Global Research

The corporatists have agreed on the details of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

If ultimately approved by Congress — and this is less than certain — the TPP will expand the North American Free Trade Agreement into Japan, Australia, Chile, Peru and several southeast Asian nations.

Obama is a keen advocate of the “free trade” deal, but has faced staunch opposition from the left side of his party, notably trade unions and environmentalists.

Republican presidential candidates, including frontrunner Donald Trump, also oppose the deal and passage by Congress is less than certain.

FT reports:

Only a handful of Democrats support Mr. Obama’s trade policy, and Republican support is unpredictable in the 2016 election year, depending on the stance of presidential candidates and new leadership in the House. As it is, the deal can’t go to a vote before Congress until early next year.

The odds of passage in Congress will hinge in large part on the final language in a number of provisions, ranging from the strengthening of rights for labor unions to whether U.S. cigarette companies will face special limitations within TPP countries.

If passed the deal will allow corporate tribunals to overrule Congress and violate the national sovereignty of the United States. The process will be authoritarian and not have an appeal process or exit provisions.

“Packaged as a gift to the American people that will renew industry and make us more competitive, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a Trojan horse,” Zero Hedge noted on Monday. “It’s a coup by multinational corporations who want global subservience to their agenda. Buyer beware. Citizens beware.”

If enacted the TPP will ultimately reduce America to third world status.

The global elite and their corporatist partners are determined to impoverish humanity, consolidate wealth and power and reinvent and modernize the feudal system of the Middle Ages.

TPP is their weapon of choice.

Last week former defence minister Jason Kenney said if re-elected the Conservatives would significantly expand Canada’s special forces. Kenney said they would add 665 members to the Canadian Armed Forces Special Operations Command (CANSOFCOM) over the next seven years.

Why? What do these “special forces” do? Who decides when and where to deploy them? For what purpose? These are all questions left unanswered (and not even asked in the mainstream media).

What we do know is that since the mid-2000s Canada’s special forces have steadily expanded to 1,900 members. In 2006 the military launched CANSOFCOM to oversee JTF2, the Special Operations Aviation Squadron, Canadian Joint Incident Response Unit and Special Operations Regiment. Begun that year, the Special Operations Regiment’s 750 members receive similar training to JTF2 commandos, the most secretive and skilled unit of the Canadian Armed Forces. After having doubled from 300 to 600 men, JTF2 is set to move from Ottawa to a 400-acre compound near Trenton, Ontario, at a cost of $350 million.

Though their operations are “shrouded in secrecy” — complained a 2006 Senate Committee on National Security and Defence — JTF2 commandos have been deployed on numerous occasions since the unit’s establishment in 1993.

A number of media outlets reported that Canadian special forces fought in Libya in 2011 in contravention of UN Security Council resolution 1973, which explicitly forbade “a foreign occupationforce of any form on any part of Libyan territory.”

On February 29, 2004 JTF2 soldiers reportedly “secured” the airport from which Haiti’s elected president Jean-Bertand Aristide was bundled (“kidnapped” in his words) onto a plane by US Marines and deposited in the Central African Republic.

After the 2003 US/British invasion JTF2 commandos were reported to be working alongside their British and US counterparts in Iraq. While Ottawa refused to confirm or deny JTF2 operations, in March 2006 the Pentagon and the British Foreign Office “both commented on the instrumental role JTF2 played in rescuing the British and Canadian Christian Peace Activists that were being held hostage in Iraq.”

Nous étions invincibles, a book by a former JTF2 soldier Denis Morisset, describes his mission to the Colombian jungle to rescue NGO and church workers “because FARC guerillas threatened the peace in the region.” The Canadian soldiers were unaware that they were transporting the son of a Colombian leader, which prompted the FARC to give chase for a couple days. On two different occasions the Canadian forces came under fire from FARC guerrillas. Two Canadian soldiers were injured in the firefight and immediately after the operation one of the wounded soldiers left the army with post-traumatic stress disorder. Ultimately, the Canadians were saved by US helicopters, as the JTF2 mission was part of a US initiative.

Morisset also provides a harrowing account of a 1996 operation to bring the Canadian General Maurice Baril, in charge of a short-lived UN force into eastern Zaire (Congo), to meet Rwandan backed rebel leader Laurent Kabila. The convoy came under fire upon which US Apache and Blackhawk helicopters launched a counterattack on the Congolese, rescuing their Canadian allies. Some thirty Congolese were killed by a combination of helicopter and JTF2 fire.

In late 2001 JTF2 secretly invaded Afghanistan, alongside US and British operatives. In the first six months of their operations, members of JTF2 claimed to have killed 115 Taliban or Al Qaida fighters and captured 107 Taliban leaders. By early 2002 the British began having doubts about the tactics used by Canadian and American special forces. In Shadow Wars: Special Forces in the New Battle Against Terrorism David Pugliese reports,

“The concern among the British was that the ongoing raids [by Americans and Canadians] were giving Afghans the impression that the coalition was just another invading foreign army that had no respect for the country’s culture or religion.”

According to documents CBC News obtained through access to information, a JTF2 member said he felt his commanders “encouraged” them to commit war crimes. The soldier, whose name was not released, claimed a fellow JTF2 member shot an Afghan with his hands raised in the act of surrender. The allegations of wrongdoing were first made to his superior officers in 2006 yet the military ombudsman didn’t begin investigating until June 2008. The JTF2 member told the ombudsman’s office “that although he reported what he witnessed to his chain of command, he does not believe they are investigating, and are being ‘very nice to him.'” After three and a half years, the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service cleared the commanders in December 2011. But they failed to release details of the allegations, including who was involved or when and where it happened. The public was supposed to simply trust the process.

It seems as if the Conservatives support special forces precisely because these elite units have close ties to their US counterparts and the government is not required to divulge information about their operations. Ottawa can deploy these troops abroad and the public is none the wiser. “Deniability,” according to Major B. J. Brister, is why the federal government prefers special operation forces.

Author of the just-released Canada In Africa: 300 years of aid and exploitation Yves Engler will be speaking across the country in the lead up to the election. For information: Yvesengler.com

The media frenzy in the countries of the anti-Assad coalition over the Russian air strikes on Al-Qaeda-linked guerrillas in Syria has made one very significant fact quite clear. Along with the nervous reaction of the US, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and some other countries it is irrefutable proof that the interests of seemingly opposing forces – NATO and radical jihadism – are actually tightly intertwined. And their relations go far beyond the Syrian crisis.

Ultimately it makes no practical sense to differentiate Daesh and Jabhat Al Nusra merely on the basis of the fact that those extremist groups differ about the manner in which it is necessary to kill infidels. If Jabhat Al Nusra enjoys the confidence of some US senators, then the real problem might be the educational level of those senators (try to disconnect Senator McCain from his handlers and speechwriters and you will quickly see what kind of person he really is). Once again: Daesh and Jabhat Al Nusra are cut from the same cloth. And we should agree yet before acting: when determining military targets, all decisions must be based specifically on military considerations and situation on the ground and not on American vision of the future of “democracy in Syria.”

The military disposition in Syria is crystal clear. Primarily, blockade of the cities of Homs and Hama should be lifted and direct land route from Damascus to the Turkish border to be put under control of pro-government forces. The first strikes of the Russian AF were dispatched precisely in that direction.

In recent months, the terrorist groups in Syria were moving towards the sites of actual or planned air bases of the Syrian army. All major combat operations have now been moved to the Hama Governorate where Jabhat Al Nusra is particularly active. Thus the starting Syrian army counter-offensive in that area is strongly supported by the Russian AF. Moreover, the Syrian 4th Armored Division has just received T-90 tanks as well as BTR-80 and GAZ Tigr armored vehicles from Russia. Once operation is completed there, Syrian regains control over all ports and military air bases.

The counter-offensive near Hama will very quickly make it possible to figure out whether the plans to drive Jabhat Al Nusra into the desert are workable. That might not be consistent with the stated goal of battling Daesh, but in the field everyone understands that it is not possible to expel Islamists into the desert without lifting the blockades on the currently fortified regions. They have been – and remain – prime targets of the Russian air wings.

American and Saudi concerns have certainly nothing to do with the alleged civilian deaths from air strikes. The fact is that the billions spent by the royal family of Saudi Arabia, the CIA, and other agents in their attempts to oust Bashar al-Assad have literally been tossed away into the sand.

Following are a few facts to support this:

Hussein al-Ramahi, the head of the political commission of Hezbollah brigades in Iraq, has repeatedlyasserted that the boxes of weapons and ammunition seized from Daesh have markings proving that they belong to Saudi Arabia.

Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri, the deputy chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, was stating that US armed forces have been supplying Daesh troops with weapons and uniforms ever since the coalition was created.

During the battles for the Syrian city of Kobani, Iraqi and Syrian Kurds also claimed that they were in possession of video evidence proving that the Turks are assisting the Islamists by moving arms and ammunition through a security checkpoint on the Syrian-Turkish border and are even providing troops to reinforce Daesh divisions.

And in regard to the intrigues concocted by the monarchies, the US, and Turkey, I believe that the Islamists being bombed by Russia will actually soon be supplied with more up-to-date weaponry. I will not be surprised if the militants turn out to have not only portable air-defense systems, but also some that are only more or less portable. What’s more, these supplies will be delivered directly from Turkey.

No doubt that the Western intelligence agencies have already ordered their sponsored cells to elaborate resonant terrorist attacks against Russian interests worldwide. This shameless tactics will bring no other result but persuading everyone still hesitating about the real masters of ‘Caliphate Project’ that the black Daesh/Al_Qaeda banner is being knit far outside the Muslim world.

RELATED VIDEOS:

Russian jet performs three strikes against command post and munition depot near the Maarrat al-Nu’man, 33 km south of Idlib and 57 km north of Hama:

Using guided aviation bombs, the jets destroyed 4 terrorist command posts near Jisr al-Shughur, Idlib Governorate:

Strikes against command post and munition depot of the ISIS terrorists located in the mountainous area. The target was located in 13 km to the west from Jisr al-Shughur. As a result, the facility inflamed and the munition detonated:

High-accurate engagement of the munition depot located in Jisr al-Shughur:

Aviation strike against a terrorist training camp located in Idlib province. Caused fires of guerrilla shelters and explosive device manufacturing sites are seen:

It goes against every fiber of human decency to use a tragedy involving the murder of civilians by a terrorist in an aircraft to score political points. This is about murder, not politics. One day after warning Russia for its airstrikes in Syria, what happens? The USA precision-bombs a MSF hospital in Kunduz. Whoosh-BANG! God Bless America!

The bombing went on for half an hour yesterday after the alert was given that there was a Médecins Sans Frontières hospital in the area where the US air force was operating, in bombing raids to remove the Taliban from Kunduz. Nine of the medical staff were murdered outright and scores of patients were injured.

It is difficult to imagine how this atrocity happened, but then again after the callous disregard for civilian human life demonstrated by the United States of America since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, after the strafing of civilians with napalm in Vietnam, after the fifty-plus overthrows of democratically elected governments around the globe, after the myriad of invasions of countries, after Afghanistan, after Iraq, after Libya, after Syria, maybe it is time for the USA to rethink policy. It could be argued that those pursuing the current approach which gets Americans hated around the world are not patriots, but traitors.

Let us take a look at the world around us and what do we see? In the year 2015 of the third millennium, we see poverty, ignorance, violence and the new phenomenon, international terrorism, which walks hand in hand with the West. It started in Afghanistan, where the Mujaheddin was used as a tool to attack the southern flank of the Soviet Union, it continued in Chechnya where external forces backed Wahhibist terrorist elements, it continued in Libya, where NATO, ably led by the FUKUS Axis (France-UK-US), sided with terrorists on their own lists of proscribed groups.

Whoosh-BANG! God Bless America

As the United States of America and its Poodles in Europe go globe-trotting, self-proclaiming themselves the global policemen, imposing their wonderful version of democracy (Parliamentary oligarchies which pander to the whims of the Lobbies, their puppet-masters) from thirty thousand feet, imposing their “whoosh-BANG! God Bless America” diplomacy, is the world a better place?

No, it is not. The Middle East continues to be a mess because the USA and its Poodles refuse to engage all the players involved, namely HAMAS and Hezbollah. Obviously, a global solution has to take into account all the positions, including Iran, including Syria, including Egypt. And including HAMAS and Hezbollah. Only when the British government engaged the IRA was peace achieved in Ulster/UK. The same approach has brought stability to numerous regions of Africa.

Today, Humankind spends thousands of billions of dollars on weapons systems to kill one another, with the excuse that arms sales is good for economies, Humankind spends more on weapons than on books. Hatred is spread with the aim of creating two warring sides, proxy-puppets doing the dirty work while those watching rub their hands in glee, and could not care less if a child gets in the way of a bullet.

And no wonder the world is in the mess it is in, with “no go” labels stuck to a growing number of countries as Washington interferes, like in Ukraine where a Putsch ousted the democratically elected President because he saw more advantage in a deal with Russia and Whoosh-BANG! God Bless America, Hunter Biden is appointed special advisor to the Ukrainian energy lobby. Well, surprise, surprise. And Ukrainian Fascists perpetrated massacres while the West looked the other way. Look at Libya – close to being a failed State, where Western intervention brought chaos and misery to a once prosperous and peaceful society. Look at Iraq, where Western intervention caused the collapse of the Ba’athist State and Islamic State sprang up under their noses.

And the West dares to express concern that Russia has bombed the Free Syrian Army? What is the Free Syrian Army, if not a bunch of terrorists and murderers? If you take up arms against the authorities, and murder soldiers and policemen, you are a terrorist, it is as simple as that. What the West means is “Please don’t bomb our terrorists”.

Perhaps Messrs. Obama and his friends would like to take their families to Syria and stand back watching as they allow the Free Syrian Army to do to them what they have done to Syrian Government troops and security officers. And then compare the way they were treated by the authorities and by their darlings, the Free Syrian Army.

A tissue of lies from the West

Anyway, after the serial lies told by the West, if Russia states that it was bombing terrorists, I believe Moscow’s word. Moscow has not lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Moscow did not perform a mission creep and breach UN Resolutions in Libya and in Syria, Russia did not strafe fields of cereals in Iraq to starve people to death, Russia did not drop Depleted Uranium on huge swathes of territory (war crime), Russia is supporting a democratically elected Government (last year) against terrorists.

Perhaps the West might stand back and allow Moscow to be the global policeman. After all, Russia’s track record is far better, far less intrusive, far more inclusive. Failing that, suppose the West butted out for a change, stopped interfering and tried an approach which puts development before deployment? And let us remember, Islamic State has chemical warfare weapons and is pursuing biological weapons, right now, as I write and you read. Think about it.

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey has worked as a correspondent, journalist and editor in online daily, weekly, monthly and yearly publications, TV stations and media groups printed, aired and distributed in Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal, Mozambique and São Tomé and Principe Isles. He has spent the last two decades in humanitarian projects, connecting communities, working to document and catalog disappearing languages, cultures, traditions, working to network with the LGBT communities helping to set up shelters for abused or frightened victims and as Media Partner with UN Women, working to foster the UN Women project to fight against gender violence and to strive for an end to sexism, racism and homophobia. A Vegan, he is also a Media Partner of Humane Society International, fighting for animal rights. He is Director and Chief Editor of the Portuguese version of Pravda.Ru. ([email protected])

One glance on Sunday morning at The Guardian website demonstrated quite clearly what is wrong with Britain – and, probably, the rest of the ‘developed’ world. Three major concerns of the average household were news. And all three are connected, not just to each other, but to the way this country is being run.

Housing and the ‘Right to Buy’

This country has never recovered from the 1980s Great British Sell-off of our social housing – council houses and flats. Having sold them off, councils weren’t then allowed to use the money to build much needed… council houses. There has been a social housing crisis ever since.

Tory plans to force housing associations (private, non-profit organisations) to go down the same path will lead to more desperate people that local councils will have to deal with. The Tories are fond of telling us we all ‘aspire’ to home ownership, but that aspiration comes second to people’s simple wish to have a secure, affordable roof over their heads. Whether it’s the rent or the mortgage that is affordable is not actually that relevant.

Education and the loss of morale

Why is it that each new government has to overhaul the education system, just when teachers have got to grips with the last ‘reforms’? A YouGov poll finds that over 50 per cent of teachers are thinking of leaving the profession. Yet people go into teaching because they sincerely want to teach. Schools Minister Nick Gibb says “Teaching remains a highly popular profession…” He continues, “While many teachers stay in their roles for more than five years…” Five years? Is that now a long time to be in a job that used to be for life

Governments have for years depended on teaching being a ‘vocation’. No matter the conditions, the extra hours, the lack of support they receive, teachers will go on teaching, won’t they? Not any more it seems.

Health, the NHS and corrupt money

Poor housing and poor education often result in poor health, but we all know the National Health Service is in trouble financially. Tories use that as a good reason to privatise parts of it, but that doesn’t stop them hiding how bad it has got under their watch. One of the main problems has been the Private Finance Initiatives, introduced by the Tories, which has led to crippling debts.

While the right to buy has ruined the supply of housing for poorer people, so PFIs have ruined many hospitals. Those built under PFIs still have to allocate large sums of their budget away from patient care, just to go on paying the interest on these deals. Governments should get bold and put an end to this. Financiers have earned more than enough from the poor taxpayers.

But they won’t. Another health story to emerge is connected to the Volkswagen scandal, where harmful emissions have been polluting the air when customers had been led to believe that VW was environmentally friendly. It turns out they are rather more friendly to the body that is supposed to measure and monitor the emissions produced by their cars.

But although Housing, Health and Education form major ‘life’ concerns for the average person, for people earning a less than generous salary all three areas are heavily impacted by the lack of financial security. It goes without saying that the Guardian and other newspapers had, in September, highlighted the news that ‘zero hours’ contracts rose by nearly a fifth last year. And it should come as no surprise that they will increase because business groups are in favour of such contracts.

So there we have it: insecure jobs, insecure housing, and an insecure education system that lets down both teachers and pupils, all of which results in poor health that can’t be addressed by a failing health-care system.

Insecurity is the problem.

Life itself is never secure and dependable, but the current government and its devotion to business and profit are making life a whole lot less secure for many people. Are the Tories hoping we’ll all simply die of worry? Then they can close down government and go and enjoy themselves.

Oh no! Where have all the servants gone?

A week and a half ago news emerged from Havana that the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and the Colombian government had reached a framework for a final peace agreement to be signed within six months. This was hailed as a breakthrough in the half-century-old conflict and an opportunity to bring peace to the people of Colombia. But by adopting the government’s narrative, mainstream media have failed to recognize the primary cause of the violence and the inevitability that it will continue in the future.

The decades-long policy of the Colombian government has been a national security strategy of counterinsurgency, developed in the late 1950s under the sponsorship of the US military. The goal of the US government was to maintain a business-friendly political system that would implement economic policies amenable to multinational corporations and foreign capital. Resistance to such policies was deemed subversion, and people who sympathized with such resistance were branded as internal enemies to be eliminated or neutralized by military means.

The narrative of the national security doctrine holds that if the insurgent threat is eliminated, then peace will be restored. The implicit assumption is that the FARC rebels have always been the side standing in the way of peace. According to this interpretation, when the FARC initiated their military operations the state was acting for the benefit of the nation as a whole by organizing a counter response.

But this narrative is historically inaccurate. The Colombian conflict is not a battle of society at large against a group of guerillas, but a battle of a small group of elites controlling the state apparatus against the majority of the population.

“As in many other Latin American countries, we can find the seeds of present-day social inequality and strife in the concentration of Colombia’s land and resources under the control of a tiny minority, matched by the progressive dispossession of the majority of people, which originated with colonialism in the sixteenth century,” explains Jasmin Hristov in her book Blood and Capital: The Paramilitarization of Colombia. [1]

After the FARC developed as the armed wing of the Communist Party in Colombia, the counterinsurgency doctrine – developed by the US military and codified in manuals distributed as early as the 1960s – taught the US’s Colombian counterparts to view any advocacy for social justice or democratic reform as a form of Communist insurgency. In addition to armed rebels, clergy, academics, labor leaders, human rights workers, and other members of civil society became potential insurgent targets.

To further extend their reach into Colombian society, the government legally authorized paramilitarism in 1965 with Plan Lazlo to form “civilian defense forces” armed and incorporated into the Colombian military system. [2] These forces serve the government’s goal of preserving the status quo by carrying out their dirty work through the use of death squads, assassinations, torture, intimidation and disappearances while providing cover and the appearance of distance from the state itself.

The Colombian conflict cannot be understood without recognizing the true nature of the actors involved and the interests they represent. “The paramilitary has never been, and is even less so now, a third actor (the state and the guerillas being the other two), as portrayed in mainstream security discourses,” writes Hristov. [3]

Writing in the New York Times after the peace agreement was announced, Ernesto Londoño declared the “three-way fight among guerilla factions, government forces and right-wing paramilitary bands that often acted as proxies for the state had killed more than 220,000 people and displaced an estimated 5.7 million.”

Dan Kovalik, Professor of International Human Rights at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, disputes the notion that paramilitaries merely occasionally serve as proxies: “It is impossible to talk about the paramilitaries as separate from the Colombian state, for the Colombian state helped create the paramilitaries, and human rights groups have concluded year after year that the state has provided them with weapons, logistical support and has carried out joint operations with them, Even federal courts confronted with this questions under the Alien Tort Claims Act have concluded that the paramilitaries are sufficiently integrated with the state that their misdeeds constitute state action.”

Aside from inaccurately describing the fighting, Londoño’s statement uses statistics about the cumulative violence without describing who holds responsibility for the deaths and displacements. Later in his editorial, Londoño implicitly blames the FARC for the majority of the violence: “Dozens of victims traveled to Havana to speak about abuses they endured at the hands of the guerilla leaders. Some implicated government forces in brutal acts… The special war tribunals the government intends to start adjudicating crimes will be dismissed as kangaroo courts by those who would have favored a military defeat of the FARC.”

If one accepts the national security narrative that most violence by the government amounts to collateral damage as a result of reaction to insurgent aggression, then guerillas would be responsible for the majority of deaths and injuries. But this is hardly the case.

