Introductory Note

The following article first published 15 years go in June 2004 pertains to Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, the legendary leader and alleged founder of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).

The name of this mysterious jihadist organization was later renamed the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) and in 2013 it became the Islamic State of the Iraq and the Levant (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh), largely involved  in terrorist attacks inside Syria.

In June 2014, the ISIL became The Islamic State (IS). The present leader and cleric of the Islamic State’s Caliphate is another mysterious figure called Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, formerly also known as Dr. Ibrahim and Abu Du’a

Both Al-Zarqawi and Al-Bagdhadi are fabricated bogeymen.

While Al Qaeda leaders are routinely presented to World public opinion as “terrorist masterminds” threatening the “Free World”,  what the media invariably fails to mention is that they were recruited and trained by the CIA, Mossad, Britain’s MI6 and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) acting in liaison with its Western counterparts.

Al Zarqawi had been recruited by the CIA to fight in the Afghan war.  This was confirmed by Secretary of State Colin Powell in his historic presentation to the UN Security Council on 5 February 2003. 

Our concern is not just about these illicit weapons [WMDs]; it’s the way that these illicit weapons can be connected to terrorists and terrorist organizations…

But what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network, headed by Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda lieutenants.

Zarqawi, a Palestinian born in Jordan, fought in the Afghan War more than a decade ago [recruited by the CIA]. Returning to Afghanistan in 2000, he oversaw a terrorist training camp. One of his specialties and one of the specialties of this camp is poisons.

When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqawi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp, and this camp is located in Northeastern Iraq. You see a picture of this camp. Graphic, above. [there were no WMDS at this camp according to ABC report, see below] Colin Powell, UN Security Council, February 5, 20o3)

And now a new legendary terrorist leader of the Islamic State has emerged: Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.

Let us be under no illusions, the Islamic State is a CIA-Mossad creation. It is an intelligence asset. 

The incursion of IS brigades into Iraq in June 2014 was part of a carefully planned military-intelligence operation supported covertly by the US, NATO and Israel. In Syria, the ISIL is said to be part of “opposition” fighting government forces. The Israeli military is directly supporting the ISIL out of bases in the occupied Golan Heights.

It is worth noting that the same strategy of using jihadist death squads to destabilize and foment violence in Iraq (including the numerous suicide attacks) was implemented by Washington from the outset of the US led occupation. 

 George W. Bush (June 2004 press Conference) candidly admits that the purpose of Al-Zarqawi’s “operational plan” was to sow “cold blooded killing”:

You know, I hate to predict violence, but I just understand the nature of the killers. This guy, Zarqawi, an al Qaeda associate — who was in Baghdad, by the way, prior to the removal of Saddam Hussein — is still at large in Iraq. And as you might remember, part of his operational plan was to sow violence and discord amongst the various groups in Iraq by cold- blooded killing. And we need to help find Zarqawi so that the people of Iraq can have a more bright — bright future. (George W. Bush, Press Conference, 1 June 2004, emphasis added)

originalWhat GWB does not mention is that Al Zarqawi is not “this guy”, he is “our guy”.

Paraphrasing president Bush, “[our] guy Zarqawi, [a CIA sponsored intelligence asset]… his operational plan, [acting on our behalf], was to sow violence and discord amongst the various groups in Iraq by cold- blooded killing.”

In 2004, the aggressor nations, namely the US and Britain “came to the rescue of the people of Iraq” “so that they can have a brighter future” under a counter-terrorism mandate at “the request” of the Iraqi interim government, in an agreement sanctioned by the UN. What is rarely mentioned by the media is that the US led military alliance has been supporting the Al Qaeda affiliated terrorists.

Washington’s unspoken objective remains “to sow violence and discord by cold blooded killing”.

And in late June 2014, the same scenario has emerged: the Islamic State (IS) has “invaded Iraq” and America –which is covertly supporting the Islamic State– is called to rescue.

The Islamic State rebels are America’s foot soldiers, generously funded by Qatar and Saudi Arabia:

The “War on Terrorism” consists in creating Al Qaeda terrorist entities as part of an intelligence operation, as well as also coming to the rescue of governments which are the target of  the terrorist insurgency. This process is carried out under the banner of counter-terrorism. It creates the pretext to intervene.

ISIS is a caliphate project of creating a Sunni Islamist state. It is not a project of the Sunni population of Iraq which is broadly committed to secular forms of government. The caliphate project is part of a US intelligence agenda.

In response to the advance of the ISIS rebels, Washington is envisaging the use of aerial bombings as well as drone attacks in support of the Baghdad government as part of a counter-terrorism operation.  It is all for a good cause: to fight the terrorists, without of course acknowledging that these terrorists are the “foot soldiers” of the Western military alliance. Michel Chossudovsky, The Engineered Destruction and Political Fragmentation of Iraq, Global Research, July 01, 2014

Al Qaeda is “Made in America” … lest we forget with the support of Israel. And this includes the entire network of Al Qaeda affiliates in a large number of countries. 

The alleged links of Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi to the Mossad, not to mention the overt support of ISIL by the Israeli military and the Netanyahu government should serve to refute the absurd proposition that Al Qaeda (including its ISIS affiliate)  is an “independent entity” which threatens America and the Western World.

A revised version of the June 2004 article below was incorporated as a chapter in my book, America’s War on Terrorism, Global Research, 2005.

Michel Chossudovsky, July 17, 2014, minor update October 18, 2015


Who is Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi?

by Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, June 11,  2004

The US intelligence apparatus has created it own terrorist organizations. And at the same time, it creates its own terrorist warnings concerning the terrorist organizations which it has itself created. In turn, it has developed a cohesive multibillion dollar counterterrorism program “to go after” these terrorist organizations.

Counterterrorism and war propaganda  are intertwined. The propaganda apparatus feeds disinformation into the news chain. The terror warnings must appear to be “genuine”. The objective is to present the terror groups as “enemies of America.”

The underlying objective is to galvanize public opinion in support of America’s war agenda.

The “war on terrorism” requires a humanitarian mandate. The war on terrorism is presented as a “Just War”, which is to be fought on moral grounds “to redress a wrong suffered.”

The Just War theory defines “good” and “evil.” It concretely portrays and personifies the terrorist leaders as “evil individuals”.

Several prominent American intellectuals and antiwar activists, who stand firmly opposed to the Bush administration, are nonetheless supporters of the Just War theory: “We are against war in all its forms but we support the campaign against international terrorism.”

To reach its foreign policy objectives, the images of terrorism must remain vivid in the minds of the citizens, who are constantly reminded of the terrorist threat.

The propaganda campaign presents the portraits of the leaders behind the terror network. In other words, at the level of what constitutes an  “advertising”  campaign, “it gives a face to terror.” The “war on terrorism” rests on the creation of one or more evil bogeymen, the terror leaders, Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, et al, whose names and photos are presented ad nauseam in daily news reports.

Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi is presented to World public opinion, as the upcoming terrorist mastermind, overshadowing “Enemy Number One”,  Osama bin Laden.

The U.S. State Department has increased the reward for his arrest from $10 million to $25 million, which puts his “market value” at par with that of Osama. Ironically, Al Zarqawi is not on the FBI most wanted fugitives list. (http://www.fbi.gov/mostwant/topten/fugitives/fugitives.htm )

Al Zarqawi’s Links to Al Qaeda

Al Zarqawi is often described as an “Osama associate”, the bogyman, allegedly responsible for numerous terrorist attacks in several countries.  In other reports, often emanating from the same sources, it is stated that he has no links to Al Qaeda and operates quite independently. He is often presented as an individual who is challenging the leadership of bin Laden.

His name crops up on numerous occasions in press reports and official statements. Since early 2004, he is in the news almost on a daily basis.

Osama belongs to the powerful bin Laden family, which historically had business ties to the Bushes and prominent members of the Texas oil establishment. Bin Laden was recruited by the CIA during the Soviet-Afghan war and fought as a Mujahideen. In other words, there is a longstanding documented history of bin Laden-CIA and bin Laden-Bush family links, which are an obvious source of embarrassment to the US government.

In contrast to bin Laden, Al-Zarqawi has no family history. He comes from an impoverished Palestinian family in Jordan. His parents are dead. He emerges out of the blue.

He is described by CNN as “a lone wolf” who is said to act quite independently of the Al Qaeda network. Yet surprisingly, this lone wolf is present in several countries, in Iraq, which is now his base, but also in Western Europe. He is also suspected of preparing  a terrorist attack on American soil.

He seems to be in several places at the same time. He is described as “the chief U.S. enemy”, “a master of disguise and bogus identification papers”. We are led to believe that this “lone wolf”  manages to outwit the most astute US intelligence operatives.

According to The Weekly Standard –which is known to have a close relationship to the Neocons in the Bush administration:

“Abu Musab al Zarqawi is hot right now. He masterminded not only Berg’s murder but also the Madrid carnage on March 11, the bombardment of Shia worshippers in Iraq the same month, and the April 24 suicide attack on the port of Basra. But he is far from a newcomer to slaughter. Well before 9/11, he had already concocted a plot to kill Israeli and American tourists in Jordan. His label is on terrorist groups and attacks on four continents.”  (Weekly Standard, 24 May 2004)

Al-Zarqawi’s profile “is mounting a challenge to bin Laden’s leadership of the global jihad.”

In Iraq, he is said to be determined to “ignite a civil war between Sunnis and Shiites”. But is that not precisely what US intelligence is aiming at ( “divide and rule”) as confirmed by several analysts of the US led war? Pitting one group against the other with a view to weakening the resistance movement. (See Michel Collon,  http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/COL312A.html , See also http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/RAD308A.html )

The CIA, with its $30 billion plus budget, pleads ignorance: they say they know nothing about him, they have a photograph, but, according to the Weekly Standard (24 May 2004), they apparently do not know his weight or height.

There is an aura of mystery surrounding this individual which is part of the propaganda ploy. Zarqawi is described as “so secretive even some operatives who work with him do not know his identity.”

Consistent Pattern

What is the role of this new mastermind in the Pentagon’s disinformation campaign, in which CNN seems to be playing a central role?

In previous propaganda ploys, the CIA hired PR firms to organize core disinformation campaigns, including the Rendon Group. The latter worked closely with its British partner Hill and Knowlton, which was responsible for the 1990 Kuwaiti incubator media scam, where Kuwaiti babies were allegedly removed from incubators in a totally fabricated news story, which was then used to get Congressional approval for the 1991 Gulf War.

What is the pattern?

Almost immediately in the wake of a terrorist event or warning, CNN announces (in substance): we think this mysterious individual Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi is behind it, invariably without supporting evidence and prior to the conduct of an investigation by the relevant police and intelligence authorities.

In some cases, upon the immediate occurrence of the terrorist event, there is an initial report which mentions Al-Zarqawi as the possible mastermind. The report will often say (in substance):  yes we think he did it, but it is not yet confirmed and there is some doubt on the identity of those behind the attack. One or two days later, CNN may come up with a definitive statement, quoting official police, military and/or intelligence sources.

Often the CNN report is based on information published on an Islamic website or a mysterious Video or Audio tape. The authenticity of the website and/or the tapes is not the object of discussion or detailed investigation.

Bear in mind that the news reports never mention that Al Qaeda is a creation of the CIA and that Al Zarqawi had been recruited to fight in the Soviet-Afghan war (This is in fact confirmed by Sec. Colin Powell in his presentation to the UN Security Council on 5 February 2003) (see details below). Both Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi are creations of the US intelligence apparatus. The recruitment of foreign fighters was under the auspices of the CIA.

The press usually present the terrorist warnings emanating from the CIA as genuine, without acknowledging the fact that US intelligence, has provided covert support to the Islamic militant network consistently for more than 20 years.

Amply documented, the training camps in Afghanistan established during the Reagan Administration had been set up with the support of the CIA. In fact, several members of the current Bush administration including Richard Armitage and Colin Powell were directly involved in channeling support to Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, where bin Laden and Al Zarqawi received specialized training. (See Michel Chossudovsky,  http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO109C.html and http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO303D.html )

History of Al Zarqawi

The first time Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi’s name is mentioned was in relation to the thwarted attack on the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman, Jordan,  during the millennium celebrations (December 1999). According to press reports, he had previously gone under another name: Ahmed Fadil Al-Khalayleh, (apparently among other aliases).

According to the New York Times, Al Zarqawi fled Afghanistan to Iran in late 2001, following the entry of US troops. Official US reports suggest that he was protected at the highest levels of the Tehran government.

“United States intelligence officials say they are increasingly concerned by the mounting evidence of Tehran’s renewed interest in terrorism [and support to Al Zarqawi], including covert surveillance by Iranian agents of possible American targets abroad. American officials said Iran appeared to view terrorism as deterrent against possible attack by the United States.

Since the surprise election of reformer Mohammad Khatami as president of Iran in 1997 and his wide public support, Washington has been counting on a new moderate political majority to emerge. But the hard-line faction has maintained its grip on Iran’s security apparatus, frustrating American efforts to ease tensions with Tehran.

Now, Iranian actions to destabilize the new interim government in Afghanistan, its willingness to assist Al Qaeda members and its fueling of the Palestinian uprising are prompting a reassessment in Washington, officials say.” (NYT, 24 March 2002)

In 2002, his presence in Tehran, allegedly “collaborating with hardliners” in the Iranian military and intelligence apparatus, is part of an evolving disinformation campaign which consists in presenting Iran as a sponsor of the “Islamic terror network”:

In February 2002, he was allegedly involved in planning terror attacks inside Israel.

Colin Powell’s Address to the UN Security Council

In the months leading up to the war on Iraq, Al Zarqawi’s name reemerges, this time almost on daily basis, with reports focusing on his sinister relationship to Saddam Hussein.

A major turning point in the propaganda campaign occurs on February 5, 2003. Al-Zarqawi was in the spot light following Colin Powell’s flopped WMD report to the UN Security Council. Powell’s speech presented “documentation” on the ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, while focusing on the central role of Al-Zarqawi: (emphasis added):

Our concern is not just about these illicit weapons; it’s the way that these illicit weapons can be connected to terrorists and terrorist organizations…

But what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network, headed by Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda lieutenants.

Zarqawi, a Palestinian born in Jordan, fought in the Afghan War more than a decade ago. Returning to Afghanistan in 2000, he oversaw a terrorist training camp. One of his specialties and one of the specialties of this camp is poisons.

When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqawi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp, and this camp is located in Northeastern Iraq. You see a picture of this camp. Graphic, above. [there were no WMDS at this camp according to ABC report, see below]

The network is teaching its operative how to produce ricin and other poisons. Let me remind you how ricin works. Less than a pinch — imagine a pinch of salt — less than a pinch of ricin, eating just this amount in your food would cause shock, followed by circulatory failure. Death comes within 72 hours and there is no antidote. There is no cure. It is fatal.

Those helping to run this camp are Zarqawi lieutenants operating in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein’s controlled Iraq, but Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical organization Ansar al-Islam, that controls this corner of Iraq. In 2000, this agent offered Al Qaeda safe haven in the region. After we swept Al Qaeda from Afghanistan, some of its members accepted this safe haven. They remain there today.

….

We know these affiliates are connected to Zarqawi because they remain, even today, in regular contact with his direct subordinates, including the poison cell plotters. And they are involved in moving more than money and materiel. Last year, two suspected Al Qaeda operatives were arrested crossing from Iraq into Saudi Arabia. They were linked to associates of the Baghdad cell, and one of them received training in Afghanistan on how to use cyanide.

From his terrorist network in Iraq, Zarqawi can direct his network in the Middle East and beyond. [Note he is present in several countries at the same time]

….

According to detainees, Abu Atiya, who graduated from Zarqawi’s terrorist camp in Afghanistan, tasked at least nine North African extremists in 2001 to travel to Europe to conduct poison and explosive attacks. Since last year, members of this network have been apprehended in France, Britain, Spain and Italy. By our last count, 116 operatives connected to this global web have been arrested. The chart you are seeing shows the network in Europe.

We know about this European network, and we know about its links to Zarqawi, because the detainee who provided the information about the targets also provided the names of members of the network.

We also know that Zarqawi’s colleagues have been active in the Pankisi Gorge, Georgia, and in Chechnya, Russia. The plotting to which they are linked is not mere chatter. Members of Zarqawi’s network say their goal was to kill Russians with toxins.

We are not surprised that Iraq is harboring Zarqawi and his subordinates. This understanding builds on decades-long experience with respect to ties between Iraq and al Qaeda.

….

As I said at the outset, none of this should come as a surprise to any of us. Terrorism has been a tool used by Saddam for decades. Saddam was a supporter of terrorism long before these terrorist networks had a name, and this support continues. The nexus of poisons and terror is new; the nexus of Iraq and terror is old. The combination is lethal.

With this track record, Iraqi denials of supporting terrorism take their place alongside the other Iraqi denials of weapons of mass destruction. It is all a web of lies. When we confront a regime that harbors ambitions for regional domination, hides weapons of mass destruction, and provides haven and active support for terrorists, we are not confronting the past, we are confronting the present. And unless we act, we are confronting an even more frightening future.”

(US Secretary of State Colin Powell to the UN Security Council, Excerpts, 5 February 2003)

The statement of Secretary Powell regarding Al-Zarqawi consisted in linking the secular Baathist regime to the “Islamic terror network,” with a view to justifying the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The Alleged Al-Zarqawi Sponsored Chemical and Biological Attacks

Powell’s UN statement with regard to Al Zarqawi rested on the existence of a chemical-biological weapons plant in Northern Iraq producing ricin, sarin and other biological weapons, allegedly to be used in terror attacks on the US and Western Europe.

With reference to the North Iraqi facility where the ricin was allegedly produced, The London Observer’s correspondent in Northern Iraq (9 February 2003) blatantly refutes Colin Powell’s statement:

” There is no sign of chemical weapons anywhere – only the smell of paraffin and vegetable butter used for cooking. In the kitchen, I discovered some chopped up tomatoes but not much else. The cook had left his Kalashnikov propped neatly against the wall. Ansar al-Islam – the Islamic group that uses the compound identified as a military HQ by Powell – yesterday invited me and several other foreign journalists into their territory for the first time. ‘We are just a group of Muslims trying to do our duty,’ Mohammad Hasan, spokes-man for Ansar al-Islam, explained. ‘We don’t have any drugs for our fighters. We don’t even have any aspirin. How can we produce any chemicals or weapons of mass destruction?'”

Barely a few weeks later, at the height of the military campaign, US Special Forces, together with their “embedded” journalists, entered the alleged chemical biological weapons facility in Northern Iraq:

“What they found was a camp devastated by cruise missile strikes during the first days of the war. A specialized biochemical team scoured the rubble for samples. They wore protective masks as they entered a building they suspected was a weapons lab. Inside they found mortar shells, medical supplies, and grim prison cells, but no immediate proof of chemical or biological agents. For this unit, such evidence would have been a so-called smoking gun, proof that it has banned weapons. But instead, this was a disappointing day for these troops on the front line of the hunt for weapons of mass destruction here. Jim Sciutto, ABC News, with US Special Forces in Northern Iraq ” (ABC News, 29 March 2003)

The Ricin Threat

On February 8th 2003, three days after Colin Powell’s UN speech, the ricin threat remerges this time in the US. Al Zaqwari was said to be responsible for “the suspicious white powder found in a letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist which contained the [same] deadly poison ricin.”

In a CIA report which was apparently “leaked” to Newsweek, a group of CIA analysts predicted that there was

“a 59 percent probability that an attack on the U.S. homeland involving WMD would occur before 31 March 2003″… It all seems so precise and frightening: a better than 90 percent chance that Saddam will succeed in hitting America with a weapon spewing radiation, germs or poison. But it is important to remember that the odds are determined by averaging a bunch of guesses, informed perhaps, but from experts whose careers can only be ruined by underestimating the threat.” (Newsweek, 24 February 2003, http://newsmine.org/archive/propoganda/terror-threats/2003/terror-alert-assumptions-hints.txt)

The picture of Al Zarqawi, the mastermind is featured prominently in the Newsweek feature article.

In the National Review (February 18, 2003), Al Zarqawi was described as Al Qaeda’s “chief biochemical engineer”:

“It is widely known [from where, what evidence] that Zarqawi, al Qaeda’s chief biochemical engineer, was at the safe house in Afghanistan where traces of Ricin and other poisons were originally found. What is not widely known-but was briefly alluded to in Sec. Powell’s U.N. address-is that starting in the mid-1990s, Iraq’s embassy in Islamabad routinely played host to Saddam’s biochemical scientists, some of whom interacted with al Qaeda operatives, including Zarqawi and his lab technicians, under the diplomatic cover of the Taliban embassy nearby to teach them the art of mixing poisons from home grown and readily available raw materials.”

Radioactive Dirty Bombs

There were rumors of attacks within the US also using ricin, sarin and other poisonous gases. In the immediate aftermath of Powell’s speech, there was an orange code alert. Official statements also pointed to the dangers of a dirty radioactive bomb attack in the US.

Again Al Zarqawi was identified as the number one suspect.

The various ricin and dirty bomb terror alerts proved to be fabricated. A fabricated story emanating from the CIA on so-called ‘radioactive dirty bombs’ had been planted in the news chain (ABC News, 13 Feb 2003). A few days following his address to the UN, Sec. Powell warned that:

“it would be easy for terrorists to cook up radioactive ‘dirty’ bombs to explode inside the U.S. … ‘How likely it is, I can’t say… But I think it is wise for us to at least let the American people know of this possibility.’”(ABC This Week quoted in Daily News (New York), 10 Feb. 2003).

Meanwhile, network TV had warned that “American hotels, shopping malls or apartment buildings could be al Qaeda’s targets as soon as next week…”. Following the announcement, tens of thousands of Americans rushed to purchase duct tape, plastic sheets and gas-masks.

It later transpired that the terrorist alert was fabricated by the CIA, in all likelihood in consultation with the State Department (ABC News, 13 Feb. 2003). The FBI, for the first time had pointed its finger at the CIA. While tacitly acknowledging that the alert was a fake, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge decided to maintain the ‘Orange Code’ alert:

“Despite the fabricated report, there are no plans to change the threat level. Officials said other intelligence has been validated and that the high level of precautions is fully warranted.” ( ABC News, 13 Feb. 2003 ).

A few days later, in another failed propaganda initiative, a mysterious Osama bin Laden audio tape was presented by Sec. Colin Powell to the US Congress as ‘evidence’ that the Islamic terrorists “are making common cause with a brutal dictator”. (US official quoted in The Toronto Star, 12 Feb. 2003). Curiously, the audio tape was in Colin Powell’s possession prior to its broadcast by the Al Jazeera TV Network. (Ibid.)

Meanwhile, Al Zarqawi had been identified as the mastermind behind the (thwarted) ricin attacks in several European countries including Britain and Spain.

In London, in January 2003, there was a ricin terror alert, which had apparently also been ordered by Al Zarqawi. The ricin had allegedly been discovered in a London apartment. It was to be used in a terror attack in the London subway.

British press reports, quoting official statements claimed that the terrorists had learnt to produce the ricin at the camp in Northern Iraq. Yet when US Special Forces in March 2003 raided the camp in Northern Iraq, nothing resembling biological or chemical weapons was found (see ABC report quoted above).

It is worth mentioning, in this regard, that news stories on the chemical weapons plant in Northern Iraq, have continued to be churned out, despite the fact that US Forces said that it did not exist. In a recent story in the Washington Times:

Zarqawi stands as stark evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein’s autocratic regime and bin Laden’s al Qaeda terror network. Zarqawi, 38, operated a terrorist camp in northern Iraq that specialized in developing poisons and chemical weapons.(Washington Times, 8 June 2004)

The Spanish Connection

Meanwhile in Spain, Bush’s coalition partner, Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar had initiated his own disinformation campaign, no doubt in liaison with US officials.

Perfect timing! While Colin Powell was presenting the Al-Zarqawi dossier to the UN, on the very same day, February 5, 2003, Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar was busy briefing the Spanish parliament on an alleged chemical terror attack in Spain.

According to Aznar, Al Zarqawi was apparently linked to a number of European  Islamic “collaborators” including Merouane Ben Ahmed, “an expert in chemistry and explosives who visited Barcelona” (reported in El Pais, February 6 2003).

Prime Minister Aznar’s speech to the Chamber of Deputies (Camera de diputados) intimated that the 16 alleged Al Qaeda suspects, who apparently were in possession of explosives and lethal chemicals, had been working hand in glove with Al Zarqawi.

The information had been fabricated. The Spanish Ministry of Defense report confirmed that the “lethal chemicals” turned out to be “harmless and some were household detergent… ” (quoted in Irish News, 27 February 2003, emphasis added):

A defence ministry lab outside Madrid tested the substances – a bag containing more than half a pound of powder and several bottles or containers with liquids or residues- for the easy-to-make biological poison ricin…The Spanish defence ministry, which carried out the tests, and the lab itself declined to comment ” (Ibid)

The Link to Ansar al-Islam

Following Powell’s February 2003 presentation to the UNSC, Al-Zarqawi immediately gained in public notoriety.

Since early 2004, his name appears almost daily in CNN reports. All in all,  his name is linked to some 25 “terrorist attacks” in Iraq, not to mention numerous terrorist warnings, threats or alerts. Already before the war in Iraq, he was presented in media reports as an ally of Saddam Hussein.

The press reports, which quoted Colin Powell’s UNSC 5 Feb 2003 speech, confirmed that Al Zarqawi was back in Iraq, working hand in glove with Ansar Al-Islam, which was held responsible for the attack on the UN in Baghdad. In August 2003, Zarqawi was identified, without supporting evidence, as having played a role in the attack on the UN, which led to the death of the UN head of mission and 24 other people.

Bear in mind Ansar was also said to be behind the alleged ricin plant in Northern Iraq, which was confirmed to be a fake.

It is useful to recall that Ansar al-Islam, which constituted a pre-existing Islamist group, developed into a paramilitary organisation, only after the 9/11 attacks. Ironically, it was allowed to develop in a region of Iraq, which was already under US military control, namely Kurdish held Northern Iraq.

Ansar was largely involved in terrorist attacks directed against the secular institutions of the Kurdish regional governments. It was also involved in assassinations of members of the Kurdish PUK. And the US military and intelligence were present in the region.

In other words, prior to the war, Northern Iraq -which was in “the no fly zone”– was already a US protectorate. According to one report  «Al Qaida affiliates coordinating the movement of people, money and supplies for Ansar al-Islam have been operating freely in the [regional] capital.” (Midland Independent, 6 February 2003).

Responding to Colin Powell’s February 2003 UN address, an Iraqi foreign ministry spokesman had stated at the time that:

 “the Iraqi government helped the [PUK] Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani against the Ansar al-Islam group. He [the spokesman] accused Ansar al-Islam of carrying out acts of sabotage inside Iraq…[and] that the United States had turned down an Iraqi offer to cooperate on the issue of terrorism.” (News Conference by Lieutenant-General Amir al-Sa’di, adviser at the Iraqi Presidency; Dr Sa’id al-Musawi, head of the Organizations’ Department at the Iraqi Foreign Ministry; and Major-General Husam Muhammad Amin, head of the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate. BBC Monitoring Service, 6 February 2003).

The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal

Was it a coincidence? At the very outset of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, there were rumors of an Al Zarqawi terrorist attack on American Soil, in Jordan as well as in Iraq.

Al Zarqawi  identified by CNN as “the lone wolf” was, according to these reports, planning terrorist attacks simultaneously in several countries. Then there was the mysterious video on the Nicholas Berg execution.

The Attacks in Jordan

A mysterious tape released by CNN pointed to Al Zarqawi’s plan to attack the Jordanian intelligence headquarters in an attack using chemical weapons which could have been more deadly than 9/11. Again the evidence is based on a mysterious tape.

CNN 27 APRIL 2004

JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Jordanian special forces raiding an apartment house in Amman in the hunt for an al Qaeda cell. Some of the suspects are killed, others arrested, ending what Jordanian intelligence says was a bold plan to use chemical weapons and truck bombs in their capital; targets including Jordanian intelligence headquarters, the prime minister’s office and the U.S. embassy. The Jordanian government fears the death toll could have run into the thousands, more deadly even than 9/11.

For the first time the alleged plotters were interviewed on videotape, aired on Jordanian TV. CNN obtained copies of the tapes from the Jordanians. This man revealing his orders came from a man named Azme Jayoussi, the cell’s alleged ringleader.

HUSSEIN SHARIF (through translator): The aim of this operation was to strike Jordan and the Hashemite royal family, a war against the crusaders and infidels. Azme told me that this would be the first chemical suicide attack that al Qaeda would execute.

VAUSE: Also appearing on the tape, Azme Jayoussi, who says his orders came from this man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the same man the U.S. says is behind many of the violent attacks in Iraq.

AZME JAYOUSSI, ACCUSED PLOTTER (through translator): I took advanced explosives course, poisons, high level, then I pledged allegiance to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, to obey him without any questioning, to be on his side. After this Afghanistan fell. I met Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq.

VAUSE: Al Jayoussi was only shown in profile. He had marks on his hand, neck and face. The Jordanians who taped the confessions say the suspect suffered the injuries during the arrest. CNN was not allowed access to any of those arrested. The Jordanian government says this plot is only the latest attempt by al Qaeda to destabilize this country.

ASMA KHADER, JORDANIAN MINISTER OF STATE: Jordan was fighting this type of plans years now, and the security forces were able to confront them.

VAUSE (on camera): The Jordanians say the alleged terrorist plot was just days away from execution. If successful, Jordan’s King Abdullah told a U.S. newspaper it could have decapitated his government.

John Vause, CNN, Amman, Jordan.

The press reports which followed the original CNN report, often quote CNN as the sole source for their information.

Al-Zarqawi’s plans for Amman scale the heights of horror. CNN quoted Jordanian authorities as saying that the attack involved a combination of 71 lethal chemicals, including blistering agents to cause third-degree burns, nerve gas and choking agents, which would have formed a lethal toxic cloud over a square mile of the capital, Amman. Many thousands would have died in what would have been al-Qaida’s deadliest terrorist attack.

The Associated Press reported Monday that four of the men arrested said on Jordanian television that they had been recruited by al-Zarqawi to carry out “the first suicide attack to be launched by al-Qaida using chemicals … striking at Jordan, its Hashemite (royal family) and launching war on the Crusaders and nonbelievers.” One of the conspirators, Azmi al-Jayousi, said he received about $170,000 from al-Zarqawi to finance the plot and used part of it to buy 20 tons of chemicals. Images of vans packed with chemicals and explosives were shown on television. (Charleston Post Courier, 28 April 2004)

Alleged Al Zarqawi “Attack on America”

Two days later, following the alleged terrorist threat on Jordanian intelligence, the State Department announced that Al Zarqawi was planning an attack on America (29 April 2003, CNN Report). Note that the rumours of an attack on America and the attack in Jordan took place virtually at the same time.

The State Department today said the number of terrorists attacks around the world declined last year, but the government’s annual report on terrorism includes a chilling warning about the year ahead.

Kitty Pilgrim reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KITTY PILGRIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The State Department says terrorists are planning an attack on U.S. soil. High on their anxiety list, terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

AMB. COFER BLACK, COORDINATOR FOR COUNTERTERRORISM: He is representative of a very real and credible threat. His operatives are planning and attempting now to attack American targets, and we are after them with a vengeance.

Bear in mind that the Attack on America report, focusing on “We are after them with a vengeance”, was published on day following the CBS 60 minutes program on torture at the Abu Ghraib prison. (Complete transcript at http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CBS405A.html ).

The Nicholas Berg Video

Barely a couple of weeks later (11 May 2004), Al Zarqawi is reported as being the mastermind behind the execution of Nicholas Berg on May 11, 2004.

Again perfect timing! The report coincided with calls by US Senators for Defense Sec Donald Rumsfeld to resign over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. It occurs a few days after President Bush’s “apology” for the Abu Ghraib prison “abuses” on May 6.

The Nicholas Berg video  served to create “a useful wave of indignation” which served to distract and soften up public opinion, following the release of the pictures of torture of Iraqi prisoners. (See the intelligence assumptions underlying Operation Northwoods, a secret Joint Chiefs of Staff plan to kill civilians in the Cuban community in Florida, and blame it on Fidel Castro. (http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/NOR111A.html ) .

CNN coverage of the Nicholas Berg execution was based on a mysterious report on an Islamic website, which CNN upholds as providing “evidence” of Al-Zarqawi’s involvement:

ENSOR: The Web site claims that the killing was done by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist whose al Qaeda affiliated group is held responsible by U.S. intelligence for a string of bombings in Iraq and for the killing of an American diplomat in Amman. CNN Arab linguists say, however, that the voice on the tape has the wrong accent. They do not believe it is Zarqawi. U.S. officials said the killers tried to take advantage of the prison abuse controversy to gain attention.

BROWN: So, the administration said today we’ll track these people down. We will get them beyond, I guess, this belief that Zarqawi somehow was involved. Are there any clues out there that we heard about?

ENSOR: This is going to be very, very difficult. They’ve been looking for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi for several years now. There’s a large price on his head. He’s been blowing up a lot of things in Iraq according to him and according to U.S. intelligence. They don’t know where he is, so it’s — I don’t think they have any clues right now, at least none that I know of — Aaron.

A subsequent more definitive report by CNN was aired 2 days later on 13 May 2004

The CIA confirms that Nicholas Berg’s killer was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi; The CIA acknowledges sticking to strict rules in tough interrogations of top al Qaeda prisoners.” (CNN)

BLITZER Because originally our own linguists here at CNN suspected that — they listened to this audiotape and they didn’t think the it sounded, the sounded like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. But now definitively, the experts at the CIA say it almost certainly is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi?

ENSOR: They say it almost certainly is. There’s just a disagreement between the CNN linguists and the CIA linguists. The U.S. Government now believes that the person speaking on that tape and killing Nick Berg on that tape is the actual man, Abu Musab al- Zarqawi.

Did the US officials check the mysterious website or was it CNN?

The video footage published on the website was called «Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi shows killing of an American». ” Then the CIA experts released a statement saying that Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was the man in the mask who beheaded the US citizen Nick Berg in front of a camera.” (See  http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/SAT405A.html ). Yet several reports question the authenticity of the video. (http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CAR405A.html ).

Al Zarqawi is Jordanian. Yet the man in the video “posing as Jordanian native Zarqawi does not speak the Jordanian dialect. Zarqawi has an artificial leg, but none of these murderers did. The man presented as Zarqawi had a yellow ring, presumably a golden one, which Muslim men are banned from wearing, especially so-called fundamentalists.” (See Was Nick Berg killed by US intelligence? by Sirajin Sattayev, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/SAT405A.html

Another report states that Zarqawi was dead.

Immediately when the issue of his artificial leg was mentioned in relation to the video, US officials revised their story, stating they were not sure whether he actually lost a leg:  “U.S. intelligence officials, who used to believe that Zarqawi had lost a leg in Afghanistan, recently revised that assessment, concluding that he still has both legs.” (News and World Report, 24 May 2004).

There were a number of other aspects of the video, which suggest that it was a fraud: there was no blood when Nicholas Berg was beheaded. The audio was not in synchrony with the video, indicating that the film might have been manipulated.

3/11 The Madrid 11 March 2004 Train Bombing

While the press dispatches provide no evidence of of Al Zarqawi’s involvement in the Madrid 3/11 bombing, several of the reports implied, without supporting evidence, that he was involved. According to the CIA, the Moroccan group which allegedly “supervised the bombings in Madrid, [were] acting as a link between al- Zarqawi and a cell of mostly Moroccan al-Qaeda members.” (The Australian, 27 May 2004)

A CNN statement two days after the 3/11 Madrid bombing states that Al Zarqawi may be planning attacks on “soft targets” in Western Europe:

LISOVICZ: And Jonathan, specifically, Abu Musaab al Zarqawi is someone you have described as al Qaeda 2.0, which is pretty scary.

SCHANZER: Yes. Abu Musaab al Zarqawi is the man we caught; we intercepted his memo last month. U.S. intelligence officials found this memo. It indicated that he was trying to continue to carry out attacks against the United States. He was seeking help from the larger al Qaeda network and was seeking to foment internecine violence inside Iraq. This is a man dangerous; he’s been linked to attacks in Riyadh, Istanbul and Morocco. This is essentially a freelancer. This is a lone wolf, someone that’s acting alone in the name of al Qaeda.

CAFFERTY: Where do we stand in your opinion on this war on terrorism? We have got this terrible situation in Madrid. We’ve got this fellow, Zarqawi, you are talking about, the lone Wolf that is active, some think inside Iraq. We have got terrorist attacks happening there. There is discussion all over Western Europe of fear of terrorism, possibly being about to increase there. Are we winning this war or are we losing it? What is your read?

SCHANZER: I think we’re winning it. We’ve certainly — I mean counterterrorism at its core is just restricting the terrorist environment. So we’ve cut down on the amount of finances moving around in the terrorist world. We have arrested a number of key figures. So we are doing a good job.(CNN,13 March 2004)

For details on the Madrid bombing see, Madrid ‘blueprint’: a dodgy document by Brendan O’Neill at  http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/ONE404A.html

Extending the War on Terrorism

Are “we winning or loosing”  the war on terrorism.  These statements are used to justify enhanced military operations against this illusive individual, who is confronting US military might, all over the World. Al Zarqawi is used profusely in Bush’s press conferences and speeches in an obvious public relations ploy.

You know, I hate to predict violence, but I just understand the nature of the killers. This guy, Zarqawi, an al Qaeda associate — who was in Baghdad, by the way, prior to the removal of Saddam Hussein — is still at large in Iraq. And as you might remember, part of his operational plan was to sow violence and discord amongst the various groups in Iraq by cold- blooded killing. And we need to help find Zarqawi so that the people of Iraq can have a more bright — bright future. (George W. Bush, Press Conference, 1 June 2004, emphasis added)

And with a new interim Iraqi government, US and British troops would be in Iraq at “the request” of the interim government, in an agreement sanctioned by the UN.

“The terrorists are still at large”: The tasks of the so-called “multinational force” would include “preventing and deterring terrorism”, namely going after Al Zarqawi, as a means to “establishing democracy” under G-8’s “political and economic reform in the Middle East and North Africa.”


Annex:

Selected Alleged Al Zarqawi Terrorist events

Assassination of Iraqi Governing Council President Izz-al-Din Salim (17 May 2004)

According to a mysterious website the Islamic Renewal Organization’s (IRO) forum at www.tajdeed.net and www.lajnah22.co.uk , Salim was executed by a Abu-Mus’ab al-Zarqawi affiliated group, the so-called  “Military Wing of the Jama’ah al-Tawhid wa-al-Jihad,”. (quoted in BBC Monitoring, May 19 2004)

Bomb Attacks in Baghdad (6 May 2004)

Well, coalition officials say that this car bomb, which went off at about 7:30 in the morning, bears all the hallmarks of Abu Musab al- Zarqawi, that Jordanian national who, coalition officials have consistently said, they believe is behind many of the car bombs that have rocked this country in recent months.

He also has ties, it is believed, with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network.

Now this bomb, as I said, went off at a time when many workers were headed towards the Green Zone. That’s the headquarters of the U.S.-led coalition.

Went off at a checkpoint. And when that happened, five Iraqi civilians were killed. A U.S. soldier, as well as the suicide bomber. Now, his nationality is not clear.

A claim of responsibility for the bombing has been put on a web site by a rather shadowy group that claims Zarqawi is its amir or its leader. The statement indicated that the bomber was from Saudi Arabia and that the car was packed with 600 kilograms or about 1,300 pounds of TNT

The Attack on the Basra Oil Facility (27 April 2004)

Responsibility for this attack by Zarqawi was based on information from the same mysterious website. No substantiating evidence based on police reports was presented:

BLITZER: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is now being blamed for the attack against the oil facilities near Basra. He’s being blamed for what happened , the near terrorist attack in Amman, Jordan. Dan Senor, first to you, then I’ll bring General Kimmitt in. Is he to blame for all of this?

SENOR: Well, it certainly looks to be that way, Wolf. But it’s too early to tell. He is a very bad guy. He’s an international terrorist. Zarqawi has very direct ties to al Qaeda. He’s been involved with al Qaeda for a number of years. Several months ago, we discovered a document that was drafted by Mr. Zarqawi, headed for the senior al Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan that outlined his battle plan for Iraq. And in there were very specific operations that he had taken credit for that occurred in the past and he described the sorts of operations that he would like to be involved with going forward.

Another CNN report on the 27th of April 2004 states without evidence that Zarqawi was responsible for the bombing of an oil facility in Basra.

BLITZER: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is now being blamed for the attack against the oil facilities near Basra. He’s being blamed for what happened , the near terrorist attack in Amman, Jordan. Dan Senor, first to you, then I’ll bring General Kimmitt in. Is he to blame for all of this?

SENOR: Well, it certainly looks to be that way, Wolf. But it’s too early to tell. He is a very bad guy. He’s an international terrorist. Zarqawi has very direct ties to al Qaeda. He’s been involved with al Qaeda for a number of years. Several months ago, we discovered a document that was drafted by Mr. Zarqawi, headed for the senior al Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan that outlined his battle plan for Iraq. And in there were very specific operations that he had taken credit for that occurred in the past and he described the sorts of operations that he would like to be involved with going forward.

Suicide bombing in Baghdad

Bombings in Baghdad and Basra, March 17-18 , 2004

Basra’s car bomb attack has remarkable similarities to what happened here in Baghdad last night. The Basra bombing, the target was a Alzeiten (ph), a small residential hotel out of the way. Again, the modus operandi, the way of delivering the bomb was a vehicle.

The attack took place just a little over an hour ago. Basra is in the British sector of Iraq and we’re told British troops rushed to the scene immediately. Again, similarities between what happened in Baghdad last night, where the target was the Mount Lebanon Hotel. Now it’s the Alzeiten in Basra. The Iraqi police are saying, in the context of the Basra attack, that anywhere between three and five people were killed. Always the early indications of casualties and fatalities will fluctuate. You can be sure of that — Soledad.

O’BRIEN: Walt, you know, you just mentioned, you said specifically remarkable similarities. Right now there is a suspect in the Baghdad bombing. Al- Zarqawi has been named as a suspect.

I know it’s early yet in the Basra bombing, but is there anything so far that is connecting this man to the bombing in Basra?

RODGERS: Yes, there is. But remember, what the U.S. military is saying at this point is that they believe this bombing here in Baghdad and the one in Basra will have the same hallmarks, which is to say, it’s an Islamist group. The car bomb, the way of detonating it, when the forensic experts go through what they’re expecting to find is similarities between what happened here in Baghdad last night and what happened last August 19th, when the United Nations compound was attacked here, killing 22 people.

What they are saying is that Abu Musab Al- Zarqawi is one of the leading suspects in the war on terror here in Iraq. They believe he’s spearheading the attacks here. But they’re also saying another Islamist group, Ansar al-Islam, could be responsible. In truth, what they’re saying is they’re not really sure who did it, but they just have a hunch — Soledad.

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Is There a Vaccine Cancer Connection?

October 30th, 2019 by Landee Martin

First published in October 2018

“This vaccine has not been evaluated for its carcinogenic or mutagenic potentials or impairment of fertility.”

This phrase or one similar can be found on just about every vaccine package insert and should be justification for any reasonable person to decline vaccination.  However, doctors are not required to give full informed consent regarding vaccines and most people blindly trust their doctors.

Considering the recommended vaccine schedule has tripled in the United States over the last thirty years, parents have begun to question whether this is necessary or valuable to their children.

Image of Advisories regarding Triton and Fluarix Vaccines

 

In 1983, children received up to 23 doses of eight vaccines before the age of eighteen.  Today children receive as many as 69 doses of 16 different vaccines, all given by the age of eighteen.

