade with Russia and the progressive construction of a multinational prosperous state, as its declared aim.

READ MORE: Asia on the Brink of a New Cold War?

This status quo has been rapidly changing because of the aggravation of the international situation in the South Caucasus, the Middle East and Central Asia. At the same time, Azerbaijan and Armenia became more aggressive on the line of contact in Nagorno-Karabakh. Raids into the disputed territory have increased significantly. Instances such as the shooting down of an Armenian helicopter by Azerbaijani forces or the recent heavy shellings have become commonplace in the region.

Some of the global and regional forces are interested in the conflict escalation that allows them to gain new opportunities. It is good fishing in troubled waters. The US seeks to obtain a range of tools to deal with the South Caucasus region in order to exercise control over the gas and oil transit. Meanwhile, the US has tried to destabilize the situation in Armenia to break its alliance with Russia. So-called, “electro-maidan” had all initial attributes of the US-led coups in the post-USSR states. The Armenian government reacted promptly and the coup attempt was neutralized. If, somehow, pro-US forces get power in Armenia, the Russian military base would be closed or troubled.

Thus, the only power which keeps the shaky peace in Nagorno-Karabakh would lose its direct and immediate influence. In turn, Russia has been conducting an unprecedented level of diplomatic work aimed to maintain the peace. In recent months, Russian and Azerbaijani political and military officials have met several times, with follow-up visits between Russian and Armenian officials. In case of the Russian diplomatic success, parties could make an arrangement that will likely lead to decline of the tensions.

Nevertheless the standoff between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh entered a new phase. Both sides have ramped up military exercises in recent months. The contemporary situation could deconstruct the web of political alliances and relationships that keep the fragile peace in the Caucasus region. This disruptive process should lead to renewing of the war and further destabilize the whole Caspian Sea region. The region is affected by a number of destructive forces, like ISIS or local criminal clans who are directly interested in the destabilization over there. Moreover, the public opinion of Azerbaijan tends to believe that the military solution is the lesser of two evils. Washington’s tactical aim in this situation is to gain an additional ace to put pressure on Russia during the bargain over the military actions in the Middle East and a political settlement to the Syrian conflict with the key question of President Assad’s b status.

The deployment of Canadian Forces overseas to take part in operations in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Ukraine and Yugoslavia have been and are illegal under Article 31 of the National Defence Act yet not one of the major parties has ever raised this issue in parliament nor have any of the media addressed it any of their coverage of these multiple operations. One has to wonder why it is that the rest of us are required to obey to the laws of Canada but the federal government leadership itself and the Armed Forces are not.

Article 31 states,

“The Governor in Council may place the Canadian Forces or any component, unit or other element thereof or any officer or non-commissioned member thereof on active service anywhere in or beyond Canada at any time when it appears advisable to do so

(a)  by reason of an emergency, for the defence of Canada;

(b) in consequence of any action undertaken by Canada under the United Nations Charter; or

(c)  in consequence of any action undertaken by Canada under the North Atlantic Treaty, the North American Aerospace Defence Command Agreement or any other similar instrument to which Canada is a party.

In none of the situations mentioned in the opening paragraph have these conditions been satisfied. Therefore all these operations have been in violation of the National Defence Act and illegal under Canadian law.

It is clear that none of these operations have been conducted under the authority of the United Nations and none of them are for the defence of Canada or in consequence of any action under the NATO Treaty which is officially a defensive alliance and which requires Canada to act only if a NATO country has come under attack, in Europe or North America, and is acting pursuant to the right of self-defence recognised in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter since the NATO Treaty stipulates that NATO actions must be in accordance with member countries rights and obligations under the United Nations Charter.

Therefore the Canadian forces military aggression against Yugoslavia in 1999 was in violation of the National Defence Act, as was the Canadian Forces involvement in attacks on Hutu refugees in Congo in 1996,1997 the overthrow of President Aristide of Haiti in 2004, the Canadian Forces operations in Afghanistan, the aggression and destruction of Libya in 2011, and now Canadian Forces operations in Iraq, Syria and Ukraine.

Yet it appears that none of the major parties have any respect for Canadian law. None of the government’s or Armed Forces lawyers seem to know the law nor that all orders given Canadian Forces to take part in these operations are illegal under Canadian law. Nor has anyone in the media raised this problem. One has to wonder why.

Why have the parties in power and all the opposition parties with seats in Parliament kept silent on the continuous violation of the National Defence Act? Why has no one raised this in the Parliamentary debates about these operations? Why has no one stood up in Parliament and said, “The government cannot do this. It cannot send our forces to this place or that unless the National Defence Act is amended to allow it? Why has not one single journalist mentioned it? The conspiracy of silence surrounding this law, and the real reason Canada continues to violate its own laws to engage in these illegal operations needs to be broken. Something must be said. Something must be done.

One thing that could be done is for citizens groups to file an action in the Federal Court for an order for mandamus, that is an order compelling the government to obey the law as contained in the National Defence Act and an order prohibiting the government from further violations of the Act. Citizens have a right as citizens to expect their government to obey the law and since there is no specific remedy contained in the National Defence Act itself whose provisions deal generally with military discipline, an application for an order for mandamus is the appropriate action to seek and one which any citizen could demand.

There is no doubt that the federal authorities would resist such an order even being issued by the Canadian courts and would try to argue that citizens have no right or standing to ask for it. But what can be of more concern to any citizen than the use of our armed forces in illegal operations that are spending our money for the benefit of a foreign power and when these operations cause immense harm to the countries and peoples subject to them, and that have brought our nation into complete disrepute around the world?

Something has to be done to stop the wars that Canada is taking part in that have nothing to do with and are violations of our obligations under the UN Charter. Since the three major parties, the Conservatives, Liberals and NDP have been co-conspirators in violating the National Defence Act, we can hardly expect them to comply with the law and since the mass media continue to turn a blind eye to the issue it is left to us as citizens to do something about it. The National Defence Act provides us with a tool we can use to try to achieve that.

As Confucius once said and I paraphrase, “The door is there. Why does no one use it?”

Europe is being overrun by refugees from American bombing campaigns in Libya and Syria, which created a failed state in Libya, and which threaten to do the same in Syria. Europe is thus being forced to separate itself from endorsing the U.S. bombing campaign that focuses against the Syrian government forces of the secular Shiite Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, instead of against his fundamentalist Sunni Islamic opponents, the jihadist groups (all of which are Sunni), such as ISIS, and Al Qaeda in Syria (al-Nusra).

A member of the Iraqi parliament has said:

The pressure on the Syrian regime, which is fighting ISIS, must be lifted. They should not try to strengthen the feeble Free Syrian Army [FSA]. There is no FSA. There is ISIS in Syria and Iraq. You cannot fight ISIS in Iraq, yet support it in Syria. There is one war and one enemy. The U.S. should give up its hypocrisy. People are not brainless.

The European publics oppose America’s bombings, which have poured these refugees from American bombing, into Europe. European leaders are starting to separate from alliance with the United States.

U.S. Senator John McCain, who, as a fanatical Vietnam-war bomber-pilot, has always hated Russia even more than does U.S. President Barack Obama (who got his hatred from other sources), is egging Obama on to war against Russia in Syria; he says, “We need to have a no-fly zone,” where we prohibit Russia’s planes from bombing areas that are controlled by American-supported jihadists (which the U.S. government still euphemistically calls “the Free Syrian Army”). Actually, as Agence France Press had reported on 12 September 2014,“Syrian rebels and jihadists from the Islamic State have agreed a non-aggression pact for the first time in a suburb of the capital Damascus, a monitoring group said on Friday.” ISIS and FSA had already been close; but now they were and are essentially one-and-the-same; it’s just not been reported in the U.S. press. The U.S. Government’s distinctions are thus entirely specious; Obama’s top goal in Syria is clearly to replace Russia’s ally, Assad, not to defeat the Islamic State (and the little that still remains of FSA). McCain just wants Obama to go all the way, to nuclear war against Russia, to overthrow Assad. (Perhaps he thinks Obama will ‘chicken out,’ and McCain will then criticize Obama for ‘abandoning the people of Syria,’ who have benefited so much from America’s bombing that they’ve been fleeing Syria by the millions. McCain and other Republicans are so “pro-life” — for zygotes anyway. When the Iraqi parliamentarian said, “People aren’t brainless,” he wasn’t referring to people like that.)

On October 1st, NPR presented McCain saying, “I can absolutely confirm to you that they [Russian air strikes] were strikes against our Free Syrian Army or groups that have been armed and trained by the CIA because we have communications with people there.” (Oh, a few of them still exist, even after the’ve been absorbed into the Holy-War group? And the CIA is still funding them? Really? Wow!)

Russia announced on October 2nd that their bombing campaign against America’s allies in Syria — ISIS and Al Nusra (the latter being Al Qaeda in Syria) — will intensify and will last “three or four months.” U.S. President Barack Obama is insisting upon excluding Russia from any peace talks on Syria; the U.S. will not move forward with peace talks unless Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad first steps down. But Russia is the only serious military power against the jihadists who are trying to defeat Assad, and Russia is now committing itself also to providing Lebanon with weapons against the jihadists, who are America’s allies in Lebanon too.

U.S. pretends that overthrowing Assad would be for ‘democracy.’ But when the Qatari regime, which funds al-Nusra, hired a polling firm in 2012 to survey Syrians, the finding was that 55% of Syrians wanted him to remain as President. Then, as I reported on 18 September 2015, “Polls Show Syrians Overwhelmingly Blame U.S. for ISIS,” and those recent polls were from a British firm that has ties to Gallup. No question was asked then about whether Assad should stay; but, clearly, support for him had strengthened considerably between 2012 and 2015, as the Syrian people now see with greater clarity than they possibly could have before, that the U.S. regime is an enemy, not a friend, to them. Obama’s, and the Republicans’, pretenses to favor democracy are blatantly fraudulent.

That’s hardly the only ‘legacy’ issue for Obama — his war against Russia, via overthrowing Gaddafi, then Yanukovych, and his still trying to overthrow Assad — which is now forcing the break-up of the Western Alliance, over the resulting refugee-crisis. An even bigger such conflict within the Alliance concerns Obama’s proposed treaty with European states, the TTIP, which would give international corporations rights to sue national governments in non-appealable global private arbitration panels, the dictates from which will stand above any member-nation’s laws. Elected government officials will have no control over them. This supra-national mega-corporate effort by Obama is also part of his similar effort in his proposed TPP treaty with Asian nations, both of which are additionally aimed to isolate from international trade not just Russia, but China, so as to leave America’s large international corporations controlling virtually the entire world.

As things now stand regarding these ‘trade’ deals, Obama will either need to eliminate some of his demands, or else the European Commission won’t be able to muster enough of its members to support Obama’s proposed treaty with the EU, the TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership). Also, some key European nations might reject Obama’s proposed treaty on regulations regarding financial and other services: TISA (Trade In Services Agreement). All three of Obama’s proposed ‘trade’ deals, including the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) between the U.S. and Asian countries, are the actual culmination of Obama’s Presidency, and they’re all about far more than just trade and economics. The main proposed deal with Europe might now be dead.

On September 27th, France’s newspaper SouthWest featured an exclusive interview with Matthias Fekl, France’s Secretary of State for Foreign Trade, in which he said that “France is considering all options, including outright termination of negotiations” on the TTIP. He explained that, ever since the negotiations began in 2013, “These negotiations have been and are being conducted in a total lack of transparency,” and that France has, as of yet, received “no serious offer from the Americans.”

The reasons for this stunning public rejection had probably already been accurately listed more than a year ago. After all, France has, throughout all of the negotiations, received “no serious offer from the Americans”; not now, and not back at the start of the negotiations in 2013. The U.S. has been steadfast. Jean Arthuis, a member of the European Parliament, and formerly France’s Minister of Economy and Finance, headlined in Le Figaro, on 10 April 2014, “7 good reasons to oppose the transatlantic treaty”. There is no indication that the situation has changed since then, as regards the basic demands that President Obama is making. Arthuis said at that time:

First, I am opposed to private arbitration of disputes between States and businesses. [It would place corporate arbitrators above any nation’s laws and enable them to make unappealable decisions whenever a corporation sues a nation for alleged damages for alleged violations of its rights by that nation of the trade-treaty.] Such a procedure is strictly contrary to the idea that I have of the sovereignty of States. …

Secondly, I am opposed to any questioning of the European system of appellations of origin. Tomorrow, according to the US proposal, there would be a non-binding register, and only for wines and spirits. Such a reform would kill many European local products, whose value is based on their certified origin.

Thirdly, I am opposed to the signing of an agreement with a power that legalizes widespread and systematic spying on my fellow European citizens and European businesses. Edward Snowden’s revelations are instructive in this regard. As long as the agreement does not protect the personal data of European and US citizens, it cannot be signed.

Fourth, the United States proposes a transatlantic common financial space, but they adamantly refuse a common regulation of finance, and they refuse to abolish systematic discrimination by the US financial markets against European financial services. They want to have their cake and eat it too: I object to the idea of a common area without common rules, and I reject commercial discrimination.

Fifth, I object to the questioning of European health protections. Washington must understand once and for all that notwithstanding its insistence, we do not want our plates or animals treated with growth hormones nor products derived from GMOs, or chemical decontamination of meat, or of genetically modified seeds or non-therapeutic antibiotics in animal feed.

Sixth, I object to the signing of an agreement if it does not include the end of the US monetary dumping. Since the abolition of the gold convertibility of the dollar and the transition to the system of floating exchange rates, the dollar is both American national currency and the main unit for exchange reserves in the world. The Federal Reserve then continually practices monetary dumping, by influencing the amount of dollars available to facilitate exports from the United States. China proposes to eliminate this unfair advantage by making “special drawing rights” of the IMF the new global reference currency. But as things now stand, America’s monetary weapon has the same effect as customs duties against every other nation. [And he will not sign unless it’s removed.]

Seventh, beyond the audiovisual sector alone, which is the current standard of government that serves as a loincloth to its cowardice on all other European interests in these negotiations, I want all the cultural exceptions prohibited. In particular, it is unacceptable to allow the emerging digital services in Europe to be swept up by US giants such as Google, Amazon or Netflix. They’re giant absolute masters in tax optimization, which make Europe a “digital colony.”

President Obama’s negotiator is his close personal friend, Michael Froman, a man who is even trying to force Europe to reduce its fuel standards against global warming and whose back-room actions run exactly contrary to Obama’s public rhetoric. Froman and Obama have been buddies since they worked together as editors on Harvard Law Review. He knows what Obama’s real goals are. Also: “Froman introduced Mr. Obama to Robert E. Rubin, the former Treasury secretary,” who had brought into the Clinton Administration Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers, and had championed (along with them) the ending of the regulations on banks that the previous Democratic President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, had put into place. (President Bill Clinton signed that legislation just as he left office, and this enabled the long process to occur with MBS securities and with financial derivatives, which culminated with the 2008 crash, and this same legislation also enabled the mega-banks to get bailed out by U.S. taxpayers for their crash — on exactly the basis that FDR had outlawed.)

Froman has always been a pro-mega-corporate, pro-mega-bank champion, who favors only regulations which benefit America’s super-rich, no regulations which benefit the public. Froman’s introducing the Wall Street king Robert Rubin to the then-Senator Obama was crucial to Obama’s becoming enabled to win the U.S. Presidency; Robert Rubin’s contacts among the super-rich were essential in order for that — Obama’s getting a real chance to win the Presidency — to happen. It enabled Obama to compete effectively against Hillary Clinton. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to do that. His winning Robert Rubin’s support was crucial to his becoming President.

The chances, that President Obama will now be able to get the support from any entity but the U.S. Congress for his proposed TTIP treaty with Europe, are reducing by the day. Europe seems to be less corrupt than is the United States, after all.

The only independent economic analysis that has been done of the proposed TTIP finds that the only beneficiaries from it will be large international corporations, especially ones that are based in the United States. Workers, consumers, and everybody else, will lose from it, if it passes into law. Apparently, enough European officials care about that, so as to be able to block the deal. Or else: Obama will cede on all seven of the grounds for Europe’s saying no. At this late date, that seems extremely unlikely.

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.

Listening to the speeches of the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, and the President of the United States, Barack Obama, at the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Monday, one is instantly struck by the polarization of the leader’s interpretation of world events. It is obvious that one leader resides in real world, whilst the other appears to live in a deluded fantasy.

You can understand why US Secretary of State, John Kerry, starts yawning 2 minutes and 47 seconds into Obama’s speech, as the US President’s delivery was completely devoid of vigour, spirit or honesty. An empty suit hypnotically going through the motions and reciting the usual propagated slogans, the US President spends as much time pausing as he does reading off his trusted teleprompter. 

Unsurprisingly, Obama promulgated the usual slogans in relation to Ukraine and Syria. The US President referred to the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad as a tyrant “who drops barrel bombs to massacre innocent children”, then moved on to deceptively describe how the Syrian conflict started in addition to reiterating once again that Assad must go:

Let’s remember how this started. Assad reacted to peaceful protests, by escalating repression and killing, and in turn created the environment for the current strife… Realism also requires a managed transition away from Assad and to a new leader.

A declassified intelligence report from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in 2012, a year after the violence erupted, completely contradicts the notion that the protests were “peaceful”, as the report documents that “the Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood and AQI [Al-Qaeda in Iraq], are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.”

In addition, an evil dictator slaughtering peaceful protestors is the exact same propaganda the West used in order to demonize Muammar al-Qaddafi in Libya, even though the Libyan leader just like the Syrian leader was reacting to violent protests. Associate Professor of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Alan J. Kuperman, wrote a policy brief in 2013, titled: Lessons from Libya: How not to Intervene,  in which he dispels the false narrative that Qaddafi instigated the violence:

Contrary to Western media reports, Qaddafi did not initiate Libya’s violence by targeting peaceful protesters. The United Nations and Amnesty International have documented that in all four Libyan cities initially consumed by civil conflict in mid-February 2011—Benghazi, Al Bayda, Tripoli, and Misurata—violence was actually initiated by the protesters. The government responded to the rebels militarily but never intentionally targeted civilians or resorted to “indiscriminate” force, as Western media claimed.

Obama on Ukraine

Obama’s comments on the crisis in Ukraine were factually inaccurate and frankly absurd, although it is the type of rhetoric incessantly spouted by Western officials. The US President said:

Consider Russia’s annexation of Crimea and further aggression in Eastern Ukraine. America has few economic interests in Ukraine, we recognise the deep and complex history between Russia and Ukraine, but we cannot stand by when the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a nation is flagrantly violated. If that happens without consequence in Ukraine, it could happen to any nation here today.

So the US apparently “cannot stand by when the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a nation is flagrantly violated”, at the same time the US is leading a coalition in Syria which violates international law and violates Syria’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

Secondly, there was a referendum in Crimea and the majority voted to rejoin Russia, Moscow did not coercively and aggressively force the Crimean people into the decision.

Western Aggression 

Thirdly, it was the West that overthrew the Ukrainian government, not Russia, a reality that even Foreign Affairs admits in an article written by the Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, John J. Mearsheimer, titled:  Why the Ukraine crisis is the West’s fault:

The United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis. The taproot of the trouble is NATO enlargement, the central element of a larger strategy to move Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and integrate it into the West. At the same time, the EU’s expansion eastward and the West’s backing of the pro-democracy movement in Ukraine — beginning with the Orange Revolution in 2004 — were critical elements, too.

Mearsheimer continues:

Although the full extent of U.S. involvement has not yet come to light, it is clear that Washington backed the coup…The United States and its allies should abandon their plan to Westernize Ukraine and instead aim to make it a neutral buffer….. It is time to put an end to Western support for another Orange Revolution…..The result is that the United States and its allies unknowingly provoked a major crisis over Ukraine.

Fourthly, how can Obama say “America has few economic interests in Ukraine”, when Hunter Biden, the son of the US Vice President, Joe Biden, joined the Board of Directors of one of the largest gas company’s in Ukraine following the coup?

A rare truth in Obama’s speech was when he called on Muslims to continue to reject “those who distort Islam to preach intolerance and promote violence”, adding that people that are not Muslim should reject “the ignorance that equates Islam with terror.” I completely agree with this statement. What Obama omits however, is that the majority of the radical Islamic terror groups that distort Islam are created and supported by Western intelligence agencies and regional allies in the first place.

Another microcosm of truth in Obama’s speech was not anything Obama actually said, but the response by the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, to the US President’s fallacious words. Even though the US has played a pivotal role in directly causing the Syrian crisis – by funding ISIS and al-Qaeda to overthrow the Syrian government – in addition to being hostile to any serious dialogue with Russia and Iran, it still didn’t stop Obama falsely claiming “the United States is prepared to work with any nation, including Russia and Iran, to resolve the [Syrian] conflict.” Lavrov’s response to the comment was a frustrated shake of the head, and a look of disbelief that someone can lie so blatantly to the world (I suggest you watch that part, it’s quite amusing – from26.15 into the speech).

Hopefully however, the US will eventually come to their senses and engage seriously with key players around the world to end conflicts they played a major role in creating – I wouldn’t hold your breath though.

Putin: The Voice of Reason 

Putin’s speech was the antithesis of Obama’s – insightful, honest, constructive and statesman-like. The Russian President’s analysis of the major geopolitical issues of our time was outstanding, with many practical, viable solutions to these issues provided. I highly recommend readers listen to the full speech as it is filled with critical and pertinent information, and I can’t include it all in this article. (Please not the quotes from Putin below are based on the Russian to English translation of his speech featured in this RT article)

Putin stressed that some nations “after the end of the cold war” considered themselves “so strong and exceptional” that they thought “they knew better than others”. The Russian President asserted that it is “extremely dangerous” for states to attempt to “undermine the legitimacy of the United Nations”:

Russia stands ready to work together with its partners on the basis of broad consensus, but we consider the attempts to undermine the legitimacy of the United Nations as extremely dangerous. They could lead to the collapse of the architecture of international relations, and then there would be no other rules left but the rule of force. We would get a world dominated by selfishness, rather than collective work. A world increasingly characterized by dictates, rather than equality. There would be less genuine democracy and freedom, and there would be a world where true independent states would be replaced by an ever growing number of de facto protectorates and externally controlled territories.

Speaking about the turmoil in the Middle East, the Russian leader correctly denounces “aggressive foreign interference” as a destructive force which has only brought chaos, not democracy:

But how did it actually turn out? Rather than bringing about reforms, aggressive foreign interference has resulted in the destruction of national institutions and the lifestyle itself. Instead of the triumph of democracy and progress, we got violence, poverty and social disaster, and nobody cares a bit about human rights – including, the right to life. I cannot help asking those who have caused this situation: do you realize now what you have done?  But I am afraid that no one is going to answer that. Indeed, policies based on self-conceit and belief in ones exceptionality and impunity, have never been abandoned.

NATO’s “Gross Violation” of UNSC Resolution 1973 

Putin specifically pinpoints Libya as a major recruiting ground for the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) – after NATO destroyed the North African nation in 2011, adding that Western supported rebels in Syria often defect to ISIS:

Many recruits also come from Libya, a country whose statehood was destroyed as a result of a gross violation of the UN Security Council Resolution 1973. And now the ranks of radicals are being joined by the members of the so-called moderate Syrian opposition, [which is] supported by the Western countries. First they are armed and trained, and then they defect to the so-called Islamic State.

Reports of US trained “moderate” fighters defecting to ISIS are ubiquitous. One example was when approximately 3,000 rebelsfrom the Free Syrian Army defected to ISIS earlier this year. Interestingly, Putin also points out that ISIS did not just magically appear out of thin air, but the group was “forged as a tool against undesirable regimes”: 

Besides, the Islamic State itself did not just come from nowhere; it was also initially forged as a tool against undesirable secular regimes.

This thesis is further confirmed by the 2012 declassified report from the DIA, which reveals that the powers supporting the Syrian opposition – “Western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey” – wanted to create a “Salafist principality in Eastern Syria in order to isolate the Syrian regime”:

Opposition forces are trying to control the Eastern areas (Hasaka and Der Zor), adjacent to the Western Iraqi provinces (Mosul and Anbar), in addition to neighbouring Turkish borders. Western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey are supporting these efforts… If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran). (p.5)

The former head of the DIA, Michael T. Flynn, also recently admitted that the Obama administration took the “willful decision” to support the rise of ISIS.

Don’t Play with Fire

Putin then goes on to issue a stark warning to the nefarious forces who have been using radical groups as geopolitical tools:

It is hypocritical and irresponsible to make loud declarations about the threat of international terrorism, while turning a blind-eye to the channels of financing… It would be equally irresponsible to try to manipulate extremist groups and place them at one’s service in order to achieve one’s own political goals, in the hope of later dealing with them. To those who do so, I would like to say: Dear sirs, no doubt you are dealing with rough and cruel people, but they are [not] primitive or silly, they are just as clever as you are, and you never know who is manipulating whom… We believe that any attempts to play games with terrorists, let alone to arm them, are not just short-sighted but fire hazardous.

ISIS “desecrates one of the greatest world religions by its bloody crimes”, Russia’s leader said, adding: “The ideology of militants makes a mockery of Islam and perverts it true humanistic values.”

Defeating ISIS

As ISIS continues to expand its influence, it is increasingly becoming a national security threat for numerous countries outside of the Middle East, and “Russia is not an exception”.  Putin stated that “we cannot allow these criminals who have already tasted blood to return back home and continue their evil doings… Russia has always been consistently fighting against terrorism in all its forms. Today, we provide military and technical assistance both to Iraq and Syria and many other countries of the region who are fighting terrorist groups. We think it is an enormous mistake to refuse to cooperate with the Syrian government and its armed forces, who are valiantly fighting terrorism face to face. We should finally acknowledge that no one but President Assad’s armed forces and Kurdish militia are truly fighting Islamic State and other terrorist organizations in Syria”

The Russia President stated the solution to the scourge of ISIS is to “create a genuinely broad international coalition against terrorism” in accordance with “international law”, which “similar to the anti-Hitler coalition, could unite a broad range of forces”.

The desire to explore new geopolitical areas is still present among some of our colleagues,” Putin said. “First they continued their policy of expanding NATO,” he said, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, “they offered post-Soviet countries a false choice – either to be with the West or with the East. Sooner or later this logic of confrontation was bound to spark off a grave geopolitical crisis. This is exactly what happened in Ukraine where the discontent of the population with the current authorities was used and a military coup was orchestrated from outside that triggered civil war as a result.

Russia’s leader maintained that the solution to the Ukrainian crisis is “through the full and faithful implementation of the Minsk accords”:

We are confident that only through full and faithful implementation of the Minsk agreements of February 12th2015, can we put an end to the bloodshed and find a way out of the deadlock. Ukraine’s territorial integrity cannot be ensured by threats and the force of arms. What is needed is a genuine consideration of the interests and rights of people in the Donbass region, and respect for their choice.”

What is blatantly clear from listening to both leaders’ speeches is that the moral leader of the world resides in Russia.

Steven MacMillan is an independent writer, researcher, geopolitical analyst and editor of  The Analyst Report, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Since yesterday, Russian Su-34, Su-24M and Su-25 jets conducted eighteen flights from the Hmeimim base in Latakia province on the Mediterranean coast, targeting 12 terrorist targets. More then 50 Russian warplanes are used in the Syrian operation.

Based on intelligence gathered from a variety of sources, including “space and drone reconnaissance,” the ministry confirmed the “total destruction” of terrorist targets in Idlib Province by Su-24 M jets. One of the targets was an Islamic State command post. The other was a terrorist training camp.

Earlier in the day, Russian military also released footage of the overnight air raids on four terrorist facilities, including an ammunition depot near Idlib, a three-level HQ near Hamah, and a reported car-bomb plant in the north of Homs.

Russian pilots also prevented the Islamic State fighters from restoring one of its command posts in Hama Province which had been struck by Russian jets on Wednesday.

To stop further ISIS activity on the object near Al-Latamna village, Russian jets conducted an additional strike, which led to the destruction of the target. The strike carried out by the Su-24M fighter jet.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Armed Forces have attempted to recapture the Al-Ghaab Plains from the possession of the Syrian Al-Qaeda affiliates in “Jaysh Al-Fateh”. The clahes have been continuing there.

Jabhat Al-Nusra with support of Harakat Ahrar Al-Sham and the Free Syrian Army attempted to advance on the Nayrab Military Airport’s on Thursday afternoon. In a series of intense firefights, the pro-government Palestinian group “Liwaa Al-Quds” defended the sector.

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and the National Defense Forces (NDF) carried out another assault on the ISIS positions at the village of ‘Ayn Sabil around the Kuweires Military Airport.

Inside of the provincial capital SAA and Liwaa Al-Quds continued their counter-offensive at the Scientific Research Facility in the Al-Rashideen District.

Expected offensiv of the Government forces in east Aleppo will likely lead to the most violent battle inside Syria since the ISIS offensive inside the provincial capital of Al-Hasakah in July of 2015 could be started.

With some 125 strikes in three days the Russian bombing campaign continues to build. The U.S. media is now obsessed with the idea that Russia may be using “dumb bombs” instead of Syrian “barrel bombs”. This is becoming a new propaganda meme. But videos from the Russian airbase show that at least some of the planes are armed with KAB-500S-E satellite (GLONAST) guided bombs which are precise “smart” bombs. (Other pictures and video from the Russian air base show a quite comfortable life including air conditioned quarters, a mess tent, Gulaschkanonen, a bakery, a laundry etc. This base is not an improvised short-term installation.)

Besides that how is it more humane to kill by a precise bomb than by a “dumb bomb” or “barrel bomb”. Gaza was bombed by the Israelis with (U.S. produced) smart bombs. That did not lead to less destruction or killing. The recent Saudi (U.S. produced) bomb on the Yemen wedding that killed 130 people was also “smart” and hit right where it was targeted at.

The Russians bombed, as I earlier described, mostly in the corridor up to the Turkish border which is in the hand of al-Qaeda, Ahrar al Shams and CIA mercenaries. It also bombedRaqqa, the Syrian capital of the Islamic State and killed a dozen fighters. In response to that the Islamic State canceled Friday prayers in Raqqa seemingly out of fear that any congregation of IS fighters would now get bombed.

Funny. The U.S. claimed for a year that it was seriously bombing the Islamic State. But the Friday prayers have never be canceled before. Could it be that the Islamic State did not believe the U.S. claims but now fears that the Russians really mean business?

The Syrian air-force had avoided bombing near the Turkish border as it rightly feared that Turkey might shoot down a Syrian jet. But the Russian can now do this. The ground bombing is done by the ground attack planes build for task, Su-24, Su-25 and Su-34, while above those planes Su-30M fighter jets armed with superfast, medium to long range R-27 air to air missiles give cover. These would shoot down any Turkish jet that would try to attack the Russian bombers. This is just to make sure that Erdogan does not get any stupid ideas.

The air campaign is also well coordinated with Syrian government forces on the ground. From a paywalled WSJ piece quoted here:

[T]housands of rebels regrouped in several enclaves north of Homs, in towns like al-Rastan and Talbiseh. Russian jets hit both civilian and military targets in these two towns and five surrounding villages, said Rashid al-Hourani, a Syrian army officer from the area who defected to the rebels in 2012.He said the airstrikes were followed with a barrage of artillery fire from several nearby positions where pro-regime Alawite and Shiite militias, including an Iran-backed group known as the Ridha Brigade, have been massing over the past few days.

The Syrian army will soon attack in coordination with the Russian air force and will try to regain northern territory along the M4 and M5 highway. That again would allow for a wider attack up to the Turkish border. Ground troop reinforcements from Iran, Iraq and Hizbullah are on their way or have already arrived. We are witnessing the build up to a wider battle.

The Guardian rumors that the Gulf states will counter the Russian move by providing more weapons:

Russia’s move clearly risks counter-action by countries supporting the rebels. According to one independent analyst, that may have already begun, with the Qataris – acting with the agreement of Saudi Arabia – flying in planeloads of weapons to Turkish airbases. “I would expect a huge influx of weapons into the north to try to blunt any ground assault by the regime,” the analyst said.

The stakes are very high.

And the Russian planes fly very high. They currently mostly fly above 5,000 meter and no Man-Portable-Air-Defense (MANPAD) missile can reach them. The people who get bombed do not even see or hear the planes coming. This will change when the Syrian army attacks and more direct ground support is needed but the planes to be used then are Su-25 and Su-34 build for that purpose and have armored cockpits.

The Russian airbase is protected by modern air defense on the ground and on Russian ships in the nearby sea. It is protected on the ground by some 1,250 Russian marines. It reportedly has ammunition and other supplies for at least three month. Nobody will mess with that base and the Russian campaign. It could not be done without very major forces and using such would practically guarantee a wider war with Russia, a nuclear superpower. Syria is Russia’s sister (vid) and will be defended.

The Obama administration has therefore decided that it will not interfere with Russian attacks on CIA mercenaries and their al-Qaeda brother in arms. Some concerned trollingstatement gets issued but that is just for show.

But the female candidates for the next presidential elections are not that smart. Both, Hillary Clinton and Carly Fiorina, have called for a U.S. enforced no-fly zone over northern Syria which would of course mean starting a war with Russia and its allies. These women want to attack Russian forces to defend al-Qaeda! Note: The country to decide who is flying or not over Syria is Russia. Dear U.S. voters. Please do not ever again allow these maniacs anywhere near a powerful position.

The CIA mercenaries in Syria – 10,000 men trained, armed and paid under a secret program– are directly cooperating with al-Qaeda and the likewise terrorist Ahrar al Shams. The NYT finally acknowledges this in two pieces today. The first says:

The fighters advancing on that [northern] front were not from the Islamic State but from the Army of Conquest, a group that includes an affiliate of Al Qaeda known as the Nusra Front and other Islamist groups, including several more secular groups that have been covertly armed and trained by the United States.

A second piece on the Army of Conquest:

The alliance consists of a number of mostly Islamist factions, including the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate; Ahrar al-Sham, another large group; and more moderate rebel factions that have received covert arms support from the intelligence services of the United States and its allies.

The groups fighting together in the Army of Conquest of course share their weapons, ammunition and other supplies. They very likely also have similar ideologies. The CIA, under Obama, Petraeus and Brennan, has been knowingly arming al-Qaeda in Syria and has done so for quite a while. The NYT had pointed out a year ago that the CIA mercenaries are working with Islamists but that piece was somewhat mealymouthed and depicted it as a minor problem. It is also quite astonishing that in-between the 2014 piece and the two pieces today no NYT pieces on Syria mentioned that relation but instead concentrated on the Pentagon “five moderate rebels” clown show which was a mere diversion.

The Pentagon is playing dumb with regards to the people hit when the Russians bomb al-Qaeda positions:

Q: McCain says they hit CIA-backed rebels. I mean, presumably, you guys are looking at the same information. Is that true, or you’re uncertain? Where are we on that?COL. WARREN: Right, well — again, what I’ll say, Tom, is we don’t think they were ISIL. You know, who’s backing who, you know, that’s — I’m not going to get into that. I’m just not going to, particularly when you’re talking about — you know, it’s not even a DOD agency you’re referring to.

I take that as confirmation.

The Israelis are now also admitting that they work with al-Qaeda:

Together with some local militias Nusra is in charge of most of the 100-kilometer border with Israel on the Syria side of the Golan Heights. In recent years, Nusra slightly toned down its militant ideology due to the influence of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which provide it with financial support.
…
Nusra is in control of most of the border but so far has reached a tacit understanding not to turn its weapons against the Jewish state.

Nusra controls the border because Israel has helped it by firing at the Syrian army whenever Nusra needed help. The linked Jerusalem Post piece is also of interest with regards to the famous Odet Yinon plan as it confirms that destroying Middle Eastern nations into warlord statelets is supervised by the Israeli military intelligence:

Some years back, the intelligence community started to reassess the chaotic reality emerging in the Middle East. Maps drawn up by MI’s Research Department show states being replaced by organizations. …

That is the plan also for Syria. But with stronger support now forming up to regain Syrian territories that plan might well falter.

As American planes bomb a hospital operated by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in the Afghan town of Kunduz, killing patients and medical staff, this terrible horror follows previous incidents around the world that replicate the example of claimed ‘collateral damage’ inflicted upon hospitals and civilian installations, in Gaza, by its attackers in 2014 and earlier.

This precedent established by Israeli-invented drones and condoned by much of the world, in accepting the shocking killing of innocent civilians, as ‘collateral damage’ in the pursuit of the liquidation of its enemies, turns accepted international law upon its head.

It is not difficult to foresee a world, in maybe only ten years’ time, in 2025, where not only Israeli and American drones, but also British, French, Turkish, Indian or Pakistani armed, unmanned aerial vehicles will suddenly appear in the skies above our homes, anywhere, in Manchester, London, Munich or Marseilles, to kill political activists or protestors, at will. No judicial process, just summary execution of perceived enemies, unwanted critics and the collateral killing of innocent bystanders.

Welcome to the brave, new world of UAV warfare that will in the very near future determine all our lives, and our deaths, controlled by anonymous operatives sitting at computer consoles, and drinking coffee, in rooms thousands of miles distant in Tel Aviv or Arlington County, Virginia.

Thank the Lord I am not a child born today.

Group Lashes Russian Official on Twitter for Noting Picture Wasn’t Real

From the moment the first Russian warplanes started launching attacks inside Syria, a new campaign in the information war was also launched, with various groups trying to get their stamps on conflicting stories about what exactly Russia attacked, whether they hit ISIS, ISIS allies, pro-US rebels, or just random Syrian civilians.

At the center of one of the bigger controversies was the “White Helmets” organization. Formerly known as the Syria Civil Defense, the group is heavily funded by the US State Department, and while the group claims to be purely an aid group, and not to be taking any side in the war, their statements overwhelmingly tow the official US line, leading to allegations that the group is little more than a “propaganda outlet.”

Early in the day, the groupclaimed Russia killed 33 civiliansin its attacks, including three children, and attached a photo to the story which was quickly pointed out to be from an incident five days prior, which had nothing to do with Russia.

Russian Deputy PM aide Dmitry Loskutov was quick to criticize the post, leading to an angry condemnation from the White Helmets, who said Russian claims they were attacking ISIS were “bu..sit.”

Earlier this week, 21WIRE reported how the Taliban overtook the strategic city of Kunduz in northern Afghanistan. 

Critics are questioning NATO’s effectiveness after 15 years of combat operations and military occupation in the country. 

Immediately after this story broke, US mainstream media propaganda kicked into high gear and falsely reported that the Afghan government security forces “have retaken the city”, even though this was a lie. Most likely this was leaked by NATO while they were assessing a counter measure. Soon reality set in and the US media were forced to admit that the US-led NATO operation had in fact lost Kunduz.

What the US did next will shock you…

As part of NATO’s counter assault, an US airstrike bombed a hospital, killing many of its staff, doctors and patients, so far killing 9 and wounding 37. Those numbers are expected to rise sharply in the next 48 hrs as team sift through the debris.

Despite having previously relayed their GPS location to US-NATO officials many days in advance of the recent fighting, Médecins Sans Frontières also revealed how the Americans’ relentless bombing of the hospital continued for 30 minutes AFTER it raised alarm.

US military officials are cynically calling the mass killing “collateral damage”.

This latest mass killing of innocents comes on the heals of US president Barack Obama and the US corporate media accusing Russia of “not hitting ISIS targets”, and of killing civilians during their initial airstrikes in Syria – even though claims of Russian-inflicted civilian casualties by US-backed Syrian opposition groups have been proven to be totally fraudulent.

US officials are struggling to spin this latest civilian mass killing…

A fire burns at the Doctors Without Borders trauma center in Kunduz, Afghanistan, early Saturday(Image: Doctors Without Borders / Medecins Sans Frontieres)

JALALABAD, Afghanistan — Three Doctors Without Borders workers were killed and 30 other people were missing after a blast that may have been caused by a U.S. airstrike rocked a trauma center in the Afghan city of Kunduz.