Kovalik notes that “human rights groups have consistently concluded that the Colombian state and its paramilitary allies commit the lion’s share of the human rights violations in that country – in the worst years, at least 80% of the abuses can be attributed to these forces.”

US Government Intervention and Plan Colombia

Londoño also credits US policy with providing the impetus to achieving peace: “Washington’s forceful intervention in the war, an intervention that began in the late 1990s, enabled the Colombian government to weaken the FARC and ultimately set the stage for peace negotiations.”

Washington’s counterinsurgency policy is seen not only as an instrument for peace, but as the primary factor enabling its achievement. This is stunning historical revisionism that portrays the instigator and sponsor of massive violence that has lasted decades as an honest broker for ending this violence.

In reality, Washington’s intervention began 40 years earlier than Londoño claims, and it created the war that has raged ever since. By any objective measure, US policy in Colombia has been an abject failure. Under US direction, funding and training, the Colombian state has had one of the worst human rights records in the hemisphere. Many human rights organizations attest to this, and have demanded an end to US military aid to Colombia.

“Year after year US policy has ignored the evidence and the cries of the United Nations, Colombian and international non-governmental organizations and the people of Colombia. Plan Colombia is a failure in every respect and human rights in Colombia will not improve until there is a fundamental shift in US foreign policy,” writes Amnesty International USA.

A Human Rights Watch report declared that: “all international security assistance should be conditioned on explicit actions by the Colombian Government to sever links, at all levels, between the Colombian military and paramilitary groups. Abuses directly attributed to members of the Colombian military have decreased in recent years, but over the same period the number and scale of abuses attributed to paramilitary groups operating with the military’s acquiescence or open support have skyrocketed.”

Bogotá professor and historian Renán Vega Cantor, in a study of U.S. involvement in Colombia, writes that: “State terrorism that has been perpetual in Colombia since the end of the 1940s feeds off the military support and financing of the United States, as much as the interests of the dominant Creole classes, to preserve their wealth and power and deny the fulfillment of elemental economic and social reforms that are redistributive.”

What the New York Times and the mainstream media miss in their analysis is that the current neoliberal Colombian sociopolitical system necessitates the continuance of violence to accommodate capital.

“The guerilla was not the cause of the Colombian conflict but rather one of its symptoms, and simultaneously became a contributing factor in the sense that its very existence has provided the ideological substance for the pretext and justification behind state-sanctioned violence and militarization, Thus unfortunately the presence of the guerilla has been used by the powerful to legitimate the onslaught on social forces that challenge the power of the dominant classes,” writes Hristov in her latest book, Paramilitarism and Neoliberalism: Violent Systems of Capital Accumulation in Colombia and Beyond. [4]

Hristov says that in order for the government to meet FARC’s demands, they would have to invest in social programs at the expense of the military-security apparatus currently in place. But since these systems serve the neoliberal economic restructuring that funnels land and resources from the masses to the tiny elite minority, it would be naive to assume this will happen.

“Even in a post-FARC era the state would always have a pretext, such as BACRIM [criminal bands with roots in nominally disarmed paramilitary groups] or the existence of other guerilla groups, to maintain its high level of militarization,” Hristov writes. [5]

The portrayal of the Colombian conflict in the New York Times and other mainstream media replicates state propaganda, in the form of the national security doctrine, while failing to account for the inherent violence of the economic system in Colombia that has driven the perpetual militarism and coercion in the country.

While any agreement offering the prospect of decreased bloodshed is encouraging, the fact that the Colombian state continues to abide by the Washington Consensus and its neoliberal socioeconomic model sadly signifies that the country is inevitably headed for continued violence, dispossession, and suffering by the vast majority of the population.

When the Colombian government and the western media recognize that Washington intervention exacerbates the violence, rather than helps minimize it, then possibly Colombia can begin to extricate itself and pursue a course that will enable the Colombian people to achieve lasting peace and social justice.

Matt Peppe writes about politics, U.S. foreign policy and Latin America on his blog. You can follow him on twitter.

References

[1] Hristov, Jasmin. Blood and Capital: The Paramilitarization of Colombia. Ohio University Press; 1 edition, 2009. Kindle edition.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Hristov, Jasmin. Paramilitarism and Neoliberalism: Violent Systems of Capital Accumulation in Colombia and Beyond. London: Pluto Press, 2014. (pg. 153)

[5] Hristov, 2014 (pg. 157)

Russian Air Force jets have flown over 60 sorties since the onset of the Russian campaign against ISIL in Syria on Wednesday. The campaign has dislodged ISIL and al-Qaeda associated terrorist brigades. Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev expressed his support for Russia. French President Francois Hollande accused Russia of having become a conflicting party due to its support of Syrian President Al-Assad. The Russian initiative is consistent with countering long-term NATO plans aimed at destabilizing the Russian Federation’s underbelly. 

On Wednesday, September 30, 2015, Russia began launching air strikes against ISIL targets in Syria. As of Saturday, the Russian Defense Ministry reported that there had been flown over 60 sorties, bombing 50 facilities of the Islamic State. Col Gen Andrey Kartapolov of the General Staff told reporters on Saturday that:

The aircraft have been taking off from the Hmeimim air base, targeting the whole Syria. … In the past three days we have managed to disrupt the terrorists’ infrastructure and to substantially degrade their combat capabilities. … Intelligence reports say that militants are leaving the areas under their control. … There is panic and desertion among their ranks. … Nearly 600 mercenaries have abandoned their positions and are making attempts to get out to Europe.

The President of fellow CSTO member Kyrgyzstan, Almazbek Atambayev, told the press on Sunday, that members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) should primarily think about protecting their own borders. President Almazbek Atambayev did, however, express his support for Moscow’s air strikes, stressing that the so-called Islamic State, a.k.a. ISIL, ISIS or Daesh had declared its ambition to control large territories. He added that:

Fighting IS is in the interests of Kyrgyzstan, and in this aspect we support Russia’s air strikes on positions of terrorists in Syria. … I support the actions of Russia. … If a country does not have a legitimate government, it is falling apart. … Similar events were in Libya, and a similar situation is in Iraq now.

During a meeting of the so-called Normandy Four on Ukraine, French President Francois Hollande reportedly said to Russian President Vladimir Putin that:

France, in the name of the legitimate self-defense, considering Islamic State to be an immediate threat, since they are preparing terrorist attacks in France and Europe, also decided to carry out air strikes. However, I recalled during the meeting with Vladimir Putin that these strikes had to be directed against Islamic State, exclusively against Islamic State. … Proceeding from this, everyone should bear responsibility. … We must focus our efforts on this terrorist group operating in two countries — Syria and Iraq.

Hollande would later accuse Moscow of having become a party to the conflict in Syria due to what he described as Moscow’s support to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. The remark fell within the context of allegations that Russian jets had targeted positions of other than ISIL fighters.

Sergey Lavrov. Photo, courtesy of ITAR-TASS, Artyom-Geodakyan.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, for his part, would note that when someone behaves, moves and acts like a terrorist it is probably a terrorist. A diplomatic way of telling the press that Moscow does not see a great difference between ISIL and e.g. the Al-Qaeda associated Jabhat Al-Nusrah.

Iraq, Iran, Syria and Russia have established a joint intelligence center in the Iraqi capital Baghdad. Moscow has previously hinted that Russia was prepared to look positively at a request for help from the Iraqi government.

Alexander Mezyaev is the Head of the Chair of the Academy on International Law and Governance in Kazan, Tatarstan, Russia explained the Russian and international legal background for Russia’s military operations in an article entitled “Russian Operation in Syria: International Law”.

Coordinated International Effort against Middle East Terrorism counters long-term NATO Objectives.

In a January 2013 interview with nsnbc, retired Pakistani Major Agha H. Amin noted that one of NATO’s long-term objectives with the destabilization of Syria was to spread a string of low intensity conflicts from the Mediterranean along Russia’s and other CSTO members soft and resource-rich underbelly to Pakistan. It is within this context that the statement of the President of Kyrgyzstan, Almazbek Atambayev, and his country’s support for the Russian air strikes can be understood.

Expanding Russian air strikes to also include e.g. Jabhat al-Nusrah and other mercenary brigades operating in Syria and Iraq would not be mission creep but rather part of a long-term strategy to counter well-documented, predominantly US and UK forged plans to destabilize and eventually to “Balkanize” the Russian Federation by drawing Russia and other CSTO member States into protracted low-intensity conflicts.

The Times is a virtual US administration/Pentagon house organ. Its articles read like imperial press releases, real journalism entirely absent, making sensationalist tabloid operations look good by comparison.

It’s  latest propaganda piece headlined “US Aims to Put More Pressure on ISIS in Syria” – polar opposite its agenda, ISIS and other takfiri terrorists its proxy army battling Assad, what Times editors, columnists, correspondents, and contributors disgracefully suppress, what’s vital to report.

The Times claiming Washington and allies are “preparing to open a major front” against ISIS in northeastern Syria is a bald-faced lie, the latest willful deception from America’s so-called “newspaper of record” – its leading lying machine, deliberately betraying its readers.

“President Obama last week approved two important steps to set the offensive in motion over the coming weeks, officials said. Mr. Obama ordered the Pentagon, for the first time, to directly provide ammunition and perhaps some weapons to Syrian opposition forces on the ground,” said The Times.

He also endorsed the idea for an increased air campaign from an air base in Turkey, although important details still need to be worked out.

Fact: All Syrian opposition groups are extremists, terrorists, no so-called moderate elements exist.

Fact: Any increased US air attacks will continue waging war on Syria, supporting ISIS and other terrorist ground forces.

“As recently as Friday, Mr. Obama said he would take all steps necessary to combat the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. The new approach relies on Arab fighters whose commanders have been screened by American forces and Kurdish fighters who are more battle-tested and whose loyalties Washington can count on,” said The Times.

Fact: The so-called “new approach” is the same old dirty one, apparently intending to be stepped up, aiming for more death and destruction, harming ordinary Syrians most, assuring continued human floods seeking safe havens, many wanting refuge in Europe.

How long EU countries most affected will put up with Obama’s war remains to be seen – its refugee flood straining their ability to cope, measures taken so far wholly inadequate, a bandaid over a festering wound.

Obama is a serial liar, again over the weekend, telling reporters “(t)he top line message that I want everybody to understand is, we are going to continue to go after ISIL. We are going to continue to reach out to a moderate opposition.”

False!! His agenda is polar opposite. Instead of explaining it, The Times reported it like gospel – deliberately deceiving its readers.

It claimed “(s)enior administration officials say the new offensive holds promise and may change the dynamics on the ground.”

After four-and-a-half years of Obama’s all-out campaign to oust Assad, short of bombing Damascus and sending in hordes of US troops, conflict was largely stalemated until Russia intervened.

It’s only in day six so too early to know it its campaign is decisive.

But it’s already made a difference. ISIS and other terrorist are panicking, US policy in disarray, frantic to come up with Plan B – for the first time facing a formidable adversary, Putin committed to defeat the scourge of terrorism Washington created, first in Syria, perhaps Iraq next.

The Times repeated the Big Lie circulated by Obama and neocons infesting his administration, claiming Russian operations are “directed largely at Syrian groups that oppose President Bashar al-Assad…”

Fact: It targets all terrorist elements in Syria. So-called moderates or rebels are misnamed. They’re all imported cutthroat killers, US foot soldiers against Assad and the Syrian population.

The Times marches in lockstep with US imperial policy – supporting its ruthless agenda, irresponsibly bashing Putin’s efforts for peace and stability instead of offering high praise.

He represents the best chance for world peace. He’s precisely what’s needed to challenge Washington’s rage for endless wars. The entire free world applauds him. No amount of Times propaganda can change that!

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 at1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

President Bashar al-Assad interview with Iran’s Khabar TV

scroll down for video (Arabic)

Question 1: In the name of God, the most compassionate, the most merciful. Mr. President, thank you very much for accepting the invitation of the Television of the Islamic Republic of Iran to give this interview. Thank you very much.

There are many issues which need to be raised; and in this interview, I’ll raise a number of them. I hope that I’ll get candid and transparent answers from your Excellency. For about five years now, Syria has been suffering from a war waged by armed terrorist groups that inflicted tremendous damage on the Syrian people. According to available statistics, these damages are estimated at more than USD 200 billion to the infrastructure, about 250,000 casualties and about six to seven million displaced Syrian individuals. All this was the result of Western states’ insistence on overthrowing the Syrian regime. They haven’t succeeded in doing so. Now we can see a change in positions regarding the situation in Syria. The states which used to call for overthrowing the regime have started to declare that they accept President Assad’s participation in an interim government. What’s your reading of this change in positions, and why has it happened?

No foreign officials might decide Syria’s future, political system or the individuals to govern

President Assad: In the beginning, I would like to welcome you in Damascus; and I’m glad to be talking to our Iranian brothers through your TV station. Concerning the changes that you see happening in the Western world, part of this is based on their statements to the media. For us in Syria, we cannot take these statements seriously, regardless of whether they are positive or negative, for many reasons. I believe that our Iranian brothers, including Iranian officials, share our view on this. In other words, both of us do not trust Western officials. As to their recent statements about a transitional period and other issues, I would like to be very clear: no foreign officials might decide the future of Syria, the future of Syria’s political system or the individuals who should govern Syria. This is the Syrian people’s decision. That’s why these statements mean nothing to us.

But what is absolutely certain is that Western officials are in a state of confusion and their vision lacks clarity. At the same time, they are overwhelmed by a sense of failure concerning the plans they drew and didn’t achieve their objectives. The only objective of course is what you mentioned in your question, i.e. destroying Syria’s infrastructure and causing a great deal of bloodshed. We have paid a heavy price, but their objectives were subjugating Syria completely and replacing one state with another. They aimed at replacing this state with a client state which implements the agendas dictated by foreign governments.

We cannot trust Western positions regardless of whether they were positive or negative

At the same time, the lies they propagated at the beginning of the events in Syria, in order to promote their positions to their audiences, have started to unravel. You cannot continue to lie to your people for years. You might do that for a limited period of time. Today, as a result of technological advances in the field of information, every citizen in every part of the world could know part of the truth. These parts have started to come together in the minds of their people, and they have found out that their governments have been lying to them concerning what has happened in Syria. They have also paid the price either through terrorist operations, the terrorism that started to affect those countries or through the waves of migrants coming to their countries, not only from Syria, but from different countries in the Middle East. All these factors started to effect a change, but I would like to stress once more that we cannot trust Western positions regardless of whether they were positive or negative.

Question 2: Mr. President, some countries, like France, used to have good relations with you, between 2008 and 2010. You enjoyed good relations with President Sarkozy. Why have such people moved to the enemies’ side and started calling for overthrowing the Syrian regime?

President Assad: Because Sarkozy was charged by George Bush’s administration to build contacts with Syria. Those contacts had a number of objectives which aimed in general at changing the political line of Syria. But there was an essential objective that the Americans wanted Sarkozy to achieve. At that time there was talk about how the 5+1 group should deal with Iran’s nuclear file, specifically how to deal with nuclear materials or the radioactive materials which were enriched in your reactors in Iran. I was required to persuade Iranian officials to send these materials to Western countries to be enriched and returned to Iran, without any guarantees of course. That was impossible. It did not convince us, and the Iranian officials were not convinced.

When the West was unable to change Syrian policies, they found an opportunity at the beginning of the events of what is called the “Arab Spring”, an opportunity to attack the states whose political line they didn’t like. That is why the period you are talking about was concerned with appearances. In other words, the West opened up to Syria, but in fact that period was replete with pressure and blackmail. They haven’t offered one single thing to Syria, neither politically, or economically, or in any other field.

Question 3: What you said was about France. How do you read the positions of other countries, like the UK and the USA?

President Assad: Their positions today?

Intervention: I mean that France wanted to intervene through the relationship that connects you with Iran. How did other countries, like the UK and the USA get involved in dialogue with you at that time?

Western countries have one master, which is the United States

President Assad: Yes. When we talk about these states, we are taking about an integrated system. We use the term “Western countries”, but these Western countries have one master, which is the United States. All these countries behave in accordance with the dictates of the American maestro. Now, the statements of all these countries are similar. They say the same thing, and when they attack Syria, they use the same language. That is why when the United States gives the signal, these countries move in a certain direction, but there is usually a distribution of roles. At that time France was asked to play that role, considering the relatively good historical relations between France and Syria since independence. There is a big Syrian community in France, and there are economic, even military, and of course political relations. That is why the best option for them was to ask France, and not any other country. But ultimately, Western officials follow the orders of the American administration. This is a fact.

Question 4: Does that mean that you know specifically what the West wants from Syria?

President Assad: They want to change the state. They want to weaken Syria and create a number of weak statelets which can get busy solving their daily problems and internal disputes with no time for development or extending support to national causes, particularly the cause of Palestine, and at the same time ensuring Israel’s security. These objectives are not new. They have always been there, but the instruments of dealing with them differ from time to time.

Question 5: It seems that some of these countries, working on behalf of the United States, have very close ties with the terrorists, and their policies are identical with those of the terrorist groups. What is the damage that such countries, like Turkey and Saudi Arabia, can inflict on regional security and stability?

President Assad: There are, of course, different kinds of terrorism in our region, but they are all overshadowed by what is called Islamic terrorism because these terrorist groups or organizations have adopted Islam without having anything to do with Islam in reality. But this is the term being used now. These groups are promoting sedition among the different components in the region in general. This means that the greatest damage is the disintegration of societies in time. Now, fortunately, there is a great awareness in our society about the danger of sectarian sedition, and the necessity of uniting ranks, particularly as far as the Muslims are concerned. But with time, and with the continuation of sectarian incitement, creating gaps between the different components of society and producing a young generation brought up on the wrong ideas, that will be a very serious danger. This disintegration will become one day a de facto situation, and will lead to confrontations, conflicts and civil wars. This is very dangerous, and it is not exaggerated. It is a fact.

Question 6: Now, it has become common in international forums for states to announce that the Syrian crisis cannot be resolved except through a political solution. But Saudi Arabia and the Saud clan insist that you should step down from your position. What is your response to that?

Neither Saudi Arabia nor Turkey have right to talk about democracy

President Assad: What I said a short while ago: any talk about the political system or the officials in this county is an internal Syrian affair. But if they are talking about democracy, the question begs itself: are the states you mentioned, especially Saudi Arabia, models of democracy, human rights or public participation? In fact, they are the worst and the most backward worldwide; and consequently they have no right to talk about this. As to Erdogan, he is responsible for creating chasms inside his own society, inside Turkey itself. Turkey was stable for many years, but with his divisive language, and his talk about sedition and discrimination between its different components, neither he nor Davutoglu are entitled to give advice to any country or any people in the world. This is the truth, simply and clearly.

Question 7: Mr. President, you said more than once that some states caused the current situation in Syria, and that foreign intervention played a significant role in creating the crisis. However, this crisis happened on your watch. To what extent have you played a role in creating this situation?

President Assad: When there is foreign intervention, it cannot make a significant negative impact unless there were gaps in this country or in that society. That is why we said from the very beginning that there are many things which need to be reformed in Syria. There are gaps; and we are all responsible for these gaps, as Syrians. Of course, the state has its share of responsibility in this regard, and the higher the official, the greater the responsibility.
This is in general terms, but when we come to the facts about what happened in Syria, we cannot deny the importance of the foreign factor. Money was paid to make people demonstrate under slogans related to the constitution, the laws or to reforms. From the very beginning we responded positively to all these proposals, despite the fact that we knew that a large part of it was unreal and not genuine. But it was merely a slogan. Nevertheless, and from the very beginning we called for a political dialogue among Syrian political forces. The result of that dialogue was that the constitution was changed, and the provisions which they claimed, or as some have claimed to be the cause of the crisis, have also been changed. New laws, providing for more freedoms, were passed, new parties established and the media law was changed. All the things which were demanded, or which were used as slogans in the demonstrations, were implemented.

Then, they started in the West and in the regional countries which are subject to the Western agendas, particularly Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, started talking about the issue of the president specifically. Why? Because they wanted to personalize the issue, in order to say that the whole problem in Syria is caused by one individual, and consequently he, and not the terrorists or the regional and Western states which seek to destabilize Syria, is responsible. That is why I say again that the issue of the presidency or other issues are the concern of the Syrian people. I, personally, have said, on more than one occasion that when the Syrian people decide that a certain individual should stay, he will stay; and when the Syrian people decide that he should go, he will go immediately. This issue cannot be subject to any discussion, but if the opinion of the West is contrary to that of the Syrian people, it has no value whatsoever. That is why we say that returning to dialogue and continuing the dialogue which is conducted from time to time is the solution for the Syrian crisis. If there are demands for reform, that shouldn’t be the responsibility of the President but the responsibility of the state’s institutions, because they define the shape of the reform. When there is a national issue, it should be shouldered by the institutions and should be carried out by these institutions, particularly elected ones, foremost among which is the People’s Assembly.

Question 8: So, you believe that what happened in Syria has to do with institutions and not the person of the president of the republic?

President Assad: Of course, because the president comes to power through institutions and leaves power through institutions. The president assumes power through the constitution and steps down through the constitution, the laws and the elections. Those are the mechanisms. A president cannot assume power through terrorism or step down as a result of terrorism. He does not assume power through chaos and does not step down because of chaos. He does not assume power through foreign intervention or under foreign cover as is the case in most countries in our region. As you know, this is a fact. When he comes to power through a foreign country, he continues in power through a decision of this foreign country and leaves power upon a decision of that country. This, however, is not the case neither in Syria nor in Iran, and will not be the case in the future.

Question 9: If we go back to the beginning of the crisis in March 2011, would you manage the crisis in the same way you did?

From the beginning we decided to fight terrorism, and today we are more committed to this principle

President Assad: In all things in our lives, there are always main titles and small details which constitute these titles. What changes often are the details and not the main titles, except in special cases. This crisis has been a rich lesson. Every national crisis is a very rich lesson to the officials, to the population and to society in general. Every day, you learn a new thing and see things from a different perspective. Sometimes you see things which you don’t know even about yourself or the society you live in. That is why it doesn’t make sense to say that the crisis is passing by and we will not learn new things from it and will not change accordingly. It is natural to have differences concerning the details, but not the main titles. The reason is that these are basic principles. For example, in the beginning we decided to have dialogue, to respond to dialogue and that the solution should be through dialogue. We still believe in this principle.