Coinciding with the ever-increasing vaccine schedule are soaring rates of chronic illness in children, including cancer, which has skyrocketed and is now the leading cause of death by disease in children past infancy.

Government authorities refuse to acknowledge any link between cancer and vaccination, but could injecting toxic chemicals repeatedly into our children, especially at critical intervals in their development be causing cancer in so many?

Toxic Vaccine Ingredients You Need to Know About

Formaldehyde – There is sufficient evidence from cancer studies in humans proving the carcinogenetic effects of this ingredient.  Both the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the International Agency for Research on Cancer admit formaldehyde is a known carcinogen.

Millions of children receive injections annually containing this toxic ingredient.

Is it a coincidence that formaldehyde has been associated with leukemia and that the number one cancer in children is leukemia?

Mercury Is In Vaccines Too – Mercury is a known carcinogen and for many years children received up to 237 micrograms (mcg) from vaccines during the first two years of life.  This far exceeds the EPA’s recommended safe (to ingest, not inject), level of 1/10th of 1 microgram per kilogram a day.

A rabbit will die if given 35 mcg of mercury.

Thimerosal, which is in many vaccines, is a mercury-containing compound that is 50 times more toxic than plain mercury!  The CDC claims to have removed “most” thimerosal from common pediatric vaccines, leaving only “trace amounts.”

There are NO safe amounts of mercury established for humans and yet, children receive combined vaccines that can build up mercury in the body and cause potential problems.

Aluminum, Yep, It’s In There Too  The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved aluminum for use as an adjuvant in human vaccines to boost immune response.  Aluminum is harmful to all life forms.

The FDA limits the dosage to 0.85 milligrams per vaccine to minimize exposure; but children receive other vaccines at the same time that also contain aluminum.

The American Academy of Pediatrics admits that aluminum interferes with many cellular and metabolic processes in the body’s nervous system and tissues.

Repeated exposure to aluminum can have damaging effects and yet children receive repeated injections during the recommended vaccine schedule.  Studies with mice have demonstrated a transient rise in aluminum levels in brain tissue.  Aluminum is also widely associated with breast cancer.

What is Polysorbate 80? Polysorbate 80 is a toxic substance that should never be ingested or placed on the skin, much less injected, and yet it is in vaccines. Studies with lab rats show Polysorbate 80 has both carcinogenic and infertility effects.

Yet, it’s ironic that this carcinogenic ingredient is found both in Merck’s cancer vaccine, Gardasil, and is also used in chemotherapy given to cancer patients.

Recombinant DNA – A Biohazard? – Speaking of Gardasil, genetically modified HPV DNA, which had firmly attached itself to aluminum, was found in blood samples of a 13 year old girl who became chronically ill following her third dose of the vaccine. Could Recombinant HPV DNA cause human cell mutations and cancer?

While searching for the reason why adolescent girls were suffering such severe side effects after receiving the Gardasil vaccine, Dr. Sin Hang Lee, of Sane Vax, Inc., found that the vaccine was contaminated with rDNA of the Human Papillomavirus. This rDNA from both strains of HPV in the vaccine were firmly attached to the aluminum adjuvant. This now reaches the level of a “dangerous biohazard.” This rDNA is not natural and is genetically modified.  Now the girls who received the contaminated vaccine, have human DNA as well as genetically engineered viral DNA in their bodies. When recombinant DNA is inserted into a human cell, it could stay forever and cause mutations; the results could be catastrophic.

SV40 (Simian Virus) Responsible for Cancer Cases – In the 1950s, Rhesus Monkey kidney cells containing SV40 were used to grow the polio virus. Dr. Maurice Hilleman, MD, a renowned scientist who developed Merck’s vaccine program and dozens of vaccines, made astounding revelations to the public that Merck had been injecting this dangerous virus into people worldwide.

Even after the US government knew about contamination, they allegedly continued to inject children with the contaminated vaccine until the 1990s.

SV40 is known to cause different types  of cancers in laboratory animals including mesotheliomas, lymphomas and brain cancers.

A study in The New England Journal of Medicine, found that mothers who received the Salk polio vaccine had brain tumors at a rate “13 times greater” than mothers who received no vaccine!

Cancer-Connection-Vaccine-Toxicity

How You Can Build Immunity And Possibly Reverse Vaccine Damage 

Anyone who has been injected with vaccines, (which is most people) may have vaccine damage.

According to the vaccine package inserts, a list of side effects include seizures, asthma, diabetes, eczema, allergies, auto-immune disease, autism, and more.  There are many studies linking vaccines to arthritis, chronic cognitive dysfunction, behavioral changes, learning disabilities, motor function impairment, autism, and cancer to name a few.

Many people claim to have reversed vaccine damage by using natural therapies like chelation, bentonite clay, homeopathy and fasting.

It is much better to support the body through nutrition and natural supplements than to inject harmful pathogens and toxins into it.

Eating a diet rich in organic fresh fruits and vegetables along with adequate rest, clean water, sunshine, exercise and minerals will go a long way in keeping the immune system strong and the body running well.

At the end of the day, a strong, healthy, pure, untouched immune system will fight most illnesses, including cancer.

Toxic chemicals have no place inside the human body and the sooner the medical establishment recognizes this, the faster we will see a health progression instead of a continual regression.  We must stop adding fuel to the fire with more and more vaccines.

Unfortunately, allopathic medicine and many governing authorities have endorsed what seems to be an ever increasing, toxic vaccine schedule which has been a calamity to the immune system and has undermined the health of at least two generations, all for the sake of profit.

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Landee Martin is a wife and mom to three children. She has a Bachelor of Science in Psychology with a focus on research methods. After noticing some serious reactions following her children’s routine vaccinations, she questioned her medical doctor who refused to acknowledge any connection.

All images in this article are from the author.

Big Pharma Sinks to the Bottom of U.S. Industry Rankings

October 30th, 2019 by Justin McCarthy

The pharmaceutical industry is now the most poorly regarded industry in Americans’ eyes, ranking last on a list of 25 industries that Gallup tests annually. Americans are more than twice as likely to rate the pharmaceutical industry negatively (58%) as positively (27%), giving it a net-positive score of -31. The restaurant industry is rated most positively.

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These data are from Gallup’s annual Work and Education poll, conducted Aug. 1-14.

The pharmaceutical industry has unseated the federal government as the lowest-rated industry this year, in terms of its net-positive score; the government has been last or tied for last from 2011 through 2018. The healthcare industry’s negative ratings also exceed its positive ratings by double digits, while the advertising and public relations industry’s net rating is barely negative.

Americans continue to give their highest ratings to the restaurant and computer industries, while the grocery industry and agriculture and farming also rank near the top of the list, with net-positive ratings that are better than +40.

Other industries that rank among the top half of the list include travel, accounting, automobile, retail, real estate, banking, electric and gas utilities, and sports.

As to the rest of the list, the industries of airlines, telephone, publishing, internet, movie and education each receive net-positive scores in the double digits. Meanwhile, the television and radio industry, the legal field, and the oil and gas industry barely register net-positive scores.

A New Low for the Pharmaceutical Industry’s Image

Americans’ net ratings for the pharmaceutical industry have never been lower since Gallup first polled on industries in 2001. Over the past 19 years, few industries have been rated lower than the pharmaceutical industry’s current -31 net rating. These include the federal government and the oil and gas, real estate, and automobile industries.

The new low in the pharmaceutical industry’s U.S. image comes amid a range of criticisms of industry norms, from generating the highest drug costs in the world to spending massive amounts in lobbying politicians to the industry’s role in the U.S. opioid crisis. Several Democratic candidates have called out the industry in their party’s presidential debates.

Just after Gallup conducted this poll, an Oklahoma judge ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $572 million for its role in the state’s opioid epidemic. Meanwhile, legislators on Capitol Hill are working to rein in the industry’s drug prices.

Images of Electric/Gas Utilities, Oil and Gas Industries at New Highs

Most industries’ images improved as the U.S. recovered from the global economic crisis of 2008 — and this was the case for electric and gas utilities as well as the oil and gas industry. The industries’ images also likely have strongly benefited from gas prices that dropped precipitously in 2014 and have mostly remained below $3 per gallon since, according to national averages from the U.S. Department of Energy.

Both electric and gas utilities and the oil and gas industry currently enjoy their best ratings from Americans in Gallup’s trend since 2001, with electric and gas utilities receiving a net-positive score of +23. Meanwhile, the oil and gas industry receives a score of +3 — its first positive score in the trend.

Bottom Line

The pharmaceutical industry’s U.S. image has fallen to a new low. The industry can hope to recover in the same way other industries have after particularly negative ratings, including the oil and gas, real estate, and automobile industries. Real estate’s image, for example, managed to recover from being near the bottom of the list, with a net rating of -40 in 2008, to its current spot among the top 10-rated industries with a +30 net rating.

As the opioid epidemic rages on — and as the actors involved in creating it continue to experience lawsuits, protests and public shaming — it may be hard for the pharmaceutical industry to make a comeback just yet. The industry’s rating likely will not recover until its role in the opioid epidemic is addressed, and the political pressure on the industry for high prices and massive profits subsides.

Americans’ views of all industries are susceptible to larger economic forces, however. So, even industries that are regarded most highly could be in for a downturn in their public images if red flags continue to suggest a coming recession.

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On October 27, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced that they have started withdrawal from the Turkish border in the framework of the de-escalation zone agreement reached by Presidents Erdogan and Putin. The SDF said that Syrian border guards will be deployed along the border. The group also called on Russia to help launch “a constructive dialogue” between the SDF-run self-administration in northeast Syria and the Damascus government.

The Turkish Defense Ministry announced that on the same day a Turkish soldier was killed and 5 others were injured in an attack by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which are the key faction within the SDF. According to the Turkish version of events, the soldiers were patrolling the area, when they came under shelling.

The SDF and Turkish-led forces regularly accuse each other of violating the ceasefire established by the safe zone agreement. Despite this, the situation in northeastern Syria has more or less stabilized.

Watch the video here.

Units of the Syrian Army reached the Turkish border east of Ras al-Ayn, where Turkish forces are deployed, and no violations were reported there. Government troops also reinforced its positions to the west of the Turkish-controlled zone. Patrols of the Russian Military Police, reinforced by Tiger and Typhoon armoured vehicles, are being carried near Kobani, west of Qamishly and along the M4 highway to the east of the Euphrates.

US forces withdrawn to western Iraq are returning to Syria. On October 26, 27 and 28, US military convoys consisting of dozens of military vehicles and fuel tracks, entered the country and moved towards the Omar oil fields area. A part of these forces was stationed at the Qasrak base on the Tell Tamr-Qamishli highway.

Therefore, despite the announced troop withdrawal, US forces are in fact remaining not only on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, but also in eastern Syria.

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US Government regulators have approved a genetically modified cotton variety as a “potential solution to human hunger.” The radical decision is to permit consumption by humans, in addition to animals, of seeds of a GMO cotton developed at Texas A&M University, with no independent long-term testing. It opens grave new concerns about the safety of our food chain. Soon, as a result, the world food chain may well be contaminated with the GMO cottonseeds whose dangers have been simply ignored by authorities.

The USA Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has just approved a new type of GMO cotton for unregulated release. The type, called TAM66274, has been genetically modified supposedly to make the seeds fit for human or animal feed by suppressing the presence of a dangerous toxin in the seed, while allegedly leaving the toxin only in the rest of the cotton plant.

With FDA approval the GMO cottons seeds will now be allowed as food for people or animals. The project has been led by Keerti Rathore, a plant biotechnology protégé of the late Norman Borlaug, at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research Center.

Rathore says the group will now seek approval in other countries starting with Mexico. He calculates that, “There are approximately 10.8 trillion grams of protein locked up in the annual global output of cottonseed. This is enough to meet the basic protein requirements of over 500 million people at a rate of 50 grams of protein per person per day.” He says the GMO cottonseeds can also be used to feed pigs, poultry or farmed fish or shrimp. His group sees it as a major new source of protein for consumption, as well as profit for cotton growers. It is not surprising that Cotton Inc., the US cotton lobby group is sponsoring the GMO project.

Cotton Inc. and Monsanto have a history of cooperation as well. Rathore says for every pound of cotton fiber, the plant produces about 1.6 pounds of seed. The annual global cottonseed production equals about 48.5 million tons. If that can now be turned into cottonseed oil or meal for human and animal consumption and sold, it adds a huge profit boost to cotton producers. The world’s largest purveyor of cotton seeds for planting cotton is Monsanto, now part of Bayer AG.

The kernels from the safe seed could be ground into a flour-like powder after oil extraction and used as a protein additive in food preparations or perhaps roasted and seasoned as a nutritious snack,” Rathore said.

On October 1 the FDA released its summary of findings for the Texas application which had been made in 2017. That gives the impression the Government researchers were making an intensive testing of the highly controversial issue of whether to permit human consumption of the GMO cotton seeds or not. Far from the case. As the FDA states in their findings of October, 2019, the FDA declaration was simply copied from the tests given them by the producer, Texas A&M and its biotech research group, funded by the US cotton industry group, Cotton Inc.

Highly toxic gossypol

The FDA approval, made with no apparent independent testing of the results given them by the group at the A&M AgriLife Research center, is notable given the fact that cottonseeds contain a highly toxic substance in the seeds known as gossypol. Because of gossypol, previously much of the weight of cotton plants was wasted or usable only for limited animal feed only after special treatment. The seeds were deemed unsuitable for human consumption.

The A&M GMO cotton was modified using what is called RNA interference technology, RNAi, to “silence” a gene that supposedly, again according to its developers, “greatly” reduces gossypol from the cottonseed. Rathore claims to have suppressed the gene of a cotton plant to produce cotton with gossypol in everything but its seeds: “We have eliminated this gossypol from the seed without affecting its levels in other parts of the plant,” said Rathore. “With the toxin removed from the cottonseed, it can potentially feed 500 to 600 million people per year.” Well, almost eliminated it, to be more accurate. They admit that about 3% gossypol remains in the seeds.

Now we are entitled to eat the “low” gossypol seeds which are said to be protein rich and supposedly safe. There are several alarming aspects to this FDA decision to release the GMO cotton variety for human and animal consumption.

Not Adequately Tested For Safety

First of all, as researcher Claire Robinson points out in an excellent analysis, the RNAi procedure for cotton is hardly proven to be safe. She notes scientific research that shows risks of GMO RNAi crops. One study found that RNAi molecules in food plants can survive digestion and enter the body of the human or animal eating it, and even affect the gene expression of the human or animal with unpredictable side effects. Robinson stresses that the FDA made no adequate thorough tests for safety of the GMO cotton, nor did Texas researchers. She notes, “No toxicity testing in animals has been done on the seeds that are intended for consumption. The application only refers to testing in mice of the NPTII antibiotic resistance gene product, though it does not mention how long the tests lasted.”

Not only are the range of tests submitted by the Rathore group deficient or inadequate, they admit that their GMO variety has not entirely eliminated the presence of toxic gossypol in the cottonseeds, hence they term it “low” gossypol cotton seed, with an estimated 3% gossypolAbsent are any tests long-term on mice or other animals of effects of 3% or low gossypol GMO cottonseeds.

Population Reduction?

Gossypol among other traits is a human contraceptive. A study published in the journal Contraceptionnotes that gossypol, “in most animals, provokes infertility, and in man it causes spermatogenesis arrest at relatively low doses… Gossypol should be prescribed preferably to men…who would accept permanent infertility after a few years of use.” It seems to be irreversible for many.

Another study published in The Scientific World Journal notes that among other toxic effects, “…free gossypol may be responsible for… respiratory distress, impaired body weight gain, anorexia, weakness, apathy, and death after several days. However, the most common toxic effect is the impairment of male and female reproduction. Another important toxic effect of gossypol is its interference with immune function, reducing an animal’s resistance to infections…”

Now according to the FDA, we humans are animals too for purposes of consuming GMO cottonseeds. Is a presence of 3% gossypol in now “edible” GMO cottonseeds enough to cause stealth contraception in humans, or any of the other grave symptoms? We simply don’t know as none of the responsible US regulators, neither at USDA nor FDA, have apparently bothered to seriously test.

What has the FDA done to safeguard the health and safety of potential human or animal consumers of the GMO cotton? A careful reading of the FDA testing summary of October 1 shows the entirety of their evaluation, as noted, is lifted directly from the test results given them by Rathore’s group at Texas A&M. And Rathore omits details of the length of their testing, which can conceal negative effects that only show up after longer time tests. Other tests are superficial and inconclusive.

Speaking of his hopes for the application of his new GMO cotton type, Rathore declares, “My personal preference as we move forward would be to follow the ‘Golden Rice’ example in terms of its use for humanitarian purposes.” The only problem with that example is that the Philippines project financed by the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1990s to develop Golden Rice, supposedly high in Vitamin A, was a colossal failure that was later abandoned by its creators. It was simply used as a GMO PR stunt. It could well be that the inadequately tested GMO cottonseeds end up blended into our food like so many such ingredients with us being none the wiser. The precautionary principle seems to have been shredded by scientists at FDA.

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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from NEO


seeds_2.jpg

Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl
ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2
Year: 2007
Pages: 341 pages with complete index

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

 

This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”

This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.

The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.

Our Vanishing World: Insects

October 30th, 2019 by Robert J. Burrowes

About 12,000 years ago, late stone age humans precipitated the neolithic (agricultural) revolution that marked the start of the steady rise to civilization. Coincidentally, this occurred at the same time as the beginning of what is now known as the Holocene Epoch, the geological epoch in which humans still live.

However, since the industrial revolution commencing in about 1750, just 270 years ago, humans have been destroying Earth’s biosphere with such tremendous ferocity that the Earth we inherited at the beginning of the Holocene Epoch is vanishing before our eyes. And life is vanishing with it.

While this catastrophe first gained significant public attention with the publication of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring in 1962, efforts in response to her effort to raise the alarm, credited with inspiring the modern environmental movement, have paled in comparison to the ongoing human effort to silence Spring.

In fact, we are destroying the biosphere with such ruthless efficiency that the global extinction rate is now 200 species per day, with another million species ‘under threat’. Moreover, according to the recent Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services researched and published by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) – the scientific body which assesses the state of biodiversity and the ecosystem services this provides to society – ‘Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history.’

So severe is the crisis through which we are now living that the normally sober tone of scientific papers is vanishing too, with words such as ‘biological annihilation’, a ‘frightening assault on the foundations of human civilisation’ and the ‘sixth mass extinction’ event in Earth’s history are being used with increasing frequency. See, for example, ‘Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines’.

So how extreme is the threat?

Well, despite the number of elite-controlled intergovernmental processes and corporate scientists paid to promulgate delusion about our timeframe, an increasing number of scientists are now warning that existing and accumulating evidence indicates that human extinction is likely to occur by 2026 (assuming that we can prevent nuclear war and prevent the deployment of 5G in the meantime). Unfortunately, too, the full extent of this unfolding catastrophe is readily masked if the many interrelated factors – emotional, political, economic, social, climatic, environmental, military, nuclear, geoengineering and electromagnetic – synergistically shaping this outcome are not each and all considered. See ‘Human Extinction by 2026? A Last Ditch Strategy to Fight for Human Survival’.

For example, it is poor science to measure climate impacts in isolation from the cascading impacts they generate ‘downstream’ (such as the adverse impact of temperature increases on insect populations in rainforests and what this means for the rainforest habitats they occupy) and to predict outcomes for humanity based on the climate impacts alone. If enough insects are gone – whether through destruction of habitat, extensive pesticide use, 5G electromagnetic radiation, climate impacts… or a combination of these and other factors – before we reach the critical climate ‘tipping point’, then human food chains will collapse rapidly followed by the human population whatever the state of the climate at the time.

However, rather than reiterate the comprehensive evidence in relation to the synergistic threats to human survival here, let me instead present the evidence only in relation to the decimation of the global insect population – variously given such labels as ‘insectageddon’ and ‘insect apocalypse’ in an attempt to convey the gravity of the crisis – including what is driving it and what it means.

The Importance of Insects

So how important are insects? According to one recent study conducted by Caspar A. Hallmann and eleven associates, insects are vital to ecosystem functioning:

‘Insects play a central role in a variety of processes, including pollination, herbivory and detrivory [an organism, such as a bacterium, fungus or insect, that feeds on dead plant or animal matter], nutrient cycling and providing a food source for higher trophic levels such as birds, mammals and amphibians. For example, 80% of wild plants are estimated to depend on insects for pollination, while 60% of birds rely on insects as a food source. The ecosystem services provided by wild insects have been estimated at $57 billion annually in the USA. Clearly, preserving insect abundance and diversity should constitute a prime conservation priority.’ See ‘More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas’.

To underscore the importance of insects, in their study Bradford C. Lister & Andres Garcia simply note that ‘arthropods comprise over two-thirds of terrestrial species’. See ‘Climate-driven declines in arthropod abundance restructure a rainforest food web’. And, as Robert Hunziker observes: without insects ‘burrowing, forming new soil, aerating soil, pollinating food crops…’ and providing food for many bird species, the biosphere simply collapses. See ‘Insect Decimation Upstages Global Warming’.

However, despite their crucial role in maintaining the habitable biosphere, insects have been in decline for several decades. And the decline is accelerating.

The Decline of Insects

Any study of insect populations readily confirms their rapid decline. For example, in the recent study by Lister and Garcia, they note that ‘Arthropods, invertebrates including insects that have external skeletons, are declining at an alarming rate. While the tropics harbor the majority of arthropod species, little is known about trends in their abundance.’ Hence they compared arthropod biomass in Puerto Rico’s Luquillo rainforest with data taken by Lister back in 1976. They found that ‘biomass had fallen 10 to 60 times’ and their analyses revealed ‘synchronous declines in the lizards, frogs, and birds that eat arthropods’. Moreover, they noted, over the past 30 years forest temperatures have risen 2.0 °C and their study indicated that ‘climate warming is the driving force behind the collapse of the forest’s food web’. Ominously, they observe: ‘A number of studies indicate that tropical arthropods should be particularly vulnerable to climate warming. If these predictions are realized, climate warming may have a more profound impact on the functioning and diversity of tropical forests than currently anticipated.’ See ‘Climate-driven declines in arthropod abundance restructure a rainforest food web’ and ‘Insect collapse: “We are destroying our life support systems”’.

Why? Well although climate warming is disrupting the entire biosphere at an accelerating pace, the rate is generally slower in tropical habitats. Nevertheless, the evidence still clearly suggests that tropical ectotherms (organisms reliant on environmental heat sources) may be particularly vulnerable to the warming climate. Citing an earlier report based on research by Daniel H. Janzen – see ‘Why Mountain Passes are Higher in the Tropics’ – Lister and Garcia note that tropical species that evolved in comparatively aseasonal environments have ‘narrower thermal niches, reduced acclimation to temperature fluctuations, and exist at or near their thermal optima. Consequently, even small increments in temperature can precipitate sharp decreases in fitness and abundance. These predictions have been verified in a variety of tropical reptiles, amphibians, and invertebrates.’ See ‘Climate-driven declines in arthropod abundance restructure a rainforest food web’.

In another recent report ‘Worldwide decline of the entomofauna: A review of its drivers’, Francisco Sánchez-Bayo and Kris A.G. Wyckhuys present ‘a comprehensive review of 73 historical reports of insect declines from across the globe, and systematically assess the underlying drivers’. In essence, their research reveals ‘dramatic rates of decline’ with the main drivers being i) habitat loss and conversion to intensive agriculture and urbanization; ii) pollution, mainly by synthetic pesticides (glyphosate, neonicotinoids and others) and fertilisers; iii) biological factors, including pathogens and introduced species; and iv) the climate catastrophe. ‘The latter factor is particularly important in tropical regions, but only affects a minority of species in colder climes and mountain settings of temperate zones.’

Moreover, they note, the general studies of insect declines are ‘in line with previous reports on population declines among numerous insect taxa (i.e. butterflies, ground beetles, ladybirds, dragonflies, stoneflies and wild bees) in Europe and North America over the past decades. It appears that insect declines are substantially greater than those observed in birds or plants over the same time periods and this could trigger wide-ranging cascading effects within several of the world’s ecosystems.’

But perhaps the most alarming report is the one written following research conducted by Caspar A. Hallmann and his associates. Noting widespread concern about insect loss, they observe that ‘Loss of insect diversity and abundance is expected to provoke cascading effects on food webs and to jeopardize ecosystem services.’ Employing a standardized protocol to measure total insect biomass using Malaise traps, deployed over 27 years in 63 nature protection areas in Germany (with 96 unique location-year combinations) their analysis estimated ‘a seasonal decline of 76%, and mid-summer decline of 82% in flying insect biomass over the 27 years of study’. Moreover, the decline was apparent regardless of habitat type. ‘This yet unrecognized loss of insect biomass must be taken into account in evaluating declines in abundance of species depending on insects as a food source, and ecosystem functioning in the European landscape.’ See ‘More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas’.

Just one cascading impact of the rapid decline of insects in Germany is the ‘decimation’ of the bird population. See ‘“Decimated”: Germany’s birds disappear as insect abundance plummets 76%’.

In summary, from the study by Sánchez-Bayo and Wyckhuys: More than 40 percent of the world’s insect species are on the fast track to extinction. See ‘Worldwide decline of the entomofauna: A review of its drivers’.

Why are insects declining?

In essence, apart from the causes of insect decline noted above, such as destruction of habitat, poisoning (using glyphosate, neonicotinoids and other pesticides) – see, for example, ‘Trump EPA OKs “Emergency” to Dump Bee-killing Pesticide on 16 Million Acres’ – and the climate catastrophe, insects are also adversely impacted by light – see ‘Light pollution a reason for insect decline’– ingestion of plastic – see ‘Microplastic ingestion by riverine macroinvertebrates’ – wars, nuclear contamination – see, for example, ‘Fukushima butterflies highlight heavy cost of nuclear disaster’ – and will be further and horrifically impacted, along with all life on Earth, if 5G is deployed. For an earlier study identifying the existing problem of electromagnetic radiation on life, see ‘Bees, Birds and Mankind: Destroying Nature by “Electrosmog”’, but for recent updates on the extraordinary hazards of 5G to all life, see ‘5G and the Wireless Revolution: When Progress Becomes a Death Sentence’ and ‘Western Insanity and 5G Electromagnetic Radiation’.

In essence, without sufficient diversity and density of insects the existing biosphere will collapse and homo sapiens will join the fossil record. And we are rapidly approaching that particular tipping point.

Part of the problem is that far too much attention is being directed at the climate catastrophe while ignoring the vast evidence from other disciplines offering highly instructive research not only in relation to climate impacts but to other human behaviours that are negatively impacting ecosystem functioning.

This has a range of negative impacts, including that it deludes people into seeking outcomes that are hopelessly inadequate if we are to address the full extent of the crisis in our biosphere.

Has anything being done?

Not much. The elite’s corporations have enormous political power so have little trouble resisting efforts to contain their destruction of the biosphere, including of insect populations.

Hence, while scientists routinely offer fine suggestions, such as the following one, they are also routinely ignored.

‘A rethinking of current agricultural practices, in particular a serious reduction in pesticide usage and its substitution with more sustainable, ecologically-based practices, is urgently needed to slow or reverse current trends, allow the recovery of declining insect populations and safeguard the vital ecosystem services they provide. In addition, effective remediation technologies should be applied to clean polluted waters in both agricultural and urban environments.’ See ‘Worldwide decline of the entomofauna: A review of its drivers’.

But, to reiterate, it is corporations that have political power and that also control the media narrative; not scientists.

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So what can we do?

Given that the insect apocalypse is deeply connected to other issues of critical importance to human survival, as always it is vital that this issue is addressed strategically from a holistic perspective. For that reason, we must approach the issue by addressing fundamental drivers but also several vital symptoms that arise from those drivers. Let me explain what I mean.

The fundamental question is this: Why are humans behaving in a way that destroys Earth’s biosphere? Surely, this is neither sensible nor even sane. And anyone capable of emotional engagement and rational thinking who seriously considers this behaviour must realize this. So why is it happening?

Fundamentally it is because our parenting and education models fail utterly to produce people of conscience, people who are emotionally functional and capable of critical analysis, people who care and who can plan and respond strategically.

Given the preoccupation of modern society with producing submissively obedient students, workers, soldiers, citizens (that is, taxpayers and voters) and consumers, the last thing society wants is powerful individuals who are each capable of searching their conscience, feeling their emotional response to events, thinking critically and behaving strategically in response. Hence our parenting and education models use a ruthless combination of visible, ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence to ensure that our children become terrified, self-hating and powerless individuals like virtually all of the adults around them.

This multifaceted violence ensures that the adult who emerges from childhood and adolescence is suppressing awareness of an enormous amount of fear, pain and anger (among many other feelings) and must live in delusion to remain unaware of these suppressed feelings. This ensures that, as part of their delusion, people develop a strong sense that what they are doing already is functional and working (no matter how dysfunctional and ineffective it may actually be) while unconsciously suppressing awareness of any evidence that contradicts their delusion. See ‘Why Violence?’, ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’,‘Do We Want School or Education?’ and ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’.

So if we are going to address the fundamental driver of both the insect apocalypse and destruction of the biosphere generally, we must address this cause. For those adults powerful enough to do this, there is an explanation in ‘Putting Feelings First’. And for those adults committed to facilitating children’s efforts to realize their potential and become self-aware (rather than delusional), see ‘My Promise to Children’.

Beyond this cause, however, we must also resist, strategically, the insane elite corporations that are a key symptom of this crisis by manufacturing and marketing a vast range of insect (and life)-destroying products ranging from weapons (conventional and nuclear) and fossil fuels to products made by the destruction of habitat (including rainforests) and the poisoning of agricultural land (to grow the food that most people eat) while now planning the imminent worldwide deployment of 5G. See Nonviolent Campaign Strategy.

But we can also undermine this destruction, for example, by refusing to buy the products provided by the elite’s corporations (with the complicity of governments) that fight wars (to enrich weapons corporations) to steal fossil fuels (to enrich energy, aircraft and vehicle-manufacturing corporations) or those corporations that make profits by destroying rainforests or producing poisoned food, for example. We can do this by systematically reducing and altering our consumption pattern and becoming more locally self-reliant as outlined in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’ or, even more simply, by committing to The Earth Pledge (below). In a nutshell, for example, if we do not buy and eat poisoned food, corporations will stop poisoning our food and this will save vast numbers of insects (and many other life forms besides).

You can also consider joining those working to end violence in all contexts by signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

The Earth Pledge 

Out of love for the Earth and all of its creatures, and my respect for their needs, from this day onwards I pledge that:

  1. I will listen deeply to children(see explanation above)
  2. I will not travel by plane
  3. I will not travel by car
  4. I will not eat meat and fish
  5. I will only eat organically/biodynamically grown food
  6. I will minimize the amount of fresh water I use, including by minimizing my ownership and use of electronic devices
  7. I will not buy rainforest timber
  8. I will not buy or use single-use plastic, such as bags, bottles, containers, cups and straws
  9. I will not use banks, superannuation (pension) funds or insurance companies that provide any service to corporations involved in fossil fuels, nuclear power and/or weapons
  10. I will not accept employment from, or invest in, any organization that supports or participates in the exploitation of fellow human beings or profits from killing and/or destruction of the biosphere
  11. I will not get news from the corporate media (mainstream newspapers, television, radio, Google, Facebook, Twitter…)
  12. I will make the effort to learn a skill, such as food gardening or sewing, that makes me more self-reliant
  13. I will gently encourage my family and friends to consider signing this pledge.

Conclusion

In response to a range of synergistically impacting behaviours, homo sapiens is on the fast track to extinction. Just one critical and largely ignored variable in this rush to extinction is our decimation of the world insect population denying us an ever-expanding range of ecological services.

On this count alone, we have already crossed a dangerous tipping point that will cause increasing problems over time. Whether we can stop short of the ultimate tipping point depends on what you decide.

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Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is [email protected] and his website is here. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Flickr

At his latest extradition hearing Julian Assange was once again denied justice by a British court.

If extradited to the U.S. he faces 175 years imprisonment for revealing American war crimes committed during its regime change wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Magistrate refuses to dismiss the extradition case against Assange

On October 21 magistrate Vanessa Baraitser refused Assange’s defence a hearing to dismiss the extradition case on the basis of the 2003 U.S.-UK extradition treaty which prohibits extradition for political offences such as espionage. The wording of the American indictment against Assange makes it clear that 18 of the 19 charges against him regard offences that allegedly damaged the national security of the United States. These espionage charges are clearly political offences which should prevent his extradition under the 2003 extradition treaty.

Magistrate refuses to postpone Assange’s extradition hearing in February 2020

The magistrate also rejected an application from Assange’s defence to postpone the full extradition hearing on 24 February 2020. This application to postpone was based on two grounds.

Firstly, that Assange is being kept in conditions at Belmarsh maximum security prison that obstruct his ability to prepare his legal defence. He is denied access to his legal papers, and a computer while his mental health has significantly declined due to his continued imprisonment.

The second ground for a postponement of the extradition hearing were that his defence team need more time to access the mass of evidence coming out of the Spanish investigation into the surveillance of Assange, his lawyers, friends and family during the time he sheltered in the Ecuadorian embassy. Spanish newspaper El Pais has revealed that security firm UC Global spied on Assange while he was in the Ecuadorian embassy and passed the information onto the CIA.

British government blocks Spanish judge from questioning Assange over spying allegations tied to American intelligence services

The newspaper El Pais has noted how the Spanish investigation has major ramifications for Assange’s case which has led the British government to block attempts by the investigating judge to question Julian Assange by videoconference. El Pais has commented upon the unprecedented nature of the UK government’s actions:

“The British position, unprecedented in these types of requests for judicial collaboration, is being viewed by Spanish judicial bodies as a show of resistance against the consequences that the case could have on the process to extradite the Australian cyberactivist to the United States. ‘’

Judge Jose De La Mata has expressed his surprise at the UK government turning down his request to interview Assange as it has agreed to such requests in ‘’previous cases’’. Refusal of such requests rarely happens and in this case is an example of the British government interfering in the judicial process in an attempt to ensure that Assange is extradited to the United States.

Judge De La Mata has replied to the British government stating that under international cooperation treaties the only obstacle to in such cases would be if the person interviewed was the accused. However, “In this case, Julian Assange is a witness, not an accused party,”.

The Spanish judge also made it clear in his reply to the British government that he had jurisdiction to question Assange:

“The Spanish judicial system has jurisdiction and is able to hear cases of crimes committed by Spanish citizens outside of the country as long as the event is a crime in the place where it was committed, the victim or the public prosecutor present a criminal complaint, and the suspect has not been sentenced or acquitted in another country.”

British legal system denies justice to Julian Assange

At the end of court hearing on 21 October Julian Assange was asked by the magistrate if he had understood the court proceedings Julian Assange replied:

“I don’t understand how this is equitable. This superpower had 10 years to prepare for this case and I can’t access my writings. It’s very difficult where I am to do anything but these people have unlimited resources…They are saying journalists and whistle-blowers are enemies of the people. They have unfair advantages dealing with documents. They [know] the interior of my life with my psychologist. They steal my children’s DNA. This is not equitable what is happening here.”

Journalist John Pilger ,who attended the latest court hearing, has noted how the actions of the British legal system make a mockery of the term justice :

“… it was an atrocious event, …. To say it is surreal is not enough, it is truly appalling. … I’ve sat in a number of courts all over the world, I’ve never seen anything like this, it belonged in a show trial in the 1950s Moscow, Prague, you name it. This is London do they know what’s happened to justice here?’’

British complicity in American regime change wars mean that it will try to ensure Assange’s extradition to the U.S.

The current British government will do all in its power to ensure that Julian Assange is extradited to the United States where he will face a show trial that will end in a very long jail term.

We should expect nothing less from a Conservative government that since 2010 has enthusiastically participated in American regime change wars. It helped the U.S. overthrow Gadaffi and turned Libya into a failed state where women and children are sold at slave markets. The UK government has participated in the American attempt to illegally overthrow the Assad government in Syria, a war that has left over 500,00 dead and helped unleash genocidal Sunni Jihadi groups upon the Syrian people. The British government since 2010 has overseen the sale of billions in weapons to the Gulf dictatorships led by Saudi Arabia which are committing war crimes on a daily basis in their illegal war in Yemen.

British historian Mark Curtis who has written extensively about British complicity in these regime change wars has commented:

“When it comes to Middle East policy, the UK is nothing but a rogue state’’.

We now face a general election in Britain. If the Labour Party is elected in December it should halt the extradition proceedings against Julian Assange whose only crime has been to speak truth to power and expose the numerous war crimes of the American empire.

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Selected Articles: War and the Battle for Middle East Oil

October 30th, 2019 by Global Research News

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‘Attention Must be Paid’ to the Sufferings of the Palestinian People

By James J. Zogby, October 30, 2019

With mass protests roiling Lebanon and Iraq, unsettling developments in Syria and Yemen, and the latest episode of the continuing soap opera that calls itself Israeli politics, little attention is being given to the plight of the Palestinians. One consequence of this neglect is that both Israel and US President Donald Trump’s administration feel they have been given a free hand to accelerate the oppression of the beleaguered Palestinian people.

Who Was the “Bigger Terrorist”: Al-Baghdadi or Osama Bin Laden?

By Nauman Sadiq, October 30, 2019

As a Saudi citizen and belonging to the powerful Saudi-Yemeni clan of the Bin Ladens, which has business interests all over the Middle East, Osama bin Laden was almost a royalty. He had so much clout even in the governments of Middle Eastern countries that he was treated like a “royal guest” by Pakistan’s military at the behest of the Saudi royal family for five years from 2006 right up to his death in 2011.

“We’re Keeping the Oil” says Trump: Military Conflict Between Russia and the US Looms in Northeast Syria

By Steven Sahiounie, October 30, 2019

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper explained in a press conference Tuesday, that a new U.S. force will be stationed in eastern Syria to protect the oil fields.  Barbara Starr, CNN’s Pentagon reporter, pressed Esper on whether the US military mission there will be to prevent the Russian or the Syrian government forces from accessing the oil at Deir Ez Zor.  Esper was forced to admit that the mission was designed to prevent the oil, and revenues generated, from being used by any group other than the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), otherwise referred to as the Kurdish militia who had been US allies in the fight to defeat ISIS.

Beirut Is Burning: Rebellion Against the Elites Has Commenced

By Andre Vltchek, October 30, 2019

So far, the rebellion has left countless people injured, while two Syrian immigrants lost their lives. Some local analysts say that this is the most serious uprising since the one in 2015 (which included the “You Stink!” campaign, reacting to the appalling garbage crises in Beirut and to the worsening social disaster), but others, including this author, are convinced that this is actually the most serious political catastrophe Lebanon has been facing since the 1980’s.

Fake Narratives as Cover for High Crimes. The Al Baghdadi ISIS-Daesh “Fairytale”

By Mark Taliano, October 30, 2019

The political spectacles, the transparent war lies, the fake narratives, obscure foundational issues. The Right to Self-Determination is foundational to International Law. Syria has every right to take any and all necessary measures to regain ITS OWN OIL FIELDS. Washington has ZERO rights to steal the oil. Syria did not EVER invite Washington and its allies like Canada to impose a REGIME CHANGE war. The Charter of the United Nations prioritizes the right of nations to determine their own, self-directed political economies.

War on Syria

Syria: The Launch of a Constitutional Committee – A Sign of Hope for Syrian People

By Peter Koenig and Press TV, October 30, 2019

The Constitutional Committee —- is a good initiative, of course. And as Mr. Pederson says, “Syrians, not outsiders, will draft the constitution. And the Syrian people must popularly approve it.”– This is an absolute must. But we should not forget – and I do not think this is a coincidence, that President Trump just decided to leave troops in Syria – under whatever pretext is unimportant. And I do not think that he wants to either protect nor steel Syrian oil. What he wants is remaining with a sizable – and flexible – military presence in Syria.

Yemen and The Militarization of Strategic Waterways

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, October 30, 2019

The article sheds light on America’s unspoken military agenda: the control over strategic waterways. In the last two years the island of Socotra (which belongs to Yemen) has been taken over by the UAE. In May 2018, acting as a US proxy, the UAE established a military base on the island, seizing control of both Socotra’s airport and seaport. It is unlikely that the UAE will be able to maintain their position on Socotra.

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With mass protests roiling Lebanon and Iraq, unsettling developments in Syria and Yemen, and the latest episode of the continuing soap opera that calls itself Israeli politics, little attention is being given to the plight of the Palestinians. One consequence of this neglect is that both Israel and US President Donald Trump’s administration feel they have been given a free hand to accelerate the oppression of the beleaguered Palestinian people.

Two reports passed my desk this week, both of which make this point and require our attention. First, as a result of the loss of US aid to UNRWA, the agency reported that it has been forced to make drastic cuts in programmes and personnel. I will quote freely from the UNRWA report in order to fully establish the magnitude of the loss.

In Gaza, “in order to protect food assistance [UNRWA] provides to one-half of the population, other critical programmes were cut.” These included: All housing subsidies for those still rendered homeless from the 2014 war; drastic reductions in in the “cash for work programme”, cut by 59 per cent, and the community mental health programme, cut by 40 per cent. In addition, UNRWA was forced to end all repairs to the refugee camps’ water and sanitation systems and to end “programs supporting students whose education was impacted by conflict.”

In the West Bank, funding was slashed by 67 per cent, resulting in: Ending the community mental health and mobile health clinic programmes; ending the “cash for work program for 90,000 refugees”, and limiting food assistance to only 30 per cent of eligible refugees. In addition, as a result of cuts to educational programs, the average class size in the West Bank has been expanded from 30 to 50 students. Even more desperate were the cuts to UNRWA programmes serving refugees in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan.

All of this has been compounded by the Trump administration’s decision to cut funding to American non-governmental organisations that provide important development and humanitarian support to Palestinians throughout the occupied lands.

In addition to being denied essential services by these cruel decisions, Palestinians living under military occupation have been forced to endure continued acts of repression and brutality at the hands of the Israeli military and vigilante settler groups, both of which operate with impunity throughout the West Bank. This brings me to the second report, a weekly cataloguing of human rights violations compiled by Mondoweiss. While these Israeli behaviors are reported only occasionally in the press, seeing them collected, in full, each week presents a horrifying picture of life under Israeli military rule.

Because this last week witnessed the celebration of Jewish holidays, there were a number of incidents directly related to hostile measures taken to allow Israelis to visit holy sites in the West Bank. For example, on October 17, busloads of Israeli settlers, escorted by Israeli army personnel, entered Nablus without permission to pray at the site Jews believe to be the burial place of the prophet Joseph. Since Nablus is within Area A, it is supposedly under the full control of the Palestinian Authority. As Palestinians gathered to protest this incursion, they were fired on by Israeli soldiers. Four were shot and wounded with live ammunition, 17 were injured by rubber bullets and 34 were hospitalised suffering from smoke inhalation.

The Israeli occupation forces also used the holy days to close Hebron’s Ibrahim Mosque to Muslims for two days, giving Jewish worshippers full access to the Mosque. They also closed several major arteries in the West Bank to allow for settlers to travel freely and to hold a “settlers’ marathon race”.

During this same period, the Israeli military invaded at least 14 Palestinian villages, shot and injured nine young men and detained over four dozen. These raids included a number of home invasions, which resulted in extensive property damage and theft, and an attack on a wedding party that witnessed beatings and injuries to some of those present who objected to the soldier’s behaviour.

A continuing reality of daily life in the West Bank are attacks by settlers on Palestinians farming their land located near Israeli settlements and outposts. The most notorious of these occurred in the village of Burin where settlers have engaged in numerous attacks disrupting villagers harvesting their olive crop. This past week, settlers uprooted olive trees, set fires that consumed hundreds of acres of farmland, and beat Palestinians who attempted to stop this vandalism. Settlers also attacked and beat Israeli volunteers who had come to assist and protect the Palestinians of Burin during the harvest.