Coalition spokesman Col. Brian Tribus confirmed that a U.S. airstrike conducted at around 2:15 a.m. local time on Saturday (5:45 p.m. ET Friday) “may have caused collateral damage to a nearby health facility.” The incident was being investigated, he added.

Tribus said the bombing was targeting “individuals threatening the force.” He added that it was the 12th U.S. airstrike “in the Kunduz vicinity” since Tuesday. Taliban militants seized control of the strategic city of 300,000 people earlier this week but the Afghan government said Thursday that its forces were in “full control” of Kunduz. Doctors Without Borders — an international charity which is also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres — said its site “was hit several times during sustained bombing and was very badly damaged.” It called the bombing an “aerial attack.” At the time of the bombing, the hospital had 105 patients and their care-takers, and more than 80 international and Afghan staff were present, it said… NBC News  October 3, 2015

Palestinian minority in Israel worried by top cop’s twin-track as interrogator for secret police and hardline settler 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu parachuted in a new police chief last week after the government’s previous candidates were thwarted by controversy.

Roni Alsheikh has officially been brought in as a new broom to sweep away a culture of corruption and sex scandals that has plagued the Israeli police for years.

The first choice for police commander, Gal Hirsch, a former army general, had to be dropped last month after it emerged that the FBI had passed on suspicions about his arms-dealing company.

Another hopeful, Benzi Sau, who served as acting police commander over the summer, drew a storm of protest from Israel’s large minority of 1.5 million Palestinian citizens.

He had been harshly criticised by a judicial-led inquiry for deploying snipers 15 years ago against protesters in solidarity with the Second Intifada. Thirteen unarmed demonstrators from Israel’s Palestinian minority were killed in a few days of clashes.

But Alsheikh is already proving to be an even more troubling choice to oversee law enforcement in Israel than either Hirsch or Sau, especially for the fifth of the population who are Palestinian citizens.

Aida Touma-Suleiman, a Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset for the Joint List party, said: “We were deeply opposed to Sau but at least his crimes were done in broad daylight.

Alsheikh’s crimes against Palestinians are likely to be even graver than Sau’s but they are so secret we cannot know what they are.

Known only as ‘R’

Alsheikh, aged 52, comes to the police force after decades of living in two shadowy worlds: as a senior officer in Israel’s secret police, known as the Shin Bet; and as an religious settler who has lived in some of the West Bank’s most extreme and violent communities.

Indicating the Shin Bet’s lack of transparency and accountability, the Israeli media had to refer to the new police chief by the initial “R” until a gag order was lifted on Wednesday. Photos of Alsheikh were then published for the first time.

Freed to discuss the appointment, the Israeli media revealed several disturbing aspects to Alsheikh’s professional and personal life – qualities, an Israeli commentator observed, that should have disqualified him from serving in the police in “a law-abiding country”.

Alsheikh’s expertise in the Shin Bet, where he reached the position of deputy director, was in interrogating Palestinian suspects.

As Israeli human rights groups have documented, blackmail and torture are staples of the Shin Bet’s interrogation rooms, despite a high court ruling in 1999 that banned physical abuse of detainees except in life-threatening circumstances.

Although the Shin Bet is often referred to as Israel’s domestic intelligence service, much of its work is in fact carried out outside Israel’s recognised borders, in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Its chief tasks are to spy on Palestinians, both in Israel and the territories, select people for arrest, interrogate detainees in proceedings that are not recorded, and use the information it collects to pressure Palestinians to turn collaborator.

Alsheikh’s talents in extracting information from unwilling suspects earned him the nickname “The Fox”.

Mohammed Zeidan, director of the Human Rights Association in Nazareth, called the appointment “dangerous”.

“The concern must be that Alsheikh imports the Shin Bet’s operational methods into law enforcement in Israel,” Zeidan told Middle East Eye.

Record of police brutality

Israel’s Palestinian citizens have long complained that they have borne the brunt of police brutality.

Paradoxically, Alsheikh’s appointment was confirmed on the same day that the Palestinian minority commemorated the 15th anniversary of the 13 deaths at the hands of the police in October 2000.

The Or Commission, an inquiry into the killings, found the police guilty of treating the country’s Palestinian citizens as “an enemy” and called for urgent institutional reforms. None were implemented.

The events of 2000, and the subsequent killing by police of dozens of Palestinian citizens in unexplained circumstances, have left the Palestinian minority deeply distrustful of the police.

But Alsheikh’s appointment gives them grounds to be even more wary and fearful, warned Touma-Suleiman.

This is a declaration of intentions by the government. It plans to deepen the police’s view of us as a security threat.

The new police chief belongs to an extremist ideological group known in Israel as the national-religious. In practice, this is the ideology of many Israeli settlers.

The Yesha Council, the official governing body for the West Bank settlements, was among those hurrying to welcome Alsheikh’s appointment.

He has previously lived in Kiryat Arba, one of the most notorious and violent settlements in the West Bank, located next to the large Palestinian city of Hebron.

He was also until recently a resident of another extreme settlement: Kokav Hashahar, a community of 350 families located north-east of Ramallah, on a ridge above the Jordan Valley.

‘Partner to land theft’

Although all settlements are illegal in international law, Israeli columnist Gideon Levy pointed out that Kokav Hashahar’s settlers have in addition broken Israel’s own laws over the years by founding what are known as “outposts”. These satellites of the original settlement are not officially authorised by the Israeli government.

Levy wondered: “Can a partner to theft of such magnitude [of Palestinian land] be a policeman at all?”

Alsheikh moved out of the West Bank and into Israel three years ago, reportedly after concerns that it was too difficult for his bodyguards to ensure his safety in a remote settlement.

Touma-Suleiman noted that settlers and their ideological allies had been gradually taking over Israel’s security services for the past two decades.

This has been particularly apparent in the Israeli military, where settlers are heavily over-represented among officers and in combat units.

But members of the national-religious community have also come to dominate the tops spots in the Shin Bet and the National Security Council, which is the prime minister’s own advisory body on security matters.

Parallel developments have been discernible in the diplomatic corps, the government, the courts and the universities. One Israeli analyst has termed this the “revolution of the crocheted kippot,” in reference to the type of skullcaps worn by settlers and their allies.

Now Alsheikh will be in a position to steer the Israeli police force into the same ideological fold. That is likely to accelerate a process begun in 2010 when the police force announced that it was launching its first-ever drive to recruit officers from the settlements.

Majd Kayyal, a political analyst, observed: “In a normal country, it would be crazy to appoint a law-breaking settler like Alsheikh to be police chief. But we are not living in a normal environment.”

Greater settler influence

Aside from Alsheikh’s likely predilection for greater secrecy and readier resort to illegal information-gathering techniques, there are several issues relating to settler activity in Israel and East Jerusalem where his new influence over policing is reason for especial concern.

The most immediate worry is that, as police chief, Alsheikh will now be dealing directly and daily with the already highly unstable situation at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Recent weeks have seen repeated clashes between Palestinians and the Israeli police as settlers have increased their provocative visits to the mosque area during the Jewish holiday season.

The settlers are reportedly putting pressure on Netanyahu’s government to divide the al-Aqsa compound, in the hope of repeating their success two decades ago at the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron. They would then claim rights to pray there, as several government ministers have demanded.

Touma-Suleiman said Alsheikh’s fingerprints were already visible in a police decision last week to set up roadblocks at entrances to Palestinian communities in Israel to check whether vehicles were heading to Jerusalem.

Another policing issue where Alsheikh may quickly leave his mark to the benefit of the national-religious is in the so-called “mixed cities,” half a dozen communities in Israel where Jewish and Palestinian citizens live in relatively close proximity.

In recent years settler groups have been moving back into Israel in what appears to be a low-level war to force out Palestinian families and complete the mixed cities’ “Judaisation”.

And then there is the pressing matter of efforts in recent years by extremist settlers to target for attack Palestinian citizens and their Muslim and Christian holy sites inside Israel.

An arson attack in July badly damaged a famous church next to the Sea of Galilee, marking the spot where Christians believe Jesus performed a miracle by feeding his followers with a few loaves and fish.

The police and Shin Bet have been criticised for their dismal failure to identify those behind such hate crimes. A former Shin Bet head, Carmi Gillon, argued last year that there was a lack of determination in the agency to crack down on violent settlers: “There’s no such thing as ‘can’t do’ in the Shin Bet, just ‘don’t want’.”

There is every reason to suspect that the same attitude will now deepen its roots in the Israeli police.

The Anti-Russian Lying Machine in Action

By Stephen Lendman, October 02 2015

It never rests, now in high gear following Russia’s announced aerial campaign against ISIS in Syria, beginning on September 30. For the first time since WW II, Russian and US warplanes are bombing the same country – each for entirely different reasons.

Russian Airstrikes in Syria Targeted “NATO Created Mercenaries”. Michel Chossudovsky

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky and Sputnik, October 02 2015

Editor’s note: This article was first published in March 2014.

Welcome to Cold War 2.0. The first one never ended. Since Soviet Russia’s 1991 dissolution, Western policy remained hard-wired in place.

Putin defends Russian sovereignty. He opposes US imperial lawlessness. Washington considers him public enemy number one. At stake is world peace.

Russia bashing is intense. It rages daily. It exceeds the worst of Soviet era levels.

Daily attacks reinvented the Evil Empire. It’s back to the future. It doesn’t surprise. Mainstream media march in lockstep with US imperial lawlessness. It’s longstanding policy.

Propagandists masquerade as journalists. Managed news misinformation substitutes for truth and full disclosure. Readers and viewers are systematically lied to. Mind manipulation works this way.

Neocons infest Washington. They hugely influence policy. The Liz Wahl affair highlights to what lengths they’ll go. More on this below.

Putin and Obama are geopolitical opposites. They’re world’s apart. A previous article explained.

Putin supports peace and stability. Obama wages one war after another.

Putin affirms UN Charter and other rule of law principles. Obama ignores them. He claims a divine right to pursue unchallenged hegemony. He does it belligerently.

Putin believes nation-state sovereignty is inviolable. Obama wants pro-Western puppet governments replacing independent ones.

Washington wants Boris Yeltsin reinvented. He presided over Russia’s lost decade.

He let 80% of Russian farmers go bankrupt. He closed 70,000 state factories. He presided over an unemployment epidemic.

Half or more of ordinary Russians became impoverished. A permanent underclass was created. Crime, suicides, mortality, alcoholism, drug abuse, and HIV/AIDS soared to intolerable levels.

So-called “shock therapy” (aka force-fed austerity) produced economic genocide. GDP plunged 50%. Life expectancy fell.

Democratic freedoms died. An oligarch class accumulated enormous wealth. Western interests profited. They did so at the expense of millions of exploited Russians.

Yeltsin let corruption and criminality flourish. One scandal followed others. Grand theft became sport. So did money laundering. Billions in stolen wealth were secreted in Western banks or offshore tax havens.

Former Nezavisimaia Gazeta editor Vitalii Tret’iakov wrote earlier:

“(F)or the greater part of his presidency, Yeltsin slept, drank, was ill, relaxed, didn’t show his face before the people and simply did nothing.”

“Despised by the majority of (Russians, he’ll) go down in history as the first president of Russia, having corrupted (the country) to the breaking point, not by his virtues and or by his defects, but rather by his dullness, primitiveness, and unbridled power lust of a hooligan.”

Western governments loved him. So did media scoundrels. They praised his “democratic” change. He presided over free market gangsterism.

He created appalling human misery. Another generation or more may be needed to recover.

Putin’s Russia is back. He’s proud and re-assertive. He’s not about to roll over for Washington. He’s on the right side of history. He defends Russian sovereignty.

He does so responsibly. He’s vilified for doing it. Daily attacks malign him. They’re intense. They’re vicious. They’re merciless. They’re unconscionable.

He’s called a Russian strongman. Hillary Clinton outrageously compared him to Hitler. She did so disgracefully. Others take full advantage to vilify him.

RT International (formerly Russia Today) provides real news and information. It does so responsibly.

It airs what viewers most need to know. It’s a vital service. It’s an antidote to Western media propaganda.

RT America is part of its network. It’s based in Washington. It includes New York, Los Angeles and Miami studios.

Former news presenter Liz Wahl became a cause celebre. She disgraced herself. She lost professional credibility.

She’s geopolitically mindless. She swallows Western propaganda irresponsibly.

She sold out. She did so perhaps for benefits derived. She resigned on air. “It actually makes me feel sick that I worked here,” she said.

“I cannot be part of a network funded by the Russian government that whitewashes the actions of Putin.”

“I’m proud to be an American and believe in disseminating the truth, and that is why, after this newscast, I’m resigning.”

RT responded professionally, saying:

“When a journalist disagrees with the editorial position of his or her organization, the usual course of action is to address those grievances with the editor, and, if they cannot be resolved, to quit like a professional.”

“But when someone makes a big public show of a personal decision, it is nothing more than a self-promotional stunt.”

It’s that and much more. It’s betrayal. It’s supporting wrong over right. Wahl got feature air time on US cable channels.

They embraced her. They took full advantage of her Russia bashing. It’s standard mainstream media practice.

Official policy mandates misinformation, demagoguery, warmongering and junk food news. What viewers and readers most need to know is suppressed.

Wahl apparently prefers presstitution to real news. Whoring pays well. Maybe she’s discussing new employment. RT viewers won’t miss her.

The Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) is the Project for the New American Century’s (PNAC) current incarnation. It’s neoconservative and then some. It’s ideologically over-the-top.

It’s militantly pro-war. It deplores peace. It supports US imperial lawlessness. It does so shamelessly.

James Kirchick is an FPI fellow. He’s based in Washington. He’s a former US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty propagandist.

He performs similar services for FPI. He buries truth. He lies for power. He conspired with Liz Wahl. He did so beginning last August. FPI was involved. What happened on-air was carefully orchestrated.

Twenty minutes before Wahl’s resignation, FPI twittered: “#WordOnTheStreet says that something big might happen on RT in about 20 – 25 minutes.”

“Tune in RT now,” it added. “The#WordOnTheStreet says it’ll be worth your while.”

At 5.26PM as Wahl quit, FPI twittered: “RT Anchor RESIGNS ON AIR. She ‘cannot be part of a network that whitewashes the actions of Putin.’ ”

FPI tweets before and coincidentally with Wahl’s resignation suggests carefully orchestrated complicity.

Around an hour daily, The Daily Beast published Kirchick’s article headlined “Exclusive: RT Anchor Liz Wahl Explains Why She Quit,” saying:

She “made Vladimir Putin’s enemies list..” Her “announcement was stunning.” It was pre-planned. It was carefully choreographed. It was straight from FPI’s playbook.

Kirchick called her stunt “a very brave thing…Hopefully (she’ll) inspire a wave of defections from Putin TV,” he added.

On March 19, Max Blumenthal and Rania Khalek headlined their Truthdig article “How Cold War-Hungry Neocons Managed RT Anchor Liz Wahl’s Resignation,” saying:

Her on-air stunt made her “one of the most famous unemployed people in America.” CNN, Fox News and MSNBC took full advantage. They jumped at a chance to interview her.

BuzzFeed is a social news and entertainment web site. It’s been sued for plagiarism. It’s political views are neoconservative. Credibility isn’t its long suit.

Rosie Gray is one of its contributors. On March 13, she headlined “How the Truth Is Made at Russia Today.”

It’s RT International (or RT.com). Russia Today is its former name. Gray’s headline was incorrect. What followed was compromised.

She lied claiming Russia invaded Crimea. No invasion occurred. She regurgitated Western propaganda. She embellished it her own way. She substituted rubbish for accuracy.

She bashed RT irresponsibly. She lied claiming it “produc(es) Russian propaganda.” Apparently she’s so brainwashed by managed news misinformation, she doesn’t recognize legitimate reporting when she hears it.

According to Blumenthal and Khalek, “a cadre of neoconservatives was celebrating a public relations coup.”

“Desperate to revive the Cold War, head off further cuts to the defense budget, and restore the legitimacy they lost in the ruins of Iraq, the tight knit group of neoconservative writers and stewards had opened up a new PR front through Wahl’s resignation.”

Complicit mainstream media helped. Featuring Wahl played right into neocon strategy. It worked without “neoconservative fingerprints.”

Inflammatory reporting escalates East/West tensions. Current RT employees take issue with Wahl.

Blumenthal and Khalek said six former colleagues call her “an apolitical, deeply disgruntled employee seeking an exit strategy from a job where, sources say, she was disciplined for unprofessional behavior and had been demoted.”

One employee said she “always (was) apolitical and without any clear principles. She didn’t talk about any politics outside of work.”

Another said she rarely objected to RT’s news coverage. “We do have editorial meetings in the morning to bring up questions and comments or concerns, an opportunity Liz rarely took,” the employee said.

Before joining RT, she interned for Fox News host Sean Hannity. He’s ideologically compromised and then some.

Last spring, said Blumenthal and Khalek, “Wahl was suspended for two weeks without pay and then demoted from anchor to correspondent after a series of outbursts in the office.”

“She had become disgruntled about her salary, the sources said, then began complaining that she was receiving insufficient assistance from producers in writing her monologues.”

She ” ‘wasn’t disgruntled about anything editorially. It was entirely about payment,’  one ex-colleague remarked.”

“Wahl expressed her outrage at co-workers, often berating them, according to her former colleagues, and by ‘screaming’ at management.”

“She was ultimately suspended without pay for her unprofessional behavior, they told us, and demoted from anchor to correspondent until her duties were restored this past January.”

Last year, she told a former colleague she was “approached by an unnamed person who wanted her to help undermine RT,” said Blumenthal and Khalek.

She took full advantage of Ukraine’s crisis. She acted irresponsibly. She’s on the wrong side of history.

US cable channels are politically compromised. Propaganda substitutes for real news and information. Perhaps employment awaits Wahl at one of them. Who said betrayal doesn’t pay.

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

His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.”

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

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

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

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour 

Propaganda is the spreading of information in support of a cause. It’s not so important whether the information is true or false or if the cause is just or not — it’s all propaganda.

The word propaganda is often used in a negative sense, especially for politicians who make false claims to get elected or spread rumours to instigate regime change [my edit]. In fact, any campaign that is used to persuade can be called propaganda.

Russia’s involvement in Syria has caused a flurry of “cold war”, Assad/ISIS co-dependency propaganda, all being produced by the usual suspects and all with the primary objective of invoking a No Fly Zone in Syria and stoking the “Russian Bear threat” fires that have been smouldering for some time.

I am going to attempt to dismantle this propaganda edifice one brick at a time.

Russia Attacks Moderate Rebels in Syria 

In a Telegraph article dated 1st October 2015 with the headline British Troops Head to Saudi Arabia to train Syrian rebels it was stated:

The FSA is considered the most moderate of factions fighting Bashar al-Assad’s government, but has been increasingly side-lined on the battlefield by more extremist Islamist factions. It has also been riven by leadership disputes.

American-led attempts to train up moderates to hold ground against Isil are months behind track because of the difficulty of finding groups which were not linked to the extremists.

The term “moderate rebels” has become one of the most significant misnomers of this coming up to five year conflict.  The hijacking of any semblance of a legitimate opposition to the Syrian Government by NATO, the US and regional allies including Israel in order to achieve their desired regime change has been well documented.

Who are these elusive “moderate rebels”?

You may well ask. Traditionally it is the FSA that has been marketed as the cuddly, viable alternative to the Assad government which incidentally is the internationally recognised government of Syria, supported by the majority of the Syrian people. However we don’t have to dig too deep to reveal the hard line Islamist, Salafi affiliations of this so-called moderate group of brigands.

Journalist Daniel Greenfield puts it most succinctly:  “Few media outlets are willing to say that out loud, but it’s quite true. There is no Free Syrian Army. It’s an umbrella for providing Western aid to a front group run by the Muslim Brotherhood.”  He deplores the shaky Pentagon math that Obama and Congress have used in an attempt to downplay the reality that even in 2013 Pentagon sources were reluctantly admitting that extremist groups constituted over 50% of Syrian “opposition” and that these numbers were steadily increasing.

This map clearly shows the weakness of this “moderate rebel” argument as it unequivocally demonstrates the minor FSA presence at the frontline of Syrian opposition.  They compose of fragmented mercenary groups largely unable to operate without extremist logistical support.

So this rather dispels the “moderate” myth and leads to the conclusion that in reality Russia was targeting areas north of Homs that contained few civilians and is an area controlled by a number of combined Muslim Brotherhood, Jihadist opposition fighters supported by the US alliance. It must also be remembered that the majority of civilians will flee an area infested by such mercenaries and seek refuge in government held areas.  This is another fact conveniently omitted from most mainstream media reports. 90% of IDPs are in Government held areas.

It also makes a mockery of Defence Secretary Ashton B Carter’s claims in the New York Times yesterday:

“By supporting Assad and seemingly taking on everybody fighting Assad,” Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said Wednesday, Russia is “taking on the whole rest of the country that’s fighting Assad.” Some of those groups, he added, are supported by the United States and need to be part of a political resolution in Syria.

“That’s why the Russian position is doomed to fail,” Mr. Carter said.

Russia is effectively exposing US policy in Syria as naked hegemony and America is not happy. While the US has been supplying TOW missiles and a variety of arms/equipment to extremists and deliberately funding any group that will secure regime change, Russia is actively deploying its military to target the nests of terrorist mercenaries and opportunists waiting eagerly for the political vacuum that would be created by the “removal” of Assad, in order to inflict their extremism upon the Syrian people.  They may not be technically called ISIS but they are cut from the same cloth of US/Israeli proxy terrorism and should be eliminated from any sovereign nation. Failure to do so has catastrophic results as seen in Libya and Iraq.

The Propaganda Trail

Now let’s examine the unsavoury marketing aspect of the propaganda campaign being waged by a frustrated and increasingly infuriated US alliance.  Of course the usual triad has leapt into action. HRW, Avaaz and the White Helmets.  Avaaz has produced one of its most poisonous and misleading petitions to date.  The inevitable eyewitness statements claim that Russia targeted civilian areas utterly free of ISIS operatives.  These statements are already rendered questionable by the evidence I have submitted above.

When we watch the videos, particularly the longer Liveleak version, it is hard to detect the women and children that are being described.  The majority of protagonists appear to be male and of fighting age.  There is no evidence of “civilian” life among the deserted buildings, the only movement is of males, some on foot, some on scooters and presumably some taking the time to film events even as the bombs are falling.  Not the actions of terrified, innocent civilians.

Live Leak Video of Russian bombing of Homs

There is one other video that does show about 2 seconds of a young boy crying and obviously injured.  However this video must be questioned as to its authenticity as the claims are that the initial shot of planes overhead is not even of Russian planes. The quality of the video is poor and apart from the footage of the one child, again demonstrates that the majority of people involved are men of fighting age in a deserted built up area to the north of Homs.

In this disgusting display of blatant propaganda calling for the long sought after no fly zone, Emma Ruby-Sachs, deputy director of Avaaz makes the extraordinary statement “Russia says it’s bombing ISIS, but eyewitnesses say their brutal attacks targeted areas way outside of ISIS control. This will only sow instability and radicalisation and should be an urgent wake-up call to the US and its allies to enforce a targeted no-fly zone to save lives, counter ISIS and alleviate the refugee crisis. Syrians civilians need protection now, not further attacks from Russian bombs.”

Speaking to one Damascus resident this morning, I asked for their opinion on this statement.  His reply was simple, “I am just relieved that the Russian Air Force is in action”.  The hypocrisy of this statement from Ruby-Sachs perfectly mirrors the hypocrisy of Congress, Obama’s Teflon speech at the UNGA, Pentagon’s barefaced obscurantism over the US role in creating exactly this instability and radicalisation in Syria and bringing misery, terror and bloodshed to the people of Syria with the sole aim of securing their interests in the region [and those of their staunchest partner in crimes against Humanity, Israel]

If we wish to speak of civilian casualties perhaps we should turn the spotlight on the pre- existing Coalition bombing campaign.  The civilian death rates from these strikes is rarely discussed and often concealed by the Pentagon and US/European associated analysts like the SOHR.  Where for example was the Avaaz petition calling for a No Fly Zone when the coalition air strikes resulted in a multitude of non-combatant deaths including children?  This report from Airwars reveals the disturbing numbers:

 Syria has also seen a number of troubling mass casualty events attributed to Coalition actions. On the first night of bombing on September 23rd 2014, US aircraft killed as many as 15 civilians in the village of Kafar Daryan. On December 28th at least 58 civilians reportedly died when the Coalition struck a temporary Daesh prison at al Bab (see report). And on April 30th 2015, 64 civilians died in a likely Coalition airstrike at Ber Mahli. In these three incidents alone, 106 non-combatant victims have so far been publicly named – 38 of them children. It remains unclear whether any of these events have been investigated by the Coalition.

Syria’s civilians need a spanner putting in the spokes of this crushing propaganda vehicle that rides roughshod over their genuine needs with devastating consequences. Those needs are simple:  stop lying, stop fabricating and stop creating, funding, arming and incubating the terrorist cancer in Syria.

The White Helmet element.

Now we come to perhaps one of the most insidious and damaging elements of the propaganda machine.  The White Helmets, created by Svengali of PR giants, Purpose.com. The White Helmets with the debonair, Sandhurst educated James Bond of humanitarianism at its helm, James Le Mesurier, whose CV reads like a NATO regime change itinerary and whose connections delve deep into the Empire’s underworld of media manipulation and strategy cultivation.

The first slick photo campaign was hot off the press almost immediately after the first Russian air strikes in the Homs region:

Unfortunately for them, perhaps White Helmets are exhausting their supply of heart string tugging images as their twitter campaign almost immediately came under attack by those who are waking up to this cynical propagandization of human misery.

Quote from Sott.net ~

“The White Helmets in their haste to point the finger of blame at Moscow, managed to tweet about Russia’s air strikes several hours before the Russian Parliament actually authorized the use of the Air Force in Syria.”

This image was also picked up and run with by RT who accurately pinpointed the deep-rooted deceit that lies at the heart of the majority of White Helmet publicity campaigns.  The flurry of activity on the White Helmet twitter page must have taken, even them, by surprise.  For so long they have enjoyed the fruits of their marketing campaign depicting them as selfless heroes, saviours of humanity, impartial protectors of kittens and Syrians in equal measure.  Unarmed, neutral, demi-saints climbing the “Mount Everest of war zones”.  Unfortunately so many of their masks have slipped that they can no longer bask in their Purpose reflected glory.

Yesterday like HRW before them they were exposed to be the fabricators and deceivers they really are.  Anyone can make a mistake I hear you say, yes sure, one mistake is acceptable, 2 is questionable but a consistent conveyer belt of misleading, perception altering, “nudging” images ceases to be innocent and enters the realm of manipulation on a terrifying scale with horrifying ramifications for the people of Syria who so far, have resisted their country being plunged into the same abyss as Libya or Iraq.

Just one other example of the White Helmet duplicitous image use:

Another image was brought to my attention this morning that further shatters the high gloss White Helmet image.  Whilst it is well known that far from being neutral, the White Helmets are in fact embedded with Al Nusra [the Syrian arm of Al Qaeda], it is perhaps not so well known that their southern Damascus depot is situated at the heart of ISIS held territory, to the south of the notorious Palestinian Yarmouk refugee camp.

This image shows their insignia and emblem clearly on the wall and gates behind the selfie taking ISIS mercenary in the foreground.  It is becoming harder and harder for White Helmets to maintain their veneer of impartiality, a fact that is borne out quite effectively by the fact that the majority of Syrians in government held areas have never heard of them, even unbiased civilians in Aleppo have not come across them.  Their association is exclusively with the extremist elements of the Syrian opposition. Their purpose is to facilitate calls for a No Fly Zone, cue Avaaz, and destabilize the region in the manner demanded by their masters in the US, UK and Syrian National Council.

Conclusion

We can safely conclude that the US, Israel and their allies are furious that they have been out manoeuvred and outsmarted by Russia and Syria.  Their No Fly Zone plans have been consistently thwarted and derailed.  Russia has effectively demanded a US coalition No Fly Zone which is the ultimate insult to US hegemony and self-proclaimed world police status.  Russia, unlike the US IS targeting ISIS in all its distorted guises and nomenclature. And yes Mr Defence Secretary, Russia is bombing US supported “rebels” in Syria for the very simple reason, the US has funded all extremist factions in Syria since they first started down the blood strewn road of regime change.

If we lived in a just world we would see Avaaz and their ilk clamouring for an end to interventionism and demanding diplomatic solutions to support internal, sovereign nation, peace processes [as in fact Russia has unwaveringly called for in Syria].  However we do not live in a world based upon a universal understanding of justice, we live in a world governed by the powerful and the greedy, devoid of compassion, intent only on their geopolitical prowess and humanity exempt colonialism.  For the sake of the Syrian people and all other nations being crushed by this well used, well-oiled propaganda machine we must question, we must demand answers, and we must wake up to our responsibility to reject calls for the destruction of nations and peoples who ask only for their basic human right to determine their own futures.

Avaaz, HRW, White Helmets and their associates have no place in that brave new world.

The “victory” of the globalist “Left” in Greece

The second victory of SYRIZA in Greece within eight months was celebrated by many in the European and US “Left” as a victory for the Left in general, following its almost total political and ideological bankruptcy of the last two decades or so.

That is, the kind of “Left” which takes for granted neoliberal globalization and simply objects to neoliberalism but not to globalization itself, deceiving the victims of globalization that there could be an alternative “good” globalization within the system of the capitalist market economy. The well-known slogan of the Social World Forum “Another World is Possible” summarizes this deception, which was adopted not only by SYRIZA in Greece and PODEMOS in Spain but, lately, even by the new leader of the British Labor Party, whose Shadow Chancellor just repeated this slogan in the Labor Party Conference.[1] Of course, both the Labor Party leader as well as his Chancellor are characterized by the British establishment as ‘radical Left’, in the same way as Tsipras, Varoufakis, Tsakalotos and the rest of SYRIZA intelligentsia, a party which just managed one of the biggest political sell-outs in decades, are characterized as Marxists by the elites and the controlled by them mass media. However, before we come to the big deception by SYRIZA we have to deal briefly with the globalist “Left” which today is dominant, from North America (Chomsky, Albert, Panitch, etc.) to Europe (Zizek, Piketty, Die Linke, et.al.) –all of whom have supported SYRIZA, even after the big sell-out.

For all those in the globalist “Left”, what matters is just the fact that a party calling itself Left took power, irrespective of the policies it followed in the past and is committed to follow in the future. What matters instead is holding power for power’s sake –a philosophy which has dominated the British Labor party since its repeated victories under the war criminal Blair, who led to the criminal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then, in opposition, to their support for the similar campaigns in Libya and Syria. At the same time, British workers have been forced through zero hours contracts, etc. (which globalization brought about!) “to stomach the biggest real-terms pay cut since the Victorian era”,[2] while most working class achievements of the 20^th century have been reversed, including the gradual degeneration of the welfare state, proudly introduced by the Labor party in 1945. Yet, all that matters for all of them in the globalist “Left” is that the Left is in power and everything else will somehow be sorted out— a kind of mentality, which has already led to the inexorable rise of neo-nationalist movements fighting for economic and national sovereignty, a goal that has been abandoned by the globalist Left.

The international globalist “Left”

Today’s international left –apart from a few notable exceptions at the theoretical level[3] and, at the political level, the anti-systemic Left contesting the New World Order (NWO) and its institutions such as the EU, NATO, etc. (e.g. the Communist Party in Greece)—it is fully integrated into the NWO of neoliberal globalization. That is, the international globalist “Left” does not question neoliberal globalization and the open and ‘liberalized’ markets which it takes for granted, let alone its institutions. On the contrary, it fully disorients the popular strata and particularly the working class, who are the main victims of the NWO, that it is supposedly fighting against neoliberalism, when at the same time it welcomes the open and liberalized markets and the related kind of “growth” that comes out of them. That is a Chinese or Indian kind of “growth”, whose beneficiaries are a minority of the population, together with a few hundred billionaires, while the vast majority is forced into slavery conditions so as to meet their survival needs and have the few consumer goods they can afford to buy. This pseudo-Left is in favor of the second component of the NWO (globalization) and simply directs its fire against the first component (neoliberalism), talking against austerity policies as if they are irrelevant to globalization and the opening and liberalization of markets and seeing neoliberalism as a mere ideology or a doctrine, if not a plot as some best-seller writers promoted by the mass media controlled by the Transnational Elite (TE) allege.

However, it can be shown that as the present globalization developed in conditions of capitalist ownership and control of the means of production, it could only be neoliberal.[4] Thus, it was the proliferation of multinationals or the Transnational Corporations (TNCs) since the mid-1970s onwards, which has led to the phenomenon of neoliberal globalization (no relation to the failing attempt for globalization in the early 20th century).^[5] The vast expansion of the TNCs implied the opening and liberalization of markets for goods, services, capital and labor (the famous “four freedoms”). The opening of capital markets was initially informally achieved by the TNCs “from below” (Euro-dollar market, etc.) and then was institutionalized, first in Britain and the US, through Thatcherism and Reaganism correspondingly, and then, through the IMF, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and of course the EU, worldwide. Needless to add that when the economic mechanisms (i.e. economic violence) are not enough to integrate a country into the NWO, then the TE — i.e. the economic, political, media and academic elites based in the countries where the large TNCs are headquartered (not in the formal legal sense), mainly the “G7” – had no qualms about using brutal physical violence to incorporate them by force (e.g. Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria,etc.).

However, the opening and liberalization of markets brought about a structural change in the capitalist economic model, which most Marxists (and I am talking about the bona fide ones, such as the still remaining anti-systemic Marxists, and not the pseudo-Marxists of the globalist “Left”– apart from some notable exceptions) failed to understand. Hence, they cannot see the direct link of neoliberalism and of the opening/liberalization of markets. Thus, they cannot see that throughout the pre-globalization part of the post-war period 1945-1975, the capitalist development model was based essentially on the internal market and therefore, the control of aggregate demand policies and especially fiscal policies (regarding taxation, but also more importantly public spending, including public investment, social spending and the welfare state), played a critical role in determining national income and employment levels. In contrast, in the globalization era that followed with the opening and liberalization of markets, the basis of growth shifted from the internal to the external market. This meant that competitiveness became the key criterion for the success of a capitalist economy, and that the multinationals now play a key role in the growth process, through the investments they essentially finance, as well as through the expansion of exports that could be brought by the installation of affiliates in a country.

But how could a country become competitive so that it could attract more investment from TNCs and/or more affiliates that could generate an expansion of exports? The answer is by implementing neoliberal policies such as the following:

• squeezing of wages and salaries (i.e. the labor cost), through the introduction of ‘flexible’ labor relations, so that productivity rises faster than the labor cost;
• cutting taxes and social security contributions of employers (i.e. depressing business costs);
• squeezing public spending, especially social spending, so that lower taxes on capital would become possible;
• compressing public investment directly, and indirectly through privatization of public enterprises, so that new sectors could become available to private investment;
• opening and liberalization of the capital market to facilitate the activity of finance capital as well as productive investment;
• privatization of banks and institutionalizing the independence of central banks from political and social control, which implies that the banking system will be directly controlled by market forces, which are in turn controlled by the multinationals (TNCs).

Clearly, all these policies in the period of globalization imply the gradual degradation of the nation-states, which are deprived of any significant degree of economic sovereignty. That means at the economic policy level Keynesianism which flourished in the era of nation-states is dead and buried today, and those pretending the opposite (Krugman, Piketty, Varoufakis and the rest), deliberately or not, disorient the victims of globalization. This is because the opening up and liberalization of markets has imposed a proportionate reduction in the capacity of imposing social controls on markets, i.e. controls that protect society from the market. [6] But when a country like Greece belongs not only to the EU but also to the Eurozone (“the heart of Europe” according to the Euro-zealots) it does not have even the elementary monetary sovereignty which was historically provided by the country’s currency. In the case of the Eurozone, as various restrictions are imposed even in fiscal policy (balanced budgets, if not surpluses!), the economic sovereignty of a country is reduced to almost zero (as is the case with the countries of the European South), unlike the countries of the “Center” usually belonging to the G7, which essentially define these policies. This, despite the mythology of “members’ parity” that is deceptively supported by the liberals to the bone (Varoufakis and Co., who pretend to be Marxists of some sort), as if Bill Gates’ vote is on a par with the vote of the last worker or unemployed person in Detroit, or the vote of Germany with the vote of Greece in the Eurogroup!

Similarly, it is a myth promoted by the same people at the theoretical level and by SYRIZA, PODEMOS and now Corbyn’s Labor Party at the political level that all that is needed is fighting austerity policies to redress neoliberalism. Austerity policies is just the symptom of the disease which is called globalization. It is globalization which, through the fundamental criterion of economic activity based on competiveness that it imposes, leads to a new kind of de-growth with a dualistic consumer society that I described elsewhere.[7]

Even the part of the globalist Left that is supposed to be anti-systemic (the Socialist Worker’s Party in UK and its subsidiary in Greece, which functions as part of an umbrella of small leftist groups called ANTARSYA that attracts at most 1% of the electorate) as well as the newly emerged Plan B in Europe (Jean-Luc Mélenchon of France’s Parti de Gauche, Stefano Fassina of Italy, and Zoe Konstantopoulou and Yanis Varoufakis of Greece) never raised the issue of breaking from the EU itself. In this sense, this kind of ‘anti-systemic’ Left in effect plays the role of a Plan B, not for the European peoples but, instead, for the TE in general and the EU elite in particular, in case the victims of globalization all over Europe unite in the future demanding genuine radical policies. That is, policies which necessarily imply self-reliance following a break with the EU and the other globalization institutions (WTO, IMF, WB, etc.) rather than just a ‘fight from within the EU’, as the above ‘anti-systemic’ leftists imply (of which Varoufakis and Konstantopoulou), for six months, have actively participated in the first SYRIZA government, while it was preparing the big sellout and were taking no action at all—even just by resigning—to raise the level of consciousness of the Greek people on why anti-austerity policies were impossible within the EU. No wonder in the last elections the Greek people punished the Left Unity (the breakaway party of the Left wing within SYRIZA) under Lafazanis and Konstantopoulou, while Varoufakis— wisely enough— did not take part in the elections!

Similarly, the so-called Delphi Declaration, signed by a number of well known globalist intellectuals,[8] was in fact an essentially liberal document criticizing the way EU and the Eurozone works (the “European project” as they called it) but in no way questioning the institutions themselves, let alone the opening and liberalization of markets, (i.e. globalization itself), inevitably ending with such ‘radical’ demands as:

• “a radical” restructuring of European debt;
• serious measures to control the activities of the financial sector;
• a “Marshal Plan” for the European periphery; and
• a courageous rethinking and re-launching of a European project which, in its present form, has proven unsustainable.

However, what the systemic globalist “Left” of the Delphi Declaration kind, as well as the “anti-systemic” globalist Left of the Plan B kind, could not understand was perfectly clear to the Bolivian vice-president Álvaro García Linera, as aptly put it speaking in Athens just before the July referendum:

“all EU countries have lost their capacity to control their economy over the last 15 years. They have mortgaged Europe to a cloud called the European Union which is basically a coalition of bankers and some firms that define the fate of the Europeans, and that is very sad…where we are able to ourselves define the exchange rates, the monetary mass, to force banks to lend money to the state, etc. you can’t, because everything is under the control of the European Bank”.[9]

What this statement shows is that in Latin America, there are genuine progressive forces which have not been integrated into the NWO of neoliberal globalization and realize that economic and national sovereignty (i.e. national liberation) is a precondition for social liberation in the globalization era. This, unlike the vast majority of the Left in North America and Europe, which is fully integrated into the NWO and, as such, is condemned to extinction—not because of the rise of fascist regimes and the likes but because its traditional clientele, the popular strata (i.e. the victims of globalization) will turn their back to it, and it will be left to the new middle classes, which benefit from globalization, to promote the ideology of globalization, i.e. identity politics, human rights and the like.