Concerning fighting terrorism, from the beginning it was clear to us that there were foreign hands behind it, and that it aimed at creating chaos and a terrorist environment to destabilize Syria. From the beginning we decided to fight terrorism, and today we are more committed to this principle. From the beginning we decided to be independent in solving our problems. We want help from our friends; and this is what Iran is offering, and what Russia is offering, together with other countries of the world. But no other country can replace us in solving our problems. I believe that we are more determined today to be committed to these principles; and the events have shown that what we used to say at the beginning of the crisis was right. When we come to the details and mechanisms, there is no doubt that the way we see them now is different from the way we saw them then.

Question 10: You said that the Syrian crisis should be resolved through Syrian-Syrian dialogue. Are you prepared, Mr. President, to sit at the same table with those armed groups fighting on the ground?

President Assad: It is self-evident that no state in the world conducts dialogue with terrorists, because terrorists, like other citizens, should be subject to the laws and should be brought to account. However, the state might conduct dialogue with terrorists in one case, when the objective of the dialogue is for the individuals who carried out terrorist acts to lay down their arms and embrace the state and the law. This has actually happened in Syria; and we held dialogue with many groups within the framework of what we call reconciliations through which the state grants amnesty to those individuals, provided that they go back to their normal lives.

This mechanism or approach has achieved reasonable success in many regions, especially when you know that many of those who carried out terrorist acts did so probably because of certain conditions which pushed them in that direction and not necessarily because they have a genuine conviction or desire to do so. There are those who were deceived and those who were misled.

On the other hand, there are ideological terrorist groups which do not believe in dialogue. They reject dialogue and reject reconciliation. They believe that these killings and these acts of terrorism are part of religion and part of Islam. They believe that when they commit these acts and get killed, they have done a service to religion, and then go to heaven. It is impossible to conduct dialogue with these groups; they do not accept it and we do not accept it.

Question 11: What are the damages caused to security and stability in the region by what happened in Syria through the acts of these extremist Islamic movements which want to declare an Islamic State or an Islamic Emirate? And how should they be dealt with?

President Assad: These terrorist organizations, whether ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra or al- Qaeda are mere manifestations of a long and deep perversion in our region and our society. This perversion is at least five decades old; but it practically started two centuries ago with perverse interpretation of Islam. The main manifestation of this perversion is the Wahhabi movement which interpreted Islam in a perverted and, in most cases, contradictory manner with the import of Islam itself. So, these are mere manifestations.

Dealing with this short term damage, which is related to the terrorist acts, the destruction and killing they are carrying out, is not easy, but certainly possible. Dealing with it will constitute a victory for society, an important victory because it protects it against a disease and a real epidemic.

The big danger is for this treatment to take a long time and for these organizations to become entrenched within society. In that case you will be dealing with a very dangerous, cultural and intellectual situation. You will be before a new generation of ideological terrorists who believe in killing, takfir and discrimination as a basic method for building an Islamic State, as they believe. Then, the whole region will face a huge dilemma. This type of thought has no boundaries. It does not recognize political borders. It spreads, through contagion, very quickly in our region, and even in Europe, as we see today. That is why these organizations are extremely dangerous, but it is not enough to fight them as organizations. More importantly, we should fight the thought which led to the creation of these organizations, the states which promoted this type of thought and the institutions which provide funds for this thought through religious schools and foundations which promote extremism in the Islamic world.

Question 12: Mr. President, Western countries tried, in a symbolic move, to create an international coalition against terrorism. But this coalition does not seem to have succeeded. Why?

International coalition failed because the thief cannot be himself the policeman

President Assad: That is true, first because the thief cannot be himself the policeman who protects the city from thieves. Similarly, the state which supports terrorism cannot fight it. This is the truth about this coalition we see. That is why, and after more than a year, we do not see any results. On the contrary, we see that is has been counterproductive. Terrorism has expanded geographically, and the number of volunteers or recruits to these terrorist organizations has increased. Second, because these states which support terrorism from the beginning and which provide cover for it, cannot be serious. Take, for instance, the number of air strikes conducted by the sixty countries together in Syria and Iraq. They constitute only a fraction of what the Syrian air force is doing, despite the facts that we are a small country in the end, and the Syrian air force is not big. Nevertheless, we are conducting many folds the number of airstrikes carried out by those countries.

If the US really wanted to fight terrorism, it would have put pressure on terrorists’ supporters

There is a more important indicator of their lack of seriousness. How can the United States and its allies fight terrorism or ISIS in Syria and Iraq while their closest allies in the government of Erdogan and Davutoglu are supporting terrorists and enabling them to cross the borders and bring weapons, money and volunteers through Turkey? Had the United States really wanted to fight terrorism, it would have put pressure on those countries. That is why I don’t believe that this coalition will do anything except strike a balance between the existing forces in order to keep the fire alive and perpetuate the process of erosion in Syria and Iraq and later other countries of the region, so that we all remain weak for decades and maybe generations.

Question 13: The states which oppose your regime consider your presence in power a pretext for continuing the war. How do you respond to them, Mr. President?

President Assad: If I were a pretext for terrorism in Syria, what is the pretext for terrorism in Yemen. I’m not in Yemen. Who is the pretext for terrorism in Libya? Who is the pretext for terrorism in Iraq? In fact, if we take the example of ISIS, you will find that it did not emerge in Syria. It emerged in Iraq in 2006 when the Americans ran most things, if not everything, particularly the security issues in Iraq. It emerged there on their watch; and all ISIS leaders graduated from the prisons which used to be run by the United States, not the Iraqi government. This does not make any sense. Western officials in America and elsewhere acknowledge that they created this extremism through al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in the beginning to fight the Soviet Union. ISIS is a by-product of al-Qaeda that came in a different form and in a different region. What they say does not have any value. The West always looks for some other party or person to hold them responsible because they will not say that it was them who supported terrorism and stood against the Syrian people and sought to destroy them together with their culture, heritage and all the basics of their lives.

Question 14: The Western coalition failed in its fight against terrorism. Now a new coalition has started to form in the region bringing together Iran, Russia, Iraq and Syria. Considering that the terrorists receive a lot of support from the outside, can this coalition succeed?

New anti-terrorism coalition must succeed, otherwise the whole region will be destroyed

President Assad: It must succeed; otherwise the whole region, not only one or two countries, will be destroyed. We have full confidence in this. Of course, what you said about the support extended to these terrorist organizations by other countries will make the price of victory for these countries which are fighting terrorism very high indeed. If those countries joined the fight against terrorism in a serious and genuine manner, at least by stopping their support to terrorists, it will hasten the process of achieving the results which we all hope to see. But even if they didn’t do that and continued to support terrorism, we as states have a vision and have expertise. All of us have suffered because of terrorism. Iran and Russia have suffered different kinds of terrorism. When these countries unite against terrorism and fight it militarily and in the areas of security and information, in addition to other aspects, this coalition will, no doubt, achieve real results on the ground, particularly that it enjoys international support from countries which do not have a direct role in these crises and in this region. This is with the exception of the West, which has always sought to support terrorism, colonization and stood against peoples’ causes, most countries of the world feel the real danger of terrorism. There have been recently successive statements from countries which support this coalition. That is why I believe that this coalition has great chances of success.

Question 15: Mr. President, your country has suffered a great deal as a result of terrorism. What is your messages to the states which support terrorism?

The most important terrorist leaders in Syria and Iraq are Europeans

President Assad: We wanted to say to them that terrorism will get to you in the end, but it has actually reached them recently. When we used to say this a few years ago, they said that the Syrians are threatening. Today it is no longer a threat. Terrorism has arrived in different European countries in addition to the regional countries which support terrorism and have started to suffer the consequences. There are waves of immigrants from different countries and for causes related to terrorism and other causes which might push others to leave the region. It is known that a large number of terrorists have infiltrated those immigrants, and now they are in those European countries. More importantly, this region has always been accused of exporting terrorism and extremism to Europe.
The fact today is that the most important terrorist leaders in Syria and Iraq are Europeans. Probably the largest number of terrorists comes from Muslim countries, and particularly Arab countries, but most of the leaders come from Europe, and specifically from northern Europe which is relatively far from our region and has a rich and sophisticated society. Nevertheless, terrorism comes from those countries to our region. This means that terrorism knows no boundaries, and that terrorism cannot be used as a political card whenever we want. I always liken terrorism to a scorpion. You cannot put a scorpion in your pocket, because it will sting on the first opportunity. We are repeating this now. They have started to realize this fact, but they do not dare acknowledge it, because if they do, they will have to acknowledge that they were mistaken from the beginning. This is difficult for them domestically and will constitute political suicide. That is why we hope that they will be brave enough one day to acknowledge this error and to say that they acted against the interests of their people in the service of their electoral interests.

Question 16: Mr. President, in addition to the official sources you use in order to get informed about the condition on the fronts and the condition of the Syrian people, do you rely on other unofficial sources?

President Assad: Of course, in all aspects of official work, it is wrong for an official to rely only on reports and on the work of institutions. There are always errors in the work of institutions. There are always personal opinions and personal views which might be at odds with reality because of a certain interest, or because of the lack of clarity. That is why the broader the network of relations and the sources of information, the closer to reality the vision is. That is why meetings with relevant individuals who have nothing to do with reports, with ordinary citizens, with any other person might add another aspect of the truth. I believe this is essential, even in times of peace, let alone in a state of war like the one we live in. You need this kind of communication in such situations more than you need it in ordinary times. Paper cannot give you a full picture of reality. This is a general rule for me.

Question 17: You follow foreign TV stations, don’t you?

President Assad: Of course, I do that all the time. We should understand how our opponents think.
Intervention: Those media outlets broadcast negative news about Syria. How do you feel when you hear such negative news?

Western media and officials lost their credibility…what they say has no value or impact

President Assad: Since the early days of the crisis, this war has been a media and psychological war in the first place. This media war, particularly through Arabic TV stations, since only a few people here watch foreign TV stations, has made a great impact and has been able to distort reality for a large number of Syrians. But if we say that this was the case in the first year, things have started to become clearer gradually. So, these media outlets continue to make an impact in their countries, but they no longer have an impact in our countries, especially when it comes to foreign media outlets. I think that they are deceiving their people, not us. Second, when you have a national cause and you defend your country, you do not pay attention to what others say. You are concerned first and foremost with protecting your country, with achieving the popular interest, the national interest. Everything else has to take a second seat. Since these media outlets have lost their credibility, and since Western officials have no credibility to start with, what they say has no value or impact even from a psychological perspective. I read and listen to such things only to understand how they think, but really it no longer has any impact as far as I’m concerned.

Question 18: Your heard the news about the immigrants and refugees who went to other countries. When you see images and videos of those refugees, how do you feel?

Western exploitation of refugee crisis is more painful than being a refugee

President Assad: This is painful of course. Syria has always been a safe haven for refugees throughput its history, since before the Ottoman Empire, and even throughout ancient history, because of its geographical location, the nature of its society and culture, and because of many other factors. But recently, at least throughout the last century, it hosted the Palestinians, the Lebanese, and before that the Armenians who fled to Syria because of the massacres perpetrated against them. There were also the massacres perpetrated against the Syriacs during the days of the Ottoman State and in other junctures. We should not also forget the Iraqis after the American invasion in 2003. It is very painful for a Syrian to turn into a refugee; and perhaps this is a black spot in Syria’s history which we will remember for decades and centuries. But what is more painful is the exploitation of the refugees’ problems on the part of Western countries and Western media. They portray it as a humanitarian tragedy from which they feel pain, while in reality they are the greatest contributors to this condition through their support of terrorism and through the sanctions they imposed on Syria. Consequently, in many parts of Syria, and in many situations, the basic requirements of life might not be available. So, terrorism, on the one hand, and these Western countries, on the other, are perpetrating the same act. They attack terrorists, but they are terrorists in their policies, whether by imposing sanctions or by supporting terrorism. This is another painful aspect of the refugees question; they fire at the Syrian refugees with one hand and give them food with the other. This is what the Europeans or the Westerners are doing.

Question 19: Mr. President, the Syrian refugee crisis has become a regional and international issue. Who, do you think, should address this issue? What do you expect of international organizations?

Every refugee is asking for countries to stop supporting terrorism

President Assad: Before talking about the services that should be provided to them. We should deal with the cause; why did these Syrian citizens emigrate? Most of those emigrants do not wish to live one single day outside their country, but there are certain circumstances which forced them to do so, on top of which are terrorism and the support of terrorism from outside Syria. So, if we ask anything of the international organizations or of the states – and I believe every refugee will ask for the same thing – It would be for them to stop supporting terrorism, and to put pressure on countries, especially Turkey, Jordan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia to stop sending terrorists to Syria and providing them with weapons and money. When they do that, there will be no problem. Solving the problem in Syria is not complicated at all. The Situation will be better, and the larger part of the refugees will come back to their country immediately, because regardless of the services provided to them in any country in the world or through whatever organization, it will not be the same as for this person to be in his country and environment and among his family and friends, neither materially nor morally.

Question 20: Mr. President, this is the second time I visit Syria this year, and I have talked to the Syrian people. They are concerned about how long this war might last. How do you, Mr. President, assess the situation in Syria? How long will this situation last?

We pin great hope on Putin’s coalition and on international changes

President Assad: The war will continue as long as there are those who support terrorism, because we are not fighting terrorist groups inside Syria, we are fighting terrorist groups coming from all over the world with the support of the richest and the most powerful countries. We are a small country, but when you defend your country, you do not have a choice, and you cannot ask how and how long unless you have decided to give up on your country. In that case you as a citizen will not have a homeland. This is out of the question in Syria. That is why I believe that the new atmosphere which has started to emerge in the international arena – although once again I exclude the West – started to push towards finding a real solution to the Syrian crisis. It is true that this is proposed under the title of a political solution, but there cannot be a political solution while there are states supporting terrorism. This is one package. We hope that this new direction started to put pressure on the governments which support terrorism. And this has actually started to exert pressure on these states in order to reduce their support. The second cause of optimism is President Putin’s initiative to form a coalition which includes Russia, Iran, Iraq and Syria. All these steps have been the natural answer to this question. For how long this war will continue? This war will continue until either terrorism defeats the people or the people defeat terrorists. So, we pin great hope on this coalition now and on these international changes.

Question 21: Mr. President, what are your own proposals to find a solution to this crisis?

President Assad: Of course, we support any political move in parallel with fighting terrorism. But this needs a number of factors to succeed. When we talk about dialogue among the Syrians, this dialogue has two aspects: there is a dialogue on the future of Syria, and it includes all Syrians. Every Syrian has the right to express an opinion in this dialogue in order to know the shape of the Syria we want. Later, there are institutions, there is the public opinion, there is a referendum on a constitution which might be produced by this dialogue. Whatever the people decide, then, will be binding to us as a state and for me as an official. But there is also a dialogue which is specific to the crisis: how to put an end to terrorism and how to restore security. If we talk about political reform, it does not concern the terrorists, because terrorists do not fight for political reform. They fight because they receive money or because they have a perverted doctrine, or because they want to have a role in a state that becomes another state’s client.
This dialogue requires an answer to the following questions: If we agree on something, what is our impact in reality? If we conducted a dialogue and reached the best possible ideas but without being able to implement them because the opposition we are conducting dialogue with has no influence on the terrorists, what do we get? On the other hand, shall we conduct dialogue with an opposition tied to foreign powers? From a national and patriotic perspective, this is unacceptable. You in Iran have political opposition, but you cannot call it an opposition if you knew, as Iranian citizens, that they receive money from a foreign country, or that they implement policies which are at odds with the interests of the Iranian people, and that they serve the interests of a foreign country. These factors do not exist so far. We have conducted dialogue with a number of groups, some of which were patriotic, we are not saying otherwise, but they told us that they have no influence on the terrorists. So, dialogue with them might be useful for the future of Syria, but not for solving the problem of terrorism. That is why the only option for us now is to destroy terrorism, because implementing any solution or any political ideas that might be agreed on will need a state of stability. Otherwise it has no value. Consequently, destroying terrorism is the foundation of any action in Syria. Political ideas can be implemented later.

Question 22: Your Excellency, Dr. Bashar Assad, you studied ophthalmology. How did you make the move to politics?

President Assad: This question cannot be raised when somebody enters the world of politics. It is legitimate when someone moves from medicine to engineering, let’s say. But politics is not a sector, it’s not economics or science. It is the outcome of all aspects of life: the economy, the military, security, people’s culture and all daily problems. All these things create something called politics. Politics is not a profession or an academic specialization. It is your link to the life you live. And in this region the complicated details of politics affect our daily life, and one cannot be but interested in politics. It is part of our lives in this region as a result of circumstances we live under and which influence us continually. So, I haven’t moved from one specialization to another or from one sector to another. I moved from place of work to another in the same public field.

Question 23: Going back to our earlier question about reforms in Syria, I read your biography and found that you made a good start with the reform process in 2000. Why haven’t you continued with these reforms?

Developing the economic situation was the basic challenge to reforms since 2000

President Assad: No, Syria has proceeded in a continuous development process, but there were priorities. For us, the basic challenge was the economic situation, which has always suffered from different problems, even before the crisis, and even under the relatively good circumstances. That was our priority. When I used to meet the citizens – before the crisis – complaints were always about the living conditions and the conditions of the economy. Political reform was linked to a certain extent to political elites in certain sections of society. It did not include everyone. As I said, the comprehensive issue was living conditions. Our basic challenge was how to develop the economy in addition to facing outside pressure because of different political reasons. That was our priority as a state. But if you talk to a large number of people, you will hear different views about priorities. Every person has his own view depending on their culture and problems. Some people might not have economic problems, so their priorities become different. For us as a state, we used to take the most common problems for the population. The state was moving forward, probably not quickly, but carefully and steadily.

Question 24: Mr. President, you have repeatedly said that important decisions need to be taken inside Syria, and that the dialogue must be among the Syrians themselves, but now we see that there are negotiations and discussions outside Syria, for instance like the negotiations between America and Russia. There are those who say that they are interfering in drawing Syria’s future. Does not that constitute a red line for you?

The Russians have never tried to impose anything on us

President Assad: We have old relations with the former Soviet Union and later with Russia, for more than six decades now. They have never tried to impose anything on us throughout the history of this relation, particularly during this crisis. The dialogue between Russia an America is not about interfering in Syria, the dialogue is happening between two sides: one which believes in interference in other states’ affairs, i.e. America and the West, and the other seeks to prevent such an intervention, prevent hegemony and violation of Security Council’s resolutions and UN Charter, i.e. Russia, the BRICS countries and a large number of other countries. It is not true that this dialogue is about intervention. They are not discussing the nature of the political system in Syria, or the identity of the next president, or how to solve the problem of terrorism in Syria. They are discussing the principle of the independence of the Syrian people’s decisions. That is why I believe that this dialogue is in the interest of Syria and the interest of the peoples of the world. When there is a strong power with allies defending the independence of peoples, this is in the interest of all of us, in the interest of the sovereignty and independence, which we have been so proud of for decades.

Question 25: Mr. President, do you know the substance of the negotiations between the Russians and the Americans?

The Russians and Americans are continuing contacts between us and the Russians

President Assad: Yes, there are continuing contacts between us and the Russians. They talk to us about all the details concerning the Syrian situation, including anything raised with the Russians by any other country, or any discussion between them and those countries, whether they were allies, opponents or enemies. There is complete transparency in this relationship.

Question 26: Going back to the negotiations with the opposition, in your interview with the Russian media you said that you are looking forward to Moscow 3. Now, there have been two discussions or meetings in Moscow and also in Geneva. I attended the Geneva meetings and saw that the opposition was divided and incongruent. In your opinion, can you reach a serious agreement with such an incongruent opposition?

We will reach no result if Geneva 3,4…or 10 continue with the same mechanism is in Geneva 1, 2

President Assad: No, if work is done using the same mechanisms, i.e. opposition groups formed in the West and in regional countries hostile to Syria which have been part of the bloodshed like Saudi Arabia, Qatar or Turkey, such an opposition cannot but implement the agendas of those countries. The simple question is: do these countries seek a solution for the situation in Syria or achieve stability? These countries are hostile to the Syrian people. They created the problem, and consequently, for them Geneva 1 and Geneva2 were merely a stage through which they wanted to achieve through politics what they could not achieve on the ground through terrorist acts. That is the objective.

Moscow conference’s mechanism is different

If Geneva 3, 4, and 10 continue with the same mechanism, i.e. for us to talk to individuals who are agents of other countries, we will certainly not reach any result. This is self-evident. We reach a result only when we conduct a dialogue, as Syrians, with each other. Hence the importance of the Moscow conference, because its mechanism is different. It includes different groups from inside and outside Syria. There are individuals who are agents of foreign, Arab or regional countries, independent individuals and patriotic individuals. The Geneva conference was based on one provision of the Geneva communique, which is the interim governing body, which we categorically reject. They wanted the Geneva conference to discuss only this point and to impose this provision on the Syrian government, or the Syrian state or the Syrian people.

The Moscow conference discusses everything. It discusses the whole of the Geneva communique which includes clear provisions like Syria’s independence, territorial integrity and the Syrian-Syrian dialogue. Everything in the Geneva communique contradicts the interim governing body provision. When we reach a consensus as Syrians in the Moscow conference, any other conference, or any other dialogue will be bound by the consensus that we will reach in Moscow. That is why we said that Moscow 3 is essential for the success of Geneva 3.

Question 27: There are many initiatives for solving the Syrian crisis, including the Russian initiative, the de Mistura initiative and the recent initiative made by the Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. What is your assessment of this last initiative?

President Assad: When Mr. Zarif visited us a few months ago, the visit was on the background of proposing ideas for an Iranian initiative. Before the visit, the Iranian Foreign Ministry announced the basic principles for this initiative, principles with which we totally agree. But as you know, the success or failure of any political action is bound to be linked to the many details which might be included in such an action. When Mr. Zarif visited, we discussed with him all these details, and the meetings continued later between officials in both foreign ministries in order to come out with the final draft of this initiative. What has changed during this period was the announcement of President Putin’s initiative, particularly in his speech in the Collective Security Treaty Organization’s Collective Security Council in which he identified basically his perception of the initiative, especially in relation to fighting terrorism.