Settler attacks occurred not only in villages but on roads as well, harassing Palestinians on their way to work. These assaults and the Palestinians’ response to them prompted a bizarre warning issued by the military to some villagers, cautioning them against taking action to resist the settlers’ vigilante behaviour. This was most likely prompted by a warning made by the Palestinian mayor of Sebastia, who threatened to shoot or arrest settlers who might break into the town during the Jewish holidays, or the story of an elderly man who confronted Israeli settlers stealing his olive harvest and was beaten so badly he had to be hospitalised.

The above is only an excerpt of the many instances of abuse encountered by Palestinians during the week covered in the report. Also mentioned were: The shootings by Israeli snipers of 73 Palestinian protestors during the weekly “March of Return” protests that took place at five locations along the Gaza border; a number of home demolitions done either as an act of collective punishment or to limit Palestinian population growth in Jerusalem; continued repressive actions designed to increase Israel’s control of Jerusalem; unprovoked attacks on Palestinian fishermen operating within the three mile limit allowed to them by the Israeli authorities; and the announcement of the construction of 251 new Jewish-only settlement units on Palestinian land.

What is most concerning about all of these horrors is how little coverage they receive not only in the US press but in the Arab World’s press, as well. With events in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen dominating the news, the plight of the Palestinians has taken a back seat. When news related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict receives coverage at all, it is driven by the drawn-out drama of Israel’s dysfunctional political system.

Accounting for this, to be sure, is some weariness with the century-old plight of the Palestinians and some justifiable frustration with the Palestinian leadership, which has lost its ability to inspire confidence. But, while all, of this may be true, it is imperative that Palestinian people not be forgotten. In this context I am reminded of a moving moment in Arthur Miller’s powerful play “Death of a Salesman”. Willy Loman, the salesman in question, is a tragic figure who has done little to earn the support of his two sons. As he nears his final breakdown, his wife speaks to her sons about the respect owed to their father. She says, “… he’s a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He’s not to be allowed to fall in his grave … Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person.”

And so, my dear readers, I urge you to consider that as you focus on all of the other conflicts unfolding across the Arab World, do not forget what is happening to the Palestinian people under occupation. Put aside your weariness and your frustrations and give attention to what they are enduring every single day. “Attention must be paid” before it’s too late.

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James J. Zogby is president of the Washington-based Arab American Institute.

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Although President Trump claimed in his address to the American public after the killing of al-Baghdadi that he was a “bigger terrorist” than Osama bin Laden, fact of the matter is the Islamic State’s self-styled caliph was simply a nobody compared to Bin Laden.

As a Saudi citizen and belonging to the powerful Saudi-Yemeni clan of the Bin Ladens, which has business interests all over the Middle East, Osama bin Laden was almost a royalty. He had so much clout even in the governments of Middle Eastern countries that he was treated like a “royal guest” by Pakistan’s military at the behest of the Saudi royal family for five years from 2006 right up to his death in 2011.

By comparison, even though he assumed the nom de guerre Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in fact Ibrahim Awad was simply a rural cleric in a mosque in Iraq’s Samarra before he assumed the title of the caliph of the Islamic State. As far as the impact of al-Baghdadi’s death is concerned, the real strength of the Islamic State lies in its professionally organized and decentralized Baathist command structure and superior weaponry provided to Syrian militants by the Western powers and the Gulf states during Syria’s proxy war.

Therefore, as far as the Islamic State militancy in Syria and Iraq is concerned, al-Baghdadi’s death will have no effect because he was simply a figurehead, though the Islamic State affiliates in the Middle East, North Africa and Af-Pak regions might be tempted to repudiate their nominal allegiance to the self-proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State.

By contrast, the [alleged] death of Osama bin Laden in 2011 had such an impact on the global terrorist movement that his successor Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian cleric lacking the resources, charisma and lineage of his predecessor, couldn’t even mediate a leadership dispute between al-Baghdadi and al-Nusra Front’s leader al-Jolani.

Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the chief of al-Nusra Front, emerged as one of the most influential militant leaders during the eight-year proxy war in Syria. In fact, since the beginning of the Syrian conflict in August 2011 to April 2013, the Islamic State and al-Nusra Front were a single organization that chose the banner of al-Nusra Front.

Although the current al-Nusra Front has been led by Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, he was appointed[1] as the emir of al-Nusra Front by Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the leader of Islamic State, in January 2012. Thus, al-Jolani’s Nusra Front is only a splinter group of the Islamic State, which split from its parent organization in April 2013 over a leadership dispute between the two organizations.

In August 2011, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was based in Iraq, began sending Syrian and Iraqi jihadists experienced in guerrilla warfare across the border into Syria to establish an organization inside the country. Led by a Syrian known as Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the group began to recruit fighters and establish cells throughout the country. On 23 January 2012, the group announced its formation as Jabhat al-Nusra.

In April 2013, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi released an audio statement in which he announced that al-Nusra Front had been established, financed and supported by the Islamic State of Iraq. Al-Baghdadi declared that the two groups were merging under the name the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The leader of al-Nusra Front, Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, issued a statement denying the merger and complaining that neither he nor anyone else in al-Nusra’s leadership had been consulted about it.

Al-Qaeda Central’s leader, Ayman al Zawahiri, tried to mediate the dispute between al-Baghdadi and al-Jolani but eventually, in October 2013, he endorsed al-Nusra Front as the official franchise of al-Qaeda Central in Syria. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, however, defied the nominal authority of al-Qaeda Central and declared himself as the caliph of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

Keeping this background in mind, it becomes abundantly clear that a single militant organization operated in Syria and Iraq under the leadership of al-Baghdadi until April 2013, which chose the banner of al-Nusra Front, and that the current emir of the subsequent breakaway faction of al-Nusra Front, al-Jolani, was actually al-Baghdadi’s deputy in Syria.

Thus, the Islamic State operated in Syria since August 2011 under the designation of al-Nusra Front and it subsequently changed its name to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in April 2013, after which it overran Raqqa and parts of Deir al-Zor in the summer of 2013. And in January 2014, it overran Fallujah and parts of Ramadi in Iraq and reached the zenith of its power when it captured Mosul in June 2014.

Excluding al-Baghdadi and a handful of his hardline Islamist aides, the rest of Islamic State’s top leadership was comprised of Saddam-era military and intelligence officials. According to a Washington Post report [2], hundreds of ex-Baathists constituted the top and mid-tier command structure of the Islamic State who planned all the operations and directed its military strategy.

Regarding the killing of Osama bin Laden in May 2011, despite a few minor discrepancies, Seymour Hersh has published the most credible account to-date of the execution of Bin Laden in his book and article titled: The Killing of Osama Bin Laden [3], which was published in the London Review of Books in May 2015.

According to Hersh, the initial, tentative plan of the Obama administration regarding the disclosure of the execution of Bin Laden to the press was that he had been killed in a drone strike in the Hindu Kush Mountains on the Afghan side of the border. But the operation didn’t go as planned because a Black Hawk helicopter crashed in Bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound and the whole town now knew that an operation is underway and several social media users based in Abbottabad live-tweeted the whole incident on Twitter.

Therefore, the initial plan was abandoned and the Obama administration had to go public within hours of the operation with a hurriedly cooked-up story. This fact explains so many contradictions and discrepancies in the official account of the story, the biggest being that the United States Navy Seals conducted a raid deep inside Pakistan’s territory on a garrison town without the permission of Pakistani authorities.

According to a May 2015 AFP report [4], Pakistan’s military sources had confirmed Hersh’s account that there was a Pakistani defector who had met several times with Jonathan Bank, the CIA’s then-station chief in Islamabad, as a consequence of which Pakistan’s intelligence disclosed Bank’s name to local newspapers and he had to leave Pakistan in a hurry in December 2010 because his cover was blown.

According to the inside sources of Pakistan’s military, after the 9/11 terror attack, the Saudi royal family had asked Pakistan’s military authorities as a favor to keep Bin Laden under protective custody, because he was a scion of a powerful Saudi-Yemeni Bin Laden family and it was simply inconceivable for the Saudis to hand him over to the US. That’s why he was found hiding in a spacious compound right next to Pakistan Military Academy in Abbottabad.

But once the Pakistani walk-in colonel, as stated in Seymour Hersh’s book and corroborated by the aforementioned AFP report, told then-CIA station chief in Islamabad, Jonathan Bank, that a high-value al-Qaeda leader had been hiding in a safe house in Abbottabad under the protective custody of Pakistan’s military intelligence, and after that when the CIA obtained further proof in the form of Bin Laden’s DNA through the fake vaccination program conducted by Dr. Shakil Afridi, then it was no longer possible for Pakistan’s military authorities to deny the whereabouts of Bin Laden.

In his book, Seymour Hersh has already postulated various theories that why it was not possible for Pakistan’s military authorities to simply hand Bin Laden over to the US, one being that the Americans wanted to catch Bin Laden themselves in order to gain maximum political mileage for then-President Obama’s presidential campaign slated for November 2012.

Here, let me only add that in May 2011, Pakistan had a pro-American People’s Party government in power. And since Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, Pakistan’s military’s then army chief, and the former head of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Shuja Pasha, were complicit in harboring Bin Laden, thus it cannot be ruled out that Pakistan’s military authorities might still had strong objections to the US Navy Seals conducting a raid deep inside Pakistan’s territory on a garrison town.

But Pakistan’s civilian administration under then-President Asif Ali Zardari persuaded the military authorities to order the Pakistan Air Force and air defense systems to stand down during the operation. Pakistan’s then-ambassador to the US Hussain Haqqani’s role in this saga ruffled the feathers of Pakistan’s military’s top brass to the extent that Husain Haqqani was later implicated in a criminal case regarding his memo to Admiral Mike Mullen and eventually Ambassador Haqqani had to resign in November 2011, just six months after the Operation Neptune Spear.

Finally, although Seymour Hersh claimed in his account of the story that Pakistan’s military authorities were also on board months before the operation, let me clarify, however, that according to the inside sources of Pakistan’s military, only Pakistan’s civilian administration under the pro-American People’s Party government was on board, and military authorities, who were instrumental in harboring Bin Laden and his family for five years, were intimated only at the eleventh hour in order to preempt the likelihood of Bin Laden’s “escape” from the custody of his facilitators in Pakistan’s military intelligence apparatus.

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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes

[1] Al-Jolani was appointed as the emir of al-Nusra Front by al-Baghdadi

[2] Islamic State’s top command dominated by ex-officers in Saddam’s army

[3] Seymour Hersh: The Killing of Osama bin Laden

[4] Pakistan military officials admit defector’s key role in Bin Laden operation

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper explained in a press conference Tuesday, that a new U.S. force will be stationed in eastern Syria to protect the oil fields.  Barbara Starr, CNN’s Pentagon reporter, pressed Esper on whether the US military mission there will be to prevent the Russian or the Syrian government forces from accessing the oil at Deir Ez Zor.  Esper was forced to admit that the mission was designed to prevent the oil, and revenues generated, from being used by any group other than the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), otherwise referred to as the Kurdish militia who had been US allies in the fight to defeat ISIS.

Retired General Barry McCaffrey questioned whether the US has stooped to piracy, and stressed that Syria owns the oil in Deir Ez Zor.

“International law seeks to protect against exactly this sort of exploitation,” said Laurie Blank, an Emory Law School professor and director of its Center for International and Comparative Law. “It is not only a dubious legal move, it sends a message to the whole region and the world that America wants to steal the oil,” said Bruce Riedel, a former national security advisor and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think-tank.

“We’re out. But we are leaving soldiers to secure the oil. And we may have to fight for the oil. It’s OK. Maybe somebody else wants the oil, in which case they have a hell of a fight. But there’s massive amounts of oil,” President Trump said Sunday morning, after announcing Baghdadi’s death.

“We’re keeping the oil,” President Trump told a gathering in Chicago on Monday. “Remember that. I’ve always said: Keep the oil. We want to keep the oil – $45 million a month. Keep the oil.”

“What I intend to do, perhaps, is make a deal with an ExxonMobil or one of our great companies to go in there and do it properly … and spread out the wealth,” President Trump said during a news conference.

Syria produced around 400,000 barrels of oil per day before the war from numerous fields scattered around the country. An IMF paper in 2016 estimated that production had slipped to just 40,000 barrels per day.

Defense officials stress the military objective is to keep ISIS from using the Deir Ez Zor oil resources to finance a possible resurgence, rather than the US looting resources in Syria for their own benefit, which would bring back memories of President George W. Bush and VP Dick Cheney in Iraq plundering the profits of one of the largest oil producers in the world, and President Obama looting the Libyan oil fields.

U.S. National Security advisor, Robert O’Brien, said

“We’re going to be there for a period of time to maintain control of those and make sure that there is not a resurgence of ISIS and make sure that the Kurds have some revenue from those oil fields,” while speaking to NBC News’ Meet the Press with Chuck Todd.

President Trump was in a hurry to make good on a campaign promise of 2016, as his current 2020 campaign is mired in daily scandals and revelations relating to impeachment investigations.  Trump announced he was ordering his troops home from northeast Syria, ahead of a planned Turkish invasion to push back a Syrian militia made up of Kurds who have been on the US payroll, allied with the US troops had fought and defeated ISIS in the 2014-2019 period.  Turkey had made their case known for years that they would not tolerate Kurdish armed terrorists on their border, regardless of the Kurds being US allies.  Turkey also considers itself to be a US ally, though they did not participate alongside the US in the fight against ISIS.

“It would mean walling off eastern Syria as a US zone,” said Aaron Stein, the director of the Middle East program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Washington.

Analysts have said for 8 years that one of the strategic goals of the US-NATO attack on Syria, beginning in March 2011, was the ultimate partitioning of the country into small states grouped by sect and ethnicity.  The current statements by Esper, support the position that the US has not abandoned the idea of a Kurdish homeland, ‘Rojava’, and are identifying a source of income for their administration.

President Trump’s sudden decision took the US military, politicians and international leaders by surprise.  It now appears he is doing some back-tracking on his plan and has announced on Friday he is sending US troops and equipment  back into Syria, but this time it is about a business deal: “…what we are getting out of the deal, I simply say, THE OIL,…”, he wrote on Twitter.

Jan Egeland, the head of the Norwegian Refugee Council and the UN’s former humanitarian chief, said “We need to remind all of these people with the power and the guns that this is no chessboard. It is a place where people live.”  Deir Ez Zor is almost entirely populated with Sunni Arabs, who would not accept a sudden demographic shift to Kurds and their US occupying allies.  Even if the US military and their SDF allies take control of the oil and gas fields there, the local population would most likely form into resistance militias which could end up sending US soldiers home in a coffin or injured.

A Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov said,

“Neither international law, nor the U.S. legislation, nothing can set any legitimate objective for U.S. troops to guard and defend Syria’s hydrocarbon deposits from Syria itself and its people.”

All eyes will be on Deir Ez Zor, for a possible showdown between Syria and their Russian ally, in a face-off against the US military to recover Syrian oil.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is a political commentator. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Mideast Discourse

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Two weeks ago, I traveled to northern Mexico along with Mexican photographer Guillermo Arias to meet with asylum-seekers who’ve been trapped at the southern U.S. border by Trump Administration policies. Neither of us was prepared for what we saw there.

We visited two cities – Ciudad Juarez and Matamoros – to track down people who had been placed into the deceptively misnamed “Migrant Protection Protocols” that have slammed America’s door shut to people fleeing persecution and violence in their home countries. Before we arrived, we wondered whether the stories we’d read of kidnappings, assaults, and despair were as widespread as they sounded. It didn’t take long for us to get our answer.

There is – right now, at this very moment – a humanitarian crisis unfolding at our southern border. And we are not paying enough attention to it.

First, a little context. The Trump Administration has been waging an all-out war on the U.S.’s asylum system, which for more than 50 years has provided shelter for people who need protection. To accomplish this reversal of tradition, they’ve put into place a series of policies that have made it nearly impossible for people to quickly and safely claim asylum at the southern border. Chief among them is the forced return to Mexico program, which has trapped tens of thousands of people in dangerous cartel-controlled cities in northern Mexico while they wait for distant court dates inside the U.S.

The circumstances these vulnerable people are facing in the meantime are dire. We saw them first-hand.

Mexican asylum-seekers sleep on the street near the Paso del Norte bridge in Ciudad Juarez, October 7, 2019.Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

Everywhere we went, people told us stories of being kidnapped or extorted while stuck in Mexico. Many were sleeping in tent encampments on the streets while safety across the border was literally within sight, but legally out of reach. Some were packed into shelters set up by the Mexican government, sleeping shoulder-to-shoulder on thin mattresses on the floor of converted warehouses. Others were living in privately-run shelters with no security protocols to prevent intruders from intimidating or preying on them.

Matamoros is a small city right across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas, just along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. It’s in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, where corruption and cartel-related violence is so bad that the U.S. state department has given it the same travel advisory as Afghanistan and Somalia. It’s also become home to thousands of people who’ve fled Central America, South America, the Caribbean, Africa, and other parts of Mexico searching for safety.

Previously, they would have been processed through the asylum system and then either detained or released inside the U.S. while their claims were evaluated by an immigration judge. But now, they’re given a sheet of paper that tells them to come back to the border months later for their first hearing. In the meantime, they’re stuck, with nowhere to go and most often nobody to help them. Next to the Matamoros-Brownsville bridge, a tent camp has sprung up on a patch of pavement and dirt that around 2,000 asylum-seekers call home. The camp is growing every day.

Children of asylum-seekers eat near the Puente Nuevo Internacional bridge in Matamoros, October 12, 2019.Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

The night before we visited, a storm system had swept through Texas, flooding the inside of the low-quality tents people were living in with rain. There was mud everywhere, and it was cold. Few people had the clothing to cope with the chilly temperatures, and the first few people we talked to were shivering, their teeth chattering as they spoke. Everywhere we looked, there were very young children sitting on curbs or hanging onto their parents.

One young man told us that in a tent nearby there was a Honduran woman with a newborn baby, so we stopped in to visit them. She’d delivered just five days earlier. Only 21 years old herself, she’d been living in the tent with her four-year-old daughter since being sent back to Matamoros by Customs and Border Protection agents. She said that when she’d first told CBP officers that she was pregnant, they suggested she get an abortion before telling her to come back for a court date over a month in the future.

A young mother sits inside her tent with her newborn child and daughter in Matamoros, October 12, 2019.Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

The tiny child was bundled into blankets in the small tent where it was spending its first days of life. Her mother coughed when she spoke, visibly exhausted. She said that she’d fled an abusive spouse and was too afraid to return to him. Later, one of the few health responders who visits the camp regularly told me that she was fearful about whether the child would survive conditions at the camp, which she said reminded her of refugee camps she’d worked at in Bangladesh.

“If there’s a cholera outbreak here, half of them could die,” she said.

Further up the hill next to the camp, along a wooded grove, lies the Rio Grande. There are a few makeshift showers near the camp, but they aren’t nearly enough for the entire camp to bathe, so many choose to wash and do their laundry at the bank of the river. The river is rife with pollution, and people living in the camp have developed rashes and other skin problems from bathing in it. Next to a small, muddy clearing, a series of white crosses stood in remembrance of the children who’ve died by drowning in the river in recent months.

Wooden crosses honoring children of asylum-seekers who drowned in the Rio Grande in Matamoros, October 12, 2019.Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

A few nights before we visited the camp in Matamoros, some of its frustrated residents had staged a protest against conditions in the camp and the policies that have trapped them there, shutting down the bridge for 15 hours. “They keep telling us we have to wait longer and longer,” one told Buzzfeed News. “When will it end?”

Walking among the tents and meeting their gracious and welcoming occupants, I felt the weight of my country’s responsibility for their suffering. The insecurity, desperation, and discomfort of the people we were speaking with isn’t a corollary effect of the policy, it’s the core intent. The “Migrant Protection Protocols” were designed to make it so uncomfortable and dangerous for people who are seeking asylum that they will simply give up, exhausted and defeated, and return back to the dangerous situations they fled.

Many have, indeed, already done so.

Further along the border, in Ciudad Juarez, we visited a network of shelters that have been set up in recent months to cope with the roughly 17,000 asylum-seekers who’ve been returned there since mid-April. On one side of the spectrum was the newly-opened federal shelter, supervised by the Mexican government, which was housing over 500 people the week we were there. A converted warehouse with no individual rooms, people were sleeping on rows and rows of small mattresses lined up against the walls and across the middle of the large hall. Its inhabitants were there waiting for court hearings as far out as January of next year.

Asylum-seekers inside the Leona Vicario Federal shelter in Ciudad Juarez, October 9, 2019.Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

We met with Venezuelans who’d fled the political crisis in their country and El Salvadorans who spoke of witnessing family members gunned down in front of them. People told us they’d been dropped off on darkened streets in Juarez by Customs and Border Protection with no idea where to go or what to do. One parent told us she’d had to wrestle with a man who tried to abduct her daughter in front of her. Some spoke of the dawning realization that they might now have no choice but to return to the very danger they’d run away from to begin with.

As we walked through the shelter, a woman approached us cautiously. She broke into tears and told us that a few nights earlier she’d woken up to see a man from the shelter trying to sexually assault her underage daughter. Could we help, she asked? We passed on her story to one of the administrative staff at the shelter.

At night, people gathered in a circle to sing hymns, the glittering lights of Juarez in the distance.

Asylum-seekers pray at the Leona Vicario Federal shelter in Ciudad Juarez, October 9, 2019.Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

The Mexican government has been providing assistance to asylum-seekers who’ve grown exhausted with the long wait times and difficult conditions, helping to arrange travel back to their countries of origin. A staff member showed us a list of people who’d relented and returned home. In just two months, 205 people had made use of the program and left for Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. 97 of them were minors.

While that shelter was crowded and lacking the barest level of privacy, it did have security protocols set up to protect people living there. There were heavy gates surrounding the facility and guards who checked the names and credentials of every visitor. This was not the case in other shelters we visited.

At one, a small horseshoe of villas surrounding a decrepit playground on the outskirts of Juarez, there was no gate or security guards at all. The risks facing people stuck there were immediately apparent. Juarez is a dangerous city, and criminals there have realized that migrants have relatives who will often pay ransoms if they are kidnapped. An unsecured shelter is a prime target.

We were there to interview a woman who said she’d been kidnapped near the border by Mexican police officers. She played messages for us that the kidnappers had sent from her phone to her relatives back home. And she told us that not long ago a truck filled with masked men had driven into the shelter and slowly circled the courtyard. Since then she hadn’t left her corner of the shelter very often.

An asylum-seeker in a private shelter in Ciudad Juarez, October 10, 2019.Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

As she was telling us her story, we heard crying outside. A legal aid worker who’d brought us to the shelter said that a family living next door had just received word from their son that he’d been kidnapped that day. The boy had been picked up near the shelter and was now texting his mother the ransom demands of his assailants. Our escort offered to take her to a new shelter but she declined, saying she feared that it might seem like she was abandoning her son.

In the wake of a kidnapping the victim’s family may be placed under observation by the culprits, and we were told that the presence of journalists with cameras could further endanger the young man. So we quickly left.

In just a brief visit, we’d heard one detailed story of a kidnapping-for-ransom and witnessed another family living through that trauma in real time. The experience underscored the insecurity and fear that tens of thousands of asylum-seekers are being subjected to across the U.S. border right now.

Supporters of the new, punitive asylum processes say that most of the people seeking shelter at our southern border are liars who are after better work opportunities in the U.S. That simply did not gel with much of what we heard. One man said he’d been a municipal employee back home. He liked Honduras, and he hadn’t wanted to leave. But a street gang had threatened to murder him and his son if the young boy didn’t start selling drugs for them, so he felt they had no choice but to flee.

Another young woman from Nicaragua showed us pictures of the street demonstrations she’d participated in against President Daniel Ortega’s government. One of her friends who she’d marched with was killed and others were arrested, so she fled north. Only 19, she looked like a high-school student, speaking in a soft voice with her shoulders drooping as she recounted her separation from her sister at the border.

I have covered challenging stories across the world. For both Guillermo and I, this was a particularly difficult trip. I will not soon forget the eyes of the people we spoke with, at once tired and hopeful, nor their stories of determination, horror, and resilience. The shame I felt as an American while interviewing them was profound. Our country is turning its back on vulnerable people who need our help, right at our doorstop. We have to do better.

The danger they face will not soon come to an end, either. ACLU lawyers have filedsuit against every anti-asylum policy the Trump Administration has tried to implement, but the courts have allowed several policies to go forward for now while the litigation against them continues.

A young boy sits in the parking lot at the Leona Vicario Federal shelter in Ciudad Juarez, October 7, 2019.Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

The attack on vulnerable people seeking asylum at our border is a political crisis, and we have to start approaching it as the matter of life-and-death that it is. We need our elected representatives – including Democrats vying for the nomination – to take a clear stand and explain what they’ll do to roll back these abusive policies as soon as possible.

At stake is our identity as a country. The people asking us for help at our border are no less human than we are, and we have the capacity to help them. How will we respond to their suffering? Wil we allow the most hateful and uncaring among us to write our history, or will we fight back and demand better? There are tens of thousands of eyes cast towards us at the border right now waiting for our answer.

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Tires are burning, smoke is rising towards the sky. It is October, the 18th day of the month, the capital city of Lebanon, in the past known as the “Paris of the East”, is covered in smoke.

For years I was warning that the country governed by corrupt, indifferent elites, could not hold together, indefinitely.

For all those five years when I was calling Beirut home, things were going down the drain. Nothing was improving: almost no public transportation, electricity shortages, contaminated and erratic water supply. Periodically, garbage has been piling up along the streets and suburban roads. Once an airplane lands and the doors open, the terrible stench of garbage welcomes us, residents of Beirut, back home.

Almost everyone knew that all this could not continue like this, forever.

The city was suffering from 4th World diseases, while simultaneously being flooded with Land Rover SUVs, Maserati and Porsche sports cars, and Armani suits.

Beirut has almost collapsed to Jakarta levels, although, one has to admit, with extremely smart, highly educated and sophisticated elites, capable of conversing simultaneously in three world languages: French, Arabic and English. Also, with first rate art galleries, art cinemas, posh bars and nightclubs. With lavish marinas and the best bookstores in the entire Middle East.

Some say that Beirut has always been in possession of brain and guts, but something happened to its heart.

Now nothing really works here. But if you have millions of dollars, it does not really matter; you can buy anything here. If you are poor, destitute – abandon all hope. And the majority of the people here are now miserably poor. And no one even knows precisely how many are destitute, as a census is forbidden, in order ‘not to disturb religious balance’ (it was, for years, somehow agreed on, that it is better not to know how many Christians or Muslims are residing in the country).

It is certain that most of people are not rich. And now, outraged by their rulers, corrupt politicians and so-called elites, they are shouting, loudly and clearly: “Enough!”, Halas, down with the regime!”

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The government decided to impose a tax on WhatsApp calls. Not a big deal, some would say. But it was; it is, it suddenly became a big deal. “The last drop”, perhaps.

The city exploded. Barricades were erected. Tires were set on fire. Everywhere: in the poorest as well as in the richest neighborhoods.

“Revolution!” people began shouting.

Lebanon has a history of left-wing, even Communist insurgencies. It also has its fair share of religious, right-wing fanaticism. Which one will win? Which one will be decisive, during this national rebellion?

The Communist Party is now behind several marches. But Hezbollah, until now the most solid social force in the country, is not yet convinced that the government of Saad al Hariri, should simply resign.

According to Reuters:

“Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said… that the group was not demanding the government’s resignation amid widespread national protests.

Nasrallah said in a televised speech that he supported the government, but called for a new agenda and “new spirit,” adding that ongoing protests showed the way forward was not new taxes.”

Any tax imposed on the poor would push him to call supporters to go take to the streets, Nasrallah added.”

So far, the rebellion has left countless people injured, while two Syrian immigrants lost their lives. Some local analysts say that this is the most serious uprising since the one in 2015 (which included the “You Stink!” campaign, reacting to the appalling garbage crises in Beirut and to the worsening social disaster), but others, including this author, are convinced that this is actually the most serious political catastrophe Lebanon has been facing since the 1980’s.

One hears anger, on every corner of the capital, in cafes and local stores:

“Trust is broken!”

Even those who used to be far from any political activities, are now supporting protesters.

Ms. Jehan, a local staff member at a UN office in Beirut, is one of those who found herself on the side of the rebellion:

“What is happening to Beirut and all over in Lebanon is good. It is about time we stood up. I will go too. This has nothing to do with religions. It is about our shattered lives.”

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Reading Western mainstream media, one could begin to believe that Lebanon’s main problems are issues like foreign debt (Lebanon is, on a per capita basis, the third most indebted country on earth. The debt stands at 150% of its GDP), miniscule real reserves (US$ 10 billion), and the way the country interacts with the donors and lenders. IMF and its “advice” are constantly mentioned.

But even news agencies like Reuters have to admit that the entire mess is far from just about structural problems:

“As dollars have dried up, banks have effectively stopped lending and can no longer make basic foreign-exchange transactions for clients, one banker said.”

““The whole role of banks is to pour money into the central bank to finance the government and protect the currency,” he said. “Nothing is being done on the fiscal deficit because doing something will disrupt the systems of corruption.””

And here is the key word: “Corruption!”

Lebanon’s elites are shamelessly corrupt. Only such countries like Indonesia are able to compete with the Lebanese troglodyte clans, when it comes to stripping the entire nation of its riches.

Almost nothing is clean, or pure in Lebanon, and that is also why there aren’t any statistics available.

Money comes from the monstrous and ruthless exploitation of natural resources in West Africa. Everybody knows it, but it is never addressed, publicly. I worked in West Africa, and I know what the racist Lebanese ‘business people’ are doing there. But money stolen from the Africans does not enrich Lebanon and its people. It ends up in the Lebanese banks, and spent on lavish yachts, tacky and overpriced European sports cars, and inside bizarre private clubs in and around the capital. While many Lebanese people are near starvation, airplanes flying to Nice, Venice or Greek Islands are constantly packed with la dolce vita seekers.

Lebanon makes billions of dollars from narcotics, particularly those cultivated and refined in the Beqaa Valley. They get exported mainly to Saudi Arabia, for the consumption of the rich, or injected into the battlefields in Yemen and Syria, so-called combat drugs. Again, everyone knows it, but nothing is done to stop it. Hundreds of families, from farmers to politicians, got filthy rich on that trade. This adds a few more super-yachts at the proverbial Beirut marinas.

Then, there is ‘foreign aid’, ‘European investment into infrastructure’, Saudi and Qatari money. Most of it goes, directly, into the pockets of corrupt officials, to the so-called ‘government’, and to its buddies, contractors. Almost nothing is built, but the money is gone. Lebanon has railroad employees who are getting their monthly paychecks, but no railways, anymore. Train station had been converted into vodka bar. Lebanon begs for money so it can host refugees from all over the region, but much of the money ends up in a few deep pockets. Very little goes to the refugees themselves, or to the poor Lebanese people who have to compete for low-paying jobs with the desperate Syrians or Palestinians.

The poor are getting poorer. Yet, Ethiopian, Philippine and Kenyan maids are dragging the groceries of the rich, wiping spit off the faces of babies born into elite families, and cleaning toilets. Some get tortured by their masters, many commit suicide. Lebanon is a tough place, for those who do not look Phoenician or European.

And the slums in the south of Beirut are growing. And some Lebanese cities, like Tripoli in the north, look like tremendous slums, altogether.

Ali, a receptionist at a hotel in downtown Beirut laments:

“I work here as a receptionist for 14 hours and earn only 540 USD every month. I need a minimum of 700 USD to survive. I have a sister in US and want to visit her only for a week, but there is no way I can get visa. I am only 24 years old. I see no future in this country, like so many thousand others protesting in the streets of Beirut.”

According to various estimates, Lebanon may collapse as early as in February 2020. No more money can be looted. The end game is approaching.

If it does collapse, the rich will have their golden parachutes. They have their families abroad: in Australia, Brazil, France. Some have two passports, others have houses in the most desirable parts of the world.

The poor will be left with absolutely nothing: with a carcass of a country, previously looted by its own elites. There will be rotting, ageing Ferraris, all over, but one cannot eat carcasses of cars. There will be lavish but abandoned swimming pools, right next to polluted and destroyed beaches.

People know it, and they have had enough.

Mohamed, a worker at a Starbucks cafe in Beirut is determined:

“This is terrible but it is about time. We can take no more. We need to change the country, drastically. This time things are different. Not about who we worship but about our daily lives.”

Lebanon, in comparison to other shamelessly-capitalist countries, is well-educated. People here cannot be fooled.

The rebellion against the elites has just begun. People want to take back their country.

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Andre Vltchek is philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He’s a creator of Vltchek’s World in Word and Images, and a writer that penned a number of books, including China and Ecological Civilization. He writes especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author

Western stories about Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi are meant to confuse, to distract, and to strengthen fake narratives.

First, the West supports Daesh in Syria (and beyond). It isn’t a secret. High profile people such as Tulsi Gabbard even admit it.

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Second, the stories provide a distraction from what is really happening in Syria. Whereas the West has been destroying Syria and stealing its resources throughout the war, now Washington is basically admitting that it is stealing Syrian resources.

Finally, they fortify the fake “War on Terror” myth which inverts the truth, which is that the West supports terrorism in all its forms as it commits war crimes as policy.

The political spectacles, the transparent war lies, the fake narratives, obscure foundational issues.

The Right to Self-Determination is foundational to International Law. Syria has every right to take any and all necessary measures to regain ITS OWN OIL FIELDS. Washington has ZERO rights to steal the oil. Syria did not EVER invite Washington and its allies like Canada to impose a REGIME CHANGE war.

The Charter of the United Nations prioritizes the right of nations to determine their own, self-directed political economies.

The right to self-determination is “apart from and before all other rights”:

Adopted at the Twenty-first Session of the Human Rights Committee, on 13 March 1984

1. In accordance with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights recognizes that all peoples have the right of self-determination. The right of self-determination is of particular importance because its realization is an essential condition for the effective guarantee and observance of individual human rights and for the promotion and strengthening of those rights. It is for that reason that States set forth the right of self-determination in a provision of positive law in both Covenants and placed this provision as article 1 apart from and before all of the other rights in the two Covenants. (1)

International Law outlaws imperialism and colonialism. The West’s Supreme International War Crimes should be front and center in everyone’s minds. The Hollywood script wrapped around the supposed death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi should be relegated to the comedy sections of “news” reporting.

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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. Visit the author’s website at https://www.marktaliano.net where this article was originally published.

Note

(1) UN Human Rights Committee (HRC), CCPR General Comment No. 12: Article 1 (Right to Self-determination), The Right to Self-determination of Peoples, 13 March 1984, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/453883f822.html [accessed 30 October 2019]

Featured image is from Flickr


Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.

Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes  the mainstream media narratives on Syria. 

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Author: Mark Taliano

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The Trump administration’s reintroduction of major US sanctions on Iran has severely hindered Iranians’ ability to access medical care, Human Rights Watch said in a new report.

Released on Tuesday, the report found that Iran was suffering from a countrywide shortage of specialised medicine and medical devices – and the health of Iranian citizens has suffered as a result.

“We very often hear from Iranian patients that what they’re having access to is the lower quality medicine,” HRW research Tara Sepehri Far said during a panel discussion to unveil the report’s findings, hosted on Tuesday by the Atlantic Council, a think tank in Washington.

The Trump administration began reimposing strict economic sanctions on Iran in late 2018 as part of its “maximum presssure” strategy against the country.

While the US sanctions included humanitarian exemptions, the penalties for violating the measures and the complex laws that govern them have deterred many financial institutions from being involved in any transactions with Iran, HRW said.

“There is no acute, nationwide shortage of medicine in Iran at this point,” Far said. “But people who are suffering from rare and special diseases are already seeing the negative effects of sanctions.”

Access to medicine

Iran produces 97 percent of its medicine domestically, HRW said in its report.

The remaining three percent is imported, and that includes the bulk of the medicine the country needs to treat rare diseases, as well as multiple types of cancer.

One such disease is Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB), a rare genetic condition that causes the skin to blister.

EB currently affects more than 800 people in Iran, and it has generally been treated in the country with a special foam that is made in Europe.

After the reimposition of the US sanctions, the non-governmental organisation that had been providing this medication to Iranians “decided not to conduct any business with relation to Iran for the time being”, HRW said in its report.

A similar situation has afflicted Iranian cancer patients, many of whom are children, who are no longer able to access specialised medicine in the country.

Payvand Seyedali, a representative of the US non-profit Child Foundation, said that 44 percent of the children her organisation works with in Iran have “medical fears”.

“What I’m seeing happen now is a movement from individual stories to a much more en masse humanitarian crisis unfolding,” Seyedali said during Tuesday’s panel.

Humanitarian channels

The International Court of Justice, the United Nation’s top court, ordered the US in October 2018 to ensure that its sanctions would not affect humanitarian aid to Iran.

However, HRW said in its report that this is what has happened in practice.

In addition to various targeted sanctions, the US designated Iran as a jurisdiction of primary money laundering under the US Patriot Act.

According to the designation, financial institutions must conduct “special due diligence” on accounts they hold with Iranian banks to ensure money associated with humanitarian trade is not used “to develop ballistic missiles, support terrorism, or finance other malign activities”.

The designation is seen by critics as an excuse for the US to obtain information on Iranian banks, and furher deter financial institutions from doing any business with Iran, even if it is humanitarian in nature.

The US Treasury Department said on Friday that it planned to set up a channel to help humanitarian products get into Iran.

But Adam Smith, a lawyer and former official in Barack Obama’s administration, said on Tuesday that it was “not entirely clear what they’re talking about”.

While HRW said Iran must be more transparent in its financial transactions, the rights group said that the US should take concrete steps to ensure that the “humanitarian exemptions” allow Iranians to access the care they need.

It also called on the European Union to work with the US on a “viable channel of financial transactions for humanitarian aid”.

“Iranians are feeling this impact, and the exemptions on paper alone are not enough,” Far said.

“We’ve had doctors telling us that the situation is not stable, we’re taking it day by day and we’re running out of time.”

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Featured image is from Anadolu Agency/Fatemeh Bahrami

US aggression in Syria is all about eliminating its sovereign independence, gaining another imperial trophy, installing puppet rule, plundering its resources, exploiting its people, removing an Israeli rival, and isolating Iran — ahead of stepped up hostile actions against its sovereign independence.

The above defines what the scourge of imperialism is all about, menacing everyone everywhere as long as its rage for dominance goes unchecked.

The US came to all its war theaters to stay — directly by endless occupation and/or by installing puppet rule it controls.

All of the above are flagrant breaches of the UN Charter, other international laws, the US Constitution, and its statute laws relating to war.

For both right wings of the US war party, it doesn’t matter. Operating by its own rules is longstanding US policy, inventing ways to serve its interests at the expense of other nations and their people.

On Tuesday, Kremlin’s special envoy to Syria Alexander Lavrentiev slammed redeployment of Pentagon troops to control Syrian oil producing areas, adding:

“(T)hese oil fields must be under (exclusive) control of the Syrian government.” The same goes for all its sovereign territory.

After meeting with his Iranian and Turkish counterparts in Geneva, Sergey Lavrov affirmed the same thing, saying:

“When it comes to US actions in Syria, they of course run counter to international law. The US and members of the US-led coalition are stationed in Syria illegally, contrary to the position of the Syrian legitimate government,” adding:

Claiming US troops aim to protect Syrian oil producing areas from ISIS is a (phony) pretext for endless Pentagon occupation and plunder of Syrian resources.

“Experts in the United States have started a discussion on how to assess everything that is going on (in Syria) right now.”

“Experts stated their opinion, and we absolutely agree with it. They cite rulings of international courts on similar situations.”

“Those rulings say that any exploitation of natural resources of a sovereign state without the state’s permission is illegal…(a) view that we share.”

“We proceed from this assumption. (The Americans)  know our position very well. We will continue to defend it.”

“The Sochi agreements — both on Idlib a year ago, and on the Syrian Turkish border on October 22 — were approved by the government in Damascus, personally by President Assad, as well as by Kurds.”

“That’s why we proceed from the fact that our activities are aimed at achieving peace, ensuring Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

“I don’t remember similar assessments regarding the actions of the United States on” Syria because none exist.

“If we consider the statements about the necessity to ‘protect’ oil fields in Syria, it looks like they are ‘protecting’ them from the Syrian Arab Republic itself.”

Russia forces, Hezbollah fighters, and Iranian military advisors are in Syria legally at the request of Damascus to help government forces combat ISIS and other US-supported terrorists.

The presence of US and allied troops in Syria is flagrantly illegal — aiming for imperial conquest and control, supporting the scourge of terrorism Washington pretends to be combatting.

Trump’s call for ExxonMobil or another Big Oil giant to control and plunder Syrian oil flies in the face of fundamental rule of law principles.

Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif addressed the issue in Geneva, saying

“it seems that the United States is staying to ‘protect’ the oil. (A)t least President Trump is honest to say what the United States intends to do.”

“Protect” means steal, plunder, and deny Damascus the right to its own resources.

Zarif added that “Iran and Russia are (in Syria) on the invitation of (its) government, and we intend to stay there as long as (its) government and Syrian people want us to be there.”

On Tuesday in Qatar, Zarif stressed that attempts by the US and its imperial allies to isolate Iran “failed.”

Separately, he denounced the Trump regime’s so-called “new humanitarian mechanism” announced by Treasury Secretary Mnuchin last week, tweeting:

“Contrary to its deceptive claims, new US regulations will aggravate #EconomicTerrorism on ordinary Iranians.”

“@SecPompeo voiced his delusion that Iranian people must bow to US ‘if they want to eat.’ Now, @USTreasury is targeting not merely food but also our imports of medicine.”

On BBC Persian, Pompeo earlier said Iranian officials have to “make a decision that they want their people to eat.”

During his September UN General Assembly address, Zarif denounced Trump regime “economic terrorism” on Iran and its people, wanting them denied essentials to life and welfare.

Separately, he said US hardliners should “abandon the illusion that Iran can be defeated by pressure. We are (successfully) resisting an unprovoked aggression by the United States.”

Last August, Iranian Professor of Toxicology and Pharmacology Abbas Kebriaee Zadeh said Trump regime sanctions aim to block medicines needed to treat cancer patients.

Current Iranian imports of pharmaceuticals are around one-third their level during pre-JCPOA Obama-era sanctions.

US pressure got EU countries to restrict or entirely cease exporting medicines and medical related products to Iran.

Trump regime hardliners want control over what enters and doesn’t enter Iran. They want Iranian oil, gas and other exports halted entirely — a failed agenda because Russia, China, Turkey and other nations reject it.

They want control of Syrian territory and its oil. Retired US General Barry McCaffrey tweeted the following:

“Trump comment(ed) (that) US intends to keep the oil in Syria. Guard(ed) with US armored forces. Bring in US oil companies to modernize the field(s).”

“WHAT ARE WE BECOMING…PIRATES?…The oil belongs to Syria.”

McCaffrey’s comment is polar opposite the prevailing view in Washington and by pro-war establishment media — ignoring fundamental international law.

No nation may legally interfere in the internal affairs of others, except in self-defense if attacked — even then, only if approved by Security Council members.

They alone have authority over this vital issue, not presidents, prime ministers, legislators or the courts.

Attacking another nation preemptively, occupying its territory, and/or seizing its resources are war crimes under international law.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

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.

Background

The UN Special Envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, said here on Monday that the Constitutional Committee’s launch should be a sign of hope for the long-suffering Syrian people.

Speaking at a press conference on Monday, Pedersen said that the creation of the Constitutional Committee is a shared promise to the Syrian people to try in earnest to agree on new constitutional arrangements for Syria’s future.