Internationalism, neo-nationalism and pseudo-internationalism

In the mean time, as an inevitable consequence of the demise of the Left in the form of the globalist “Left”, the popular strata (especially the working class) who are the main victims of neoliberal globalization and of related economic policies, have left traditional left parties. This inevitably has led to the effective bankruptcy of the European Left (as it happened earlier to the American Left, following the defeat of the labor movement after the WWII, and the development of various currents of post-modern ‘Left’ in the globalization era, which firmly belong to what I called globalist Left.

At the same time, neo- nationalist parties from the Right have emerged which took advantage of this opportunity and turned into anti-globalization movements to fill the huge gap created by the disappearance of the anti-systemic globalization movement early in the last decade and its replacement by the ‘alternative’ globalization pseudo-Left movement (the International Social Forum of the reformist Left which soon was inevitably phased out as no alternative ‘good’ globalization is possible in a capitalist system. Therefore, the fight today has to be for national (i.e. popular sovereignty) as a precondition for systemic change which would give rise to a New Democratic World Order based on sovereign peoples who will decide their form of self-determination. So, a series of neo-nationalist movements emerged in France, Britain, Italy and elsewhere, whose main objective is the recovery of national sovereignty that has been trampled under the NWO, indeed with the complicity of this integrated “Left”. These movements have nothing to do with the prewar racist nationalist movements or fascist and Nazi movements, which basically expressed antagonisms between large nation-states and the national elites that controlled them. Today, there are no more similar nation-states and even countries like the US and Germany, France and Britain are characterized by transnational sovereignty,[10] which is exerted by the TNCs in their countries, and of course by transnational military domination. Today, we are talking about a defensive nationalism that defends the loss of national sovereignty and not about the old aggressive nationalism that was consistent with the inter-imperialist conflicts, etc., and characterized only the era of nation-states, which today is irrelevant to the globalization reality.

Of course, this does not preclude the existence of latent racist trends (e.g. against immigrants) in some of these movements. But this racism is latent because it is basically turned against the opening and liberalization of labor market, imposed by globalization, which has also significantly contributed to the compression of wages, and has increased unemployment and under-employment everywhere. In this sense, the role of today’s “Left” is to be deplored, as, instead of adopting a genuine anti-globalization position, it smears effectively all movements fighting for national sovereignty as fascist and Neo-Nazi (usually through campaigns financed by the European Commission and various secret funds!), thus hoping to increase its electoral clientele –something that of course brings about the opposite effect. Obviously the huge strata that move to these movements are not fascists, as some miserable parts in the “Left” imply, but simply feel abandoned by the Left and by the labor parties that they always supported, after their integration in the NWO.

Similarly, these popular strata are not anti-internationalist –the other “stigma” flying against them by the globalist Left in France, Greece and elsewhere. These movements (as opposed to the leaders of neo-nationalist parties) are anti-globalist in the above sense, but not anti-internationalist. By contrast, the working strata among them, in particular, are internationalist in the genuine sense of internationalism, which aims at a new international community of nation—states that would be based on the principles of solidarity and mutual aid, in place of brutal competition and competitiveness, indirectly supported by the globalist “Left”.

The Greek globalist Left

The process of enslavement of the Greek people is not effected just by the foreign elites, that is the Transnational Elite (TE), as represented by the EU (European Committee and ECB) and the IMF. A key role in this process belongs to the local elites (economic, political, academic and media), without the unwavering contribution of which, the current enslavement would have been impossible. This, despite the deceitful allegations of the political and academic elites of SYRIZA (e.g. Douzinas, Milios, Klavdianos, Vergopoulos, et.al.) that the culprits for everything to blame are just “bad” Schäuble & Co in the TE. However, these political organs of the TE, after all just “do their job” as prominent members of the economic elites within the TE. The question is whether they would have been capable to do this job so effectively had they not had the decisive help of Tsipras, Dragasakis, Tsakalotos, Varoufakis, Stathakis, Flabouraris, et. al. who helped crucially the TE, into transforming Greece today into a formal protectorate of the TE. This contributed as well into ultimately emasculating the globalist Left in Greece and beyond it. This was the aim of the TE, anyway, i.e. the exemplary “punishment” and humiliation of SYRIZA. Not of course because they feared in any way this sort of “left”, as its propagandists say, but in order to make clear to everybody concerned the lesson that no one can challenge the New World Order of neoliberal globalization, even if this is attempted indirectly, through challenging the austerity policies inevitably arising out of it.

Therefore, since SYRIZA never questioned Greece’s entry and stay in the EU and more generally the country’s integration into the NWO of neoliberal globalization, it had no choice but to implement the neoliberal policies of the ‘club’ to which Greece had acceded, thanks to the actions of the right wing establishment (New Democracy under Karamanlis senior) which were complemented by the actions of the “socialist” establishment (PASOK under Andreas Papandreou).  These policies included the austerity policies imposed on countries that failed to improve their competitiveness by improving their productivity (as indeed the countries of the center can do because they have the appropriate production structure). But, that is the kind of structure that countries like Greece just do not have, as the opening and liberalization of markets—as a result of its joining the EEC /EU, meant the destruction of both its rural and rudimentary industrial productive structure, which was heavily protected. But if competitiveness cannot be improved through increased productivity, the only other way in the globalized market economy to improve it is by the artificial reduction of salaries and wages through devaluation of the currency. However, since Greece does not control even its own currency within the Eurozone, there was no other way to improve its competitiveness than by implementing austerity policies imposed on it by the Troika representing the TE (i.e. IMF for US and the institutions of the EU for Germany).

On this basis therefore, SYRIZA’s election promises that, if elected, it would not implement austerity policies in Greece—even if it remained a member of the Eurozone and the EU, was pure deception of the people. It was self-evident that EU and Eurozone membership would deprive Greece of the capability even to opening its banks—let alone taking measures to control its economy—if not approved by the “”European institutions” (ECB, etc.) which were in charge of Greece’s currency, the Euro. Even more fraudulent was SYRIZA’s claim that, if elected, it could create alliances within the EU against such policies. However, reversal of these policies would require evicting multinationals from Europe (or at least limiting their activity within the EU area), which in the globalized capitalist market economy is of course totally non-feasible. This is why several Social Democrats (Mitterrand, Oskar Lafontaine, even Hollande) failed miserably to implement different policies. So, when SYRIZA economists (Varoufakis & Co.) supported similar arguments they either had no idea of what they were talking about and of the real significance of globalization, or they were just deceiving the Greek people.

The pseudo-“No” of the Greek referendum and the real OXI of the people

But let us see in some more detail how the big sell-out of Greece was effected by the “Left” government of SYRIZA, which, as Tsipras showed in his recent visit in the USA on the occasion of the UN 70^th anniversary celebrations, it was far from undesired. Despite the sheer lies he used to disorient the Greek electorate that he was allegedly forced to accept the third (and worst) Memorandum, what he stated a few days ago addressing the Clinton Global Initiative, applauded by George Soros (probably his backer) tells a different story. Thus, after stating that the new bailout had less of the wrong-headed internal evaluation of previous ones and that its three-year duration will provide a stable environment for investment, he went on to stress that:

“For the first time Greece has a realistic programme and it is the first time that there is discussion on the restructuring of the debt. Together we took a difficult decision to remain in the eurozone, even if that entails difficulties…Now we must put the growth programme on the table. For the first time Greece can cover its needs without recessionary measures. We will keep our pledges, but it is also important for the other side [creditors] to keep their promise to offer debt relief, so as to attract investments to Greece.” [11]

As usual with Tsipras’ talks, there is hardly a word which is not a lie. First, there are hardly any economists, even orthodox ones, who see this program as a realistic one, and there is no discussion yet for the restructuring of the debt as even Christine Lagarde, the IMF head, confirmed a couple of days later in her meeting with Stathakis, another well-known for his conservative views academic/politician who pretends to be left-wing, just to be in power. In fact, the Germans in particular, but also other members of the Eurozone, have always stressed that all they could discuss—after Greece implements all structural reforms imposed on it—would be a lengthening of the period within which the loan will be repaid but not any reduction of its size (at present the Greek debt, following the latest bailout is over 200 percent of the GDP!). Second, it is a gross lie that the program does not imply recessionary measures when VAT (an indirect tax particularly hitting the low income groups because of its non-progressiveness) goes up to the maximum 23% for many goods and services, while pensions are already being hit hard by the new Memorandum and farmers’ incomes are particularly hit by a combination of tax measures. Third, investment and therefore growth crucially depend under the new memorandum, as also under the old ones, on foreign investment and this in fact was the aim of the Clinton event in which Tsipras was begging the executives of the TNCs to invest in Greece, promising good profits, as a result of the drastic squeezing of wages and salaries, the adoption of ‘flexible labor relations’ (i.e. part-time and zero contract hours, etc.) introduced by the new memorandum on top of the previous ones. The trouble of course is that similar conditions are offered to TNCs by many other countries in the NWO today, and there is no guarantee at all that Greece would attract more investors than its competitors.

But let us go back to July this year when the big sell out by Tsipras’ SYRIZA began. In July, the TE decided that this was the moment to impose its strictest bailout conditions on the SYRIZA government, as an exemplary punishment to all those in the globalist “Left” who dared to challenge, even in the slightest, the NWO policies, as globalization itself was out of bounds for any party in the globalist “Left” anyway. All this became apparent by the pseudo-referendum in which the entire globalist Left in Greece and elsewhere, except for KKE (the Greek Communist Party) and MEKEA (the Popular Front for the Social and National Liberation[12] -Inclusive Democracy), supported it. This was, in fact, a pseudo-referendum because of the deceitful way in which the question asked was framed. Not only the referendum did not ask the real question whether Greeks prefer a different kind of development to the one imposed by the EU which resulted in the catastrophe[13] of the last four years or so (that is a straight ‘yes’ or ‘no’ vote on the crucial issue of Greece’s participation in the EU and the Eurozone), but it did not even raise what was supposed to be the crucial SYRIZA demand, i.e. the demand for abolition of every Memorandum and austerity policies in general. Yet, this was the demand which was put forward by the globalist “Marxists” of SYRIZA (who, like the indescribable Varoufakis, or Klavdianos and Spourdalakis,[14] firmly believe in globalization and capitalist markets. Although, to be fair, they believe in fact ‘the alter-globalization of the now defunct Social World Forum, which historically had functioned as the Trojan Horse of the reformist Left to destroy the initially anti-systemic movement against globalization![15]

The real reason behind this pseudo referendum was that the SYRIZA leadership and the elites behind it expected that the referendum will open the way for the endorsement of the new third memorandum that Tsipras- Dragasakis and Tsakalotos–Varoufakis had already informally agreed with the TE. Their expectation was that the referendum will return either a “Yes” vote, or at most a marginal “No” vote, which would trick the Greek people into the endorsement of a new memorandum. The massive campaign by the mass media of the TE, as well as the constant interventions of the Euro-political elites that presented the referendum as a “Yes” or “No” to Grexit, aimed at terrorizing the Greek middle class and petty bourgeoisie to vote for “Yes”—the same tactics that was successfully used in the 2012 elections. In fact, the referendum simply asked for approval or rejection of the last bailout proposal offered by the Euro-elite. However, the people had been deceived by an artful and massive parallel unofficial propaganda campaign to believe that “No” was not just about the last bailout proposal of lenders (most were not even aware of it), but (albeit indirectly) against all Memoranda and austerity policies in general.

In effect, this was also the reason why the Greek electorate had given power to SYRIZA just five months ago. At the same time, the foreign and local elites indirectly supported the rise of SYRIZA to power, in full knowledge that the other parties which supported the previous parliamentary junta (“Junta”, in the sense that without any popular mandate for it had applied the most brutal austerity policies ever imposed by bailout programs) were so worn out that it was no more possible to proceed to the complete integration of the country into the NWO of neoliberal globalization. For the elites, a “Left” parliamentary Junta could pass all the measures at the point where the junta of PASOK and New Democracy stepped down. But the leadership of SYRIZA knew, or ought to have known unless it is composed of cretins, that a new memorandum would be necessary in order to reach any agreement with the TE, which as I have repeatedly stressed since 2010, had every capability to sentence the Greek people to economic suffocation by draining all their sources of funding, through the ECB it controls, since Greece was powerless with no monetary sovereignty (i.e. its own currency) and thus national sovereignty, as a “proud” member of the Eurozone.

So, the official campaign to vote for “No” to the latest bailout proposal was effectively submerged by the unofficial campaign to vote for “No” to austerity policies in general. The result was that a spontaneous manifold “No” began forming from below, which was directed either only against austerity policies in general, or even against the Euro, if not against the EU itself! In other words, an informal front from below was formed, which ranged from “hard-left” to “right-wing” and from Communists to Christians and patriots, i.e. a kind of “MEKEA from below”. Needless to add that such demands –especially those directed against the EU itself– are rejected in abomination not only by the leftist parts in it (Lafazanis-Leoutsakos-Lapavitsas) who although they were questioning the Euro (just as a badly organized currency) they never directed their fire against the EU itself and globalization—exactly as the Delphi initiative and the rest do, as we saw above. The result was that almost 42% of registered citizens voted “No” and “void”, in which we have to add much of the abstention rate that reached 38%, while the “Yes” vote in favor of austerity just reached 25%. In other words, it was only 1/4 of the people who fully supported the EU while the other 3/4 were, in various degrees, from highly critical to unfriendly towards it.

Yet, the appalling (and very likely paid by the EU Commission) polls consistently present 3/4 of the people to be vehemently and masochistically pro-EU, irrespectively of how the TE and its institutions treat the Greek people. This, despite the fact that no one ever asked the Greek people for Greece’s accession to the EEC, the EU, or the Eurozone! These are the same pseudo-polls that in Greece are particularly unreliable, as indicated by their very frequent and resounding failures – although this does not prevent them from indirectly influencing the results. This becomes obvious by the fact that these polls “coincidentally” always return favorable results to those who commissioned them.

The cancellation of the referendum from the “left” parliamentary Junta

The referendum called by SYRIZA supposedly asked citizens to simply express their opinion on the monstrous proposal of the “Institutions” dated 25/6/2015. This, essentially demanded, in the form of an ultimatum, the formal transformation of Greece into a protectorate ―which was already an informal protectorate since 2010.[16] However, despite the fact that “No” represented ¾ of the registered citizens as I showed above, it was only after a few days when the same degenerate leadership of SYRIZA Tsipras, Tsakalotos, Dragasakis and Flambouraris, (who played the role of the “godfather” of the Tsipras mafia) adopted a new and even worse memorandum than the previous two implemented by PASOK and New Democracy. In the meantime, the ECB had forced them to close the banks and impose capital controls, through the well tested in the past (Ireland, Cyprus) device of squeezing liquidity, which I predicted long in advance that it was going to be used in Greece as well! Of course I was not any kind of prophet to predict that, but I just knew that a government that does not even dream of exiting the EU and the Eurozone will very easily be forced into a similar general capitulation, or better, such an unconditional surrender. The only reason for not having done this would be if they had already prepared the people for the difficult transition decisions that would be needed for the relatively short period of transition from the Euro to the Drachma and for getting the technical-economic measures required for that. That is, all that was needed was a “Plan B” as it has come to be called. But, in fact, as Robert Peston pointed out following his own a research on the matter:

The first rather chilling thing I’ve learned, from well-placed bankers, is there have been no conversations between the Bank of Greece, the government or regulators and Greece’s commercial banks about the technicalities of leaving the euro and adopting a new currency. This is astonishing – and some would say pretty close to criminal. [17]

This is indeed the greatest crime of the leadership of SYRIZA: that they essentially drove the people to their slaughter by going to “negotiate”, while they voluntarily had their hands tied behind their backs! Neither of course Varoufakis’ criminal role in the matter can be dissipated by his silly allegations that he “had” a plan (obviously in his mind), as Greece’s finance minister at the time, but he thought that it should not be activated so as to “not become a self-fulfilling prophecy”![18] This is because even a sophomore student of economics should know that the transition from one currency to another, in order to not be destructive, requires a process of several months, not only for the technical part of it to be implemented, but, most importantly, in order to prepare the people at the level of consciousness for the radical measures that had to be taken on during the transition period. Especially for a people like the Greek people who have suffered massive brainwashing for decades about the EU, from the state and political authorities up to the media and the Euro-bred Academics, etc.

The same of course applies to the stance of the more “Left” wing of SYRIZA (Lafazanis, Lapavitsas, Leoutsakos, et.al.), who, later broke from the party to form their own “Popular Alliance” but did not manage in the following elections to enter Parliament. This might have been a just punishment for their prevarication during the first SYRIZA government when they never dared to demand on time the preparation of a ‘Plan B’, threatening to leave the party in case the leadership had refused it. No wonder that even during the critical plenary session of Parliament for the ratification of the brutal agreement with the TE that would later become the New (Third) Memorandum, they did not dare again to vote against the agreement but they simply abstained voting “present” as the vote was about where a new dump was going to be and not about the most critical legislation piece of the first SYRIZA government. For the same reason, it was a misleading assertion what Lafazanis constantly repeated that “alternatives” exist. Of course, the theoretical existence of alternatives is one thing, and it is quite another a Grexit, without the slightest preparation for it, a fact known to the people who had every reason to be concerned about what would follow from a break with the Eurozone. Needless to add that the new memorandum easily passed through Parliament thanks to a large ad hoc majority formed by the ‘systemic memorandum’ parties, in alliance with the fiercely (up to then) anti-memorandum party, SYRIZA.

So, for the first time the local and foreign elites (which may well have drafted such a master plan before the rise of SYRIZA in power) were able to implement a Memorandum worse than any previous one, with measures none of the previous parliamentary juntas were able to take and in particular the effective elimination of any trace of Greek national sovereignty. This was achieved through the creation of a special fund of 50 billion euros, that could incorporate every public asset of the country, which the Troika will consider profitable and will then be able to proceed to its sale, essentially for the repayment of debt. And of course it is another fraud what Tsipras-Tsakalotos achieved, i.e. that the headquarters of the fund will be in Greece, and that it will be “managed” by Greece “under the supervision” of the Troika — something reminiscent of the alleged “management” of the Greek economy over the years by Greek governments “under the supervision of the Troika”! All this makes all Greeks ashamed of themselves, particularly when they hear politicians and “thinkers” (i.e. “intellectual” crooks close to SYRIZA), that we just lost a battle, but we will win the war, while it is in their full knowledge that selling off the social wealth is irrevocable –except of course if the same Left crooks will ever be able to launch a revolution to recover it!

Inevitably, the “Left” parliamentary Junta’s crime, which could not have taken place without the decisive help of all Euro-systemic parties in Parliament, which have adopted and implemented the previous bailouts, has inexorably led to the final catastrophe of the popular masses who constitute the overwhelming majority of the population, for the sake of a minority, most of whom benefit from the NWO in general and the EU in particular.

SYRIZA’s new “victory” in September

The new victory of SYRIZA was the result of a master plan on timing by the Left crooks of SYRIZA, in full co-operation with the Transnational Elite and the local elites. Having passed very speedily the new Memorandum in Parliament, effectively through a parliamentary coup, as was condemned by the Speaker of Parliament— leaving parliamentarians a day or so to scrutinize hundreds of pages of legalistic text— they then proceeded to call for a general election in the shortest period possible and while the summer vacation was still on. All this with the full co-operation of the TE which gave the green light for the election. The idea was to have the election before the onerous measures of the new memorandum were obvious to everybody. This way Tsipras and his crooks could easily gain in the elections, with the massive help of the mass media, particularly the state media, which became the main organ of SYRIZA propaganda. The fact also that the choice was effectively between politicians (the main slogan of SYRIZA’s campaign was “vote for Tsipras as PM”) rather than among programs played a crucial role in this, given that SYRIZA could not produce any alternative program to the one based on the memorandum, which all main parties now supported. The only parties which were against the memorandum were, first, the discredited Golden Dawn, second, the equally discredited by the system KKE, since its defeat in the Civil War— which anyway had dismally failed to create a new popular front for national and social liberation (like EAM during the Occupation) that could have frustrated the TE’s plans— and, finally, the contradictory Popular Alliance mentioned above. As a result the informal “Memorandum Front” gained over 80% of the vote.

Does this mean the effective surrender of the Greek people to the economic violence of the TE and the fraudulent machinations of the SYRIZA crooks in the leadership? Not quite. For the first time in Greece, a country where voting is compulsory, the abstention rate reached a record 44%, which means that effectively only 35% of registered citizens voted all memorandum parties together, including SYRIZA. Even if we allow for a non-proper renewal of the electoral register, still this cannot explain what happened to some 800,000 voters (almost 10% of the total) who were ‘lost’ between January and September 2015. It is clear, and confirmed also by anecdotal evidence, that at least most, if not all, the extra abstention was expressing disgust with what passes as politics in a parliamentary junta like Greece. In fact, this is not a new phenomenon as similar phenomena can be noticed even in countries like Britain, the mother of parliamentary democracy, where the popular strata in particular abstained in droves from parliamentary elections, following the full incorporation of the Labor party into the NWO under Blair and Brown, and it was only the appearance of UKIP and now Corbyn in the Labor party, which began reversing this trend. This means that the potential for radical change in Greece is still there, particularly when even those naïve enough to fall under the SYRIZA deception soon realize that they were conned.

Why a Popular Front for National and Social Liberation?

Therefore the development of a Popular Front for National and Social Liberation like MEKEA is imperative, as it is now clear that:

a)    it is not the size of the debt or the bad design of the Eurozone which is the ultimate cause of the Greek catastrophe but, instead, as I will try to show briefly below, Greece’s integration into the NWO through its joining the EU and the Eurozone;

b)    the main consequence of Greece’s integration into the NWO is the loss of its economic and therefore national sovereignty;

c)    this implies that only the break with the institutions of globalization and particularly the EU, but also NATO, WTO, IMF and the parallel introduction of policies of self-reliance, could lead Greece (and any other country in a similar condition) out of the present catastrophic position;

d)    this is why national liberation is a precondition for social liberation, the form of which to be decided democratically by the people of each country;

e)    the creation of self-reliant nations is a pre-condition for the development of a new democratic world order based on the principles of mutual assistance and solidarity, in place of the present world order based on the principles of competitiveness and profitability. The latter have led to the present massive physical and/or economic violence characterizing globalization, as reflected by the hundreds of millions of people moving out of their countries, which are being destroyed by the economic violence of the TNCs, or the physical violence launched by the TE which controls the NWO.

As regards (a) in particular, it can easily be shown, as I attempted to do elsewhere,^[19] that it was Greece’s entry into the EU initially and then into the Eurozone, which forced the opening and liberalization of its markets that destroyed its almost self-reliant agricultural production as well as its protected industrial sector. This is not something happening just to less developed countries like Greece, as this summer’s violent demonstrations of French farmers against globalization clearly showed.^[20] The debt trap to which Greece entered since the 1980s, as I showed elsewhere,^[21] is only the symptom of the crisis, i.e. of the destruction of Greek productive structure—not its cause and therefore even if Greece was going to be relieved of its entire debt, without the development of a viable productive structure (which obviously cannot be based on tourism alone) it is a matter of time before a new debt crisis develops. And, of course, the development of a viable productive structure cannot be left to the decisions of TNCs and private investors (as Tsipras now declares) who are only interested in their profits, rather than the development of productive structures. No wonder that the present developed countries (including Britain and USA) did not open their markets before they fully developed their productive structures under protection. Finally, it was the same Greek entry into the EU which led to an unprecedented decline of real wages (i.e. of their purchasing power), as was just shown by the latest Report on the Greek Economy published by the Greek Trade Union Congress. The “Marxist” economists and intellectuals in SYRIZA would have a lot of explaining to do about their misleading allegations that the workers will be destroyed outside the EU, when, in fact, the purchasing power of the minimum wage has declined by almost a quarter since Greek entry into the European Economic Community in the 1980s, as a result of the much faster rise in prices than nominal wages during this period. ^[22] Needless to add that the new memorandum is already pushing wages and salaries down, so that Greece becomes more competitive, according to the instructions of the TE and the EU. Yet, when one asks these “Marxist” intellectuals why SYRIZA never tried to raise the level of consciousness of the workers and the popular strata about the catastrophic role of the EU, their deceitful answer is that they did not have a mandate for it, as if mandates flourish in the farms and not through political debate, which was supposed to be the role of a Left party like SYRIZA that is supposed to play also the role of an avant-garde!

Finally, coming to (b) i.e. the loss of Greece’s economic and therefore national sovereignty as a consequence of its integration into the NWO through its entry into the EU, this is how Heather Stewart of the Observer (not exactly a radical Left paper!) described the new Memorandum and the surrender of sovereignty by the “Left” SYRIZA government:

It’s a full-blown, three-year, big bang modernisation with a hefty price tag attached – not just in austerity measures, but in surrendered sovereignty.The memo sets out not just the budget savings Tsipras and his ministers will have to try to deliver over the next three years, but a litany of specific policies they have pledged to implement under the general headings of modernising the economy and the state. Athens will have to review its entire welfare system, for example, and throw open a series of restricted professions, including bailiff (surely a fruitful occupation in today’s Greece). It will have to liberalise the tourism rental market, review labour-market practices, scrutinise all the members of major bank boards to make sure they’re fully independent, accelerate the procurement of VAT collection software… the list goes on and on. Once it gets down to the nitty-gritty, the abrogation of political control signalled by the memorandum is extraordinary. It is littered with milestones and targets the Athens government must meet – month by month, year by year – and pledges to subject any significant policy changes to the scrutiny of its international overseers.^[23]

Her conclusion is even more devastating for the likes of SYRIZA “Left” who, as Tsipras just stated in the Clinton initiative event, there are several positive elements in the latest bailout agreement: “Greek citizens are being expected to absorb this dizzying level of social and economic change at a time when output has suffered a collapse on the scale of the Great Depression.”^[24] Finally, the very fact that the Memorandum includes a clause according to which any deviation from the fiscal targets of the bailout program will trigger an automatic mechanism to cover the gap through a corresponding reduction of public spending shows clearly why Greece has now become formally a protectorate of the TE and the EU.

 Notes

INTRODUCTION

The basic disagreement between U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the source of the economic sanctions against Russia, and ’the new cold war,’ concerns the question of whether the process by which Crimea separated from Ukraine and joined Russia was, as Obama says, «aggression» by Russia, an illegal «seizure» of Crimea by Russia; or, on the other hand, as Putin says, a thoroughly legal and democratic act by the people of Crimea, to exercise their right of self-determination, via a referendum.

Many of the points that will be referred-to, along the way here, are going to be opposite to the views that are widespread in the West; and, so, wherever that is the case, clicking onto the linked source will enable you easily to check what’s being said, if it conflicts with what you ‘know’ or have previously been told. All of the sources linked-to here are either primary evidence such as videos of the actual events, or else articles which link through to similarly high-quality primary evidence. In «politicized» and other controversial matters like this, the quality of the evidence is especially important to making a rational determination as to where the truth actually is; and this (plus the heavy prevalence of propaganda surrounding this matter) is the reason for the extensive and high-quality documentation that’s cited here. These links provide ready evidence regarding any allegation that might seem doubtful.

The alternative to such extensive and high-quality documentation would be to offer here only statements that are either bland and/or undocumented; and, regarding the present topic «Obama v. Putin», any such article on so controversial a matter would, frankly, be a waste for readers, hardly enlightening at all — just more ‘confirmation’ of what you already ‘know,’ or else not even a credible article. The subject here is worth the trouble to understand accurately. (Or, if it’s not, then you probably woudn’t have read even this far.)

OBAMA’S SIDE

In addition to charging Russia with «aggression» regarding Crimea, Obama also accuses Russia of «aggression» against Ukraine in Ukraine’s former Donbass region (which is basically the dark purple area on this map), such as by saying, «Russia’s aggression in Ukraine makes clear that European security and the international rules and norms against territorial aggression cannot be taken for granted. In response, we have led an international effort to support the Ukrainian people as they choose their own future and develop their democracy». However, he has never cited the justification for his overthrowing (look at that video evidence of it, but there’s lots more) the democratically elected President of Ukraine in February 2014 (Obama’s type of «as they choose their own future and develop their democracy»). The head of the «private CIA» firm Stratfor admits that this was actually «the most blatant coup in history». (Like I said: there’s lots more evidence of the coup.) Obama has never cited any justification for imposing in Ukraine instead a rabidly anti-Russian regime next-door to Russia, replacing the then-existing and democratically elected Ukrainian government that had existed. He has always alleged that the source of the new cold war was Crimea’s transfer to Russia, not the transfer of Ukraine to the U.S. (the coup, shown here being prepared), which had immediately preceded, and precipitated, the breakaway of Crimea.

However, did this decision by Obama, to overthrow Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych, really «develop their democracy», as Obama phrased the matter? Or did it instead end that democracy, and cause some parts of Ukraine, which had voted overwhelmingly for the man whom Obama overthrew, to separate themselves from Obama’s newly coup-imposed government of Ukraine? Crimeans had voted over 75% for Yanukovych; Donbass had voted over 90% for Yanukovych. With the coup, Ukraine’s new national government was anything but a ‘democracy’ for them. It was instead their government’s being stolen by the United States. Obama’s rhetoric, alleging his desire to help «develop their democracy», is a blatant lie, which is something that’s actually routine for him. (Please click onto that link there for the evidence on the matter, if you disagree that he routinely lies.) To say that he rampantly lies is just a statement of fact, not one of opinion. Obama is remarkably similar to George W. Bush — though far more articulate, and though he uses rhetoric that appeals to a broader global audience.

Just because something (such as what was just documented here) is not generally reported in the press doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not true. The meaning of that might instead be: the American press, on all sides of it, lies in the same direction about certain things on which all sides of the aristocracy (since the same aristocracy controls both the government and the ‘news’ media) agree, such as, itself, the lie that America is a democracy, not an aristocracy. When the national press and the national government are controlled by the same group, it’s no democracy. The nation’s aristocracy naturally don’t want the public to recognize that their government is, in fact, not a democracy. Not a republic («republic» being another name for the system of government in any large democratic nation). It represents instead only a narrow group. It’s a dictatorship, not a democracy. For example: see this and this. Aristocrats rule here, behind the scenes. They don’t want the public to see it; so, the things that I’ve just linked to regarding Russia and Crimea, they have refused to report, and instead demonize Russia and its leader Putin. The public won’t favor this new cold war if they know it’s based instead upon their aristocracy’s grasp for expanding their own empire, at the public’s expense (in money for the military, if nothing else, to use the nation’s armed forces as their personal group’s armed international gang).

But, just because Obama has been lying about the Crimean situation doesn’t necessarily mean that the transfer of Crimea to Russia was in accord with international law. Was it? Obama says it wasn’t.

Crimea is the specific issue on which Obama imposed sanctions against Russia, saying that it was «illegal». He has never even considered, publicly, that Crimea’s breakaway from Ukraine was actually sparked by that coup — his coup. Nor has the Western press discussed any of these things — the actual cause of that breakaway, by Crimea, from Ukraine. (It was, in fact, sparked directly by Obama’s thugs butchering busloads of Crimeans who were escaping from Obama’s Kiev coup. And, here is a quick summary I recently did of that butchery.) However, Obama insists that Crimea must be restored to the Ukrainian government, in order for the sanctions against Russia to end.

This is like George W. Bush’s «Saddam’s WMD» excuse for «regime change», except that Obama’s «regime change» is occurring in Libya (Gaddafi), Syria (Assad), Ukraine (Yanukovych), and other countries that have supported Russia — all aimed ultimately to replace Putin himself. Obama paints Putin as being a modern version of Stalin.

Only Obama’s side has been presented in the West — his Administration’s lies — and the economic sanctions were imposed against Russia on that false basis, and without challenge from the Western press. But is his legal case valid? If the legal case is valid, even though the history of the conflict has been misrepresented, then international law itself would need to be changed. The results of Obama’s lies would then be essentially permanent. (Changing international law would take too long, if it happens at all.) But those results affect the entire world’s future. We’re heading toward a possible nuclear war. So, the legal issue needs also to be accurately understood, in order to see whether there’s any case at all to be made for continuing on this course (toward a nuclear war).

These economic sanctions constitute Obama’s punishment of Russia for that breakaway of Crimea from Ukraine; this is the foundation of the «new cold war», entailing not just the anti-Russia sanctions but all of the military exercises on both sides with tit-for-tat training operations by each side’s military regarding the possible use of nuclear weapons in the event that one side or the other decides to be the first one to pull the nuclear plug.

Where, then, does the legal case stand?

Obama has not publicly provided any legal analysis in order to back-up his view that the breakaway of Crimea from Ukraine was illegal, but Andrei Illarionov of the libertarian billionaire Koch brothers’ Cato Institute has already done that for him, in Illarionov’s — which thus-far is the only — coherent statement regarding why Obama’s view, the West’s view, on this, is legally correct, and why Putin’s view on it is legally wrong.

Illarionov’s 10 November 2014 article, «Annexation of Crimea Is a Litmus Test for Russian Opposition», said that indeed the first among «the crimes that have been committed or are being committed by the Kremlin — stealing Crimea» can be rectified only by terminating Russia as we know it, totally rejecting «Russia’s aggression in Crimea», which, to him, means replacement of the current Russian government by «a free democratic state with the rule of law»: i.e., overthrowing it, in order to establish that very thing, «a free democratic state with the rule of law». (His concept of «democracy» is, however, as you will see here, the opposite of the usual meaning of that term.) His case that today’s Russia has fundamentally violated «the rule of law» in the Crimean instance, and so needs not only sanctions, but much more severe treatment, will now be presented and discussed here:

He said that, «The issue of Crimea’s jurisdiction is within the competence of only one subject of international law — the owner of that territory, namely Ukraine. Only this subject, and no one else, has necessary legal rights to change this territory’s jurisdiction». And, since Ukraine did not sell Crimea to Russia, Russia «stole» it from Ukraine. That’s his argument.

He sees the issue of Crimea as being not an issue of people, but of land: the land-area of Crimea, which Russia «stole» from Ukraine — that Russia stole the land and everything in it, and under it, and on it, including its residents.

According to Illarionov, Crimea’s residents are simply human property there. They belong to Ukraine, no matter what they think, because they reside on Ukraine’s land.

Illarionov’s article doesn’t even so much as discuss whether the 16 March 2014 popular vote of Crimeans, in which 97% voted to rejoin Russia (note: the Soviet Union’s dictator Khrushchev had donated Crimea from Russia, to Ukraine, in 1954, without even asking anyone in Crimea their opinion of the matter — Crimea had been part of Russia for hundreds of years prior to 1954) — whether this vote reflected accurately the public sentiment among Crimeans. It actually did reflect that (which is why Obama can’t argue on that basis — self-determination), but this question is simply ignored by Illarionov.

However, he goes further, to condemn: «bashful populism hiding behind unlimited (non-liberal) democracy. ‘Whatever the majority desires is right.’ People who hold these beliefs might admit that all possible laws and norms have been violated, that a crime has been committed, and even condemn the crime; but if the majority wants the crime’s results to be preserved, they will not do anything to stop it, protect the victim, return what was stolen, [nor] punish the criminal. This is the principle of recognizing the fait accompli resulting from the crime, the principle of subordinating one’s actions to the mob’s instincts». In other words: he condemns «unlimited democracy» and «the mob». (Obama himself has used similar imagery in order to state privately his support of America’s aristocratic crooks, when he told Wall Street’s CEOs who had administered and profited from the MBS and other frauds that had crashed the world’s economy, these men who were assembled together inside the White House, early in his Administration: «My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks [the ‘mob’]… I’m protecting you… I’m going to sheild you from public and congressional anger». And he did.) And, by «non-liberal», Illarionov is using the term for libertarianism that’s used outside the United States: «liberal». He favors only«liberal» «democracy», which he thinks is a «limited» form of «democracy». Whoever rules there, it’s certainly not «the mob», his term for the public. (It’s Obama’s «pitchforks».)

Furthermore, Illarionov goes on to say: «The fact that most of the peninsula’s population are ethnic Russians does not matter either».

In other words: the residents of Crimea should be entirely ignored, he says. Not only the residents’ opinions, but the possible reasons for those opinions, have nothing whatsoever to do with the legality of Crimea’s transfer, he says. Those people live on Ukraine’s land, and so are Ukraine’s property — and Russia stole this property, from Ukraine. The people there are only property.

That’s the only coherent legal theory upon which Obama’s case against the transfer of Crimea back to Russia makes sense.

(This argument of Illarionov would apply equally to Donbass — if valid at all — though Putin has refused to accept the urgings of the residents there that they too be allowed to join Russia. Obama and Ukraine say he’s trying to grab that region, but Putin only wants the people there to be able to protect themselves from the government that’s trying to kill them, and he sends them multi-truckloads of foods and medicines so that they can survive. Those people are therefore establishing their own government, and the question now is whether that government will become accepted as constituting an «oblast» or district within a federal Ukraine. Ukraine so far has rejected that, federalism. But if Ukraine accepts, then the issues will arise of what, if any, property-rights will be restored to Ukraine, in Donbass, by the residents there, and of how those residents can be compensated for the Ukrainian government’s bombing of them — including destruction of their houses and apartments and businesses.)

(All Ukrainians except the U.S.-backing oligarchs have also been suffering enormously from America’s takeover of Ukraine. The pro-Western Razumkov Center’s periodic polling of Ukrainians finds that the latest percentage of them who think Ukraine is going «in a right direction» is 14.3%; the highest score in the past 10 years was 41.3%, in June 2010, right after the man whom Obama overthrew in 2014, Viktor Yanukovych, was elected President in 2010. The second-highest such score was 26.1%, in December 2013, which was their first poll taken after Yanukovych had turned down the EU’s offer, and was when the U.S.-planned coup and its «Maidan» demonstrations were already under way. This is the actual result of Obama’s ‘democracy.’)

Here is how Obama himself phrased his case, to the extent that he has done so at all:

Since Mr. Putin made this decision around Crimea and Ukraine — not because of some grand strategy, but essentially because he was caught off-balance by the protests in the Maidan and Yanukovych then fleeing after we had brokered a deal to transition power in Ukraine — since that time, this improvisation that he’s been doing has getting — has gotten him deeper and deeper into a situation that is a violation of international law, that violates the integrity, territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine, has isolated Russia diplomatically, has made Europe wary of doing business with Russia, has allowed the imposition of sanctions that are crippling Russia’s economy at a time when their oil revenues are dropping. There’s no formula in which this ends up being good for Russia. The annexation of Crimea is a cost, not a benefit, to Russia. The days in which conquest of land somehow was a formula for great nation status is over.

He made this statement on 1 February 2015, only a few months after the 18 September 2014 Scottish referendum on independence had been held, in which not only Britain but most of the world accepted without question the right of the people in a district of a nation to self-determination; but, he didn’t even mention that referendum, and his interviewer, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, failed to ask him about it. (It’s like the U.S. press had failed to challenge George W. Bush’s allegations about «Saddam’s WMD», etc.)

Similarly, Obama said on 3 September 2014 (with links added here by me):

It is a brazen assault on the territorial integrity of Ukraine — a sovereign and independent European nation. It challenges that most basic of principles of our international system — that borders cannot be redrawn at the barrel of a gun; that nations have the right to determine their own future.

By «a sovereign and independent nation», he was referring to the «nation» Ukraine possessing a right to impose whatever type of government it wishes in any region of it that it wishes — and not at all about the rights of the people in Crimea.

At the very start of his sanctions against Russia, Obama said this, on 6 March 2014, as constituting his legal case (and the AP subsequently posted the video of him saying it):

This morning I signed an executive order that authorizes sanctions on individuals and entities responsible for violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, or for stealing the assets of the Ukrainian people… And that includes standing up for the principle of state sovereignty. The proposed referendum on the future of Crimea would violate the Ukrainian constitution and violate international law. Any discussion about the future of Ukraine must include the legitimate government of Ukraine. In 2014, we are well beyond the days when borders can be redrawn over the heads of democratic leaders.