Syrian-Iranian discussion continues, with Putin’s initiative taken into account

Now, the discussion continues between us and our Iranian brothers at the foreign ministry in order to take into account this important change, so that it becomes not necessarily part of the Iranian initiative, but to make the initiative compatible with these important and positive changes on the Syrian arena, and probably on the Syrian-Iraqi arena. That is why I say that this initiative is very important and necessary, particularly after signing the Iranian nuclear deal, and with European officials starting to communicate with Iran. We believe that the Iranian role has become important for us in Syria through this initiative. Of course, when it is complete the details are integrated, it will be announced.

Question 28: We heard recently that a Chinese warship arrived in Lattakia and that a Russian warship also arrived in the Lattakia port on board of which there are two thousand Russian soldiers with advanced equipment. Military operations and airstrikes against terrorists have started. Why have they come now and got involved in the conflict, and what will the results be?

China does not take part militarily in fighting terrorism, It supports the Russian efforts

President Assad: Concerning China, it does not take part militarily in fighting terrorism. It has announced a clear position. It supports the Russian role and the Russian efforts in this regard, and supports President Putin’s initiative concerning fighting terrorism, which includes the recent Russian presence in Syria and which has started operations recently. As to the Russian aircraft carrier, Russia has a presence in Syrian airports, and there is no need for an aircraft carrier. When operations started in Syria recently, the Russian Defense Ministry announced officially the start of these operations. So, everything is clear and public, and there is nothing hidden. Russia announced that these operations are in the form of airstrikes, but without any land operations as the media tried to depict. The military assistance comes exclusively within this framework.

Question 29: Mr. President, do the military personnel have a specific frame of reference in Syria?

Plans within Russian operation drawn by Syrian and Russian officers

President Assad: As for the timeframe, it has not been set yet. This depends on the development of events. But if you mean the plans and details of these plans, yes, the plans have been drawn in cooperation between Syrian and Russian officers a while ago when preparations started for the reception for Russian forces in Syria.

Question 30: Going back to cooperation relations between Iran, Hezbollah and Syria, these three parties enjoy strategic relations in the region. Do you believe that these relations can stand up to Zionist American plans?

Independence situation in the region wouldn’t have been the same without Iran-Hezbollah-Syria relation

President Assad: I believe that without this relation, which you described as strategic, which dates back for decades, the situation in the region would not have been the same in terms of independence. At least, there’re would not have been an independent state, or independent government and consequently an independent people. This axis distinguishes itself by defending its rights and adhering to independence. There is no doubt that it is capable of doing so, because it was able to do so in the past. God willing it will be able to defeat terrorism which is a new instrument for subjugating the region. It will certainly be able to do that. Once again, I say that there are no other options for this region if it wanted to be independent and to prosper and develop. What enabled you scientifically to make your achievements in the nuclear field was independence. Without independence, Iran would not have been able to achieve this. It would not have been allowed to reach this level. So, independence is the foundation of development, the foundation of prosperity in all development areas: economically, culturally, intellectually and in all other areas without any exception. So we should maintain this relationship, consolidate and develop it.

Question 31: What are the impacts which will be made by the nuclear agreement between Iran and the West on the political equations in the region in your opinion?

President Assad: It has a tremendous impact, not in the way some people see it in terms of Iran’s technical, scientific or political capabilities. It has a great and extensive impact on all developing countries, because Iran is a developing country which has broken the knowledge blockade imposed on developing countries in order for the West to monopolize knowledge in certain areas, particularly that oil resources are being exhausted, and the future becoming dependent on nuclear energy.

If Iran is stronger, Syria will be stronger, and vice versa

All what has been said about this issue concerning the nuclear bomb was merely an illusion and fake marketing on the part of the West, because the real nuclear bombs they fear are the brains which now exist in Iran. This is the challenge. Iran is a developing country that provided a model. It emerged from a destructive war that lasted eight years, but the people were united and provided patriotic models. It provided a model of independence and that is why it achieved this result. This is the model which worries the West, and it is the model which concerns us as a developing country, as a country which maintains a strong relationship with us.

On the other hand, you and we are strategic allies; so if Iran is stronger, Syria will be stronger, and vice versa. From another perspective, had Iran abandoned its rights in the nuclear file, that concession would have been used as the new standard which will be applied to other countries, regardless of the legitimate international right of all countries to obtain nuclear energy. In the future, Syria or any other similar country might need nuclear energy. What Iran has won by its steadfastness and through the intelligence of its negotiators will be applied to all these other countries in the future. What you won, we have won as a developing country. That is why this is a very important aspect.

The final aspect is that related to the crisis. Acknowledging the real weight of Iran and its regional role will give it an opportunity to use its increasing influence to persuade the West that their policies are wrong. Of course, I do not pin, nor do you I believe, great hopes on the West changing its colonialist world view and moving in the right direction, but any effort made by Iran must have its impact. This impact, even if it were limited, would accumulate in time in order to mitigate the damage inflicted on our country by the colonialist West, practically now in relation to the situation in Syria and through your renewed relation with the European countries.

Question 32: Mr. President, as you know Iranian strategic relations have their roots in ancient history, and these relations have been strengthened and developed based on mutual regional interests. Can we have your take on the areas around which these mutual interests revolve?

President Assad: As I said a short while ago in the area of the independence of national decision making which covers all the other areas. When we are independent, we cooperate first politically, economically and militarily. Of course, we have been able to achieve the best in cooperating politically during the past three and a half decades, since the success of the Iranian Revolution. But I believe that we have not done enough economically, despite the conditions in which Syria lives. I believe this is an important area, and this is what I discussed with Iranian officials. The crisis itself might be an opportunity, particularly in light of the Western sanctions against Syria, for economic relations to develop between us and Iran. There are also military relations which are old and go back to the same period. They are advanced relations and we cooperate in detail with Iran on military issues. So, it is a comprehensive cooperation in all areas, but as I said, priority is given to the independence of decision-making in the region and preventing more countries from falling under Western hegemony.

Question 33: Mr. President, how do you see the role of his imminence, the Supreme Leader, in achieving stability in Syria and enabling the Syrian people to defend themselves against terrorism?

President Assad: First, the relationship between his imminence, the Supreme Leader, and me is a brotherly relationship despite the difference in years between us. It is a genuine brotherly relationship. He is possessed with special attributes in terms of clarity and adherence to principles. These are the things you look for in any politician; and I believe these are the attributes which are in harmony with Iranian policies and the Iranian people’s adherence to principles. They provided a new model in the possibility for states to maintain their principles and interests at the same time based on principles and not on short term political tactics or opportunistic political tactics.

This is what his imminence, the Supreme Leader, provided during the Syrian crisis. I’m also talking about Iranian policies before that; because the current policy is a continuation of the policies of Imam Khomeini who also embodied the adherence to principles. This has been the shape of Iranian policies since the revolution, with one difference only: the fact that they developed continuously to meet the needs of the times. They are based on the same principles but they always have more developed manifestations. In fact Iran’s support to Syria is based on a popular position now; but his imminence, the Supreme Leader, has an essential role through his directives to Iranian institutions; and we are familiar with the details of these directives in terms of the mechanisms of supporting the Syrian institutions in order to support Syria in her ferocious war against terrorism and the countries which support it.

Question 34: How do you define or explain to us this Iranian position in support of the Syrian people during this crisis?

The Iranians are principled and have been loyal to Syria

President Assad: It can be summarized in two words: First, what I said about adherence to principles. The Iranian people are principled. And the second word is loyalty, for the Iranian people have been loyal to Syria which supported Iran when it went through war for eight years. That war had the same objectives which they want to achieve in Syria today, but in a different form, using different tools and under different international circumstances. The Iranian people and leadership have not forgotten Syria’s position at that time. When most countries of the world tried impose sanctions against Iran, Syria was, I don’t want to say the only state, but one of the few states which stood by Iran, but it was the clearest in its position.

Today, whenever we meet any Iranian individuals they talk about Syria’s role at that time. Today, Iran pays back loyalty with loyalty, truthfulness and transparency. On the other hand, the Iranian people have a certain vision and a certain methodology which actually led you to the nuclear deal. When you see things clearly, enemies and opponents cannot deceive you. This vision for the region in general, including Syria, and including Iran’s future and also the future of the region is very important for the stability which we seek in the coming decades.

These characteristics are very important, and I talked a short while ago about patriotism, about the patriotic model provided by the Iranian people. I cite a simple example: when they started their attempts to stir unrest in Iran, it was the first country in which they wanted to implement the regional model through the 2008 elections. I met a number of European officials who told me that the Iranian state will fall soon. Of course they say “regime” and not “state”, because they do not recognize our states or peoples. I used to say no, these movements will fail. And Iran, the Iranian society, people and state were able to isolate this limited attempt, and all other attempts failed. Unfortunately, this succeeded in other countries of the region. These are patriotic models: the Iranians uniting around the nuclear file despite the different political currents in Iran. There are national issues around which you unite. I believe that all these attributes represent the Iranian people.

Question 35: Recently, there was a human disaster in Mina. The Saud clan government evaded stating the truth and tried not to uncover the facts. How do you describe this irresponsible Saudi behavior?

The Hajj is not a Saudi event, it is a Muslim and global event

President Assad: First of all, I offer my sincere condolences to the Iranian people for this human catastrophe. The chaos we saw in managing the Hajj rituals isn’t the first. Far from the political aspect, there is a difference between having the holy sites within the sovereignty of a state and dealing with these sites as if they were their personal possession. This is a painful incident for many countries of the world which lost their citizens in the incident. At the same time the Saudis have prevented the Syrians from making the Hajj for the past four years for purely political reasons, which is very dangerous. That is why the issue of how to manage the Hajj and who manages it started to be discussed throughout the Muslim world. The Hajj is not a Saudi event, it is a Muslim and global event. I believe that this issue needs to be discussed seriously at the level of the Muslim states.

Question 36: Once again, we go back to internal Syrian affairs. The opposition calls for you to step down. If you believe that stepping down will restore security and stability to Syria, what would you do?

President Assad: This is decided only by the people. That is why I say to them: if you believe that you are right why don’t you convince the Syrian people, and the Syrian people will decide, through their institutions or the elections, who the president should be. There were elections last year. Where were you? What did you do? What is your impact on the street? Nothing. Their impact is nothing. Every person who lends his decisions to another country is despised by the Syrian people, and his influence will be zero. He becomes a mere talking head in the media. All those who believe in such a proposition should take part in the elections and try to prove their viewpoints. We have no objection. As for me personally, I say once again that if my departure is the solution, I will never hesitate to do that.

Question 37: This interview will be translated into a number of languages and many members of your opposition will watch this. What is your message to them?

The real opposition is that which belongs to the people

President Assad: The real opposition is that which belongs to the people. If any person is convinced that he opposes the government, we tell him to speak out for the concerns of the Syrian citizens. If you speak out for the concerns, aspirations and desires of this citizen and act in his best interest, he will consider you his representative, and you will have a role in your country whether others wanted that or not. No one can stand against the people. But don’t call yourself a member of the opposition if you are an agent for another country. To be in opposition means to be patriotic. There is no unpatriotic opposition. Any unpatriotic individual is not a member of the opposition, he is a foreign agent.

Question 38: what is your message to the leaders of the countries which oppose you?

President Assad: I ask them to tell their people the truth one day. They always say the truth after they leave politics, because they act for their electoral interests. I tell them briefly: work for your national not electoral interests. Supporting terrorism is not only aimed against our peoples but against yours as well. This terrorism has started to bite back. What you have seen so far is only the beginning or “the tip of the iceberg”.

Journalist: Thank you very much for availing us of this opportunity to talk with you. If there is any other points you want to make, please go ahead.

President Assad: Thank you for coming to Syria; and I would like to send, through you, to the brotherly Iranian people my best greetings and all my love. The main part of the history that will be written in Syria after victory, God willing, will be dedicated to Iran’s support to Syria in all economic, political, and military fields. Thank you once more.

Journalist: Thank you very much, Mr. President.

The Syrian army is preparing for offensive actions against Al Nusra and ISIS near the town of Al-Rastan. In the recent interview, the Commander of the 147th Syrian tank brigade said that they coordinate perfectly with the Russian forces providing them intelligence and air support.

According to the government sources, over 450 militants from the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and another 250 people wanted by governmental authority have turned themselves into the Syrian Security Forces at the provincial capital of the Dara’a Governorate (Dara’a city). There are no confirmed reports about the reasons of such activity, but anybody can easily suppose why they did this. Meanwhile, the Syrian Air Force struck the Syrian Al-Qaeda group “Jabhat Al-Nusra” and their allies from the FSA around the city of Busra Al-Sham.

On Saturday morning, the Russian Aerospace Defence Forces (VKO) targeted the Jaysh Al-Fateh (Army of Conquest) militant group positions in the Idlib Governorate: Mardeij, Ma’arat Al-Nu’man, Jisr Al-Shughour, Saraqib and Sarmeen.

Separately, the Russian Air Force’s destroyed a command-and-control center of Jabhat Al-Nusra at Saraqib.

Russian warplanes conducted a reconnaissance flight above the Al-Ghaab Plains of the Hama Governorate. This could be a feature of the future military activity in this sector.

ISIS has been targeted by the Russian warplanes at the city of Al-Raqqa sector at least 25 times and each time. This includes the Tabaqa Military Airport and Tabaqa National Hospital turned into the ISIS’ primary military base and headquarters in Al-Raqqa.

Recently, the VKO has targeted the terrorist group inside the Deir Ez-zour Governorate. The ISIS positions along the imperative Deir Ezzor-Raqqa International Highway and Al-Mayadeen-Deir Ez-zour Road were destroyed.

The Russian Aerospace Defence Forces has conducted more than 60 flights and bombed over 50 Islamic State targets in three days. According to the Lieutenant General Andrey Kartapolov, head of the Main Operation Directorate of the General Staff of Russia’s armed forces, the strikes have significantly reduced the terrorists’ combat capabilities.

Russia’s decision to use its Air Force in Syria was a necessary step that is essential in order to maintain the balance of power in the Eastern Mediterranean. There is no alternative: Russia’s geopolitical interests dictate to block the Islamic State and other terrorist groups’ advance to the Mediterranean coast. This is not about messianism, although historically St. Petersburg, and later Moscow, have always been sensitive to stimuli coming from the Middle East. Meanwhile, the West is pulling out maps from the archives that date back to the French mandate for Syria and Lebanon (1923-1946). This means that not only the border between Syria and Lebanon is being questioned, but also the Turkish border as well.

Washington, London, Paris and Tel Aviv totally controlled the Syrian crisis – until July 14, 2015. After the Iran deal was signed in Vienna, Tehran then emerged at the forefront of a major game being played over gas supplies, and military activity intensified on the Lebanese-Syrian border. Paris and Tel Aviv saw this move as a challenge and carried out a series of air strikes over Syria in late September. When former French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing offers his opinions, he speaks in the spirit of the colonial wars of the 19th century, urging UN forces headed by a French general to be sent to the Arab republic turning President Assad into only a nominal ruler, a dignitary who could be trotted out when needed to bless Paris’s restoration of that mandate. This is rapid progress. The historical figure of General Henri Gouraud leaps to mind, who in 1920 bested King Faisal I of Iraq (a member of the Hashemite dynasty) at the Battle of Maysalun, thus capturing Damascus. Gouraud was so ruthless in his conquest of the Arab Kingdom of Syria that in 1921 he was able to carve out from its vast territory the État de Damas, the État d’Alep, the Alawite State (known as the Sanjak of Latakia), Jabal al-Druze (the Druze State), the Sanjak of Alexandretta (present day İskenderun and the Hatay Province in southern Turkey), and also Greater Lebanon (1920). Those unifications endured, in various incarnations, until 1946, when Paris withdrew its troops under pressure from Arab nationalists.

From a geographical point of view, the French today are operating within their sphere of influence, which was formed as a result of the conference in San Remo in 1920. For this reason, the French air force launched attacks (on Sept. 27) on the oil-rich northeastern city of Deir ez-Zor, where back in 1921 they had set up a military garrison, which was incorporated into a unified Syria in 1946. The French colonial empire, which was buried in 1962 under the rubble of the uprising in Algeria, has not only survived in the minds of the political elite, but is also showing a determination to be reincarnated.

The paradox is that Assad, an Alawite, is not requesting military assistance from Paris, which in the minds of Syrians is a symbol of dyed-in-the-wool European colonialism, but from Moscow. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, but the people of the Middle East have positive memories of Soviet presence in the region. In this sense, the air strikes carried out by the Russian air force on Jabhat al-Nusra & Daesh positions are marking the outlines of the absolutely new post-colonial framework for the Middle East, which was created not through secret diplomacy, but through the good will of Damascus and Moscow. It caused indignation of a vainglorious France. Yet everything is being done in a fully legal manner: Moscow’s actions are supported by a bilateral (with Damascus) Treaty of Friendship and Mutual Assistance. François Hollande cannot hide his resentment, and he is now accusing Assad of wholesale slaughter. And this is not empty rhetoric. Paris is trying to claim that this matter falls under the jurisdiction of 2005’s Resolution on theResponsibility to Protect (R2P), which obliges the UN Security Council to use force against regimes that allow “ethnic cleansing,” “genocide,” or “mass killings.” The French have not lost hope. After all, that gimmick worked with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Russia’s stronger hand in the Middle East is a fact that has already been recognized by the US and Great Britain. Prime Minister David Cameron, who previously maintained an uncompromising position regarding Bashar al-Assad’s hold on power, is now saying the Syrian leader could play a role a “transitional government,” although in public he continues to threaten him with an international tribunal, working in sync with Hollande. The Guardian quoted Cameron as saying that “So far, the problem has been that Russia and Iran have not been able to contemplate the end state of Syria without Assad.”

The Israelis are in an uproar, especially after these words from Putin: “We respect Israel’s interests related to the Syrian civil war. But we are concerned about its attacks on Syria.” Translated from the language of diplomacy, this is a warning. Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon retorted, “Israel is not coordinating its operations in Syria with Russia.” He feels that the border between the Jewish state and the Arab Republic is the exclusive prerogative of Tel Aviv. The Kremlin is not contesting this position, which stems from the Israeli vision for the Middle East’s future borders (including Jabal al-Druze). The problem lies elsewhere. Without outside help, would Israel be prepared to survive a political earthquake in the Muslim world?

Sarkis Tsaturyan is the Russian-Armenian historian and international policy analyst. He teaches at the Moscow Peoples’ Friendship University.

Proclamation of the state of Greater Lebanon, Gouraud with Grand Mufti of Beirut Sheikh Mustafa Naja, and on his right is the Maronite Patriarch Elias Peter Hoayek, Sept 1, 1920.

Source in Russian: Regnum, Adapted and translated by ORIENTAL REVIEW

The specter of mass protest – of mob rule – seems to have haunted Vladimir V. Putin throughout his political life, and that fear lies at the heart of his belief in the primacy of state authority. It also informs Russia’s forceful intervention in Syria.  NYT, 4 October 2015.

The NYT – one of the key spin doctors in spreading falsehoods – knows no limits in manipulating public opinion and demeaning Mr. Putin in Machiavellian fashion with lies and untrue inferences.

What the paper describes in its article titled “In Putin’s Syria Intervention, Fear of a Weak Government Hand”,  is just about what the US has been doing in Syria since 2007 with increasing intensity by training, funding and arming terrorists that were given different names ranging from al Qaeda – to al-Nusra – ISIS/L- Daesh… “moderate opposition” – you name it, to please the Washington hegemon’s needs; and this with the objective of achieving ‘regime change’, meaning replacing President al-Assad with a Washington puppet.

All the while hypocritically and deceptively claiming the US / NATO and other European puppets were fighting the terrorists, when in fact America, the Saudis, Qatar, Turkey, NATO and the EU were funding, arming and training them.

The only legitimate intervention on behalf of a foreign country since WWII is Russia helping Syria since 30 September 2015 in eliminating the foreign funded, devastating terrorism, causing human misery and millions of refugees flooding neighboring countries and Europe.

Mr. Putin with the approval of the Russian Parliament, the Duma, agreed to this intervention at the request of the legally and people-elected President al-Assad. The official request of the Syrian Government is one of the two only lawful reasons for a foreign country to intervene in a sovereign nation. The other one is by request of the UN Security Council.

None of the US / NATO interventions in the Middle East and around the world, including economic sanctions, are legal. None of them would stand up in an honest court of justice that deserves its name; is there still one left that is not coerced into defending US interests?

All interventions in foreign countries by the United States directly or by proxy are spreading chaos, destruction and death in the name of ‘democracy’. They have been and continue to be – in its full meaning – illegal and in flagrant violation of the Charter of the UN. They serve only one purpose: for Washington to achieving Full Spectrum Dominance of the world, as outlined by the Zionist-drafted PNAC (Plan for a New American Century) – which is the road map for the US State Department’s Foreign Policy. – NYT and other MSM adherents might want to know this.

After listening to Mr. Obama’s pitiful speech of lies and deceptions before the UN General Assembly on 28 September, followed by that of Mr. Putin – who presented a series of down-to-earth facts, culminating in his conclusion ‘do you realize what you have done‘ – the world at large may have started opening their eyes and minds to the truth. The shrouds of deception, manipulation and outright lies spread by the sorts of the NYT and other MSM will gradually be lifted, giving light to a new dawn, a new horizon away from the NWO (New World Order) towards peaceful cooperation rather than US controlled wars, conflicts and destruction through bombs and financial fraud.

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 o

Watching the addresses to the General Assembly of the United Nations by leaders of the major powers was a lesson in the use and abuse of power. The address made to the General Assembly by President Putin on behalf of the Russian Federation contrasted sharply with the address made by President Obama, for the United States. While President Putin emphasized the fact that the international world order and security system depended on the principles set out in the UN Charter, President Obama made the absurd claim that the United States had the right to ignore national sovereignty in order to “restore security” for peoples of nations oppressed by what it labelled “tyrants” and echoed the Bush doctrine that it would act alone or with its allies to accomplish these objectives, come what may.