Russia, Iran and Turkey have stressed that Syrian constitutional committee must work independently from any foreign intervention to gain maximum support from the people in the Arab country.

Sergey Lavrov was reading a joint statement made by Moscow, Tehran and Ankara ahead of a meeting of Syria’s constitutional committee in Geneva. Lavrov also highlighted the importance of Syria’s unity and territorial integrity. He expressed the readiness of Russia, Iran and Turkey to cooperate with the United Nation’s special envoy for Syria to facilitate the work of the constitutional committee. Lavrov urged the volunteer and safe return of Syrian refugees to their homeland. The Russian foreign minister also described the presence of the U-S troops in Syrian oil fields as illegal.

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PressTV: How would you assess the Launch of the Syrian Constitutional Committee – and the Conclusion of the Press Conference?

Peter Koenig: The Constitutional Committee —- is a good initiative, of course. And as Mr. Pederson says, “Syrians, not outsiders, will draft the constitution. And the Syrian people must popularly approve it.”– This is an absolute must.

But we should not forget – and I do not think this is a coincidence, that President Trump just decided to leave troops in Syria – under whatever pretext is unimportant.

And I do not think that he wants to either protect nor steel Syrian oil.
What he wants is remaining with a sizable – and flexible – military presence in Syria.

Let’s backtrack to 2008 and then 2011 – when the CIA first recruited, trained, funded and armed the terror groups in 2008 up to 2011 – when they launched the so-called “civil war” – as part of the Arab Spring – which as we all know, has nothing to do with a civil war, but it’s a US mercenary war against the legitimate Syrian Government.

Why is it important to remember this?

Because, Washington has made it its goal to ultimately control Syria – Syria is part of the list countries mentioning in the PNAC (Plan for a New American Century) that must fall – in order for the US to reach full global hegemony. To reach that goal, the Middle East is a key square on the geopolitical Chess Board.

This should always remain in the back of the heads of those who negotiate and draft the new Constitution – the idea of new Constitution is good, but even if all parties agree, it will only be possible to apply it when the US leaves Syria. That is a must.

So, while the negotiations and drafting of the Constitution goes on, observed by Russia, Iran, and Turkey and of course the UN – it is extremely important that the US leaves Syria – letting Syria take full and sovereign control of her territory.

PressTV: It is an important part of the validity of the new Constitution that Syria gains full sovereignty over her territories. What if the US won’t leave?

PK: That is precisely the point. The US is not likely to leave voluntarily – as we just have vivid proof. They stay under any pretext – as it is and remains their goal to achieve regime change in Syria and dominate this crucial pivotal Middle East country, called Syria.

And more so, as the US does not even have an observer role in the drafting of the new Constitution, unlike, Russia, Iran and Turkey – and of course the UN.

Washington could easily disrupt the process by launching again a false flag attack, by re-mobilizing the ISIS / Al Qaeda terror, or by calling NATO to “secure and protect” the Syrian oil fields. There is no shortage of potential interference by the US.

This is not to put a negative spell on the process of the Constitutional Committee. But let’s be conscious of the dangers, while this worthwhile initiative is moving forward.

The designated observers’ awareness and constant presence in Geneva and in Syria, is, therefore, of utmost importance. Let’s it also be reminded, Russia and Iran are invited in Syria by President Assad, the presence of the US is illegitimate. Peace can be secured only once the US leaves Syria, be that by diplomatic or economic pressure. For the America, leaving Syria is like stepping back from their objective of Middle East and world hegemony. And that does not come voluntarily.

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Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; Greanville Post; Defend Democracy Press, TeleSUR; The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); 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.

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

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UAE Steals Endangered Trees from Yemen’s Socotra

October 30th, 2019 by Middle East Monitor

Images and videos circulating on social media show endangered Dragon’s Blood (Dracaena cinnabari) trees, native only to Yemen’s Socotra island, being displayed in Abu Dhabi, UAE.

Known locally as “Dum Al-Akhawain” or “blood of the two brothers”, the trees are considered one of the most important features of the island of Socotra archipelago.

This confirms previous reports that the UAE, who locals perceive as an occupying force, may have been stealing the UNESCO protected tree. There have also been reports from last year of coral reef stones and rare birds being looted from the island. Emirati forces began to arrive on the island in April 2018 without prior coordination with the Yemeni government.

Image on the right: Dragon’s Blood (Dracaena cinnabari) trees, native only to Yemen’s Socotra island, being displayed in Dubai, UAE.

The iconic trees are known for their red sap, locally known as “emzoloh”, which has a wide range of medicinal uses. Referred by the ancients as “cinnabar” it has been traded since before 60 AD.

One widely circulated video shows an Emirati man showing off one such tree at the entrance of his house for decoration. He can be heard confirming that it is from Socotra.

Other images show that the trees have been planted in public spaces in Dubai.

According to the website Uprising Today, many Yemenis are under the impression that the “UAE’s inferiority complex of not having any history and civilisation of its own, drives it to steal what it can from Yemen’s ancient civilisation.”

Local news source the Socotra Post has said the Socotra residents fear the UAE intends to carry out a coup against the Yemeni authorities, one such attempt was reported earlier this month. It has been said that the foreign soldiers and officials have been treating the island as if it belongs to the UAE rather than to Yemen, even raising Emirati flags over government buildings.

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Featured image: The Yemeni island of Socotra on 12 February 2014 [Rod Waddington/Flickr]

Free Speech: Trump Administration Rescinds Planned Anti-Protest Rules

October 30th, 2019 by Partnership for Civil Justice Fund

In an extraordinary victory for the people, the Trump Administration has announced that it is fully withdrawing its massive anti-democratic plan to block free speech and assembly through proposed regulations that would have crushed protest on federal land in the nation’s capital.

As the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund was preparing to meet the Trump Administration head on in court to challenge the regulations as unconstitutional, the National Park Service announced that they could not surmount the public and legal opposition they faced and will not move forward with their plans, withdrawing them in their entirety.

“Faced with a far-reaching constitutional rights lawsuit and a groundswell of grassroots opposition to the proposed NPS regulations, the Trump White House has abandoned its dangerous efforts to eviscerate mass protest in the nation’s capital,” stated Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, constitutional rights lawyer and executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund. “The Trump administration’s outrageous plan was met with the very force they were trying to suppress — the power of the people. Today is a huge victory in defense of the Constitution and cherished freedoms,” Verheyden-Hilliard stated.

The proposed regulations would have criminalized and restricted fundamental First Amendment rights. Trump’s plan would have made people pay for the right to protest. They planned to charge people for the right to demonstrate on our public spaces including costs and fees so high that no grassroots group could ever afford to do so. They planned to shut down the iconic White House sidewalk to protest, making it off limits. They planned to enact new restrictions and waiting periods for permit applications that would make it impossible to organize a demonstration, including eliminating the 24-hour “deemed granted” rule. They planned to ban any sustained vigil or protest forcing evictions at 30 days. Had this plan succeeded it would have been a model for repressive regulations and legislation nationwide.

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund first exposed Trump’s new plan with a line-by-line legal analysis of his proposed rules and sounded the alarm, including through an OpEd in the Washington Post, “The Trump Administration Wants to Tax Protests. What Happened to Free Speech?” In rapid-response, PCJF then led a national organizing, education and outreach campaign bringing together organizations and grassroots groups across the country in opposition and providing a breakdown of the nearly-100 page proposal available for public dissemination, as well as a platform for the submission of comments.

This broad coalition included organizations that focus on different struggles and communities but who joined together in a robust, collective and uncompromising defense of fundamental First Amendment rights upon which all of us rely.  This included civil rights, labor, climate justice, women’s rights, LGBTQ, immigration rights and anti-war organizations among many others. This initiative and principled, united coalition work resulted an astounding response from the public — more than 140,000 comments were submitted into the formal rule-making record.

In addition to preparing and filing detailed and substantive legal comment in opposition, and helping other organizations do the same, the PCJF prepared for litigation to immediately seek an injunction and stop the rules from taking effect.

Rather than take a low-hanging fruit approach and attack only some portions of the Trump Administration’s massive proposed-rulemaking, we undertook a comprehensive challenge with the intention to strike it in its entirety. Having worked on the frontlines with grassroots organizations seeking access to public space for more than two decades, we recognized that cherry-picking would allow provisions to take effect that would cause enormous damage to the ability of people to assemble and speak out in D.C.   It is this uncompromising strategy pursued by the groups in coalition that made the difference and resulted in the remarkable complete and total retreat by the Trump Administration.

The PCJF used the comment process to build the administrative record on which the case would be litigated, including submitting substantive legal challenges and affidavits into the record that addressed myriad parts of the Trump proposal, as well as dozens of iconic protest images and videos. Among the affidavits in the record were ones from Cleve Jones, the organizer behind the concept and the display of the AIDS Quilt; Kim Propeack of CASA, the immigrant rights organization; Brian Becker of the Act Now to Stop War & End Racism Coalition; and John Boardman of UNITE HERE Local 25, all of whom have vast experience organizing protests on federal land in Washington, DC and could speak directly to the material and unconstitutional impact different components of the proposed regulations would have on the capacity of people to exercise their First Amendment rights.

This is the administrative record that the administration was not able to overcome and which forced it to withdraw its regulatory proposal in its entirety.

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund has successfully brought constitutional rights litigation against the National Park Service including obtaining a federal injunction forcing the NPS to administer its permitting system in a constitutional manner – the same system at issue here. It has also successfully litigated police misconduct claims against the federal Park Police department resulting in changes to policy and practices in the handling of demonstrations.  The Trump Administration sought to overturn decades of civil rights litigation with a massive regulatory overhaul, much of which defied prior federal court rulings and the Constitution.

As a candidate, President Trump said he’d like to punch protesters and have them carried out on stretchers, and he regularly encouraged violence at his rallies. As President he has continued his assault on the First Amendment attacking NFL players who peacefully protest for civil rights, called the media “enemy of the people,” and said “I think its embarrassing for the country to allow protesters.” Acting on that hostility towards free speech and dissent his administration sought to block protesters from public forums in the nation’s capital.

Notably, the legal department behind this proposal at Trump’s Department of the Interior is currently headed by a Koch industries insider who has been placed there. The Koch brothers have been at the forefront of efforts to suppress people’s movements and democracy through their funding of ALEC to push anti-protest legislation across the U.S.

The regulations proposed by the Trump administration would have:

  • imposed steep fees and costs on demonstrations in Washington, D.C.
  • effectively banned protests on the iconic White House sidewalk
  • forced protesters to pay the costs of barricades erected at police discretion, park ranger wages and overtime, and harm to grass from standing on it
  • created waiting periods removing any obligation of the government to promptly process or approve permits and eliminating the current 24 hour “deemed granted” rule’
  • restricted and suppressed spontaneous demonstrations that respond to breaking events
  • created hair-triggers that allow police to end protests for the most minor of issues
  • restricted sound and staging
  • banned long-term vigils or protest presences criminalizing protests that last more than 30 days
  • made protesters pay for expensive “turf covers,” among many other radical restrictions of free speech rights

These changes would have affected all parkland under the National Park Service (NPS) in the nation’s capital including the National Mall, Lafayette Park, the White House Sidewalk, Lincoln Memorial, the Ellipse, Freedom Plaza and the sidewalks and parkland along Pennsylvania Avenue — including the sidewalk in front of the Trump Hotel.

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Boris Johnson Against Parliament

October 30th, 2019 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

A pretty odd thing, this.  The prime minister of Britain, supposedly of the conservative creed, making an almost violent dash against both parliament and the courts of law.  While his presence is barely a patch on Margaret Thatcher, there is something about the Johnson rabble that reeks of demagogic aspiration. Thatcher, for one, was not a conservative but a neoliberal, a demolisher of institutions rather than their preserver. Society was the enemy; there were only individuals with ambitions, talents and desires. 

Boris Johnson has increasingly found his country’s institutions, namely Parliament and the Courts, irritating, intrusive and even inconvenient.  During the course of September, Johnson was using the language of belligerence and conflict, suggesting, according to James Butler, that he was “dangling his toes in the linguistic swamp of the alt-right.”  The prime minister had attacked legislation preventing a no-deal Brexit as “the surrender act”.  Opposition MPs were accused of being saboteurs.  Jess Phillips MP, a backbench Labour MP, had her constituency office in Birmingham Yardley attacked and her phone line jammed “with people shouting traitor and cunt to my staff.”  (Phillips had accused Johnson for using language “entirely designed to inflame hatred or division.”) 

It was a strategy that drew criticism from former justice secretary, David Gauke.  Gauke, amongst others, had been accused for meeting with the enemy – the European Union – in drafting the Benn Act, which obligates the prime minister under certain conditions to seek an extension to the Brexit withdrawal date. 

This conspiratorial thesis of treason was dismissed by Gauke on Sky, “but even if it were true the use of language of that sort is completely disproportionate, completely over the top, and feeds into this narrative that anyone who doesn’t agree with No 10’s position is somehow unpatriotic or betraying the country, or an enemy, or wanting the country to surrender.”

To delegates of the 2019 Conservative Party conference in Manchester, Johnson was all shallowness and thunder.  He had “seen so many things that give cause for hope, hospitals that are finally getting the investment to match the devotion of staff, schools where the standards of reading are rising through the use of synthetic phonics”.  (A warning about Johnson: whenever he mentions anything touching on technology, decline and decay are poking around the corner.) 

Not so Parliament, a body that had refused to get onto his bus of optimism in exiting the EU. 

“If parliament were a laptop, then the screen would be showing the pizza wheel of doom,” he sniped.  “If parliament were a school, Ofsted would be shutting it down,” he lamented.  “If parliament were a reality TV show the whole lot of us would have been voted out of the jungle by now.” 

And, for good measure, Johnson had only contempt for one of Parliament’s most revered stations: the speaker of the house: “at least we could have watched the speaker being forced to eat a kangaroo testicle.” 

It was Parliament that had held up Brexit, embraced vacillation instead of action, and refused to go to an election, leaving everyone to “chew the supermasticated subject of Brexit.”  This was a Parliament that had frustrated what “people” and “the whole world” wants.

In this narrow view, such institutions as Parliament are not supreme voices of the people but beneath them.  Indeed, Johnson has made “the people” a spectral and all-too-holy entity, the voters he hopes will deliver him the crushing numbers that will enable him to make Brexit possible.  They are his get out of gaol card, and he hopes to play it with aggression. 

In his short and unsuccessful spell in office, the prime minister has attempted to exercise powers in defiance of Parliament, but failed.  Both the highest courts in Scotland and England found against him, suggesting that he had sought the suspension of parliament for improper purposes.  Spitefully and very much in the fashion of Johnson, he decided to shoot off a letter to European Council president Donald Tusk seeking an extension, as per the Benn Act, but preferred to leave it unsigned. 

This gesture of scoffing was accompanied by two other letters: an explanatory note from the UK’s ambassador to the EU, and one specific to the prime minister himself explaining why he was not actually seeking an extension.  His personal note warned that “a further extension would damage the interests of the UK and our EU partners, and the relationship between us”.  In it, a solid blow was reserved for Parliament which had “missed the opportunity to inject momentum into the ratification process”.

In Britain, it is now clear that the country will head to another election in December.  The Financial Times has dubbed it a “people versus parliament” election.  This will be a vote, not merely on British sovereignty vis-à-vis the European Union, but a deliberation on who holds the reins of power within the United Kingdom.  For Johnson, it is a horrendous gamble, one based on the hope that he will clean the decks and cleanse the stables of obstructionist MPs.  His yearning is that of the authoritarian who can take charge.  As his predecessor Theresa May found to her horror in 2017, these elections are unpredictable things, able to either return thumping majorities, as she had hoped, or whittle them down.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Featured image is from 21st Century Wire

This article was first published on April 8, 2019, several months prior to the ongoing protest movement and civil strife in Lebanon. The analysis presented in this article is not corroborated by secondary sources.

We were unable to verify the authenticity of the documents which are presented as screenshots of the Al Jaheed report. Visibly these documents are not from official US or Israeli sources. (Global Research)

***

During his visit with US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, Lebanese President Michel Aoun reportedly received a US-Israeli document detailing plans for creating a civil war in Lebanon with covert false flag operations and possible Israeli invasion.

Although the source of the document is Israeli and created in partnership with Washington, no one knows who presented it to Aoun. The Lebanese TV station, Al-Jadeed, initially reported the document on Lebanese TV and a video on its website. Geopolitics Alert translated the report for this article.

Israel and the United States Foment Civil War in Lebanon

The document details American plans to splinter the Lebanese Internal Security Forces, a domestic institution separate from the Lebanese Army. The plans involve Washington investing 200 million dollars into the Internal Security Forces (ISF) under the guise of keeping the peace but with the covert goal of creating sectarian conflict against Hezbollah with 2.5 million specifically dedicated to this purpose.

The document states the ultimate goal is to destabilize the country by creating a civil war in Lebanon which will “help Israel on the international scene.” The United States and Israel plan to accomplish this by supporting “democratic forces,” sounding remarkably similar to the same strategy used in Syria, Libya, Venezuela, and elsewhere.

According to the document, although “full load of our firepower will be unleashed,” they somehow do not anticipate any casualties. They do, however, expect the civil war to “trigger requests” for intervention from the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) which Israel must only agree to after extreme reluctance.

The document says Israel will also play an important role by creating “covert false flag operations” as the conflict progresses. Perhaps these operations would include chemical attacks similar to the chemical attacks on civilians in Syria or even direct attacks on Lebanese or Israeli civilians to blame on Hezbollah and justify international intervention.

The document admits that the United States and Israel will need an unprecedented amount of credibility to pull this off and also admits that the Lebanese Army may be an obstacle, likely due to the Army’s diverse makeup. As a legitimate political party with members throughout all aspects of Lebanese society, Hezbollah already has members and allies throughout the ISF as well as the Army.

Screenshots from Al-Jadeed

Mike Pompeo Holds Meeting with Lebanese Officials

During his meeting with Lebanese President, Michael Aoun, US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo presented an ultimatum: contain Hezbollah or expect unprecedented consequences.

According to Foreign Policy, Pompeo told Aoun that if he fails to complete the impossible task of removing Hezbollah from government institutions and cracking down on its military activities, Lebanon should expect an end to US aid and even potential sanctions.

“It will take courage for the nation of Lebanon to stand up to Hezbollah’s criminality, terror, and threats,” Pompeo said.

At a dinner, Pompeo reportedly warned Lebanese officials that they themselves were potential targets for sanctions such as members of the Free Patriotic Movement, President Aoun’s party with the majority of its support coming from Lebanese Christians.

Potential sanctions will likely first target the Lebanese Health Ministry which is currently managed by an elected member of Hezbollah’s political party. Civilians across Lebanon rely on a functioning Health Ministry for subsidized medications and general medical care so these sanctions would create immense suffering for the entire Lebanese population.

The civil war plan detailed in the document is not likely to succeed according to US plans. The Lebanese Security forces are not a homogeneous group. Members of Hezbollah and their Christian allies hold many positions not only in the ISF but throughout the Lebanese Army and several branches of government. The Lebanese constitution and political system require all sects have adequate representation in government. As such, a potential manufactured civil war would likely focus on re-writing the Lebanese constitution as a top priority.

It is unclear if Pompeo’s staff presented Aoun with this document as a threat prior to their meeting. It is clear, however, that the US and Israel are plotting behind closed doors to create sectarian conflict in Lebanese society and its democratic political process, similar to actions in Syria, Lybia, Yemen, Venezuela, Iran, and so on.

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Co-founder of Geopolitics Alert, Randi is a geopolitical analyst and content strategist in the United States. She covers U.S. imperialism in West Asia with a special focus on Yemen.

Featured image: SecStae Mike Pompeo visit to Israel, April 2018, US Embassy Jerusalem.

Yemen and The Militarization of Strategic Waterways

October 30th, 2019 by Prof Michel Chossudovsky

This article was first published by GR in February 2010, five years prior to the outbreak of the US-Saudi war on Yemen.

The article sheds light on America’s unspoken military agenda: the control over strategic waterways.

In the last two years the island of Socotra (which belongs to Yemen) has been taken over by the UAE.  

In May 2018, acting as a US proxy, the UAE established a military base on the island, seizing control of both Socotra’s airport and seaport.

It is unlikely that the UAE will be able to maintain their position on Socotra.

Michel Chossudovsky, October 30, 2019

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“Whoever attains maritime supremacy in the Indian Ocean would be a prominent player on the international scene.” (US Navy Geostrategist Rear Admiral Alfred Thayus Mahan (1840-1914))

The Yemeni archipelago of Socotra in the Indian Ocean is located some 80 kilometres off the Horn of Africa and 380 kilometres South of the Yemeni coastline. The islands of Socotra are a wildlife reserve recognized by (UNESCO), as a World Natural Heritage Site. 

Socotra is at the crossroads of the strategic naval waterways of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden (See map below). It is of crucial importance to the US military.

MAP 1

Among Washington’s strategic objectives is the militarization of major sea ways. This strategic waterway links the Mediterranean to South Asia and the Far East, through the Suez Canal, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

It is a major transit route for oil tankers. A large share of China’s industrial exports to Western Europe transits through this strategic waterway. Maritime trade from East and Southern Africa to Western Europe also transits within proximity of Socotra (Suqutra), through the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. (see map below). A military base in Socotra could be used to oversee the movement of vessels including war ships in an out of the Gulf of Aden.

“The [Indian] Ocean is a major sea lane connecting the Middle East, East Asia and Africa with Europe and the Americas. It has four crucial access waterways facilitating international maritime trade, that is the Suez Canal in Egypt, Bab-el-Mandeb (bordering Djibouti and Yemen), Straits of Hormuz (bordering Iran and Oman), and Straits of Malacca (bordering Indonesia and Malaysia). These ‘chokepoints’ are critical to world oil trade as huge amounts of oil pass through them.” (Amjed Jaaved, A new hot-spot of rivalry, Pakistan Observer, July 1, 2009)

MAP 2

Sea Power

From a military standpoint, the Socotra archipelago is at a strategic maritime crossroads. Morever, the archipelago extends over a relatively large maritime area at the Eastern exit of the Gulf of Aden, from the island of Abd al Kuri, to the main island of Socotra. (See map 1 above and 2b below) This maritime area of international transit lies in Yemeni territorial waters. The objective of the US is to police the entire Gulf of Aden seaway from the Yemeni to Somalian coastline. (See map 1).

MAP 2b

Socotra is some 3000 km from the US naval base of Diego Garcia, which is among America’s largest overseas military facilities.

The Socotra Military Base

On January 2nd, 2010, President Saleh and General David Petraeus, Commander of the US Central Command met for high level discussions behind closed doors.

The Saleh-Petraeus meeting was casually presented by the media as a timely response to the foiled Detroit Christmas bomb attack on Northwest flight 253. It had apparently been scheduled on an ad hoc basis as a means to coordinating counter-terrorism initiatives directed against “Al Qaeda in Yemen”, including “the use [of] American drones and missiles on Yemen lands.”

Several reports, however, confirmed that the Saleh-Petraeus meetings were intent upon redefining US military involvement in Yemen including the establishment of a full-fledged military base on the island of Socotra. Yemen’s president Ali Abdullah Saleh was reported to have “surrendered Socotra for Americans who would set up a military base, pointing out that U.S. officials and the Yemeni government agreed to set up a military base in Socotra to counter pirates and al-Qaeda.” (Fars News. January 19, 2010)

On January 1st, one day before the Saleh-Petraeus meetings in Sanaa, General Petraeus confirmed in a Baghdad press conference that “security assistance” to Yemen would more than double from 70 million to more than 150 million dollars, which represents a 14 fold increase since 2006. (Scramble for the Island of Bliss: Socotra!, War in Iraq, January 12, 2010. See also CNN January 9, 2010, The Guardian, December 28, 2009).

This doubling of military aid to Yemen was presented to World public opinion as a response to the Detroit bomb incident, which allegedly had been ordered by Al Qaeda operatives in Yemen.

The establishment of an air force base on the island of Socotra was described by the US media as part of the “Global war on Terrorism”:

“Among the new programs, Saleh and Petraeus agreed to allow the use of American aircraft, perhaps drones, as well as “seaborne missiles”–as long as the operations have prior approval from the Yemenis, according to a senior Yemeni official who requested anonymity when speaking about sensitive subjects. U.S. officials say the island of Socotra, 200 miles off the Yemeni coast, will be beefed up from a small airstrip [under the jurisdiction of the Yemeni military] to a full base in order to support the larger aid program as well as battle Somali pirates. Petraeus is also trying to provide the Yemeni forces with basic equipment such as up-armored Humvees and possibly more helicopters.” (Newsweek,  Newsweek, January 18, 2010, emphasis added)


Existing runway and airport

US Naval Facility?

The proposed US Socotra military facility, however, is not limited to an air force base. A US naval base has also been contemplated.

The development of Socotra’s naval infrastructure was already in the pipeline. Barely a few days prior (December 29, 2009) to the Petraeus-Saleh discussions (January 2, 2010), the Yemeni cabinet approved a US$14 million loan by Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED) in support of the development of Socotra’s seaport project.

MAP 3

The Great Game

The Socotra archipelago is part of the Great Game opposing Russia and America.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union had a military presence in Socotra, which at the time was part of South Yemen.

Barely a year ago, the Russians entered into renewed discussions with the Yemeni government regarding the establishment of a Naval base on Socotra island. A year later, in January 2010, in the week following the Petraeus-Saleh meeting, a Russian Navy communiqué “confirmed that Russia did not give up its plans to have bases for its ships… on Socotra island.” (DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia), January 25, 2010)

The Petraeus-Saleh January 2, 2010 discussions were crucial in weakening Russian diplomatic overtures to the Yemeni government.

The US military has had its eye on the island of Socotra since the end of the Cold War.

In 1999, Socotra was chosen “as a site upon which the United States planned to build a signal intelligence system….” Yemeni opposition news media reported that “Yemen’s administration had agreed to allow the U.S. military access to both a port and an airport on Socotra.” According to the opposition daily Al-Haq, “a new civilian airport built on Socotra to promote tourism had conveniently been constructed in accordance with U.S. military specifications.” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania), October 18, 2000)

The Militarization of the Indian Ocean

The establishment of a US military base in Socotra is part of the broader process of militarization of the Indian Ocean. The latter consists in integrating and linking Socotra into an existing structure as well as reinforcing the key role played by  the Diego Garcia military base in the Chagos archipelago.

The US Navy’s geostrategist Rear Admiral Alfred T. Mahan had intimated, prior to First World War, that “whoever attains maritime supremacy in the Indian Ocean [will] be a prominent player on the international scene.”.(Indian Ocean and our Security).

What was at stake in Rear Admiral Mahan’s writings was the strategic control by the US of major Ocean sea ways and of the Indian Ocean in particular: “This ocean is the key to the seven seas in the twenty-first century; the destiny of the world will be decided in these waters.

MAP 4

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal,  which hosts the award winning website: www.globalresearch.ca . He is the author of the international best-seller “The Globalisation of Poverty and The New World Order”. He is a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, member of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission and recipient of the Human Rights Prize of the Society for the Protection of Civil Rights and Human Dignity (GBM), Berlin, Germany. His writings have been published in more than twenty languages.

Related Global Research Article: See Rick Rozoff,  U.S., NATO Expand Afghan War To Horn Of Africa And Indian Ocean, Global Research,  8 January 2010.


AMERICA’S “WAR ON TERRORISM”

by Michel Chossudovsky

CLICK TO ORDER

America’s “War on Terrorism”

In this new and expanded edition of Michel Chossudovsky’s 2002 best seller, the author blows away the smokescreen put up by the mainstream media, that 9/11 was an attack on America by “Islamic terrorists”.  Through meticulous research, the author uncovers a military-intelligence ploy behind the September 11 attacks, and the cover-up and complicity of key members of the Bush Administration.

The expanded edition, which includes twelve new chapters focuses on the use of 9/11 as a pretext for the invasion and illegal occupation of Iraq, the militarisation of justice and law enforcement and the repeal of democracy.

According to Chossudovsky, the  “war on terrorism” is a complete fabrication based on the illusion that one man, Osama bin Laden, outwitted the $40 billion-a-year American intelligence apparatus. The “war on terrorism” is a war of conquest. Globalisation is the final march to the “New World Order”, dominated by Wall Street and the U.S. military-industrial complex.

September 11, 2001 provides a justification for waging a war without borders. Washington’s agenda consists in extending the frontiers of the American Empire to facilitate complete U.S. corporate control, while installing within America the institutions of the Homeland Security State.

Chossudovsky peels back layers of rhetoric to reveal a complex web of deceit aimed at luring the American people and the rest of the world into accepting a military solution which threatens the future of humanity.

The last chapter includes an analysis of the London  7/7 Bomb Attacks.

CLICK TO ORDER (mail order or online order)

America’s “War on Terrorism”

 

Video: “El Pueblo Unido Jamás será Vencido”

October 29th, 2019 by Global Research News

“El Pueblo Unido Jamás será Vencido”

People united will never be defeated.

Concert-event:

In front of the Basilica de los Sacramentinos, Santiago de Chile, the orchestra plays the classic “El Pueblo Unido Jamás será Vencido” (When people are united they will never be defeated), a song by Sergio Ortega and the Quilapayún group, in 1973, under the Allende government, which became, throughout Latin America, the chorus of generations to come, as part of an ongoing struggle against US imperialism and neoliberalism. 

Video posted by the Facebook of Midia Ninja. (click image to view video)

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Like his predecessors, Trump operates as a frontman for the military, industrial, security complex, Wall Street, and other monied interests.

As commander-in-chief, he continues endless US wars of aggression in multiple theaters, along with economic terrorism on Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, Cuba, and other nations on the US target list for regime change — including China and Russia.

His vow to bring all US troops home from Syria was a mirage. In March 2011, the US preemptively attacked the country for regime change, wanting pro-Western puppet rule replacing its sovereign independence.

Illegal Pentagon/CIA occupation of northern and southern parts of the country continues with no near-term prospect for conflict resolution because dominant bipartisan hardliners in Washington reject restoration of peace and stability to all US war theaters.

Longstanding US policy aims for dominion over planet earth, its resources and populations.

Nations not controlled by the US are vulnerable to preemptive attacks or war by other means — what the scourge of imperialism is all about, humanity’s greatest curse.

On Monday, US war secretary Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Mark Milley held a joint press conference.

Esper repeated Trump’s dubious claim about eliminating alleged ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Like DJT, he provided no evidence of Baghdadi’s death. The remains of whoever US forces reportedly killed were buried at sea so no independent DNA testing or other identity checks could be conducted, clear evidence of deception and coverup.

According to forensic pathologists, positive IDing of human remains can take days or weeks to complete. Trump claimed Baghdadi was killed overnight Saturday — in a remote Syrian location nowhere near a forensic lab.

Yet on Monday, US war secretary Mark Esper dubiously claimed DNA testing showed remains tested were Baghdadi’s — suggesting most likely whoever was killed was someone else.

Baghdadi alive or dead matters little. ISIS remains a US creation, its activities orchestrated and controlled by its Pentagon and CIA handlers.

US officials and establishment media pretend Pentagon forces combatted and destroyed the “caliphate.” Washington actively supports it, along with likeminded terrorist groups, in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, and elsewhere.

Esper’s remarks were an exercise in mass deception, falsely claiming US operations in Syria “enable(d) the enduring defeat of ISIS,” adding:

“(R)epositioning (US) forces within the country is intended to posture us to continue this mission and give the president options, (including) execut(ion) (of) counterterrorism operations.”

Reality on the ground is polar opposite his above deception. Part of the US mission includes controlling and looting Syrian oil — on the phony pretext of protecting it from ISIS, enabling private interests and the CIA to profit from plundering Syrian resources, along with denying them to Damascus to benefit the nation and its people.

Esper: “(W)e will respond with overwhelming military force against” any threat to US occupation of Syrian territory and control of its resources.

Milley made similar remarks, stressing “counterterrorism operations” in Syria and other US war theaters that don’t exist.

During a Q & A session, reporters failed to challenge US war of aggression and occupation of sovereign Syria threatening no one.

No one questioned Trump’s dubious account of Baghdadi’s alleged elimination or that the remains of whoever was killed were buried at sea to prevent independent DNA checking.

Nothing was asked about the looting of Syrian oil belonging to the nation, not an illegal foreign occupier.

Asked whether Pentagon troops might confront Russian or Syrian forces militarily, Esper curtly responded: “Yes.”

Last week, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman General Igor Konashenkov called US plunder of Syrian oil “state-sponsored banditry,” along with denouncing US protection of smugglers involved in looting Syrian resources.

Syria remains an active war theater, its people terrorized by the presence of US forces and jihadist foot soldiers.

As long as total US control of Syria remains unattained, dark forces in Washington rule out restoration of peace and stability to the nation and its long-suffering people.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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Never Had a Chance!

October 29th, 2019 by Philip A Farruggio

It was 1956, Brooklyn , NYC, the year after our beloved Dodgers had finally won a World Series from those Damn Yankees. We kids on Dahill Road were ‘ The Children of Howdy Doody’ , for that was the show that all five, six and seven year olds cherished each afternoon. I can still remember playing outside on Roy Edelstein’s perfect baseball diamond stoop, a game I invented to mimic our Dodger heroes.

As we slid around on that concrete slab on many an afternoon, at a designated time the windows would open up and a symphony of Moms would yell out ‘ It’s Howdy Doody time!’  Kids throughout the block would scramble into their two family homes… everyone it seemed except Richie D. No, for some reason he would not retreat around the corner of Ave P to his walk- up apartment above John’s Superette. He just hung out by himself. Richie was one year older than Roy, Johnny M. and me, which was a big thing then.

Richie was also much taller and more ‘ robust’ than the three of us, and we all feared him. I guess he would be in the category of a ‘ Semi bully’ , for Richie was not that mean, rather, looking back, Richie was a very angry kid. We knew from what he did tell us that he lived with his mom and baby brother. He never spoke of a father, and we knew enough not to pry. As is the case in most urban areas or small towns, gossip travels faster than the common cold. The gossip was that his father was in jail, and had been for a long time.

 I can remember one incident that somehow lingers in my memory bank all these 60+ years. It was one of those ‘perfect ‘ Spring Saturday afternoons, when just about the whole block of neighbors were out on their stoops, or washing cars or doing some fixing up of their homes. Of course, half of the families on Dahill Road were renters, like my family. Still, it seemed that this bright sunny day had a myriad of folks enjoying the afternoon. You could hear the many portable radios playing either different types of music, or perhaps one of NYC’s three major league baseball teams’ games. Roy, Johnny and me were out there playing with our air rifles, and I believe Roy and I were wearing those coonskin hats, like Fess Parker wore ( as Davy Crockett )  from the popular television show. Suddenly a car screeched right within inches of Richie D. as he apparently tried to dodge across the middle of the highly trafficked street . The driver got out and was yelling at Richie, and then a few neighbors began yelling at Richie to ‘ Go the hell home where you belong!’ Richie looked frightened and that quickly turned into rage, as he cursed everyone out and ran up Dahill Road.

I think it was perhaps a short time later when Richie approached me in front of my house. ” Ya wanna come to my birthday party Saturday?” I just said ” Sure” and asked what time. I told my Mom, and with all the faults she may have had, my Mom always liked the underdog and the vulnerable. I can remember her always feeding the birds in our backyard with all the scraps of bread that we did not finish at dinner. She never wanted to waste anything, always giving leftover pies and cakes, or dishes that my Dad cooked ( he was a gourmet cook) to her two next door neighbors,  Molly and Shirley. She told me she would get a present for Richie, and a card to give him . When Saturday came she made me put on a nice pair of pants and a clean shirt and reminded me to be polite to Richie’s mom. She knew, as did most of the women on the block, that Richie did not have a dad.  She then walked me to the corner of Ave P and across the street. ” Call me when you are finished and I’ll come and get you.”

That was one of her faults, being way overprotective. I went to the doorway next to John’s Superette and rang the bell inside the hallway. The buzzer rang and I went in. Richie was waiting for me at the top of the stairs. I went up and handed him his present and card. He had this rarely seen big smile on his face. We went inside the apartment and the first thing I noticed was how dark it was . Really ominous and very bleak . HIs mom stood there with Richie’s little four  year old brother. She was a tall woman, much taller than my mom, and she had this pale, almost ghostly complexion. His brother had that same appearance. She was very nice to me, and sat me at the kitchen table, but there was no one else there. I mean no one, not even grandparents or aunts and uncles… NO ONE! My young seven year old heart was saddened by this. I could almost touch the forlorn look on all their faces.

Years later, when I went back to visit Dahill Road, where my grandparents still lived, I asked my grandfather whatever happened to Richie D. ” Oh, he died last year of an overdose or something. Bad kid.”  I didn’t realize it then, as an eighteen year old college student, but perhaps if both Richie D. and his sad eyed mom had gotten counseling, who knows? He was a textbook case of a troubled boy, unable to be disciplined in school, with an equally troubled mom… both living on the edges. Therapy was for those who could afford it, then and now.

When half of our tax revenue goes for spending on phony wars and overkill weapons , there is not enough funding for a ‘ Safety Net’ for troubled souls. Every public school  should have one psychologist on permanent staff, instead of  having only one solitary psychologist  to service a myriad of schools in a district. Women like Richie D.’s mom should have been able to get regular counseling for what ailed them. Nothing has changed… perhaps only for the worst! How many more Richie D.s do we have to see destroy their lives or others’ lives before we realize that they ‘ Never had a chance!’

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Neoliberal Macri Regime Trounced in Argentinian Elections

October 29th, 2019 by Stephen Lendman

Last August, opposition candidate Alberto Fernandez and running mate/former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner defeated President Mauricio Macri by a 47.22% to 32.36% margin. 

It was short of a majority triumph, requiring a electoral runoff. Center-right Roberto Lavagna came in third with 8.39% support.

In Sunday elections, Fernandez/de Kirchner triumphed decisively by 48% to Macri’s 40% support, above the 45% threshold to be able to declare victory in a two-party contest — results with 96% of votes counted as of Monday.

Argentinians rejected Macri’s neoliberal harshness, serving Western and internal monied interests at the expense of the general welfare — transforming the country into an economic basket case since taking office in December 2015.

Unemployment way exceeds the official Q II 10.6% level. Youth unemployment exceeds 25%. Underemployment affects most working Argentinians.

According to Trading Economics, annualized 2019 inflation exceeds 53% through September data, likely to top 55% by yearend.

Macri’s neoliberal harshness escalated after getting $57 billion in IMF financing in June 2018 — the largest amount ever by the notorious loan shark of last resort to any nation, what no responsible leader should have anything to do with.

Its predatory lending practices come with unacceptable strings, demanding privatization of state enterprises, mass layoffs, deregulation, deep social spending cuts, wage freezes or cuts, other corporate friendly policies, marginalizing trade unions, and harsh crackdowns on resisters.

It’s all about letting bankers and other corporate predators strip mine countries of their material wealth and resources, shifting them from public to private hands, crushing democratic values, hollowing out nations into dystopian backwaters, destroying middle class societies, and turning ordinary people able to find work into serfs earning poverty wages.

Reportedly, President-elect Fernandez will discuss restructuring of crushing Argentinian debt with creditors, much of it odious, notably IMF blood money, default a possibility for relief of an unacceptable public burden.

Argentina’s economy is on the brink of collapse. Desperate times call for tough measures to combat them.

Debt relief is essential, the country in deep recession, poverty and unemployment increasing, millions of ordinary people suffering from neoliberal rule dismissive of their rights and welfare.

One observer remarked that “(a)s in Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, almost everyone (in the Macri regime, investment community and IMF) had a hand in Argentina’s ongoing economic and financial debacle.”

Economic recovery depends on getting out from under the country’s crushing foreign debt burden.

On Monday, Telesur reported that President-elect Fernandez

“arrived at the presidential palace in Buenos Aires…for a meeting with outgoing incumbent Mauricio Macri where the two are expected to discuss the potentially tricky transition of power as financial markets watch closely.”

On December 10, Fernandez assumes office, a potentially major power shift ahead if neoliberal harshness is mitigated or abandoned in favor of governance serving everyone equitably.

Sunday’s electoral results rejected Macri’s rule, calling for positive change, wanting Fernandez to deliver.

At party headquarters, he thanked supporters, saying: “We’re going to be the Argentina that we deserve because it’s not true that we’re condemned to this Argentina,” adding:

“We’re going to enter the world with dignity. The government is back in the hands of the people!”

The jury is out on whether he’ll deliver as promised.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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In recent months, Haitians have demonstrated their overwhelming opposition to President Jovenel Moïse. There have been massive protests and multiple general strikes demanding Moïse leave. We consider their demands legitimate.

A recent corruption investigation by Haiti’s Superior Court of Auditors and Administrative Disputes accused Moïse’s companies of swindling $2 million of public money. Some two billion dollars were pilfered under Moïse’s mentor Michel Martelly from Petro Caribe, a discounted oil program set up by Venezuela. Yet, the people’s demand for justice in this money squandering scandal has been met with fierce repression. Police have killed dozens of demonstrators since anti-corruption protests began last year. In the worst documented case, the UN confirmed the Haitian government’s culpability in a terrible massacre of up to 71 civilians in the impoverished Port-au-Prince neighborhood of La Saline in mid-November 2018.

Let’s remember that Moïse assumed office in 2017, through voter suppression and electoral fraud. Barely one in five Haitians voted. The people have been protesting and voicing their opposition to Moïse since day one, but he clings to power because of support from the US, Canada and members of the so-called “Core Group” (France, Brazil, Germany, Spain, EU and OAS). Canada has provided financial, policing and diplomatic support to the unpopular government. Canadian officials have repeatedly promoted and applauded a police force that has been responsible for countless abuses. Recent Canadian and “Core Group” statements completely ignore Moise’s electoral illegitimacy and downplay the enormity of the corruption and violence against protesters.

The undersigned call on the Justin Trudeau government and Canadian state, member of the “Core Group” – to stop backing a corrupt, repressive and illegitimate president Haitians massively reject.

Please note the situation is urgent, as the people’s access to basic necessities is more precarious everyday while the country is paralyzed and dysfunctional due to the political crisis.