«Stealing the assets of the Ukrainian people» is short-form for Illarionov’s argument, but doesn’t mention what those «assets» consist of. Illarionov honed in on the land; he filled in that detail, which would have seemed too ugly to too many people if the President himself were to have stated it publicly. Few in the public would agree with Obama’s view that property takes precedence over people, so Obama ignored this detail. He didn’t make clear that he was treating «the legitimate government of Ukraine» (which he had actually just installed) as if the people of Crimea were that government’s property, to rule as they wish. Obama’s real mental world is hereditary kings and their subjects — not actually elected heads-of-state and their citizenry, whom no one owns. It’s an imperial world, in Obama’s mind; but he’s smart enough not to say it publicly. He even hypocritically pontificates: «In 2014, we are well beyond the days when borders can be redrawn over the heads of democratic leaders».

But what about «over the heads of democratic voters»? To him, voters in a foreign country don’t even count, so he refers instead to the «leaders» as the ones who possess rights in a foreign country, to decide yea or nay for their — subjects, not citizens. And that’s the point here: Obama cares only about «leaders», not about such mere «pitchforks» (the citizenry). He rejects the fundamental principle of revolution: that the thing separating it from being a coup (regressive instead of progressive) is that it must be bottom-up, not top-down (not «a coup», but instead a type of democratic expression, an authentic representation of the public’s sentiment). He’s in the business of squashing revolutions (the real thing), and of imposing coups (the fake version).

The aristocracy that placed Obama into the White House want only to control the land, and that’s what he is interested in (for examples: oil, gas, minerals, and strategic positions for gas-pipelines etc.). The people can just drop dead, for all he cares, if he’s not in fact (as in Ukraine) sending in trainers and troops to help to kill or otherwise get rid of them. (Refugees here — anybody want to take them? Oh, Russia?) And, like Obama’s competitor in 2012, Mitt Romney said, Russia «is without question our number one geopolitical foe», so, the objective to conquer Russia is clearly bipartisan; the only difference between Obama and Romney is that Obama wasn’t so stupid as to assert a thing like that in public during the general-election phase of a Presidential campaign.

Internationally, too, Obama was hardly alone in his stance favoring property rights over human rights; he actually had the backing of most European leaders. For example, in a 9 February 2015 joint press conference with President Obama, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel said:

One particular priority was given to the conflict between Ukraine and Russia this morning. We stand up for the same principles of inviolability of territorial integrity. For somebody who comes from Europe, I can only say if we give up this principle of territorial integrity of countries, then we will not be able to maintain the peaceful order of Europe that we’ve been able to achieve. This is not just any old point, it’s an essential, a crucial point, and we have to stand by it. And Russia has violated the territorial integrity of Ukraine in two respects: in Crimea, and also in [Donbass, which consists of] Donetsk and Luhansk. So we are called upon now to come up with solutions, but not in the sense of a mediator, but we also stand up for the interests of the European peaceful order.

She, too, was implicitly denying the democratic right of the Scots in UK, and of Catalans and others in Spain, etc., to self-determination — to separate their region into a new and democratic country, if they have come to find terminally unacceptable the country of which they have been and are a part. She, too, was starting from the ideological position that had become internationally popular under Reagan and Thatcher: the view that property rights take precedence over human rights (rather than, as before, being subordinate to human rights).

PUTIN’S SIDE

So: here, then, is Putin’s case on the matter, in aninterview:

English: Exclusive ARD interview with Russian President Putin | Günther Jauch | ARD. 17.Nov.2014 [Jauch of ARD — German public television — interviews Putin regarding Crimea]

[10:55] J: For the West, this was a clear breach of international law.

PUTIN: What’s the question? J

AUCH: The question is, did you underestimate the reaction of the West?

PUTIN: We find this reaction absolutely disproportionate. … When we’re confronted with the accusations that Russia has violated international law, I can hardly feel anything but astonishment. What is international law? First and foremost, it’s the charter of the United Nations. … A vivid and fresh precedent was set in Kosovo. J

A: You mean the judgment of the International Criminal Court, with respect to Kosovo [and here is the link to that], which said that Kosovo had the right to self-determination, and that the people of Kosovo could vote on whether they wanted to have their own state or not?

PUTIN: Exactly so, but there’s more to it than that. The most important thing mentioned there was that in terms of self-determination, people populating a certain area are not obliged to ask the opinion of the central authorities of the state where they are resident. There’s no need to have permission from the central governmental authorities, in order to take the necessary steps to self-determination. This is the most crucial point, and nothing that transpired in Crimea was any different from that which happened in Kosovo. I am deeply convinced that Russia has not violated any international laws. I am very open about this. It’s a fact, and we’ve never concealed it. … Besides, what is democracy? You and I know very well, what does demos mean, it means people. Democracy means the rule by the people. In our case, it’s the people’s right to be independent.

Regarding Putin’s allegation, in the same interview, that the evidence is clear that the Crimean population were «mind-blowing» in their support of joining Russia, that evidence is so conclusive that Washington can’t challenge it, and instead avoids even referring to it; but, here it is. Just click onto the links there, and the links in those articles, and you’ll see the evidence itself: the results of the polls that were taken in Crimea, even by Western polling organizations. Obama’s pretense to being a supporter of democracy is, in a sense, even worse than Hitler’s supporting «The Big Lie» technique, because Hitler at least acknowledged that he despised democracy (which is what Obama, but only in private, contemptuously called «the pitchforks»).

(Please note that, though the Donbass case can’t even be alleged to constitute any attempt by Russia to seize that former region of Ukraine; Putin’s argument, and the ICC’s decision, would apply also in Donbass: self-determination. The only type of case where it would not apply would be one like the U.S. Southern Confederacy in 1860: the breaking-away of a region in order to enable slavery to exist under the law — the type of separatism that’s intended to allow something so blatantly vile that the laws virtually everywhere do not allow it. The ICC’s ruling does not enable any separatism which violates basic human rights. It does not allow, for another example, a separatism which would enable extermination of a people. Nor would it allow a separatism which would legalize husbands raping their wives. The ICC’s ruling instead enforces basic human rights. That’s what it was/is all about.)

(for Part II click here)

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.

The UN General Assembly this year celebrated its 70th anniversary which is why more leaders than usual attended and participated. While the speeches were typical and mostly irrelevant for people already well-informed about world events, there was one particular point to note that made this gathering more telling than most. 

The key sentence in The New York Times’ lead article about Russian airstrikes against Syrian rebel targets fell to the bottom of the story, five paragraphs from the end, where the Times noted in passing that the area north of Homs where the attacks occurred had been the site of an offensive by a coalition “including Nusra Front.”

What the Times didn’t say in that context was that Nusra Front is Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, an omission perhaps explained because this additional information would disrupt the righteous tone of the article, accusing Russia of bad faith in attacking rebel groups other than the Islamic State.

But the Russians had made clear their intent was to engage in airstrikes against the mélange of rebel groups in which Al Qaeda as well as the Islamic State played prominent roles. The Times and the rest of the mainstream U.S. media are just playing games when they pretend otherwise.

Plus, the reality about Syria’s splintered rebel coalition is that it is virtually impossible to distinguish between the few “moderate” rebels and the many Sunni extremists. Indeed, many “moderates,” including some trained and armed by the CIA and Pentagon, have joined with Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front, even turning over U.S. weapons and equipment to this affiliate of the terrorist organization that attacked New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001. Lest we forget it was that event that prompted the direct U.S. military intervention in the Middle East.

However, in recent months, the Israeli government and its American neoconservative allies have been floating trial balloons regarding whether Al Qaeda could be repackaged as Sunni “moderates” and become a de facto U.S. ally in achieving a “regime change” in Syria, ousting President Bashar al-Assad who has been near the top of the Israeli/neocon hit list for years.

A key neocon propaganda theme has been to spin the conspiracy theory that Assad and the Islamic State are somehow in cahoots and thus Al Qaeda represents the lesser evil. Though there is no evidence to support this conspiracy theory, it was even raised by Charlie Rose in his “60 Minutes” interview last Sunday with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The reality is that the Islamic State and Al Qaeda have both been leading the fight to destroy the secular Assad government, which has fought back against both groups.

And, if these two leading terror groups saw a chance to raise their black flags over Damascus, they might well mend their tactical rifts. They would have much to gain by overthrowing Assad’s regime, which is the principal protector of Syria’s Christians, Alawites, Shiites and other “heretics.”

The primary dispute between Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, which began as “Al Qaeda in Iraq,” is when to start a fundamentalist caliphate. The Islamic State believes the caliphate can begin now while Al Qaeda says the priority should be mounting more terrorist attacks against the West.

Yet, if Damascus falls, the two groups could both get a measure of satisfaction: the Islamic State could busy itself beheadings the “heretics” while Al Qaeda could plot dramatic new terror attacks against Western targets, a grim win-win.

One might think that the U.S. government should focus on averting such an eventuality, but the hysterical anti-Russian bias of The New York Times and the rest of the mainstream media means that whatever Putin does must be cast in the most negative light.

The Anti-Putin Frenzy

On Thursday, one CNN anchor ranted about Putin’s air force attacking “our guys,” i.e., CIA-trained rebels, and demanded to know what could be done to stop the Russian attacks. This frenzy was fed by the Times’ article, co-written by neocon national security correspondent Michael R. Gordon, a leading promoter of the Iraq-WMD scam in 2002.

The Times’ article pushed the theme that Russians were attacking the white-hatted “moderate” rebels in violation of Russia’s supposed commitment to fight the Islamic State only. But Putin never restricted his military support for the Assad government to attacks on the Islamic State.

Indeed, even the Times began that part of the story by citing Putin’s quote that Russia was acting “preventatively to fight and destroy militants and terrorists on the territories that they already occupied.” Putin did not limit Russia’s actions to the Islamic State.

But the Times’ article acts as if the phrase “militants and terrorists” could only apply to the Islamic State, writing: “But American officials said the attack was not directed at the Islamic State but at other opposition groups fighting against the [Syrian] government.”

Unless The New York Times no longer believes that Al Qaeda is a terrorist group, the Times’ phrasing doesn’t make sense. Indeed, Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front has emerged as the lead element of the so-called Army of Conquest, a coalition of rebel forces which has been using sophisticated U.S. weaponry including TOW missiles to achieve major advances against the Syrian military around the city of Idlib.

The weaponry most likely comes from U.S. regional allies, since Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and other Sunni-led Gulf states have been supporting Al Qaeda, the Islamic State and other Sunni rebel groups in Syria. This reality was disclosed in a Defense Intelligence Agency report and was blurted out by Vice President Joe Biden.

On Oct. 2, 2014, Biden told an audience at Harvard’s Kennedy School:

“our allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria … the Saudis, the emirates, etc., what were they doing? They were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of military weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad, except the people who were being supplied were Al Nusra and Al Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.” [Quote at 53:20 of clip.]

Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front also has benefited from a de facto alliance with Israel which has taken in wounded Nusra fighters for medical treatment and then returned them to the battlefield around the Golan Heights. Israel also has carried out airstrikes inside Syria in support of Nusra’s advances, including killing Hezbollah and Iranian advisers helping the Syrian government.

The Israeli airstrikes inside Syria, like those conducted by the United States and its allies, are in violation of international law because they do not have the permission of the Syrian government, but those Israeli and U.S. coalition attacks are treated as right and proper by the mainstream U.S. media in contrast to the Russian airstrikes, which are treated as illicit even though they are carried out at the invitation of Syria’s recognized government.

Obama’s Choice

Ultimately, President Barack Obama will have to decide if he wants to cooperate with Russia and Iran in beating back Al Qaeda, the Islamic State and other jihadists – or realign U.S. policy in accord with Israel’s obsession with “regime change” in Syria, even if that means a victory by Al Qaeda. In other words, should the United States come full circle in the Middle East and help Al Qaeda win?

Preferring Al Qaeda over Assad is the Israeli position – embraced by many neocons, too. The priority for the Israeli/neocon strategy has been to seek “regime change” in Syria as a way to counter Iran and its support for Lebanon’s Hezbollah, both part of Shia Islam.

According to this thinking, if Assad, an Alawite, a branch of Shia Islam, can be removed, a new Sunni-dominated regime in Syria would disrupt Hezbollah’s supply lines from Iran and thus free up Israel to act more aggressively against both the Palestinians and Iran.

For instance, if Israel decides to crack down again on the Palestinians or bomb Iran’s nuclear sites, it now has to worry about Hezbollah in southern Lebanon raining down missiles on major Israeli cities. However, if Hezbollah’s source of Iranian missiles gets blocked by a new Sunni regime in Damascus, the worry of Hezbollah attacks would be lessened.

Israel’s preference for Al Qaeda over Assad has been acknowledged by senior Israeli officials for the past two years though never noted in the U.S. mainstream media. In September 2013, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, then a close adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told the Jerusalem Post that Israel favored the Sunni extremists over Assad.

“The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc,” Oren told the Jerusalem Post in an interview. “We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran.” He said this was the case even if the “bad guys” were affiliated with Al Qaeda.

And, in June 2014, then speaking as a former ambassador at an Aspen Institute conference, Oren expanded on his position, saying Israel would even prefer a victory by the brutal Islamic State over continuation of the Iranian-backed Assad in Syria. “From Israel’s perspective, if there’s got to be an evil that’s got to prevail, let the Sunni evil prevail,” Oren said. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Al-Qaeda, Saudi Arabia and Israel.”]

So, that is the choice facing President Obama and the American people. Despite the misleading reporting by The New York Times, CNN and other major U.S. news outlets, the realistic options are quite stark: either work with Russia, Iran and the Syrian military to beat back the Sunni jihadists in Syria (while seeking a power-sharing arrangement in Damascus that includes Assad and some of his U.S.-backed political rivals) — or take the side of Al Qaeda and other Sunni extremists, including the Islamic State, with the goal of removing Assad and hoping that the mythical “moderate” rebels might finally materialize and somehow wrest control of Damascus.

Though I’m told that Obama privately has made the first choice, he is so fearful of the political reaction from neocons and their “liberal interventionist” pals that he feels he must act like a tough guy ridiculing Putin and denouncing Assad.

The danger from this duplicitous approach is that Obama’s penchant for talking out of multiple sides of his mouth might end up touching off a confrontation between nuclear-armed America and nuclear-armed Russia, a crisis that his verbal trickery might not be able to control.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.

Image: A poll released Wednesday by the Coalition for Better Trade shows that a clear majority of voters who can offer an opinion about the proposed TPP say they oppose the deal. (Photo: Citizens Trade Campaign/Twitter)

As trade ministers from around the world continued meeting in Atlanta on Thursday forfinal-stretch negotiations on the corporate-friendly Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), civil society groups demonstrated on the streets in a final salvo against a deal they describe as “a wholesale auction of our rights, our freedoms, and our democracy to multinational corporations who put profits over people.”

High-level officials including Japan’s Economic and Fiscal Policy Minister Akira Amari and New Zealand Prime Minister John Key have warned that if the talks do not wrap up this week, the 12-nation trade agreement could be put on ice for years.”They’re getting close, but we can stop them,” reads the Citizens Trade Campaign’s call-to-action. “If we do, and the Atlanta round fails, many believe the TPP could be knocked off track indefinitely.”

“The window of opportunity to complete [the] TPP is closing so you wouldn’t say it’s impossible to complete the deal if it doesn’t take place in Atlanta, but it does become more difficult,” Key told the Asia Society in New York this week.

Citing such remarks, organizers of Thursday’s demonstration declare: “Very rarely do protests have as much potential for immediate results as this one.”

To coincide with Thursday’s action, activists from SumOfUs.org, MoveOn.org, andActionStation ran a full-page ad in the local alt-weekly Creative Loafing slamming the secretive trade deal.

“In a final effort to strike a TPP deal, companies and governments have once again tried to organize secret closed-door negotiations to lobby against the interests of workers all around the world,”

said Jon Lloyd, campaign director for SumOfUs.

“All the secrecy means we don’t know the gory details of what it contains, but we do know they’re planning attacks on internet freedom, environmental protections, and affordable medication and that is unacceptable.”

In particular, activists in Atlanta are highlighting how the TPP could slash access to affordable medicines. As the Japan Times reports, drug patents, tariffs on automobiles, and market access for dairy products remain among the “thorny issues” for negotiators.

“U.S. negotiators are pushing for the TPP to include 12 years of data protection for life-saving biologics,” wrote Marc Perrone, international president of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), in a letter sent Tuesday to U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman. “This demand puts the profits of big pharmaceutical companies above the health and welfare of every American family and effectively risks lives by delaying access to lower cost generic drugs.”

Perrone continued: “For U.S. negotiators to insist that the TPP protect these high drug prices rather than the hard-working Americans who buy them is completely unacceptable.”

The AARP, which advocates for people 50 and older, chimed in, with senior legislative representative KJ Hertz explaining on Thursday that anti-competitive provisions within the TPP proposal “would extend brand drug patent protections through ‘evergreening’ drug products that provide little to no new value.”

These intellectual property provisions

“also prolong high prescription drug costs for consumers, link approval to market generic or biosimilar drugs to existing patents in a way that protects only brand drugs, and increase data exclusivity periods for biologics that further delays access by other companies to develop generic versions of these extremely high-cost drugs,”

Hertz added.

However, TPP opponents are quick to point out (pdf) that even if a deal is reached this week, Congress will not debate and vote on it until late winter because, as per the Fast Track legislation passed earlier this year, President Barack Obama cannot sign the deal without giving lawmakers 90 days’ notice.

As the New York Times notes, that timeline would put a TPP vote right “in the heat of the states’ presidential nominating contests.”

In a memo to reporters (pdf) circulated late last week, Public Citizen’s Lori Wallach called that scenario a political “nightmare”—at least for the corporate forces pushing the pro-corporate trade pact.

“Ten Presidential candidates have pushed anti-TPP messages in their campaigning, stoking voters’ ire about the pact,” Wallach said. “The political costs of an unpopular ‘yes’ vote for the TPP would increase with every passing week in 2016.”

Meanwhile, a poll released (pdf) Wednesday by the Coalition for Better Trade shows that a clear majority of voters who can offer an opinion about the proposed TPP say they oppose the deal.

“Voters are opposed to TPP, and the Administration and Congress should listen to what they have to say,” said Khristyn Brimmeier, communications director for the group, which is made up of labor, environmental, and public health advocacy organizations.

“Rather than continue to push for a deal based on 25 years of failed policy, the Administration and Congress should heed the public demand for a trade policy that’s transparent rather than one developed in secret and at the hand of global corporations, and one that will keep good jobs at here at home.”

President Obama has ripped a page out of George Orwell’s classic futuristic tome, 1984, in issuing an executive order that directs federal agencies to better manipulate Americans to the will of the government.

They will accomplish this, according to WorldNetDaily, by hiring psychologists who will “experiment and find ways” to achieve manipulation – all in the name of “science.”

“A growing body of evidence demonstrates that behavioral science insights – research findings from fields such as behavioral economics and psychology about how people make decisions and act on them – can be used to design government policies to better serve the American people,”

Obama wrote in an executive order released in mid-September at WhiteHouse.gov.

Pay no attention to your own common sense

The order’s origin comes from a 2013 policy proposal considered by the White House called “Strengthening Federal Capacity for Behavioral Insights”. The new order streamlines applications for federal financial aid as well as automatic retirement payments – two areas where behavioral science lessons applied to government programs have been effective, WND reported.

“[T]o more fully realize the benefits of behavioral insights and deliver better results at a lower cost for the American people, the federal government should design its policies and programs to reflect our best understanding of how people engage with, participate in, use, and respond to those policies and programs,”

Obama wrote, as reported by theWashington Examiner.

The president has never hidden his desire to use the heavy hand of federal authority to employ behavioral control techniques against the American public, a sizable portion of which has routinely opposed his policies on immigration, health care, the military and social spending, to mention but a few. In February 2014, the White House launched a Social and Behavioral Sciences Team, or SBST, and then celebrated its one-year anniversary in this blog post.

“SBST had a successful first year, launching a wide variety of evidence-based pilots with objectives ranging from connecting veterans with employment and educational counseling benefits to helping struggling student borrowers understand their loan repayment options,”

the Obama administration wrote on February 9, 2015.

Now, the team will move forward in pointing out programs that will “most effectively promote public welfare, as appropriate, giving particular consideration to the selection and setting of default options.” The team performs under the guise of the National Science and Technology Council, WND reported.

Welcome to 1984 – in 2015

“It makes sense for us to be able to redesign government so that it can deliver on the functions that the American people are looking for. We should all want a government that’s smarter, quicker, and more responsive to the needs of the American people,” Obama said in 2013.

Who’s not for a redesigned government that is “smarter, quicker and more responsive to the needs of the American people?” It all sounds so good, doesn’t it? In fact, it calls to mind the statement that “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor,” and “Obamacare’s individual mandate is not a tax.” Notice the president never mentions anything about the hiring of psychologists and the role they will play in manipulating Americans’ thought processes and opinions.

If they can brainwash us into thinking that all government policies are good, that Obama and his minions are benevolent and all-knowing, wouldn’t we then also believe that government had suddenly become “smarter, quicker, and more responsive?”

Two people whose research played a central role in the creation of Obama’s initiative and order are Harvard Law School Prof. Cass Sunstein – who once acted as Obama’s “regulatory czar” – and Richard Thaler, a University of Chicago economist, according toThe Daily Caller News Foundation.

“The two behavioral scientists argued in their 2008 book ‘Nudge’ that government policies can be designed in a way that ‘nudges’ citizens toward certain behaviors and choices,” theDaily Caller reported.

Welcome to 1984 – in 2015.

Sources include:

WND.com

WashingtonExaminer

DailyCaller.com

WhiteHouse.gov

On Wednesday the Russian military became active in the fight against ISIS and al-Qaeda in Syria. Pursuant to a request from the Syrian government, Moscow first began deploying military equipment and trainers as well as humanitarian assistance. Then the Russian parliament approved the use of force, and force was indeed used on Wednesday. 

The Obama Administration is not happy about this development.

The US has been bombing Syria for a year without permission from the Syrian government and without a UN Security Council resolution authorizing an attack on a sovereign nation. That means US strikes on Syrian soil are illegal according to international law. However the first US response to the Russian strikes against ISIS in Syria was to condemn the Russian government for not coordinating its strikes with the US.

Unsurprisingly, the US mainstream media once again rushed to carry water for the US administration, with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour pondering whether Russia answering the legitimate Syrian government’s request for assistance would open itself up to war crimes charges! In Amanpour’s world there is no crime in a year of bombing a sovereign state with not even a fig leaf UN resolution to back it up. The only crime is to resist the US empire. No wonder in a world of media austerity, Amanpour is a well-compensated regime propagandist.

Rather than welcoming Russian efforts against ISIS and al-Qaeda, the US claims that unless Russia also focuses on removing the Assad government from power its efforts are “doomed to failure.” The US claims to be concerned that the Russians are attacking the “moderate” Syrian rebels trained by the United States — but even US generals have admitted that group consists of a grand total of four or five individuals. So it’s hard to understand the sudden concern. Each new batch of “moderates” the US churns out seems to defect to al-Qaeda or ISIS within minutes of deployment in Syria.

What is interesting is that the US-led coalition dropping bombs on Syria for the past year has yet to even consider the mounting civilian body count from its attacks. Not a word from the US government about large numbers of civilians it has killed in Syria. Yet there is plenty of evidence that the civilian toll taken by American bombs is exceedingly high. The moment the Russians join the fight against ISIS and al-Qaeda in Syria, however, the US suddenly becomes obsessed with civilian deaths — even as no evidence has arisen aside from suspicious reports from opposition-friendly “human rights” organizations that any civilians have been killed in the first day of Russian strikes.

What “evidence” exists of civilian casualties in the Russian strikes comes from the war machine funded Institute for the Study of War (ISW), headed by Victoria Nuland‘s sister-in-law Kimberly Kagan. ISW’s Genevieve Casagrande — a former dolphin expert who quite frankly does not look like a seasoned foreign policy expert —  claimed to know that Russia’s airstrikes “did not hit ISIS militants and rather resulted in a large number of civilian casualties.” Based on what? Only the unquestioning mainstream media could tell us. But of course they do not.

The bottom line is this: the US is opposing Russia’s attacks on ISIS and al-Qaeda — two branches of the same tree that are a proven threat to the US homeland — because Russia is not also attacking the Assad government, which could never be a threat to the United States.

Who really is protecting us? Obama with his ongoing Assad obsession?

Danger ahead!

ATLANTA, USA, October 2, 2015 — Trade ministers from 12 countries negotiating the gigantic ‘Trans Pacific Partnership’, which will set the economic rules for 40 percent of the world economy, are concluding today a secret meeting to finalise this trade deal which threatens global sustainable development.

Last week, global leaders from around the world committed to implement the UN Sustainable Development Goals, a new plan to address the global challenges of climate change, environmental degradation, poor health, and poverty.

Yet while the UN Goals were announced, secret trade negotiations were underway to advance the Trans Pacific Partnership, or TPP, and threatens to undermine the U.N. goals before they have even begun.

“The TPP would drive a race to the bottom in environmental protection. The TPP chapters on technical barriers to trade will threaten regulators’ access to the tools needed to effectively regulate the roughly 85,000 chemicals in commerce needed to protect human health and our environment,” said Sam Cossar-Gilbert Friends of the Earth International Economic Justice Resisting Neo-Liberalism Coordinator.

“Even very simple consumer sustainability measures like efficiency rating and food labelling on imported goods could be impossible under TPP, because labelling regulation can be deemed a barrier to trade,” he added.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals consist of 17 goals and 169 specific targets.

Several UN goals and targets appear irreconcilable with the TPP trade deal.

They are listed in the background note below and online at http://webiva-downton.s3.amazonaws.com/877/34/5/6511/SDG_TPP_backgrounder.pdf

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT

Bill Waren, Senior Trade Analyst, Friends of the Earth, U.S. +1 202 222 0746 or [email protected]

Sam Cossar-Gilbert, Friends of the Earth International Economic Justice Resisting Neo-Liberalism Coordinator +33 75 09 18 983 or [email protected]

BACKGROUND NOTE

Several UN goals and targets that appear irreconcilable with the TPP trade deal are:

Sustainable Development Goal 13: ‘Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.’

The Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism included in the TPP investment chapter grants foreign investors access to a secret tribunal if they believe actions taken by a government will affect their future profits. This provision is a ticking time-bomb for climate policy, because many government policies needed to address global warming are subject to suits brought before international investment tribunals.

For example, in 2009 Vattenfall, the Swedish energy giant, launched a USD 1.9 billion ISDS case against Germany for its decision to delay a coal fired power station and impose stricter environmental standards. To avoid the potentially massive fine looming under ISDS, the government reached a settlement that involved removing additional environmental requirements, enabling the coal plant to begin operating in 2014. With the highest carbon content among fossil fuels, coal is a profound threat to the climate.

Other TPP chapters like the one covering trade in goods can be the basis for state-to-state suits challenging climate policies. Big fossil fuel companies strongly support the TPP because it would encourage a massive expansion of trade in oil, coal and liquefied natural gas across the Pacific.  Specifically, the TPP would provide them with legal weapons to counter campaigns launched by climate activists to impose regulations and controls on U.S. fossil fuel exports to the region. The TPP would reinforce industry claim that controls on energy exports are illegal under international trade and investment law.

TPP provisions on market access and trade in goods, if modelled on the WTO General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, might unnecessarily chill future legislative action on fossil fuel exports, if the claims of some industry lobbyists are accepted. Some apologists for fossil fuels argue that WTO (GATT) article XI:1 on “General Elimination of Quantitative Restrictions” prohibits restrictions on the export of products including fossil fuels, to another WTO member, other than duties, taxes or other charges.

Also, the TPP would with no doubt accelerate the already alarming surge in the number of international trade disputes related to renewable energy and climate policies, such as the WTO Appellate Body ruling in the Ontario “feed-in tariff” case. In that case Ontario’s comprehensive program to promote renewable energy was successfully challenged under the WTO agreement related to allegedly discriminatory government purchasing policies.

Sustainable Development Target  12.4: ‘By 2020, achieve the environmentally sound management of chemicals and all wastes throughout their life cycle, in accordance with agreed international frameworks, and significantly reduce their release to air, water and soil in order to minimize their adverse impacts on human health and the environment.’

Sustainable Development Target 3.9: ‘By 2030, substantially reduce the number of deaths and illnesses from hazardous chemicals and air, water and soil pollution and contamination.’

It will be difficult to meet sustainable development target 12.4 on environmentally sound management of chemicals with the TPP chapter on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) which promises to thwart higher standards of chemicals regulation.

A growing body of scientific evidence is demonstrating that many chronic illnesses on the rise in the industrialized world are linked to exposure to toxic chemicals, including many cancers, learning disabilities, asthma, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, and fertility problems. The effects on wildlife can be similarly profound. For example, synthetic chemicals are causing infertility in animals, from alligators, to polar bears, to some species of fish.

Global corporations seek to use this TPP chapter to undercut chemical safety standards. The goal of TPP negotiators is to include “TBT-plus” provisions in the TPP that are more restrictive than tough World Trade Organization standards. This call for “TBT-plus” is astounding given that several TBT challenges in the WTO paired with allegations of discrimination under the GATT agreement on Trade in Goods have succeeded in undermining important environmental and public health measures. According to the World Trade Organization, these so-called TBT standards, including those that apply to regulation of dangerous chemicals” “involve significant costs for producers and exporters.”

Sustainable Development Target 12.7: ‘Promote public procurement practices that are sustainable, in accordance with national policies and priorities’

The TPP is also likely to be hard to reconcile with global commitment to act on Sustainable Development Target 12.7. While we do not know the details of the secret TPP text of the Chapter on public procurement, we do know that procurement chapters in free trade agreements generally restrict local purchasing preferences, endangering procurement rules that are intended to foster local production of clean energy are clearly at risk. The award of public contracts would generally have to be based on product cost and performance. This could restrict requirements for products to be made with recycled or organic materials or meet energy efficiency standards.

Sustainable Development Target 2.4: ‘By 2030, ensure sustainable food production systems and implement resilient agricultural practices that increase productivity and production, that help maintain ecosystems, that strengthen capacity for adaptation to climate change, extreme weather, drought, flooding and other disasters and that progressively improve land and soil quality’

The record of past trade agreements strongly suggests that the TPP is likely to increase the volatility of agricultural markets, putting sustainable family farms at risk and increasing corporate control of markets and production practices. Under TPP rules, corporate confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) can be expected to flourish all around the Pacific Rim, at the expense of rural communities whose air and water would be polluted.

It can be further expected that many family farmers will be reduced to working as contractors for global pork and poultry giants who own the animals while the farmer absorbs the production costs and risks. With the TPP, family farmers will suffer; global agribusiness giants will prosper; and the rural environment will be despoiled.

Sustainable Development Target 3.8:  ‘Achieve universal health coverage, including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all’.

The U.S. is making demands in TPP negotiations that would deny the seriously ill access to affordable medicines and strengthen the monopoly pricing power of global pharmaceutical giants, by forcing changes in domestic laws related to patents, use of medical test data, and government purchasing of drugs for public health care programs. Of particular concern are provisions in the latest leaked draft the TPP chapter in intellectual property related to life saving medicines called “biologics.”  Pharmaceutical companies would be granted monopoly pricing power for periods of up to 12 years, even if the drug is not patented.

On Wednesday morning, the Federation Council upper house of parliament granted permission to the Russian president to use the country’s troops in Syria. Kremlin chief of staff Sergey Ivanov said that Russia will use only its Air Force in Syria and it does this on Syrian President Bashar Assad’s request.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Russian Air Force began to conduct air raids against the Islamist rebels of Jabhat Al-Nusra inside the Latakia and Hama Governorates in the western part of Syria.

These provinces would reportedly be the primary target for the Russian Air Force and the Syrian Arab Army. According to scrappy reports, the Russian Air Force targeted that areas of Al-Lataminah, Kafr Zita, the Jabal Al-Zaweed, Kassab, and Deir Hanna. At the moment airstrikes are aimed on the Syrian brench of Al-Qaeda. However, it’s clear that the ISIS positions inside eastern Syria will be targeted in the nearest future.

Complete Transcript below

VIDEO

Meanwhile, the Syrian Arab Army’s Special Forces division known as the “Tiger Forces” have deployed their units to the east Aleppo front to help lift the ISIS’s siege of the Kuweires Military Airport. Lifting the siege from the airport will open additional opportunities of the Syrian Air Force’s usage in the conflict and free forces and facilities which could be used to relieve the situation in the sector.

It’s very possible that Russia will use Iraq’s vast airspace in the nearest future. Iraq is imperative to Russia’s fight against ISIS due to its geographical location. In other cases, Russia’s airstrikes in eastern Syria would be limited because of terrorists’ ability to use Iraq’s wide-open highways.

Earlier, SouthFront: Analysis & Intelligence reported that Russia, Iran, Iraq and Syria have made an agreement to set in Bagdad a joint information center to coordinate their operations against ISIS.

The positioning of Russian aircraft in Syria gives the Kremlin an ability to shape and control the battlespace in both Syria and Iraq out of all proportion to the size of the Russian force. It could impact the U.S. to accept a combined coalition with Russia, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Lebanese Hezbollah in support of operations against ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra.

Separately, the contemporary situation can probably lead to the establishment of a permanent Russian air and naval base in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Help produce more actual and interesting content, join our struggle by donating via PayPal: [email protected] or via: http://southfront.org/donate/

The following article predates the Russian air strikes in Syria. Its original version was published on September 28, 2015. While explaining the nature of Iranian and Russian military ties with Syria, the article posits that if either the Iranians or the Russians increase their military presence in Syria, they would be doing it to preserve regional stability and keep Syria intact. 

A lot of negative words have been said about Moscow’s role in the ongoing Syrian crisis by the US and its allies. Starting from August 2015 these claims took a new turn. Reports about Russian military buildup in Syria began. Unsupported by evidence, these reports continued throughout August and September.

Some of the reports speculated that Russian effort has been coordinated with Iran. These reports were linked to claims that Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Quds Force, had visited Russia to discuss a joint Iranian-Russian strategy in Syria. Other reports claimed that Moscow’s moves were aimed at supporting an exhausted Hezbollah and to even rival Iranian influence in Syria. These reports, however, are nothing more than misleading conjecture.

Iranian and Russian Cooperation

Reports that Iran and Russia are competing against each other for influence in Syria are false. The main objective of both the Iranians and the Russians is to keep Syria intact. Similar to Russian-Chinese cooperation in Eastern Eurasia and Asia-Pacific region, Iran and Russia are collaborating together in the Middle East and the central portion of Eurasia. From the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus to the Levant and the Mediterranean Sea, Tehran and Moscow have been acting as forces of stability.

The cooperation between Russia and Iran is on the rise. A three-day long joint naval drill at the northern Iranian port of Anzaili in the Caspian Sea was conducted in August. During the exercise the Russian warships Volgodonsk and Makhachkala trained with the Iranian warships Damavand, Joshan, and Peika. Before this, the last Russo-Iranian exercises in the Caspian were held in October 2014.

Throughout 2014 and 2015, Iranian and Russian military officials had high-level communication and meetings. For instance, through the meetings between the defense ministers of the Russian Federation and Iran, Sergei Shoigu and Hussein Dehghan, a principal agreement was achieved on delivery of the S-300 system to Iran. While in Moscow for an international security conference, Hussein Dehghan also suggested a need for a joint Eurasian effort by Iran, Russia, China, and India to counterbalance the US and NATO.

Aside from comments by Iranian and Russian officials that Iran is examining a possibility of procurement of Russian passenger jets for Iranian civil aviation needs, there have also been talks about sharing military technology and the joint development of weapons. This includes the joint manufacturing of military jets by Moscow and Tehran. Russia is also going to help Iran develop its own satellite navigation system, which will be linked or based on Russia’s own Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS). GLONASS, like China’s BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, is a rival of Washington’s Global Positioning System (GPS). For its part, Iran is planning on exporting its drone technology to Russia.

Protecting Syria

After being prevented by the US and other NATO members from using their airspace to deliver humanitarian cargo to the Syrians, Russia used an alternative route via Iran and Iraq. Unsupported reports soon began to claim that the government in Damascus was on the verge of collapse. Upping the ante, Washington began sounding the alarm bells about a Russian military buildup in Syria that was very much reminiscent of the previous claims about an Iranian military buildup. What is very telling is that in parallel to these unsubstantiated reports, US, British, and French officials were all calling for Iran and Russia to bring the Syrian government to the negotiating table. What does this say about the situation?

Moreover, both the Russian and Iranian military presences in Syria have been long-standing. Both Tehran and Moscow have military advisers and technicians inside the Syrian Arab Republic. Russia has a naval base in the Mediterranean port of Tartus, while the Iranians have military defense agreements with Syria. All of this is legal and taking place within the framework of international law.

Is there really a Russian or Iranian military intervention in Syria? If either the Iranians or the Russians increase their military presence in Syria, they would be doing it to preserve regional stability. This means not only keeping the Syrian state intact and coming to the aid of a sovereign government defending its people, but also stopping the expansion of groups like Al-Nusra Front, Al-Qaeda, and the misnamed Islamic State – something that the US and its allies have deliberately incubated and fuelled in both Syria and Iraq. If the reports are true that Iran, Syria, Russia, and Iraq are forming an anti-ISIS coalition alongside Lebanon’s Hezbollah (that some Lebanese sources call the 4+1), with the possible inclusion of China, the true intentions of this alliance should be kept in mind.

It never rests, now in high gear following Russia’s announced aerial campaign against ISIS in Syria, beginning on September 30.

For the first time since WW II, Russian and US warplanes are bombing the same country – each for entirely different reasons.

Moscow’s campaign aims to defeat ISIS, eliminate its scourge. Washington actively supports it, striking Syrian targets exclusively, duplicitously claiming otherwise.

The US State and Defense Departments’ lying machine has sprung into action, criticizing Moscow instead of praising its efforts, vital against terrorists ravaging Syria.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter claimed Russian airstrikes are tantamount to “pouring gasoline on the fire.”

“By supporting Assad and seemingly taking on everyone who is fighting Assad, you’re taking on the whole rest of the country of Syria,” he blustered.

That is not our position. At least some parts of the anti-Assad opposition belong in the political transition going forward. That’s why the Russian approach is doomed to fail.

Carter and other administration officials fear it may succeed, undermining Washington’s imperial strategy, a long overdue initiative.

John Kerry suggested Russia isn’t fighting ISIS, instead targeting non-existent moderate rebels. Despite Moscow’s request to clear Syrian airspace to avoid any accidental aerial engagements between US and Russian aircraft, Kerry said so-called “coalition” strikes will continue.

America’s declared war on ISIS is a complete fabrication. Russia’s is the real thing – why Obama administration officials are so alarmed about its justifiable intervention, supporting a regional ally in need, complying fully with international law.

A statement from the “Presidency of the Syrian Arab Republic” said “the sending of Russian air forces was carried out upon a request of the Syrian state conveyed via a letter sent by President Bashar al-Assad to President Vladimir Putin.”

He got unanimous upper house Federation Council authorization to deploy Russian forces abroad and conduct aerial operations in Syria – in full compliance with international law.

During a Wednesday Security Council session on countering terrorism, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem pointedly said

“(t)he UN charter has authorized Security Council the first responsibility for protecting international peace and Security, yet, what has the council done to combat terrorism in Syria and Iraq.”

It’s done nothing to challenge Washington’s war machine with complicit EU and regional partners. It’s financing and arming ISIS as well as other takfiri terrorists, used to “perpetrate the ugliest crimes in Syria and Iraq,” Moallem stressed.

“Those who want to combat terrorism on the Syrian territories should cooperate and coordinate with the Syrian government whose army carries on the war against terrorism and assumes its national duty in defending the Syrian people,” he added.