Obama once again accused Russia of aggression in Crimea and Ukraine, accused Iran of sponsoring terrorism in the middle east, accused China of violating international law in the South China Sea, blamed Cuba and its people for the American imposed trade embargo for not “cooperating” with the United States and once again called for President Assad of Syria to be removed. He reiterated the claim that the United States had the right to impose its illegal sanctions where it saw fit and claimed, in an astonishing reversal of history and fact, that the United States has kept the peace in the world since the United Nations was founded.

President Obama gave the impression of an edgy street punk, intimidating everyone with his cock of the walk bravado and the threat of American military power unless we all “cooperated” with the United States. He talked of “terrible conflicts” throughout the world in the past seventy years, but never stated that the United States was the instigator of most of them, and claimed to have prevented a third world war when it is the United States that has threatened it many times in the past and, with the new threat of placing advanced nuclear weapons on German territory, threatens it now. He bragged about the cost imposed on those who chose to resist American hegemony instead of cooperating with it and claimed, with a straight face, that the order imposed by America had brought dignity and equal work for all people in the world but forgot that the one per cent have all the money while the rest of us do all the work

Obama shifted the blame for the refugee crisis from his government that caused it to “strong men.” Clearly the crisis, according to him, is the fault of Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gadhafi, and President Assad, for forcing the American government to attack them. Such is the surreal logic used by the Americans to justify the unjustifiable. He then made several references to control of the media, oppression of political opponents, and control of access to information, as a swipe at Russia even though these are things that are happening in America and Europe. Then he tried to justify the use of illegal sanctions against Russia by claiming it was working and causing hardship for the nation and that Russians were leaving the country as a response. He seemed oblivious to the slap in the face he delivered to the UN as he said these words since unilateral sanctions are a violation of the UN Charter. But it is more likely that the contempt shown by these words was openly and deliberately defiant of the UN and all it stands for.

President Putin, to the contrary, rejected this false history and false presentation of the causes of the current world crisis and put the blame squarely on the doorstep of the United States and its NATO allies where it belongs. He began by reminding everyone that the concept of the UN arose at the Yalta meeting in Crimea during the fight against Hitler and that the UN has a long history in trying to prevent conflict. He recognised that the Americans and their allies complain of inefficiencies in the UN, which really means that they complain when they don’t get their way, but emphasised that differences in views were recognised as inevitable from the creation of the UN and that the veto power was necessary to guarantee that no single power could dominate the rest. He also reminded everyone of the fact that the US and its allies have long used the veto when their interests were concerned and that any nation that bypasses the UN or violates the UN Charter acts illegally, and outside international law. He added that the American claim to all world power after the end of the Cold War, if acceded to would result in a world dominated by selfishness, by ditkats instead of equality, democracy and freedom and a world where independent states would be replaced by de facto protectorates.

In distinct contrast to the American position that state sovereignty does not exist, he reaffirmed the fundamental principle of international law that state sovereignty is essential for the free development of a nation and its peoples. He illustrated his point with the examples of US aggression in the Middle East and North Africa where chaos and catastrophe for the peoples of those countries are the consequence, instead of stable governments, and which aggression resulted in the rise of Islamic state and other terrorist groups that were created by the west as tools to be used against secular states under attack. He accused the west of hypocrisy in dealing with the refugee crisis while at the same time financing and supporting Islamic State and other groups. He reiterated that no one but President Assad’s armed forces and the Kurd militia are really fighting these groups.He stressed that Russia does not have ambitions of any type but stated that “we can no longer tolerate the current state of affairs in the world.”

To deal with the current crisis in the Middle East he proposed the creation of a broad anti-terrorist coalition similar to the anti-Hitler coalition. He also called on the cooperation of the Islamic nations and religious leaders to help in this struggle against the common enemy and stated that statehood must be restored where it has been destroyed, and military, economic and material assistance provided to countries in difficult situations, and that this must be done in accordance with the UN Charter and international law. In this regard he made special mention of Libya, Iraq and Syria.He stressed the need for global security and condemned the expansion of NATO after the Cold War, and the false choice presented to the east bloc countries by America of being either with the west or with the east and stated correctly that this aggressive logic had sparked the geopolitical crisis in Ukraine where popular discontent was used by the west to stage a military coup from outside that triggered a civil war. He reiterated Russia’s support of the Minsk Agreements of February 12, 2015 as the only way out of the crisis and underlined that the interests and rights of the peoples of the Donbass region must be take into account and respect given to their choices and that all steps taken by the Kiev regime must be coordinated with them.

He then shifted focus to another reality of the struggle for power in the world, the economic front and insisted that there must be a common space for economic cooperation using the World Trade Organisation principles of free trade, investment and open competition but the Americans are trying to bypass the WTO now and are trying to set up separate and secret structures such as the Trans Pacific Partnership project which Obama had bragged about. He also denounced the use of unilateral sanctions as a violation of the UN Charter and stated that they are being used not only to apply political pressure but also to eliminate economic competitors. These trends can unbalance the trade system completely and cause the disintegration of the global economic space. Russia, on the other hand, proposes harmonising regional economic projects, what he called the “integration of integrations”, based on universal and transparent rules of international trade. He made a point of citing the plans to connect the Eurasian Economic Union and China’s Silk Road Economic Belt and called for their further integration with the European Union.

Finally, while Obama paid lip service to the problem of climate change in his address, he made no concrete commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The Chinese proposed that they would reduce their emissions by 40% over 2005 levels. Putin topped that with a promise to cut them by 75% over 1999 levels by 2030. But he went further by calling for fundamentally new technologies inspired by nature and for industrial development to be in harmony with nature in order to restore the balance between human activity and nature and called or a special UN forum to tackle climate change and stated that Russia is ready to co-sponsor such a forum.

So, there we have the world situation expressed in the speeches of these two men; Obama, for the United States, claiming the right to act on its own, to enforce its will with military might wherever it is resisted, to secure economic advantages for itself at all costs, all based on a refusal to treat every nation as equal and sovereign; and, President Putin, calling for a strict adherence to international law, for common efforts against terrorism and threats to peace, for integrated economic cooperation, all based on the principles of national sovereignty and the dignity of nations and peoples. The conflict has been clearly delineated. The lines have been drawn. We all wait to see how this fundamental conflict will be resolved.

The Welsh Deputy Minister for Farming and Food, Rebecca Evans, has announced that the country will take advantage of new EU rules allowing countries to opt out of growing EU-authorized GM crops. Yep – Wales is moving forward with a complete ban on biotech’s seed! [1]

Evans says that the nation plans to ban GM corn as well as 7 other GM crops authorized by the EU. She states:

“These new rules proposed by the European Commission provide Wales with the necessary tools to maintain our cautionary approach by allowing us to control the future cultivation of GM crops in Wales. It will allow us to protect the significant investment we have made in our organic sector and safeguard the agricultural land in Wales that is managed under voluntary agri-environment schemes.”

She continued:

“Farming and food processing businesses remain the driving force of our rural economy. Our emphasis is on competing on quality, strong branding and adding value through local processing.  We, therefore, need to preserve consumer confidence and maintain our focus on a clean, green, natural environment. By having the ability to control what is grown in Wales we can have confidence in preserving these values.  I have therefore acted now to ban the eight GM varieties from being grown in Wales that are either approved or about to be approved for cultivation in the EU.

These crops have not been developed for Welsh growing conditions and would be of no real benefit to Welsh farmers at this time. I will of course keep this position under review and am keeping an open mind on future GM developments and more advanced genetic techniques.”

Meanwhile, in the US, Food Democracy Now has reported that the Senate Agriculture Committee has scheduled a hearing less than three weeks away — on Wed. Oct 21st, to try to pass its version of the DARK ACT, 1599. The House passed the DARK act in July; the act outlaws states’ rights to label GMOs. Forget bans in the US, we can’t even get correct labeling, thanks to Monsanto!

With the string of EU Countries banning GMOs, soon we’ll have to report on the stragglers who haven’t banned genetically modified organisms.

Notes:

[1] GreenPeace

Image: Ukrainian Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko.

The U.S. government is missing – or withholding – audit documents about the finances and possible accounting irregularities at a $150 million U.S.-taxpayer-financed investment fund when it was run by Ukraine’s Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, who has become the face of “reform” for the U.S.-backed regime in Kiev and who now oversees billions of dollars in Western financial aid.

Before taking Ukrainian citizenship and becoming Finance Minister in December 2014, Jaresko was a former U.S. diplomat who served as chief executive officer of the Western NIS Enterprise Fund (WNISEF), which was created by Congress in the 1990s with $150 million and placed under the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to help jumpstart an investment economy in Ukraine.

After Jaresko’s appointment as Finance Minister — and her resignation from WNISEF — I reviewed WNISEF’s available public records and detected a pattern of insider dealings and enrichment benefiting Jaresko and various colleagues. That prompted me in February to file a Freedom of Information Act request for USAID’s audits of the investment fund.

Though the relevant records were identified by June, USAID dragged its feet on releasing the 34 pages to me until Aug. 28 when the agency claimed nothing was being withheld, saying “all 34 pages are releasable in their entirety.”

However, when I examined the documents, it became clear that a number of pages were missing from the financial records, including a total of three years of “expense analysis” – in three-, six- and nine-month gaps – since 2007. Perhaps even more significant was a missing paragraph that apparently would have addressed an accounting irregularity found by KPMG auditors.

KPMG’s “Independent Auditors’ Report” for 2013 and 2014 states that “except as discussed in the third paragraph below, we conducted our audits in accordance with auditing standards generally accepted in the United States of America,” accountant-speak that suggests that “the third paragraph below” would reveal some WNISEF activity that did not comply with generally accepted accounting principles (or GAAP).

But three paragraphs below was only white space and there was no next page in what USAID released.

Based on the one page that was released for 2013-14, this most recent audit also lacked the approval language used in previous audits, in which KPMG wrote: “In our opinion, the consolidated financial statements … present fairly, in all material respects, the consolidated financial position of Western NIS Enterprise Fund and subsidiaries.” That language was not in the 2013-14 analysis, as released by USAID.

The KPMG report for 2013-14 does note that “The [audit] procedures selected depend on the auditors’ judgment, including the assessment of the risks of material misstatement of the financial statements, whether due to fraud or error. … An audit also includes evaluating the appropriateness of accounting policies used and the reasonableness of significant accounting estimates made by management, as well as evaluating the overall presentation of the financial statements.”

That page then ends, “We believe that the audit evidence we have obtained is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our audit opinion.” But the opinion is not there.

After I brought these discrepancies to the attention of USAID on Aug. 31, I was told on Sept. 15 that “we are in the process of locating documents to address your concern. We expect a response from the bureau and/or mission by Monday, September 28, 2015.”

After the Sept. 28 deadline passed, I contacted USAID again and was told on Oct. 2 that officials were “still working with the respective mission to obtain the missing documents.”

Yet, whether USAID’s failure to include the missing documents was just a bureaucratic foul-up or a willful attempt to shield Jaresko from criticism, the curious gaps add to the impression that the management of WNISEF fell short of the highest standards for efficiency and ethics.

A previous effort by Jaresko’s ex-husband Ihor Figlus to blow the whistle on what he considered improper business practices related to WNISEF was met by disinterest inside USAID, according to Figlus, and then led to Jaresko suing him in a Delaware court in 2012, using a confidentiality clause to silence Figlus and getting a court order to redact references to the abuses he was trying to expose.

Feeding at the Taxpayer Trough

Other public documents indicate that Jaresko and fellow WNISEF insiders enriched themselves through their association with the U.S.-taxpayer-financed investment fund. For instance, though Jaresko was limited to making $150,000 a year at WNISEF under the USAID grant agreement, she managed to earn more than that amount, reporting in 2004 that she was paid $383,259 along with $67,415 in expenses, according to WNISEF’s filing with the Internal Revenue Service.

Among the audit documents that I received under FOIA, the “Expense Analysis” for 2004 shows $1,282,782 being paid out as “Exit-based incentive expense-equity incentive plan” and another $478,195 being paid for “Exit-based incentive expense-financial participation rights.” That would suggest that Jaresko more than doubled her $150,000 salary by claiming bonuses from WNISEF’s investments (bought with U.S. taxpayers’ money) and sold during 2004.

Jaresko’s compensation for her work with WNISEF was removed from public disclosure altogether after she co-founded two related entities in 2006: Horizon Capital Associates (HCA) to manage WNISEF’s investments (and collect around $1 million a year in fees) and Emerging Europe Growth Fund (EEGF), a private entity to collaborate with WNISEF on investment deals.

Jaresko formed HCA and EEGF with two other WNISEF officers, Mark Iwashko and Lenna Koszarny. They also started a third firm, Horizon Capital Advisors, which “serves as a sub-advisor to the Investment Manager, HCA,” according to WNISEF’s IRS filing for 2006.

According to the FOIA-released expense analyses for 2004-06, the taxpayer-financed WNISEF spent $1,049,987 to establish EEGF as a privately owned investment fund for Jaresko and her colleagues. USAID apparently found nothing suspicious about these tangled business relationships despite the potential conflicts of interest involving Jaresko, the other WNISEF officers and their affiliated companies.

For instance, WNISEF’s 2012 annual report devoted two pages to “related party transactions,” including the management fees to Jaresko’s Horizon Capital ($1,037,603 in 2011 and $1,023,689 in 2012) and WNISEF’s co-investments in projects with the EEGF, where Jaresko was founding partner and chief executive officer. Jaresko’s Horizon Capital managed the investments of both WNISEF and EEGF.

From 2007 to 2011, WNISEF co-invested $4.25 million with EEGF in Kerameya LLC, a Ukrainian brick manufacturer, and WNISEF sold EEGF 15.63 percent of Moldova’s Fincombank for $5 million, the report said. It also listed extensive exchanges of personnel and equipment between WNISEF and Horizon Capital. But it’s difficult for an outsider to ascertain the relative merits of these insider deals — and the transactions apparently raised no red flags for USAID officials, nor during that time for KPMG auditors.

Bonuses, Bonuses

Regarding compensation, WNISEF’s 2013 filing with the IRS noted that the fund’s officers collected millions of dollars in more bonuses for closing out some investments at a profit even as the overall fund was losing money. According to the filing, WNISEF’s $150 million nest egg had shrunk by more than one-third to $94.5 million and likely has declined much more during the economic chaos that followed the U.S.-backed coup in February 2014.

But prior to the coup and the resulting civil war, Jaresko’s WNISEF was generously spreading money around to various insiders. For instance, the 2013 IRS filing reported that the taxpayer-financed fund paid out as “expenses” $7.7 million under a bonus program, including $4.6 million to “current officers,” without identifying who received the money although Jaresko was one of the “current officers.”

WNISEF’s filing made the point that the “long-term equity incentive plan” was “not compensation from Government Grant funds but a separately USAID-approved incentive plan funded from investment sales proceeds” – although those proceeds presumably would have gone into the depleted WNISEF pool if they had not been paid out as bonuses.

The filing also said the bonuses were paid regardless of whether the overall fund was making money, noting that this “compensation was not contingent on revenues or net earnings, but rather on a profitable exit of a portfolio company that exceeds the baseline value set by the board of directors and approved by USAID” – with Jaresko also serving as a director on the board responsible for setting those baseline values.

Another WNISEF director was Jeffrey C. Neal, former chairman of Merrill Lynch’s global investment banking and a co-founder of Horizon Capital, further suggesting how potentially incestuous these relationships may have become.

Though compensation for Jaresko and other officers was shifted outside public view after 2006 – as their pay was moved to the affiliated entities – the 2006 IRS filing says:

“It should be noted that as long as HCA earns a management fee from WNISEF, HCA and HCAD [the two Horizon Capital entities] must ensure that a salary cap of $150,000 is adhered to for the proportion of salary attributable to WNISEF funds managed relative to aggregate funds under management.”

But that language would seem to permit compensation well above $150,000 if it could be tied to other managed funds, including EEGF, or come from the bonus incentive program. Such compensation for Jaresko and the other top officers was not reported on later IRS forms despite a line for earnings from “related organizations.” Apparently, Horizon Capital and EEGF were regarded as “unrelated organizations” for the purposes of reporting compensation.

The KPMG auditors also took a narrow view of compensation only confirming that no “salary” exceeded $150,000, apparently not looking at bonuses and other forms of compensation.

Neither AID officials nor Jaresko responded to specific questions about WNISEF’s possible conflicts of interest, how much money Jaresko made from her involvement with WNISEF and its connected companies, and whether she had fully complied with IRS reporting requirements.

Gagging an Ex-Husband

In 2012, when Jaresko’s ex-husband Figlus began talking about what he saw as improper loans that Jaresko had taken from Horizon Capital Associates to buy and expand her stake in EEGF, the privately held follow-on fund to WNISEF, Jaresko sent her lawyers to court to silence him and, according to his lawyer, bankrupt him.

The filings in Delaware’s Chancery Court are remarkable not only because Jaresko succeeded in getting the Court to gag her ex-husband through enforcement of a non-disclosure agreement but the Court agreed to redact nearly all the business details, even the confidentiality language at the center of the case.

Since Figlus had given some of his information to a Ukrainian journalist, Jaresko’s complaint also had the look of a leak investigation, tracking down Figlus’s contacts with the journalist and then using that evidence to secure the restraining order, which Figlus said not only prevented him from discussing business secrets but even talking about his more general concerns about Jaresko’s insider dealings.

The heavy redactions make it hard to fully understand Figlus’s concerns or to assess the size of Jaresko’s borrowing as she expanded her holdings in EEGF, but Figlus did assert that he saw his role as whistle-blowing about improper actions by Jaresko.

In a Oct. 31, 2012, filing, Figlus’s attorney wrote that

“At all relevant times, Defendant [Figlus] acted in good faith and with justification, on matters of public interest, and particularly the inequitable conduct set forth herein where such inequitable conduct adversely affects … at least one other limited partner which is REDACTED, and specifically the inequitable conduct included, in addition to the other conduct cited herein, REDACTED.”

The defendant’s filing argued:

“The Plaintiffs’ [Jaresko’s and her EEGF partners’] claims are barred, in whole or in part, by public policy, and particularly that a court in equity should not enjoin ‘whistle-blowing’ activities on matters of public interest, and particularly the inequitable conduct set forth herein.”

But the details of that conduct were all redacted.

In a defense brief dated Dec. 17, 2012 [see Part One and Part Two], Figlus expanded on his argument that Jaresko’s attempts to have the court gag him amounted to a violation of his constitutional right of free speech:

“The obvious problem with the scope of their Motion is that Plaintiffs are asking the Court to enter an Order that prohibits Defendant Figlus from exercising his freedom of speech without even attempting to provide the Court with any Constitutional support or underpinning for such impairment of Figlus’ rights.

“Plaintiffs cannot do so, because such silencing of speech is Constitutionally impermissible, and would constitute a denial of basic principles of the Bill of Rights in both the United States and Delaware Constitutions. There can be no question that Plaintiffs are seeking a temporary injunction, which constitutes a prior restraint on speech. …

“The Court cannot, consistent with the Federal and State Constitutional guarantees of free speech, enjoin speech except in the most exceptional circumstances, and certainly not when Plaintiffs are seeking to prevent speech that is not even covered by the very contractual provision upon which they are relying. Moreover, the Court cannot prevent speech where the matter has at least some public interest REDACTED, except as limited to the very specific and exact language of the speaker’s contractual obligation.”

A Redacted Narrative

Figlus also provided a narrative of events as he saw them as a limited partner in EEGF, saying he initially “believed everything she [Jaresko] was doing, you know, was proper.” Later, however, Figlus

“learned that Jaresko began borrowing money from HCA REDACTED, but again relied on his spouse, and did not pay attention to the actual financial transactions…

“In early 2010, after Jaresko separated from Figlus, she presented Figlus with, and requested that he execute, a ‘Security Agreement,’ pledging the couple’s partnership interest to the repayment of the loans from HCA. This was Figlus first realization of the amount of loans that Jaresko had taken, and that the partnership interest was being funded through this means. … By late 2011, Jaresko had borrowed approximately REDACTED from HCA to both fund the partnership interest REDACTED. The loans were collateralized only by the EEFG partnership interest. …

“Figlus became increasingly concerned about the partnership and the loans that had been and continued to be given to the insiders to pay for their partnership interests, while excluding other limited partners. Although Figlus was not sophisticated in these matters, he considered that it was inappropriate that HCA was giving loans to insiders to fund their partnership interests, but to no other partners. …

“He talked to an individual at U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in Washington D.C., because the agency was effectively involved as a limited partner because of the agency’s funding and supervision over WNISEF, but the agency employee did not appear interested in pursuing the question.”

In the court proceedings, Jaresko’s lawyers mocked Figlus’s claims that he was acting as a whistle-blower, claiming that he was actually motivated by a desire “to harm his ex-wife” and had violated the terms of his non-disclosure agreement, which the lawyers convinced the court to exclude from the public record.

The plaintiffs’ brief [see Part One and Part Two] traced Figlus’s contacts with the Ukrainian reporter whose name is also redacted:

“Figlus, having previously received an audit from the General Partner, provided it to REDACTED [the Ukrainian reporter] with full knowledge that the audit was non-public. Also on or about October 2, 2012, REDACTED [the reporter] contacted multiple Limited Partners, informed them that he possessed ‘documented proof’ of alleged impropriety by the General Partner and requested interviews concerning that alleged impropriety.”

The filing noted that on Oct. 3, 2012, the reporter told Figlus that Jaresko “called two REDACTED [his newspaper’s] editors last night crying, not me, for some reason.” (The Ukrainian story was never published.)

After the competing filings, Jaresko’s lawyers successfully secured a restraining order against Figlus from the Delaware Chancery Court and continued to pursue the case against him though his lawyer has asserted that his client would make no further effort to expose these financial dealings and was essentially broke.

On May 14, 2014, Figlus filed a complaint with the court claiming that he was being denied distributions from his joint interest in EEGF and saying he was told that it was because the holding was pledged as security against the loans taken out by Jaresko. But, on the same day, Jaresko’s lawyer, Richard P. Rollo, contradicted that assertion, saying information about Figlus’s distributions was being withheld because EEGF and Horizon Capital “faced significant business interruptions and difficulties given the political crisis in Ukraine.”