Signatories,

David Suzuki, award-winning geneticist/broadcaster

Roger Waters, co-founder Pink Floyd

Amir Khadir, ex-deputy Québec Solidaire, responsible for international solidarity issues

Maude Barlow, Honorary Chairperson of the Council of Canadians

Linda McQuaig, author/journalist

Joel Harden, MPP for Ottawa Centre

Will Prosper, filmmaker/human rights activist
.
Françoise Boucard, former chair Haiti’s National Truth and Justice Commission

Sid Ryan, former president of Ontario Federation of Labour and CUPE Ontario

Sue Montgomery, Mayor of NDG/Co-creator of #BeenRapedNeverReported

JimManly, Member of Parliament 1980-88

Yann Martel, author

Tariq Ali, author

Frantz Voltaire, editor

André Michel, president Artistes Pour La Paix

Michele Landsberg, journalist/activist
 .
Michel Chossudovsky, professor (emeritus), University of Ottawa, president, Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
.
Chris Hedges, author

Frantz André, Solidarité Québec-Haïti #Petrochallenge 2019

Bruce Cockburn OC, musician/songwriter

El Jones, poet

Rawi Hage, author

Robyn Maynard, author Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present

George Elliott Clarke, OC, poet

Greg Grandin, professor history Yale University

Rinaldo Walcott, professor and writer

Terra Lightfoot, singer-songwriter

Jean Saint-Vil, journalist/activist

Alain Deneault, philosopher

Antonia Zerbisias, journalist/activist

Medea Benjamin, co-director CODEPINK

Stephen von Sychowski, President Vancouver & District Labour Council

Gordon Laxer, author/founding Director Parkland Institute

Èzili Dantò, Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network/Free Haiti Movement

Jord Samolesky, Propagandhi

Janis Alton, Co-Chair Canadian Voice of Women for Peace

Yves Engler, author/activist

Carmen Rodriguez, author

Christopher C. Black, Canadian international criminal lawyer, list of counsel, ICC

Peter Hallward, author Damming the Flood: Haiti and the Politics of Containment

Monia Mazigh, PhD/author

Azeezah Kanji, journalist/legal academic

Charlie Demers, writer/comedian

Renel Exentus, regroupement des haïtien.ne.s de Montréal contre l’occupation d’Haïti

Grahame Russell, Co-Director Rights Action

Wade Davis, Professor of Anthropology and the BC Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at University of British Columbia

Eva Manly, retired filmmaker

Pierrot Ross-Tremblay, professeur Université d’Ottawa

Clayton Thomas-Muller Author, Director, Senior Campaign Specialist – 350.org

Frederick Jones, retired professor Dawson College

Marie Dimanche, Solidarité Québec-Haïti #Petrochallenge 2019

Torquil Campbell singer and a songwriter for Stars

Rosina Kazi, vocalist LAL band

Alexa Conradi, author/activist

Bianca Mugyenyi, activist

Jonathan Kuttab, co-founder Al-Haq

Kevin Edmonds, educator/activist

Mostafa Henaway, author/Immigrant Workers Centre

Donald Cuccioletta, coordinator Nouveaux Cahiers du Socialisme andMontreal Urban Left

Derrick O’Keefe, writer/co-founder Ricochet

Scott Weinstein, health care worker

Bill Ross, activist

Margaret Flowers, co-director Popular Resistance

Jennie-Laure Sully, Solidarité Québec-Haïti #Petrochallenge 2019

Kevin Zeese, co-director Popular Resistance

Ann Rogers, Political Studies Vancouver Island University

Andrea Levy, coordinating editor Canadian Dimension magazine

James Winter, author and Professor in the Graduate Program in Communication and Social Justice University of Windsor

Kari Polanyi Levitt, development economist

Patrick Mbeko, Canadian political scientist of Congolese origin

Rafaelle Roy, painter

Jan J. Dominique, writer

Gary Klang, writer

Tamara Lorincz, board member Canadian Voice of Women for Peace

Greg Beckett, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Western University

Kevin Skerrett, union researcher

Nikolas Barry-Shaw, researcher/activist

Darren Ell, teacher/photographer

Henry Heller, professor

Turenne Joseph, Solidarité Québec-Haïti #Petrochallenge 2019

Richard Swift, journalist

Claudia Chaufan, MD, YorkGraduate Program Director and Associate ProfessorSchool of Health Policy and Management

Robin Mathews, retired Professor/Poet/Playwright/Activist

Jay Watts, co-chair Toronto Association for Peace & Solidarity

Michael S Goodman, activist

Rosemary Hnatiuk, activist

Ajit Singh, lawyer/graduate student

Ali Mallah, former Ontario and Federal NDP Executive member

Raul Burbano, activist

Justin Podur, writer/academic

Elaine Hughes, activist

Trevor Herriot, writer, activist

Ken Collier, Retired academic and current activist Mission, BC

Syed Hussan, Migrant Workers Alliance

Ralph Gastmeier, Retired cooperative housing coordinator

Saul Bottcher, Green Party of Canada candidate 2015

David Heap, Teacher-Researcher & Community Human Rights Advocate

Bev Currie, Past President Saskatchewan NDP

Phil Taylor, Host and producer of Taylor Report, CIUT 89.5 fm Toronto

Nadia Abu-Zahra, Assistant Professor, School of International Development and Global Studies University of Ottawa

Martin Lukacs, journalist

Youri Smouter, journalist

Sid Shniad, retired union research director/activist

Eva Bartlett, independent journalist/activist

Jooneed Khan, journalist and human rights activist

Barry Weisleder, co-editor, Socialist Action newspaper, chair, NDP Socialist Caucus

William Sloan, ex. refugee lawyer

Dimitri Lascaris, lawyer/journalist/activist

John Philpot, international defense lawyer

Arnold August, Montreal journalist/author on US-Latin America

Antonio Artuso, Front uni contre le fascisme et la guerre

Gary Engler, author

John Wesley Delva, journalist/poet

Jonathan McPhedran Waitzer, consultant in organizational development

Jeanne-Marie Rugira, Professor at the University du Québec à Rimouski

Mouloud Idir-Djerroud, political scientist/pan-Africanist activist

Franklin Lopez, Filmmaker, Voluntarily Unemployed

Nadia Duguay, cofounder Exeko

Amel Zaazaa, feminist and anti-racist activist

Marita Mariasine, activist in Ayiti since 2010

Pascale Brunet, community organizer

Christian Tremblay, anticolonial activist

Christian Gagnon, Bloc Québécois candidate in Papineau

Nawel A. Hamidi,  lawyer, PhD student University of Essex(UK)

Rushdia Mehreen, community organizer / anti-racist activist

Athena R. Kolbe, Professor of Social Work University of North Carolina

Robert Green, Green Party Candidate for NDG-Westmount/Teacher at Westmount High School

Brian Concannon, Human Rights Lawyer and Board Member of IJDH

Freda Guttman artist/activist

Rael Nidess, M.D.Marshall, TX USA

Khaled Mouammar, activist

Richard Sanders, author/activist

Marv Gandall, activist

Karen Rodman, activist

Larry Hannant, historian/activist

Dave Greenfield, activist

Judith Deutsch, psychoanalyst

Raoul Paul, co-editor Canada-Haiti Information Project

Travis Ross, public school teacher/co-editor Canada-Haiti Information Project

Greg Albo, York professor

Paul Larudee, nonprofit administrator/former academic/US government advisor

Denis Rancourt, Researcher Ontario Civil Liberties Association, former Professor of Physics, University of Ottawa

Anthony James Hall, Professor Emeritus/Editor In Chief American Herald Tribune

Peter Eglin, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Wilfrid Laurier University/activist

Mary Ellen Davis, cinéaste/travailleuse culturelle

Ken Stone, Treasurer of Hamilton Coalition To Stop The War

Samir Gandesha, Associate Professor and Director SFU Institute for the Humanities

Carmen Aguirre, theatre artist/author

Anastasia Marcelin, activist/politician

Pierre Beaudet, Nouveaux cahiers du socialisme

John Clarke, activist

Harsha Walia, activist/writer

Aziz Fall, President Centre Internationaliste Ryerson Foundation Aubin

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Washington’s influence in Latin America, it’s so-called “backyard”, has reached a new crisis as neoliberal and reactionary governments that have been backed by the U.S. and President Donald Trump, are threatened either by popular mobilization and uprisings or by electoral defeats.

The so-called “pink tide” is a period in Latin America that peaked in 2011 as it saw Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela all ruled by left-wing governments. However, the tide began to turn back as Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru and others returned to the neoliberal order in recent years. However, the political pendulum, which has been moving to the right is seemingly going back to the left.

The chaotic events in the Chilean capital of Santiago, along with the brutal reaction of security forces that has seen 19 people dead, is state-backed violence not seen since the years of the Pinochet dictatorship. (Image right: Pinochet and Kissinger).

The mobilization of the Chilean armed forces is not a sign of strength, but evidence of a political panic that permeates all across Latin America. In the face of President Sebastián Piñera, the whole neoliberal model of the IMF that Washington has consistently exported to the region since the installation of Pinochet, is once against being challenged by the people of Latin America.

Ecuadorean President Lenin Moreno was initially elected to follow the socialist program of his predecessor, Rafael Correa, the ardent defender of WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange. Moreno has not only offered Julian Assange, an Australian-born but Ecuadorean citizen whistle blower, to the U.S., but has offered land and water as well. This is in conjunction to his initial agreement to implement IMF demands that would completely destroy the Ecuadorean Middle Class and reverse efforts in poverty reduction.

It is little wonder why Ecuador exploded weeks ago, forcing Moreno to backdown on implementing the IMF demands. He not only withdrew fuel price liberalization, but was forced, for a time, to abandon his country’s capital of Quito, a highly embarrassing move.

TrumpAt the same time, Evo Morales’ new election victory in Bolivia , as well as Washington’s failure to overthrow the Venezuelan government, despite repeated coup attempts, provide some proof that the so-called “pink tide” could make a comeback – even without some of the radical features of its first incarnation.

Importantly, on Sunday’s Uruguayan elections, Leftist Daniel Martínez received 39.9% of the vote while neoliberal Luis Lacalle Pou of the National Party received 29%. Both will now compete in the second round of the elections on November 24. Although there are still many weeks until the next round, it does appear for now that Martínez will be the next leader of Uruguay.

We must not forget, of course, that Washington has already lost a valuable ally in Mexico, a country that in the past elected its presidents among executives of American companies, such as Coca Cola, as well as reactionaries who asserted their power with state violence. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has not shied away from building stronger ties with both China and Russia, even as both are competing with Mexico’s powerful neighbour to the north, the U.S.

The political earthquake in Argentina has been epic as Peronist Alberto Fernandez won the election against neoliberal Mauricio Macri had a better yield of votes than previous research indicated, reaching 40.61% of the preference. However, that was not enough to take the election to the second round, as Fernández won 47.88% of the vote, enough to take the title of president- elect on Sunday. The removal of Macri from the presidency does not only signify his personal failure, but also the complete rejection of the IMF’s financial program, which in the country is seen as identical to U.S. dependence and has seen poverty sharply rise in Argentina.

In Brazil, the large rallies of protest over the devastating fires in the Amazon, as well as cutbacks in education, caused the first cracks in the absolute power Far Right-loving President Jair Bolsonaro (image right with Trump). But even Brazil’s right-wing economic elite having expressed its frustration and anger over Washington in recent days, as Donald Trump initially backed tracked on his vow to support Brazil’s membership of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). For Bolsonaro and the elite businessmen who supported him, the OECD was the center piece of their economic policy. Indeed, in order to gain the favor of the U.S. they had to make a series of concessions, such as the transfer of Alcantara’s strategic air and space base.

Finally, in Colombia, which is a hotbed for U.S. aggression across Latin America and has become a center for the CIA and USAID to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the government survives a state of constant terror. Paramilitary raids, which usually operate with the backing of the Colombian army and police, continually execute trade unionists, members of left-wing organizations and leaders of indigenous groups, who question President Iván Duque Márquez authority. There is little suggestion that the situation in Colombia will soon change.

Therefore, the recovery of center-left and left-wing governments in Latin America that challenge Washington’s empire is beginning to return to the continent. The whole region, however, has always been the most sensitive barometer of the global financial crisis – such as the one expected by almost all major economists and international organizations. As the crisis deepens, Washington’s allies in the region will be confronted with movements and uprisings that will challenge the neoliberal order of the superpower.

Maintaining this model will require more coups, martial law and blood on the streets. But this is unlikely to work as the people of Latin America have demonstrated that they are no longer tolerant of the neoliberal world order and continue to push for their sovereignty and choices to guide their own destinies. No matter what happens now, Latin America is beginning to change once again, and it is not in the direction of Washington’s vision and demands.

Originally published on InfoBrics

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A Call For Action On Kashmir Black Day

October 29th, 2019 by Andrew Korybko

Andrew Korybko delivered the following speech on 28 October, 2019, at the Pakistani Embassy in Moscow during an event observing Kashmir Black Day, the somber occasion that marks the day that Indian occupying forces first entered the UNSC-recognized disputed territory and have remained to this day in violation of international law amidst an ever-worsening humanitarian catastrophe made worse by New Delhi’s lockdown of the region following its de-facto annexation at the beginning of August.

***

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you all at this important event. The yearly observation of Kashmir Black Day serves as a reminder about one of the “original sins” of the United Nations, namely the failure to resolve this long-running conflict that’s been a stain on the global consciousness for over seven decades already. The issue is more important than ever following India’s de-facto annexation of this UNSC-recognized disputed region in early August, which has seen the occupying forces cut off all communication to and from the Valley and thus place millions of innocent civilians in an ongoing state of lockdown that violates every single norm of modern-day society and decency. Even worse, it’s given rise to fears that basic services aren’t being provided to the population, therefore causing worry that an enormous humanitarian crisis is unfolding that could ultimately result in ethnic cleansing and even genocide.

Everyone here is already acutely aware of this, and that’s why it’s our responsibility to spread the message of the Kashmiri people to the rest of the world that they demand that the UNSC’s resolutions on the future status of their disputed homeland be immediately implemented by India in order to end their incessant suffering as soon as possible. We can do that by talking to our family and friends, as well as through more direct activist methods such as legally organizing rallies in their support wherever possible and holding academic conferences to discuss their deteriorating humanitarian situation and its international political consequences. Furthermore, it might be a good idea to consider whether the Pakistani missions abroad can reach out to local media in their host country and inquire whether they’d be interested in publishing the testimonies of Kashmiris and their diaspora on this fateful day in order to ensure that more people become aware of what happened, why, and what is to be done directly from some of India’s many victims themselves.

India has upped the ante after its de-facto annexation of occupied Jammu and Kashmir, thus throwing the disputed region into an ever-worsening crisis, so it’s incumbent upon all of us to do our part to the best of our ability to raise awareness about this pressing issue. Whether that’s through the holding of somber events such as this one that brought us all here together today, convening conferences about the humanitarian and international political implications of this tragedy, and/or encouraging the media to report on the testimonies of those who have survived the atrocious conditions of their occupation, all of us have the moral responsibility to do what we can to help. While the situation is becoming desperate and looking increasingly dim, we mustn’t lose hope that a better future is possible for the Kashmiris, and that our collective efforts at pressuring the international community to finally do something of tangible significance about this will eventually be successful.

Thank you.

Originally published on One World

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Western Courts Target Gazprom For Expropriations

October 29th, 2019 by Padraig McGrath

On October 23rd the Amsterdam District Court issued an order for the seizure of 100% of the shares of the South Stream Transport B.V. company, which is contracted to build the offshore section of the Turk Stream Pipeline. This legal ruling follows a 2018 award by the Stockholm Arbitration Tribunal of $4.6 billion to Naftogaz, the (theoretically) state-owned oil and gas company of Ukraine, in a lawsuit which it had filed against Gazprom in 2014 in relation to alleged contractual violations regarding gas-transit through Ukraine. That $4.6 billion award was later negotiated down to $2.56 billion, but on October 23rd the Amsterdam District Court ordered the seizure of all South Stream Transport B.V. shares as a punitive measure for non-compliance with the Stockholm Arbitration Tribunal order.

Despite this development, Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak said on October 27th that the construction of the Turk Stream Pipeline would be completed on schedule. The 1100-kilometre pipeline, 900 kilometres of which runs under the Black Sea to Turkey, is envisaged to begin delivering a combined total of 30 billion cubic metres of gas to Turkey and South-Eastern Europe per year, beginning in late 2019.

Of course, this is not the first time that Russia’s state-owned concerns have been targeted for plunder by a court or quasi-judicial body convened in the legal jurisdiction of a western country. In July 2014, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague issued an award of $50 billion to former shareholders of Yukos, the oil company previously controlled by the oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Interestingly, the Amsterdam District Court, the same judicial body which has issued this latest ruling, later quashed the 2014 ruling made by the Permanent Court of Arbitration on the grounds that the latter had no legal jurisdiction to issue such a ruling.

One thing which is perfectly clear in context is that these legal rulings are, quite blatantly, both politically and geo-politically motivated. Targetting Gazprom serves multiple geo-political functions. Firstly, the Turk Stream pipeline was devised in order to enable Russia to bypass the territory of a deeply problematic, crisis-ridden, hostile and contractually unreliable neighbour in the task of effecting gas-transit to its markets in Europe. Even before relations between Russia and Ukraine deteriorated following the February 2014 Ukrainian coup d’etat, the siphoning-off of Russian gas while in transit across Ukrainian territory had been a perpetual concern for many years.

However, this goal of rendering Ukraine a geo-political irrelevancy, and therefore nobody else’s problem, is precisely what western geo-strategists are invested in preventing. Ukraine has been transformed by western interests into the failed state that it is now precisely for the purpose of presenting developmental and economic challenges to Russia. Therefore, these same interests must use any counter-measures, including quasi-legal counter-measures, in order to keep Ukraine relevant. This explains the punitive court-order to freeze the shares of South Stream Transport B.V.

Another driver of this western judicial hostility, also a manifestation of current geo-political conditions, pertains to Gazprom specifically. To analyze this, we should look at the role which highly profitable state-owned concerns, Gazprom the most notable among them, play within the Russian economy and in Russian society more broadly.

In spite of maintaining quite a business-friendly tax-environment (Russia has a 13% flat income-tax rate), the Russian government nonetheless manages to maintain (and indeed, to significantly upgrade) the social system. Significant federal investments have already been made in infrastructure and in the modernization of the public healthcare sector, for example. In February, the government announced 12 major development-projects as part of the “Great Society” initiative ranging from agriculture, ecology, infrastructure, the digital economy, and the further technological modernization of public healthcare.

In a country with a 13% flat income-tax rate, revenues from state-owned companies like Gazprom make this kind of state-building and society-strengthening possible. The western alliance (and its judiciaries) understand perfectly well that financial attacks against Gazprom amount in practical terms to attacks on the Russian state, and to counter-measures to the Russian state’s efforts to build the kinds of social systems which are necessary to its long-term self-defence.

Taken to its logical conclusion, from the liberal democratic perspective, the rationalization for this further degree of geo-political weaponization of “international law” would be that, as liberal democracy is believed by the western alliance to be the only political system which has any moral or political legitimacy, it therefore follows that only liberal democratic legal systems have any legal jurisdiction, and that their jurisdiction should be seen as universally extensive.

“Liberal universalism” refers to a sense of moral universality, but also (consequently) to a sense of universality of legal jurisdiction.

This mindset attempts to justify the weaponization of judiciaries, and of judicial bodies established by international law, against all and any states which don’t sign on with the liberal universalist consensus.

Of course, Russia is not the only state which is targeted by this geo-political weaponization of judiciaries. We might recall the 2012 order made by a New York court to freeze $6.5 billion in Iranian government assets in relation to a lawsuit filed by family-members of people killed in the 9/11 attacks. The lawsuit had claimed (quite spuriously and bizarrely) that Iran had aided and abetted the 9/11 attackers, despite the obvious point that Al-Qaeda’s ideology is fanatically anti-Shi’ite. One point which is interesting, considering that state-sponsored piracy has quite recently re-appeared on the high seas (Gibraltar), is that judicial structures established by “international law” are now also being quite explicitly used for the purpose of enabling what we might term “judicial piracy.”

What next? Will the British government start re-issuing “letters of marque” to sea-faring privateers?

However, as with so many geo-political stratagems deployed by the governments of contemporary liberal democracies, the resulting erosion of the judiciary’s independence from the political sphere completely undermines the normative and legal basis of liberal democracy itself.

Originally published on InfoBrics

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The renowned author and whistleblower Evaggelos Vallianatos describes British environmentalist and campaigner Dr Rosemary Mason as a “defender of the natural world and public health.” I first came across her work a few years ago. It was in the form of an open letter she had sent to an official about the devastating environmental and human health impacts of glyphosate-based weed killers. What had impressed me was the document she had sent to accompany the letter. It was over 20 pages long and contained official data and referred to a plethora of scientific papers to support the case she was making.

For almost a decade, Rosemary Mason has been writing open letters and sending reports she has compiled to media outlets and prominent officials and agencies in the US, the UK and Europe to question their decisions and/or to inform them of the dangers of pesticides. She has been relentless in exposing conflicts of interest, fraudulent science and institutionalised corruption in regulatory processes surrounding glyphosate and other agrochemicals. Her quest has been fired by a passion to protect the natural world and the public but there is also a personal aspect: she is affected by a serious health condition which she attributes directly to the reckless use of pesticides in South Wales where she resides. And her assertion here is not based on idle speculation. In her reports, she has presented a great deal of evidence about the deterioration of the health of the British public and how agrochemicals play a major contributory role.

She recently sent me a report ‘How glyphosate-based herbicides poisoned our nature reserve and the world‘. It focuses on how she had set up a nature reserve in South Wales. What she and her husband (who has a professional background in conservation and nature) had achieved on that reserve was impressive. But thanks to the local council’s indiscriminate spraying of glyphosate-based herbicides, it was subsequently transformed from a piece of land teeming with flora and fauna into a barren wasteland.

What follows is an interview I conducted with Rosemary Mason about her nature reserve and her campaigning. We discussed her motivation, the support she has received and her feelings after almost a decade of campaigning.

Colin Todhunter: Have you always had a passion for the natural environment?

Rosemary Mason: I was born in the countryside during the war and my mother took us on walks and taught us about wildflowers, which was her passion. My brothers and I fished in the stream for minnows and sticklebacks and set nightlines for pike and chub (we never caught any). When I was a junior doctor, I became interested in bird watching and I am former chair of the West Area, Glamorgan Wildlife Trust. At that time, unlike today, farmland was full of lapwing, oystercatcher and redshank displaying and protecting their nests.

CT: Why did you decide to set up your nature reserve?

RM: In 2006, the Bumblebee Conservation Trust was launched in response to the massive declines in bumblebees, butterflies and insects in general, with the demise of traditional hedgerows, hay meadows, chalk grassland and wildflowers and the intensification of farming and the widening use of pesticides. At the same time, the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council perversely announced the closure of its wildlife research centres for ‘financial reasons’, a decision opposed by 99% of 1,327 stakeholders. Monks Wood centre, which hosted BBC’s Spring Watch, pioneered work on DDT and pesticides in the 1960s and more recently revealed how climate change is affecting wildlife, with spring arriving three weeks earlier. More significantly, the research centres were also involved in assessing the impacts of GM (genetically modified) crops on wildlife, with findings contradicting industry claims that no harm would be caused.

In response, in March 2006, my husband and I decided to establish our own small pesticide-free wildlife reserve after attending a joint meeting of the Welsh Ornithological Society and the British Trust for Ornithology in Aberystwyth.

CT: I have read your new report about your nature reserve. I would certainly encourage everyone to read it. It describes in some detail how you and your husband set about attracting an impressively wide array of bird, insect and plant species to the reserve, many of which had virtually disappeared from the British countryside, mainly as a result of intensive farming practices. What I found impressive is your knowledge of these species and how you were able to identify them. From the narrative provided (which at times reads almost like a novel) and the enthusiasm conveyed, you put in a lot of hard work developing the reserve and what you achieved there was impressive.

RM: In brief, it was a miracle. I think the next five years from 2006 were the most exciting and fulfilling of my life. At the end of 2009, I wrote an account of speckled bush crickets. Judith Marshall, working at the Natural History Museum, is a world expert on grasshoppers and bush crickets. She said it was the first monograph to be written on a single species.

CT: Can you say something about the demise of the nature reserve?

RM: We published a second photo-journal in 2010, ‘The year of the bumblebee: observations in a small nature reserve.’ But in 2011, I knew something was wrong. The moths were disappearing from the area and the orb web spider had gone from the hedge. We were aware that the local council was spraying glyphosate-based herbicides on Japanese knotweed in the valley below and close to our reserve. But we had to be sure.

So, in August 2013 and August 2014, we sent samples of river water and tap water to Leipzig to Prof Dr Monika Kreuger for analysis. Between August 2013 and August 2014, the levels of glyphosate in tap water had increased ten-fold, from 30 ppt to 300 ppt. These were of the order of concentrations that stimulated the growth of breast cancer cells in a laboratory setting.

In August 2013, we asked our then Welsh Assembly Member to request the council to stop spraying glyphosate-based herbicides on Japanese knotweed. The council said they would only stop if they were authorised by the Health and Safety Executive. So, I wrote to the HSE at the beginning of 2014 telling them about measuring increasing glyphosate levels in water and that we had had many cases of breast cancer in our area. They refused to do it because they said that glyphosate-based herbicides were still legal. I begged them to do it on several occasions, as we saw the biodiversity in our reserve plummeting. Finally, they said if I asked the same question again, they wouldn’t reply to me.

CT: You have engaged in a long struggle for many years, trying to get officials at local, national and European levels to act on pesticides. You have written many open letters to policy makers and key officials and have usually attached lengthy reports referring to data and scientific papers in support of your case. I think you began doing this in late 2010. Whose work have you taken inspiration from along the way? 

RM: The work of Dr Henk Tennekes, the independent Dutch toxicologist, was a real eye opener for me. In 2010, he published a paper and wrote a book ‘The Systemic Insecticides: a disaster in the making’. It is about the loss of insects and insect-feeding birds in Europe, caused by neonicotinoid insecticides. The RSPB and the IUCN Charities refused to help fund the book because it ‘wasn’t scientific enough’.  We subsequently discovered that Syngenta had funded neonicotinoid seeds for the RSPB Hope Farm Reserve. Systemic neonicotinoid insecticides are still on the market in the UK and the US nine years later.

I found Henk’s work to be shattering. It actually changed the course of my life. The fact was that he’d worked out that the effect on the brains of insects was irreversible, cumulative and there was no safe level of exposure. What was worse was that the Chemical Regulation Directorate didn’t seem to take it seriously. So, I wrote to Europe and the US EPA and the response was the same: ‘there is no evidence that the neonics are harmful to honeybees.’ Henk had written this book with amazing pictures and artwork showing the impact on insect-feeding birds throughout Europe. Humans had the same receptors; so, imagine the effects on humans if there are lots of neonics around. By March 2011, Henk and I decided that there would be a chemical apocalypse. So here we are, eight years later and bingo, our predictions were spot on!

Francisco Sanchez-Bayo, a toxicologist living in Australia, wrote papers with Henk agreeing that neonicotinoids insecticides irreversibly damaged the brains of insects and that levels built up over time. In 2019, he wrote a paper with a colleague in China, which proved that insect losses were global and due to pesticides.

Then there was the late Dr Maewan Ho of the former Institute of Science in Society who helped me to publish an article in the ISiS magazine in September 2014: ‘How Roundup poisoned my nature reserve’. She sadly died on 16 March 2016 from advanced cancer. She was an amazing woman and gave me much encouragement.

Finally, Polly Higgins, a Scottish barrister and environmentalist, gave up her practice and set up an organisation to end ecocide (destruction of the environment). Polly Higgins was an inspiration and campaigned tirelessly against ecocide. She died from cancer aged 50.

CT: Given all the open letters you have written to officials over the years, I cannot but feel you have by and large been stonewalled. Where does the buck stop?

RM: With David Cameron, the Health and Safety Executive and Defra (Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs) . A ‘Letter from America’ was sent from nearly 60 million US citizens warning Europe not to authorise GM crops and Roundup because of the disastrous effects on human health and biodiversity. Wales and Scotland took that advice. David Cameron received it on 11 November 2014, but he and Defra ignored it on behalf of England and kept it secret from the public. Cameron also appointed Michael Pragnell Founder of Syngenta to be Chairman of Cancer Research UK, which I’ve written about. 

The HSE refused to ask the Council to stop spraying GBH on our reserve because it was ‘still legal’. The European Commission and the European Food Safety Authority ignored the Letter from America too and kept on authorising GM crops for feed and food in the EU.

Of course, there are many others who should be held responsible too, such as Bernhard Url, chief executive of EFSA, and the recently retired Chief Medical Officer for England, Dame Sally Davies.

CT: How do you feel about the destruction of your reserve, the pesticides issue, the state of nature and those officials who have effectively ignored much of what you have said to them? Disappointed? Frustrated?

RM: Those are such inadequate words to express my feelings. I am devastated about the global losses of biodiversity and I weep for our reserve. Sometimes, I dream that it is all reversible, but I know it is not. I read books about nature as ‘comfort food’. I feel sorry for the children who may never see a butterfly or a bumblebee. Indeed, I am a bit disappointed about the lack of support I have had from certain environmental groups and media outlets that report on environmental issues. I would like the mainstream media to acknowledge the role of the pesticides industry, but I don’t suppose they ever will.

However, I have gained some satisfaction from receiving expressions of gratitude and praise via the academia.edu site where my work is archived. And at least Jon Snow (Channel 4 broadcast journalist in the UK) has revealed the chief cause of losses of biodiversity to be poisoning the land, not global warming.

How do I feel? Maybe ‘resigned’ would be the right word to use.

All of Rosemary Mason’s work can be accessed here

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Yesterday morning, President Trump announced the death of Abu Bakr Al- Baghdadi and three of his children.   

President Trump said Al-Baghdadi, the founder of ISIS, was fleeing U.S. military forces, in a tunnel, and then killed himself by detonating a suicide vest he wore.

In 2004, Al-Baghdadi had been captured by U.S. forces and, for ten months, imprisoned in both Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca.

I visited Camp Bucca in January, 2004 when, still under construction, the Camp was a network of tents, south of Basra, in an isolated, miserable area of Iraq.

Before our three-person Voices delegation entered Iraq, that month, we waited for  visas in Amman, Jordan. While there, two young Palestinian men visited us and described their experiences during six months of imprisonment in Camp Bucca. Recalling the horrible experience, they remembered how fearful they felt, sleeping in sand infested with desert scorpions; they were paraded naked, for showers, in front of U.S. military women and told to bark like a dog or say “I love George Bush”  before their empty bowls would be filled with food. Unable to communicate with anyone outside the prison, they could only hope for release when their turn finally came to appear before a three-person Tribunal.

Five of their friends were still in the prison. They begged us to visit these friends and plead for their release. All of them were Palestinians studying for professional degrees in Baghdad. Reluctant to lose their chances of eventually graduating, they took a risk and remained in Baghdad throughout the 2003 Shock and Awe bombing. U.S. marines arrived at their dormitory on Baghdad’s Haifa Street and systematically rounded up students with foreign IDs. They were tagged as TCNs, “Third Country Nationals,” and herded off to various prisons.

In Baghdad, our friends in the Christian Peacemaker Teams had already developed a data base of names and prison numbers to help Iraqis discover the whereabouts of missing relatives. They found the prison numbers for two of the young men we were asked to visit and advised us to ask for Major Garrity, a U.S. military officer who was in charge of Camp Bucca.

We traveled to the southernmost town in Iraq, Umm Qasr, and sat on a weathered picnic table outside of Camp Bucca, awaiting Major Garrity’s decision. Prospects were bleak since we learned, upon arrival, that we’d come after visiting hours and the next day to visit was three days later. There was no shade, the sand was coated with black grease, and we constantly spat small black flies out of our mouths. Camp Bucca was one of the most hellish spots I’ve ever encountered. Yet we felt quite grateful when word arrived that Major Garrity had approved our visit.

A military pick-up truck drove us across an expanse of sand, and soon we were witnessing a tearful, tender embrace between one of the prisoners and his brother, a dentist from Baghdad, who had accompanied us. With no prompting, the prisoners, all in their twenties, corroborated the grievances their previously released friends expressed. They spoke of loneliness, monotony, humiliation and the fearful uncertainty prisoners face when held without charge by a hostile power with no evident plans to release them. They were, however, relieved to know we could tell their relatives we had met with them. Later, Major Garrity said the outlook for them being released wasn’t very positive. “Be glad they’re here with us and not in Baghdad,” she said, giving us a knowing look. “We give them food, clothes and shelter here. Be glad that they’re not in Baghdad.” Later, in May of 2004, CNN released pictures from the Abu Ghraib prison. We began to understand what she meant.

The November 3, 2005 issue of the New York Review of Books quoted three officers, two of them non-commissioned, stationed with the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Mercury in Iraq.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, they described in multiple interviews with Human Rights Watch how their battalion in 2003-2004 routinely used physical and mental torture as a means of intelligence gathering and for stress relief… Detainees in Iraq were consistently referred to as PUCs. The torture of detainees reportedly was so widespread and accepted that it became a means of stress relief, where soldiers would go to the PUC tent on their off-hours to “f**k a PUC” or “smoke a PUC.” “F**king a PUC” referred to beating a detainee, while “smoking a PUC” referred to forced physical exertion sometimes to the point of unconsciousness.

“Smoking” was not limited to stress relief but was central to the interrogation system employed by the 82nd Airborne Division at FOB Mercury. Officers and NCOs from the Military Intelligence unit would direct guards to “smoke” the detainees prior to an interrogation, and would direct that certain detainees were not to receive sleep, water, or food beyond crackers. Directed “smoking” would last for the twelve to twenty-four hours prior to an interrogation. As one soldier put it: “[The military intelligence officer] said he wanted the PUCs so fatigued, so smoked, so demoralized that they want to cooperate.

A sergeant told Human Rights Watch, “If he’s a good guy, you know, now he’s a bad guy because of the way we treated him.”

The violence that brought the Islamic State into being has a long history.

In numerous trips to Iraq from 1996 to 2003, our Voices delegation members grew to understand the unbearable weariness and suffering of Iraqi families eking out an uncertain existence under punishing economic sanctions. Between the wars, the death toll in children’s lives alone, from externally imposed economic collapse and from the blockade of food, medicine, water purification supplies and other essentials of survival, was estimated by the U.N. at 5,000 children a month, an estimate accepted without question by U.S. officials.

U.S. assaults, from Desert Storm (1991) to Shock and Awe (2003) — achieved through aerial bombings, children’s forced starvation, use of depleted uranium and white phosphorous, through bullet fire, night raids, blockaded medicines, emptied reservoirs and downed power lines, through abandoned state industries and cities left to dissolve in paroxysms of ethnic cleansing — have all been one continuous war. Along with the abuses of prisoners in places like Camp Bucca, FOB Mercury, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo, U.S. warfare predictably led to the buildup of ISIS and Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi’s commitment to “an eye for an eye.”

Asked, in 2016, to talk about his favorite passage in the Bible, President Trump said “eye for an eye.” He didn’t seem to realize that Jesus rejected this teaching.

“But I say unto you,” Jesus said, “love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you.”

Rather than urge retaliation, Jesus spoke of dignified non-resistance through winning over the opponent.

We need not choose ignorance, or the hatred that lets us be herded in fear. We can instead seek to pay reparations for suffering caused through our wars. We can work to abolish war, mourn the deaths of Al-Baghdadi’s children and question how conditions inside U.S. military camps, in Iraq, led to the extremism of Al-Baghdadi and his ISIS followers.

Picture: Video stills (cropped) of Abu Bakr al-Bagdhadi and of a soldier torturing a prisoner at Abu Ghraib

Kathy Kelly ([email protected]) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org).

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Brexit – The Cold Hard Truth Emerges

October 29th, 2019 by True Publica

Brexit has turned out to be some sort of quasi-crusade for the radical right and their acolytes in the form of buccaneering Brexiteers and swashbuckling ‘Spartans.’ The truth about Brexit is really quite simple when boiled down. After all the bubbling water has turned into steam its real ingredients are eventually revealed. And what has been revealed is nothing but a sour and bitter aftertaste once we’ve taken our first helping. A sort of trade deal has been thrashed out – but not with our European neighbours, but with the American’s.

The withdrawal agreement with the EU agreed by Boris Johnson is worse than Theresa May’s deal that was rejected three times. This is how disaster capitalism works. Grinding down the populace and then offering something to end the pain is its modus operandi. And so it is – we have a worse deal than the original bad deal.

For example – the EU customs arrangements within the new Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB) are allowed to be routinely updated. That bit explains (in Para 23) that “any such updates will be able to take effect without the need for further domestic legislation.” Little things like that leave the door wide open to agreeing to all sorts of things later without debate.

The DUP is, despite its objection is actually incandescent with fury that Johnson’s deal effectively turns Northern Ireland into an EU colony. Strange how the buccaneering Brexiters and their Spartans are completely silent about how the PM is selling Britain into vassalage now that the truth is emerging. And this vassalage is a double-edged sword which will eventually bleed Britain for years.

Leaving aside the trade deal Britain will end up with when it has finally left the biggest trading bloc in the world – it will have already done a deal with America.

Take just one example of what is going to happen in dealing with the USA. The investigation by Channel4’s current affairs programme ‘Dispatches‘ on the the Us/UK trade deal can be boiled down to this. It found that no less than six secret meetings have taken place between senior civil servants and representatives of US pharmaceutical firms where the price the NHS pays for its drugs has been discussed. US drug firms have been given direct access to British trade negotiators and senior British officials and then not declared those meetings. An agreement has been reached that drug pricing caps to American drug companies will be lifted. The fact that US drug companies will be able to increase prices and hold the health of the nation up to ransom as they do in the USA is a fact we should all be aware of. This one example should be taken note of.

If any government in Britain allows the NHS to become beholden to American drug companies – literally anything you can think of is up for grabs. The NHS in Britain is sacrosanct and desecrating its function to the society it serves for profit is a cardinal sin. If there is one thing that riles the citizenry of Britain – its screwing with the NHS. There won’t just be protests – riots will follow. If nothing else, remainers or leavers – both will fight for the NHS. And yet – the government will waive in such desecrations anyway.

How did Boros Johnson get this through? He hasn’t yet. But his plan will unfold when the general election result has been announced. Let’s assume Johnson wins with a workable majority. He has granted himself something known as “Henry VIII powers.”. They’re named after Henry VIII because he was the first person in Britain to use them. What they did was let him change laws without passing new ones. And with Brexit – Johnson has granted nineteen of these laws. Hail – Ceasar.

In essence – a Henry VIII power enables a minister to amend an Act of Parliament without needing another Act of Parliament. Normally this is done by issuing regulations. This is more than just controversial as it reduces the government’s accountability to Parliament. In other words – it gives the government executive powers over the scrutiny of Parliament (representative democracy). While MPs can amend Acts, they can’t do that to regulations.

One of these Henry VIII powers allows the government to change the WAB – any part of it. This has enraged the DUP as they can see what’s coming in Clause 21 of the WAB. The government has given itself powers to even scrap the independent monitoring body whose only role is to protect the rights of EU citizens. Another one of those powers says – that a minister may make regulations that he or she “considers appropriate.”

This overly fluffed up 102-page document published alongside the Withdrawal Agreement Bill effectively hands unprecedented powers to the government that no peace-time government has ever had in Britain. Imagine that in the hands of people like Dominic Cummings and Jacob Rees-Mogg, let alone Boris Johnson. This is what Donald Trump has wet dreams about – not being accountable to congress.

Johnson is ducking and diving and avoiding scrutiny of any type – be it in parliament, select committees or even TV broadcast interviews. He knows a set of quick-fire questions will force another pack of lies on the question of these powers.

Listen carefully to this interview with ex Bank of England boss Mervyn King. He clearly says there is a stark reality behind Brexit – that the only deal required to get freedom from the regulation of others like the EU is a hard no-deal Brexit. And so Boris Johnson is aiming to achieve that by forcing an election. Corbyn knows it’s game over if he loses. He and his followers will be the victim of an ensuing purge – and workers rights will be sold down a river.

Jim Pickard at the FT has picked over the WAB and its associated documents and concludes this – “The British government is planning to diverge from the EU on regulation and workers’ rights after Brexit, despite its pledge to maintain a “level playing field” in prime minister Boris Johnson’s deal.” Pickard went further to describe this as a “significant divergence‘ where the government has no intention of sticking to its deal with the EU and that the leaked government document also said the drafting of workers’ rights and environmental protection commitments “leaves room for interpretation.” When Johnson announced that he is committed to “the highest possible standards” within the WAB – it’s no exaggeration to say he’s lying – again.

A government spokesperson said the UK government “has no intention of lowering the standards of workers’ rights or environmental protection after we leave the EU”. When Jenny Chapman, Labour’s shadow Brexit minister got sight of the leaked documents she said – “These documents confirm our worst fears. Boris Johnson’s Brexit is a blueprint for a deregulated economy, which will see vital rights and protections torn up.”

The sleight of hand here is not just Henry VIII powers and other trickery – under  Johnson’s deal, the legally binding “level playing field” provisions they keep boasting about that remain in the exit treaty are almost exclusively limited to Northern Ireland – but not to the rest of the UK.

So the cold hard truth about Brexit is this. There is only one Brexit as Mervyn King says – a hard-Brexit. And you can wrap it up in all sorts of fluffy comforting soundbites and official documentation dripping with hot wax seals and triumphant photoshoots. The government is going to the polls to extend its powers to the point of authoritarianism in order that it can bypass representative democracy and do as it pleases. Its legacy will be to force a deregulation festival upon Britain if it wins.

All those over the age of 65 who voted for Brexit should take note. You had the benefit of the decades-long fight that gave you working rights, pension rights, maternity rights and more – along with a growing post-war economy that enriched your world beyond the wildest dreams of your forebearers – and have dealt a massive body blow to your children and their children to deny them these things. It is pure fabrication to think anything else. If Brexit was so good why would the government need to pass laws to give it the power to bypass representative democracy? This is what Brexit really is – about executive power.

Exploitative corporate power kept in check by the political strength of post-war social democracy is about to be unchecked. It’s a coup d’etat. The Singapore Scenario we wrote about is soon to become a truth and it is a very ugly looking truth if you’re on the wrong side – and 90% of the population is on the wrong side.

And one last thought for the swashbuckling Brexiteers and their fellow travellers. When a foreign country sits down with the UK and wants to thrash out a trade deal – their first question will be – who are they dealing with. We won’t even be able to answer that. Scotland has just agreed to vote with this government for a general election but only because it wants an independence referendum of its own. For the following few years, trade negotiators will not know if Scotland (40% of UK land, 60% of UK fishing, and huge new oil find) will end up being an EU member state or when. Northern Ireland is now asking itself the same question – and there are even murmurings that Wales is considering it.

It took an American comedian to tell us what’s really happening in America –

They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you, sooner or later, ’cause they own this fucking place. It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club. And by the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe.” 

George Carlin, bless his soul – is right on the button with these immortal words.

If Boris Johnson wins this election – it’s because we’ve all been conned and you’re about to find out what not being in his club is like.

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Trump Flip-Flops on Syria Withdrawal. Again.

October 29th, 2019 by Rep. Ron Paul

President Trump is reversing his foreign policy decisions so quickly these days that it almost seems like he overturns himself before making the decision in the first place. Last week he was very clear that the US was pulling its troops out of Syria. “Bringing soldiers home,” he said. “Let someone else fight over this long-bloodstained sand.”

But then he overturned himself later in the same speech. He said:

“We’ve secured the oil and therefore a small number of US troops will remain in the area where they have the oil. And we’re going to be protecting it and we’ll be deciding what we’re going to do with it in the future.”

Where does President Trump think he gets the legal or moral authority to send US troops to illegally occupy foreign territory and determine what that foreign country can or cannot do with its resources? After eight years of Obama’s disastrous “Assad must go” policy, during which the US provided weapons and training to radicals and terrorists with a half million people killed as a result, President Trump had the opportunity to finally close that dark chapter of US foreign policy so the Syrian people could rebuild their country.

Instead he sat down on Thursday with Senator Lindsey Graham, who has been wrong in every foreign policy position he’s ever taken, and decided to follow Graham’s advice to take Syria’s oil. Even though Trump himself has said many times that ISIS is 100 percent defeated, he claims we must take Syria’s oil to keep it from ISIS.

The real reason the neocons want the US military to occupy Syria’s oil fields is they are still convinced they can overthrow Assad by carving out eastern Syria for the Kurds. They don’t want to keep the oil from ISIS, they want to keep it from the Syrian government. They don’t want the oil revenue to be used to help rebuild the country because they still want to make life more unbearable for the population through sanctions so they will overthrow Assad. They don’t care how many innocent civilians die.

So instead of bringing the troops home like he promised, President Trump has allowed himself to be convinced to actually expand the US presence in eastern Syria! Instead of ending a foolish mission, he’s giving them an even more foolish mission – and sending in more troops and weapons. Instead of removing the approximately 200 troops in that region as promised, Trump is going to add more troops to equal about a thousand. He’s also sending in tanks and other armored vehicles, according to the Pentagon.