Sergey Lavrov told reporters: “Do not listen to the Pentagon (propaganda) about Russian (air) strikes. Ask the Russian Defense Ministry.” Full information was made public.

Moscow stepped up to the plate and acted, countering US-sponsored aggression, actively supported by Israel, Britain, France, Canada and Australia, along with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, other Gulf states and Jordan.

Moallem thanked Vladimir Putin for providing vitally needed help. Whether it’s enough to be a game-changer remains to be seen.

It’s only day two of operations. On day one, Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said: “Today, Russian aerospace force jets delivered pinpoint strikes on eight ISIS terror group targets in Syria. In total, 20 flights were made.”

As a result, arms and fuel depots and military equipment were hit. ISIS coordination centers in the mountains were totally destroyed. Russian jets did not use weapons on civilian infrastructure or in its vicinity.

Strikes followed air surveillance intelligence enabling Russia’s Defense Ministry to choose targets for successfully conducted pinpoint strikes. Areas around Homs and Hama were hit.

Russia’s Defense Ministry categorically denied accusations of causing civilian casualties – fabricated to vilify Moscow’s legitimate attacks on ISIS targets.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said “(i)t’s all an information attack, a war, of which we’ve heard so many times” before.

She expressed surprise about the scale and speed of social media “info injections,” including fake “photos of alleged victims.”

We all know perfectly well how such pictures are made,” she said. Billionaire George Soros is  notoriously anti-Russian. His White Helmets group claims phony humanitarian credentials.

It’s an instrument for imperial propaganda – its elements caught red-handed fabricating so-called evidence of Russia’s “disastrous” involvement in Syria.

Its photo of a bleeding girl posted on Twitter was propaganda misinformation – along with saying “Russia strike in Homs today. 33 civilians killed including 3 children and 1 @SyriaCivilDef volunteer.

False!! It never happened. The girl shown was wounded on September 25 – five days before Russia’s air campaign began. No evidence of civilian casualties exists.

The phony Twitter posting appeared hours before Wednesday’s bombing began – reminiscent of the BBC reporting on World Trade Center building 7 collapsing on 9/11 30 minutes before it happened.

The White Helmets (formerly called the Syria Civil Defense) was externally created – serving imperial and monied interests, not the Syrian people as claimed.

It actively backs takfiri terrorist groups, committing horrific atrocities where they’re deployed – part of America’s war OF terror on humanity, a scourge vital to challenge.

The Western media lying machine is in high gear, speaking with one voice, irresponsibly bashing Russia’s campaign to defeat ISIS in Syria – perhaps next in Iraq if its government requests badly needed help.

A typical New York Times propaganda piece headlined “Russians Strike Targets in Syria, but Not ISIS.” The source: US officials, notorious liars.

Other Western media repeated the same Big Lie. The Washington Post called Russia’s campaign “an unpredictable new element…a dramatic escalation of Russia’s military involvement…an affront” to Obama…”sharply increas(ing) tensions…US official dispute Moscow’s claim” about targeting ISIS – despite no evidence disputing Russia’s Defense Ministry account of yesterday’s actions.

The Wall Street Journal headlined “Russian Airstrikes in Syria Targeted CIA-Backed Rebels, US Officials Say.” So-called “rebels” are ISIS and other takfiri terrorists.

No moderate elements exist, at least not enough to matter. US Central Command General Lloyd Austin admitted a $500 million Pentagon program trained only “four or five” so-called “rebels.”

Other US-trained Division 30 fighters reportedly handed their weapons and equipment to al-Nusra terrorists immediately on entering Syria.

Other Western Media Russia bashing included the Chicago Tribune headlining

“US warns Russia against striking non-Islamic State groups in Syria.”

The Los Angeles Times headlined

“Russia launches airstrikes in Syria amid US concern about targets.”

The UK government’s owned and operated BBC asked whether Russia is “trying to destroy IS or…prop up President Assad? Falsely claiming Wednesday targets struck had “no (IS) presence.”

London’s Guardian highlighted Pentagon propaganda, accusing Russia of

“throwing gasoline on the fire…(a strategy) doomed to failure.”

CNN asked

“(w)hat are Russia’s intentions. US questions whether Russia is trying to hit ISIS.”

Fox News headlined

“CIA-backed rebels, civilians reportedly targeted by Russian airstrikes in Syria.”

Western media reports on all major domestic and geopolitical issues feature all rubbish all the time – an insult to news consumers wanting real information, not state-sponsored propaganda.

Moscow’s involvement in Syria represents the first serious challenge to Washington’s regional hegemonic agenda.

Anti-Russian propaganda doesn’t change facts on the ground. ISIS now faces a formidable adversary. So do lunatics in Washington.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

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

Information on casualties among civilians appeared in Western media before Russian arcraft left ground, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday.

Now that Russia has officially begun conducting airstrikes on anti-regime forces operating in Syria, commentators, pundits, and analysts around the world will be keen to compare and contrast the results of Moscow’s efforts with the year-old US-led air campaign against ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq.

Clearly, Russia has a very real incentive to ensure that its airstrikes are effective.

Preserving the global balance of power means preserving the Assad regime and, by extension, ensuring that Iran maintains its regional influence.

On the other hand, the US and its regional allies actually have an incentive to ensure that their airstrikes are minimally effective. That is, for the US, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, the idea is not to kill Frankenstein, but rather to ensure that he doesn’t escape the lab.

As we documented earlier today, Russia wasted no time launching strikes against anti-regime targets once the country’s lawmakers gave the official go-ahead and the West wasted no time accusing Russia of breaking protocol by targeting “modetrate” Syrian rebels (like al-Qeada) that aren’t aligned with ISIS.

It’s against that backdrop that we present the following footage released by the Russain Ministry of Defense which depicts the opening salvo in The Kremlin’s battle against terrorism in the Middle East (note the vehicle traveling towards the compound at a particularly inopportune time towards the end).

And predictably, Western media reports regarding civilian casualties and Russia’s alleged targeting of “moderate” rebels (as opposed to ISIS) were countered by Moscow’s sharp-tongued spokeswoman and US foreign policy critic extraordinaire Maria Zakharova.

Via RT:

Russia has struck eight Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) targets in Syria, the country’s Defense Ministry said, adding that “civilian infrastructure” was avoided during the operations.

“Today, Russian aerospace force jets delivered pinpoint strikes on eight ISIS terror group targets in Syria. In total, 20 flights were made,” spokesperson for the Russian Defense Ministry, Igor Konashenkov, said. 

“As a result, arms and fuel depots and military equipment were hit. ISIS coordination centers in the mountains were totally destroyed,” he added.

Konashenkov said that all the flights took place after air surveillance and careful verification of the data provided by the Syrian military. He stressed that Russian jets did not target any civilian infrastructure and avoided these territories.

“Russian jets did not use weapons on civilian infrastructure or in its vicinity,” he said.

Reuters reported that Russia targeted opposition rebel groups in Homs province instead of Islamic State forces. The agency cited Syrian opposition chief Khaled Khoja, who put the death toll of the bombardment at 36 civilians.

“Russia is intending not to fight ISIL [Islamic State], but to prolong the life of [Syrian President Bashar] Assad,” Khoja said.

Similar claims were made by the BBC, Fox News, Al Jazeera and numerous other news outlets.

Moscow harshly criticized the reports, labeling them an information war.

“Russia didn’t even begin its operation against Islamic State… Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov didn’t even utter his first words at the UN Security Council, but numerous reports already emerged in the media that civilians are dying as a result of the Russian operation and that it’s aimed at democratic forces in the country (Syria),” Maria Zakharova, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, told media. 

“It’s all an information attack, a war, of which we’ve heard so many times,” she added.

Zakharova also said that she was amazed by the scale and speed of what she called “info injections” into social networks such as “photos of alleged victims” that appeared on the web as soon as the Russian operation began.

“What can I say? We all know perfectly how such pictures are made,” she said, remembering a Hollywood flick ‘Wag the Dog,’ which described the US media reporting on a fake war in Albania.

For those who missed it, see here for our assessment of the Western media’s take on the first round of Russian airstrikes (and by the way we, like Maria, were surprised at how quickly the propaganda machine kicked into high gear). Here is the bottom line:

The bottom line going forward is that the US and its regional and European allies are going to have to decide whether they want to be on the right side of history here or not, and as we’ve been careful to explain, no one is arguing that Bashar al-Assad is the most benevolent leader in the history of statecraft but it has now gotten to the point where Western media outlets are describing al-Qaeda as “moderate” in a last ditch effort to explain away Washington’s unwillingness to join Russia in stabilizing Syria. This is a foreign policy mistake of epic proportions on the part of the US and the sooner the West concedes that and moves to correct it by admitting that none of the groups the CIA, the Pentagon, and Washington’s Mid-East allies have trained and supported represent a viable alternative to the Assad regime, the sooner Syria will cease to be the chessboard du jour for a global proxy war that’s left hundreds of thousands of innocent people dead.

Self-defense forces from Donetsk in eastern Ukraine have handed over the remaining debris from the MH17 crash to experts from the Netherlands. The Dutch Safety Board were unaware fragments of the plane were still in Donetsk until an RT documentary aired.
TrendsMalaysia MH17 plane crash

“Today, we have handed over to the Dutch 576 fragments of the Malaysian Boeing, which were unearthed in the villages of Grabovo and Rassypnoe [where flight MH17 crashed in July 2014],” Marina Pozhidaeva from Donetsk local authorities told Interfax.

The pieces of wreckage were surrendered to the investigating team in the presence of OSCE representative.

“We hope that the delivered fragments will be considered during the investigation …and thus help to establish the true culprits behind this tragedy,” Pozhidaeva added.

The Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was downed in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 people on board, mostly Dutch nationals.

READ MORE: Dutch Safety Board asks for RT’s assistance in MH17 probe after documentary

The Dutch Safety Board, which is leading the investigation into the crash, had no knowledge of the fragments until an RT documentary titled “MH17: A year without truth” was broadcast in July 2015.

The film showed fragments of the crashed Boeing and pieces of luggage still scattered in the area at the time of filming. The RTD crew collected the parts of the plane’s exterior they spotted, and took them to authorities in the nearby town of Petropavlovsk.

Following the release of the film, Dutch Safety Board spokesperson Sara Vernooij contacted RT.

“With great interest we watched your documentary, ‘MH17: A year without truth,’” she wrote to RT. “In this film, RT shows parts of the cockpit roof which were found near Petropavlivka. We would like to gather those pieces and bring them over to the Netherlands so the Dutch Safety Board can use them for the investigation and the reconstruction.”

In the documentary, the RTD team talked to witnesses, experts and family members of flight MH17 passengers in a bid to understand whether the truth of what caused the tragedy will ever be established.

Though it’s been more than 15 months since the crash, no definitive answer on who downed the plane has been released yet.

So far the Dutch team’s preliminary report only states that the plane broke up in the air after structural damage caused by high-energy objects penetrating the aircraft from outside.

However, Kiev and Western powers have already ‘found’ their own culprit without providing any solid evidence – Russia and local self-defense forces in eastern Ukraine.

READ MORE: MH17 probe not truly independent and intl tribunal aimed at hiding its ineffectiveness – Lavrov

Moscow has repeatedly called for more transparency in the ongoing investigation of the MH17 incident by the Dutch authorities. The Dutch Safety Board’s final report is due to be presented on October 13.

This August, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov once again said there are a lot of questions regarding the MH17 investigation, adding it is “not independent, not comprehensive and not truly international.

“The representative of the Russian Civil Aviation Organization is participating in these procedures, but the information we receive through this representative is not complete. We are being given less information than those who started the investigation,” Lavrov said during a visit to the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur.

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A lot has happened in the last few hours. Putin spoke at the UN, the Russian Parliament has approved the use of Russian military forces in Syria and Sergei Ivanov has given the Russian media a detailed explanation for the reasons which made the Kremlin request such an authorization. The picture has finally become much clearer.

What will not happen:

There will be no “Most Anticipated Showdown in Recent History”: no Russian ground operation, no Russian imposition of a no-fly zone (especially not against the US or its allies!), no MiG-31s, no Russian Airborne Forces, no Russian tanks on the frontlines, no Russian SSBN (nuclear weapons carrying) submarines and probably no significant Russians military presence around Damascus. In fact, there will be no Russian unilateral military operation of any kind. All that nonsense can now finally be put to rest.

What will happen:

The Russian military operation will be legal on all levels: the Russians have received a formal request for military assistance from the Syrian government, the Russian Parliament has given its authorization, and Russia will seek a UN Security Council authorization. The Russian military operation will be officially limited to air operations including bombings and close air support. The main hub of the Russian operation will be in Latakia. Crucially, Russia will act as a part of a broad coalition.

It would be a mistake to focus primarily on what will happen next. I would argue that what has already happened is far more significant.

What has already happened:

Putin has basically forced the USA to accept the Russian plan. Kerry has told CNN that the US policy for Syria will be “adjusted” – in other words the US is giving up on the notion of ousting Assad, officially temporarily. NATO has declared that it would welcome a positive role for Russia in Syria. The Pentagon has followed the Israeli example and has decided to open a special communications channel to coordinate Russian and US operations. Considering the above, I suppose that the US will give its Bulgarian colony the order to stop closing its airspace to Russian aircraft.

Finally, I will make some guesses as to what might happen next.

What might also happen:

First, I would not be surprised if the Russians did declare that it was their standard operating procedure to protect their military installations with air defense systems. And then would finally bring in their S-300s (I am aware of rumors that the S-300s are already there, but I have seen no confirmation so far). I would expect the Israelis to feel particularly miserable about that, and I would not be surprised if the Russians offered guarantees that these systems would remain exclusively under Russian control. What is already certain is that Netanyahu did fly to Moscow to address issues at least of Russian-Israeli “non-interference,” if not “cooperation.” I would add here that Moscow has no hostile plans towards Israel whatsoever and that, by all accounts, the Russians and Israeli officials get along famously, if only because both sides are smart and pragmatists (they don’t need a love fest, they need responsible behavior).

Second, the official Russian military presence in Syria will give the Russians the perfect cover for all sorts of covert efforts including the delivery of equipment, joint intelligence operations and even direct action missions. I don’t think that this will be a major part of the Russian effort, but now the option is definitely here.

Third, and this is admittedly 100% my own speculations, I believe that the entire Russian military effort will be a cover for something else: a larger Iranian and Hezbollah involvement. Why? For one thing, there is only that much any air operation can achieve. There is no reason to assume that a very small Russian Air Force contingent will significantly change the course of the war. The total failure of the NATO airforces over Kosovo has proven that air operations are, by themselves, of very limited capability, and, unlike NATO in Kosovo, Russia will send a rather small contingent of aircraft. However, the presence of the Russian Air Force in the Syrian skies could conveniently “explain away” any sudden military reversals for Daesh, especially if the real reason for such reversals would be a beefed up Iranian intervention. Again, I have absolutely no information confirming any of that, but I personally expect a sharp rise in the Iranian and Hezbollah efforts to push back Daesh.

Evaluation:

In purely military terms this is a rather minor development. Yes, the Syrian Air Force badly needs some modernization (the fact that they are using helicopter-dropped 500kg barrel bombs is a proof that they don’t have enough aircraft to deliver guided or even unguided 500kg aerial bombs) and the Russians will be bringing some very capable aircraft (SU-24s and SU-25s for sure, and in some specific cases they could even use Tu-22M3s and SU-34s). But this will not be a game changer. Politically, however, this marks yet another triumph for Vladimir Putin, who has forced the US Empire to renounce its plans to overthrow Assad. Because—and make no mistake here—the Russians are now there to stay: a limited Russian military presence will now turn into a major Russian political commitment. Furthermore, not only will Tartus continue to serve a fairly limited but not irrelevant role for the Russian Navy, the airbase in Latakia will become a hub of Russian military operations and, in effect, a forward operating base for the Black Sea Fleet.

Conclusion: a game changer after all?

Yes. But not because of the Russian military move. Consider this: for the United States the main purpose of Daesh was to overthrow Assad. Now that the US is declaring that they “don’t plan to arm the Syrian rebels at the moment” and that Assad will not be overthrown, the utility of Daesh to the Anglo-Zionist Empire has just taken a major hit. If the Empire decides that Daesh has outlived its utility and that it has now turned into a liability, then the days of Daesh are numbered.

Of course, I am under no illusions about any real change of heart in the imperial “deep state”. What we see now is just a tactical adaptation to a situation which the US could not control, not a deep strategic shift. The rabid russophobes in the West are still out there (albeit some have left in disgust) and they will now have the chance to blame Russia for anything and everything in Syria, especially if something goes really wrong.

Yes, Putin has just won another major victory against the Empire (where are those who claimed that Russia had “sold out” Syria?!), but now Russia will have to manage this potentially “dangerous victory”.

This week’s Labour conference sent the party and its new leader, Jeremy Corbyn, soaring in popularity. So better get the knife in quick, writes Oliver Tickell. His refusal to commit mass murder in a nuclear attack gave his enemies just the cue they needed – including those who should be his loyal allies. We must not let them succeed.

Jeremy Corbyn’s first Labour Conference as party leader and Leader of the Opposition was looking like an overwhelming success – the best in many years.

Delegates were inspired by his speech, rapturous in their applause, and reassured by the calm ‘bank manager’ image projected by the shadow Chancellor John McDonnell.

Even more important, opinion polls were showing that Corbyn popularity in the country was on the rise. In a Sky poll, more than half thought he would make a credible prime minister, 66% liked his leadership style, and 59% felt more likely to vote Labour in a General Election. Disaster!

Disaster, that is, for his enemies who are determined to bring him down. RememberChurchill’s political saw: ‘the other side are your opponents. Your enemies are sitting behind you.’

And so it proved to be. Labour mayoral candidate for London Sadiq Khan kicked it off on the BBC’s Today programme by stubbornly refusing to find anything positive to say about Corbyn’s leadership when pressed to do so. Condemnation, not by faint praise but by a total absence of praise of any kind.

But the real attack kicked off last night after an interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.

‘I will not commit mass murder of innocent millions’ – Shock Horror!

Asked about nuclear weapons, Corbyn had nothing terribly surprising to say. After all we all know he is against nuclear weapons, and would not renew the UK’s Trident nuclear missile system. That’s the basis on which he was elected party leader.

LC: “Would you ever push the nuclear button if you were prime minister?”

JC: “I am opposed to nucler weapons, I am opposed to the holding and usage of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are the ultimate weapons of mass destruction that can only kill millions of civilians if ever used. I am totally and morally opposed to nuclear weapons. I do not see them as a defence and do not see the use of them as a credible way to do things”

LC: “So yes or no you would never push the nuclear button?”

JC: “I have told you perfectly clearly its immoral to have or use nuclear weapons, I have made that clear all my life.”

LK: “But Jeremy Corbyn do you acknowledge there is a risk that you would put your own principles before the protection of this country?”

JC: “It looks to the voters I hope that I am someone who is absolutely committed to the spread of international law, spreading international human rights, bringing a nuclear free world nearer.”

LK: “And that is more important to you than the protection of this country? Some voters might think that.”

JC: “We are not under threat from any nuclear power. We are under threat from instability, yes, there is a terrorist issue around the world. Listen, the nuclear weapons that the United States hold, all the hundreds if not thousands of warheads they’ve got , were no help to them on 9/11.”

In other BBC interviews he referred to the UK’s legal duties to pursue nuclear disarmanent under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, adding: “I want to see a nuclear-free world. I believe it is possible. I do not think we should be renewing Trident … I think we should be promoting an international nuclear weapons convention which would lead to a nuclear-free world.

There are five declared nuclear weapon states in the world. There are three others that have nuclear weapons. That is eight countries out of 192; 187 countries do not feel the need to have nuclear weapons to protect their security. Why should those five need them to protect their security? We are not in the cold war any more.

“I don’t think we should be spending £100bn on renewing Trident. That is a quarter of our defence budget. There are many in the military that do not want Trident renewed because they see it as an obsolete thing thing they don’t need. They would much rather see it spent on conventional weapons.

And as he pointed in his own speech to the conference, this is the position that he took in the leadership election, and on which he was elected with a massive popular mandate.

The snakes come out of their holes

It was only to be expected that Corbyn’s anti-nuclear weapons stance would arouse widespread indignation in the UK’s predominantly right wing media. More shocking is the fact that it was also roundly denounced by members of his own shadow cabinet.

Lining up to condemn Corbyn’s position on nuclear weapons were shadow defence secretary Maria Eagle, shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn, shadow home secretary Andy Burnham, and shadow justice secretary Lord Falconer.

In the face of this open rebellion Corbyn stuck to his principles – but said that he would beprepared to live with a Labour Party decision to renew Trident.

So what was going on? The apparently coordinated rush to condemn in belligerent terms by those who should be Corbyn’s loyal political allies makes the truth clear. This was no mere disagreement among colleagues to be debated in a reasoned manner as part of Labour’s policy making process.

This was, rather, a deliberate, coordinated, pre-emptive attack, an attempt to weaken, undermine and destabilise Labour’s most popular party leader in a generation, elected with an overwhelming mandate.

Corbyn’s principled refusal to make himself a mass murderer and war criminal is legally, strategically and militarily correct, and in accordance with the UK’s international treaty obligations to pursue nuclear disarmament. We should give him our unconditional support in his quest for a nuclear-free world.

And we must not let them get away with it!

Petition: ‘Support Jeremy Corbyn: No to nuclear weapons! No to Trident!‘

Action:

• Contact the Labour Party to tell them of your position, and your disgust at the disloyal attacks on Corbyn from within his own party and shadow cabinet.
• Contact your Labour MP (if applicable) calling on them to give Corbyn their full support. Especially if your MP is Andy Burnham, Angela Eagle or Hilary Benn”

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

Russia started its air campaign against ISIL in Syria, following a request for assistance from Damascus in the fight against terrorism.

Soon after the first Russian strikes in Syria some media outlets were quick to come up with reports claiming that the Moscow-led campaign already resulted in civilian deaths.  

Meanwhile, the Kremlin refuted the rumors of Russian airstrikes hitting non-terrorist infrastructure in Syria as groundless, emphasizing that there has been no verified information of such activity.

Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konoshenkov told reporters on Wednesday that Moscow had carried out 20 airstrikes solely against the Islamic State on the first day of its air campaign. He also underlined that the Russian jets did not hit any civilian infrastructure or areas nearby – as was alleged earlier by some media.

Professor Michel Chossudovsky, director of the Canadian Centre for Research on Globalization, spoke to Sputnik in an exclusive interview about how Russia is helping Syria in the fight against the US-supported terror groups in Syria.

AUDIO

“First of all it is important to underline the fact that all these terrorist organizations are supported by US intelligence. In fact the mainstream media now has acknowledged that these rebels are supported by the CIA. The Wall Street Journal says Russian airstrikes in Syria targeted CIA-backed rebels.”“These rebels are terrorists including the al-Nusra Front. What I think is at stake here is that the Russian air force is now waging targeted attacks directed against al-Nusra in coordination with the Syrian government and what the US is saying is that in a way Russia is going after America’s good-guy terrorists rather than the bad-guy terrorist. They are making a distinction between ISIL and other terrorist organizations, all of which are covertly supported by the US,” Chossudovsky told Sputnik.

He went on to say that Russia is targeting the foot soldiers of the western military alliance, “Basically the mercenaries that have been recruited right from the beginning by NATO, the Turkish High Command with the complicity of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel.”Chossudovsky reminded that in early 2012 Washington categorized al-Nusra as a terrorist organization but now it is supporting al-Nusra front officially.

“Western media is contradicting itself but it is also acknowledging candidly that the CIA is supporting the al-Qaeda affiliated groups inside Syria.”

Talking about the Russian airstrikes in Syria, the expert said, “It is ironic that the United States and its allies including Britain, France and Canada have been bombing Syria and Iraq for over a year and we are talking about several thousand strikes and there is ample evidence, not from Western media, that these strikes were not directed towards the terrorist targets but were directed towards civilian infrastructure.”

He said that Russia is involved in a very precise bombing exercise rather than carpet bombing the country as United States has done, the media is now accusing them of targeting civilians. It is a double discourse with no proof of it. Chossudovsky added that the US has been bombing Syria without the authority of the sovereign government and in violation of international law.

 70th session of the UN General Assembly

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: 

Mr. President,

Mr. Secretary General,

Distinguished heads of state and government,

Ladies and gentlemen,

The 70th anniversary of the United Nations is a good occasion to both take stock of history and talk about our common future. In 1945, the countries that defeated Nazism joined their efforts to lay a solid foundation for the postwar world order. Let me remind you that key decisions on the principles defining interaction between states, as well as the decision to establish the UN, were made in our country, at the Yalta Conference of the leaders of the anti-Hitler coalition.

The Yalta system was truly born in travail. It was born at the cost of tens of millions of lives and two world wars that swept through the planet in the 20th century. Let’s be fair: it helped humankind pass through turbulent, and at times dramatic, events of the last seven decades. It saved the world from large-scale upheavals.

The United Nations is unique in terms of legitimacy, representation and universality. True, the UN has been criticized lately for being inefficient or for the fact that decision-making on fundamental issues stalls due to insurmountable differences, especially among Security Council members.

However, I’d like to point out that there have always been differences in the UN throughout the 70 years of its history, and that the veto right has been regularly used by the United States, the United Kingdom, France, China and the Soviet Union, and later Russia. It is only natural for such a diverse and representative organization. When the UN was first established, nobody expected that there would always be unanimity. The mission of the organization is to seek and reach compromises, and its strength comes from taking different views and opinions into consideration. The decisions debated within the UN are either taken in the form of resolutions or not. As diplomats say, they either pass or they don’t. Any action taken by circumventing this procedure is illegitimate and constitutes a violation of the UN Charter and contemporary international law.

We all know that after the end of the Cold War the world was left with one center of dominance, and those who found themselves at the top of the pyramid were tempted to think that, since they are so powerful and exceptional, they know best what needs to be done and thus they don’t need to reckon with the UN, which, instead of rubber-stamping the decisions they need, often stands in their way.

70th session of the UN General Assembly.

That’s why they say that the UN has run its course and is now obsolete and outdated. Of course, the world changes, and the UN should also undergo natural transformation. Russia is ready to work together with its partners to develop the UN further on the basis of a broad consensus, but we consider any attempts to undermine the legitimacy of the United Nations as extremely dangerous. They may result in the collapse of the entire architecture of international relations, and then indeed there will be no rules left except for the rule of force. The world will be dominated by selfishness rather than collective effort, by dictate rather than equality and liberty, and instead of truly independent states we will have protectorates controlled from outside.

What is the meaning of state sovereignty, the term which has been mentioned by our colleagues here? It basically means freedom, every person and every state being free to choose their future.

By the way, this brings us to the issue of the so-called legitimacy of state authorities. You shouldn’t play with words and manipulate them. In international law, international affairs, every term has to be clearly defined, transparent and interpreted the same way by one and all.

We are all different, and we should respect that. Nations shouldn’t be forced to all conform to the same development model that somebody has declared the only appropriate one.

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

It seems, however, that instead of learning from other people’s mistakes, some prefer to repeat them and continue to export revolutions, only now these are “democratic” revolutions. Just look at the situation in the Middle East and Northern Africa already mentioned by the previous speaker. Of course, political and social problems have been piling up for a long time in this region, and people there wanted change. But what was the actual outcome? Instead of bringing about reforms, aggressive intervention rashly destroyed government institutions and the local way of life. Instead of democracy and progress, there is now violence, poverty, social disasters and total disregard for human rights, including even the right to life.

I’m urged to ask those who created this situation: do you at least realize now what you’ve done? But I’m afraid that this question will remain unanswered, because they have never abandoned their policy, which is based on arrogance, exceptionalism and impunity.

Power vacuum in some countries in the Middle East and Northern Africa obviously resulted in the emergence of areas of anarchy, which were quickly filled with extremists and terrorists. The so-called Islamic State has tens of thousands of militants fighting for it, including former Iraqi soldiers who were left on the street after the 2003 invasion. Many recruits come from Libya whose statehood was destroyed as a result of a gross violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1973. And now radical groups are joined by members of the so-called “moderate” Syrian opposition backed by the West. They get weapons and training, and then they defect and join the so-called Islamic State.

In fact, the Islamic State itself did not come out of nowhere. It was initially developed as a weapon against undesirable secular regimes. Having established control over parts of Syria and Iraq, Islamic State now aggressively expands into other regions. It seeks dominance in the Muslim world and beyond. Their plans go further.

70th session of the UN General Assembly.

The situation is extremely dangerous. In these circumstances, it is hypocritical and irresponsible to make declarations about the threat of terrorism and at the same time turn a blind eye to the channels used to finance and support terrorists, including revenues from drug trafficking, the illegal oil trade and the arms trade.

It is equally irresponsible to manipulate extremist groups and use them to achieve your political goals, hoping that later you’ll find a way to get rid of them or somehow eliminate them.

I’d like to tell those who engage in this: Gentlemen, the people you are dealing with are cruel but they are not dumb. They are as smart as you are. So, it’s a big question: who’s playing who here? The recent incident where the most “moderate” opposition group handed over their weapons to terrorists is a vivid example of that.

We consider that any attempts to flirt with terrorists, let alone arm them, are short-sighted and extremely dangerous. This may make the global terrorist threat much worse, spreading it to new regions around the globe, especially since there are fighters from many different countries, including European ones, gaining combat experience with Islamic State. Unfortunately, Russia is no exception.

Now that those thugs have tasted blood, we can’t allow them to return home and continue with their criminal activities. Nobody wants that, right?

Russia has consistently opposed terrorism in all its forms. Today, we provide military-technical assistance to Iraq, Syria and other regional countries fighting terrorist groups. We think it’s a big mistake to refuse to cooperate with the Syrian authorities and government forces who valiantly fight terrorists on the ground.

We should finally admit that President Assad’s government forces and the Kurdish militia are the only forces really fighting terrorists in Syria. Yes, we are aware of all the problems and conflicts in the region, but we definitely have to consider the actual situation on the ground.

Dear colleagues, I must note that such an honest and frank approach on Russia’s part has been recently used as a pretext for accusing it of its growing ambitions — as if those who say that have no ambitions at all. However, it is not about Russia’s ambitions, dear colleagues, but about the recognition of the fact that we can no longer tolerate the current state of affairs in the world.

What we actually propose is to be guided by common values and common interests rather than by ambitions. Relying on international law, we must join efforts to address the problems that all of us are facing, and create a genuinely broad international coalition against terrorism. Similar to the anti-Hitler coalition, it could unite a broad range of parties willing to stand firm against those who, just like the Nazis, sow evil and hatred of humankind. And of course, Muslim nations should play a key role in such a coalition, since Islamic State not only poses a direct threat to them, but also tarnishes one of the greatest world religions with its atrocities. The ideologues of these extremists make a mockery of Islam and subvert its true humanist values.

I would also like to address Muslim spiritual leaders: Your authority and your guidance are of great importance right now. It is essential to prevent people targeted for recruitment by extremists from making hasty decisions, and those who have already been deceived and, due to various circumstances, found themselves among terrorists, must be assisted in finding a way back to normal life, laying down arms and putting an end to fratricide.

70th session of the UN General Assembly.

In the days to come, Russia, as the current President of the UN Security Council, will convene a ministerial meeting to carry out a comprehensive analysis of the threats in the Middle East. First of all, we propose exploring opportunities for adopting a resolution that would serve to coordinate the efforts of all parties that oppose Islamic State and other terrorist groups. Once again, such coordination should be based upon the principles of the UN Charter.

We hope that the international community will be able to develop a comprehensive strategy of political stabilization, as well as social and economic recovery in the Middle East. Then, dear friends, there would be no need for setting up more refugee camps. Today, the flow of people forced to leave their native land has literally engulfed, first, the neighbouring countries, and then Europe. There are hundreds of thousands of them now, and before long, there might be millions. It is, essentially, a new, tragic Migration Period, and a harsh lesson for all of us, including Europe.

I would like to stress that refugees undoubtedly need our compassion and support. However, the only way to solve this problem for good is to restore statehood where it has been destroyed, to strengthen government institutions where they still exist, or are being re-established, to provide comprehensive military, economic and material assistance to countries in a difficult situation, and certainly to people who, despite all their ordeals, did not abandon their homes. Of course, any assistance to sovereign nations can, and should, be offered rather than imposed, in strict compliance with the UN Charter. In other words, our Organisation should support any measures that have been, or will be, taken in this regard in accordance with international law, and reject any actions that are in breach of the UN Charter. Above all, I believe it is of utmost importance to help restore government institutions in Libya, support the new government of Iraq, and provide comprehensive assistance to the legitimate government of Syria.

Dear colleagues, ensuring peace and global and regional stability remains a key task for the international community guided by the United Nations. We believe this means creating an equal and indivisible security environment that would not serve a privileged few, but everyone. Indeed, it is a challenging, complicated and time-consuming task, but there is simply no alternative.

Sadly, some of our counterparts are still dominated by their Cold War-era bloc mentality and the ambition to conquer new geopolitical areas. First, they continued their policy of expanding NATO – one should wonder why, considering that the Warsaw Pact had ceased to exist and the Soviet Union had disintegrated.

Nevertheless, NATO has kept on expanding, together with its military infrastructure. Next, the post-Soviet states were forced to face a false choice between joining the West and carrying on with the East. Sooner or later, this logic of confrontation was bound to spark off a major geopolitical crisis. And that is exactly what happened in Ukraine, where the people’s widespread frustration with the government was used for instigating a coup d’état from abroad. This has triggered a civil war. We are convinced that the only way out of this dead end lies through comprehensive and diligent implementation of the Minsk agreements of February 12th, 2015. Ukraine’s territorial integrity cannot be secured through the use of threats or military force, but it must be secured. The people of Donbas should have their rights and interests genuinely considered, and their choice respected; they should be engaged in devising the key elements of the country’s political system, in line with the provisions of the Minsk agreements. Such steps would guarantee that Ukraine will develop as a civilized state, and a vital link in creating a common space of security and economic cooperation, both in Europe and in Eurasia.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have deliberately mentioned a common space for economic cooperation. Until quite recently, it seemed that we would learn to do without dividing lines in the area of the economy with its objective market laws, and act based on transparent and jointly formulated rules, including the WTO principles, which embrace free trade and investment and fair competition. However, unilaterally imposed sanctions circumventing the UN Charter have all but become commonplace today. They not only serve political objectives, but are also used for eliminating market competition.

70th session of the UN General Assembly

I would like to note one more sign of rising economic selfishness. A number of nations have chosen to create exclusive economic associations, with their establishment being negotiated behind closed doors, secretly from those very nations’ own public and business communities, as well as from the rest of the world. Other states, whose interests may be affected, have not been informed of anything, either. It seems that someone would like to impose upon us some new game rules, deliberately tailored to accommodate the interests of a privileged few, with the WTO having no say in it. This is fraught with utterly unbalancing global trade and splitting up the global economic space.

These issues affect the interests of all nations and influence the future of the entire global economy. That is why we propose discussing those issues within the framework of the United Nations, the WTO and the G20. Contrary to the policy of exclusion, Russia advocates harmonizing regional economic projects. I am referring to the so-called ”integration of integrations“ based on the universal and transparent rules of international trade. As an example, I would like to cite our plans to interconnect the Eurasian Economic Union with China’s initiative for creating a Silk Road economic belt. We continue to see great promise in harmonizing the integration vehicles between the Eurasian Economic Union and the European Union.

Ladies and gentlemen, one more issue that shall affect the future of the entire humankind is climate change. It is in our interest to ensure that the coming UN Climate Change Conference that will take place in Paris in December this year should deliver some feasible results. As part of our national contribution, we plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions to 70–75 percent of the 1990 levels by the year 2030.

However, I suggest that we take a broader look at the issue. Admittedly, we may be able to defuse it for a while by introducing emission quotas and using other tactical measures, but we certainly will not solve it for good that way. What we need is an essentially different approach, one that would involve introducing new, groundbreaking, nature-like technologies that would not damage the environment, but rather work in harmony with it, enabling us to restore the balance between the biosphere and technology upset by human activities.

It is indeed a challenge of global proportions. And I am confident that humanity does have the necessary intellectual capacity to respond to it. We need to join our efforts, primarily engaging countries that possess strong research and development capabilities, and have made significant advances in fundamental research. We propose convening a special forum under the auspices of the UN to comprehensively address issues related to the depletion of natural resources, habitat destruction, and climate change. Russia is willing to co-sponsor such a forum.

Ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues. On January 10th, 1946, the UN General Assembly convened for its first meeting in London. Chairman of the Preparatory Commission Dr. Zuleta Angel, a Colombian diplomat, opened the session by offering what I see as a very concise definition of the principles that the United Nations should be based upon, which are good will, disdain for scheming and trickery, and a spirit of cooperation. Today, his words sound like guidance for all of us.

Russia is confident of the United Nations’ enormous potential, which should help us avoid a new confrontation and embrace a strategy of cooperation. Hand in hand with other nations, we will consistently work to strengthen the UN’s central, coordinating role. I am convinced that by working together, we will make the world stable and safe, and provide an enabling environment for the development of all nations and peoples.

Thank you.

In an interview with the Metro, Canada’s prime minister Stephen Harper got serious about pervasive, all consuming danger. The opening lines from the paper suggest as much, noting the prime minister’s insistence that the world was full of it.

The vehicle for harnessing this is the idea that expert opinions – call it that preserve of babbling elites – counts little in the populist manipulation of the demos. “Look, it’s not that elite opinion doesn’t matter, and in all matters expert opinion always counts, but you cannot govern well and you cannot govern properly unless you understand the values and the realities of ordinary Canadians.”[1]

The “ordinary Canadian” is a handy, moveable prop across the stage of political fear. At times, the ordinary Canadian also becomes Harper’s handy bludgeon, easy to deploy against journalist and critic. The motif comes out most when Harper is cornered and asked to account for his reactionary stance. Disagreeing with him is tantamount to disagreeing with true Canada, or at least that Canada of ordinariness that conservative leaders peddle with predictable consistency.

The policy of stripping Canadian citizenship from those convicted of terrorist crimes and associated offences is a standard affront to international laws and tends to sit uncomfortably with domestic laws as well. But it fits in well within this economy of manufactured fear.

Apologists for it have come out everywhere, and Harper can count on substantive legal opinion to back his claim. If you can have citizenship removed in circumstances of fraud, you can certainly have it pinched off you if you are a convicted terrorist.

But the prime minister does not even need the sophists of legal notoriety, claiming that those who oppose the policy are petrified by their own meekness. “This is kind of elite political correctness on steroids.” This amounts to having “two classes of citizens”, a wonderful nonsense if one considers that there are always classes of citizens. (Why stop at two?) “We can’t have a class of people who are war criminals and convicted terrorists as opposed to everybody else.”

The Commonwealth bloc has been busily going about eroding rights to citizenship, with Canada doing so with the passage of C-24. Britain did so in May, and even took one step further, throwing the book of executive overreach at international law by allowing the stripping of citizenship even if it caused statelessness.

The House of Lords, after showing initial resistance, removed the bar to statelessness in the bill. In a country that gave the Western world the Westminster system, common law and various concepts of constitutionalism, even native-born Britons can be subjected to the deprivation.

All of this is inflicted at the behest of the home secretary who has the power to determine such citizenship that is “seriously prejudicial to the interests of the United Kingdom”. There are no public hearings offered, no permitted scrutiny other than an appeal to a specially constituted immigration court.

Harper drew considerable inspiration from this prototypical act of police state rationality. The enormous power vested in the citizenship and immigration minister is a dominant feature. This effectively amounts to an unwarranted vesting of judicial power in the executive. The Canadian Tories did, however, stop short of allowing the infliction of total statelessness. Even in Harper’s Canada, some vague compliance of international law is occasionally admitted, in this case the UN 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.