The filing suggested that the interlocking investments between EEGF and the U.S.-taxpayer-funded WNISEF were experiencing further trouble from the political instability and civil war sweeping across Ukraine.

A Face of Reform

By December 2014, Jaresko had resigned from her WNISEF-related positions, taken Ukrainian citizenship and started her new job as Ukraine’s Finance Minister. In an article about Jaresko’s appointment, John Helmer, a longtime foreign correspondent in Russia, disclosed the outlines of the court dispute with Figlus and identified the Ukrainian reporter as Mark Rachkevych of the Kyiv Post.

“It hasn’t been rare for American spouses to go into the asset management business in the former Soviet Union, and make profits underwritten by the US Government with information supplied from their US Government positions or contacts,” Helmer wrote. “It is exceptional for them to fall out over the loot.”

When I contacted George Pazuniak, Figlus’s lawyer, about Jaresko’s aggressive enforcement of the non-disclosure agreement, he told me that “at this point, it’s very difficult for me to say very much without having a detrimental effect on my client.” Pazuniak did say, however, that all the redactions were demanded by Jaresko’s lawyers.

I also sent detailed questions to USAID and to Jaresko via several of her associates. Those questions included how much of the $150 million in U.S. taxpayers’ money remained, why Jaresko reported no compensation from “related organizations,” whether she received any of the $4.6 million to WNISEF’s officers in bonuses in 2013, how much money she made in total from her association with WNISEF, what AID officials did in response to Figlus’s whistle-blower complaint, and whether Jaresko’s legal campaign to silence her ex-husband was appropriate given her current position and Ukraine’s history of secretive financial dealings.

USAID press officer Annette Y. Aulton got back to me with a response that was unresponsive to my specific questions. Rather than answering about the performance of WNISEF and Jaresko’s compensation, the response commented on the relative success of 10 “Enterprise Funds” that AID has sponsored in Eastern Europe and added:

“There is a twenty year history of oversight of WNISEF operations. Enterprise funds must undergo an annual independent financial audit, submit annual reports to USAID and the IRS, and USAID staff conduct field visits and semi-annual reviews. At the time Horizon Capital assumed management of WNISEF, USAID received disclosures from Natalie Jaresko regarding the change in management structure and at the time USAID found no impropriety during its review.”

One Jaresko associate, Tanya Bega, Horizon Capital’s investor relations manager, said she forwarded my questions to Jaresko, but Jaresko did not respond.

Despite questions about whether Jaresko improperly enriched herself at the expense of U.S. taxpayers and then used a Delaware court to prevent disclosure of possible abuses, Jaresko has been hailed by the U.S. mainstream media as the face of reform in the U.S.-backed Ukrainian regime that seized power in February 2014 after a violent coup overthrew democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych.

For instance, last January, New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman cited Jaresko as an exemplar of the new Ukrainian leaders who “share our values” and deserve unqualified American support. Friedman uncritically quoted Jaresko’s speech to international financial leaders at Davos, Switzerland, in which she castigated Russian President Vladimir Putin:

“Putin fears a Ukraine that demands to live and wants to live and insists on living on European values — with a robust civil society and freedom of speech and religion [and] with a system of values the Ukrainian people have chosen and laid down their lives for.”

However, from the opaqueness of the WNISEF records and the gagging of her ex-husband, Jaresko has shown little regard for transparency or other democratic values. Similarly, USAID seems more intent on protecting Jaresko and the image of the Kiev regime than in protecting America tax dollars and ensuring that WNISEF’s investments were dedicated to improving the lot of Ukrainian citizens.

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.

La unipolaridad de Estados Unidos en el sistema financiero mundial se desvanece a paso veloz. Como consecuencia de su miopía política, Washington obligó a otros países a poner en marcha instrumentos de cooperación financiera que abandonan el uso del dólar, así como instituciones multilaterales que ya no se rigen más por las reglas impuestas desde el Departamento del Tesoro.

Es que en definitiva, las finanzas y la moneda se han venido utilizando como instrumentos de política exterior, esto es, como mecanismos de dominación global que buscan socavar tanto a adversarios geopolíticos (Rusia), como a potencias económicas en ascenso (China) que resisten a doblegarse ante el yugo norteamericano.

Ante la imposibilidad de alcanzar sus objetivos estratégicos por la vía diplomática, Estados Unidos se lanza a la guerra financiera,ya sea a través deembargos económicos, ataques especulativos, congelamiento de cuentas bancarias de políticos y empresarios, etcétera.

En abierta violación de los principios del derecho internacional, Washington apunta su artillería contra los países que, de acuerdo con su concepción, integran el denominado “eje del mal”: Corea del Norte, Irán, Siria, Sudán, etcétera. Su modus operandi consiste en estrangular la economía del país en cuestión para promover un cambio de régimen.

Ahora esa misma estrategia se dirige contra el Gobierno de Vladimir Putin. Es que luego de la reintegración de la República de Crimea y la ciudad de Sebastopol a territorio ruso –sustentada en el referéndum celebrado en marzo de 2014–, Estados Unidos, el Reino Unido y Polonia presionaron a la Unión Europea para que expulsara a Rusia de la Sociedad de Telecomunicaciones Financieras Interbancarias Mundiales (SWIFT, por sus siglas en inglés).

Fundado en 1973 en la ciudad de Bruselas, Bélgica, SWIFT es un sistema internacional de comunicaciones que permite a los bancos realizar transferencias electrónicas entre sí. Antes de su puesta en marcha, las entidades financieras se limitaban a comunicarse a través de Télex y sistemas telefónicos bilaterales.

En ese sentido, SWIFT constituye un avance tecnológico de primer nivel, puesto que ha permitido tanto aumentar la velocidad del comercio y la inversión mundiales, así como disminuir los costos de transacción en una escala sin precedentes.

En la actualidad SWIFT es utilizado por 10,500 bancos –sobre todo estadounidenses y europeos– en más de 200 países. En su día de mayor apogeo en lo que va de 2015 procesó 27.5 millones de mensajes de órdenes de pago.

SWIFT es un mecanismo “técnico”, puramente “neutral”, según los magnates de Wall Street y la City de Londres. No obstante, los ataques del 11 de septiembre a las Torres Gemelas sirvieron para que Estados Unidos se inmiscuyera en el sistema de pagos: el Departamento del Tesoro solicita desde entonces “información específica”con la excusa de que “monitorea” los canales de financiamiento de “grupos terroristas”.

De esta manera, con el argumento de que se encontraban inmiscuidos en actividades ilegales se desconectó a los bancos iraníes de SWIFT hace 3 años, situación que puso en aprietos la provisión de crédito a las operaciones de comercio exterior del país persa.

Asimismo, Washington abrió el camino para la intromisión de la Agencia de Seguridad Nacional (NSA, por sus siglas en inglés). Según las revelaciones de Edward Snowden, ‘Follow the Money’ es el nombre del programa especializado de la NSA que se encarga de espiar el sistema financiero global.

El seguimiento realizado por el personal de la NSA desembocó en la construcción de una base de datos, ‘TRACFIN’, misma que en 2011 contenía por lo menos 180 millones de registros de las operaciones entre los bancos, las transacciones con tarjetas de crédito y, por supuesto, los miles de mensajes transmitidos a través del sistema SWIFT.

Por lo tanto, Estados Unidos se hizo del control quasi monopólico del sistema de pagos internacionales para asfixiar a sus rivales. Hasta ahora la desconexión de SWIFT aún no se ha implementado en contra de Rusia por la “falta de autoridad” de las autoridades regulatorias. Pues sí, una cosa es castigar a una potencia regional, y otra muy distinta es entrar en una batalla cara a cara con una potencia mundial.

Con todo, las constantes amenazas de parte de Estados Unidos y sus aliados europeos propiciaron que el Gobierno de Vladimir Putin pusiera en funcionamiento un sistema de pagos alternativo. Es que más de 90% de las operaciones de los bancos rusos son transfronterizas, con lo cual, si se hubiese concretado la expulsión de Moscú del sistema SWIFT las consecuencias sobre la economía mundial habrían sido catastróficas.

Los principales bancos rusos (Sberbank, VTB, Gazprombank, Bank of Moscow, Rosselkhozbank, etcétera) realizan ya acuerdos bilaterales y utilizan de lleno el nuevo sistema de pagos, anunció hace unos días Olga Skorobogatova, la vicegobernadora del banco central.

El nuevo sistema de transacciones disminuye el monto de los costos en comparación con SWIFT, y más importante todavía, brinda a Moscú de mayor autonomía política y seguridad económica en caso de una nueva escalada de sanciones. Adicionalmente, la iniciativa rusa detonó la construcción de sistemas de pagos alternativos en otros lugares del mundo.

Por un lado, China está lista para poner en marcha las próximas semanas su propio sistema de transacciones. Por otro lado, los integrantes del BRICS (acrónimo de Brasil, Rusia, India, China y Sudáfrica) se encuentran discutiendo la posibilidad de lanzar un sistema de pagos multilateral, esto es, que no sean sólo Rusia y China los beneficiados, sino que el sistema de pagos realice operaciones entre todos los miembros del bloque.

El plan de contención orquestado desde Washington y Bruselas en contra de Rusia derivó en un ‘efecto búmeran’, pues no sólo no la expulsaron de SWIFT, sino que Moscú construyó un sistema de pagos alternativo que neutralizó por completo los intentos de desestabilización y que, en paralelo, sirve de inspiración para los países del BRICS y muy pronto, también lo será para la mayoría de las economías emergentes.

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez

Hungary is planning to host a NATO command center alongside with other central European and eastern European countries. The center would plan military exercises and coordinate the actions of the Alliance’s rapid deployment forces in the case of emergencies.

The Hungarian government announced that the new command center’s personnel, called a NATO Force Integration Unit, would include 40 officers both from Hungary and other NATO member states with no combat units deployed there.

“Its task in peaceful times is to organize and plan international exercises and, in an emergency, the coordination of the NATO Reaction Force,” the government spokesman’s office told Reuters.

NATO has already created similar command centers in Lithuania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Poland and Romania.

The centers’ task would be in to coordinate the actions of the Alliance’s spearhead force which is to be fully operational in early 2016. The role of the new force will be discussed by the member states’ defense ministers in Brussels on October 8.

On its website, NATO said that the “rapid deployment of allied forces to the eastern part of the Alliance” could be necessary and the new system of command centers could effectively help with that.

At the same time, some eastern European members of the Alliance, such as Poland, would like the NATO spearhead force to focus on deterring a potential Russian offensive amid the growing tensions between Russia and the Western countries.

The new system of command centers in central and eastern Europe will not be the only move in what the Alliance called “assurance measures” launched in response to perceived “challenges” posed by Russia as NATO steps up its military presence along Russia’s borders.

On Friday, the Alliance started month-long military exercises in Lithuania called Baltic Piranha. The war games will witness 500 Lithuanian soldiers join forces with Belgian, American and Luxembourgian troops, with the total number of military involved amounting to some 1,000 soldiers and around 100 pieces of military equipment.

At the same time, the US Air Force is starting preparations to transport B61 nuclear bombs to Germany’s Buchel Air Base, ZDF TV channel reports. The base has already acquired 20 nuclear weapons since 2007, according to the Royal United Services Institute.

The US is currently working on a new variant of the B61, Mod 12, which would be more accurate and have a smaller yield than the third and fourth modifications currently deployed in Europe.

However, the US relies not only on its nuclear arsenal in countering the perceived ‘Russian threat’. It has also prepared for a possible hybrid war with Russia in Europe’s Baltic States, German media reports.

The report by Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten (DWN) says all the NATO war games organized in the region by Washington are held with the intent of preparing for various military response scenarios.

The Pentagon has shifted its military thinking when it comes to Moscow, selecting Russia’s direct neighbors in the Baltic region as the battleground, DWN adds. Its plan includes using irregular troops and destabilizing the region via mass rallies as well as cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure.

Russia has repeatedly stated that it sees NATO expansion and constant military activity along its borders as hostile and destabilizing. Additionally, Russia also denounced the US decision to deploy new nuclear arms in Germany as it would disrupt the strategic balance in Europe.

“This is another step and unfortunately it is a very serious step towards increase of tensions on the European continent. Such actions cannot be described as a step towards stronger trust and greater stability,” President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary said.

The Russian Air Force has conducted more than 60 flights and bombed over 50 Islamic State targets in three days, according to Russia’s top armed forces official. He added the strikes have significantly reduced the terrorists’ combat capabilities.

“The airstrikes were being conducted night and day from the Khmeimim airbase and throughout the whole of Syria. In three days we managed to undermine the terrorists’ material-technical base and significantly reduce their combat potential,”Lieutenant General Andrey Kartapolov, head of the Main Operation Directorate of the General Staff of Russia’s armed forces, told reporters on Saturday.

He added that according to Russian intelligence the militants are fleeing the area that was in their control.

“There is panic and defection among them. About 600 mercenaries have left their positions and are trying to reach Europe,” he said.

Washington has notified the Russian Defense Ministry that there were only militants in the areas of Russia’s military operation against IS in Syria, he added.  “The Americans informed us during contacts that there was no one except terrorists in this region,” he said.

“Over the past 24 hours, Sukhoi Su-34 and Su-24M fighter jets have performed 20 sorties and hit nine Islamic State installations,” Igor Konashenkov, Russia’s Defense Ministry spokesman, reported.

Konashenkov added that yesterday evening Russian aircraft went on six sorties, inflicting strikes on three terrorist installations.

“A bunker-busting BETAB-500 air bomb dropped from a Sukhoi Su-34 bomber near Raqqa has eliminated the command post of one of the terror groups, together with an underground storage facility for explosives and munitions,” the spokesman said.

Commenting on the video filmed by a Russian UAV monitoring the assault near Raqqa, Konashenkov noted, “a powerful explosion inside the bunker indicates it was also used for storing a large quantity of munitions.

“As you can see, a direct hit on the installation resulted in the detonation of explosives and multiple fires. It was completely demolished,” the spokesman said.

Konashenkov noted the crosshair visible on the drone video footage is not a target, but merely a focus point of the UAV’s camera “maintaining control over an airstrike.”

Another bomber on a sortie from Khmeimim has dropped a KAB-500 air bomb on an Islamic State camp near Maarrat al-Numan. It destroyed fortifications, ammunition, fuel and seven units of equipment, Konashenkov said at a media briefing on Saturday.

KAB-500 bombs are accurate to within five meters.

The Russian Air Force has also eliminated a workshop in Idlib province, where terrorists have been mounting large-caliber machine-guns and other heavy armaments on pickup trucks.

Assault aircraft from at Khmeimim airbase have also inflicted airstrikes against terrorist forces near Jisr al-Shughur in Idlib province, destroying vehicle storage depots used for organizing terror attacks.

Regarding the airstrike on a target near Jisr al-Shughur, Igor Konashenkov pointed out, “footage of a huge pillar of smoke indicates a direct hit resulted in the total elimination of the facility.”

Drones stationed at Khmeimim airbase are maintaining “round-the-clock monitoring of the situation in Islamic State’s operation areas,” Konashenkov said.

“All disclosed targets are promptly engaged, regardless of the weather or light conditions,” said the Defense Ministry’s spokesman.

No anti-aircraft activity has been registered within the Russian task force’s sector of interest in Syria.

“No operable air-defense systems have been spotted in the Russian Air Force zone of action in Syria. Nevertheless, all operational flights are being performed with activated defensive onboard [radioelectronic combat] gear,” the spokesman said.

The UK government has said it intends to change legislation in order to prevent local councils divesting from the arms trade and Israeli human rights abuses.

Announcing the plans, a Conservative spokesperson said that “Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, alongside Labour-affiliated trade unions, are urging councils to use their procurement and pension policies to punish both Israel and the UK defence industry.”

The spokesperson continued: “Hard-left campaigns against British defence companies threaten to harm Britain’s £10 billion export trade, destroying British jobs, and hinder joint working with Israel to protect Britain from foreign cyber-attacks and terrorism.”

The proposed amendment to legislation will be aimed at stopping councils from incorporating the concerns of human rights campaigners into their pension and procurement policies.

According to Communities and Local Government Secretary Greg Clark, such a step would be a challenge to “the politics of division.”

The language used by the Conservatives, including the claim that divesting from companies complicit in Israeli atrocities “poison[s] community relations”, mirrors the rhetoric of pro-Israel lobby groups.

Clark added that “divisive policies undermine good community relations, and harm the economic security of families by pushing up council tax.” Cabinet Office Minister Matthew Hancock said: “We will…prevent such playground politics undermining our international security.”

With Germany’s largest company by revenue, Volkswagen, deep in damage recovery mode, and the market still unable to decide just how systemic and profound the fallout will be from the emissions scandal which has already cost the job of VW’s CEO and which according to some will impact the GDP of Hungary and the Czech republic as much as -1.5%, many are still trying to determine not if but how many other companies – whether “clean diesel” focused or otherwise – will be impacted by the crackdown on emissions fraud.

We don’t know the answer suffice to speculate that it will be “many” for one simpler reason: there are dozens of ways to manipulate emissions tests in both the lab and on the road, and with the temptation to “reduce” emissions all too great for management teams laser-focused on boosting profit margins, one can be certain that in this particular case not only is there more than one cockroach, there are dozens.

The chart below from Transport and Environment shows some of the traditional ways in which carmakers manipulate CO2 emissions tests to make their cars appear more efficient:

Worse, according to a follow-up report, it is only a matter of time before far more widespread crackdowns take place within the auto industry where emissions fraud now appears as systemic as that of the global banking sector.

As reported earlier this week, the gap between official test results for CO2 emissions/fuel economy and real-world performance has increased to 40% on average in 2014 from 8% in 2001, according to T&E’s 2015 Mind the Gap report, which analyses on-the-road fuel consumption by motorists and highlights the abuses by carmakers of the current tests and the failure of EU regulators to close loopholes. T&E said the gap has become a chasm and, without action, will likely grow to 50% on average by 2020.

 By exploiting loopholes in the test procedure (including known differences between real-world driving and lab simulations) conventional cars can emit up to 40-45% more CO2 emissions on the road than what is measured in the lab. But the average gap between test results and real-world driving is more than 50% for some models. Mercedes cars have an average gap between test and real-world performance of 48% and their new A, C and E class models have a difference of over 50%. The BMW 5 series and Peugeot 308 are just below 50%. The causes of these big deviations have to be clarified as soon as possible.

Greg Archer, clean vehicles manager at T&E, said: “Like the air pollution test, the European system of testing cars to measure fuel economy and CO2 emissions is utterly discredited. The Volkswagen scandal was just the tip of the iceberg and what lies beneath is widespread abuse by carmakers of testing rules enabling cars to swallow more than 50% more fuel than is claimed.”

Greg Archer concluded: “This widening gap casts more doubt on how carmakers trick their customers in Europe to produce much better fuel efficiency in tests than can be achieved on the road. The only solution is a comprehensive investigation into both air pollution and fuel economy tests and all car manufacturers to identify whether unfair and illegal practices, like defeat devices, may be in use. There must also be a comprehensive overhaul of the testing system.”

Who are the biggest European culprits.

The cost: distorted laboratory tests cost a typical motorist €450 a year in additional fuel costs compared to what carmakers’ marketing materials claim, the report finds.

Now multiply that by tens of millions of cars and you get a sense of the potential industry liability, especially since can be absolutely certain Europe’s US carmaking peers are just as guilty of emissions manipulation.

Finally, to paraphrase Dr. House, everybody lies.

Russia has conducted its first airstrike against ISIL militants in Syria. The Russian Ministry of Defense says the operation took place in the Arab republic’s third largest city of Homs, which is a central link between the interior cities and the Mediterranean coast.

The operation came hours after the Russian Parliament approved the use of the country’s armed forces abroad.

According to Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Sergei Ivanov, the decision was made after Syrian President Bashar Assad requested military assistance from Moscow in the fight against terrorism.

While speaking to journalists on Wednesday morning, Ivanov also added that the move does not foresee any ground troop operations.

Russia, Iran, Iraq, and Syria have recently created an information center in Baghdad in order to coordinate the fight against Islamic State. The new center would begin operations in October or November.

Mahdi Nazemroaya, an award-winning author, sociologist and geopolitical analyst, spoke to Sputnik in an exclusive interview about the new center in Baghdad.

“Russia is very serious about fighting ISIL. This isn’t just for Syria or Iraq, it’s for regional security and it has broader international implications. ISIL has made it clear that it’s going to march to other places in the world and it is also a threat to the Russian Federation, specifically the North Caucasus. So this move is to stabilize the region and to keep the Syrian state intact,” Nazemroaya said.

He also went on to explain that this is very different from what the US is doing. He said that ISIL’s strength has not declined under the US’ bombing, nothing has been happening. The move that has been made by Russia, Iranians and the center in Baghdad show that now there will be real action taking place in the Middle East.

“Russia’s actions are absolutely intended to bring stability to Syria. It is vital to note that Russia wants to see Syria intact. It does not want to see Syria as a failed state. It wants to see a sovereign state’s government in place and all the institutions in place, which is the opposite of what the United States has done.”

Nazemroaya recalled the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the US and Britain when they illegally invaded Iraq and the first thing they did was ‘destroy the state’. “They destroyed its institutions and the chaos in Iraq and the rise of ISIL are linked to this.”

The analyst further noted, “The Iranians are also involved in this as they have extended support to the Syrian government. They want to keep Syria intact. They have been providing Syria with military, economic and humanitarian support to Syria. They have extended diplomatic support at various foreign forums as well.”

He also said that China is also interested in neutralizing the ISIL force. “The US bombing campaign has done nothing in the fight against ISIL. It is clear that the US and Turkey have been helping ISIL.”

The analyst further explained how the US has been facilitating ISIL’s actions and why it hasn’t put a stop to their rise when it could.

Syria has been in a state of civil war since March 2011. The country’s army has been fighting various extremist groups, such as the Nusra Front and Islamic State. In mid-2014 the US started an airstrike campaign against ISIL in both Iraq and Syria within the framework of an international coalition.