If President Trump believes following neocon advice on Syria is going to produce results different than the past eight years of following neocon advice on Syria, he’s naïve or worse. This new mission is going to cost tens of millions of dollars per month and will only serve to inspire the next generation of radicals. Trump is right that the people of the region, including Russia, Iran, Syria, and Turkey have all the incentive to keep ISIS at bay. So why does he fold like a cheap suit every time the neocons strong-arm him into another dumb foreign policy position?

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Our government is being led by fools who do not understand economics or science and who ignore that the earth burns and our air is toxic and all the while people are dying. And dying in record numbers. It should not be this way. But actually it is getting worse.

Despite the fact that we are living in a climate emergency, despite the fact that California is on fire, and despite the fact that thousands are dying of toxic dirty air, the Denier in Chief, Donald Trump, has instructed his administration to pull the US out of the Paris Climate agreement as soon as possible.

This week, Trump confirmed what we have long known he would do. The US will definitely withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, President Trump said.

But Trump is ignoring the science and the facts that his policies are making people sick. The Washington Post reported this week new research from Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University: “Air pollution worsened in the United States in 2017 and 2018, new data shows, a reversal after years of sustained improvement with significant implications for public health.”

Its not rocket science that clean air regulations give you clean air, and a roll back of regulations allows the polluters to pollute. It is not rocket science that renewables give you cleaner air; fossil fuels give you dirty air, especially those talked about in the study, known as small particulates that lodge in your lungs, known as PM2.5s. Emissions of these have risen over five per cent since 2016.

In 2018 alone, the Post remarks, “eroding air quality was linked to nearly 10,000 additional deaths in the U.S. relative to the 2016 benchmark, the year in which small-particle pollution reached a two-decade low, according to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University.

Another reason in the rise of PM2.5s is wildfires, linked to our warming world. As the Post notes: “Big fires, particularly in California in 2018, played a role in driving up total national air pollution.”

And now California burns again. What is known as the Kincade Fire, which started on Wednesday in California’s Sonoma County, one of the country’s best known wine regions, has now spread to 16,000 acres, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The BBC adds that some 40,000 people have been evacuated.

As Ecowatch adds: “Windy, dry weather in Northern California had already prompted utility company Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) to shut off power to around 27,830 customers in Sonoma County Wednesday and 178,000 statewide. The outages meant that many people had to evacuate their homes in darkness.”

As people flee in the dark, homes are being destroyed: “Aerial footage of the Kincade fire showed homes engulfed in flames propelled by high winds that could become even stronger in the coming days,” notes the Times.

Things could get worse. According to the California Fire Service, only 5 percent of the blaze is currently contained.

The smoke from the fire is predicted to spread south over the Bay area later today, and red flag warnings and potential power shut offs will continue through the weekend.

But the Kincade Fire isn’t the only place where California burns. In Los Angeles County, the fast-moving Tick Fire has incinerated 5,000 acres with some 50,000 people evacuated. In total there are some 600 wildfires raging in the county, according to a New York Times article, that put the fires on its front-page today.

And things will get worse as climate change takes hold. Earlier this week, academic Naomi Oreskes and economist Nicholas Stern, argued in the New York Times, in an article entitled: “Climate Change Will Cost Us Even More Than We Think”, that “In a worst-case scenario, climate impacts could set off a feedback loop in which climate change leads to economic losses, which lead to social and political disruption, which undermines both democracy and our capacity to prevent further climate damage.”

Indeed, back in May this year, David Wallace-Wells, wrote an article in the New York Magazine, entitled: “Los Angeles Fire Season Is Beginning Again. And It Will Never End.” His article paints an apocalyptic picture of never ending fire and tragedy. Just now reporter Amy Westervelt, tweeted:

The fire-fighters understand. The scientists understand. The majority of the public understand. Journalists understand and are increasingly reporting climate change with the urgency it deserves, like the New York Times today. But Trump doesn’t even understand basic economics and science and why our world is on fire. He doesn’t understand the crucial sentence that “climate impacts could set off a feedback loop in which climate change leads to economic losses.”

Trump’s actions may make Big Oil Executives richer in the short term, but they make all of us poorer in the long-term. In the meantime, the U.S. remains a land on fire, a land that cannot breathe. And a land being led by a fossil fool.

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O Califa, filme CIA entre a ficção e a realidade

October 29th, 2019 by Manlio Dinucci

“Foi como assistir a um filme”, disse o Presidente Trump, depois de testemunhar a eliminação de Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, o Califa, Chefe do ISIS, transmitido na Situation Room da Casa Branca. Aqui, em 2011, o Presidente Obama assistia à eliminação do então inimigo número um, Osama Bin Laden, Chefe da Al Qaeda. O mesmo argumento: os serviços secretos dos EUA tinham localizado,há muito tempo, o inimigo; este não é capturado, mas eliminado: Bin Laden é morto; al Baghdadi suicida-se ou é “suicidado”; o corpo desaparece: o de Bin Laden é sepultado no mar,os restos de al Baghdadi, desintegrados pelo cinto de explosivos,também esses são espalhados no mar. O mesmo produtor do filme: a Comunidade de Inteligência, formada por 17 organizações federais. Além da CIA (Agência Central de Inteligência), existe a DIA (Agência de Inteligência de Defesa), mas cada sector das Forças Armadas, bem como o Departamento de Estado e o Departamento de Segurança Interna, têm o seu próprio serviço secreto.

Para as acções militares, a Comunidade de Inteligência usa o Comando das Forças Especiais, instalado em, pelo menos, 75 países, cuja missão oficial compreende, além da “acção directa para eliminar ou capturar inimigos”, a “guerra não convencional conduzida por forças externas, treinadas e organizadas pelo Comando “. É, exactamente, o que começou na Síria, em 2011, no mesmo ano em que a guerra USA/NATO destrói a Líbia. Demonstram-no as provas documentadas, já publicadas em ‘il manifesto’.

Por exemplo, em Março de 2013, o New York Times publicou uma pesquisa detalhada sobre a rede da CIA, através da qual chegam à Turquia e à Jordânia, com o financiamento da Arábia Saudita e de outras monarquias do Golfo, rios de armas para os militantes islâmicos treinados pelo Comando de Forças Especiais USA, antes de serem infiltradas na Síria.

Em Maio de 2013, um mês após ter fundado o ISIS, al Baghdadi, encontra na Síria uma delegação do Senado dos Estados Unidos chefiada por John McCain na Síria, como mostra a documentação fotográfica.

Em Maio de 2015, um documento do Pentágono datado de 12 de Agosto de 2012 é desclassificado pela Judicial Watch, no qual se afirma que há “a possibilidade de estabelecer um principado salafita na Síria oriental, e é exactamente o que os países ocidentais desejam, os Estados do Golfo e a Turquia, que apoiam a oposição”.

Em Julho de 2016, é desclassificado pelo Wikileaks um email de 2012 no qual a Secretária de Estado, Hillary Clinton, escreve que, dada a relação Irão-Síria, “a destituição de Assad constituiria um imenso benefício para Israel, diminuindo o medo de perder o monopólio nuclear.”  Isso explica por que motivo, não obstante os EUA e os seus aliados iniciarem, em 2014, a campanha militar contra o ISIS, as forças do ISIS podem avançar sem perturbações em espaços abertos, com longas colunas de veículos armados.

A intervenção militar russa em 2015, de apoio às forças de Damasco, reverte o destino do conflito. O objectivo estratégico de Moscovo é impedir a demolição do estado sírio, que provocaria um caos do tipo líbio, vantajoso para os USA e para a NATO, para atacar o Irão e cercar a Rússia.

Os Estados Unidos, irracionais, continuam a jogar a cartada da fragmentação da Síria, apoiando os independentistas curdos e depois abandonando-os para não perder a Turquia, posto avançado da NATO na região.

Neste contexto, compreende-se por que al Baghdadi, como Bin Laden (anteriormente aliado dos USA contra a Rússia, na guerra do Afeganistão), não podia ser capturado para ser processado publicamente, mas que devia desaparecer fisicamente para fazer desaparecer as provas do seu verdadeiro papel na estratégia USA. Por isso, a Trump agradou tanto o filme com um final feliz.

Manlio Dinucci

Artigo original em italiano :

Il Califfo, film Cia tra fiction e realtà

Tradução por Maria Luisa Vasconcelos

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Il Califfo, film Cia tra fiction e realtà

October 29th, 2019 by Manlio Dinucci

«È stato come guardare un film», ha detto il presidente Trump  dopo aver assistito alla eliminazione di Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, il Califfo capo dell’Isis, trasmessa nella Situation Room della Casa Bianca. Qui, nel 2011, il presidente Obama assisteva alla eliminazione dell’allora nemico numero uno,  Osama Bin Laden, capo di Al Qaeda. Stessa sceneggiatura: i servizi segreti Usa avevano da tempo localizzato il nemico; questi non viene catturato ma eliminato: Bin Laden è ucciso, al Baghdadi si suicida o è «suicidato»; il corpo sparisce: quello di Bin Laden sepolto in mare, quello di al Baghdadi disintegrato dalla cintura esplosiva. Stessa casa produttrice del film: la Comunità di intelligence, formata da 17 organizzazioni federali. Oltre alla Cia (Agenzia centrale di intelligence) vi è la Dia (Agenzia di intelligence della Difesa), ma ogni settore delle Forze armate, così come il Dipartimento di stato e quello della Sicurezza della patria, ha un proprio servizio segreto.

Per le azioni militari la Comunità di intelligence  usa il Comando delle forze speciali, dispiegate in almeno 75 paesi, la cui  missione ufficiale comprende, oltre alla «azione diretta per eliminare o catturare nemici», la «guerra non-convenzionale condotta da forze esterne, addestrate e organizzate dal Comando». È esattamente quella che viene avviata in Siria nel 2011, lo stesso anno in cui la guerra Usa/Nato demolisce la Libia. Lo dimostrano documentate prove, già pubblicate sul manifesto.

Ad esempio, nel marzo 2013  il New York Times pubblica una dettagliata inchiesta sulla rete Cia attraverso cui arrivano in Turchia e Giordania, con il finanziamento di Arabia Saudita e altre monarchie del Golfo, fiumi di armi per i militanti islamici addestrati dal Comando delle forze speciali Usa prima di essere infiltrati in Siria.

Nel maggio 2013, un mese dopo aver fondato l’Isis, al Baghdadi incontra in Siria una delegazione del Senato degli Stati uniti capeggiata da John McCain, come risulta da documentazione fotografica.

Nel maggio 2015 viene desecretato da Judicial Watch un documento del Pentagono, datato 12 agosto 2012, in cui si afferma che c’è «la possibilità di stabilire un principato salafita nella Siria orientale, e ciò è esattamente ciò che vogliono i paesi occidentali, gli stati del Golfo e la Turchia che sostengono l’opposizione».

Nel luglio 2016 viene desecretata da Wikileaks una mail del 2012 in cui la segretaria di stato Hillary Clinton scrive che, data la relazione Iran-Siria, «il rovesciamento di Assad costituirebbe un immenso beneficio per Israele, facendo diminuire il suo timore di perdere il monopolio nucleare». Ciò spiega perché, nonostante gli Usa e i loro alleati lancino nel 2014 la campagna militare contro l’Isis, le forze dell’Isis possono avanzare indisturbate in spazi aperti con lunghe colonne di automezzi armati.

L’intervento militare russo nel 2015, a sostegno delle forze di Damasco, rovescia le sorti del conflitto. Scopo strategico di Mosca è impedire la demolizione dello Stato siriano, che provocherebbe un caos tipo quello libico, sfruttabile da Usa e Nato per attaccare l’Iran e accerchiare la Russia.

Gli Stati uniti, spiazzati, continuano a giocare la carta della frammentazione della Siria, sostenendo gli indipendentisti curdi, per poi abbandonarli per non perdere la Turchia, avamposto Nato nella regione.

Su questo sfondo si capisce perché al Baghdadi, come Bin Laden (già alleato Usa contro la Russia nella guerra afghana), non poteva essere catturato per essere pubblicamente processato, ma doveva fisicamente sparire per far sparire le prove del suo reale ruolo nella strategia Usa. Per questo a Trump è piaciuto tanto il film a lieto fine.

Manlio Dinucci

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Recently, polls have outlined that up to 66% of Russians “want to go back to the USSR”, almost 30 years after its disintegration. Those outside of Russia may find such realities surprising – especially considering that Vladimir Putin’s approval ratings have, at separate times this decade, been ranked among the highest in the world – though his popularity figures have noticeably decreased during the past year, due to unpopular domestic policies.

Under president Putin, Russia has re-emerged on the international stage such as in Syria, and also by incorporating the Crimea to its territory in 2014; while Moscow reacts to ongoing NATO manoeuvres and flagrant American government interference in neighbouring Ukraine.

Yet one of the chief reasons behind a continued nostalgia for the Soviet Union, is due to the disastrous Western-designed neoliberal “reforms”, first introduced in Russia during the early 1990s.

The ideology of neoliberalism, which began to take off from the 1970s, has been a central factor behind the environmental decline witnessed around the globe, whose beginnings can be traced to about the year 1950, with the arrival of the Anthropocene – the current epoch, when humans became the driving force impacting planetary climactic conditions and life on earth, also resulting in the sixth mass extinction.

The Axis powers’ defeat in World War II was supposed to herald a bright new dawn for humanity, in which the horrors of the previous generation would be left behind. However, our fortunes could hardly have taken a worse turn. No further world wars have occurred, but the indisputable fact is that the planet has since become much more dangerous – first with the completely unnecessary initiation of the nuclear age from 6 August 1945.

Threat of nuclear war is now rivalled by environmental loss and climate change. The neoliberal era which ravaged Russian society, along with other nations past and present, has made it far more difficult to tackle these challenges. Humankind is in effect caught in a vice grips, and which will eventually impact upon all humans, rich and poor.

Principles underlining neoliberalism are, as intended from the outset, eroding of democratic foundations, attacks on social solidarity, reducing the public’s influence in determining policy, accumulating wealth in a few pockets – and other strategies like bank bailouts and austerity for the masses.

In the meantime, nuclear arsenals are “upgraded” while carbon emissions are at a record high. Government attempts to tackle climate change have been dismal to date, particularly from those countries producing the largest emissions: China, America, India and Russia, four states which posted growing carbon levels for 2018. The largest emitter, China, has experienced for the first six months of 2019 another 4% emission increase.

Turning our attention to Russia, following the Soviet collapse, American politicians were overtly interfering in the country’s affairs. In the build-up to the 1996 Russian presidential elections, US leader Bill Clinton was supporting his favourite for a second term, incumbent Boris Yeltsin.

On 21 April 1996, less than two months before Russia’s populace was due to vote, president Clinton said while dining in the Kremlin that, “So I’ve been trying to find a way to say to the Russian people ‘this election will have consequences’, and we are clear about what it is we support”. In other words, the Russian electorate had better vote the right way.

Yeltsin subsequently won a second stint in office, beating the Communist Party candidate, Gennady Zyuganov, with a margin of 54% to 40%. By the time Yeltsin resigned in late 1999, dogged by corruption allegations and having failed to make good on his promises, some forecasts put his approval ratings at as low as 2%.

The Clinton administration’s interference in the 1996 Russian presidential elections are, undoubtedly, much more serious than those charges levelled at Moscow, relating to the 2016 US presidential vote.

There were claims too that Clinton was involved in employing American consultants to advise Yeltsin’s campaign team; and that the Clinton administration’s role in backing an IMF loan, for Yeltsin’s Russia, was an example of deliberate foreign electoral intervention. The $10 billion IMF deal, agreed in February 1996, was publicly supported by Clinton himself. Little of this receives mention in establishment commentary linking the Kremlin to Donald Trump’s election victory.

Another crucial factor behind a yearning for the Soviet years, has been a decline in the quality of Russia’s health service over the past generation. Between 1991 and 1994 alone, average life expectancy in Russia dropped by five years, and come the mid-1990s Russian men were living for just 57 years. A catastrophe had gripped the society.

Despite global scientific advancements made in the field of health, average Russian citizens today are living just five years longer than in 1960 (71 years compared to 66 years). In America, over the same six decade time span, US citizens are now experiencing a lifespan on average 10 years greater.

A 2017 study by the Lancet, one of the most prestigious medical journals, outlined that Russia’s populace had “seen the social safety net provided by the Soviet system abruptly disintegrate, inequities grow sharply, and elderly, sick, and disabled people become left behind while the country painfully and erratically transitioned from a planned economy to capitalism”.

The Lancet author, experienced French physician Michel Kazatchkine, notes that “Another reason for the lingering nostalgia is the persistent perception that health care should be provided by the central government, with little or no responsibility on the part of the individual”. Under the Soviet institution, health care enjoyed “universal coverage, accessible to everyone, even in the most remote parts of the country”.

The death rate in Russia shot up in the immediate years following Soviet demise, and the figures “are unprecedented in a modern industrialised country in peacetime”, according to the BMJ (British Medical Journal), one of the longest-running medical periodicals in the world. Between the period of 1992 to 2001, up to three million Russians died prematurely in middle age.

Yet, it may be the case too, that former Soviet citizens are reminiscing partly through a vision of rose-tinted glasses. While by 1969, the Russian lifespan was just below that of an American, from 1970 life expectancy levels in Soviet Russia remained almost identical up to the 1991 collapse.

Much of the cause behind this was due to the stagnation which occurred under president Leonid Brezhnev – who also remained in power long after his health had deteriorated, before dying in office on 10 November 1982. The Lancet report identifies that the Russian health system “rapidly deteriorated in the 1970s” because of “Reduced funding from the central government and increasing bureaucratic and economic inefficiencies”.

Education standards in Russia likewise appreciably declined in quality, as neoliberal policies were ushered in. With education under the Soviets once comprising a highly centralised government-managed structure, decentralisation of education continued apace from 1991; while vested interest groups began flocking in order to profit from unequal education distribution.

Joseph Zajda, an education and globalisation expert, noted that the assaults upon Russian education “resulted in a new dimension of educational inequality between rich and poor regions, municipalities and cities” and that “Russian policy makers had failed to understand that globalisation was an ideologically driven social change”.

To the south of Russia in neighbouring China, similar regressions in education and health standards have been witnessed during the post-Maoist years – as the Chinese state drifted towards a capitalist-style model following the death of Mao Zedong in September 1976.

It should first be mentioned that currently there are many hundreds of thousands of millionaires in China (4.4 million), and present too are almost 500 billionaires in the country. This brief insight portrays a China that hardly consists of a communist or socialist state, and such pretensions were tacitly abandoned at least three decades ago. China has now surpassed America in numbers pertaining to the world’s richest people.

On a per capita basis (per person) America is, however, still far clear in having a wealthy top brass, with a population of about 330 million, by comparison to China’s 1.4 billion.

Still, Mao Zedong must be turning over in his grave somewhat. He was unable to implement a foundation to prevent a decisive move towards “market reforms”, and which has produced growing levels of inequity in China, not to mention rising privatisation and deregulation.

Detailed, in depth and conservative estimates produced by researchers show that inequality rates in China are “now approaching a level that is almost comparable to the USA”. Modern China is also more unequal “than that of European countries”.

From 1978 to 2015, the level of private wealth in China increased four times over. In 1978, the bottom 50% of Chinese earners had about the same income share as the top 10%. Not equitable even then. By 2015, the bottom half in Chinese society was earning almost three times less than the elite. For the 40% bulk in the middle, their share of national income has actually stagnated in the post-Mao era.

Overall, a Chinese citizen is earning greater wages than 40 years ago, but China is still a poor country – a statement which may surprise those eulogising, or warning about, the purportedly fabulous Chinese economy. The explosion in China’s economic figures is in fact highly misleading. Much of that wealth has accumulated in the top 10%, and increasingly the top 1%, of the nation’s populace.

This receives scarce focus in the many reports on China’s rocketing Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Utilising GDP results to estimate a country’s living state is a deeply flawed concept, and an ideological one, as GDP is concerned with “goods” and “services”, not people. There is no reference at all to the population in such accounts, what sort of wages they are earning, how long they are living, what shape the health and education sectors are in.

To gain a perspective of Chinese societal conditions, it can be important to analyse formats like the Human Development Index (HDI) – which measures per person income, life expectancy, etc. Most recent Human Development Index figures, from 2017, places China in 86th position; below such countries as Armenia (83rd), Azerbaijan (80th), Brazil (79th), Mexico (74th) and Cuba (73rd).

Throughout this decade, readers have been informed that China has “the world’s second largest economy”, and which could soon overtake America. We can cut through the illusions, and examine cold facts on the ground; such as pertaining to Gross National Income (GNI) per capita, which covers a broader area and relates to the “residents of a country”.

According to 2017 HDI figures, the average Chinese citizen earns per annum $15,270, compared to a yearly salary for a typical American of $54,941, more than three times as much. The average Chinese wage per year is also less, for example, than in Thailand ($15,516), Azerbaijan ($15,600), Mexico ($16,944) and Iran ($19,130). These figures surely dismantle much of the myth regarding China’s “economic miracle”.

In recent decades, hundreds of millions in China have been lifted from absolute grinding poverty; nonetheless, a large proportion of China’s population remains poor, especially when compared to living standards in privileged Western countries.

It may be interesting to compare health and education standards per capita between two communist nations: One largely communist in name only (China), and the other (Cuba) which may well be the only communist state in reality remaining on earth.

A Chinese person today lives on average for 76 years, which is less than a Cuban citizen, who enjoys a mean lifespan of almost 80 years. With its long burgeoning “economy”, China has a decidedly inferior health system to Cuba – in spite of the latter being under a decades-long embargo by the most powerful country in history, America.

China’s health care has considerably declined in quality since Mao Zedong’s death over 40 years ago. Indeed, “mortality sharply decreased in China during the Maoist years” as the American political analyst Noam Chomsky wrote but, as he reveals, China endured rising mortality levels “with the initiation of capitalist reforms thirty years ago, and the death rate has since increased”.

Cuba likewise possesses superior education standards to that of China. One statistic is telling from the HDI. The “mean years of schooling” for a child in China totals just shy of eight years altogether. In Cuba, the average youngster enjoys almost 12 years of schooling.

Cuba’s educational system is based on a non-discriminatory and non-fee paying basis, “a free education from the cradle to the grave” – whereas privatisation, fee paying or hidden expenses have crept into Chinese education, inevitably affecting poorer people the most.

The average Cuban receives a notably low annual income, at under $10,000 a year. The reason for this could be the aforementioned and punishing blockade enacted against Cuba. There is no way to tell for certain. Though the Cuban population is far from affluent, inequality was eradicated long ago. By 2004, the Castro government had further eliminated unemployment, drug use, gambling and homelessness, while Cuba has become the only country in the world to achieve sustainable development, according to the Switzerland-based World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). Most of these social ills have plagued Chinese society, along with many other states.

China is, as often reported, rivalling America in GDP terms – but the US is a wealthy state, and a particularly business-run society. Speculation regarding America being ousted by China as the world’s top power any time soon, should be taken with a grain of salt. China’s elite financial muscle might be attempting to match its US counterpart, through such associations as the Beijing-led Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).

This is a concern for Washington, but China also has major domestic problems to deal with: social unrest, a shrinking work force and ageing population, environmental issues, a trade war with the White House, and the fact it is almost surrounded by US military forces seaward.

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Israel’s New Moves to Airbrush the Occupation

October 29th, 2019 by Jonathan Cook

The United Nations’ independent expert on human rights in the Palestinian territories issued a damning verdict last week on what he termed “the longest belligerent occupation in the modern world”.

Michael Lynk, a Canadian law professor, told the UN’s human rights council that only urgent international action could prevent Israel’s 52-year occupation of the West Bank transforming into de facto annexation.

He warned of a recent surge in violence against Palestinians from settlers, assisted by the Israeli army, and a record number of demolitions this year of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem – evidence of the ways Israel is further pressuring Palestinians to leave their lands.

He urged an international boycott of all settlement products as a necessary step to put pressure on Israel to change course. He also called on the UN itself to finally publish – as long promised – a database that it has been compiling since 2016 of Israeli and international companies doing business in the illegal settlements and normalising the occupation.

Israel and its supporters have stymied the release, fearing that such a database would bolster the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign that seeks to end Israel’s impunity.

Lynk sounded the alarm days after Israel’s most venerated judge, Meir Shamgar, died aged 94.

Shamgar was a reminder that the settlers have always been able to rely on the support of public figures from across Israel’s political spectrum. The settlements have always been viewed as a weapon to foil the emergence of a Palestinian state.

Perhaps not surprisingly, most obituaries overlooked the chicanery of Shamgar in building the legal architecture needed to establish the settlements after Israel occupied the Palestinian territories in 1967.

But in a tweeted tribute, Benjamin Netanyahu, the interim prime minister, noted Shamgar’s contribution to “legislation policy in Judea and Samaria”, using the Israeli government’s term for the West Bank.

It was Shamgar who swept aside the prohibition in international law on Israel as an occupying state, transferring its population into the territories. He thereby created a system of apartheid: illegal Jewish settlers enjoyed privileges under Israeli law while the local Palestinian population had to endure oppressive military orders.

Then, by a legal sleight of hand, Shamgar obscured the ugly reality he had inaugurated. He offered all those residing in the West Bank – Jews and Palestinians alike – access to arbitration from Israel’s supreme court.

It was, of course, an occupier’s form of justice – and a policy that treated the occupied territories as ultimately part of Israel, erasing any border. Ever since, the court has been deeply implicated in every war crime associated with the settlement enterprise.

As Israeli lawyer Michael Sfard noted, Shamgar “legalised almost every draconian measure taken by the defence establishment to crush Palestinian political and military organisations”, including detention without trial, house demolitions, land thefts, curfews and much more. All were needed to preserve the settlements.

Shamgar’s legal innovations – endorsing the systematic abuse of Palestinians and the entrenchment of the occupation – are now being expanded by a new generation of jurists.

Their latest proposal has been described as engineering a “revolution” in the occupation regime. It would let the settlers buy as private property the plots of occupied land their illegal homes currently stand on.

Disingenuously, Israeli officials argue that the policy would end “discrimination” against the settlers. An army legal adviser, Tzvi Mintz, noted recently: “A ban on making real-estate deals based on national origin raises a certain discomfort.”

Approving the privatisation of the settlements is a far more significant move than it might sound.

International law states that an occupier can take action in territories under occupation on only two possible grounds: out of military necessity or to benefit the local population. With the settlements obviously harming local Palestinians by depriving them of land and free movement, Israel disguised its first colonies as military installations.

It went on to seize huge swathes of the West Bank as “state lands” – meaning for Jews only – on the pretext of military needs. Civilians were transferred there with the claim that they bolstered Israel’s national security.

That is why no one has contemplated allowing the settlers to own the land they live on – until now. Instead it is awarded by military authorities, who administer the land on behalf of the Israeli state.

That is bad enough. But now defence ministry officials want to upend the definition in international law of the settlements as a war crime. Israel’s thinking is that, once the settlers become the formal owners of the land they were given illegally, they can be treated as the “local population”.

Israel will argue that the settlers are protected under international law just like the Palestinians. That would provide Israel with a legal pretext to annex the West Bank, saying it benefits the “local” settler population.

And by turning more than 600,000 illegal settlers into landowners, Israel can reinvent the occupation as an insoluble puzzle. Palestinians seeking redress from Israel for the settlements will instead have to fight an endless array of separate claims against individual settlers.

This proposal follows recent moves by Israel to legalise many dozens of so-called outposts, built by existing settlements to steal yet more Palestinian land. As well as violating international law, the outposts fall foul of Israeli law and undertakings made under the Oslo accords not to expand the settlements.

All of this is being done in the context of a highly sympathetic administration in Washington that, it is widely assumed, is preparing to approve annexation of the West Bank as part of a long-postponed peace plan.

The current delay has been caused by Netanyahu’s failure narrowly in two general elections this year to win enough seats to form a settler-led government. Israel might now be heading to a third election.

Officials and the settlers are itching to press ahead with formal annexation of nearly two-thirds of the West Bank. Netanyahu promised annexation in the run-up to both elections. Settler leaders, meanwhile, have praised the new army chief of staff, Aviv Kochavi, as sympathetic to their cause.

Expectations have soared among the settlers as a result. Their impatience has fuelled a spike in violence, including a spate of recent attacks on Israeli soldiers sent to protect them as the settlers confront and assault Palestinians beginning the annual olive harvest.

Lynk, the UN’s expert, has warned that the international community needs to act swiftly to stop the occupied territories becoming a permanent Israeli settler state. Sadly, there are few signs that foreign governments are listening.

A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.

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From RussiaGate to UkraineGate: The Impeachment Inquiry

October 29th, 2019 by Renee Parsons

As the Quantum field oversees the disintegration of institutions no longer in service to the public, the Democratic party continues to lose their marbles, perpetuating their own simulated bubble as if they alone are the nation’s most trusted purveyors of truth. 

Since the Mueller Report failed to deliver on the dubious Russiagate accusations, the party of Thomas Jefferson continues to remain in search of another ethical pretense to justify continued partisan turmoil.  In an effort to discredit and/or distract attention from the Barr-Durham and IG investigations, the Dems have come up with an implausible piece of political theatre known as Ukrainegate which has morphed into an impeachment inquiry.    

The Inspector General’s Report, which may soon be ready for release, will address the presentation of fabricated FBI evidence to the FISA Court for permission to initiate a surveillance campaign on Trump Administration personnel.  In addition, the Department of Justice has confirmed that Special Investigator John Durham’s probe into the origin of the FBI’s counter intelligence investigation during the 2016 election has moved from an administrative review into the criminal prosecution realm.  Durham will now be able to actively pursue candidates for possible prosecution. 

The defensive assault from the Democrat hierarchy and its corporate media cohorts can be expected to reach a fevered pitch of manic proportions as both investigations threatened not only their political future in 2020 but perhaps their very existence.       

NBC suggests that the Barr investigation is a ‘mysterious’ review “amid concerns about whether the probe has any legal or factual basiswhile the NY Times continues to cast doubt that the investigation has a legitimate basis implying that AG Barr is attempting to “deliver a political victory for President Trump.”   The Times misleads its readers with

Trump has repeatedly attacked the Russia investigation, portraying it as a hoax and illegal even months after the special counsel closed it.”

when in fact, it was the Russiagate collusion allegations that Trump referred to as a hoax, rather than the Mueller investigation per se.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va), minority leader of the Senate Intel Committee suggested that Attorney General William Barr “owes the Committee an explanation” since the committee is completing a “three-year bipartisan investigation” that has “found nothing to justify” Barr’s expanded effort.  The Senator’s gauntlet will be ever so fascinating as the public reads exactly how the Intel Committee spent three years and came up with “nothing” as compared to what Durham and the IG reports have to say.

On the House side, prime-time whiners Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif) and Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) commented that news of the Durham investigation moving towards criminal liability “raised profound concerns that Barr has lost his independence and become a vehicle for political revenge” and that “the Rule of Law will suffer irreparable damage.”    

Since Barr has issued no determination of blame other than to assure a full, fair and rigorous investigation, it is curious that the Dems are in premature meltdown as if they expect indictments even though the investigations are not yet complete.

There is, however, one small inconvenient glitch that challenges the Democratic version of reality that does not fit their partisan spin. The news that former FBI General Counsel James Baker is actively cooperating with the BD investigation ought to send ripples through the ranks. Baker has already stated that it was a ‘small group’ within the agency who led the counterintelligence inquiry into the Trump campaign; notably former FBI Director James Comey and former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

Baker’s cooperation was not totally unexpected since he also cooperated with the Inspector General’s FISA abuse investigation which is awaiting public release.  As FBI General Counsel, Baker had a role in reviewing the FISA applications before they were submitted to the FISA court and currently remains under criminal investigation for making unauthorized leaks to the media. 

As the agency’s chief legal officer, Baker had to be a first-hand participant and privy to every strategy discussion and decision (real or contemplated).  It was his job to identify potential legal implications that might negatively affect the agency or boomerang back on the FBI.  In other words, Baker is in a unique position to know who knew what and when did they know it. His ‘cooperation’ can be generally attributed to being more concerned with saving his own butt rather than the Constitution.  In any case, the information he is able to provide will be key for getting to the true origins of Russiagate and the FISA scandal.  Baker’s collaboration may augur others facing possible prosecution to step up since ‘cooperation’ usually comes with the gift of a lesser charge..   

With a special focus on senior Obama era intel officials  Durham has reportedly already interviewed up to two dozen former and current FBI employees as well as officials in the office of the Director of National Intelligence.  From the number of interviews conducted to date it can be surmised that Durham has been accumulating all the necessary facts and evidence as he works his way up the chain of command, prior to concentrating on top officials who may be central to the investigation.

It has also been reported that Durham expects to interview current and former intelligence officials including CIA analysts, former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper regarding Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election.

In a recent CNN interview, when asked if he was concerned about any wrong doing on the part of intel officials, Clapper nervously responded “I don’t know.  I don’t think there was any wrong doing.  It is disconcerting to know that we are being investigated for having done our duty and done what we were told to do by the President.  One wonders if Clapper might be a candidate for ‘cooperating’ along with Baker.

As CIA Director, Brennan made no secret of his efforts to nail the Trump Administration.  In the summer of 2016, he formed an inter agency taskforce to investigate what was being reported as Russian collusion within the Trump campaign.  He boasted to Rachel Maddow that he brought NSA and FBI officials together with the CIA to ‘connect the dots.”  With the addition of James Clapper’s DNI, three reports were released:  October, 2016, December, 2016 and January, 2017 all disseminating the Russian-Trump collusion theory which the Mueller Report later found to be unproven.

Since 1947 when the CIA was first authorized by President Harry Truman who belatedly regretted his approval, the agency has been operating as if they report to no one and  that they never owe the public or Congress any explanation of their behavior or activity or  how they spend the money.  Since those days it has been a weak-minded Congress, intimidated and/or compromised Members who have allowed intel to run their own show as if they are immune to the Constitution and the Rule of Law.  Since 1947, there has been no functioning Congress willing to provide true accountability or meaningful oversight on the intel community.   

Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist with Friends of the Earth and staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She can be found on Twitter @reneedove31

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In the event of the death of the Islamic State’s self-styled caliph, Amaq, a news agency affiliated with the Islamic State, reported on 7 August 2019 that the terrorist organization’s chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had appointed Abdullah Qardash as his successor.

 Abdullah Qardash is from Tal Afar, a predominantly Sunni Muslim city in northwestern Iraq, and has served as an army officer during Saddam Hussein’s regime. Besides Qardash, two other close aides who have emerged as al-Baghdadi’s likely successors over the years are Iyad al-Obaidi, his defense minister, and Ayad al-Jumaili, the in charge of security.

Al-Jumaili has already reportedly been killed in an airstrike in April 2017 in al-Qaim region on Iraq’s border with Syria, while the whereabouts of al-Obaidi are unknown. Both al-Jumaili and al-Obaidi have also previously served as security officers in Iraq’s Baathist army under Saddam Hussein.

Regarding the creation and composition of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, apart from training and arms which were provided to Syrian militants in the training camps located in the Turkish and Jordanian border regions adjacent to Syria by the CIA in collaboration with Turkish, Jordanian and Saudi intelligence agencies, another factor that contributed to the success of the Islamic State in early 2014 when it overran Raqqa in Syria and Mosul and Anbar in Iraq was that its top cadres were comprised of former Baathist military and intelligence officers from the Saddam era.

Reportedly, hundreds of ex-Baathists constituted the top and mid-tier command structure of the Islamic State who planned all the operations and directed its military strategy. The only feature that differentiated the Islamic State from all other insurgent groups was its command structure which was comprised of professional ex-Baathists and its state-of-the-art weaponry that was provided to all militant outfits fighting in Syria by the intelligence agencies of the Western powers, Turkey, Jordan and the Gulf states.

Recently, the Islamic State’s purported “terror franchises” in Afghanistan and Pakistan have claimed a spate of bombings against the Shi’a and Barelvi Muslims who are regarded as heretics by Takfiri jihadists. But to contend that the Islamic State is responsible for suicide blasts in Pakistan and Afghanistan is to declare that the Taliban are responsible for the sectarian war in Syria and Iraq.

Both are localized militant outfits and the Islamic State without its Baathist command structure and superior weaponry is just another ragtag, regional militant outfit. The distinction between the Taliban and the Islamic State lies in the fact that the Taliban follow Deobandi sect of Sunni Islam which is a sect native to South Asia, whereas the jihadists of the Islamic State mostly belong to Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi-Salafi denomination.

Secondly, and more importantly, the insurgency in Afghanistan and the border regions of Pakistan is an indigenous Pashtun uprising which is an ethnic group native to Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan, whereas the bulk of the Islamic State’s jihadists in Syria and Iraq was comprised of Arab militants and included foreign fighters from the neighboring Middle Eastern countries, North Africa, the Central Asian states, Russia, China and even radicalized Muslims from as far away as Europe and the United States.

The so-called “Khorasan Province” of the Islamic State in the Af-Pak region is nothing more than a coalition of several breakaway factions of the Taliban and a few other inconsequential local militant outfits that have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State’s late chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in order to enhance their prestige, and draw funds and followers, but which doesn’t have any organizational and operational association with the Islamic State proper in Syria and Iraq.

The total strength of the Islamic State-Khorasan is estimated to be between 3,000 to 5,000 fighters. By comparison, the strength of the Taliban is estimated to be between 60,000 to 80,000 militants. The Islamic State-Khorasan was formed as a merger between several breakaway factions of the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban in early 2015. Later, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a Pakistani terrorist group Jundullah and Chinese Uyghur militants pledged allegiance to it.

In 2017, the Islamic State-Khorasan split into two factions. One faction, based in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province, is led by a Pakistani militant commander Aslam Farooqi, and the other faction, based in the northern provinces of Afghanistan, is led by a former Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) commander Moawiya. The latter faction also includes Uzbek, Tajik, Uyghur and Baloch militants.

In Pakistan, there are three distinct categories of militants: the Afghanistan-focused Pashtun militants; the Kashmir-focused Punjabi militants; and foreign transnational terrorists, including the Arab militants of al-Qaeda, the Uzbek insurgents of Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and the Chinese Uyghur jihadists of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM). Compared to tens of thousands of native Pashtun and Punjabi militants, the foreign transnational terrorists number only in a few hundred and are hence inconsequential.

Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is mainly comprised of Pashtun militants, carries out bombings against Pakistan’s state apparatus. The ethnic factor is critical here. Although the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) like to couch their rhetoric in religious terms, it is the difference of ethnicity and language that enables them to recruit Pashtun tribesmen who are willing to carry out subversive activities against the Punjabi-dominated state apparatus, while the Kashmir-focused Punjabi militants have by and large remained loyal to their patrons in the security agencies of Pakistan.

Although Pakistan’s security establishment has been willing to conduct military operations against the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), which are regarded as a security threat to Pakistan’s state apparatus, as far as the Kashmir-focused Punjabi militants, including the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, and the Afghanistan-focused Quetta Shura Taliban, including the Haqqani network, are concerned, they are still enjoying impunity because such militant groups are regarded as “strategic assets” by Pakistan’s security agencies.

Therefore, recent allegations by regional power-brokers that Washington has provided material support to the Islamic State-affiliate in Afghanistan and the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) as a tit-for-tat response to Pakistan’s security agencies double game of providing support to the Afghan Taliban to mount attacks against the Afghan security forces and their American backers cannot be ruled out.

In November last year, for instance, infighting between the main faction of the Afghan Taliban led by Mullah Haibatullah Akhunzada and a breakaway faction led by Mullah Mohammad Rasul left scores of fighters dead in Afghanistan’s western Herat province.

Mullah Rasul was close to Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar, and served as the governor of southwestern Nimroz province during the Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. After the news of the death of Mullah Omar was made public in 2015, Mullah Rasul broke ranks with the Taliban and formed his own faction.

Mullah Rasul’s group is active in the provinces of Herat, Farah, Nimroz and Helmand, and is known to have received arms and support from the Afghan intelligence, as he has expressed willingness to recognize the Washington-backed Kabul government.

Regarding Washington’s motives for providing covert support to breakaway factions of the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban and the Islamic State’s affiliate in Afghanistan, the US invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attack, and toppled the Taliban regime with the help of the Northern Alliance comprised of ethnic Tajik and Uzbek warlords.

The leadership and fighters of the Pashtun-majority Taliban resistance movement found sanctuary in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, and mounted an insurgency against the Washington-backed Kabul government. Throughout the occupation years, Washington kept pressuring Islamabad to mount military operations in the tribal areas in order to deny safe havens to the Taliban.

However, Islamabad was reluctant to conduct military operations, which is a euphemism for all-out war, for the fear of alienating the Pashtun population of the tribal areas. After Pakistan’s military’s raid in July 2007 on a mosque (Laal Masjid) in the heart of Islamabad, which also contained a religious seminary, scores of civilians, including students of the seminary, died.

The Pakistani Taliban made the incident a rallying call for waging a jihad against Pakistan’s military. Thereafter, terror attacks and suicide bombings against Pakistan’s state apparatus peaked after the July 2007 Laal Masjid incident. Eventually, under pressure from the Obama administration, Pakistan’s military decided in 2009 to conduct military operations against militants based in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

The first military operation was mounted in the Swat valley in April 2009, the second in South Waziristan tribal agency in October the same year, and the third military operation was launched in North Waziristan and Khyber tribal agencies in June 2014. In the ensuing violence, tens of thousands of civilians, security personnel and militants lost their lives.

Although Pakistani political commentators often point fingers at the Washington-backed Kabul government in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s arch-foe India for providing money and arms to the Pakistani Taliban for waging a guerrilla war against Pakistan’s state establishment, reportedly Washington has provided covert support to the Pakistani Taliban in order to force Pakistan’s military to conduct military operations against militants based in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Keeping this background of Washington’s covert support to breakaway factions of the Afghan Taliban that have waged an insurgency against the US-backed Kabul government and to the Pakistani Taliban that has mounted a guerrilla war against Pakistan’s state establishment in mind, the allegations that Washington has provided material support to the Islamic State’s affiliate in the Af-Pak region in order to divide and weaken the Taliban resistance against American occupation of Afghanistan are not unfounded.

Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism.

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Caliph Closure: ‘He Died Like A Dog’

October 29th, 2019 by Pepe Escobar

He died like a dog.” President Trump could not have scripted a better one-liner as he got ready for his Obama bin Laden close-up in front of the whole world.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, fake caliph, ISIS/Daesh leader, the most wanted man on the planet, was “brought to justice” under Trump’s watch. The dead dog caliph is now positioned as the ultimate foreign policy winning trophy ahead of 2020 reelection.

The climatic scenes of the inevitable-as-death-and-taxes movie or Netflix series to come are already written. (Trump: I “watched it like a movie.”) Cowardly uber-terrorist cornered in a dead-end tunnel, eight helicopter gunships hovering above, dogs barking in the darkness, three terrified children taken as hostages, coward detonates a suicide vest, tunnel collapses over himself and the children.

A crack forensic team carrying samples of the fake caliph’s DNA apparently does its job in record time. The remains of the self-exploded target – then sealed in plastic bags – confirm it: it’s Baghdadi. In the dead of night, it’s time for the commando unit to go back to Irbil, a 70-minute flight over northeast Syria and northwest Iraq. Cut to Trump’s presser. Mission accomplished. Roll credits.

This all happened at a compound only 300 meters away from the village of Barisha, in Idlib, rural northwest Syria, only 5km from the Syria-Turkish border. The compound is no more:  it was turned to rubble so it would not become a (Syrian) shrine for a renegade Iraqi.