The Tories have also embraced a strategy of lobbing problems of security and terrorism to the next recipient. Not only is Harper’s response here one of outsourcing the problem of a citizen’s delinquent propensities, one who has befouled the obligations to the community, it is one of denying the very essence of ownership as related to the state.

Harper concedes that citizenship is a matter of possession, but that the state retains the ultimate power over the subject to deprive. This is a property owner of poor graces, confiscating possessions for ill-conduct. Misbehave, and you will have that citizenship taken off you with minimum oversight.

Having lost that citizenship, you may well be given your marching orders, sent to a state which will have to contend with what amounts to an imported problem. Effectively, Canada can become an exporter of convicted terrorists, circumstances permitting. State responsibility to the international community is thereby circumvented.

Under the Harper cook book of confiscation, there is little reason why the logic cannot be taken further, to remove the citizenship of those who have not been convicted of terrorist charges, but other crimes.

On The Andrew Lawton Show, Harper did just that, answering a question posed by Lawton on how far the law could actually go in future. Would, for instance, a rapist or serial killer fall into that category? “Well, you know, obviously we can look at options into the future.”[2]

Liberal electoral contender Justin Trudeau saw the slippery slop appear with ominous prospects before the legislative landscape. It was made more acute by “this prime minister who has made a habit of calling out First Nations groups, environmental groups as terrorists”. The frog continues to boil.

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

 Notes

[1] http://www.metronews.ca/news/canada/2015/09/29/stephen-harper-on-terrorism-syrian-refugees-and-citizenship.html

[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/09/30/bill-c-24-harper-tories-criminals-trudeau_n_8223162.html

Contrary to the expectations of many experts who were predicting a “second Munich” from Vladimir Putin in New York, the Russian president made no grandiose proclamations during his address to the UN General Assembly. In fact, he was outwardly far milder than one might have imagined. By comparison, Obama’s emotional speech, which was replete with strident but unsubstantiated claims, seemed sad, and occasionally even comical. For example, there was a passage about the ouster of Assad, but then less than a day later the US position flip-flopped …

After the speeches, Putin and Obama sat down for a nearly two-hour conversation, after which the US president could not even rouse himself sufficiently to emerge to speak to journalists. The Russian president conducted an exhaustive press conference on his own.

What is the takeaway from those last three days in September, which, according to many observers, lay to rest the idea of a unipolar world?

First of all, the US is making profound changes in its attitude to Poroshenko’s regime in Ukraine, assembling a reserve set of “politicians” and revoking its green light for military action. Incumbent PM Yatsenyuk is more likely to be replaced by Sergey Lyovochkin, former head of ex-president Yanukovych’ administration and memner of “Opposition Bloc”. Given the pacification of Kiev and the Southeast in accordance with the Kremlin’s terms, the US withdrawal from Ukraine – and the withdrawal of Ukraine itself into the shadow of the world’s agenda – the US wager on the “Opposition Bloc” makes perfect sense.

The very next day in Minsk, Aleksandr Zakharchenko and Leonid Kuchma confirmed that weapons of a caliber less than 100 mm. would be pulled back 15 km. behind the front line, which actually signifies an end to the hostilities. For the preceding seven months no one had been able to reach an agreement on this point. At the same time, Kiev admitted that it had committed war crimes in the Donbass: several stories on this topic appeared over the course of a single day in the Ukrainian media, from the admission that Oles Buzina had been killed by commandos from a special forces unit of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, to an acknowledgment of crimes committed by “territorial” battalions. Obviously this would not have happened without an order from the American embassy. To this must be added the resignation of Evelyn Farkas, the Pentagon’s top official overseeing military relations with Russia and Ukraine. Ms. Farkas had held that position for five years. She will officially leave her post in late October. It should be noted that this senior official had insisted on retaliatory measures against Russia’s policy in Ukraine and had also facilitated the provision of financial aid to Kiev.

And all this occurred less than a day after Vladimir Putin’s speech in New York and his meeting with Obama. That means that all these events were the result of a deal. And in fact, these are only the first fruits. Clearly there is more to come. But the trend is clear – the US has acknowledged the legitimacy of Russian claims that Ukraine is within Russia’s sphere of interest.

Second, the situation in and around Syria changed dramatically over the course of one day. The US is no longer insisting on Assad’s resignation. The US is not opposing Russian military involvement in operations against ISIL and is prepared to enter into immediate negotiations with Russia about the formation of a united front against terrorists. Russia’s air force launched strikes on ISIL strongholds after Assad asked Moscow for military assistance, and the Federation Council approved the use of the Russian air force against the terrorists in Syria. That would have been inconceivable even on the morning of Sept. 28. But only a day and a half later this was the reality, which is evidence of the dramatic change in the entire global geopolitical picture.

Time magazine had written about this just the day before.

If Putin can get Obama to go along with his proposal as well, it would mark one of the greatest diplomatic triumphs of his 15 years in power.

This means Russia’s victory is now official. The only question is – victory over whom?

What I mean is – I would like to emphasize that this is not a victory over Obama, as many experts are simplistically trying to present it, but over a powerful supranational grouping, which uses the United States as a battering ram in order to plunge the world into a new Middle Ages. And this group’s reaction to the agreement between Putin and Obama quickly followed. Right out of the blue Hillary Clinton launched into a tirade of criticism against Obama. But she was not lambasting him over agreements with Russia on Syria and Ukraine, as one might have expected, but over a purely domestic issue – ObamaCare.

Leaving aside for the moment the content of his speech, which has already been picked over for quotes, let us try to answer the main question – why did Putin have to address the “international community” at all? Couldn’t he have just published an article in any international media outlet? The answer is very simple – for the same reason he had to help a flock of young Siberian cranes get to where they needed to go. The content of Putin’s New York speech takes a distant second to the psychological component of his message to the leaders of the world community and the global decision-makers in the West. Time will reveal the significance of that. But, looking at how the global picture evolved between Sept. 29 and 30, we can see that Putin really got through to the intended audience for his statements. And he was more than just heard – specific agreements have now been reached with Moscow regarding the first steps for getting out of the quagmire into which the backstage elites have led the world.

Obama addresses make painful listening. He represents ruthless US ambitions to rule the world – even at the risk of destroying it.

His remarks at all times reflect willful deception.  His policies speak for themselves. His agenda threatens humanity’s survival. His neocon infested administration deplores peace and stability. His claims otherwise ring hollow. His Monday General Assembly address was true to form.

His praise for UN achievements over seven decades belies its dismal record. Its mandate “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war” failed to prevent them throughout its entire history – US-led NATO and Israel bearing most responsibility.

Obama ludicrously claimed

“unparalleled advances in human liberty and prosperity…lift(ing) more than a billion people from poverty…constraining bigger countries from imposing our will on smaller ones…advancing the emergence of democracy and development and individual liberty on every continent.”

Fact: Only a fool or liar believes this rubbish. Human liberty and prosperity were never more imperiled.

Fact: Billions of people are mired in poverty worldwide. Half the US population is either impoverished or bordering on it. Poverty in other Western countries and Israel are increasing. So-called “real progress” Obama touts is nonexistent.

Fact: No nation imposes its will more on other nations of all sizes than America, none more aggressively, recklessly, and ruthlessly.

Fact: None wages more direct and proxy wars. None more greatly threatens world peace and stability – none more intolerant of democracy anywhere at home and abroad, none more disdainful of rule of law principles, none more hated for its villainy.

Obama revealed his rage for war, saying he’ll “never hesitate to protect my country or our allies, unilaterally and by force where necessary.”

Fact: America’s only enemies are ones it invents. Endless wars on humanity reflect longstanding bipartisan US policy.

The so-called “threat of terrorism” he hypes often is entirely fabricated. It’s manufactured to serve US imperial interests. State terrorism alone matters – the greatest threat to world peace.

Obama lied accusing Russia of “aggression” in Ukraine and annexing Crimea. He bears full responsibility for ousting a democratically elected government, installing Nazi-infested putschists to replace it, using them to wage war on their own people, ignoring the will of Crimeans and Donbass to embrace democracy, reject fascist rule.

Obama: “(W)e want a strong Russia that’s invested in working with us to strengthen the international system as a whole.”

Fact: Longstanding US policy calls for regime change, replacing Russia’s democratic governance with a US-controlled puppet regime, balkanizing the country for easier control, stealing its vast resources, exploiting its people.

Obama: “(W)e joined an international coalition under a UN mandate to prevent a slaughter” in Libya…(W)e helped the Libyan people bring an end to the reign of a tyrant.”

Fact: Obama waged naked aggression against a nation threatening no one, destroying Africa’s most developed country, massacring its people, creating an out-of-control cauldron of violence and chaos. No UN mandate authorized his war.

He turned truth on its head calling Bashar al-Assad “a dictator, slaughter(ing) tens of thousands of his own people.”

Fact: In June 2014, Syrians overwhelmingly reelected him in a process international monitors called open, free and fair. Obama bears full responsibility for endless war and mass slaughter – one of many high crimes on his rap sheet. Assad courageously defends his nation and people. He deserves universal support.

Obama’s claim about wanting ISIS degraded and destroyed is polar opposite his agenda. Its recruits are US proxy foot soldiers, serving Washington’s imperial agenda, supported, not attacked, by Pentagon airstrikes.

Obama: “(T)he United States is increasing the number of refugees who we welcome within our borders.”

Fact: False! Pathetically few are permitted entry. None are “welcome.” Obama and Bush/Cheney bear full responsibility for the greatest refugee crisis since WW II – the direct result of US imperial wars.

Obama’s address was beginning-to-end demagogic rubbish, total misinformation, one Big Lie after another – praising US democracy and the rights and needs of people everyone.

America is a fascist police state, ruled by money controlled duopoly power. Democracy is pure fantasy. Endless wars and exploitation destroy the hopes, dreams and lives of people wherever America shows up – a scourge on humanity, a cancer threatening life on earth.

Putin is polar opposite Obama. World peace and stability are his top geopolitical priorities. No world leader more deserves Nobel Peace Prize recognition. War criminals like Obama nearly always win.

Putin’s address was polar opposite Obama’s – forthright and honest remarks, highlighting the importance of world nations working together cooperatively for peace and stability.

“Russia stands ready to work together with its partners on the basis of full consensus,” he stressed, denouncing rule by force – “a world dominated by selfishness rather than collective work, a world increasingly characterized by dictate rather than equality.”

A world without “democracy and freedom…where true independent states would be replaced by an ever-growing number of de facto protectorates and externally controlled territories” – America’s worldview, accepting no alternatives.

“(S)overeignty (is) the right to choose freely one’s own future for every person, nation or state,” said Putin. Instead of learning from past mistakes, they’re repeated, he explained – with tragic consequences.

Instead of solving major problems, new ones are created, old ones exacerbated. “Instead of the triumph of democracy and progress, we got violence, poverty and social disaster. Nobody cares a bit about human rights, including the right to life.”

“(P)olicies based on self-conceit and belief in one’s exceptionality and impunity have never been abandoned.” Endless wars rage.

“(T)he Islamic State…did not just come from nowhere.” Imperial powers use it “as a tool against ‘undesirable’ secular” governments they want replaced.

Islamic State terrorists seek “dominance in the Islamic world. (Its) plans go further than that. The situation is more than dangerous,” Putin stressed.

He denounced “hypocritical and irresponsible…loud declarations about the threat of international terrorism” while financing and supporting it at the same time.

“We cannot allow these criminals who already tasted blood to return back home and continue their evil doings,” he stressed. World leaders must unite to eliminate their scourge, working cooperatively with Syria’s government, he urged.

Claims about Russian territorial or other nefarious geopolitical ambitions are baseless, a diversion from the current disturbing state of world affairs, he explained.

He proposed nations work together cooperatively – “guided by common values and common interests, rather than ambitions,” according to international law, including UN Charter principles.

(W)e must join efforts to address the problems that all of us are facing and create a genuinely broad international coalition against terrorism.

The alternative is endless wars, devastating consequences, including unprecedented human refugee floods seeking refuge, millions perhaps heading to Europe, already overwhelmed with numbers they’re poorly handling.

Putin stressed the importance of restoring legitimate governance in Libya, supporting Iraq’s government in its fight against terrorism, and “comprehensive” assistance to Assad – “the legitimate government of Syria.”

He urged the “full and faithful implementation of” Minsk ceasefire terms in Ukraine, ending the bloodshed once and for all – respecting “the interests and rights of (Donbass residents) and respect for their (democratic) choice.”

He denounced “unilateral sanctions” illegally imposed, “circumventing the UN Charter,” permitting only Security Council members to impose them.

Putin addressed other vital issues, presenting ideas and vital solutions to pressing problems – polar opposite America’s destructive agenda.

Russia will work cooperatively “with other countries (to) make the world stable and safe, as well as provide conditions for the development of all states and nations,” he concluded.

Following their addresses, both leaders met privately for 90 minutes. Obama left with no comments. Putin told reporters “(t)oday’s meeting was very constructive, practical and surprisingly frank.”

We found a lot of common ground, but there are differences as well. In fact, they are known, so there is no need to repeat them.

He touched on the dismal state of US/Russian relations, reflecting Washington’s agenda, not Moscow’s.

He urges peace and stability, respect for the sovereignty of all nations, a united front to defeat the scourge of international terrorism.

Obama wants endless imperial wars for unchallenged global dominance – an agenda for unprecedented human slaughter and misery.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

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

Russian air power is a force to be reckoned with, matching America’s best – with state-of-the-art warplanes, attack helicopters and support aircraft, backed up with unmatched surface-to-air missile defenses.

In mid-September, US Air Forces in Europe commander General Frank Forenc called the quality and quantity of Russian aircraft “alarming,” saying America’s “advantage…is shrinking” – code language for admitting Russia’s capability matches the Pentagon’s best.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said 50 warplanes and helicopters were deployed in Syria. Spokesman Igor Konashenkov said it was completed on “very short notice…possible because we had most of the material and ammunition ready at our (naval) depot in Tartus.”

“We only had to move our aircraft and deliver some extra equipment.” Sophisticated Su-24M and Su-25 ground attack planes” are being used.

Wednesday night sorties followed daytime attacks, targeting four Islamic State facilities. “A terrorist HQ and an ammunition depot were destroyed near Idlib, as were a fortified three-level command center near Hama. A direct bomb hit also completely destroyed a workshop north of Homs that produced explosives and ammunition,” Konashenkov explained.

All the airstrikes are being conducted in coordination with the Syrian Army command. The Syrian Defense Ministry has deployed an operative group at the Hmaimim air base.

During day one of operations, 12 ISIS targets were struck. Expect dozens more to follow, likely hundreds.

On Thursday, Vladimir Putin said fabricated reports of civilian casualties surfaced before Russia’s air campaign began. Propaganda works this way.

As for any information in the media on civilians suffering (from Russian airstrikes), we were ready for such (mis)information attacks. I draw your attention to the fact that the first reports on civilian casualties emerged before our planes even left the ground.

America and “(o)ther nations have been bombing Syrian territory for over a year” with no Security Council authorization or permission from Damascus.

“We have such an invitation,” Putin stressed, “and we intend to fight against terrorist organizations and them only.”

Dozens of fake videos and other material surfaced online and in Western media reports after Moscow announced its campaign. Putin calls them “information attacks” – propaganda war on truth blasted worldwide. It’s fast reaching gale force.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

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

To listen to the Republican candidates’ debate last week, one would think that President Obama had slashed the U.S. military budget and left our country defenseless.

Nothing could be farther off the mark.

There are real weaknesses in Obama’s foreign policy, but a lack of funding for weapons and war is not one of them. President Obama has in fact been responsible for the largest U.S. military budget since the Second World War, as is well documented in the U.S. Department of Defense’s annual “Green Book.”

The table below compares average annual Pentagon budgets under every president since Truman, using “constant dollar” figures from the FY2016 Green Book. I’ll use these same inflation-adjusted figures throughout this article, to make sure I’m always comparing “apples to apples”. These figures do not include additional military-related spending by the VA, CIA, Homeland Security, Energy, Justice or State Departments, nor interest payments on past military spending, which combine to raise the true cost of U.S. militarism to about $1.3 trillion per year, or one thirteenth of the U.S. economy.

U.S. Military Budgets 1948-2015

Obama           FY2010-15         $663.4 billion per year

Bush Jr          FY2002-09*        $634.9  ”    ”   “

Clinton           FY1994-2001     $418.0  ”    ”   “

Bush Sr          FY1990-93         $513.4  ”    ”   “

Reagan          FY1982-89         $565.0  ”    ”   “

Carter             FY1978-81         $428.1   ”    ”   “

Ford               FY1976-77         $406.7   ”   ”    “

Nixon              FY1970-75        $441.7   ”   ”    “

Johnson         FY1965-69        $527.3   ”   ”    “

Kennedy         FY1962-64        $457.2   ”   ”    “

Eisenhower    FY1954-61        $416.3   ”   ”   “

Truman           FY1948-53       $375.7   ”   ”   “

*Excludes $80 billion supplemental added to FY2009 under Obama.

The U.S. military receives more generous funding than the rest of the 10 largest militaries in the world combined (China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, U.K., France, Japan, India, Germany & South Korea). And yet, despite the chaos and violence of the past 15 years, the Republican candidates seem oblivious to the dangers of one country wielding such massive and disproportionate military power.

On the Democratic side, even Senator Bernie Sanders has not said how much he would cut military spending. But Sanders regularly votes against the authorization bills for these record military budgets, condemning this wholesale diversion of resources from real human needs and insisting that war should be a “last resort”.

Sanders’ votes to attack Yugoslavia in 1999 and Afghanistan in 2001, while the UN Charter prohibits such unilateral uses of force, do raise troubling questions about exactly what he means by a “last resort.” As his aide Jeremy Brecher asked Sanders in his resignation letter over his Yugoslavia vote, “Is there a moral limit to the military violence that you are willing to participate in or support? Where does that limit lie? And when that limit has been reached, what action will you take?” Many Americans are eager to hear Sanders flesh out a coherent commitment to peace and disarmament to match his commitment to economic justice.

When President Obama took office, Congressman Barney Frank immediately called for a 25% cut in military spending. Instead, the new president obtained an $80 billion supplemental to the FY2009 budget to fund his escalation of the war in Afghanistan, and his first full military budget (FY2010) was $761 billion, within $3.4 billion of the $764.3 billion post-WWII record set by President Bush in FY2008.

The Sustainable Defense Task Force, commissioned by Congressman Frank and bipartisan Members of Congress in 2010, called for $960 billion in cuts from the projected military budget over the next 10 years. Jill Stein of the Green Party and Rocky Anderson of the Justice Partycalled for a 50% cut in U.S. military spending in their 2012 presidential campaigns. That seems radical at first glance, but a 50% cut in the FY2012 budget would only have been a 13% cut from what President Clinton spent in FY1998.

Clinton’s $399 billion FY1998 military budget was the nearest we came to realizing the “peace dividend” promised at the end of the Cold War. But that didn’t even breach the Cold War baseline of $393 billion set after the Korean War (FY1954) and the Vietnam War (FY1975). The largely unrecognized tragedy of today’s world is that we allowed the “peace dividend” to be trumped by what Carl Conetta of the Project on Defense Alternatives calls the “power dividend”, the desire of military-industrial interests to take advantage of the collapse of the U.S.S.R. to consolidate global U.S. military power.

The triumph of the “power dividend” over the “peace dividend” was driven by some of the most powerful vested interests in history. But at each step, there were alternatives to war, weapons production and global military expansion.

At a Senate Budget Committee hearing in December 1989, former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and Assistant Secretary Lawrence Korb, a Democrat and a Republican, testified that the FY1990 $542 billion Pentagon budget could be cut by half over the next 10 years to leave us with a new post-Cold War baseline military budget of $270 billion, 60% less than President Obama has spent and 20% below what even Jill Stein and Rocky Anderson called for.

There was significant opposition to the First Gulf War – 22 Senators and 183 Reps voted against it, including Sanders – but not enough to stop the march to war. The war became a model for future U.S.-led wars and served as a marketing display for a new generation of U.S. weapons. After treating the public to endless bombsight videos of “smart bombs” making “surgical strikes”, U.S. officials eventually admitted that such “precision” weapons were only 7% of the bombs and missiles raining down on Iraq. The rest were good old-fashioned carpet-bombing, but the mass slaughter of Iraqis was not part of the marketing campaign. When the bombing stopped, U.S. pilots were ordered to fly straight from Kuwait to the Paris Air Show, and the next three years set new records for U.S. weapons exports.

Presidents Bush and Clinton made significant cuts in military spending between 1992 and 1994, but the reductions shrank to 1-3% per year between 1995 and 1998 and the budget started rising again in 1999. Meanwhile, U.S. officials crafted new rationalizations for the use of U.S. military force to lay the ideological groundwork for future wars. Untested and highly questionable claims that more aggressive U.S. use of force could have prevented the genocide in Rwanda or civil war in Yugoslavia have served to justify the use of force elsewhere ever since, with universally catastrophic results. Neoconservatives went even further and claimed that seizing the post-Cold War power dividend was essential to U.S. security and prosperity in the 21st century.

The claims of both the humanitarian interventionists and the neoconservatives were emotional appeals to different strains in the American psyche, driven and promoted by powerful people and institutions whose careers and interests were bound up in the growth of the military industrial complex. The humanitarian interventionists appealed to Americans’ desire to be a force for good in the world. As Madeleine Albright asked Colin Powell, “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” On the other hand, the neocons played on the insularity and insecurity of many Americans to claim that the world must be dominated by U.S. military power if we are to preserve our way of life.

The Clinton administration wove many of these claims into a blueprint for global U.S. military expansion in its 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review. The QDR threatened the unilateral use of U.S. military force, in clear violation of the UN Charter, to defend “vital” U.S. interests all over the world, including “preventing the emergence of a hostile regional coalition,” and “ensuring uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies and strategic resources.”

To the extent that they are aware of the huge increase in military spending since 1998, most Americans would connect it with the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the ill-defined “war on terror.” But Carl Conetta’s research established that, between 1998 and 2010, only 20% of U.S. military procurement and RDT&E (research, development, testing & evaluation) spending and only half the total increase in military spending was related to ongoing military operations. In his 2010 paper, An Undisciplined Defense, Conetta found that our government had spent an extra 1.15 trillion dollars above and beyond Clinton’s FY1998 baseline on expenses that were unrelated to to its current wars.

Most of the additional funds, $640 billion, were spent on new weapons and equipment (Procurement + RDT&E in the Green Book). Incredibly, this was more than double the $290 billion the military spent on new weapons and equipment for the wars it was actually fighting. And the lion’s share was not for the Army, but for the Air Force and Navy.

There has been political opposition to the F-35 warplane, which activists have dubbed “the plane that ate the budget” and whose eventual cost has been estimated at $1.5 trillion for 2,400 planes. But the Navy’s procurement and RDT&E budgets rival the Air Force’s.

Former General Dynamics CEO Lester Crown’s political patronage of a young politician named Barack Obama, whom he first met in 1989 at the Chicago law firm where Obama was an intern, has worked out very well for the family firm. Since Obama won the Presidency, with Lester’s son James and daughter-in-law Paula as his Illinois fundraising chairs and 4th largest bundlers nationwide, General Dynamics stock price has gained 170% and its latest annual report hailed 2014 as its most profitable year ever, despite an overall 30% reduction in Pentagon procurement and RDT&E spending since FY2009.

Although General Dynamics is selling fewer Abrams tanks and armored vehicles since the U.S. withdrew most of its forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, its Marine Systems division is doing better than ever. The Navy increased its purchases of Virginia class submarines from one to two per year in 2012 at $2 billion each. It is buying one new Arleigh Burke class destroyer per year through 2022 at $1.8 billion apiece (Obama reinstated that program as part of his missile defense plan), and the FY2010 budget handed General Dynamics a contract to build 3 new Zumwalt class destroyers for $3.2 billion each, on top of $10 billion already spent on research and development. That was despite a U.S. Navy spokesman calling the Zumwalt “a ship you don’t need,” as it will be especially vulnerable to new anti-ship missiles developed by potential enemies. General Dynamics is also one of the largest U.S. producers of bombs and ammunition, so it is profiting handsomely from the U.S. bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria.

Carl Conetta explains the U.S.’s unilateral arms build-up as the result of a lack of discipline and a failure of military planners to make difficult choices about the kind of wars they are preparing to fight or the forces and weapons they might need. But this massive national investment is justified in the minds of U.S. officials by what they can use these forces to do. By building the most expensive and destructive war machine ever, designing it to be able to threaten or attack just about anybody anywhere, and justifying its existence with a combination of neocon and humanitarian interventionist ideology, U.S. officials have fostered dangerous illusions about the very nature of military force. As historian Gabriel Kolko warned in 1994, “options and decisions that are intrinsically dangerous and irrational become not merely plausible but the only form of reasoning about war and diplomacy that is possible in official circles.”

The use of military force is essentially destructive. Weapons of war are designed to hurt people and break things. All nations claim to build and buy them only to defend themselves and their people against the aggression of others. The notion that the use of military force can ever be a force for good may, at best, apply to a few very rare, exceptional situations where a limited but decisive use of force has put an end to an existing conflict and led to a restoration of peace. The more usual result of the use or escalation of force is to cause greater death and destruction, to fuel resistance and to cause more widespread instability. This is what has happened wherever the U.S. has used force since 2001, including in its proxy and covert operations in Syria and Ukraine.

We seem to be coming full circle, to once again recognize the dangers of militarism and the wisdom of the U.S. leaders and diplomats who played instrumental roles in crafting the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, the Kellogg Briand Pact and much of the existing framework of international law. These treaties and conventions were based on the lived experience of our grandparents that a world where war was permitted was no longer sustainable. So they were dedicated, to the greatest extent possible, to prohibiting and eliminating war and to protecting people everywhere from the horror of war as a basic human right.

As President Carter said in his Nobel lecture in 2002, “War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good.” Recent U.S. policy has been a tragic experiment in renormalizing the evil of war. This experiment has failed abysmally, but there remains much work to do to restore peace, to repair the damage, and to recommit the United States to the rule of law.

If we compare U.S. military spending with global military spending, we can see that, as the U.S. cut its military budget by a third between 1985 and 1998, the rest of the world followed suit and global military budgets also fell by a third between 1988 and 1998. But as the US spent trillions of dollars on weapons and war after 2000, boosting its share of global military spending from 38% to 48% by 2008, both allies and potential enemies again responded in kind. The 92% rise in the U.S. military budget by 2008 led to a 65% rise in global military spending by 2011.

U.S. propaganda presents U.S. aggression and military expansion as a force for security and stability. In reality, it is U.S. militarism that has been driving global militarism, and U.S.-led wars and covert interventions that have spawned subsidiary conflicts and deprived millions of people of security and stability in country after country. But just as diplomacy and peacemaking between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. led to a 33% fall in global military spending in the 1990s, a new U.S. commitment to peace and disarmament today would likewise set the whole world on a more peaceful course.

In his diplomacy with Cuba and Iran and his apparent readiness to finally respond to Russian diplomacy on Syria and Ukraine, President Obama appears to have learned some important lessons from the violence and chaos that he and President Bush have unleashed on the world. The most generous patron the military industrial complex has ever known may finally be looking for diplomatic solutions to the crises caused by his policies.

But Obama’s awakening, if that is what it turns out to be, has come tragically late in his presidency, for millions of victims of U.S. war crimes and for the future of our country and the world. Whoever we elect as our next President must therefore be ready on day one to start dismantling this infernal war machine and building a “permanent structure of peace”, on a firm foundation of humanity, diplomacy and a renewed U.S. commitment to the rule of international law.

This week will go down in history as the time that Western hegemony died; in more than one sense.

Russia’s President Putin delivered a landmark speech this week at the UN General Assembly where he truly humiliated Western foreign policy decisions in Syria. Since then, Russia began to launch airstrikes on all forces destabilising the state of Syria.

This led to an incredibly embarrassing response from Western mainstream media, claiming that ‘moderate’ terrorists, not ISIS (despite there being no real difference), had been bombed and civilians had been killed.

Enter Putin (again), who has now branded those reports ‘information warfare‘. The reason why is that those reports emerged before any Russian combat missions had even started.

Taking no prisoners. (Photo Credit: Russian Presidential Office)

This means that not only has Western state government hegemony suffered a huge set back this week, but so too has the hegemony of mainstream, Western media outlets. Mainstream media has, for too long, held itself as unassailable and untouchable. Putin just changed that by exposing the fact that such outlets are used in information warfare for wholly nefarious purposes, to further the particular agenda of a state.

The entire idea of information warfare, particularly governments using media outlets to disseminate disinformation, will be entirely alien to the vast majority of the general public.

But, perhaps this open attack on such tactics from Russia’s President might be yet another catalyst which serves to wake people up to this tragic reality.

Hamlet: Let it work,

For ’tis the sport to have the engineer

Hoist with his own petard.

At the United Nations General Assembly on Monday’s last, the Russian Federation hoisted the United States on its own petard, blowing up the fourteen-year-old fictitious narrative of the War on Terror by proposing real action. While Obama went to UNGA without a single proposal, Putin proposed a coalition against terrorists, “like the one we had against Hitler”:

We are suggesting to not be guided by ambition, but by mutual values and shared interests. To unite our efforts based on international law to solve the issues we are facing, and to create a truly broad international anti-terrorism coalition.

You have to agree that the reference to Hitler was a rhetorical masterstroke, mocking the American political and media establishments’ frequent slurs of Putin as Hitler. Taking over the terms of a discourse is the first step in exposing its hidden connivance. It’s the petard in action. Polonius-like with doddering ramblings, but rank with clichéd sound-bites and sulking fury, Obama boasted like a cornered school-yard bully, ““I lead the strongest military that the world has ever known, and I will never hesitate to protect my country and our allies, unilaterally and by force where necessary.” Against which boast, with almost biblical thunder, pounced Putin’s accusation, ““Do you realize what you’ve done?”

A stunning question, for, without ever mentioning the US, referring to it instead as the “sole center of dominance” after the end of the Cold War, Putin recalled its attention to the devastating consequences of its foreign policy decisions. “A power vacuum for extremism,” in his words, had opened like a sucking vortex in the Middle East and North Africa, which “led to the creation of zones of anarchy, immediately filled by extremists.” The Islamic State, he said, did not materialize from nothing.

So, then, what now? The Islamic State must be destroyed—in all its permutations. Imagine Washington’s consternation as its pretext for rampaging across the globe was being deftly and swiftly removed from its propaganda control.

Since Monday, dramatic events unfolded. On his return to Russia on 29 September, Putin gathered the permanent members of the Russian Federation’s advisory council on security to discuss the fight against extremism and terrorism. On Wednesday, upon recommendation of the advisory council, the Russian Parliament (higher chamber) approved the use of Russian armed forces on foreign soil. President Assad formally requested Russian military assistance in fighting ISIS, thus making Russia’s defensive intervention in Syria the only one based on legality—unlike the aerial strikes conducted by the US, joined lately by France, and being considered by Australia and other countries, which violate international law, as noted by Sergei Ivanov, Kremlin spokesman. Foreign Minister Lavrov, on Wednesday, said that

Russia is helping Syria to fight against the Islamic State. We have explained our position, we do not to feel any affection to anyone in the region, but we are firmly convinced that we cannot allow Syria to collapse as a state. We have suggested that the US should harmonize its efforts to be sure that the air strikes on the terrorists’ positions are coordinated with the steps on the ground. I hope that Barack Obama has heard the words of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Lavrov added that Moscow is preparing a UN resolution proposing a coalition against the Daesh. Will the United States expose its cheating hand by voting against it in the Security Council? We are living in interesting times. Russia is sending to Syria from forty to sixty—Su-24, Su-25, and Su-34—airplanes and two battalions. Russian strikes have already hit near Homs, as reported by CNN. The US has not heeded Russia’s request to keep clear of Syria’s aerial space during these initial operations, thereby increasing the risk of “confliction,” a military term meaning an incident SNAFU of international proportions.

Whatever happens next, the US is on notice to stop playing with fire. Let’s hope, as Otto von Bismarck said, that “there is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, and the United States of America,” so that the Americans understand, still in Bismarck’s words, not to “expect that once we have taken advantage of Russia’s weakness, we will profit forever.”

The Teutons, the Mongols, the Turks, the French, and the Nazis all learned that hard lesson. It’s time for the US to take up Russia’s offer to join a coalition alliance to stamp out these proliferating terrorists—implicitly, instead of training and funding them until the whole scam blows up in their faces, as it’s doing in Syria. “The secret of politics is to make a good treaty with Russia,” Bismarck advised. As history shows, it is not wise to play dice with Russia.

(Please read Part I before this article)

The first part of the series outlined the construction of the Asian NATO and described all the ways in which its various members are converging with their anti-Chinese policies in the Philippines. This part of the research speaks about possible scenarios that could happen to offset the organization’s creation, be it by precluding various members’ participation or indefinitely delaying it for as long as possible. One of the scenarios also looks at how the prospective alliance might ironically turn its forces inward by being sucked into a quagmire in Mindanao, which would consequently render them unable to effectively counter China as well as increase the chances that various members decide to abandon the costly coalition.

The structure for this section addresses all 5 of the CCC members individually, not counting South Korea or the US. Seoul, as earlier discussed, has yet to commit its interests to the ASEAN region or in countering China, while Washington, as the plan’s mastermind, is incapable of recanting the strategy that it’s already invested so much of its political capital in supporting. This piece begins by pinpointing the conditions that would have to transpire in order to interrupt the participation of the Australian and Indian auxiliary members, before moving along to the core ones of Vietnam, Japan, and the Philippines.

Particular attention should be paid to the scenarios affecting the Tokyo-Manilla axis, as this is the most important bilateral partnership of the entire endeavor. ‘Led from behind’ by the US, it’s capable of standing alone and creating considerable challenges for China even in the event that the other three potential members don’t participate. Likewise, the reverse logic dictates that if anything happens to disrupt their ties or destabilize the Philippines as the entity’s host territory, then the Asian NATO would be stymied and could likely dissolve.

Before beginning, one should remember that even though these scenarios all play out to China’s ultimate advantage, it doesn’t mean that it has a hand behind every one. This is in specific regard to those dealing with India (Neighboring Crises and Seven Sisters Secessionism), Japan (Public Pressure Pushback), and the Philippines (Election Reversal and Mindanao Mayhem).

Australia

Backyard Rivalry Reverses Itself:

Instead of Australia being free to interfere in China’s South Sea backyard without repercussion, China could ramp up the diplomatic and economic contacts it has in the South Pacific in order to reverse the dynamic and turn the rivalry initiative against Australia. As noted by the Indian think tank Gateway House in a publication urging the South Asian state to commit more to the region, China already commands much sway in the South Pacific, and this is largely due to Australia’s own history of shortcomings in treating its neighbors with respect. This backdrop means that it’s entirely possible for China to utilize its existing advantages in order to further minimize Australia’s role in the region, perhaps even eventually turning the Pacific Islands Forum (of which Canberra is a member) into a platform for deeper Chinese-South Pacific cooperation, embarrassingly excluding Australia from its own organization and de-facto replacing it in importance.

Two key starting points where it could most easily exercise its regional influence are Fiji, which China supported amidst punitive Western efforts to sanction and isolate it after a 2006 coup, and Papua New Guinea, one of the poorest countries in the world and thus capable of being easily influenced for cheap. Bougainville and the Solomon Islands are also prospective partners due to their physical and natural resources, respectively, although China might encounter difficulty working with the latter so long as it continues to recognize Taiwan (although this could quickly change with the right economic enticement). It should be noted that China is already moving in this overall strategic direction, as Radio New Zealand reports that it has given $1.4 billion in foreign aid to ”the Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Tonga, and Vanuatu” since 2006 and has recently pledged to donate more.

A Chinese-Indonesia Strategic Partnership:

Indonesian military academy cadets visited to Chinese Military Academy in Qingdao. (fyjs.cn)

While still a faint possibility, if the circumstances arose where China and Indonesia expressly entered into a strategic partnership with one another, then this would split the Asian NATO’s focus, dilute its capabilities, and potentially even lead to one or more of its members (such as India) abandoning the entire enterprise. The trigger for this happening could be proven Western meddling in West Papua or any other Yugoslav-like attempts to dismember the multinational country as punishment for its pragmatic policies towards China, or as a means of pressuring it to cave in to some forthcoming ploy to enter the Asian NATO. Jakarta would then have the impetus to fully reorient itself towards China out of the existential interest to secure its sovereignty and defend its territorial integrity. This relates to Australia’s participation in the CCC by totally distracting it from any (superficial) anti-Chinese commitments and leading to its absolute dedication in countering Indonesia instead. Once more, the reader should be reminded that this unlikely development could very well usher in the collapse of the Asian NATO and be a total game changer for countering the US’ P2A, but they shouldn’t exactly get their hopes up for it occurring any time soon.

India

Neighboring Crises:

India has made it a point to flex its out-of-regional aspirations ever since Modi came into office last year, but if serious enough crises were to erupt in Myanmar and/or Nepal, then this would snap its immediate attention back to South Asia and potentially hinder its ability to “Act East” (depending on the intensity and duration of the crisis/crises). For example, Myanmar could actually see simultaneous ones erupting, ranging from renewed cross-border terrorism to Rohingya secessionism and a return to all-out civil war. Any of these three, let alone their combination in some shape or form, would necessitate an urgent response from India and inhibit the projection of sustained influence past the country and deeper into ASEAN or the South China Sea. The same holds true for Nepal, which appears to be entering into a constitutional crisis over its decision to federalize the country. The latest reports are that India has enacted a crippling de-facto but unacknowledged blockade against Nepal in support of the Indian-affiliated Madhesi people that are upset at what they feel will be their unequitable influence under the federalized system. If the situation spirals out of control and civil war returns to the country, albeit one of an ethnic and non-ideological tint this time (or conceivably even leading to a second communist insurgency alongside the ethnic one), then India would certainly have to put its “Act East” plans on ice in order to prioritize dealing with the refugees and other elements (potentially armed militants) that might continually spill over into its border as the conflict slogs on.

Seven Sisters Secessionism:

In the same vein as the aforementioned scenario, if a serious secessionist crisis breaks out in India’s ‘Seven Sisters’ (it’s Northeastern Provinces), possibly aided and abetted by the cross-border terrorists spoken about above, then there’s no way the country would be stable enough to seriously entertain countering China in the South China Sea. This part of India is notorious for its separatist and terrorist history (sometimes overlapping, sometimes distinct), and if it isn’t stably brought under control and incorporated into mainstream Indian economic life, then it will remain a perennial risk to any sustained “Act East” policy. Right now there’s definitely the very real possibility for increased destabilization due to the combined threats of Bodo and Naga secessionist terrorism, which explains why India has made efforts to so publicly fight back against them. Still, because on-the-ground information from the region is so hard to come by for most observers, it’s uncertain exactly what degree of influence the central government has over the hearts and minds of most of the area’s inhabitants. Ultimately, this means that its ability to maintain peace might be tenuous and ultimately dependent on heavy-handed military measures, which in their own way might perpetuate the anti-government sentiment currently present there and create a cyclical reaction of more secessionism.

Vietnam

China’s Indochina Inroads:

It might very well be that Vietnam won’t be dissuaded under any circumstances from participating in the Asian NATO against China, but the best that can happen would be to divide its strategic focus and diminish its militarily ability to deepen the strategic partnership with the Philippines. The most feasible way to achieve that is for China to continue making inroads in Indochina, particularly via the high-speed railroad its building through Laos and Thailand and its entrenched economic and political influence in Cambodia (which just officially joined the SCO as a dialogue partner this month). By being so successful in the countries west of Vietnam, Beijing asymmetrically opens up a ‘reverse front’ of competition against Hanoi, putting the latter on the strategic defensive for once and chipping away at the sole competitive focus it used to attached to the South China Sea. Faced with rivalry in its literal backyard (and where its military used to freely operate during the 1980s), Vietnam now must divide its attention between the East (South China Sea) and West (Indochina), thus giving it relatively less mobility in the South China Sea than it previously used to have prior to China’s successes in carrying out its southern mainland shift.