Ever since Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed the UN General Assembly on 28 September, the spokespersons for the US regime and its propaganda apparatus have tried to present Russia as a nostalgic power seething with envy. Such misrepresentations of current Russian policy and Russian history in the US are not unusual– in fact they have been the rule since 1917. Unlike the US, Russia is not an island whose ignorance and idiocy have been preserved by two oceans separating it from the rest of humanity (except the non-whites and half-whites south of Miami and the Rio Bravo).

Hence when Julia Ioffe quotes Putin in English except for a single Russian word in her Foreign Policy article, it is more than pedantic.[1] Her point is to reassure the journal’s readership that a single Russian word gosudarstvennik from an approximately 70 minute speech is more important than any of the complete sentences that composed President Putin’s polite but firm indictment of US imperial policy, especially as practiced in the Middle East. However as if to prove that she either has no comprehension of Russian or is simply illiterate, she elaborates:

The same is true when the two men talk about a certain post-war world order. In Obama’s mouth, the phrase evokes certain American ideals, however patchily or hypocritically implemented: human rights, democracy, and the idea that governments serve their people, not the other way around. It is about the democratic peace theory — the idea that democracies don’t go to war with one another. It is a force of progress and, often, progressivism. In Putin’s understanding, however, it is the vessel of a certain brand of standpatter conservatism and, most significantly, statism. Putin, at his core, is a gosudarstvennik, a believer in a strong unitary central government.

In fact, Putin used the term gosudarstvennost’ — the stability and strength of the state — and its linguistic derivatives no fewer than 10 times in his address. And he didn’t use it the way someone like Obama might. Libya’s gosudarstvennost’, Putin said, “was destroyed through the grave violations of U.N. Security Council Resolution No. 1973.” When he spoke about the refugee crisis engulfing the Middle East and Europe, he spoke not of the responsibility of governments to help those in need, he spoke of gosudarstvennost’. “Without a doubt, the refugees need sympathy and support,” Putin said. “But the only way to definitively solve this problem is to restore gosudarstvennost’ in the place where it was destroyed, by strengthening state institutions where they still exist or are being recreated.

Ioffe uses another standard liberal rhetorical device when she insists that “post-war world order” “evokes certain American ideals, however patchily or hypocritically implemented”. She does not explain why precisely anyone but Americans should consider patchy and hypocritical behaviour to bear any connection to ideals, let alone “American ideals”. According to Ioffe Putin is a “statist”, a believer in a strong unitary central government. Of course David Cameron is too. Moreover since the Patriot Act is still in force to assert that the US regime does not advocate strong unitary central government (in the form of the POTUS) is to be on the verge of delirium.

No mention is made of a conspicuous difference between Putin’s speech and Obama’s:

The United States of America is prepared to use all elements of our power, including military force, to secure our core interests in the region. We will confront external aggression against our allies and partners, as we did in the Gulf War.

We will ensure the free flow of energy from the region to the world. Although America is steadily reducing our own dependence on imported oil, the world still depends on the region’s energy supply and a severe disruption could destabilize the entire global economy. [2]

In US jargon “free” anything means the unrestricted ability of US corporations and their allies to extract labour, raw materials and any other resources from any place in the world without interference by the people or governments of countries that may be in possession of them. US “core interests” are just what George Kennan said they were in 1947—everything the US wants to satisfy its gluttonous ruling class, just like the slave labour that made the US from the very beginning. Israel and Saudi Arabia are US allies in the region for this purpose. In sub-Saharan Africa the allies are now Uganda and Rwanda. Human rights and national sovereignty have never been core interests of the US, except to the extent its courts treat corporations as if they were human beings or sovereign entities.

What escapes Ioffe—and is characteristic of most Anglo-American imperial thought on the matter—is that Putin uses the word gosudarstvennost to mean “sovereignty”. Putin has rightly said that the violation of national sovereignty has caused today’s conditions—the post-war order, in which the US claims to be the sole absolute sovereign. That is obvious even with no knowledge of Russian.

In his speech today, Putin spoke of the vital importance of other international bodies, like the G-20 and the World Trade Organisation. But their significance lies in the same basic fact: These bodies allow Russia to use its historic and unparalleled talent at bureaucratic manoeuvrings to punch above its weight…

In other words, Russian policy always has to be subordinated to US policy—because even Russia is not big enough to have its own foreign policy. The Washington Post, in a more diluted form for its semi-literate bureaucratic readership, describes the Russian government’s position as if it were merely the reaction of lower class day children to being spit-balled by the upper-class boarders at some New England prep school. While not everyone expresses such blatant ignorance as former Hewlett-Packard mistress Carla Fiorina, the propaganda experts in the US know that the best way to manipulate public opinion in the US is by maintaining a rigorous “no fact zone” over US airspace.[3]

With even sophomores able to reason the possible consequences of Russia’s intensified support for its long-time ally, Syria, a combination of irritation, condemnation and confusion can be found among the usual suspects who opine in the faux gauche media. Joshua Frank condemns Russia and anyone who supports its action in Counterpunch:

Russia’s latest involvement in the ever-worsening Syrian catastrophe — which has no doubt been fuelled by the U.S. and its regional allies — is being embraced by much of the anti-imperialist Left as a direct confrontation to U.S. intentions in the region. If one is to buy Russia’s propaganda more than Western disinformation, we’d have to believe that Vladimir Putin’s invitation to drop bombs in Syria is solely meant to aid the Syrian Army against the growing threat of the Islamic State. That’s it. It’s a pseudo-peace mission. Get it? Indeed, the Syrian Army is in retreat in much of the country and any help they can get is being welcomed by President Bashar al-Assad, who only controls 20% of the country. Assad needs victories, and he needs them fast. Yet, there is most certainly other geopolitical issues at play that shouldn’t be ignored. [4]

Frank is one of those closet cold warriors who believe that Columbia has the duty to carry Britannia’s torch throughout the world. He calls Russian statements “propaganda” because the word generates knee jerks throughout the outer party in the US. For Frank “Western disinformation” is obviously nicer, it sounds like “distress” or “distortion”; in the “land of euphemism” it means outright lies. In order to give his rant the quality of America’s favourite masturbatory tactic—even-handedness—he begins with reference to  “Two bullshit talks at the UN, one from the leader of the “Free World”, the other from the head of the Russian Federation…” Needless to say the “Free World” has been extinct since 1989 but Frank hasn’t noticed. The point is to reassure readers that no facts will penetrate Left cyberspace if Frank can do anything to prevent it.

In a story by Vijay Prashad, also appearing in Counterpunch but originally published in the Indian journal Frontline, confusion is sown in a discussion of General John Allen’s assessment of the alleged war against ISIS.[5]

Misused reports

Not long after Allen’s strong statement, 50 intelligence analysts who work at the U.S. military’s Central Command formally complained that their reports had been misused. They noted that their own assessments were less rosy than those of the upper administration. The Pentagon’s Inspector General has opened an investigation into these claims. Its spokeswoman, Bridget Serchak, noted: “The investigation will address whether there was any falsification, distortion, delay, suppression or improper modification of intelligence information.” Senior military officials at the Central Command—such as Major General Steven Grove, who ran its intelligence operation—are said to be targets of the investigation. The Central Command would not comment on the allegations. [6]

The excuse of bad or misused intelligence has been around at least since the US re-invaded Korea in 1951. Then the complaint was how could the Koreans north of the 38^th parallel not only cross it by “surprise” but also nearly drive the US military and its Korean lackeys in the South into the Sea of Japan. This story of poor intelligence was repeated in Vietnam too. As a rule the “poor intelligence” song is sung whenever the official policy is faced with embarrassment or there is faction fighting within the ruling elite.

The “Leftist” mouthpiece The Nation, suggests one of the avenues the imperial elite is likely to consider.[7]

On the other hand, Obama is surely correct in his insistence that the Assad regime’s brutality “is not just a matter of one nation’s internal affairs—it breeds human suffering on an order of magnitude that affects us all.” And it’s certainly reasonable for Obama to call for ‘a managed transition away from Assad and to a new leader, and an inclusive government.

The parties to a new peace conference must focus on creative ways to bridge that divide, even as they pursue other steps to de-escalate the conflict. Those interim steps should include support for local cease-fires, like the one recently agreed to in Zabadani and Idlib province. A second step should be deeper cooperation among all nations in stemming recruitment by jihadi extremists, in particular ISIS. A third step is an arms embargo, preferably one agreed to by the UN Security Council. That may seem a distant possibility now, given Russia’s recent steps to buttress its military base in Latakia and increase the flow of arms to Assad’s government, not to mention the continued supply of weapons to rebel groups, whether moderate or jihadi. But an embargo agreed to by Washington, Moscow, and the other P5 nations, as well as the Gulf monarchies, Iran, and Turkey—and applied to all parties, rebels as well as government forces—is an eventual necessity.

The Nation editors support “regime change” provided it is “creative” and has the veneer of diplomacy. The proposed peace conference is a way in which Syria can be dismantled like Yugoslavia under CIA pacifier Richard Holbrooke was at Dayton. To even suggest that the Gulf oil despots, euphemistically called Gulf monarchies, should have anything to say in the restoration of peace and sovereignty in the Middle East is nothing more than the polite form of cynicism that prevails among the glitterati on the Hudson. An arms embargo is one of those old tricks used in Iraq and elsewhere to make sure that only covert weapons supplies to US proxies arrive. The dishonesty of the proposal is apparent by the conspicuous omission of Israel, whose settler-colonial regime has waged overt and covert war against Syria since it was part of Nasser’s United Arab Republic. Since the recruitment of jihadi extremists has been US (CIA) policy, for which Saudi Arabia and the Gulf tyrannies are amply paid, the only party that can stop these recruitments, not to mention training and arming them, is the very foreign policy establishment for which the journal regularly speaks.

The British shadow foreign secretary, Hilary Benn[8], bane of deceased, serious Left MP Tony Benn, was reported in the Guardian to have said:

Russia needed to ‘urgently clarify what the aims are of its airstrikes in Syria.

‘There is wide international agreement on the threat from Isil/Daesh [Isis], but, while the Russians say that this is who they are targeting, reports from Syria suggest that this is not the case,’ he said.

What has happened in the last 48 hours makes it all the more pressing and important that the British government lead the way in seeking to secure a UN security council resolution to deal with the threat from Isil/Daesh, safeguard civilians, increase humanitarian aid and agree a plan to try to bring peace to the long-suffering Syrian people.’ [9]

Either Benn does not read or it is not only his ministerial pretension that is in the shadows. Russia has always stated its objectives in Syria quite clearly—ever since Mr Obama threatened President Assad with his “red line”.[10] Unlike the US regime or HM Government and Opposition, the Russian government has consistently respected the letter and the spirit of the UN guarantees to the sovereign integrity of its member-states.

When the US regime subverted the UN Charter by declaring that NATO and OAS were merely “collective self-defence” arrangements—supposedly compatible with the Charter—it abrogated one of the primary terms by which states were encouraged to join this successor to the League of Nations: an end to aggressive war by military alliances. In 1991 and again in 2003 the German government subverted the provisional basic law (de facto constitution) by claiming that military participation in the invasions of Yugoslavia and Afghanistan were ultimately within the NATO framework, although they constituted neither self-defence nor actions within NATO territory at the time.

Wintour continues to confuse the Guardian’s “Left” readership with this thinly disguised regime polemic:

The immediate dilemma facing the UK was whether it would be forced to accept that the price of the ejection of Islamic State from northern Syria was the strengthening of President Bashar al-Assad. Cameron has always insisted that there can be no long-term settlement unless Assad goes, even if he remains during a transition. The Labour frontbench also recognises that Assad is the cause of most deaths in Syria. [11]

This is not far from the position that Frank intends to give respectability. Since it is clear—but not openly explained—that ISIS cannot be defeated without bombing then the best thing is for NATO to bomb because murdering Assad—Gaddafi-style—is worth killing every Syrian between Nusaybin – Al Qamishli and Damascus.[12] The announcement that the French are joining the bombing can be explained easily—since the conclusion of the secret Sykes – Picot agreement in 1916, France has considered Syria a part of its republican empire. If Assad and the Ba’ath Party are to be vaporised or sodomised, the French elite has at least sentimental reasons to collect their share of the booty a century later.

The Economist, by no means Left but enjoying a large readership among the “outer party” of the Empire, advises the white, middle-class bureaucrats, academics and business people who read it[13]:

Both Kunduz and Russia’s bombing are symptoms of the same phenomenon: the vacuum created by Barack Obama’s attempt to stand back from the wars of the Muslim world. America’s president told the UN General Assembly this week that his country had learned it ‘cannot by itself impose stability on a foreign land’; others, Iran and Russia included, should help in Syria. Mr Obama is not entirely wrong. But his proposition hides many dangers: that America throws up its hands; that regional powers, sensing American disengagement, will be sucked into a free-for-all; and that Russia’s intervention will make a bloody war bloodier still. Unless Mr Obama changes course, expect more deaths, refugees and extremism. [14]

The myth of the benevolent emperor, soon to be punished for his ill-placed mercy, is a trope that appeals especially to patients with Vietnam Syndrome. The Economist cautiously advises of the risks of coitus interruptus when an empire is in the process of raping a country.

The principal mouthpiece of the US corporate elite, the New York Times, presented the Russian airstrikes in Syria in the style consistent with the feigned objectivity for which the US propaganda flagship is renowned:

Russian aircraft carried out a bombing attack against Syrian opposition fighters on Wednesday, including at least one group trained by the C.I.A., eliciting angry protests from American officials and plunging the complex sectarian war there into dangerous new territory.

Russia’s entry into the Syrian conflict, foreshadowed by a rapid military build-up in the past three weeks at an air base in Latakia, Syria, makes the possibility of a political settlement in Syria more difficult and creates a new risk of inadvertent incidents between American and Russian warplanes flying in the same area. And it adds a powerful but unpredictable combatant to a civil war that has already resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and a flood of refugees.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia justified his country’s entry into the conflict by saying that Russia was acting “preventatively, to fight and destroy militants and terrorists on the territories that they already occupied, not wait for them to come to our house.”[15]

This article is riddled with deception. First of all the modifier “at least one group trained by the CIA” suggests that CIA-trained groups, of which ISIS/ ISIL is entirely composed, are distinguishable, “good CIA” and “bad CIA”. What could the “dangerous new territory” be? Syria is not the Netherlands, known to have expanded its national territory with land drained using dikes. Then the Times refers to a build-up at an air base. The reader is not told that the Latakia air base has been maintained by Russia since the days of the Soviet Union. The Latakia base and its naval station in Tartus have all the legitimacy of USAFB Ramstein, Germany or the USN Sixth Fleet station in Naples, Italy. To call Russia unpredictable is simply mendacious given the consistency with which Putin has always announced his government’s intentions and actions well in advance of implementation. The Times editors—who are intimately connected to the US national security establishment know very well that since Brzezinski replaced Kissinger in the National Security Council, Muslim militants and terrorists have been a major instrument for attacking Russia.

In fact were pundits like Joshua Frank to write what they really mean—and what many of the faux gauche in the US and UK believe—they would admit that they share the ambitions of the US regime to maintain their empire’s exceptional privilege in the world. Their quandary is namely that of speaking from both sides of their mouth while chewing the lies they have been regurgitating for decades.

So what is the real story that has the imperial establishment in a state of apparent panic? I propose the following explanation—just based on what ordinary people with some historical memory can construct.

Ever since the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 by CIA-trained mercenaries, the bulk of US wars have been conceived and managed at Langley. This was also the case with Vietnam as I argued in my essay (attached just for ease of reference). The regular US military provides a screen for these wars. At least that is Langley’s intention. After Vietnam there were in fact many regular military who were highly averse to fighting CIA wars (although not opposed to wars themselves, like in Iraq.) This led consecutive POTUS to increase the appropriations for so-called Special Operations forces. These irregulars dress like US military but are essentially nothing more or less than the US equivalent of the Waffen SS. They operate under direct political command structures that are more frequently than not completely distinct from the legislated chain of command. They wear regular uniforms in public in part to conceal their irregular role and also to promote an illusory “super-soldier” competence in the regular armed forces that is simply absent.

There are only two regular military forces active in the Middle East under “normal” US command, the US fleets in the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean. The rest, especially after the draw down in Iraq, is under the control of Langley, either directly or through Israel/ Saudi Arabia or SOC.

The recent push by the CIA forces in Syria is essentially a copy of the Vietnam bombing campaigns intended to depopulate the countryside and create “free fire” zones. The refugees serve two purposes; one is to create a space between Turkey and Damascus where Syrian forces can be destroyed with impunity (like the gap between Benghazi and Tripoli) and two, to provide the justification for “humanitarian bombing” campaigns. This strategy against Assad relies upon the deniability of the ISIS and the illusion that “moderate opposition” is actually Syrian. (Recall the problems the US regime (CIA) had in creating a “third force” in Vietnam.) Since ISIS is a mercenary army with little or no Syrian participation it cannot be treated as part of the “opposition” to Assad which the US regime claims justifies its war.

It is very important to remember that every CIA war has at least three basis components:

a) the covert policy target: e.g. overthrow of Assad;

b) the exploitation of the covert economy: weapons, drugs/ contraband, and shadow finance;

c) the ideological/ political manipulation of the “white” population (US and/ or Europe). This means that the covert policy target may enjoy support of different regime factions.

At the same time obtaining the covert policy objective may have little or nothing to do with the Company’s main business– profiting from the covert economy and regulating it on behalf of the sectoral executive management (e.g. illicit drugs and the pharmaceutical industry). Moreover ideological manipulation of “whites” in Europe frequently poses different problems than the rather simple strategies needed to manipulate the US population. In the present case there are several levels at which internal policy conflicts can arise within the Company which are then magnified when tabled with the interests of other factions in the US ruling class.

Now shift to Russia (and apparently China). Putin has made clear on numerous occasions that he does not support separatism in the Ukraine or pseudo-Islamic terrorism in states bordering Russia. Putin is a staunch defender of national sovereignty (something utterly foreign to US/ CIA doctrine). Until now Washington has relied on the propaganda and sanctions against Russia, as well as pressure in the Ukraine, to keep Putin’s government divided. (He has to contend with those USD billionaires inherited from Yeltsin, too.) Putin sees– correctly– the strategy behind the sudden flow of refugees to Europe. If the CIA is allowed to do to Damascus what they did to Tripoli, any action to preserve Russian presence will become untenable.

The overdue decision to intervene and actively support Assad is based on the general knowledge– reiterated in his UN speech– that the Syrian army is competent and battle-worthy but needs support against the covert warriors. Putin knows that the US is not bombing ISIS but bombing Syrian infrastructure and military. (Evacuating the population helps keep this fact concealed.) If Putin actually destroys the ISIS bases and creates the shield the Syrian army needs to mop up, then the CIA will lose this war and even worse, Russia may produce all the smoking guns needed to show everyone whose war it is.

Ideally the CIA would like to have Russia forced to restrict its operations to NATO rules (essentially grounding them). Russia won’t accept that. So now the question for Langley is: can they get a USAF shield in place to prevent Russia from neutralizing their mercenaries (to use a CIA term)? That would risk a real war, which the regular US military would have to fight (from a considerable disadvantage). Or do they sacrifice the ISIS and help kill them off so that they remain deniable assets– while perhaps evacuating and regrouping them in Saudi Arabia or Turkey. Turkey is a risky place to hide them. Evacuating them under cover of refugee streams will save manpower but brings a number of other problems (especially in Europe).

So the folks in Washington are not “numbskulls”– just incredibly vicious. There is an understandable fight over who is responsible for the policy in the Middle East now. The CIA has never willingly conceded its prerogative to make foreign policy (after all it is the organisation closest to the Business elite that runs the country.) However it depends on all sorts of regular military and political assets to impose its strategy and implement its decisions. That is the core of ambiguity and “confusion” in Washington, a struggle among the factions (in which the psychopaths in Tel Aviv play no small role, as the principal US offshore enterprise.)

I confess, as I have argued elsewhere in these pages, that the primarily white male supremacist establishment on both sides of the Atlantic are still embarked on the war-driven campaign for global domination begun by Britain in the 19^th century. While David Cameron wants to recreate himself as a 21^st century Palmerston[16] and imagines he is fighting Russia like in 1853, the folks who run Langley hope—“they can” perpetuate the role they assumed when Britain was ruined in 1918. Generations of white imperialists, whether Progressive, Fabian or Tory, cannot bear the thought that Asia—Russia and China—could restore some semblance of the global equity that the United Nations promised seventy years ago and Anglo-American atomic bombs and mercenaries have obstructed since 1945. It is not Russia that suffers from nostalgia and obsessive delusions of global grandeur.

Notes

[1] Julia Ioffe, The Remarkable Similarity of Putin’s and Obama’s Speeches at the U.N. Foreign Policy http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/09/29/the-remarkable-similarity-of-putins-and-obamas-speeches-at-the-u-n/ pp. 3-7

Having the BBC herded along with Afghan government troops in heavily armed convoys as they made their way through Kunduz was hardly comforting for the official account. That account suggested that the government was gaining control of a city that had seen fierce Taliban resistance since their daring invasion on Monday.

The chaos has now been compounded by an airstrike by US forces that ended up killing nine members of Médicins san Frontières and six patients, while also wounding 37 others. As the organisation stated, “At 2:10 am (20:40 GMT) local time… the MSF trauma centre in Kunduz was hit several times during sustained bombing and was very badly damaged.” The overworked centre had treated 394 patients, a problem compounded by the recent fighting.

According to US military sources, “there may have been collateral damage” to the medical facility. “This incident is under investigation.” A statement issued by the office of the President Ashraf Ghani said that Army General John Campbell, chief of US-led forces in Afghanistan, apologised.

Such instances of formality tend to be the crude outcomes of what is already certain. In this instance, the only force capable of conducting such a strike would have to have been associated with the bolstering coalition.

Some members of the MSF facility had been critical of the Ghani administration’s conduct of operations in Kunduz. One of the critics counted among the fatalities was Dr. Ehsan Osmani, a 25 year old doctor who was on one of his finals shifts at the Kunduz facility.