The caliph was already on the run, and arrived at this rural back of beyond only 48 hours before the raid, according to Turkish intelligence. A serious question is what he was doing in northwest Syria, in Idlib – a de facto cauldron-like Donbass in 2014 – which the Syrian army and Russian airpower are just waiting for the right moment to extinguish.

There are virtually no ISIS/Daesh jihadis in Irbil, but lots of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, as in al-Qaeda in Syria, known inside the Beltway as “moderate rebels,” including hardcore Turkmen brigades previously weaponized by Turkish intel. The only rational explanation is that the Caliph might have identified this Idlib backwater near Barisha, away from the war zone, as the ideal under-the-radar passport to cross to Turkey.

Russians knew?

The plot thickens when we examine Trump’s long list of “thank yous” for the successful raid. Russia came first, followed by Syria – presumably Syrian Kurds, not Damascus – Turkey and Iraq. In fact, Syrian Kurds were only credited with “certain support,” in Trump’s words. Their commander Mazloum Abdi, though, preferred to extol the raid as a “historic operation” with essential Syrian Kurd intel input.

In Trump’s press conference, expanding somewhat on the thank yous, Russia again came first (“great” collaboration) and Iraq was “excellent”: the Iraqi National Intelligence Service later commented on the break it had gotten, via a Syrian who had smuggled the wives of two of Baghdadi’s brothers, Ahmad and Jumah, to Idlib via Turkey.

There’s no way US Special Forces could have pulled this off without complex, combined Turkish, Iraqi and Syrian Kurd intel. Additionally, President Erdogan accomplishes one more tactical masterpiece, juggling between performing the role of dutiful, major NATO ally while still allowing al-Qaeda remnants their safe haven in Idlib under the watchful eye of the Turkish military.

Significantly, Trump said, about Moscow: “We told them, ‘We’re coming in’ … and they said, ‘Thank you for telling us.’” But, “they did not know the mission.”

They definitely didn’t. In fact, the Russian Defense Ministry, via spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov, said it had “no reliable information about US servicemen conducting an operation to ‘yet another’ elimination of the former Daesh leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in the Turkish-controlled part of the Idlib de-escalation zone.”

And on Trump’s “we told them,” the Russian Defense Ministry was emphatic: “We know nothing about any assistance to the flight of US aircraft to the Idlib de-escalation zone’s airspace in the course of this operation.”

According to ground sources in Syria, a prevalent rumor in Idlib is that the “dead dog” in Barisha could be Abu Mohammad Salama, the leader of Haras al-Din, a minor sub-group of al-Qaeda in Syria. Haras al-Din has not issued any statement about it.

ISIS/Daesh anyway has already named a successor: Abdullah Qardash, aka Hajji Abdullah al-Afari, also Iraqi and also a former Saddam Hussein military officer. There’s a strong possibility that ISIS/Daesh and myriad subgroups and variations of al-Qaeda in Syria will now re-merge, after their split in 2014.

Who gets the oil?

There’s no plausible explanation whatsoever for Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, for years, enjoying the freedom of shuttling back and forth between Syria and Iraq, always evading the formidable surveillance capabilities of the US government.

Well, there’s also no plausible explanation for that famous convoy of 53 brand new, white Toyota Hi-Luxes crossing the desert from Syria to Iraq in 2014 crammed with flag-waving ISIS/Daesh jihadis on their way to capture Mosul, also evading the cornucopia of US satellites covering the Middle East 24/7.

And there’s no way to bury the 2012 US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)  leaked memo that explicitly named “the West, Gulf monarchies, and Turkey” as seeking a “Salafist principality” in Syria (opposed, significantly, by Russia, China and Iran – the key poles of Eurasia integration).

That was way before ISIS/Daesh’s irresistible ascension. The DIA memo was unmistakable: “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).

True, the fake caliph has been proclaimed definitely dead at least five times, starting in December 2016. Yet the timing, now, could not be more convenient.

The facts on the ground, after the latest ground-breaking Russia-brokered deal between the Turks and the Syrian Kurds, graphically spell out the slow but sure restoration of Syria’s territorial integrity. There will be no balkanization of Syria. The last remaining pocket to be cleared of jihadis is Irbil.

And then, there’s the oil question. The “died as a dog” movie literally buries – at least for now – an extremely embarrassing story: the Pentagon deploying tanks to “protect” Syrian oilfields. This is as illegal, by any possible interpretation of international law, as is, for that matter, the very presence in Syria of US troops, which were never invited by the government in Damascus.

Persian Gulf traders told me that before 2011, Syria was producing 387,000 barrels of oil a day and selling 140,000 – the equivalent of 25.1% of Damascus’s income. Nowadays, the Omar, al-Shadaddi and Suwayda fields, in eastern Syria, would not be producing more than 60,000 barrels a day. Still, that’s essential for Damascus and for “the Syrian people” so admired within the Beltway – the legitimate owners of the oil.

The mostly Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) did in fact take military control of Deir er-Zor when they were fighting ISIS/Daesh. Yet the majority of the local population is Sunni Arab. They will never tolerate any hint of a longtime Syrian Kurd domination – much less in tandem with a US occupation.

Sooner or later the Syrian army will get there, with Russian air power support. The Deep State might, but Trump, in an electoral year, would never risk a hot war over a few, illegally occupied oilfields.

In the end, the “died as a dog” movie can be interpreted as a victory lap, and the closure of a historical arc languishing since 2011. When he “abandoned” the Syrian Demoratic Forces Kurds, Trump effectively buried the Rojava question – as in an independent Syrian Kurdistan.

Russia is in charge in Syria – on all fronts. Turkey got rid of its “terrorism” paranoia – always having to demonize the Syrian Kurd PYD and its armed wing YPG as a spin-off of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) separatists inside Turkey – and this may help to settle the Syrian refugee question. Syria is on the way to recover all its territory.

The “died as a dog” movie can also be interpreted as the liquidation of a formerly useful asset that was a valued component of the gift that keeps on giving, the never-ending Global War on Terror. Other scarecrows, and other movies, await.

Originally published on Asia Times

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U.S. Universities Bow to Pressure of Israel Lobby

October 29th, 2019 by Philip Giraldi

The Israel lobby in the United States and its counterparts in Europe have been paying particular attention to curtailing the activities of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS). This is because BDS, which is non-violent and based on established human rights principles, is extremely appealing to college students, who will be tomorrow’s leaders. Israel, which promotes its own largely fictional narrative about itself, is reluctant to allow any competing stories about its foundation and current activities, so it has worked hard to exclude any and all criticism of its practices on college campuses and even among students in public high schools.

Unfortunately, many colleges and universities are all too ready to compromise their principles, such as they are, whenever a representative of Israel or of Jewish groups comes calling. A popular line that has proven to be particularly effective is that Jews on campus feel threatened whenever anyone advocates for the Palestinians or Iranians, intended to convey that their civil rights are being violated.

Even if that type of allegation is actually relevant to whether or not one allows free speech and association, one wonders how violated the Palestinians and Iranians must feel when confronted by the endless stream of hostility emanating from the U.S. media and Hollywood as well as from select politicians representing both parties and the White House.

In the most recent manifestation of suppression of views critical of Israel, the federal government’s Department of Education has ordered Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to reorganize the Consortium for Middle East Studies program run jointly by the two colleges based on their failure to include enough “positive” content relating to Christianity and Judaism. The demand came with a threat to suspend federal funding of Title VI Higher Education Act international studies and foreign language grants to the two schools if the curriculum is not changed.

Of course, the demands have nothing to do with Christian groups demanding inclusion and everything to do with organized Jewish pressure to present Israel in a positive light while also casting aspersions on the Jewish state’s perceived enemies in the region and also on university campuses. Anyone who has even cursory knowledge about the Middle East knows that Christians and Jews constitute only a tiny minority in the region, so the emphasis on teaching about Islam, the Arabs, and the Persians makes sense if the instruction is to have any actual relevance.

One particular event that apparently led to an earlier investigation in June launched by the Education Department consisted of a conference in March called “Conflict Over Gaza: People, Politics, and Possibilities.” A Republican congressman was outraged by the development and asked Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to investigate because the gathering was full of “radical anti-Israel bias.”

Even The New York Times acknowledged in their coverage of the story that “Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, has become increasingly aggressive in going after perceived anti-Israel bias in higher education.” Her deputy—who has served as a focal point for the effort to root out anti-Israel sentiment—is Assistant Secretary of Civil Rights Kenneth L. Marcus, who might reasonably be described as “a career pro-Israel advocate.”

Marcus is the founder and president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, a foundation that he has used to exclusively defend the rights of Jewish groups and individuals against BDS and other manifestations of Palestinian pushback against the Israeli occupation of their country. He has not hesitated to call opponents anti- Semites and has worked with Jewish students to file civil rights complaints against college administrations, including schools in Wisconsin and California. In an op-ed that appeared, not surprisingly, in The Jerusalem Post, he observed that even when student complaints were rejected, they created major problems for the institutions involved. “If a university shows a failure to treat initial complaints seriously, it hurts them with donors, faculty, political leaders, and prospective students.”

Last year Marcus reopened an investigation into alleged anti-Jewish bias at Rutgers University that the Obama administration had closed after finding that the charges were baseless. Marcus indicated that the re-examination was called for, as his office in the Education Department would henceforth be using the State Department definition of anti-Semitism that includes “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination,” making much criticism of Israel a hate crime.

In the current North Carolina-Duke case, DeVos and Marcus expressed concern over course content that had “a considerable emphasis placed on understanding the positive aspects of Islam, while there is an absolute absence of any similar focus on the positive aspects of Christianity, Judaism, or any other religion or belief system in the Middle East.” The complaint called for balancing content relating to “the historic discrimination faced by, and current circumstances of, religious minorities in the Middle East, including Christians, Jews, Baha’is, Yazidis, Kurds, Druze, and others.”

Zoha Khalili, a staff lawyer at Palestine Legal, explained how the message coming from Washington is actually quite simple and has nothing to do with balance:

“They really want to send the message that if you want to criticize Israel, then the federal government is going to look very closely at your entire program and micromanage it to death. . . . [It] sends a message to Middle Eastern studies programs that their continued existence depends on their willingness to toe the government line on Israel.”

The possible consequences are very clear. If you are an educational institution that criticizes Israel in any way, shape or form, you will lose any funding you receive from the federal government. The move has nothing to do with budgetary demands or the national security of the United States or even with the efficacy of the programs that are being funded. It has everything to do with promoting Israeli interests. That a demonstrated and outspoken Israeli advocate like Marcus should be placed in a key position to decide who gets what based on his own biases is a travesty, but it is something that we should all be accustomed to by now, as there is apparently no limit to what the Trump administration is willing to do for Israel and for that monstrous country’s powerful, wealthy, and incessantly vocal supporters in the United States.

Originally published on Aletho News

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U.S. Special Operations forces eliminated ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi during a nighttime raid into northwestern Syria on October 26, President Donald Trump officially announced. According to the President, Baghdadi died with his 3 young children after activating his suicide vest. Baghdadi’s body was mutilated by the blast. However, Trump said, “test results gave certain and positive identification.”

A large number of Baghdadi’s fighters and companions were killed and 11 young children were moved out of the operation site, the President added. He also thanked Russia, Turkey, Iraq and Syria, including Kurds, for “support”. He praised the “great cooperation” with Russia, which allegedly opened up airspace under its control to allow US aircraft to use the area.

Earlier, reports appeared that eight military helicopters carried out an operation, including delivering strikes, near the village of Barisha in the Syrian province of Idlib, near the Turkish border. At least 7 people, including 3 children, were killed, according to local sources.

Iraqi sources claimed that a group of senior ISIS and al-Qaeda commanders was killed along the ISIS leader. These were Baghdadi’s deputy – Abu Said al-Iraqi, his bodyguard – Ghazwan al-Rawi, the head of ISIS security in Syria – Abu al-Yaman, and Abu Mohamad al-Halabi, a prominent commander of the Syrian al-Qaeda-affiliated militant group, Horas al-Din. The family of Abu Mohamad al-Halabi was also allegedly killed.

The Russian Defense Ministry commented on Trump’s statement by saying that it has no verifiable information confirming the ‘yet another’ elimination of al-Baghdadi. A defense ministry spokesman Maj.Gen. Igor Konashenkov added that Russia also has no info about the supposed opening of airspace for US aircraft.

The Trump administration needed an operation to eliminate al-Baghdadi to once again take credit for ‘eliminating ISIS’ and get a PR success for Trump’s ‘mission accomplished’ claims and the withdrawal of US troops from northern Syria. With these developments, Trump will be able to explain his administration’s Middle East strategy to the internal audience ahead of the upcoming presidential election in 2020.

Another important factor is that the US action once again revealed the double-faced policy of Western states and mainstream media that have been promoting northwestern Syria, including the province of Idlib, as a stronghold of the ‘democratic opposition’ to the ‘bloody regime’ of Bashar al-Assad. In fact, this ‘democratic opposition’ does not exist and the Greater Idlib area is almost fully controlled by various radicals and terrorists. So, the ISIS Leader and his inner circle were free to hide there, near the Turkish border.

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They Live, We Sleep: Beware the Growing Evil in Our Midst

October 29th, 2019 by John W. Whitehead

“You see them on the street. You watch them on TV. You might even vote for one this fall. You think they’re people just like you. You’re wrong. Dead wrong.”They Live

We’re living in two worlds, you and I.

There’s the world we see (or are made to see) and then there’s the one we sense (and occasionally catch a glimpse of), the latter of which is a far cry from the propaganda-driven reality manufactured by the government and its corporate sponsors, including the media.

Indeed, what most Americans perceive as life in America—privileged, progressive and free—is a far cry from reality, where economic inequality is growing, real agendas and real power are buried beneath layers of Orwellian doublespeak and corporate obfuscation, and “freedom,” such that it is, is meted out in small, legalistic doses by militarized police armed to the teeth.

All is not as it seems.

This is the premise of John Carpenter’s film They Live, which was released more than 30 years ago, and remains unnervingly, chillingly appropriate for our modern age.

Best known for his horror film Halloween, which assumes that there is a form of evil so dark that it can’t be killed, Carpenter’s larger body of work is infused with a strong anti-authoritarian, anti-establishment, laconic bent that speaks to the filmmaker’s concerns about the unraveling of our society, particularly our government.

Time and again, Carpenter portrays the government working against its own citizens, a populace out of touch with reality, technology run amok, and a future more horrific than any horror film.

In Escape from New York, Carpenter presents fascism as the future of America.

In The Thing, a remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic of the same name, Carpenter presupposes that increasingly we are all becoming dehumanized.

In Christine, the film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel about a demon-possessed car, technology exhibits a will and consciousness of its own and goes on a murderous rampage.

In In the Mouth of Madness, Carpenter notes that evil grows when people lose “the ability to know the difference between reality and fantasy.”

And then there is Carpenter’s They Live, in which two migrant workers discover that the world is not as it seems. In fact, the population is actually being controlled and exploited by aliens working in partnership with an oligarchic elite. All the while, the populace—blissfully unaware of the real agenda at work in their lives—has been lulled into complacency, indoctrinated into compliance, bombarded with media distractions, and hypnotized by subliminal messages beamed out of television and various electronic devices, billboards and the like.

It is only when homeless drifter John Nada (played to the hilt by the late Roddy Piper) discovers a pair of doctored sunglasses—Hoffman lenses—that Nada sees what lies beneath the elite’s fabricated reality: control and bondage.

When viewed through the lens of truth, the elite, who appear human until stripped of their disguises, are shown to be monsters who have enslaved the citizenry in order to prey on them.

Likewise, billboards blare out hidden, authoritative messages: a bikini-clad woman in one ad is actually ordering viewers to “MARRY AND REPRODUCE.” Magazine racks scream “CONSUME” and “OBEY.” A wad of dollar bills in a vendor’s hand proclaims, “THIS IS YOUR GOD.”

When viewed through Nada’s Hoffman lenses, some of the other hidden messages being drummed into the people’s subconscious include: NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT, CONFORM, SUBMIT, STAY ASLEEP, BUY, WATCH TV, NO IMAGINATION, and DO NOT QUESTION AUTHORITY.

This indoctrination campaign engineered by the elite in They Live is painfully familiar to anyone who has studied the decline of American culture.

A citizenry that does not think for themselves, obeys without question, is submissive, does not challenge authority, does not think outside the box, and is content to sit back and be entertained is a citizenry that can be easily controlled.

In this way, the subtle message of They Live provides an apt analogy of our own distorted vision of life in the American police state, what philosopher Slavoj Žižek refers to as dictatorship in democracy, “the invisible order which sustains your apparent freedom.”

We’re being fed a series of carefully contrived fictions that bear no resemblance to reality.

The powers-that-be want us to feel threatened by forces beyond our control (terrorists, shooters, bombers).

They want us afraid and dependent on the government and its militarized armies for our safety and well-being.

They want us distrustful of each other, divided by our prejudices, and at each other’s throats.

Most of all, they want us to continue to march in lockstep with their dictates.

Tune out the government’s attempts to distract, divert and befuddle us and tune into what’s really going on in this country, and you’ll run headlong into an unmistakable, unpalatable truth: the moneyed elite who rule us view us as expendable resources to be used, abused and discarded.

In fact, a study conducted by Princeton and Northwestern University concluded that the U.S. government does not represent the majority of American citizens. Instead, the study found that the government is ruled by the rich and powerful, or the so-called “economic elite.” Moreover, the researchers concluded that policies enacted by this governmental elite nearly always favor special interests and lobbying groups.

In other words, we are being ruled by an oligarchy disguised as a democracy, and arguably on our way towards fascism—a form of government where private corporate interests rule, money calls the shots, and the people are seen as mere subjects to be controlled.

Not only do you have to be rich—or beholden to the rich—to get elected these days, but getting elected is also a surefire way to get rich. As CBS News reports, “Once in office, members of Congress enjoy access to connections and information they can use to increase their wealth, in ways that are unparalleled in the private sector. And once politicians leave office, their connections allow them to profit even further.”

In denouncing this blatant corruption of America’s political system, former president Jimmy Carter blasted the process of getting elected—to the White House, governor’s mansion, Congress or state legislatures—as “unlimited political bribery… a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over.”

Rest assured that when and if fascism finally takes hold in America, the basic forms of government will remain: Fascism will appear to be friendly. The legislators will be in session. There will be elections, and the news media will continue to cover the entertainment and political trivia. Consent of the governed, however, will no longer apply. Actual control will have finally passed to the oligarchic elite controlling the government behind the scenes.

Sound familiar?

Clearly, we are now ruled by an oligarchic elite of governmental and corporate interests.

We have moved into “corporatism” (favored by Benito Mussolini), which is a halfway point on the road to full-blown fascism.

Corporatism is where the few moneyed interests—not elected by the citizenry—rule over the many. In this way, it is not a democracy or a republican form of government, which is what the American government was established to be. It is a top-down form of government and one which has a terrifying history typified by the developments that occurred in totalitarian regimes of the past: police states where everyone is watched and spied on, rounded up for minor infractions by government agents, placed under police control, and placed in detention (a.k.a. concentration) camps.

For the final hammer of fascism to fall, it will require the most crucial ingredient: the majority of the people will have to agree that it’s not only expedient but necessary.

But why would a people agree to such an oppressive regime?

The answer is the same in every age: fear.

Fear makes people stupid.

Fear is the method most often used by politicians to increase the power of government. And, as most social commentators recognize, an atmosphere of fear permeates modern America: fear of terrorism, fear of the police, fear of our neighbors and so on.

The propaganda of fear has been used quite effectively by those who want to gain control, and it is working on the American populace.

Despite the fact that we are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack; 11,000 times more likely to die from an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane; 1,048 times more likely to die from a car accident than a terrorist attack, and 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist , we have handed over control of our lives to government officials who treat us as a means to an end—the source of money and power.

As the Bearded Man in They Live warns, “They are dismantling the sleeping middle class. More and more people are becoming poor. We are their cattle. We are being bred for slavery.”

In this regard, we’re not so different from the oppressed citizens in They Live.

From the moment we are born until we die, we are indoctrinated into believing that those who rule us do it for our own good. The truth is far different.

Despite the truth staring us in the face, we have allowed ourselves to become fearful, controlled, pacified zombies.

We live in a perpetual state of denial, insulated from the painful reality of the American police state by wall-to-wall entertainment news and screen devices.

Most everyone keeps their heads down these days while staring zombie-like into an electronic screen, even when they’re crossing the street. Families sit in restaurants with their heads down, separated by their screen devices and unaware of what’s going on around them. Young people especially seem dominated by the devices they hold in their hands, oblivious to the fact that they can simply push a button, turn the thing off and walk away.

Indeed, there is no larger group activity than that connected with those who watch screens—that is, television, lap tops, personal computers, cell phones and so on. In fact, a Nielsen study reports that American screen viewing is at an all-time high. For example, the average American watches approximately 151 hours of television per month.

The question, of course, is what effect does such screen consumption have on one’s mind?

Psychologically it is similar to drug addiction. Researchers found that “almost immediately after turning on the TV, subjects reported feeling more relaxed, and because this occurs so quickly and the tension returns so rapidly after the TV is turned off, people are conditioned to associate TV viewing with a lack of tension.” Research also shows that regardless of the programming, viewers’ brain waves slow down, thus transforming them into a more passive, nonresistant state.

Historically, television has been used by those in authority to quiet discontent and pacify disruptive people. “Faced with severe overcrowding and limited budgets for rehabilitation and counseling, more and more prison officials are using TV to keep inmates quiet,” according to Newsweek.

Given that the majority of what Americans watch on television is provided through channels controlled by six mega corporations, what we watch is now controlled by a corporate elite and, if that elite needs to foster a particular viewpoint or pacify its viewers, it can do so on a large scale.

If we’re watching, we’re not doing.

The powers-that-be understand this. As television journalist Edward R. Murrow warned in a 1958 speech:

We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.

This brings me back to They Live, in which the real zombies are not the aliens calling the shots but the populace who are content to remain controlled.

When all is said and done, the world of They Live is not so different from our own. As one of the characters points out, “The poor and the underclass are growing. Racial justice and human rights are nonexistent. They have created a repressive society and we are their unwitting accomplices. Their intention to rule rests with the annihilation of consciousness. We have been lulled into a trance. They have made us indifferent to ourselves, to others. We are focused only on our own gain.”

We, too, are focused only on our own pleasures, prejudices and gains. Our poor and underclasses are also growing. Racial injustice is growing. Human rights is nearly nonexistent. We too have been lulled into a trance, indifferent to others.

Oblivious to what lies ahead, we’ve been manipulated into believing that if we continue to consume, obey, and have faith, things will work out. But that’s never been true of emerging regimes. And by the time we feel the hammer coming down upon us, it will be too late.

So where does that leave us?

The characters who populate Carpenter’s films provide some insight.

Underneath their machismo, they still believe in the ideals of liberty and equal opportunity. Their beliefs place them in constant opposition with the law and the establishment, but they are nonetheless freedom fighters.

When, for example, John Nada destroys the alien hyno-transmitter in They Live, he restores hope by delivering America a wake-up call for freedom.

That’s the key right there: we need to wake up.

Stop allowing yourselves to be easily distracted by pointless political spectacles and pay attention to what’s really going on in the country.

The real battle for control of this nation is not being waged between Republicans and Democrats in the ballot box.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the real battle for control of this nation is taking place on roadsides, in police cars, on witness stands, over phone lines, in government offices, in corporate offices, in public school hallways and classrooms, in parks and city council meetings, and in towns and cities across this country.

The real battle between freedom and tyranny is taking place right in front of our eyes, if we would only open them.

All the trappings of the American police state are now in plain sight.

Wake up, America.

If they live (the tyrants, the oppressors, the invaders, the overlords), it is only because “we the people” sleep.

WC: 2446

Originally published by The Rutherford Institute

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His book Battlefield America: The War on the American People is available online at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected]. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

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America Created Al-Qaeda and the ISIS Terror Group

October 28th, 2019 by Garikai Chengu

Incisive article originally published by GR in September 2014.  In recent developments, Al Baghdadi the leader of the ISIS terror group is dead.  Hollywood in Real Time: Trump said that “he watched the operation from the Situation Room”. 

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The fact that the United States has a long and torrid history of backing terrorist groups will surprise only those who watch the news and ignore history.

The CIA first aligned itself with extremist Islam during the Cold War era. Back then, America saw the world in rather simple terms: on one side, the Soviet Union and Third World nationalism, which America regarded as a Soviet tool; on the other side, Western nations and militant political Islam, which America considered an ally in the struggle against the Soviet Union.

The director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan, General William Odom recently remarked, “by any measure the U.S. has long used terrorism. In 1978-79 the Senate was trying to pass a law against international terrorism – in every version they produced, the lawyers said the U.S. would be in violation.”

During the 1970’s the CIA used the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as a barrier, both to thwart Soviet expansion and prevent the spread of Marxist ideology among the Arab masses. The United States also openly supported Sarekat Islam against Sukarno in Indonesia, and supported the Jamaat-e-Islami terror group against Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in Pakistan. Last but certainly not least, there is Al Qaeda.

Lest we forget, the CIA gave birth to Osama Bin Laden and breastfed his organization during the 1980’s. Former British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, told the House of Commons that Al Qaeda was unquestionably a product of Western intelligence agencies. Mr. Cook explained that Al Qaeda, which literally means an abbreviation of “the database” in Arabic, was originally the computer database of the thousands of Islamist extremists, who were trained by the CIA and funded by the Saudis, in order to defeat the Russians in Afghanistan.

America’s relationship with Al Qaeda has always been a love-hate affair. Depending on whether a particular Al Qaeda terrorist group in a given region furthers American interests or not, the U.S. State Department either funds or aggressively targets that terrorist group. Even as American foreign policy makers claim to oppose Muslim extremism, they knowingly foment it as a weapon of foreign policy.

The Islamic State is its latest weapon that, much like Al Qaeda, is certainly backfiring. ISIS recently rose to international prominence after its thugs began beheading American journalists. Now the terrorist group controls an area the size of the United Kingdom.

In order to understand why the Islamic State has grown and flourished so quickly, one has to take a look at the organization’s American-backed roots. The 2003 American invasion and occupation of Iraq created the pre-conditions for radical Sunni groups, like ISIS, to take root. America, rather unwisely, destroyed Saddam Hussein’s secular state machinery and replaced it with a predominantly Shiite administration. The U.S. occupation caused vast unemployment in Sunni areas, by rejecting socialism and closing down factories in the naive hope that the magical hand of the free market would create jobs. Under the new U.S.-backed Shiite regime, working class Sunni’s lost hundreds of thousands of jobs. Unlike the white Afrikaners in South Africa, who were allowed to keep their wealth after regime change, upper class Sunni’s were systematically dispossessed of their assets and lost their political influence. Rather than promoting religious integration and unity, American policy in Iraq exacerbated sectarian divisions and created a fertile breading ground for Sunni discontent, from which Al Qaeda in Iraq took root.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) used to have a different name: Al Qaeda in Iraq. After 2010 the group rebranded and refocused its efforts on Syria.

There are essentially three wars being waged in Syria: one between the government and the rebels, another between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and yet another between America and Russia. It is this third, neo-Cold War battle that made U.S. foreign policy makers decide to take the risk of arming Islamist rebels in Syria, because Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, is a key Russian ally. Rather embarrassingly, many of these Syrian rebels have now turned out to be ISIS thugs, who are openly brandishing American-made M16 Assault rifles.

America’s Middle East policy revolves around oil and Israel. The invasion of Iraq has partially satisfied Washington’s thirst for oil, but ongoing air strikes in Syria and economic sanctions on Iran have everything to do with Israel. The goal is to deprive Israel’s neighboring enemies, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Palestine’s Hamas, of crucial Syrian and Iranian support.

ISIS is not merely an instrument of terror used by America to topple the Syrian government; it is also used to put pressure on Iran.

The last time Iran invaded another nation was in 1738. Since independence in 1776, the U.S. has been engaged in over 53 military invasions and expeditions. Despite what the Western media’s war cries would have you believe, Iran is clearly not the threat to regional security, Washington is. An Intelligence Report published in 2012, endorsed by all sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies, confirms that Iran ended its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Truth is, any Iranian nuclear ambition, real or imagined, is as a result of American hostility towards Iran, and not the other way around.

America is using ISIS in three ways: to attack its enemies in the Middle East, to serve as a pretext for U.S. military intervention abroad, and at home to foment a manufactured domestic threat, used to justify the unprecedented expansion of invasive domestic surveillance.

By rapidly increasing both government secrecy and surveillance, Mr. Obama’s government is increasing its power to watch its citizens, while diminishing its citizens’ power to watch their government. Terrorism is an excuse to justify mass surveillance, in preparation for mass revolt.

The so-called “War on Terror” should be seen for what it really is: a pretext for maintaining a dangerously oversized U.S. military. The two most powerful groups in the U.S. foreign policy establishment are the Israel lobby, which directs U.S. Middle East policy, and the Military-Industrial-Complex, which profits from the former group’s actions. Since George W. Bush declared the “War on Terror” in October 2001, it has cost the American taxpayer approximately 6.6 trillion dollars and thousands of fallen sons and daughters; but, the wars have also raked in billions of dollars for Washington’s military elite.

In fact, more than seventy American companies and individuals have won up to $27 billion in contracts for work in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan over the last three years, according to a recent study by the Center for Public Integrity. According to the study, nearly 75 per cent of these private companies had employees or board members, who either served in, or had close ties to, the executive branch of the Republican and Democratic administrations, members of Congress, or the highest levels of the military.

In 1997, a U.S. Department of Defense report stated, “the data show a strong correlation between U.S. involvement abroad and an increase in terrorist attacks against the U.S.” Truth is, the only way America can win the “War On Terror” is if it stops giving terrorists the motivation and the resources to attack America. Terrorism is the symptom; American imperialism in the Middle East is the cancer. Put simply, the War on Terror is terrorism; only, it is conducted on a much larger scale by people with jets and missiles.

Garikai Chengu is a research scholar at Harvard University. Contact him on [email protected]

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According to a New York Times report [1], the surprising information about the Islamic State chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s whereabouts came following the arrest and interrogation of one of al-Baghdadi’s wives and a courier in Iraq this past summer.

The report details the chronology of the US Special Ops overnight raid: “Around midnight Sunday morning — 5 p.m. Saturday in Washington — eight American helicopters, primarily CH-47 Chinooks, took off from a military base near Erbil, Iraq. Flying low and fast to avoid detection, the helicopters quickly crossed the Syrian border and then flew all the way across Syria itself — a dangerous 70-minute flight in which the helicopters took sporadic groundfire — to the Barisha area just north of Idlib city, in western Syria.”

Before the publishing of the NY Times report, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported earlier [2] on Sunday that a squadron of eight helicopters accompanied by warplanes belonging to the international coalition, had attacked positions of Hurras al-Din, an al-Qaeda-affiliated group, in Idlib province where the Islamic State chief was believed to be hiding.

Despite detailing the operational minutiae of the Special Ops raid, however, the NY Times deliberately elided over the crucial piece of information that the compound in Barisha village 5 km. from Turkish border where al-Baghdadi was killed belonged to Hurras al-Din, which has previously been targeted several times in the US airstrikes.

Although Hurras al-Din is generally assumed to be an al-Qaeda affiliate, it is in fact regrouping of the Islamic State’s jihadists in northwestern Idlib after the latter terrorist organization was routed from Mosul and Raqqa and was hard pressed by the US-led coalition’s air raids in eastern Syria.

It’s worth pointing out that the distinction between Islamic jihadists and purported “moderate rebels” in Syria is more illusory than real. Before it turned rogue and overran Mosul in Iraq in June 2014, Islamic State used to be an integral part of the Syrian opposition and enjoyed close ideological and operational ties with other militant groups in Syria.

Thus, though practically impossible, even if Washington does eliminate all Islamic State militants from Syria, what would it do with myriads of other militant outfits in Syria, particularly with tens of thousands of al-Nusra Front jihadists, including the transnational terrorists of Hurras al-Din, who have carved out a new sanctuary in Syria’s northwestern Idlib governorate since 2015?

The only practical solution to the conundrum is to withdraw all American troops from Syria and let Damascus establish writ of the state over all of Syria in order to eliminate all militant groups from Syria, including the jihadists of the Islamic State, al-Nusra Front and Hurras al-Din, though the foreign policy hawks in Washington might have objections to strengthening the hands of Iran and Russia in Syria.

Before the evacuation of 1,000 American troops from northern Syria to western Iraq, the Pentagon had 2,000 US forces in Syria. After the drawdown of US troops at Erdogan’s insistence in order for Ankara to mount a ground offensive in northern Syria, the US still has 1,000 troops, mainly in oil-rich, eastern Deir al-Zor province and at al-Tanf military base.

Al-Tanf military base is strategically located in southeastern Syria on the border between Syria, Iraq and Jordan, and it sits on a critically important Damascus-Baghdad highway, which serves as a lifeline for Damascus. Washington has illegally occupied 55-kilometer area around al-Tanf since 2016, and several hundred US Marines have trained several Syrian militant groups there.

It’s worth noting that rather than fighting the Islamic State, the purpose of continued presence of the US forces at al-Tanf military base is to address Israel’s concerns regarding the expansion of Iran’s influence in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

Washington’s interest in the Syrian proxy war has been mainly about ensuring Israel’s regional security. The United States Defense Intelligence Agency’s declassified report [3] of 2012 clearly spelled out the imminent rise of a Salafist principality in northeastern Syria – in Raqqa and Deir al-Zor which were occupied by the Islamic State until October 2017 – in the event of an outbreak of a civil war in Syria.

Under pressure from the Zionist lobby in Washington, however, the former Obama administration deliberately suppressed the report and also overlooked the view in general that a proxy war in Syria would give birth to radical Islamic jihadists.

The hawks in Washington were fully aware of the consequences of their actions in Syria, but they kept pursuing the ill-fated policy of nurturing militants in the training camps located in Syria’s border regions with Turkey and Jordan in order to weaken the anti-Zionist Syrian government.

The single biggest threat to Israel’s regional security was posed by the Iranian resistance axis, which is comprised of Tehran, Damascus and their Lebanon-based surrogate, Hezbollah. During the course of 2006 Lebanon War, Hezbollah fired hundreds of rockets into northern Israel and Israel’s defense community realized for the first time the nature of threat that Hezbollah and its patrons posed to Israel’s regional security.

Those were only unguided rockets but it was a wakeup call for Israel’s military strategists that what will happen if Iran passed the guided missile technology to Hezbollah whose area of operations lies very close to the northern borders of Israel. Therefore, the Zionist lobbies in Washington literally coerced then-President Obama to coordinate a proxy war against Damascus and its Lebanon-based surrogate Hezbollah in order to dismantle the Iranian resistance axis against Israel.

Over the years, Israel has not only provided medical aid and material support to militant groups battling Damascus – particularly to various factions of the Free Syria Army (FSA) and al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate al-Nusra Front in Daraa and Quneitra bordering the Israel-occupied Golan Heights – but Israel’s air force virtually played the role of air force of Syrian jihadists and conducted hundreds of airstrikes in Syria during the eight-year conflict.

In an interview to New York Times [4] in January, Israel’s outgoing Chief of Staff Lt. General Gadi Eisenkot confessed that the Netanyahu government approved his shift in strategy in January 2017 to step up airstrikes in Syria. Consequently, more than 200 Israeli airstrikes were launched against the Syrian targets in 2017 and 2018, as revealed [5] by the Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz in September last year.

In 2018 alone, Israel’s air force dropped 2,000 bombs in Syria. The purpose of Israeli airstrikes in Syria has been to degrade Iran’s guided missile technology provided to Damascus and Hezbollah. Though after Russia provided S-300 missile system to the Syrian military after a Russian surveillance plane was shot down in Syria on September 18 last year, killing 15 Russians onboard, Israel’s airstrikes in Syria have been significantly reduced.

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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. 

Notes

[1] C.I.A. Got Tip on al-Baghdadi’s Location From Arrest of a Wife and a Courier

[2] Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi killed in US raid

[3] The United States Defense Intelligence Agency’s declassified report of 2012

[4] An interview with Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, Israel’s chief of staff

[5] Israel Katz: Israel conducted 200 airstrikes in Syria in 2017 and 2018

Selected Articles: The Death of ISIS Leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

October 28th, 2019 by Global Research News

A future without independent media leaves us with an upside down reality where according to the corporate media “NATO deserves a Nobel Peace Prize”, and where “nuclear weapons and wars make us safer”

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Twenty-six Things About the Islamic State (ISIS-ISIL-Daesh) that Obama (and Trump) Do Not Want You to Know About

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, October 27, 2019

“Capturing or killing him has been the top national security priority of my administration.” Addressing the Nation from the White House, “Trump said al-Baghdadi killed himself and three of his children, detonating a suicide vest as U.S. forces closed in after a “dangerous and daring” U.S.-led air raid in northwestern Syria.” Hollywood in Real Time: Trump says that “he watched the operation from the Situation Room”.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi: Made and Killed by the CIA

By Marc Vandepitte, October 28, 2019

In 2003 the US and Great Britain invaded Iraq. At the time, there was little mention of Al Qaeda or other jihadist terror groups in the region. After the invasion, the US army was confronted with a fierce uprising. To crush it, death squads were used just like in Latin America, what the Americans called the ‘Salvador option’. Moreover, in that dirty war, the Sunnis and Shiites were deliberately set against each other, the tactic of divide and rule. It was in that orgy of religiously provoked violence that Al Qaeda gained a foothold in Iraq under the name ‘Islamic State of Iraq’ (ISI).

ISIS Chief Al-Baghdadi Killed on Turkish Border while Fleeing Idlib

By Nauman Sadiq, October 28, 2019

Islamic State’s self-styled Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed in a United States Special Ops overnight raid Saturday involving helicopters, warplanes and a ground clash on the Turkey-Syria border while fleeing Syria’s northwestern Idlib Governorate, Reuters and Newsweek are reporting, and President Trump [has made] the major announcement of the biggest symbolic victory of his administration in the war against terrorism soon.

ISIS Leader Al-Baghdadi Killed? Trump’s Dubious Announcement. “Fake Politics”?

By Stephen Lendman, October 28, 2019

Whether Baghdadi or others headed ISIS leaves unexplained that the terror group was created, supported and controlled by the US, their fighters used as proxy troops, deployed to Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere, aided by Pentagon terror-bombing. Trump’s Sunday announcement about the alleged elimination of Baghdadi was a political stunt, diverting attention momentarily from Dem efforts to remove him by impeachment, along with aiming to boost his reelection campaign — by falsely claiming he’s combatting terrorism, the scourge created and supported by the US.

Forever War Propaganda: Trump and the Death of al-Baghdadi

By Kurt Nimmo, October 28, 2019

There is no evidence al-Baghdadi killed himself when confronted by US Special Forces in Syria, the same as there is no evidence that Obama killed Osama bin Laden (evidence indicates Osama died in Afghanistan of natural causes in late 2001). Abu “from Baghdad” has died before. In June 2017, Russia said it may have killed him during an airstrike in Syria. The following month, ISIS allegedly admitted al-Baghdadi was killed during an air raid in the Iraqi province of Nineveh. 

US Tries to Reverse Syrian Fortunes with “Baghdadi Raid”

By Tony Cartalucci, October 27, 2019

The supposed military operation – unfolding just miles from the Syrian-Turkish border – comes at a time when the prospects of America’s proxy war in Syria have reached all time lows. First – US proxy forces jointly armed and aided by Turkey as well as other US allies – have been all but eliminated from the battlefield with their remnants residing in Idlib, increasingly encircled by Syrian forces. Attempts by the US to intervene in Syria directly to oversee the overthrow of the government in Damascus was also thwarted by Russia’s military intervention beginning in 2015.

Did John McCain Meet with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Alleged Head of the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh)?

By Global Research News, October 27, 2019

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the alleged leader of ISIS is dead. President Trump confirmed that he was under surveillance and that he had ordered his execution. “He died like a dog, he died like a coward,” the President said he watched the operation from the Situation Room but would not give more details of what type of feed it was. Who is Al Baghdadi, leader of the ISIS? Was he an asset of Western intelligence?

The Caliphate Project, Made in America. Declassified U.S. Government Documents Confirm the US Supported the Creation of ISIS

By Washington’s Blog, October 26, 2019

Judicial Watch has – for many years – obtained sensitive U.S. government documents through freedom of information requests and lawsuits. The government just produced documents to Judicial Watch in response to a freedom of information suit which show that the West has long supported ISIS.   The documents were written by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency on August 12, 2012 … years before ISIS burst onto the world stage.

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A project for Greater Albania – conspiracy or legitimate? According to a 2010 Gallup Balkan Monitor report, 83% of Albanians in Albania supported the idea of a Greater Albania, with 81% and 53% of Albanians in Kosovo and North Macedonia respectively supporting such an ambition.

The ultimate goal? To have Kosovo and the Preševo Valley in Serbia, southern Montenegro, Epirus in Greece and western North Macedonia into a single Greater Albanian state. Although this may not be official policy of the Albanian Republic, it is ingrained into the Albanian mythos. The very idea of a Greater Albania has roots in the 1913 Treaty of London that left roughly 40% of the Albanian population outside the newly established Albanian country. This has been something that the U.S. could weaponize against Russian influence in the Balkans.

Despite the heroics of Albanian national figure and anti-Ottoman guerrilla leader Gjergj Kastrioti, more commonly known as Skënderbej, the Albanians became loyal Ottoman subjects and were used as colonists in more restive and disloyal areas of the empire, especially those inhabited by the Serbs, Bulgarians and Greeks. They often became a majority over the initial inhabitants, like what happened in Kosovo and western North Macedonia.

Although the idea of a Greater Albania may seem like an exaggerated conspiracy, to the Serbian people this is anything but. The Serbian mythos finds itself in the 1389 Battle of Kosovo, where despite their courage, Serbian Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović was martyred and his forces routed by the Ottoman invaders. Although the Serbs achieved sovereignty over Kosovo with the downfall of the Ottoman Empire, the region had already become an Albanian majority on Ottoman orders to weaken Serbian identity to the region.

Kosovo became an autonomous region of Serbia after the establishment of socialist Yugoslavia in the aftermath of World War Two and retained its Albanian-majority. The 1990’s proved this was always a weak point of Serbia. With the U.S. sponsoring the violent destruction of Yugoslavia in the early 1990’s, the status of Kosovo was left unresolved, culminating in the terrorist-led war against the Yugoslav state (in which Serbia was the successor of) in 1999.

The terrorist ethnic-Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) had the backing of NATO and the Albanian Republic. The United Nations and NATO assumed control of the territory, which eventually declared independence in 2008. Since then the region has become a heroin ‘smugglers paradise,’ and a hub for human trafficking, organ harvesting and arms trafficking.

It is for this reason that in an interview on Saturday, the former Serbian Chief of General Staff, General Ljubisa Dikovic, discussed the project for a Greater Albania. Dikovic believes that the area of ​​the Balkan Peninsula cannot be peaceful because of unresolved issues like Kosovo.

“There can easily be big problems if things get out of hand. I hope that there will be enough wisdom and intelligence and that everyone will do what we do, in terms of strengthening security, cooperation and trust. I am free to say that we are in the lead because I do not see on other sides showing desire to build peace. After all, the issue of ‘Greater Albania’ is a matter of the highest security risk. We can ask why this is happening now with Albania and [North] Macedonia? It might be waiting to create a ‘Greater Albania’,” Dikovic said.

His comments come as the economic situation in Kosovo continues to deteriorate and becomes even more reliant upon foreign aid and donations from the unilateral behaving U.S., their former Ottoman masters in Turkey that had gifted lands to them hundreds of years earlier, and Germany who effectively rules the European Union.