Russia’s Restraining Influence:

Vietnam joined free trade zone with the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union earlier this year.

Along the lines of how Vietnam’s anti-Chinese activity in the South China Sea could be curtailed, one must recall the influence that Russia has over the Southeast Asian country. Vietnam values its relations with Russia to such a degree that it refused the American order for it to limit its military interactions with Moscow, and both sides have alsosigned a free trade agreement under the auspices of the Eurasian Union. From these established facts of friendship, one can then proceed to the logical conclusion that Russia holds considerable weight in Vietnam’s strategic planning, and it thus becomes possible for Moscow to capitalize upon this in aiding its Chinese ally’s concerns as per its tacit responsibility under theRussian-Chinese Strategic Partnership. It’s not predicted that Russia can entirely restrain Vietnam from carrying out anti-Chinese policies in the region, but it could at least use its diplomacy to act as a counterweight to American influence over its decision makers and possibly act as a crisis mediator in the event that a naval clash one day occurs with China. Overall, Russia’s role is that of a trusted, moderating influence that can restrain Vietnam from making hasty and overly rushed (and American-influenced) anti-Chinese actions that unexpectedly destabilize the situation even more than it currently is.

Japan

Public Pressure Pushback:

The Japanese public isn’t happy about their government’s remilitarization push, and tens of thousandsof citizens have vocally protested against it in an unprecedented pushback over the past year. The government doesn’t appear to be fazed by their rising anger, and with the next elections scheduled to be held by 2018, it seems as though they’re counting on the public losing interest before then and not prioritizing the topic as an electoral issue. Still, Japanese society has never been this mobilized before, as the entirety of the country understands the historic choice being imposed on them by their leaders and recognizes the far-reaching consequences that this entails. It could turn out that the public pushback is strong enough to call early elections that might unseat the government, especially if the public becomes incensed by any possible Japanese military deployment to the Philippines, and even more so if this results in any casualties whatsoever at the hands of Mindanao-based Wahhabi terrorists. Another thing to mention is that the ‘beauty’ of democracy is such that domestic and international issues can easily be manipulated by outside forces (ergo why the US engages in regime change and ‘democracy promotion’ across the world), indicating that China could potentially attempt to influence the debate to its favor via soft and covert means in response to American efforts to do the same, thus leading to some interesting informational scenarios.

A Russian-Japanese Breakthrough:

It might seem far-fetched at the moment, but if Russia and Japan reach some sort of diplomatic breakthrough (possibly as a result of years-long secret negotiations a la the US-Cuban ones), then it would change the entire calculus for the US’ P2A. This is because Japan is the main pillar of the whole strategy, since it alone is the only country in East and Southeast Asia with the capital and military potential to present a sizeable headache for China, and it’s also the only state with a leadership history (Fascist Japan) that stretches into both theaters. If it were to reach some sort of understanding with Russia and then begin trying to play it against the US (the same hand that Israel is trying to play at the moment, but for different reasons), then it would create a multitude of strategic uncertainties for the US and throw the P2A into jeopardy. Therefore, this is the absolute last scenario that the US wants to see happen, and it won’t hold back any option to prevent this from occurring. Keeping Russia and Japan apart is just as, if not more, important to American grand strategy at the moment than keeping Russia and the EU divided, and if this state of affairs changes, then there’s no doubt that it’ll elicit a fundamental change in the US’ position and unexpectedly throw it on the defensive in a region where it had long taken its dominance for granted.

The Philippines

Electoral Reversal:

The US’ plans for constructing an Asian NATO against China are predicated on the overly confident belief that loyal Filipino proxy Benigno Aquino III or his potential successor Manuel “Mar” Roxas II will win the presidential elections next May. The Diplomat, however, thinks that this might not be as assured as the US would like to believe, as oppositionist Jejomar Binay might put up quite an electoral fight with his populist platform. It’s still too early to tell how things will play out, but it’s worthwhile for one to read the publication’s article, since it puts into context exactly how different Binay’s foreign policy towards China might be. In relation to the treatise, he would essentially reverse the current President’s policies by normalizing ties with Beijing and jointly cooperating with it in the South China Sea, and there’s also the possibility that he and his supporters would find the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement recently enacted with the US as illegal and thus overturn it. This momentous policy shift would neutralize the very reason for the Asian NATO and remove the US’ ability to use the island chain (and especially Palawan) as its forward operating base against China. Suffice it to say, the US has a real stake in the outcome of the forthcoming election, and it will likely resort to uncouth means (a dirty information war or worse) to manipulate the voting process and guarantee to the best of its ability that its preferred candidate comes out on top (or that the opposition can be bought off). But, as nothing can be certain, it mustn’t be discounted that the US could be handed a sobering electoral surprise that totally takes the Pentagon off guard and forces it to furiously scramble various improvisations to salvage its defeated P2A.

Mindanao Mayhem:

The Philippines-based terror group the Black Flag Movement (pictured) – known as the Khalifa Islamiah Mindanao has declared its support for ISIS.

The other contingency that could occur to offset the Asian NATO’s creation in the Philippines would be the explosion of terrorist mayhem coming from Mindanao. This large southern island has been home to a separatist movement for decades, but regretfully Wahhabi terrorist elements have hijacked the cause and discredited it in the eyes of the global public. The resultant terrorist campaign of the past years has created a situation where the country felt compelled to seek increased American military assistance, a precursor of sorts to the P2A. While a renewed spike in terrorism could obviously serve as a pretext for deeper American military involvement in the Philippines (and a convenient smokescreen for ‘justifying’ an anti-Chinese buildup there), it could also drag the US into a potential quagmire and distract from its sole anti-Chinese function in constructing the Asian NATO. Not only that, but the Philippines’ foreign military partners might be scared to commit troops there so long as the violence is raging, as even if they remain confined to their bases (like the Japanese are predicted to be if they enter the country), the terrorists could bring the battle to them if they feel that the foreign forces are qualitatively benefitting the Filipino military through training and/or arms (which Japan already says it wants to provide to the country).

It’s absolutely certain that the Japanese public has no stomach for military causalities incurred abroad, so even the death of a single serviceman in the Philippines, no matter if it’s due to a terrorist attack against their base or an in-field battle, could lead to a nationwide near-revolt that demands the immediate withdrawal of military forces and potentially a snap election to return the Constitution back to its peaceful intent. The effect of American military casualties is less clear, as they’d likely be special forces and their information accordingly won’t be made public in the event they were injured or killed (except if an internal source leaks the information). Even so, American public opinion has no effect whatsoever in altering the Pentagon’s P2A plans, but the same can’t be said for other countries like Australia, for example, which could also get sucked into the Mindanao mess via the very tempting ‘logic’ of mission creep. In any case, an upsurge in terrorism in the Philippines would disrupt the island’s primary function of gathering a de-facto coalition of anti-Chinese militaries and lead to unintended consequences that could bode very negatively for the future of the said organization, as it would increase the real costs of participation and potentially scare away prospective member states from setting up base in this geo-critical but terrorist-plagued island chain.

Concluding Thoughts

It’s no secret that the US wants to interrupt China’s peaceful rise, and in doing so it’s stoked the fire of regional rivalry in the South China Sea. The purpose behind this is twofold: (1) insert seemingly irreconcilable political differences into the economic relationship between China and its ASEAN partners (like what the US has tried to do between Russia and the EU with Ukraine and Crimea); and (2) provoke China into militarily responding to provocations from Vietnam and/or the Philippines to confirm the self-fulfilling cycle of regional suspicion that Washington has tried to foster (just as it’s tried to do with Russia in Ukraine). The fulfillment of this double-headed objective is meant to ‘justify’ the push to craft an institutionalized entity that will essentially serve as an Asian NATO for countering China. It’s envisioned that this organization’s core deployment will be centered on the Philippine islands due to geostrategic and political factors (per the latter, that the government is entirely under the influence of the US at the moment), and that it’s other two primary members will be Japan and Vietnam, both of which have the most heated island disputes with China. But, this entity is also expected to potentially include two other auxiliary members that can buffet its strategic potential, and these are India (in the direction of mainland Southeast Asia) and Australia (against Indonesia, the simultaneous containment of which alongside China was explained in the first section).

Everything doesn’t have to be that way, however, since there are a multitude of possible scenarios that could occur in order to interrupt this process and possibly even lead to the dissolution of the Asian NATO before it ever has a chance to be formalized. In a nutshell, these are the explosion of regional conflicts that offset the focus of India (in Myanmar, Nepal, and the Seven Sisters) and the Philippines (in Mindanao), and the skilled application of Russian diplomacy in Vietnam and Japan.China can also play an active part by pushing its strategic interests deeper into the South Pacific and Indochina, which would serve to divert Australia and Vietnam’s attention from their previous sole focus on the South China Sea in regards to ‘containing China’. By shifting the initiative, China can make regional inroads while at the same time throwing its rivals off balance by unexpectedly flipping the dynamic against them in their home areas (the literal reverse of what they’re attempting to do to China in the South China Sea). Also, democratic factors in Japan and the Philippines could weigh heavily in changing their respective governments’ outlook towards this dangerous situation. Whichever form it ultimately takes, it’s clear that there are definitely a plethora of situational options available, some of which can be directly influenced by China and its strategic Russian partner, to slow the process of Asian NATO formation, and that it can confidently be fought back against under the proper circumstances, with the cultivation of a dedicated enough level of political will, and through a little bit of ‘geopolitical luck’ (as unethical and coarse as that may sound in relation to Mindanao, Myanmar, Nepal, and the Seven Sisters).

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

(Please read Part I before this article)

The first part of the series outlined the construction of the Asian NATO and described all the ways in which its various members are converging with their anti-Chinese policies in the Philippines. This part of the research speaks about possible scenarios that could happen to offset the organization’s creation, be it by precluding various members’ participation or indefinitely delaying it for as long as possible. One of the scenarios also looks at how the prospective alliance might ironically turn its forces inward by being sucked into a quagmire in Mindanao, which would consequently render them unable to effectively counter China as well as increase the chances that various members decide to abandon the costly coalition.

The structure for this section addresses all 5 of the CCC members individually, not counting South Korea or the US. Seoul, as earlier discussed, has yet to commit its interests to the ASEAN region or in countering China, while Washington, as the plan’s mastermind, is incapable of recanting the strategy that it’s already invested so much of its political capital in supporting. This piece begins by pinpointing the conditions that would have to transpire in order to interrupt the participation of the Australian and Indian auxiliary members, before moving along to the core ones of Vietnam, Japan, and the Philippines.

Particular attention should be paid to the scenarios affecting the Tokyo-Manilla axis, as this is the most important bilateral partnership of the entire endeavor. ‘Led from behind’ by the US, it’s capable of standing alone and creating considerable challenges for China even in the event that the other three potential members don’t participate. Likewise, the reverse logic dictates that if anything happens to disrupt their ties or destabilize the Philippines as the entity’s host territory, then the Asian NATO would be stymied and could likely dissolve.

Before beginning, one should remember that even though these scenarios all play out to China’s ultimate advantage, it doesn’t mean that it has a hand behind every one. This is in specific regard to those dealing with India (Neighboring Crises and Seven Sisters Secessionism), Japan (Public Pressure Pushback), and the Philippines (Election Reversal and Mindanao Mayhem).

Australia

Backyard Rivalry Reverses Itself:

Instead of Australia being free to interfere in China’s South Sea backyard without repercussion, China could ramp up the diplomatic and economic contacts it has in the South Pacific in order to reverse the dynamic and turn the rivalry initiative against Australia. As noted by the Indian think tank Gateway House in a publication urging the South Asian state to commit more to the region, China already commands much sway in the South Pacific, and this is largely due to Australia’s own history of shortcomings in treating its neighbors with respect. This backdrop means that it’s entirely possible for China to utilize its existing advantages in order to further minimize Australia’s role in the region, perhaps even eventually turning the Pacific Islands Forum (of which Canberra is a member) into a platform for deeper Chinese-South Pacific cooperation, embarrassingly excluding Australia from its own organization and de-facto replacing it in importance.

Two key starting points where it could most easily exercise its regional influence are Fiji, which China supported amidst punitive Western efforts to sanction and isolate it after a 2006 coup, and Papua New Guinea, one of the poorest countries in the world and thus capable of being easily influenced for cheap. Bougainville and the Solomon Islands are also prospective partners due to their physical and natural resources, respectively, although China might encounter difficulty working with the latter so long as it continues to recognize Taiwan (although this could quickly change with the right economic enticement). It should be noted that China is already moving in this overall strategic direction, as Radio New Zealand reports that it has given $1.4 billion in foreign aid to ”the Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Tonga, and Vanuatu” since 2006 and has recently pledged to donate more.

A Chinese-Indonesia Strategic Partnership:

Indonesian military academy cadets visited to Chinese Military Academy in Qingdao. (fyjs.cn)

While still a faint possibility, if the circumstances arose where China and Indonesia expressly entered into a strategic partnership with one another, then this would split the Asian NATO’s focus, dilute its capabilities, and potentially even lead to one or more of its members (such as India) abandoning the entire enterprise. The trigger for this happening could be proven Western meddling in West Papua or any other Yugoslav-like attempts to dismember the multinational country as punishment for its pragmatic policies towards China, or as a means of pressuring it to cave in to some forthcoming ploy to enter the Asian NATO. Jakarta would then have the impetus to fully reorient itself towards China out of the existential interest to secure its sovereignty and defend its territorial integrity. This relates to Australia’s participation in the CCC by totally distracting it from any (superficial) anti-Chinese commitments and leading to its absolute dedication in countering Indonesia instead. Once more, the reader should be reminded that this unlikely development could very well usher in the collapse of the Asian NATO and be a total game changer for countering the US’ P2A, but they shouldn’t exactly get their hopes up for it occurring any time soon.

India

Neighboring Crises:

India has made it a point to flex its out-of-regional aspirations ever since Modi came into office last year, but if serious enough crises were to erupt in Myanmar and/or Nepal, then this would snap its immediate attention back to South Asia and potentially hinder its ability to “Act East” (depending on the intensity and duration of the crisis/crises). For example, Myanmar could actually see simultaneous ones erupting, ranging from renewed cross-border terrorism to Rohingya secessionism and a return to all-out civil war. Any of these three, let alone their combination in some shape or form, would necessitate an urgent response from India and inhibit the projection of sustained influence past the country and deeper into ASEAN or the South China Sea. The same holds true for Nepal, which appears to be entering into a constitutional crisis over its decision to federalize the country. The latest reports are that India has enacted a crippling de-facto but unacknowledged blockade against Nepal in support of the Indian-affiliated Madhesi people that are upset at what they feel will be their unequitable influence under the federalized system. If the situation spirals out of control and civil war returns to the country, albeit one of an ethnic and non-ideological tint this time (or conceivably even leading to a second communist insurgency alongside the ethnic one), then India would certainly have to put its “Act East” plans on ice in order to prioritize dealing with the refugees and other elements (potentially armed militants) that might continually spill over into its border as the conflict slogs on.

Seven Sisters Secessionism:

In the same vein as the aforementioned scenario, if a serious secessionist crisis breaks out in India’s ‘Seven Sisters’ (it’s Northeastern Provinces), possibly aided and abetted by the cross-border terrorists spoken about above, then there’s no way the country would be stable enough to seriously entertain countering China in the South China Sea. This part of India is notorious for its separatist and terrorist history (sometimes overlapping, sometimes distinct), and if it isn’t stably brought under control and incorporated into mainstream Indian economic life, then it will remain a perennial risk to any sustained “Act East” policy. Right now there’s definitely the very real possibility for increased destabilization due to the combined threats of Bodo and Naga secessionist terrorism, which explains why India has made efforts to so publicly fight back against them. Still, because on-the-ground information from the region is so hard to come by for most observers, it’s uncertain exactly what degree of influence the central government has over the hearts and minds of most of the area’s inhabitants. Ultimately, this means that its ability to maintain peace might be tenuous and ultimately dependent on heavy-handed military measures, which in their own way might perpetuate the anti-government sentiment currently present there and create a cyclical reaction of more secessionism.

Vietnam

China’s Indochina Inroads:

It might very well be that Vietnam won’t be dissuaded under any circumstances from participating in the Asian NATO against China, but the best that can happen would be to divide its strategic focus and diminish its militarily ability to deepen the strategic partnership with the Philippines. The most feasible way to achieve that is for China to continue making inroads in Indochina, particularly via the high-speed railroad its building through Laos and Thailand and its entrenched economic and political influence in Cambodia (which just officially joined the SCO as a dialogue partner this month). By being so successful in the countries west of Vietnam, Beijing asymmetrically opens up a ‘reverse front’ of competition against Hanoi, putting the latter on the strategic defensive for once and chipping away at the sole competitive focus it used to attached to the South China Sea. Faced with rivalry in its literal backyard (and where its military used to freely operate during the 1980s), Vietnam now must divide its attention between the East (South China Sea) and West (Indochina), thus giving it relatively less mobility in the South China Sea than it previously used to have prior to China’s successes in carrying out its southern mainland shift.

Russia’s Restraining Influence:

Vietnam joined free trade zone with the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union earlier this year.

Along the lines of how Vietnam’s anti-Chinese activity in the South China Sea could be curtailed, one must recall the influence that Russia has over the Southeast Asian country. Vietnam values its relations with Russia to such a degree that it refused the American order for it to limit its military interactions with Moscow, and both sides have alsosigned a free trade agreement under the auspices of the Eurasian Union. From these established facts of friendship, one can then proceed to the logical conclusion that Russia holds considerable weight in Vietnam’s strategic planning, and it thus becomes possible for Moscow to capitalize upon this in aiding its Chinese ally’s concerns as per its tacit responsibility under theRussian-Chinese Strategic Partnership. It’s not predicted that Russia can entirely restrain Vietnam from carrying out anti-Chinese policies in the region, but it could at least use its diplomacy to act as a counterweight to American influence over its decision makers and possibly act as a crisis mediator in the event that a naval clash one day occurs with China. Overall, Russia’s role is that of a trusted, moderating influence that can restrain Vietnam from making hasty and overly rushed (and American-influenced) anti-Chinese actions that unexpectedly destabilize the situation even more than it currently is.

Japan

Public Pressure Pushback:

The Japanese public isn’t happy about their government’s remilitarization push, and tens of thousandsof citizens have vocally protested against it in an unprecedented pushback over the past year. The government doesn’t appear to be fazed by their rising anger, and with the next elections scheduled to be held by 2018, it seems as though they’re counting on the public losing interest before then and not prioritizing the topic as an electoral issue. Still, Japanese society has never been this mobilized before, as the entirety of the country understands the historic choice being imposed on them by their leaders and recognizes the far-reaching consequences that this entails. It could turn out that the public pushback is strong enough to call early elections that might unseat the government, especially if the public becomes incensed by any possible Japanese military deployment to the Philippines, and even more so if this results in any casualties whatsoever at the hands of Mindanao-based Wahhabi terrorists. Another thing to mention is that the ‘beauty’ of democracy is such that domestic and international issues can easily be manipulated by outside forces (ergo why the US engages in regime change and ‘democracy promotion’ across the world), indicating that China could potentially attempt to influence the debate to its favor via soft and covert means in response to American efforts to do the same, thus leading to some interesting informational scenarios.

A Russian-Japanese Breakthrough:

It might seem far-fetched at the moment, but if Russia and Japan reach some sort of diplomatic breakthrough (possibly as a result of years-long secret negotiations a la the US-Cuban ones), then it would change the entire calculus for the US’ P2A. This is because Japan is the main pillar of the whole strategy, since it alone is the only country in East and Southeast Asia with the capital and military potential to present a sizeable headache for China, and it’s also the only state with a leadership history (Fascist Japan) that stretches into both theaters. If it were to reach some sort of understanding with Russia and then begin trying to play it against the US (the same hand that Israel is trying to play at the moment, but for different reasons), then it would create a multitude of strategic uncertainties for the US and throw the P2A into jeopardy. Therefore, this is the absolute last scenario that the US wants to see happen, and it won’t hold back any option to prevent this from occurring. Keeping Russia and Japan apart is just as, if not more, important to American grand strategy at the moment than keeping Russia and the EU divided, and if this state of affairs changes, then there’s no doubt that it’ll elicit a fundamental change in the US’ position and unexpectedly throw it on the defensive in a region where it had long taken its dominance for granted.

The Philippines

Electoral Reversal:

The US’ plans for constructing an Asian NATO against China are predicated on the overly confident belief that loyal Filipino proxy Benigno Aquino III or his potential successor Manuel “Mar” Roxas II will win the presidential elections next May. The Diplomat, however, thinks that this might not be as assured as the US would like to believe, as oppositionist Jejomar Binay might put up quite an electoral fight with his populist platform. It’s still too early to tell how things will play out, but it’s worthwhile for one to read the publication’s article, since it puts into context exactly how different Binay’s foreign policy towards China might be. In relation to the treatise, he would essentially reverse the current President’s policies by normalizing ties with Beijing and jointly cooperating with it in the South China Sea, and there’s also the possibility that he and his supporters would find the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement recently enacted with the US as illegal and thus overturn it. This momentous policy shift would neutralize the very reason for the Asian NATO and remove the US’ ability to use the island chain (and especially Palawan) as its forward operating base against China. Suffice it to say, the US has a real stake in the outcome of the forthcoming election, and it will likely resort to uncouth means (a dirty information war or worse) to manipulate the voting process and guarantee to the best of its ability that its preferred candidate comes out on top (or that the opposition can be bought off). But, as nothing can be certain, it mustn’t be discounted that the US could be handed a sobering electoral surprise that totally takes the Pentagon off guard and forces it to furiously scramble various improvisations to salvage its defeated P2A.

Mindanao Mayhem:

The Philippines-based terror group the Black Flag Movement (pictured) – known as the Khalifa Islamiah Mindanao has declared its support for ISIS.

The other contingency that could occur to offset the Asian NATO’s creation in the Philippines would be the explosion of terrorist mayhem coming from Mindanao. This large southern island has been home to a separatist movement for decades, but regretfully Wahhabi terrorist elements have hijacked the cause and discredited it in the eyes of the global public. The resultant terrorist campaign of the past years has created a situation where the country felt compelled to seek increased American military assistance, a precursor of sorts to the P2A. While a renewed spike in terrorism could obviously serve as a pretext for deeper American military involvement in the Philippines (and a convenient smokescreen for ‘justifying’ an anti-Chinese buildup there), it could also drag the US into a potential quagmire and distract from its sole anti-Chinese function in constructing the Asian NATO. Not only that, but the Philippines’ foreign military partners might be scared to commit troops there so long as the violence is raging, as even if they remain confined to their bases (like the Japanese are predicted to be if they enter the country), the terrorists could bring the battle to them if they feel that the foreign forces are qualitatively benefitting the Filipino military through training and/or arms (which Japan already says it wants to provide to the country).

It’s absolutely certain that the Japanese public has no stomach for military causalities incurred abroad, so even the death of a single serviceman in the Philippines, no matter if it’s due to a terrorist attack against their base or an in-field battle, could lead to a nationwide near-revolt that demands the immediate withdrawal of military forces and potentially a snap election to return the Constitution back to its peaceful intent. The effect of American military casualties is less clear, as they’d likely be special forces and their information accordingly won’t be made public in the event they were injured or killed (except if an internal source leaks the information). Even so, American public opinion has no effect whatsoever in altering the Pentagon’s P2A plans, but the same can’t be said for other countries like Australia, for example, which could also get sucked into the Mindanao mess via the very tempting ‘logic’ of mission creep. In any case, an upsurge in terrorism in the Philippines would disrupt the island’s primary function of gathering a de-facto coalition of anti-Chinese militaries and lead to unintended consequences that could bode very negatively for the future of the said organization, as it would increase the real costs of participation and potentially scare away prospective member states from setting up base in this geo-critical but terrorist-plagued island chain.

Concluding Thoughts

It’s no secret that the US wants to interrupt China’s peaceful rise, and in doing so it’s stoked the fire of regional rivalry in the South China Sea. The purpose behind this is twofold: (1) insert seemingly irreconcilable political differences into the economic relationship between China and its ASEAN partners (like what the US has tried to do between Russia and the EU with Ukraine and Crimea); and (2) provoke China into militarily responding to provocations from Vietnam and/or the Philippines to confirm the self-fulfilling cycle of regional suspicion that Washington has tried to foster (just as it’s tried to do with Russia in Ukraine). The fulfillment of this double-headed objective is meant to ‘justify’ the push to craft an institutionalized entity that will essentially serve as an Asian NATO for countering China. It’s envisioned that this organization’s core deployment will be centered on the Philippine islands due to geostrategic and political factors (per the latter, that the government is entirely under the influence of the US at the moment), and that it’s other two primary members will be Japan and Vietnam, both of which have the most heated island disputes with China. But, this entity is also expected to potentially include two other auxiliary members that can buffet its strategic potential, and these are India (in the direction of mainland Southeast Asia) and Australia (against Indonesia, the simultaneous containment of which alongside China was explained in the first section).

Everything doesn’t have to be that way, however, since there are a multitude of possible scenarios that could occur in order to interrupt this process and possibly even lead to the dissolution of the Asian NATO before it ever has a chance to be formalized. In a nutshell, these are the explosion of regional conflicts that offset the focus of India (in Myanmar, Nepal, and the Seven Sisters) and the Philippines (in Mindanao), and the skilled application of Russian diplomacy in Vietnam and Japan.China can also play an active part by pushing its strategic interests deeper into the South Pacific and Indochina, which would serve to divert Australia and Vietnam’s attention from their previous sole focus on the South China Sea in regards to ‘containing China’. By shifting the initiative, China can make regional inroads while at the same time throwing its rivals off balance by unexpectedly flipping the dynamic against them in their home areas (the literal reverse of what they’re attempting to do to China in the South China Sea). Also, democratic factors in Japan and the Philippines could weigh heavily in changing their respective governments’ outlook towards this dangerous situation. Whichever form it ultimately takes, it’s clear that there are definitely a plethora of situational options available, some of which can be directly influenced by China and its strategic Russian partner, to slow the process of Asian NATO formation, and that it can confidently be fought back against under the proper circumstances, with the cultivation of a dedicated enough level of political will, and through a little bit of ‘geopolitical luck’ (as unethical and coarse as that may sound in relation to Mindanao, Myanmar, Nepal, and the Seven Sisters).

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

Falsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatever: But, as in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an œconomy of truth. It is a sort of temperance, by which a man speaks truth with measure that he may speak it the longer.  Edmund Burke, Letters on a Regicide Peace (1796)

Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it. Mark Twain, Following the Equator (1897)

 The conditions of the Transvaal ordinance … cannot in the opinion of His Majesty’s Government be classified as slavery; at least, that word in its full sense could not be applied without a risk of terminological inexactitude. Winston Churchill, as Under-Secretary for the Colonies, Commons speech, 22 February 1906

In the closing scene of Robert di Niro’s film The Good Shepherd (2006), the protagonist Edward and his colleague and fellow Bonesman Richard enter the new CIA building.[1] They both stop in the foyer and take note of a biblical text emblazoned on the wall.

“And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” John VIII-XXXII

Edward, whose career has been based on the establishment of counter-intelligence, asks Richard whose idea that was? The professional paranoid whose primary qualities throughout the film are emotional detachment and the inability to make either statement or gesture with discernable sincerity betrays his lack of imagination or even sense of humour and finds the citation merely odd. Richard treats it as sarcasm and cynicism. He at least sees the irony of an unofficial motto for an organisation of professional liars.

If we are to even begin to grasp the extent to which empire is based upon lies, we have to ask a more fundamental question—what do we mean by “truth”? Unfortunately to give a useful answer to this question here it is necessary to condense centuries of speculation and offer a deliberately brief answer in this essay. For this purpose I will confine this argument to an examination of what constitutes a lie and above all what is political language?

Again to save time I would like to repeat an anecdote from an unappreciated scholar of Victorian literature with whom I was fortunate to study many years ago. Morse Peckham was a contemporary of the more famous Thomas S. Kuhn whom Peckham had met at Princeton.[2] Kuhn’s renown derived from his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) in which he argued that scientific theories were not disproved but abandoned by scientific consensus in what he called “paradigm shifts”.

Peckham’s parable is about an encounter by one of his academic contemporaries, Wayne Booth, when he enters a restaurant.[3] The question Peckham wants to raise is “what is interpretation?”

I mean rather a theory of what we are doing when we interpret an utterance, any utterance, whether spoken or written. It comes down to this. It is idle of Miller and Booth, and Abrams too, to talk about the methodology of interpreting complex literary texts before they have determined what interpretational behaviour is in ordinary, mundane, routine verbal interaction. The explanation for this statement lies in the logical and historical subsumption of literary written texts by all written texts, in the subsumption of written texts by spoken verbal behaviour, in the subsumption of spoken verbal behaviour by semiotic behaviour, and in the subsumption of semiotic behaviour by whatever it is we are responding to when we use the word “meaning”.

If Professor Booth goes into his usual coffee shop to get his morning coffee, and says to the waiter, “I’d like a cup of coffee, please,” and the waiter brings it to him, what has happened? What is the methodology of the waiter? It is not absurd to ask why the waiter does not bring the America Cup filled to the brim with unroasted coffee beans, nor why Professor Booth does not say, “I asked you for a cup of coffee, but you have brought me a cup of mostly hot water.” Moreover if Professor Booth searches the literature of linguistics and of psychology in order to locate those studies and experiments, which will tell him about the methodology of the waiter, he will find very little. The original program of linguistics set forth a hierarchy of investigation beginning with phonemics, and going on through morphemics, syntactics, semantics, to pragmatics. But as yet very little has been accomplished above syntactics. Psychologists, at least of the typical academic breed, seem to be unaware of the problem…

Let us return to the waiter. I believe that something can be said about his methodology. In going for a cup of coffee in response to Professor Booth’s request, his behaviour can be characterised as dependent upon his perceptual disengagement of an analogically determined recurrent semiotic pattern from an analogically determined series of semiotic matrices. A request for coffee can be made in a variety of verbal formulations, but the waiter responds to all of them in the same way. He has determined that the analogies among those patterns are sufficient to justify his responding to them with the same behaviour. However, if Professor Booth meets the waiter at the beach, when both of them are on vacation and taking sunbaths, and if Professor Booth repeats his request for coffee, it is quite unlikely that he would get it. For the waiter would determine that the analogical resemblances between the beach and the restaurant are not sufficient for him to obey Professor Booth’s instructions. In the restaurant he has analogically determined that the customer-waiter-restaurant matrix is analogically similar enough to the hundreds of such matrices in which he has successfully performed so that he ought to get Professor Booth’s coffee.[4]

In Peckham’s principal theoretical work, Explanation and Power (1988), he argues that all interpretation involves verbal behaviour and more importantly it is control over behaviour. The attempt to determine what something means, whether an utterance or an act, is always an attempt to determine what behaviour is the appropriate response, whether verbal or non-verbal, to that utterance or act.

An important underlying principle in Peckham’s argument is that the meaning of any sign (an utterance or act to which a response is sought) is the response to that sign. From this it follows that all behaviour is ultimately interpretational—that is to say the search for an appropriate response. His parable of Professor Booth deliberately takes an academic and shows that there is no substantive difference between his behaviour as a literary scholar and his behaviour in any other situation. Professor Booth is engaged in interpretation and control of his behaviour. Moreover Booth is subject to conventions which he has learned, more or less well, about how to interpret and how to behave but these conventions are in no way inherent in his situation or in the words and signs to which he may respond.

I have cited this passage at length because if we can say anything obvious about political language it is that it is about controlling behaviour, because this is what all language does. The first thing we can say about a lie is that it involves utterances, utterances that elicit responses and hence require interpretations. The very possibility of uttering a lie is inherent in the virtually infinite range of responses that can be made to any utterance. What we interpret to be a lie is not in fact the absence of some “truth” but the judgement—usually after the fact—that our response to an utterance was in some very unpleasant way inappropriate. That inappropriateness is unpleasant because of the judgement that our response might have been somehow different had we known something—interpreted the utterance—to require a different response than the one we in fact gave.

To judge that a statement is a lie first of all is to interpret it as a statement to which we ought not to have responded in a given matrix or context to which we have been accustomed to assign it. In political language this means that, based upon our particular political assumptions, our response to a statement will be controlled by the matrix including appropriate responses to any given utterance. Furthermore it means that the person producing the utterance was aware of both the assumptions prevailing and the conventional responses that such an utterance would elicit.

In Peter Seller’s last film, Being There (1979), he plays a gardener who has been displaced by the death of his wealthy employer. Mr Chance has spent his entire life, as long as he can remember, living on the estate of his employer with no other occupations than gardening and watching television. Thrown into the real world he lacks any orientation except his experience gardening and the images of life depicted in the television shows he has watched. Walking through what appears to be the Black quarter of Washington he realises that he is hungry. An older black woman passes him on the sidewalk. He stops her—he is dressed in a suit, Chesterfield, and homburg, carries an umbrella and a suitcase left to him by the dead man—and after saying he is hungry, asks if she would make him lunch.

Not unlike the waiter in Peckham’s anecdote, Chance sees a black woman as a housekeeper and concludes that she is the right person to ask for a meal. The woman is shocked and rejects his request, certainly convinced that he is mad at best. In the course of the film, Chance meets people of increasing political importance who attempt to identify him and find themselves bewildered by his apparent inability/ unwillingness to say anything that reveals who he is. At the same time because his conversation is restricted entirely to his experience as a gardener and TV addict, the simplicity of his statements are soon treated as great wisdom. The political leaders interpret his statements as aphorisms or metaphors for profound ideas and judgement. Mr Chance does not even know what a lie is. His audience interprets all his statements in terms of political assumptions of which Mr Chance has not the slightest clue.

It becomes clear from the behaviour of Mr Chance’s “audience” that they share a set of political assumptions that govern their interpretation of Chance’s utterances, no matter how fantastic they may be. Occasionally sceptics appear who challenge the credulity of his statements or the appropriateness of his new patrons’ responses—to no avail. In fact the film concludes with Chance established as a senior advisor and guru to the group of powerful people who have adopted him.

In order to explain a lie or its technical opposite the “truth”, it is insufficient to look whether there are some underlying facts to be revealed or to submit correct data. A lie is not simply an utterance but includes the response to it. In short there can be no lie without a liar and someone who responds to the utterance. Here it is useful to quote Peckham again:

The value of semiotic transformation into a verbal semiotic mode, especially when explanation is superimposed, is that it makes negation of a perceptually disengaged sign pattern possible. Animals can refuse, but only a man can negate, for negation is an attribute of verbalisation.[5]

Moreover a lie, as a component of political language, is always embedded in the particular political assumptions of the person(s) to be deceived. An old adage among Germans in the annexed former GDR is that “everything they told us about socialism was false, but everything they said about capitalism was true.” It was a common place in the Soviet Union and the GDR that the government and the media did not tell the truth or at best were to be treated with great scepticism. The government was aware of this as was clear from the statement attributed to a Soviet journalist visiting the US who wondered how it was possible to travel from coast to coast and hear or read the same news and opinions everywhere—when even with censorship and strict policing such consensus was unenforceable in the USSR.

To this date one can read interminable complaints that the US and UK governments lied about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein prior to launching the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Aside from the question of whether the war would have been legal and supported had the “facts been known”, what does the accusation of official deceit by the US and UK governments really mean?

In 1960 Patrice Lumumba was elected the first prime minister of the newly independent Republic of the Congo. Within eleven months he was not only deposed but also murdered. He was decried in Washington and Brussels as well as throughout the West as a “communist”. Not only did Lumumba deny this, there was never any evidence produced to establish that he was. Decades later the official and largely unchallenged viewpoint is that in the Cold War it was logical that the US would consider Lumumba a communist—even if he was not. More disturbing however, are the replies that it was wrong to kill Lumumba because he was not a communist. The political assumption apparently held even by some of his supporters is that had he been a communist some kind of executive action (deposing, imprisoning or executing him) would have been at least understandable. In other words the lie was not simply that Lumumba was a communist but the unstated assumption that communists may not be elected to public office and they can be killed.

This is also the unstated assumption of all those who insisted that Saddam Hussein no longer had the alleged weapons of mass destruction and therefore the US invasion was wrong. Today there are many people who claim to oppose the destruction of Libya but virtually none of them are able to admit that Gaddafi’s murder was inappropriate or unacceptable.[6] The same condition applies to Syria. It is almost impossible to find anyone who will say that President Assad is the legitimate ruler of Syria and that no external government has the right to depose him. Instead the debate is focussed upon how to restore peace and stability to Syria as if the US and its vassals were not waging war against Syria (and its ally Iran). Allegations made by US and NATO officials against the Assad government are rarely questioned—although those officials have lied demonstrably in the past to justify waging war.

While it seems easy enough to establish how often and how seriously the NATO powers have lied, there appears to be no general incredulity toward subsequent statements and representations. The most common explanations for this defect is that these imperial officials occasionally lie but the mass media does not report the lies or that these governments are so successful at manipulating the populace that people believe whatever lies they are told. Neither of these arguments explains the persistence and recurrence of the deceit or the surprise with which every lie discovered is then greeted.

One has to ask why liars exposed are still believed the day after or why liars suffer no consequences for their lies? This is not simply a matter of daily propaganda and repression—although both can be found. The problem is that lies are not just words. They are behaviour. In political language a lie is a political utterance and an act. Liars exert control over the people to whom they lie. Those who ingest the lie also do something—they exercise control over their own behaviour through the interpretive act. That interpretive act involves both overt and covert behaviour. The reader/ viewer/ listener does not simply respond to an isolated statement. Instead the response involves at least a covert verbal control on the part of the target, which involves organising a battery of potential responses—a repertory—from the entire scope of political experience. The challenge of political warfare is not simply to sell a falsehood but to manipulate the entire political context, the political assumptions within which the recipient’s behavioural repertory are embedded.[7]

Since the manipulation of this political context is the real target of lies in political language, the disclosure of a lie—a falsehood—usually has little impact. The same applies to the threat and atrocity reporting common in the so-called Left media. Investigative journalism, practically a cliché in a world where five multinational corporations own practically the entire mass media of all types, rarely leads to more than an occasional resignation or farcical press statement. At best it delivers the alibi for token measures against those least able to claim sovereign or corporate immunity.

Therefore if there is to be any realistic chance of penetrating the cerebellum of the sympathetic media consumer, there has to be a proper understanding of the political assumptions within which her or his potential responses are embedded. This leads to the question whether those assumptions support any of the response options that a political opponent—and here let us be clear we mean opposition to the prevailing empire and its ideology—might find compatible with the struggle.[8]

Along with the West’s most enduring piece of science fiction and theatrical paraphernalia, two ideas of books have probably done more to structure the political assumptions prevailing among the vast majority of the Anglo-American Empire’s white subjects. These are the idea of Adam Smith and the idea of Charles Darwin. Together the vulgarised forms of their respective theories have been extremely powerful—creationists not withstanding.

Adam Smith is best remembered for “the invisible hand” although he explicitly warned that businessmen always conspire to fix prices and rig so-called free markets. The “invisible hand” is turned into the theory of general economic equilibrium most valiantly proselytised by what Paul Samuelson called the “neo-classical synthesis” in economics. Samuelson’s and Friedman’s “invisible hands” are mailed fists that are supposed to keep popular politics out of supposedly rational business and macro-economic policy. Adam Smith was not a “scientist” but a moral philosopher. His Wealth of Nations is full of speculative exercises that have no basis in reality.[9] That has not reduced the devotion to markets and adventurism (the earlier term for capitalism).