The picture looks even uglier given the attempts by the organisation to persistently ring NATO and contacts in Washington to warn them as the bombs rained for “nearly an hour”.  MSF Afghanistan representatives reiterated the position that, “in all conflict contexts, these precise locations were communicated to all parties on multiple occasions over the last months, including most recently on 29 September.” Once in train, the machine of death can be a hard one to stop.

To add suitable propaganda value to the event, Taliban spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid made mileage out of condemning this “attack carried out on innocent people.” On that score, his assertion was hard to counter.

The interminable conflict in Afghanistan between government forces and those of the Taliban continues. Documents have been circulating from such bodies as the Institute for the Study of War suggesting that the US mission in Afghanistan needs revision.[1] This warning is drearily familiar: a failed mission that needs persistent tinkering in order to avoid the obvious point of defeat. The consequence of such reasoning never changes: the occupation force should linger in a various guises, be it in a combative, advisory role, or both. Then comes the pressure to reverse decisions, and increase troop totals that were originally slated for the chop.

In February 21, 2015, the then newly appointed Defence Secretary Ashton Carter openly considered slowing down the withdrawal time table and “rethinking the US counter-terrorism mission.”

The vast, vacuous wound of history that is Afghanistan continues to draw imperial forces in with impeccable consistency. Initial plans to cut the number of US troops have been altered – the previous plan was reducing the number to 5,500 by the end of the last year. The ISW makes the obvious point that the “Afghan National Security Forces face numerous challenges in 2015 that may significantly hinder their capacity to assume responsibility for their country’s security.”

The very fact that the Taliban managed to nab Kunduz was ominous – it was the first major Afghan city to fall into their hands since 2001. It also trumpets, rather loudly, the realities that face the frazzled regime in Kabul – the Taliban have time on their side, consolidating their position in remote areas while still gathering pace to strike at more urban centres.

A striking point in Taliban strategy is their efforts to engage in institution building within various areas of contention, something that should be the preserve of the Kabul government.

In the meantime, the swaddling clothes are still well and truly on the being that is Ghani’s regime. His army has what overly technical strategists term “capability gaps”, hence the continued need for coalition buttressing via air support and external expertise.

The false accounts and skewed narratives about repelling contenders for the carcass that is the Afghan state do, however, continue. In the vast echo chamber of Twitter, individuals such as Sweden’s former prime minister and self-proclaimed “entrepreneur of future and peace” Carl Bildt can only see minutiae on the battle field, incremental gains that suggest that things are capital when they are actually disastrous. “Good news” came his message on October 1, “Afghan government forces making advance in efforts to retake Kunduz.” The persistent NATO-US presence suggests how fragile the state of affairs is.

If that presence entails bungled attacks on the only trauma centre in Kunduz, then the foreign advisors might as well hand in their resignations and exit the inglorious episode of a failed occupation that refuses to go away.

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

Note

[1] http://www.understandingwar.org/report/taliban-resurgent-threats-afghanistans-security

A new contract being imposed on junior doctors makes a mockery of their dedication and hard work, explains Dr Tomasz Pierscionek

Marx and Engels, in 1848 pamphlet “The Communist Manifesto”, had much to say on how capitalism had reduced the status of skilled professionals. “The bourgeoisie,” they write, “has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.”

These prescient words remain relevant. During the 1980s Margaret Thatcher employed the wealth and muscle of the state against the unions. David Cameron seeks to continue in her footsteps to break the backs of the working class and its defenders and roll back years of hard-won rights using austerity as an excuse to implement the neoliberal ideology he shares with his mostly wealthy supporters.

We are told that we are all in it together but some are, of course, more in it than others. The British Medical Association (BMA), representing over 156,000 doctors, is now the facing the consequences of such “austerity.”

In October 2013 talks began between the BMA’s junior doctors committee (JDC) and NHS England — an “executive non-departmental public body of the Department of Health” — to negotiate a new contract for junior doctors for the first time in 13 years.

Negotiations broke down a year later after the JDC felt the government’s proposals would adversely affect doctors’ working patterns and thus place patient care at risk. The British government then asked the Review Body on Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration (DDRB) to make recommendations pertaining to new contractual arrangements.

The DDRB published a report in July 2015 which favoured the government’s proposals. The JDC subsequently sought its members’ views and, after 99 per cent of 4,500 doctors responding to a BMA poll said the DDRB’s recommendations were unacceptable, decided on August 13 not to re-enter negotiations.

Consequently, the British government announced that in August 2016 it would impose a new contract on 56,000 junior doctors in England. The Scottish and Welsh governments have stated they will not impose a new contract on junior doctors while the Northern Ireland Assembly is yet to reach a decision.

In brief, the proposed contract would appear to adversely affect junior doctors’ salaries with some expected to receive an overall pay cut of up to 30 per cent. It does this by redesignating some unsociable hours (considered to be 7pm-7am on weekdays and weekends) as sociable, making 7am-10pm Monday to Saturday “normal working time” and thus eliminating the on-call supplement doctors earn when they work those hours.

Doctors who work part-time, take maternity leave or take time out of clinical practice to perform research would also lose financially. Patient care would be placed at risk as the new contract would abolish financial penalties for trusts that breach regulations preventing junior doctors from working excessively long hours.

A number of royal colleges, including the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and the Royal College of General Practitioners, have issued statements voicing their concerns. The Psychiatric Trainees’ Committee within the Royal College of Psychiatrists has publicly expressed its concerns about the proposed contract’s implications. The BMA’s JDC is developing plans to resist its imposition. The BMA council has decided to support the JDC in undertaking any lawful action in its fight for a fair contract. This weekend the JDC voted to ballot its English members in England for industrial action.

Junior doctors should be sent their ballot papers in the next few weeks.

Taking industrial action is a decision that doctors do not make lightly — it last occurred in 1975. The government cynically exploits the beneficence of doctors, who took an oath to make the health of their patients their primary concern, knowing we have a difficult choice to make.

News of the upcoming ballot is likely to be followed by carefully crafted and distorting attacks by the Tory-allied media on supposedly “greedy” doctors who seek to protect their “large salaries.” As is the case with much of the mainstream media’s pronouncements, reality is somewhat different.

A newly qualified doctor is paid a basic salary of £22,636 for a 40-hour week. Most work more than 40 hours and thus receive an on-call supplement depending on their total weekly hours and the number of “unsociable” hours worked (currently evenings past 7pm, weekends and nights) which can equal a little over £30,000 for a newly qualified doctor working the maximum (currently) legally allowed number of on-call shifts.

During such on-calls (often comprising several 12-hour shifts in a row during weekends or nights), hospitals are often staffed by only a few doctors whose actions, inactions and decisions can mean the difference between life and death. A junior doctor’s salary then rises by around a couple of thousand each year if they prove they have attained certain skills and have completed a required number of assessments.

The paperwork required to prove one has acquired the necessary competencies can mean hours of unpaid work — which doctors often complete in their own time. A typical 40-plus hour week can easily extend as doctors working on busy wards stay late, sometimes an hour or more beyond the end of their shifts, to ensure their patients get the care they require.

Doctors also stay late to tackle an ever-increasing mountain of paperwork. Additional professional requirements, such as occasionally preparing presentations for weekly hospital meetings, mean further hours of unpaid labour outside of work.

In order to progress beyond a certain point in their careers, junior doctors are required to pass a number of exams for which they study in their own time and pay for out of their own pockets. I paid over £1,900 to sit four exams and could easily have paid far more if I had not passed first time. I considered myself lucky as a GP colleague paid over £1,700 for just one of his exams.

Hundreds of pounds are also spent on mandatory membership of the General Medical Council, a royal college (each doctor begins associated with a certain speciality), and medical defence indemnity to protect us from litigation. We may get paid for a 40-odd hour week but our excess labour is unpaid. Is it any wonder many doctors qualifying from British medical schools seek to work abroad in the years after their graduate?

If the proposed contract comes into force, the exodus will increase. The General Medical Council confirmed a few days ago that in the 10 days after the government announced it would impose new contracts next August, a total of 3,468 doctors made requests to start collecting the paperwork they require to practice medicine outside Britain.

The government talks about expanding the NHS to provide seven-day services yet does not invest in the health service and will further damage conditions for doctors and place patient safety at risk. I cynically cannot help but wonder whether the Tories are trying to set the NHS up to fail so they can have an excuse to privatise the health service by claiming that it is inefficient and not up to scratch.

The BMA may not have had the experience of fighting neoliberalism that some unions have, yet many doctors are a pay cheque or two away from getting into debt and thus, whether they know it or not, are part of the broadly defined working class.

We must keep our nerve, prepare for the media onslaught and patiently explain our position. I was inspired to see doctors of all political persuasions, including some otherwise Tory supporters, preparing to take a stand against the government’s plans.

There also needs to be a transition from trade union to political consciousness as we realise that our fellow health workers and members of other unions are fighting in different sections of the front against the ideology of the free market. An injury to one is an injury to all.

There is no way out of austerity via the capitalist model and the consequences of its inherent economic downturns will always be passed on to paid wage labourers, be they the physician, teacher, Tube driver or any other worker. We are all in it together and we cannot afford to lose — for the sake of our patients, our NHS and our society.

Dr Tomasz Pierscionek writes this article in a personal capacity.

Here’s my ten minute piece on the current Refugee Crisis, in the Dáil yesterday –

“I too welcome the motion and, even though I speak only for myself, because I am an Independent Deputy, I will be supporting it. Unfortunately, our approach last winter was not quite so positive. We argued about the cancellation of the Mare Nostrum programme and protested to the Europeans that it was not a good idea. When programme was brought to an end, the refugees were never going to stop trying to come across the sea, they were just going to drown and that is what happened to many of them. People were also drowning when the Mare Nostrum programme was working but it was, at least, a big help at the time.

There is no doubt that this is an incredible crisis. On the issue of the refugees coming in, I support Deputy Mac Lochlainn’s point about the importance of getting these people into a work situation as quickly as possible. Surely, it would be rational to do this. The manner in which we have dealt with that issue in the past has left too much to be desired.

I still worry about this situation. If we consider what has happened in the past 20 years, the statistics are frightening.

The militarisation of the planet has continued to increase, especially since 2001. In the past five years, there has been a 16% increase in the proliferation of arms in comparison to the previous five years, a frightening development. Of the 60 million people currently displaced, it is estimated 33 million of them are displaced because of war.

What will we do about this? Ireland is a small country but I believe we can play a positive role in this regard. Several weeks ago, Annette Groth, a member of the German Parliament who had been in Hungary watching the plight of the refugees there, told the German Parliament:

Germany is the third biggest weapons exporter in Europe and has good relations with, for instance, Saudi Arabia and Qatar … Our government is still delivering arms to Saudi Arabia which happens to be supporting ISIS, the jihadists.

We all realise the whole Middle East region has gone crazy but we cannot stay silent on the reason for it. The number of refugees will actually increase, not decrease, unless there is a serious examination of the root causes of it all. For example, Deputy Mac Lochlainn made the point some countries are prepared to help more than others. Two countries not prepared to take in refugees are Saudi Arabia and America, yet the part they are playing in the destruction of this region is unbelievable. Yemen is being destroyed, with refugees being created every hour there, but no one has said a word about it.

Shannonwatch, through freedom of information requests, got the statistics on the planes coming through Shannon Airport last year. There are planes going through the airport from America to Saudi Arabia with all kinds of arms and most likely cluster bombs, which are being used in Yemen. We are allowing Shannon Airport to be used by the American Government and the arms industry to bring arms to the Middle East region to cause havoc. Bombs are falling on innocent people’s homes and they are being driven out of them but we are not stopping it. It is great we sent two boats to the Mediterranean and it is to be commended that we are prepared to take in refugees but how can we continue to allow Shannon to be used for as a US military base? If the Minister for Justice and Equality did nothing else for the rest of her time in government before the election, it would be wonderful if she took a positive decision on this issue, as it would mean so much. We cannot possibly defend our facilitation with what is happening.

Those fleeing to Europe now are fleeing to countries which sold the arms that caused the havoc and displacement in the first place. The Russians have now started to bomb Syria, making them as culpable as the Americans. Bombs do not solve problems; they create them. The French and British cannot wait to get in there more. The region is a minefield now. They have been training rebel groups to fight Bashar al-Assad. While I would not defend Assad for one minute, the alternative is worse. The ISIS crowd are flourishing because of what is happening. It is crazy what they are like. Bad as Assad is, his is one of the last multicultural governments in the region. His biggest crime is that he is independent of America and Israel. I accept he is guilty of many crimes against his own people over the past five years. He should be tried for war crimes, the same as the likes of Blair, Bush and Obama for what they have been involved in.

I make no excuses for Assad or the Russians but Ireland has an opportunity to play a positive role. We are an island, a small country, but it does not stop us from having a real and strong neutral voice for peace. We cannot start talking about peace, however, while we continue to allow Shannon Airport to be used as a US military base. That is the height of hypocrisy. Up to 2.5 million US troops have gone through Shannon since 2001. The amount of arms that we allow through with permits on civilian planes is astronomical. We refuse to search military planes that land at the airport. When people are in opposition, they say we should search the military planes in Shannon. When they get into government, however, they say they have assurances from America that all is well. All is not well.

Deputy Clare Daly and I had three days in court in Ennis recently. Witnesses came forward who were working in Shannon to testify they saw arms on military planes which is illegal. Still our Government does not want to look into this. The judge accepted the bona fides of the testimonies of these individuals. He ended up fining us in the end, which was irrational given his own arguments but that is a different issue.

Will we look at the Shannon issue and stop helping one country bomb another? It would mean so much. Can one imagine visiting people in the Middle East region and watching bombs falling on the houses beside them, looking to kill someone involved military activity but wiping out women and children? Can one imagine sitting there knowing the bombs could have come through Shannon before they were dropped? What does it say about us that we can tolerate this?

The manner in which the world operates has never been as disappointing. The arms industry, along with the pharmaceutical industry, is one of the two largest industries in the world. One cannot get elected President of America without the support of the arms industry. It will cost Hillary Clinton $2 billion just to run for president, which is a lot of money. One needs the arms industry’s support to run for President of America in a serious manner. The end result is payback. Bombs have to be dropped on people to support the arms industry and keep it thriving. We are complicit because we choose to turn a blind eye to Shannon Airport being used as a US military base. We should be ashamed of ourselves.”

For more than a year, the United States has been playing patty-cake with an army of homicidal maniacs who call themselves ISIS. On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he’d had enough of Washington’s song-and-dance and was planning to bring a little Russian justice to the terrorist militias that had killed 225,000 Syrians and ripped the country to shreds. In language that could not be more explicit, Putin said to the General Assembly: “We can no longer tolerate the currents state of affairs in the world”.  Less than 48 hours later, Russian bombers were raining down precision-guided munitions on terrorist strongholds across western Syria sending the jihadi vermin scrambling for cover.

That’s how you fight terrorism if you’re serious about it.   Bravo, Putin.

Putin’s blitz caught the entire western political establishment flat-footed. Even now, three days into the air campaign, neither the administration nor the policy wonks at the many far-right think tanks in Washington have even settled on an approach, much less a strategy, to developments on the ground. What’s clear, is that Putin’s action has surprised everyone including the media which to-this-day hasn’t even settled on it’s talking points.

This is extraordinary. Ask yourself this, dear reader: How can our political and military leaders watch Moscow deploy its troops, warplanes and military hardware to a theater where the US is carrying out major operations and have absolutely no plan of how deal with those forces if they are sent into battle?

If you are convinced, as I am, that we are governed by numbskulls, you will certainly find confirmation of that fact in recent events.

But while the Obama administration is frantically searching for a strategy, Putin’s air-squadrons are unleashing holy hell on the sociopaths, the head-choppers and the other assorted vipers that comprise the Islamic State.  And Mr. Putin is getting plenty of help too, particularly from the crack-troops in the Iranian Quds forces and from the ferocious militia that defeated the IDF in two separate conflicts, Hezbollah, the Army of God. Check this out from Reuters:

Hundreds of Iranian troops have arrived in Syria in the last 10 days and will soon join government forces and their Lebanese Hezbollah allies in a major ground offensive backed by Russian air strikes, two Lebanese sources told Reuters….

The (Russian) air strikes will in the near future be accompanied by ground advances by the Syrian army and its allies,” said one of the sources familiar with political and military developments in the conflict….

The vanguard of Iranian ground forces began arriving in Syria: soldiers and officers specifically to participate in this battle. They are not advisors … we mean hundreds with equipment and weapons. They will be followed by more,” the second source said. Iraqis would also take part in the operation, the source said.

(“Assad allies, including Iranians, prepare ground attack in Syria: sources“, Reuters)

A military alliance between Moscow, Tehran and Hezbollah?

You’re darn tootin’, and you can thank Barack Obama and his lunatic regime change plan for that development.

Many critics of Putin’s action have said that “He doesn’t know what he’s doing” or “He’ll get bogged down” or “It’ll be another Vietnam”.

Wrong. The fact is, Putin is more a devotee of the Powell Doctrine than any of the morons at the Pentagon. And he is particularly mindful of Rule Number 5 which states: “Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?”

Has Putin thought about that or has he merely blundered ahead impulsively like US leaders are so apt to do?  Here’s what he said on September 30:

We naturally have no intention of getting deeply entangled in this conflict. We will act strictly in accordance with our set mission. First, we will support the Syrian army only in its lawful fight against terrorist groups. Second, our support will be limited to airstrikes and will not involve ground operations. Third, our support will have a limited timeframe and will continue only while the Syrian army conducts its anti-terrorist offensive.

Bingo. In other words, he’s going to bomb these jokers into oblivion and let Quds brigade and Hezbollah mop up afterwards. There will be no Russian boots-on-the-ground. The Russian airforce will get precise intelligence on ISIS locations from Syrian agents on the battlefield which will minimize civilian casualties and limit damage to critical infrastructure. It will also make mincemeat out of anyone on the receiving end of the bombardment. Does anyone seriously believe that  ISIS and the disparate rabble of “moderate” throat-slitters that receive CIA funding are going to be able to withstand this impending onslaught?

No way. Putin’s going to cut through these guys like a tornado through a trailer park.  Yes, ISIS has had some success against the bedraggled Iraqi and Syrian armies. But now they’re up-against the A Team where they are clearly out of their league.  Rolling up these cutthroats is going to take a lot less time than anyone figured.

Russian bombers are already destroying ammo dumps, fuel depots, heavy military hardware, command posts, anything that enhances ISIS’s ability to wage war.  The new anti-terror coalition is going to cut supply lines and hang the jihadis out to dry. And the whole operation is going to be wrapped up before Uncle Sam even get’s his boots laced.  This is from Iran’s Press TV:

A senior member of Russia’s parliament says an ongoing air campaign by Moscow against militants operating in Syria is going to intensify. Alexei Pushkov, who serves as the chairman of the Committee for International Affairs at the Russian State Duma, said Friday that Moscow will be intensifying its attacks against the militants in Syria while studying the risks associated with an extensive operation.

“There is always a risk of being bogged down, but in Moscow, we are talking about an operation of three to four months,” Alexei Pushkov said, Reuters reported.

Russia started to launch coordinated airstrikes on the positions of militants in Syria on Wednesday. The move came shortly after members of the Russian upper house of the parliament, the Federation Council, authorized the operations in Syria. (Press TV)

There’s not going to be any pussyfooting around. Putin’s going to go straight for the jugular and then head for the exits.

Do you think they’ve figured this out at the White House yet?  Do you think they understand that Iranian troops and Hezbollah are not going to distinguish between the “moderate” terrorists and the “extreme” terrorists; that they’re simply going to “kill them all and let God sort it out”.  Do you think they realize that Washington’s Middle East policy just collapsed and that the funding of jihadis and dreams of regime change just ended for good?  Do you think they grasp that Washington’s role as guarantor of global security has just been transferred to Vladimir Putin who has put himself and his country at risk to defend the fundamental principles of international law, national sovereignty and self determination? Here’s Putin again:

 We are supporting the government of Syria in the fight against a terrorist aggression. We are offering and will continue to offer it necessary military-technical assistance. We must continue a dialogue for the sake of reaching consensus. But it’s impossible to achieve real success as long as bloodshed continues and people don’t feel secure. We won’t achieve anything until we defeat terrorism in Syria.

Putin is leading a coalition in the fight against terror. We should all be grateful for that.

The FSA have killed hundreds of thousands of Syrian citizens, they have kidnapped and beheaded innocent citizens. They have killed Generals in the Syrian army with car bombs. They have thrown post office workers off the roof of their building. They have shot sportsmen because they represent their country. They have set off car bombs outside schools, police stations, hospitals and universities.

They have raped women and sold them.

They have killed Christians and destroyed both mosques and churches.

They have dragged innocent people, tied to the back of cars around the streets until they were dead.

They have have mutilated innocent people and thrown their bodies off a bridge.

The have beheaded babies. They have massacred whole villages of people, including children. They starved 60,000 people in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp. They cut out a soldier’s heart and ate it and Obama says these butchers are NOT terrorists!!!!

The US has locked up many innocent people claiming they were terrorists with no charges being laid against them for years, yet butchers are not classed as terrorists.

Well Obama, just what does somebody have to do before you would claim them to be a terrorist?

Seems to me that a terrorist is a person who you deem to be a threat to the USA. Of course the FSA are not a threat to the USA, because you trained them in the first place. So a terrorist is only a terrorist if they use acts of barbarism in the US. It does not matter that they have killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people including children in Syria. Unless it is on your doorstep, you don’t give a sh..t.

It is on the doorstep of Europe and the people of Europe do give a sh.t. We do not want your barbarians moving into Europe and we are all pleased that Russia is killing them.

Just a reminder of what your precious FSA have been doing in the past 4 years.

Free Syrian Army

Children kidnapped from Latakia and then killed by FSA

Aleppo’s Umayyad Mosque

Church in Homs

Biden and McCain

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:

CFUV 101. 9 FM in Victoria. Airing Sundays from 7-8am PT.

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

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

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

Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the  North Shore to the US Border. It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia Canada. – Tune in every Saturday at 6am.

Notes:

1) 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.

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.

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.