Charles Darwin’s renown or infamy is based on his attempt to explain the incidence of new species.[10] However the distortion of Darwin is even greater than that of Smith. Although “social Darwinism” is a term describing ideas introduced by Herbert Spencer (Social Statics, 1851), by attributing the maxim “survival of the fittest” to Darwin, the political theory borrows its legitimacy from supposedly objective biology. Darwin did not propose the “survival of the fittest”. In fact his argument was that in the course of generations within a plant or animal community, the least adapted to the prevailing environment might be better equipped to survive changes in that environment, whether gradual or sudden. Yet it is the Darwinism influenced by Spencer that has prevailed. The most obvious example of this view can be found when white Americans explain the subordination and destruction of the Native American population. In fact, the unstated premise of Euro-American domination is that the US and its European vassals to a lesser extent constitute the highest stage of human and political development to which all other peoples and cultures naturally must aspire.

The ideological fictions of the “invisible hand”, the “market” and “survival of the fittest” are essential tenets of Liberalism and the peculiar form of it found in the Anglo-American Empire identified as “Left”.

Again to simplify my argument I will dispense with such useless terms as “left”, “democratic socialism”, “neo-conservatism” or “neo-liberalism”. These are just words that elaborate—and thus conceal—the same ideology, capitalism.

When Marx wrote Capital he was not proposing an economic theory at all. Marx undertook to analyse the seemingly impersonal processes by which a class of people created institutions to control labour—labouring people. “Political economy” was political language—not scientific—it was the language of power that was replacing theology. Today that theology is called simply “economics”.

As a counter to this attempt to analyse the pseudo-science of empire, the ruling class created a language which together with the application of brute force shaped a horror scenario by which any attempt to alter imperial power relations became a violation of nature, a violence against self-evident truths—ostensibly against scientific truth. The “spectre of communism”, which the young Marx called the political challenge of the working classes to the owners of property, was articulated by the ruling class as a synthetic narrative where all the supposed virtues of the ruling class were negated and this negation became the “spectre” that prevailed until “communism” was deemed obsolete in 1989.[11] Communism was in fact a very broad and differentiated approach to reorganising human relations and thus altering world. It was never a monolithic ideology—even in the states that later attempted to enforce doctrinal orthodoxy. However, the “communism” of the ruling class was monolithic: it comprised every conceivable degree of opposition that could not be controlled by the regime.

This was the identical synthetic approach taken by Pope Innocent III when he declared that anyone who did not confess and practice according to the dictates of the Roman pontiff was a heretic and worthy of annihilation.[12] In other words, like heresy in the Middle Ages, communism was not defined as a specific set of positive political positions but as the term subsuming any deviation from imperial ideology, doctrine and practice. Furthermore, a communist was merely anyone who had been judged to be a threat to the ruling class if this threat could not be integrated or co-opted into the system of domination.[13]

The attempts of reformers to mitigate the wanton greed and gratuitous brutality of the ruling classes have all absorbed these assumptions while inventing and using language to challenge the symptoms but almost never the causes of the malaise itself. The problem of class domination was overcome in the same way the Reformers imagined when they renounced papal supremacy. Instead of a single capitalist—the days of so-called “robber barons”—the capitalist reformation introduced a scientific tyranny of capital, subject to regulation.

This transformation occurred in two stages. The first was at the end of the 19^th century with the emergence of social democracy in Germany, Fabianism in Great Britain, and Progressivism in the US. All three reform movements borrow the critical language that emerged in class struggle but synthesise the opposition to the ruling class into a positivist doctrine.[14] Positivism is best characterised as a religion of science. However in contrast to science as means and methods of producing human knowledge, positivist science returns to the medieval notion of natural laws (divine laws) that are disclosed by human activity or revelation. The validity or “truth” of those discoveries relies on the correct (appropriate) application of rigorous methods. The methods are not arbitrary—they are the tools of engineering, the creation of instruments like machines with which capitalists exert their power over labour and the natural environment.

Whereas Marx was an analytic thinker whose writing addressed incoherence and hence human struggles, the Reformers were committed to the fundamental coherence of ruling class ideology. Communists of all sorts were aware that knowledge and power were specific to the form of social organisation. Positivists aiming to reform capitalism (cosmetically modify the appearance and specific techniques of ruling class domination to make them more palatable) consistently defended the prevailing system as given and naturally inevitable, the result of natural law. The Reformist task was to discover or reveal the as yet unknown rules and techniques that would make the system work better. The principal of gradualism only makes sense if one accepts the prevailing order as inspired. The field of social action no longer embraces a belief in the fundamental malleability of human social organisation. There can be no revolution. Moreover there ought not to be one. Social movements, like organised labour or opposition to slavery and colonialism, are not supposed to change capitalism. Their purpose is to accelerate the movement toward a more serene capitalism that functions better because the as yet undiscovered laws are thus revealed, allowing the faithful to more closely approach the salvation that the one, true empire promises, just like the one, true Church did in the Middle Ages.[15]

The second, although relatively short-lived, Reformist tendency is that associated with economist, politician and eugenicist, John Maynard Keynes. After the failure to suppress the 1917 Russian Revolution and the outbreak of the Great Depression in 1929, Keynes published his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936). He argued that unemployment was due to under-consumption (one could call this poverty or destitution) in turn due to lack of investment which reduced both the rate of profit and the rate of spending in the economy by multipliers that increased the negative impact disproportionately. Since the ruling class had no opportunities to obtain adequately massive profits, there was no propensity to invest. If the State was to avoid the instability that spiralling unemployment and poverty could cause it was necessary to intervene in the supposedly natural course of things and stimulate consumption and investment so that employment would result. Keynes arguments were more detailed and complex than what can be presented here. Nonetheless political pressure in the US and UK resulted in modest state intervention to create jobs and thus stimulate consumption. These measures were supposed to motivate private capitalists to invest in the promise of more profits from sales to consumers. Although the most reactionary factions in the ruling class fought these policies tooth and nail, calling it among other things communism, it became the new theory of the social democratic sect. Keynes in this context constituted something like the heresy of the “poverty of Christ”.[16] The mere suggestion that capitalism must include a theology of full employment and consumption was (and is) infamous heresy for the orthodox Church, the fact of Keynes solid capitalist credentials notwithstanding. The central heresy is not that consumption is necessary for capitalist growth and therefore should be stimulated, e.g. by incomes policy. Rather the central heresy is that at least in principle, popular politics (as opposed to Business) could/ should be used to direct economic policy.

Keynes was merely analysing the problem that arose when massively subsidised capitalist war production became redundant with the peace. As long as the Great War was raging, factory output was being destroyed as soon as it was replaced. Armaments manufacturers, bankers and troop outfitters reaped extortionate profits. Several million surplus consumers had been annihilated on the front. Now those factories were no longer needed and there was nothing as profitable to replace the war. The command economy was also a great time for employers since workers had a simple choice, e.g. the pit or the trench. It took the mobilisation of the Second World War for Keynesian economic policy to be fully implemented. However, that was the point: there is no higher rate of consumption, investment and employment than during war. The best thing about war is that everything produced can be endlessly destroyed, including the workers and their families, only profit remains.

When WWII ended, the ruling class was faced with a return to labour unrest, mass unemployment and a fall in the rate of institutionalised plunder. Thus in the US Empire the permanent war economy was introduced, made even more profitable by the destruction or severe weakening of its main competitors.[17] The trade-off among Reformists was again (as in 1914) war against the rest of the world in return for high domestic employment and relative labour peace. The unexpected survival of the Soviet Union, combined with those countries it was allowed to occupy under the Yalta Agreement, posed a dual challenge to liberal reformers. On the one hand it was necessary to loot the former colonies of the competition (euphemistically called “open door policy”, esp. in China) to feed the domestic profit machine. On the other the Soviet Union, which was in the process of rebuilding after the West’s almost twenty-year attempt to destroy it, had to be neutralised to prevent it from recovering either as a trade competitor or an ideological alternative.

What I would call World War III has been labelled euphemistically the “Cold War”.[18] Almost immediately after the surrender of the Axis in Europe, the Anglo-American Empire began its crusades against heresy—meaning any resistance to economic and political subordination to the US—by waging war against Greek nationalists. The combination of covert action, military assistance to reactionary regimes and terror became known as the Truman Doctrine. This would only be the first campaign in a continuous war against non-whites and nationalists who took the UN Charter seriously. By the official end of this Cold War—the collapse of the Soviet Union—probably 15 – 20 million people had been murdered either directly by US military and economic terror or by that performed on the behalf of its ruling class through local terror organisations (with or without the State).

While the Soviet Union was inhibited in its ability to develop its own economy because of the US atomic arsenal and its constant first (and second strike) threat, newly independent countries were denied any assistance from the West—except in return for a kind of “sharecropping” relationship. The constant wars also disrupted trade between the former colonies that still relied on primary commodity exports and the industrialised economies in what was called the “Socialist Bloc”, although the terms of trade were generally more favourable to developing nations than those offered by the West.

The US atomic arsenal was applied as blackmail to restrain the Soviet Union from engaging in normal trade relations and implicitly to threaten Asians with mass annihilation should they resist the revival of Manifest Destiny and the “Open Door” in the Pacific.[19] Alone in Asia the US regime murdered over six million people between 1945 and 1975—two hundred thousand annually, if one only counts the invasion of Korea and the occupation of Vietnam. That is sort of like wiping out a city like Des Moines, Richmond or Fayetteville every year for three decades. This does not count the destruction of the infrastructure and poisoning of the environment.

All of this was supported by Liberals in both the orthodox and reformed factions. Orthodox Liberals were the party of Manifest Destiny in the US; they want(ed) to continue where the US regime left off in 1910. Reformed Liberals followed in the cloak of Keynesian militarism—while regretting the injury done to those non-whites, the integration of the empire was still paramount. Aid to aspiring dictatorships was good for employment and profits as long as they followed Washington’s guidelines.

By the late 1960s the Reform faction was split by the intensification of domestic revolt. The Cold War myth had been built upon a “white consensus”. However since 1957 Black Americans had seen the arrival of Black African national governments—something inconceivable since the Haitian Revolution. The isolation of Black Americans from the African Diaspora was momentarily broken. Black nationalism also returned to the US. Caribbean islands with large or majority Black populations were also becoming independent. The Reform faction had been willing to make gradual concessions to what they called the Civil Rights movement. When Malcolm X began to speak the same language as Nkrumah, the civil rights movement threatened to become a human rights movement—one for liberation and not amelioration. Emergent Black Nationalism in the US and tenacious resistance by the Vietnamese to US occupation and war posed a serious risk to the white Liberal consensus that had prevailed since WWII. The result was a Liberal “counter-reformation”—not unlike Luther’s decision to side with the ruling class in the Peasant Revolts. Luther was deeply opposed to a class war in which the position of the clergy itself was at risk. Reformed Liberals recognised that Black Nationalism and the Native American movement (e.g. Black Panthers and AIM) could destroy the white regime internally—or at least believed they could.

As a result the primary political warfare instruments, the CIA, FBI, corporate mass media, and “organised crime” (better understood as covert business) were mobilised.[20] White differences were buried and every measure was taken to avert race or class struggle in the US. For a brief period concessions were made to the Black middle class. However the “war on poverty” was the mirror of the counter-insurgency waged in Vietnam at the same time. While administered benefit systems were introduced to control the poor, especially Blacks, the covert warfare arms suppressed the regimes opponents by assassination or incarceration—where they could not be bought or simply discredited by propaganda measures.[21]

The war against African independence had not prevented Kwame Nkrumah from becoming prime minister of Ghana. However the political warriors succeeded in crushing Congolese independence in 1961, only a few months after Patrice Lumumba had been elected. The war against Black Nationalism was also waged in the Caribbean basin. Closer to the US and its Black population, these countries were potentially more threatening examples. Covert operations in Latin American were established practice. However manipulating territories that had been under British rule was more sensitive, not least because it could excite intra-elite rivalries. The countless wars being waged simultaneously by the US regime were expensive. In fact the cost of invading Vietnam was creating a serious financial problem for the US whose currency value had been tied to a USD 35 gold exchange rate.

The US had become the world’s depository for reserve bullion after WWII and the monetary rules had been agreed at Bretton Woods to assure the US dollar as a reserve currency. To avoid a run on the gold held in US vaults, the white consensus POTUS Richard Nixon abrogated the Bretton Woods fixing—but not without creating the petrodollar by agreement with Saudi Arabia. Another way of describing this sequence of events is that the US regime transferred the costs of its wars onto all of those forced to import oil, not only its European competitors but also all its imperial targets—i.e. newly independent countries in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.[22] This was aided enormously by the fact that the penultimate beneficiaries were the Anglo-American oil cartel, aka as the “Seven Sisters”, who already owned the house of ibn Saud.[23]

As the controlling shareholder of the Bretton Woods multilateral extortion apparatus (aka World Bank and IMF), the US regime first imposed massive debts/ balance of payments deficits on its enemies and competitors, it also could use the multilateral banking system to reset the balance of trade in any given country to feed the US Empire cheap or free labour and raw materials.

Although there are a few survivors of the Vietnam generation who condemn Richard Nixon for domestic felonies and together with Henry Kissinger for war crimes, the Nixon years formed the basis of the white Liberal reconciliation that reached its zenith in the canonisation of Ronald Reagan. In fact for those who bothered to listen or read carefully Barack Obama’s campaign speeches in 2008, it should have been clear that Obama was the distillation of the white Liberal counter-reformation that arrived to return the US Empire—and the world it has dominated since 1989—to the pure orthodoxy of Liberalism that prevailed in 1914.[24]

This pure Liberalism is not incompatible with the gradualist, scientific adjustments imagined by 19^th century progressives and Fabians. Quite the contrary, the objective of Progressivism was to prevent revolution and obliterate class struggle—ultimately to discover and recover the natural laws of capitalism that would allow exploitation for the insatiable to proceed again. There are some sects within the Reform faction that claim pure liberalism is dysfunctional and demand a return to what Samuelson called “depression economics”.[25] However their adherents miss the point: Capitalism is not an economic system based on scientific laws. It is not an engineering project, like building a bridge. The purpose of capitalism is not to guarantee under conditions of private ownership and free enterprise a rational economy with coherent processes for allocating resources.

It is and always has been a religion. In fact I would argue that capitalism is an outgrowth of Roman Catholicism, Max Weber (1930) and R H Tawney (1926) not withstanding. The Greco-Roman sect that seized control of the Roman imperial bureaucracy shortly after 313 A D, absorbed the institutions of Roman power and endowed them with the bureaucratic ideology called Roman Catholicism. The focus of imperial Catholic power was the Roman pontiff, the pope. An absolute ruler, who claimed both divine and secular authority, the pope was elected from the enormous European bureaucracy that the Church created. Its central institutions, the clergy, the mendicant orders, and the Inquisition established a reign of terror throughout Europe and wherever Europeans went. It stole everything that has made the Church and European ruling class so obscenely wealthy and vicious—along with their American cousins.

Ironically in 1913 the US Congress adopted the Federal Reserve Act.[26] Sixteen hundred years after the Edict of Milan, the US regime constitutes what might be termed a college of cardinals, banking prelates, who select the chief financial bureaucrat with the nominal authority to reign over the petrodollar. Only tiny cells of confused opposition actually dispute the legitimacy of central banking, capitalism’s equivalent of papal supremacy.

This religion, this Church, relies not only on overt force to compel obedience. It can draw on centuries of bureaucratic technology for monitoring and policing the souls of the subjugated. Auricular confession holds only a fraction of the potential of the credit rating today. Although Joseph Ratzinger’s Inquisition appears to have had only a bishop and a few murdered clerics to its credit and no longer burns heretics at the stake, the political warfare institutions descended from it—the national security state—which is in fact an international Inquisition to punish heretics condemned by the cardinals of central banking—could surely dye the vestments of every Roman prelate since Innocent III with the blood that has been spilled.[27] Capitalism is a religion for dominating labour (and the unemployed) and nature for the enrichment of a tiny class of psychopaths.

There is no rational, scientific argument against capitalism; any more than there is a definitively rational, scientific argument against Christianity and its virulence, whether Catholic or Protestant. Karl Marx was sober enough to recognise that there were no natural processes, no divine laws (not even history) by which human society can be permanently organised. He described in great detail the form of organisation of social power and domination in the West and anticipated the consequences of this peculiar organisational form. The organisational form—the Church of Capitalism—is the instrument that has formulated and instilled the political assumptions that underlie our semiotic matrices. We find ourselves—to the extent that we do not grasp the root of those assumptions—always able to deceive ourselves. In fact these cheap deceptions, whether they be the readiness to accept WMD and a pretext for war or police murders of non-whites or the lies and manipulations of our employers, supervisors and colleagues, are part of the cycle that allows us to confess and be absolved for our trespasses.

Burke and Twain, one serious while the other sarcastic, both understood that what we call “truth” is really a product of our religious economy. In some cases it is a commodity that can be traded like an indulgence. But in fact “truth” in religion is really nothing more than the refusal to call something a lie and then act upon that admission. Eternal demands for the “truth” about the Kennedys or the truth about “9-11” or the “truth” about the US war against Syria, are part of the economy of faith and integral to the lies that shock but are soon forgotten, like the promise in the confessional after the fifth Ave Maria. The journalistic exposure of “lies” among the faithful cannot dilute the holy water at Lourdes—nor does it change social organisation and social power. George Carlin declaimed before he died that he had given up on the human race. There was no malice in his voice as he said he had “no more interest in the outcome”. Rather he said humans were a remarkable species with unimaginable potential—who sold out to high priests and merchants.[28] In the Middle Ages one could identify the high priests by their clothes. Today the high priests and merchants all dress alike—well maybe it’s because they are really the same.

Notes 

This week’s annual United Nations General Assembly summit brought the rare occasion of Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin face-to-face attending the same momentous session. With Obama appearing peevish and sheepish, the Russian strongman took center stage targeting the US president’s failed policy and leadership in his crosshairs:

Rather than bringing about reforms, an aggressive foreign interference has resulted in a brazen destruction of national institutions and life itself. Instead of the triumph of democracy and progress, we got violence, poverty and social disaster.

Nobody cares a bit about human rights, including the right to life. I cannot help asking those who have caused the situation, do you realize now what you’ve done? But I am afraid no one is going to answer that. Indeed, policies based on self-conceit and belief in one’s exceptionalism and impunity have never been abandoned.

Planet earth is rapidly changing drastically in a myriad of ways. On display before the world this week, the shifting geopolitics of an overextended US Empire in freefall decline is now fully underway for all to see. But a brief look back to last year’s events and developments provides the contextual explanation of how we got here.

The overt aggression in February 2014 of Hillary’s NGO-led coup in Kiev overthrowing the democratically elected Ukrainian president at Russia’s border violated and defied all international law regarding the sovereignty of nations. The imperialistic US Empire was chomping at the bit to gain full Black Sea access by stealing Russia’s naval base in Sevastopol. But Putin strategically outmaneuvered the Obama neocons by Crimea electing to be annexed by Russia as it had been for centuries earlier. Though it was clearly the US that was the foreign invader violently triggering another regime change, the feds began their nonstop attack demonizing Putin as the global villain ushering the latest installment of cold war II complete with a nuclear first strike contingency plan.

The subsequent re-emergence of the Russian-Chinese alliance in self-defense against an overly aggressive United States bent on isolating the two Eastern powers ever since has had profound implications militarily, politically and economically on the global chessboard. The establishment of China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank a half year ago and the immediate exodus of longtime US allies rushing to join as founding members became a litmus test for what was to come. Clearly a dramatic global shift in power was afoot moving from West to East.

Not wanting another world war to break out in their backyard, the French and German leaders quickly brokered periodic rounds of peace talk negotiations in Minsk as needed between Kiev’s neo-Nazi US puppet and Russia in the face of escalating violence and war in Eastern Ukraine. Unfortunately with complicit approval from warmongering Washington, Ukraine forces have repeatedlyviolated the peace treaties.

Meanwhile, Obama was leading the charge rushing to ship heavy arms as well as send US military advisors to aid the Ukrainian military to engage in ethnic cleansing against the would-be freedom fighters asserting their independence from an illegitimate, corrupt and hostile Kiev regime. The hastened peace talks became another sign of Euro-defiance toward the US-NATO killing machine whose commander General Breedlove(aka Dr. Strangelove) was making wildly bogus claims that Russian soldiers were invading Ukraine, again rankling Merkel and others into calling for a diminished NATO role.

Obama’s economic sanctions against Russia have only hurt gas-dependent Western Europe far more than Putin as yet another costly consequence of America’s arrogant “full spectrum dominance” to surround and weaken rivals Russia and China. But then the EU, the UK, Europe and NATO have long been considered a mere extension as vassals to the monolithic empire operating out of Washington.

Still another over-the-top catastrophe plaguing the entire continent of Europe is this year’s tidal wave of migration from Syria, the Middle East and North Africa currently pouring into the continent, once again caused directly by the warring foreign policy of the US-NATO-Israel. The latest evidence of the crumbling influence of the US Empire is German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s welcoming embrace of Putin’s decisive move to eradicate ISIS in Syria. Merkel secretly knows America’s so called war against ISIS is simply another false fronted fake war by Obama and his Pentagon. The US-Israel-EU-NATO-Saudi-Turkey-Arab Gulf state funded creation of the terrorist monster-on-steroids has recently been exposed like never before. Obama’s pledge a year ago to “hunt down” and destroy ISIS proved to be yet another of his too many to count, empty false promises he never intended to keep.

For decades now al Qaeda/Islamic State jihadists have regularly been America’s secret go-to proxy ally, hired gun mercenary thugs used effectively to destroy wherever they’re unleashed, especially where US Empire chooses not to put GI boots on the ground. Then came the biggest false flag coup in human history – 9/11 – when we’re supposed to believe that 19 box-cutting al Qaeda “terrorists” murdered 3000 Americans when no solid evidence confirms it. Instead they were used as neocon stooges hired to be the fall guys for the 9/11 attacks. Half of those so called terrorists have subsequently been found alive, some are even currently suing the US government.

In fact evidence has now been uncovered that Israel and its Mossad conspired with the Bush-Cheney neocons along with a little help from their Saudi friends as the real 9/11 terrorists. The entire plan to destabilize and redraw the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) had already been hatched by the 9/11 architects with their Project for a New American Century (PNAC) long before the towers ever fell. Calling for a “new Pearl Harbor event,” the neocons conspired with Israel to launch an imperialistic blood-for-oil crusade under the false flag cover of their forever war on terror to take down every Arab nation not part of the US-Israeli crime cabal.

General Wesley Clark’s passing discovery a week after 9/11 of the Bush-Cheney foreign policy calling for a 7-nation regime change was simply the PNAC agenda still criminally operating today with the neocon/Obama obsession to remove Syria’s Assad from power. 9/11 became the diabolical excuse to invade, occupy, and murder millions of people to destroy Iraq and Afghanistan, respectively the world’s third largest oil producer and the world’s largest heroin producer. By the way, the feds’ international drug smuggling operation has been criminally funding US military Black Ops in 135 countries around the world, 85% of which is illegally laundered by IMF and the World Bank. Neocon lies of infamy and incessant false propaganda were used to remove two former US Empire allies Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi who both made the fatal error daring to defy the unholy sanctum of the US petrodollar. As Israel’s proxy ally the neocon-led US proceeded to systematically turn those two once prosperous, oil-rich nations into permanent, war ravaged, failed states along with half a dozen other hapless MENA nation fatalities.

This week’s events at the United Nations shed more gaping light and guilt on the demonic US Empire agenda. Even mainstreamCNN stated “Vladimir Putin stole Barack Hussein Obama’s thunder” on Monday calling out despot Obama on his failed policy to stop ISIS in its tracks. In Putin’s own words:

We should finally acknowledge that no one but President Assad’s armed forces and Kurdish militia are truly fighting the Islamic State and other terrorist organizations in Syria… We support the legitimate government of Syria. And it’s my deep belief that any actions to the contrary, in order to destroy the legitimate government, will create a situation which you can witness now in the other countries of the region or in other regions – for instance, in Libya, where all the state institutions are disintegrated. We see a similar situation in Iraq.

In contrast Obama’s softer approach toward the world’s enemy is fighting ISIS “with ideas, not violence.” In Barack Obama’s words:

This means defeating their ideology. Ideologies are not defeated with guns. They are defeated by better ideas – a more attractive and compelling vision.

This only makes sense when the world realizes that as the creator of ISIS in the first place, the US Commander-in-Chief’s own self-interest is to extend the war on terror well into the future (defeating ISIS “will take time”) by ensuring Islamic State’s continued protection and survival. After all, treasonous feds in Washington and the Islamic jihadists maintain a symbiotic relationship. The US needs ISIS as much for its forever war on terror as ISIS needs the secret US-Israeli cabal as its main backer-financier. Of course Saudi Arabia, Turkey and all the little oil-rich Arab Gulf state monarchies like Qatar, Kuwait and United Arab Emirates play their part in secretly funding their extremist partner against the Kurds, Syria and Iran. Hence as closeted bedfellows, Obama’s kid gloves approach towards his favorite proxy ally is revealed. Even former Defense Intelligence Agency director retired General Michael J. Flynn insists that back in 2012 even prior to ISIS becoming ISIS, Obama made his “willful” choice to favor, arm and support the Islamic State terrorists as his proxy ally against Assad.

As such, instead of destroying ISIS, Obama and the US Empire have been treasonously aiding and abetting the Islamic jihadists as they spread their malignant cancer to every hotspot in the Middle East, North Africa and well beyond.

While IS is still flourishing more than ever in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, it has now linked up deeper into sub-Saharan Africa with other terrorist groups such as Nigeria’s Boko Harem and Somalia’s Al- Shabaab. The government watchdog group Judicial Watch earlier this year even reported ISIS co-training with a Mexican drug cartel at a camp just 8 miles from the El Paso, Texas border.

The Islamic State has even moved into Ukraine as a forward base and is now feared to be opportunistically hopping a ride onboard the globalist cabal orchestrated migration crisis. There are already reports of ISIS entering the Balkan nation states. Islamic extremists have also set their eyes eastward into the Caucasus and Central Asian regions. Thus, the urgency of this human crisis now has Germany and other European nations desperately looking toward leadership from Putin to be the real enemy of the terrorists as opposed to the paper tiger faker Obama.

Seizing on the opportunity to expose the US for its feeble response in its yearlong fake efforts to wipe out ISIS, now even China is joining Putin’s bandwagon by also coming to the aid of Assad’s Syria, Iraq and Iran in their earnest fight to eliminate the Islamic militants once and for all.

The Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning-CV-16  and a Chinese guided missile cruiser are now docked in the Syrian port OF Tartus. Stephen Lendman rightly points out that perhaps Russia and China may extend an open invitation to other nations to join their newest coalition waging real war against the terrorists.

Chinese military advisors followed by more troops are scheduled to arrive in Syria tasked with freshly arriving Russian marines along with Iranian and Syrian anti-terrorism forces to defeat ISIS in Syria.

Moreover, usual stalwart US allied puppet Australia has just decided to abandon the US Empire’s imperialistic scheme to remove Assad, willing to see what happens in the long term as the new coalition led by US enemies Russia and China appear to be resolutely taking charge against ISIS after the US “accidentally on purpose” dropped the ball.

Meanwhile, mounting evidence shows that traitor Obama, fellow traitor chicken-hawk McCain and war criminal Bibi Netanyahu have been caught red-handed secretly meeting with ISIS and coddling jihadist terrorists in a Golan Heights hospital respectively.

There have been one too many US or British aircraft shot down by Iraqi security forces carrying arms to IS. Or one too many US airdrops of medical, food and arms supplies “mistakenly” landing in so called enemy hands waiting on the ground instead of the legitimate anti-ISIS forces like the Kurds. To make matters demoralizingly worse, financially strapped US taxpayers are being forced to spend $10 million a day on a fake war that’s only making the enemy stronger. Adding insult to injury, these repeated incidents confirming Obama’s aiding and abetting support his and his Pentagon’s contentions that this long war on terror will be ongoing for “decades to come,” deceitfully ensuring that the enemy supply line is maintained at all cost. But now the cost of aiding and abetting the enemy is exposing the US president as a traitor like never before.

All the while the Pentagon has been presenting a far more optimistic and deceptive picture than the dismal reality on the ground honestly permits. A long history of US war commanders typically lie through their teeth to justify their wars. From General Westmoreland in Vietnam to General Petraeus in Afghanistan to the latest Central Commander General Lloyd Austin, the same old bloody song wags on. In late March General Austin went on record with his recommendation to the White House that a key US military role in Syria will be to “shield” several thousand US freshly trained jihadists fighting against Assad forces. Historically there’s been no difference between ISIS and the latest US financed, trained and armed hired gun jihadists. In a related deception, the Pentagon’s Inspector General is now investigating General Austin’s Central Command for lowballing lies about ISISexpansion after getting caught fudging intelligence reports. How long are we the citizenry going to put up with all these dishonest traitors as our leaders regularly committing treason against us? When we’re locked up or dead it’ll be too late.

Ironically Obama’s objective to weaken and isolate Russia and China has been backfiring miserably. As this week’s developments clearly show, it’s Obama who’s the weakest and most isolated. In stark contrast, both of the US adversaries are enjoying a resurgence in global strength and power that is now successfully challenging Washington’s unilateral policy of interventionism and in-your-face global hegemony.

That “Asian pivot” Obama boldly touted a couple years ago designed to expand US military influence and power throughout East Asia has also proven an abysmal failure. The US has chosen to militarize the region by arming its puppet allies Japan, South Korea, Philippines and Australia. Meanwhile, the onetime US enemy that suffered millions of lost lives during the Vietnam War has allowed the US to take over its naval base at Cam Ranh Bay in order to combat China’s surging regional dominance in the South China Sea. The pivot was an obvious attempt to willfully stir up tensions off China’s coast over disputed Pacific islands, all strategically designed to hem China in similar to Russia. Meanwhile, the Gulen Islamic Schools operating as a transparent CIA front throughout the Caucasus and Central Asia are subversively infiltrating western China’s Xinjiang Province funding and fomenting separatist terrorism amongst the local Uyghur population.

In an overt ploy to humiliate and undermine this week’s USA visit by China’s President Xi Jinping, Obama threatened to apply economic sanctions against China that could pose a fatal blow to the US hi-tech electronics industry in Seattle and Silicon Valley that heavily depends on the vast Chinese market for continued expansion. Similar to the Putin sanctions harming Europe far more than Putin, Obama’s latest offensive shot across the bow amidst a fiercely raging currency war, cyber war and heightened military tensions especially after the massive Tianjin chemical explosion that could well have been triggered by US military saboteurs a day after China chose to devalue its Yuan. Another large industrial explosion occurred in China several days later followed by yet another explosion in a US arsenal warehouse in Japan only ratcheting up hostilities and suspicions to a fever pitch.

Like virtually everything, the increasing conflicts between America and China in recent years have been caused by the US. In 2010 the NSA was busted using Google to spy on China’s military and trade secrets. Of course mainstream media never mentioned a word about this faux pas that soured China to do business with Google and other American IT companies, causing Beijing to implement a new trading policy requiring US corporate giants to begin sharing technologies locally with China’s rising electronics manufacturers.

This justified precautionary measure was retaliated against by the Obama administration with several high profile arrests falsely charging Chinese scientists as spies that were later dropped for lack of evidence. Then came the bogus accusations that Chinese hackers were behind the theft of US company trade secrets followed by more finger pointing after alleged sensitive personal info belonging to thousands of federal employees was compromised. Again without providing any substantiation backing up its claims, Washington and its MSM propaganda have launched a relentless assault to demonize China as the latest cold war enemy in a cyber war that the US in fact had started.

In case you haven’t noticed, for the longest time truth has been the enemy of the feds’ crime cabal government and it’s now fast catching up to the treasonous rogue aggressors misrepresenting Americans as the true enemy of the entire world. The seven decade run that the United States has enjoyed since World War II as the number one leader of the not-so-free world is all but over.

A quarter century ago with the fall of the Soviet Union the United States emerged from the cold war as sole victor and sole global superpower. But instead of using its economic, geopolitical and military might and power to benefit other nations on earth in order to enhance the lives of all humans, the US Empire proceeded to make war around the world killing over 30 million people in the process, ultimately alienating itself as the sole world bully-killer executioner of any and all nations that dared to resist its fascist imperialistic exploitation and naked aggression.

The US crime cabal acting as a front for the military industrial complex, the oil industry and the global elite has maintained a predatory policy of siccing the World Bank and IMF on every developing nation with non-repayable, insurmountable loan debtsthat then unleash the Fortune 500 sharks to privatize and otherwise rape, pillage and plunder this earth, sapping precious lifeblood resources right out of its Third World victims. And this is how US Empire victimizes the world short of going to war.

The parasitic nature of the pathologically impaired elite, the subhuman species comprising the psychopathy club’s innermost circle, has been calling all the shots for centuries, manipulating US Empire and its killing machine to do its dirty bidding. But with an awakened masses, empowered and informed sovereign citizens of the world united, its reign of terror and crimes against humanity are finally coming to an end.

Its brutal rule over the rest of the world using criminal assault, intimidation, threats, extortion, torture and murder in violation of every international law, UN Charter and Geneva Convention rule, the globalists’ Empire of chaos and destruction has long operated with complete impunity but ultimately its day of reckoning, judgment and karmic comeuppance is finally arriving.

Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field for more than a quarter century. He now concentrates on his writing and has a blog site athttp://empireexposed.blogspot.co.id/.

On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a blistering critique of US foreign policy to the UN General Assembly.

On Tuesday, Barack Obama shoved a knife in Putin’s back. This is from Reuters:

“France will discuss with its partners in the coming days a proposal by Turkey and members of the Syrian opposition for a no-fly zone in northern Syria, French President Francois Hollande said on Monday…

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius “in the coming days will look at what the demarcation would be, how this zone could be secured and what our partners think,” Hollande told reporters on the sidelines of the annual United Nations General Assembly…

Hollande said such a proposal could eventually be rubber-stamped with a U.N. Security Council resolution that “would give international legitimacy to what’s happening in this zone.”…(France, partners to discuss northern Syria ‘safe zone’: Hollande, Reuters)

Hollande is a liar and a puppet. He knows the Security Council will never approve a no-fly zone. Russia and China have already said so. And they’ve explained why they are opposed to it, too. It’s because they don’t want another failed state on their hands like Libya, which is what happened last time the US and NATO imposed a no-fly zone.

But that’s beside the point. The real reason the no-fly zone issue has resurfaced is because it was one of the concessions Obama made to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the use of Incirlik airbase.  Washington has kept the terms of that deal secret, but Hollande has let the cat out of the bag.

So who put sock-puppet Hollande up to this no-fly zone nonsense?

Why the Obama administration, of course. Does anyone seriously believe that Hollande is conducting his own independent policy in Syria?  Of course not.  Hollande is just doing what he’s been told to do, just like he did when he was told to scotch the Mistral deal that cost France a whopping $1.2 billion. Washington and NATO didn’t like the idea that France was selling state-of-the-art helicopter carriers to arch-rival Putin, so they ordered Hollande to put the kibosh on the deal. Which he did, because that’s what puppets do; they obey their masters.  Now he’s providing cover for Obama so the real details of the Incirlik agreement remain off the public’s radar. That’s why we say,  Obama shoved a knife in Putin’s back, because, ultimately, the no-fly zone damages Russia’s interests in Syria.

The significance of the Reuters article cannot be overstated. It suggests that there was a quid pro quo for the use of Incirlik, and that Turkey’s demands were accepted. Why is that important?

Because Turkey had three demands:

1–Safe zones in north Syria (which means that Turkey would basically annex a good portion of Syrian sovereign territory.)
2–A no-fly zone (which would allow either Turkish troops, US Special Forces or US-backed jihadi militants to conduct their military operations with the support of US air cover.)
3–A commitment from the US that it will help Turkey remove Assad.

Did Obama agree to all three of these demands before Erdogan agreed to let the USAF use Incirlik?

Yes, at least I think he did, which is why I think we are at the beginning of Phase 2 of the US aggression against Syria. Incirlik changes everything. US bombers, drones and fighters can enter Syrian airspace in just 15 minutes instead of 3 to 4 hours from Bahrain. That means more sorties, more surveillance drones, and more air-cover for US-backed militias and Special Forces on the ground.  It means the US can impose a de facto no-fly zone over most of Syria that will expose and weaken Syrian forces tipping the odds decisively in favor of Obama’s jihadi army. Incirlik is a game-changer, the cornerstone of US policy in Syria.  With access to Incirlik, victory is within Washington’s reach. That’s how important Incirlik is.

And that’s why the normally-cautious Putin decided to deploy his warplanes, troops and weaponry so soon after the Incirlik deal was signed. He could see the handwriting on the wall. He knew he had to either act fast and turn the tide or accept the fact that the US and Turkey were going to topple Assad sometime after Turkey’s snap elections on November 1. That was his timeline for action. So he did the right thing and joined the fighting.

But what does Putin do now?

On Wednesday, just two days after Putin announced to the UN General Assembly:  “We can no longer tolerate the current state of affairs in the world,” Putin ordered the bombing of targets in Homs, an ISIS stronghold in West Syria. The attacks, which were unanimously approved by the Russian parliament earlier in the day, and which are entirely legal under international law (Putin was invited by Syria’s sitting president, Assad, to carry out the airstrikes), have put US policy in a tailspin. While the Russian military is maintaining an open channel to the Pentagon and reporting when-and-where it is carrying out its airstrikes, U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said that the US plans to “continue to fly missions over Iraq and Syria” increasing the possibility of an unintended clash that could lead to a confrontation between the US and Russia.

Is that what Washington wants, a violent incident that pits one nuclear-armed adversary against the other?

Let’s consider one probable scenario: Let’s say an F-16 is shot down over Syria while providing air cover for Obama’s militants on the ground. Now that Russia is conducting air raids over Syria, there’s a good chance that Putin would be blamed for the incident like he was when the Malaysian airliner was downed over East Ukraine.

So what happens next?

Judging by similar incidents in the past,  the media would swing into full-propaganda mode exhorting the administration to launch retaliatory attacks on Russian military sites while calling for a broader US-NATO mobilization. That, in turn, would force Putin to either fight back and up-the-ante or back-down and face disgrace.  Either way, Putin loses and the US gets one step closer to its objective of toppling Bashar al Assad.

Putin knows all this. He understands the risks of military involvement which is why he has only reluctantly committed to the present campaign. That said; we should expect him to act in much the same way as he did when Georgian troops invaded South Ossetia in 2007. Putin immediately deployed the tanks to push the invading troops back over the border into Georgia and then quickly ended the hostilities. He was lambasted by critics on the right for not invading Georgia and removing their leader, Mikheil Saakashvili, in the Capital. But as it turned out, Putin’s restraint spared Russia the unnecessary hardship of occupation which can drain resources and erode public support. Putin was right and his critics were wrong.

Will his actions in Syria mirror those in South Ossetia?

It’s hard to say, but it’s clear that the Obama crew is thunderstruck by the speed of the intervention. Check this out from the UK Guardian:  “Back at the White House, spokesperson Josh Earnest suggests that Vladimir Putin did not give Barack Obama warning about his intentions to begin air strikes in Syria.

“We have long said we would welcome constructive Russian coordination,” Earnest says, before qualifying that the talks between US and Russian militaries will be purely tactical: “to ensure that our military activities and the military activities of coalition partners would be safely conducted.” (The Guardian)

What does Earnest’s statement mean?  It means the entire US political class was caught off-guard by Putin’s  blitz and has not yet settled on an appropriate response. They know that Putin is undoing years of work by rolling up proxy-units that were supposed to achieve US objectives, but there is no agreement among ruling elites about what should be done. And making a decision of that magnitude could take time, which means that Putin should be able to obliterate a fair number of the terrorist hideouts and restore control of large parts of the country to Assad before the US ever agrees to a strategy. In fact, if he moves fast, he might even be able to force the US and their Gulf allies to the bargaining table where a political solution could be reached.

It’s a long-shot, but it’s a much better option then waiting around for the US to impose a no-fly zone that would collapse the central government and reduce Syria to Libya-type anarchy. There’s no future in that at all.