The former military man’s comments also come as Serbia leads Exercise “Slovenian Shield 2019” with Russia. Although some Slavic tribes broke off and headed south into the Balkans sometime at around 600AD, they maintained their Slavic kinship with the Russians and shared Christian Orthodox faith, ensuring Serbia has always had a pro-Russia view. Albanian expansionism has therefore become a natural ally of the U.S. to limit Russian influence in the Balkans.

However, this begs the question then why strong efforts for Albanian independence in Greece, Montenegro and North Macedonia has been weak in comparison to those in Serbia. Greece has been a long-time loyal NATO member, with the exception of the disintegration of Yugoslavia, and therefore does not pose a threat to U.S. hegemony in the Balkans, protecting Greece from destabilization efforts via Albanian expansionism. Although Montenegro and North Macedonia also share Slavic kinship with the Serbs and Russians, as well as the Orthodox faith, they have proven to have Globalist ambitions, wanting to join NATO and the EU.

Serbia remains the only anti-EU/NATO state in the Balkans that is overwhelmingly pro-Russia. It is for this reason that Dikovic wants to renew compulsory military service, stating: “One should not gamble and think that there will be no conflict and risk. It is not only up to us, but we must have an answer to everything.”

Although the overwhelming majority of Albanians want a Greater Albania, it is unlikely to be achieved with Washington’s backing in Greece, Montenegro and North Macedonia as they do not pose a threat to U.S. hegemony in the Balkans, but rather serve it, while not encouraging Russian influence in the region. As Serbia is a pro-Russian island in a hostile region, it will continue to be targeted by Albanian expansionism with U.S. backing. Will this drive for expansionism violently spill over into the Preševo Valley? That remains to be seen.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies.

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We talk to Fidel Narvaez, the ousted Ecuadorian diplomat who handled Julian Assange’s case about why Lenín Moreno caved to international pressure, broke his promises, and gave Assange up to British authorities.

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Assange had been granted asylum in 2012, at the height of Latin America’s Pink Tide, when progressive governments across the continent challenged US interference in the region. Six and a half years later, Assange’s expulsion reflects a rightwards shift in Ecuadorian politics and a new president, Lenín Moreno, willing to serve US interests.

For his cooperation, Moreno has been warmly received by Washington, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressing his enthusiasm to “continue to work in partnership” with Ecuador.

To discuss the dynamics behind Ecuador’s decision to expel the Australian Wikileaks founder, Jacobin spoke to Fidel Narvaez, the former Ecuadorian consul in London, who was instrumental in obtaining asylum for Assange in 2012, and who spent six years at the embassy with him.

Stefania Maurizi: When did you first hear about Julian Assange?

Fidel Narvaez: I first heard of Julian in 2010, when Wikileaks began publishing the archives of American military and diplomatic document. I personally approached him in 2011, because my government was interested in making public all the diplomatic cables on Ecuador. We were not looking for privileged access to the cables, but we did want them available in the public domain. To that end, in May 2011, Wikileaks released all those documents — and with no strings attached.

Since then, I had maintained some contact with the Wikileaks team, so when Julian reached the stage where he needed protection, and knocked on Ecuador’s door, he came to me first. I felt very strongly about the idea of protecting him, because my background is not in diplomacy, but in human rights. I was absolutely convinced that he needed protection.

SM: Did you ever perceive that by providing protection to Assange, Ecuador’s then president, Rafael Correa, wanted to antagonize the United States?

FN: The United States is a major superpower. It’s also Ecuador’s most important economic partner, so it’s not in our interest to look for a fight. However, we did want to make clear that we were not prepared to have the same relationships that we historically had. That’s why we said “no” to the Manta US military base: we wanted to exercise our sovereignty in accordance with our new Constitution, which allows no foreign military presence in Ecuador.

When WikiLeaks cables brought to light one American ambassador’s interference in Ecuadorian internal affairs, she was subsequently expelled. We also expelled several CIA agents, because they were interfering with our police forces. We refused to enter free trade agreements with the United States, because they weren’t the best deal for our country. In the case of Julian, we were not obliged to provide asylum, but we saw it as a human-rights issue, and the right thing to do.

SM: What happened immediately after you granted him asylum?

FN: The United States, of course, was not happy, and I think they were acting through the United Kingdom. The official American discourse was to deny that they were going after Julian. But the day before we announced the asylum, the United Kingdom delivered a letter threatening to enter the embassy to arrest Julian. They also deployed a disproportionately large contingent of police, and at night they closed the street to normal traffic. There were policemen everywhere: they were outside every window and they were even inside the building, because there was an interior patio. Ecuadorian diplomacy reacted fast and publicly rejected the threats: you can’t storm an embassy, not even during a war. The British backtracked, and even tried to say that we had misunderstood. In any event, Ecuador stood firm and granted asylum. We protected Julian for six years until the change in government.

SM: What was the most difficult time?

FN: The night the British threatened the embassy was probably the tensest, but after that, I would say the US elections, when WikiLeaks published the documents from the Democratic Party.

SM: Did the United States send any official diplomatic communication on that occasion?

FN: No, not as far as I know. I can only speculate that the pressure was delivered in a diplomatic way, probably through the ambassador in the United States. Also, for the first time, the government suspended Julian’s internet connection during the elections, for something like ten days. However, Ecuador was not going to withdraw protection, not under President Correa. But that was a difficult moment.

SM: Were you ever afraid?

FN: Personally, no. However, during those years, there were a couple of times when the embassy received threats, mostly by post. We also received white powder in envelopes.

SM: How was Julian’s relationship with staff at the embassy?

FN: Contrary to what Moreno’s government led people to believe, there was mutual respect between Assange and the diplomatic and administrative staff at the embassy.

SM: The Spanish newspaper El Paìs recently revealed that UC Global, the security company hired by Ecuador to protect Julian Assange inside the embassy, was actually spying on him, as well as his staff and every journalist, lawyer, and activist who visited him. El Paìs reported that the company shared the information with the CIA. Had you ever suspected anything like that?

FN:  I never trusted the security in the embassy. They were brought on in 2012, two months after Julian’s arrival. We needed security because the embassy didn’t even have cameras installed, but I think the company was very unprofessional. In order to secure their own employment they were misrepresenting Julian’s behavior inside the embassy.

SM: Do you have any examples of this?

FN: Let me describe one small episode. At the very beginning, during the night somebody was throwing something from the streets onto Julian’s windows. Assange immediately went to see the security guard and asked him to look through the security cameras. The guard didn’t speak English, he didn’t know what Julian wanted, he didn’t let Julian look at the cameras, and there was a little argument. What does the company do? It complains about him. On the video, I saw that the British police outside were having fun, throwing coins at Julian’s window at two o’clock in the morning.

So I complained about the company, saying that Julian was not the problem, and asking to see the video — which they never produced, claiming it was lost. I have to say, we did underestimate the extent of this company’s espionage. We knew that UC Global had started to produce very inaccurate reports, misrepresenting what was going on in the embassy. It was in the interest of the company to portray Julian as a problematic presence. Why? Because that way they were justifying their own employment.

SM: It’s the old strategy “keep the problem going, so the money keeps flowing” …

FN: Exactly. We underestimated that. Soon enough, the company’s reports were leaked and, gaining access to those, the Ecuadorian press started to attack Julian, pressuring the government to get rid of him. Then, based on those reports, the international media also rolled out aggressive smear campaigns, especially the Guardian and CNN.

SM: The Guardian even reported on “Russia’s secret plan to help Julian Assange escape from the UK” …

FN: First of all, there is an obsession with trying to link WikiLeaks to Russia. I don’t think there is any ground for this — neither in terms of the Russian state, nor Russian intelligence services. In 2017, Ecuador appointed Julian as a diplomat and requested the UK Foreign Office to register him in the diplomatic list. The idea was to increase protection of the political asylee, in a way similar to what the United Kingdom has done with the journalist Nazanin Rafcliffe [detained by Iran]. The United Kingdom rejected this, and though Ecuador could have taken the case to the International Court of Justice, there was another option: to appoint Julian as a diplomat to a third country that might accept him. So it is true that Ecuador did consider appointing him as a diplomat to Russia, but in the end, it didn’t happen.

SM: Why is that?

FN: I don’t know for sure, but I think that the United States learned of the plan and threatened unfriendly action. That was the breaking point. After that, Ecuador began withdrawing its protection. That’s the fact. The Guardian published a very different story, saying that Russia had devised a secret undercover operation to smuggle Julian out.

SM: A James Bond story …

FN: That’s how the Guardian presented it. The article said that I was Moscow’s contact, in other words that I was plotting with Russia. I filed a complaint against the newspaper, and it is still being assessed.

SM: Why do you think Lenín Moreno stopped protecting Julian?

FN: Lenín Moreno never liked Julian, not even when he was vice president. He doesn’t understand what WikiLeaks is or what they do. At the beginning of his government, Maria Fernanda Espinosa — who became the president of the UN General Assembly soon afterwards — was the one protecting Julian, I think even despite Moreno’s dislike for him. But when she wasn’t there anymore, that was when I think Julian’s fate was decided: they started making the case to end his asylum. How? They isolated him, they tried to break him down, so that he would leave the embassy of his own accord. They failed.

When the isolation started arousing international condemnation, they tried to impose the so-called “protocol,” which was an outrageous prison regime of putting banana peels all over the floor to provoke him and get an excuse to kick him out. That was one of the strategies. Another was to defame him in order to justify his expulsion, and to approach the British and the Americans in order to hand Julian over.

SM: You were no longer a diplomat at that time, right?

FN: No, I left in July 2018, because I was asked to. They didn’t want me anymore — and I didn’t want them anymore either. It was unbearable. Julian’s isolation began when I was there. I witnessed it.

SM: Moreno obtained a 4.2 billion-dollar deal from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Do you think it was related to his decision to stop protecting Assange?

FN: Moreno was desperate to get cash from any source. Under Correa, we avoided deals with the IMF, but with Moreno things were different. I think he would have expelled Julian anyway, even if he hadn’t gotten cash for it, because it is part of his colonial mentality to be subservient, to try to please the United States. I wouldn’t be able to say whether Julian’s expulsion was a condition of the deal, but we do know that the United States has veto power with the IMF.

SM: You lost your privileged position; you are no longer a diplomat. Do you have any regrets?

FN: Of course, I’ve paid a price. I don’t think my job opportunities are very broad. If people Google my name, they see that the Guardian is calling me a “Russian plotter,” and that the government of Ecuador is trying to discredit me. But I don’t regret anything at all. As a diplomat, the most interesting people I met were in connection to providing asylum for Julian Assange, and in trying to help Edward Snowden. I would do it again, for sure.

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Fidel Narvaez is the former Ecuadorian consul in London who was instrumental in obtaining asylum for Assange in 2012, and who spent six years at the embassy with him.

Stefania Maurizi is an investigative journalist for the Italian daily La Repubblica. She has worked on all major WikiLeaks releases and partnered with Glenn Greenwald to reveal the Snowden files about Italy.

Featured image is from Jacobin

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi allegedly headed ISIS, the jihadist group created and supported by the US and its imperial allies.

Years earlier, he was held in Camp Bucca, a US military prison in Iraq, later released, after which the ISIS terrorist group emerged.

Their fighters captured and controlled large parts of Iraq and Syria — heavily armed with US, other Western, Israeli and Turkish weapons, trained by US special forces and CIA operatives at regional Pentagon bases.

Whether Baghdadi or others headed ISIS leaves unexplained that the terror group was created, supported and controlled by the US, their fighters used as proxy troops, deployed to Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere, aided by Pentagon terror-bombing.

Trump’s Sunday announcement about the alleged elimination of Baghdadi was a political stunt, diverting attention momentarily from Dem efforts to remove him by impeachment, along with aiming to boost his reelection campaign — by falsely claiming he’s combatting terrorism, the scourge created and supported by the US.

His announcement was reminiscent of Obama’s fake news about Osama bin Laden’s alleged May 2011 death.

Post-9/11, he became “Enemy Number One,” the nation’s top “security threat.” If he hadn’t existed, he’d have been invented.

He had nothing to do with 9/11. Obama didn’t kill him. Gravely ill with kidney disease and other ailments, he died of natural causes in December 2001 — reported by the NYT, the BBC, Fox News and other Western media at the time.

Influential people reported his death, including then-Pakistani President Musharraf, FBI counterterrorism head Dale Watson, Pakistani intelligence, and Israel’s Mossad, saying supposed messages from him were fake.

Is Baghdadi dead or alive? Does it matter either way? Can anything Trump says be believed? His credibility was long ago lost.

Trump saying Baghdadi was “killed…in a daring nighttime raid” sounded like Obama’s earlier falsely claiming “the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden (by) a targeted operation…carried out…with extraordinary courage and capability (sic).”

Bin Laden was an unwitting CIA asset, later demonized post-mortem for political purposes — Baghdadi serving in a similar capacity.

Whether alive or dead doesn’t matter. ISIS, al-Qaeda and other terrorists ground continue to be used by the Pentagon and CIA as proxy troops.

In response to Trump’s Sunday announcement, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman General Igor Konashenkov said the following:

The ministry “has no reliable information about (involvement of) US servicemen (in) an operation to ‘yet another’ elimination of the former Daesh leader Abu Bark al-Baghdadi in the Turkish-controlled part of the Idlib deescalation zone,” adding:

“No airstrikes performed by US aircraft or aircraft belonging to the so called ‘international coalition’ were detected on Saturday or during the following days.”

No Russian cooperation was provided to the US for the alleged operation, no permission to use deescalation zone airspace, as Trump claimed.

“Since the moment of the final Daesh’s defeat at the hands of the Syrian government army supported by Russian Aerospace Forces in early 2018, yet another ‘death’ of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi does not have any strategic importance regarding the situation in Syria or the actions of the remaining terrorists in Idlib,” Konashenkov stressed.

Reports of his death proved greatly exaggerated a number of times before. If Washington wanted him killed, he’d have been eliminated long ago.

Trump’s Sunday announcement is another example of things allegedly changing but staying the same.

Endless US wars rage in Syria and elsewhere, no near-term prospect for resolving them because bipartisan US hardliners and the nation’s military, industrial, security, media complex oppose restoration of peace and stability to war-torn countries.

A Final Comment

On June 16, 2017, Tass reported that “Baghdadi may have been killed by a Russian airstrike on the southern outskirts of Raqqa in late May, according to the Defense Ministry,” adding:

“The airstrike was carried out overnight to May 28 against a command post, where the IS group’s leaders were meeting to discuss the routes for the terrorists’ exit from Raqqa through the so-called southern corridor, the ministry said in a statement.”

“According to information…the meeting was also attended by the IS leader Ibrahim Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was eliminated in the strike,” the ministry said.

“Russia’s Aerospace Forces killed a number of high-ranking commanders of the Islamic State terrorist group, including 330 field commanders and militants, in the southern suburb of Syria’s Raqqa in late May,” according to its Defense Ministry.

Russian and Syrian forces successfully combated ISIS and other terrorist groups.

The US and its imperial allies pretend to be combating the scourge of ISIS they support — along with al-Qaeda, its al-Nusra offshoot, and likeminded jihadists.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

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.

Featured image is from Flickr

Saudi Arabia’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel Al-Jubeir has recently called out Iran for its alleged “support of terrorist groups, its ballistic missile program and its destabilizing effect” in the Middle East even though Iran has not attacked a country in more than 200 years.

The Saudi Gazette, an English-language online daily newspaper published in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia who describes itself as “The Tone of Truth and Moderation” reported on October 21st ‘Iranians are on a rampage — Al-Jubeir’ on a Q&A event that took place at the Chatham House, a think tank based in London with Al-Jubeir. Al-Jubeir claimed that “Iran’s hand is in almost all countries in the region… Iranians are on a rampage and have been on a rampage since 1979″ and that there is an ‘Iran Problem’ — its support of terrorist groups, its ballistic missile program and its destabilizing effect in the region and unless we deal with those problems, “we will always have an Iran problem as they keep on meddling in the internal affairs of other countries.”

Al-Jubeir said the Iran poses problems when it comes to the internal affairs of other countries, so is he talking about Syria who its President, Bashar al-Assad has invited not only Iran but also Russia to help fight the Islamic State? Let’s go back to 2011, during the start of the Syrian conflict which began as an uprising against the Assad government, there were U.S. backed moderate rebels and members of ISIS and other terrorist groups that came from Iraq, Libya and elsewhere who infiltrated the demonstrations.

Professor Tim Anderson, a Senior Lecturer in Political Economy at the University of Sydney and an author of several books including ‘The Dirty War on Syria: Washington, Regime Change and Resistance’ and ‘Daraa 2011: Syria’s Islamist Insurrection in Disguise’ described how the Syrian civil war actually began:

A double story began on the Syrian conflict, at the very beginning of the armed violence in 2011, in the southern border town of Daraa. The first story comes from independent witnesses in Syria, such as the late Father Frans Van der Lugt in Homs. They say that armed men infiltrated the early political reform demonstrations to shoot at both police and civilians. This violence came from sectarian Islamists. The second comes from the Islamist groups (‘rebels’) and their western backers, including the Washington-based Human Rights Watch. They claim there was ‘indiscriminate’ violence from Syrian security forces to repress political rallies and that the ‘rebels’ grew out of a secular political reform movement

Iraq, Libya and Syria did not want to be controlled by the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East including Israel and Saudi Arabia, so they were targeted for regime change, now they are destabilized and the results are never-ending conflicts, increased poverty and even human trafficking in regards to Libya, so the revolution against the Syrian government was anything but organic.

The US-Saudi Alliance: Supporting Terrorists One Step At A Time

Investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh published ‘The Red Line and the Rat Line’ in the London Review of Books in April 2014 where he interviewed an anonymous former pentagon official who claimed that the U.S. diplomatic post located in Benghazi, Libya existed for the purpose of sending weapons through a secret pipeline to the Syrian rebels who were fighting Syrian government forces. Hersh elaborated on the Obama administration’s role in sending weapons from Libya through Turkey and finally into the hands of the terrorists or the moderate rebels within Syria’s borders:

The full extent of US co-operation with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in assisting the rebel opposition in Syria has yet to come to light. The Obama administration has never publicly admitted to its role in creating what the CIA calls a ‘rat line’, a back channel highway into Syria. The rat line, authorised in early 2012, was used to funnel weapons and ammunition from Libya via southern Turkey and across the Syrian border to the opposition. Many of those in Syria who ultimately received the weapons were jihadists, some of them affiliated with al-Qaida

That’s just one side of the story. The majority of fighters that made their way into Syria were trained and armed in Jordan by the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies under ‘Operation Timber Sycamore’ that began in 2011 and supposedly lasted until 2013 according to the mainstream media. The pipeline to ISIS was through Saudi Arabia according to a September 2016 report by The New York Times ‘U.S. Relies Heavily on Saudi Money to Support Syrian Rebels’:

When President Obama secretly authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to begin arming Syria’s embattled rebels in 2013, the spy agency knew it would have a willing partner to help pay for the covert operation. It was the same partner the C.I.A. has relied on for decades for money and discretion in far-off conflicts: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Since then, the C.I.A. and its Saudi counterpart have maintained an unusual arrangement for the rebel-training mission, which the Americans have code-named Timber Sycamore. Under the deal, current and former administration officials said, the Saudis contribute both weapons and large sums of money, and the C.I.A takes the lead in training the rebels on AK-47 assault rifles and tank-destroying missiles

In June 2016, another report by The New York Times ‘C.I.A. Arms for Syrian Rebels Supplied Black Market, Officials Say’ suggested that weapons delivered to Jordan that were intended for the Syrian rebels were stolen by Jordanian intelligence operatives and sold on the black market ending up in the hands of ISIS and other terrorists groups. “The theft, involving millions of dollars of weapons, highlights the messy, unplanned consequences of programs to arm and train rebels — the kind of program the C.I.A. and Pentagon have conducted for decades — even after the Obama administration had hoped to keep the training program in Jordan under tight control.” Well, the world knows who supported ISIS and it was not Iran.

Iran is also guilty in the attacks on the Aramco oil facility according to Saudi Arabia. “Saudi Arabia is convinced, from the evidence we have gathered, that Iran is involved in the Aramco oil facilities attacks” besides the fact that the Houthi
resistance in Yemen has claimed credit for the attacks. Al-Jubeir claimed that “Iran’s targeting of these facilities indicate Tehran’s hostile intentions in the region.” How would Iran even remotely benefit from such an attack in the first place? “We are convinced that the missile attacks on Saudi facilities came from the North, not South” meaning that they are convinced, but in reality, they have no proof “We don’t want war but we also can’t sit idle and be attacked constantly by Iran and its proxies. What Iran needs to do is very simply to act like a normal country and stop its destabilizing the region with murderous actions,” Al-Jubeir said. However, Saudi Arabia itself has been involved in a relentless bombing campaign in Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the Middle East since March of 2015. Death and misery is the only result for the Yemeni people. This geopolitical tragedy is the making of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that has backed the Saudi’s destruction of Yemen. The Guardian’s Mohamed Bazzi wrote an opinion piece on October 19th ‘America is likely complicit in war crimes in Yemen. It’s time to hold the US to account’ on the full-picture of what is actually going on with Saudi Arabia’s barbaric war on Yemen:

The full scope of human suffering in Yemen has been partly obscured because the UN stopped updating civilian deaths in January 2017, when the toll reached 10,000. And while the actual death toll is far higher, many news reports still rely on the outdated UN figures. In June, an independent monitoring group, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, released a report detailing more than 90,000 fatalities since the war began in 2015.

In April, the United Nations Development Programme issued a report warning that the death toll in Yemen could rise to 233,000 by the end of 2019 – far higher than previous estimates. That projection includes deaths from combat as well as 131,000 indirect deaths due to the lack of food, health crises such as a cholera epidemic, and damage to Yemen’s infrastructure

The U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia are the destabilizing factors in the Middle East. Human rights for Saudi Arabia is non-existent in its foreign policy as well as their internal affairs with its own citizens. However, when it comes to human rights in Saudi Arabia, I should mention an important milestone that did occur on September 2017, I mean it was a breakthrough for human rights around the world, Saudi women were finally allowed to drive! Imagine that. Since 1957, Saudi Arabia was the only country in the world where women were not allowed to drive due to Wahhabism, a strict form of Sunni Islam where women and men are not allowed to mix or mingle in any way. Saudi Arabia’s ruler, King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud announced that Saudi women could drive starting on June 24, 2018. What an achievement.

Of course, I am being sarcastic. Saudi Arabia, in my view is possibly the worst dictatorship on the planet is launching an all-out propaganda war against Iran, albeit, Iran is not perfect, it has its own domestic issues, but for a country like Saudi Arabia to criticize and accuse Iran of being hostile and dangerous is absurd. Saudi Arabia is on a rampage in Yemen and Syria, and don’t forget the rampage it has on its own citizens when it comes to women’s rights, torture, public beheadings and other human rights abuses.

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Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his blog, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author

The Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association (RRA) has come out in support of a bill that promotes the human rights of Palestinian children and they’re calling on congress to pass it.

H.R.2407, the Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act, was introduced by Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN) in April. The bill would amend the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 to ensure that U.S. taxpayer money would not go towards the military detention of children in foreign countries, including Israel. A different version of the bill was introduced by McCollum in 2017, but it died at the end of that congressional session.

“While we fully support Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorists, we believe that the detention and interrogation of children is a very last resort only in the most urgent cases. It should never be a normal course of action,” reads a statement put out by RRA.

The Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association was founded in 1974. It has over 300 members and most of them are graduates of Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Pennsylvania, the only seminary connected to Reconstructionist Judaism.

“The RRA represents the rabbinic voice within the Reconstructionist movement, bringing the teachings, stories, and traditions of Judaism to bear on contemporary issues and challenges, and helping to define Reconstructionist positions on Jewish issues for our time,” reads the groups website.

In recent months, the group has also released statements opposing a potential annexation of the West Bank and condemning the Netanyahu government’s decision to bar Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from entering Israel.

Rabbi Elyse Wechterman is the Executive Director of the RRA.

“As Jews and reconstructionist rabbis, we have a long standing commitment to human rights and an awareness that societies are measured by how they treat their most vulnerable – especially children,” she told Mondoweiss, “Our members have been working hard against child detention and family separation on the border here in the United States.  When the issue of child incarceration, torture and detention by the Israeli military was brought to our attention, we felt we could not ignore it – this is part of what it means to fight for justice locally and globally.”

Earlier this month, Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-CA) became the 22nd member of Congress to co-sponsor McCollum’s bill. The legislation continues to gain support amidst a wider national discussion on the subject of conditioning aid to Israel. Democratic presidential candidates Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren have all indicated that they might be open to the idea of leveraging aid to impact Israel’s policies. A recent report released by the progressive think tank Data for Progress indicates that a net majority of Democratic voters support cutting aid to Israel over their human rights violations.

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Michael Arria is the U.S. correspondent for Mondoweiss.

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Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the alleged head of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) renamed ISIS-ISIL-Daesh in 2014. This Al Qaeda jihadist group was created and supported by the US and its allies.

The following video features Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton who candidly acknowledges that America created and funded Al Qaeda as a terrorist organization in the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war:  

““Let’s remember here… the people we are fighting today we funded them twenty years ago

… let’s go recruit these mujahideen. 

“And great, let them come from Saudi Arabia and other countries, importing their Wahabi brand of Islam so that we can go beat the Soviet Union.” 

And that is precisely what the US is doing in Syria: using their Al Qaeda “Moderates” to fight against Syria and Russia. For Moscow, it is “Déjà Vu.

The plan in Afghanistan was to destroy the secular state and install a proxy U.S. Islamic State.  The same objective prevails in Syria. 

What Hillary does not mention is that at no time in the course of the last 36 years has the US ceased to support and finance Al Qaeda as a means to destabilizing sovereign countries. It was “a pretty good idea”, says Hillary, and it remains a good idea today: 

Amply documented, the ISIS and Al Nusrah Mujahideen are recruited by NATO and the Turkish High command, with the support of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel. 

And Trump has endorsed US support for Al Qaeda and ISIS “rebels” in Syria. America is a state sponsor of terrorism, which uses Al Qaeda affiliated mercenaries to wage war on Syria.

US, French and Israeli operatives are fighting alongside Al Qaeda in Southern Syria.

Michel Chossudovsky, Jun 27, 2018

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The Global War on Terror (GWOT) is led by the United States. It is not directed against Al Qaeda.

Quite the opposite: The “Global War on Terrorism” uses Al Qaeda terrorist operatives as their foot soldiers.

“Political Islam” and the imposition of  an “Islamic State” (modeled on Qatar or Saudi Arabia) is an integral part of US foreign policy.

America is the Terror State.

The GWOT is a diabolical instrument of Worldwide conquest.

It is a means to destabilizing sovereign countries and imposing “regime change”.

Clinton’s successor at the State Department, John Kerry is in direct liaison with Al Nusra, an Al Qaeda affiliated organization in Syria, integrated by terrorists and funded by the US and its allies.

In a bitter irony, John Kerry is not only complicit in the killings committed by Al Nusra, he is also in blatant violation of US anti-terrorist legislation. If the latter were to be applied to politicians in high office, John Kerry would be considered as a “Terror  Suspect”.

New Normal? Al Nusra is on the State Department blacklist of terrorist organizations and the US Secretary of State is channeling money and weapons to Al Nusra.

Support to Al Qaeda operatives in different countries by the US government is known and documented.

In this upside down World,  the Lie prevails: The Protagonists of the “Global War on Terrorism” and the “Responsibility to Protect” are the Terrorists.

Its a circular relationship, a vicious circle: Those who lead the “Global War on Terrorism” in the name of “Democracy” are those who are supporting and financing terrorist organizations, which they themselves created.

TRANSCRIPT AND VIDEO

“Let’s remember here… the people we are fighting today we funded them twenty years ago… and we did it because we were locked in a struggle with the Soviet Union.

“They invaded Afghanistan… and we did not want to see them control Central Asia and we went to work… and it was President Reagan in partnership with Congress led by Democrats who said you know what it sounds like a pretty good idea… let’s deal with the ISI and the Pakistan military and let’s go recruit these mujahideen.

“And great, let them come from Saudi Arabia and other countries, importing their Wahabi brand of Islam so that we can go beat the Soviet Union.

“And guess what … they (Soviets) retreated … they lost billions of dollars and it led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“So there is a very strong argument which is… it wasn’t a bad investment in terms of Soviet Union but let’s be careful with what we sow… because we will harvest.

“So we then left Pakistan … We said okay fine you deal with the Stingers that we left all over your country… you deal with the mines that are along the border and… by the way we don’t want to have anything to do with you… in fact we’re sanctioning you… So we stopped dealing with the Pakistani military and with ISI and we now are making up for a lot of lost time.” (HILLARY CLINTON)

C’est le monde à l’envers.

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Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi: Made and Killed by the CIA

October 28th, 2019 by Marc Vandepitte

Now that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of IS, has been eliminated, there is a great deal of joy and relief in the US and the West. What they don’t mention is that this barbaric terror group is a product of their own foreign policy in the region.

The emergence of IS

In 2003 the US and Great Britain invaded Iraq. At the time, there was little mention of Al Qaeda or other jihadist terror groups in the region. After the invasion, the US army was confronted with a fierce uprising. To crush it, death squads were used just like in Latin America, what the Americans called the ‘Salvador option’. Moreover, in that dirty war, the Sunnis and Shiites were deliberately set against each other, the tactic of divide and rule. It was in that orgy of religiously provoked violence that Al Qaeda gained a foothold in Iraq under the name ‘Islamic State of Iraq’ (ISI).

Then came the Arab Spring of 2011. To overthrow Gaddafi, NATO collaborated with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) under the leadership of Abdelhakim Belhaj, a former leader of al-Qaeda in Libya. When the uprising started in Syria, Belhaj sent hundreds of armed fighters to that country to expel Assad from power. The security services of the US and GB cooperated in transferring Libyan arsenals to Syrian rebels.

In 2012, the US, Turkey and Jordan set up a training camp for Syrian rebels in Safawi, northern Jordan. French and British instructors were also involved. Parts of these rebel groups would later join ISIS.

There were many Syrians in the ranks of Al Qaeda in Iraq. At the start of the civil war in Syria, many of them returned to their homeland to establish the al-Nusra Front. In April 2013, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISI, declared that his group and Al-Nusra had merged under the name Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and later Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Al Qaeda, however, distanced itself from it and from now on both terrorist organizations went their own way.

In this ‘wasp’s nest‘ ISIS, later called IS, originated and became strong. The terror organization expanded rapidly, conquered a lot of ground from 2014 onwards and proclaimed itself a caliphate in June of that year. The US Military Intelligence Service (DIA) had known for some time that there were plans for such a caliphate. But according to Michael Flynn, former National Security Advisor under President Trump, the U.S. government looked the other way. Such a caliphate was an excellent Sunni buffer to weaken Syria and reduce the influence of Shia Iran.

Graham Fuller, one of the most respected Middle Eastern analysts and former CIA agent, is very clear:

“I think the United States is one of the key creators of ISIS. The United States did not plan the formation of ISIS, but its destructive interventions in the Middle East and the war in Iraq were the basic causes of the birth of ISIS.”

There’s nothing new under the sun

The Pentagon’s flirting with extremist Islamic groups is not new. Remember the mudjahedin, from 1979 they were recruited, armed and trained by the US to expel the communist government in Afghanistan. Rambo 3 by Silverster Stallone, is a Hollywood version of this collaboration. It is from these mudjahedin circles that al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden later came.

In the 1990s, the extremist and even more violent Taliban fighters became Washington’s preferred partner in Afghanistan. This cooperation came to an end when it became clear that the Taliban could no longer serve US interests.

During the civil war in Yugoslavia (1992-1995) the Pentagon had thousands of Al Qaeda fighters flown over to Bosnia, in support of the Muslims in the area.

In 1996 the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was trained by Al Qaeda officers just across the border with Albania. At the same time there was help from British and US soldiers.

We have already referred to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and NATO working together to overthrow Gaddafi. After 2011, this terrorist organization formed an alliance with the Islamist rebels of Mali. The latter, together with the Tuaregs, managed to conquer the north of Mali for several months. Thanks to NATO bombardments, LIFG was able to plunder the Libyan army’s arms depots. The very weapons that jihadis are using today in Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, Chad and Mali. The Financial Timessees a link between these events and the geopolitical rivalry with China: “The militarization of US policy in Africa post 9/11 has long been contentious, perceived in the region as an attempt to shore up US control of resources and counter China’s burgeoning commercial role.”

Nor can it be ruled out that Western intelligence services may be directly or indirectly involved in the terrorist activities of the Chechens in Russia and of the Uyghurs in China.

We are therefore talking about a systematic and deliberate policy on the part of Washington and its allies to maintain control of the region.

The strategy of chaos

Today, the war on terror has turned into its opposite, the spread of terror. The failed operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria clearly demonstrate that the US and the West are no longer able to mold the region of the Middle East as they would like it.

Washington and its allies are in danger of losing their grip more and more and are increasingly turning to sub-contractors of the worst kind. They argue: ‘if we cannot control the area ourselves, then certainly no one else either’.

That is what could be described as the strategy of chaos, or perhaps better ‘the chaos of strategy’. In any case, it is the pinnacle of immorality.

One thing’s for sure. The terror in the region will not be eradicated by the same forces that brought them to life. Or, as an unsuspected source such as Dominique de Villepin, France’s former Minister for Home and Foreign Affairs, put it strongly:

“The wars lost in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya favor separatism, failed states, the brazen law of armed militias. Never have these wars made it possible to overcome terrorists swarming over the region. On the contrary, they legitimize the most radical. … Each Western intervention creates the conditions for the next. We must stop this.”

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For about 70 years the CIA has been undermining a free press.  It began with Operation Mockingbird, a Cold War operation against communism.  The CIA recruited journalists into a propaganda network.  The CIA paid journalists to write fake stories or to publish stories written by the CIA in order to control explanations that served the agency’s agendas.  Student and cultural organizations and intellectual magazines, such as Encounter, were suborned into the CIA’s propaganda network.  Thanks to the German journalist, Udo Ulfkotte, we know that every European journalist of any significance is a CIA asset.  In 1977 Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame wrote in Rolling Stone that the CIA “has secretly bankrolled numerous foreign press services, periodicals and newspapers—both English and foreign language—which provided excellent cover for CIA operatives.”  Like most other people, Western journalists were all too willing to sell out their integrity for money.  The few who were not were blackmailed into submission.

The few honest journalists who remain have been forced out of the “mainstream” or “presstitute media” onto Internet websites.  Wikileaks is by far the best news organization of our time.  To bring this organization to heel Washington, using its Swedish, British, and Ecuadoran vassals, has persecuted Wikileaks’ founder, Julian Assange, for years.  The CIA’s media vassals, including the New York Times and The Guardian, both of which published the material leaked to Wikileaks that is being used to destroy Assange, have joined wholeheartedly in the persecution of the World’s Best and Most Honest Journalist.  

Currently Assange is being tortured, apparently to death, while bring held in solitary confinement in a maximum security British prison awaiting his extradition to the US on false charges.  As the CIA cannot be certain it has suborned all the federal judges, Washington is just as happy if Assange dies in a British prison as there is no valid case against him under current US law.  Probably the absence of a valid case doesn’t matter as the rule of law in the US is very difficult to find.

The lack of any valid case against Assange is the reason the distinguished documentary film maker John Pilger describes Assange’s persecution as a Stalinist Show Trial.

What is astonishing about the CIA’s destruction of Julian Assange is the silence of American law schools and bar associations, the silence of universities, the absence of student and labor union protests, the absence of any protection of Assange’s rights from courts as the last news organization willing and capable of holding governments accountable for their crimes is destroyed openly in full view of the law schools, intellectuals, bar associations, courts, and print and TV media.  

The CIA’s control over explanations is as complete as the control Big Brother has in George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984.  And this doesn’t bother the citizens of the US, UK, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Europe.  Only a few individuals speak out for Assange, and they, too, are demonized in turn.  

The Age of Tyranny has now descended upon the Western World. 

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog, Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Snopes.com

Trump said he talked to Syrian Democratic Forces leader Gen. Mazloum Abdi on Thursday. As usual, Trump’s report of the conversation is marred by outright lies and bizarre allegations. He said,

.

.

We know that Abdi (who sometimes goes by the nom de guerre Mazloum Kobanê) is not actually happy with “what Trump did,” in inviting Turkey to invade the Kurdish regions of northeast Syria because he repeatedly said so.

What Trump was likely referring to was Abdi’s relief at the pause in fighting arranged by vice president Mike Pence last week, which gave Russia time to impose severe limits on Turkey’s advance into Syria.

Trump had earlier said,

“This was an outcome created by us, the United States, and nobody else, Now we’re getting out. … Let someone else fight over this long-bloodstained sand.”

Trump goes back and forth between dismissing Syria as an unimportant desert and playing up its small oil reserves. Northeast Syria, from which Trump pulled 1,000 US special operations personnel, is the most fertile agricultural area in Syria and is for the most part not desert.

As for the issue of oil, Syria’s reserves are mostly in the east, with the bulk in the southeast province of Deir al-Zor (Deir Ezzor). Its population is largely Sunni Arab and it had been controlled by ISIL, but Abdi’s Kurdish troops and some Arab allies fought down there. The al-Assad regime wants this region back, and even risked tangling with the US over a Conoco Gas plant in 2018.

The Guardian’s Julian Borger points out that Trump administration officials are talking about the possibility of a US tank force invading Deir al-Zor from Iraq and occupying it. The goal would be to deny the oil resources to a resurgent ISIL but also to keep them out of the hands of the Syrian government. Also, the US is somehow convinced, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that it can block Iranian personnel and supply lines into Syria with this southeast garrison.


h/t Energy Consulting Group

Trump appears to have encouraged a massive Kurdish population movement down to Deir al-Zor from the northeast in order to deny ISIL and Damascus the petroleum. This suggestion would please Turkey, which dreams of kicking hundreds of thousands of Syrian Kurds out of their homes and replacing them with Sunni Arab Syrian refugees now resident in Turkey. As Samantha Power observed, Trump is signing on to Erdogan’s
ethnic cleansing effort, for his own purposes.

Although the YPG took military control of Deir al-Zor during its fight with ISIL, the local Arab population is not happy with even this light Kurdish presence. The Kurds are unlikely actually to emigrate to Deir al-Zor in any numbers. And anyway, they have invited Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian Arab Army into their territory to protect them from Turkey, so their presence to the south wouldn’t keep al-Assad from having a presence in Deir al-Zor.

The notion of a US invasion and occupation of Deir al-Zor is entirely illegal in international law. The US has no grounds for militarily occupying part of Syria after it withdrew from another part. Washington also has no grounds for denying Syrian oil resources to the Syrian government.

Also, wouldn’t this require Congressional approval?

As Borger points out, occupying Deir al-Zor would certainly take a big US force, much bigger than the 1000-strong spec ops soldiers who have just been withdraw. So much for Trump binging the troops home.

Iraq would also have to cooperate with this move, which seems to me unlikely.

Sen. Lindsay Graham and other senators want to bring Abdi to Washington for consultations and have asked secretary of state Mike Pompeo to expedite his visa.

The senators are concerned about the impact of Trump’s withdrawal in favor of Turkey on the continued fight against ISIL extremism in eastern Syria, which Trump has endangered by demoralizing his Kurdish allies.

About 100 hardened ISIL fighters have escaped in the chaos.

In response, the Turkish government threatened to have Abdi extradited to Turkey for terrorism, branding him a member of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which both the US and Turkey consider a terrorist organization. Ankara does not make a distinction between the People’s Protection Units (YPG) of the Syrian Democratic Union Party and the PKK, even though they are quite distinct. Abdi is YPG. Abdi, moreover, is the general who led the campaign against ISIL and took their capital of Raqqa, losing 10,000 of his men in the effort. Turkey did almost nothing against ISIL. Let’s just say I don’t think the US justice system is very likely to extradite Abdi to Turkey.

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Hundreds of American soldiers are remaining in Syria to occupy its oil reserves and block the Syrian government from revenue needed for reconstruction. Trump said openly, “We want to keep the oil.”

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US President Donald Trump has reassured supporters that he is “bringing soldiers home” from the “endless” war in Syria. But that is simply not the case.

While Trump has ordered a partial withdrawal of the approximately 1,000 American troops on Syrian territory — who have been enforcing an illegal military occupation under international law — US officials and the president himself have admitted that some will be staying. And they will remain on Syrian soil not to ensure to safety of any group of people, but rather to maintain control over oil and gas fields.

The US military has already killed hundreds of Syrians, and possibly even some Russians, precisely in order to hold on to these Syrian fossil fuel reserves.

Washington’s obsession with toppling the Syrian government refuses to die. The United States remains committed to preventing Damascus from retaking its own oil, as well as its wheat-producing breadbasket region, in order to starve the government of revenue and prevent it from funding reconstruction efforts.

The Washington Post noted in 2018 that the US and its Kurdish allies were militarily occupying a massive “30 percent slice of Syria, which is probably where 90 percent of the pre-war oil production took place.”

Now, for the first time, Trump has openly confirmed the imperialist ulterior motives behind maintaining a US military presence in Syria.

We want to keep the oil,” Trump confessed in a cabinet meeting on October 21. “Maybe we’ll have one of our big oil companies to go in and do it properly.”

Three days earlier, the president tweeted, “The U.S. has secured the Oil.”

The New York Times confirmed the strategy on October 20. Citing a “senior administration official,” the newspaper reported:

“President Trump is leaning in favor of a new Pentagon plan to keep a small contingent of American troops in eastern Syria, perhaps numbering about 200, to combat the Islamic State and block the advance of Syrian government and Russian forces into the region’s coveted oil fields.

A side benefit would be helping the Kurds keep control of oil fields in the east, the official said.”

Trump then explicitly reiterated this policy in a White House press briefing on the Syria withdrawal on October 23.

“We’ve secured the oil (in Syria), and therefore a small number of US troops will remain in the area where they have the oil,” Trump said. “And we’re going to be protecting it. And we’ll be deciding what we’re going to do with it in the future.”

Using ISIS as an excuse to occupy Syria’s oil fields

US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper – the former vice president of government relations at top weapons manufacturer Raytheon, before being promoted by Trump to the head of the Pentagon – revealed the actual US policy on Syria in a press conference on the 21st:

“We have troops in towns in northeast Syria that are located next to the oil fields. The troops in those towns are not in the present phase of withdrawal.

Our forces will remain in the towns that are located near the oil fields.”

Esper added that the US military is “maintaining a combat air patrol above all of our forces on the ground in Syria.”

Unlike Trump, Esper offered an excuse to justify the continued US military occupation of Syria’s oil fields. He insisted that American soldiers remain to help the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) hold on to the resources and prevent ISIS jihadists from taking them over.

This led mainstream corporate media outlets like CNN to report, “Defense secretary says some US troops will temporarily stay in Syria to protect oil fields from ISIS.”

But any observer who carefully parsed Esper’s comments during his press conference would have been able to detect the real goal behind the prolonged US presence in northeastern Syria. As Esper said, “A purpose of those [US] forces, working with the SDF, is to deny access to those oil fields by ISIS and others who may benefit from revenues that could be earned.”

Pentagon Mark Esper troops Syria oil fields

An excerpt from the Pentagon’s official transcript of the Mark Esper press conference

“And others who may benefit from their revenues earned” is a crucial qualifier. In fact, Esper used this language – “ISIS and others” – two more times in his presser.

Who exactly Esper meant by “others” is clear: The US strategy is to prevent Syria’s UN-recognized government and the Syrian majority that lives under its control from retaking their own oil fields and reaping the benefits of their revenue.

US military massacred hundreds to keep control of Syrian oil fields

This is not just speculation. CNN made it plain when it reported the following in an undeniably blunt passage, citing anonymous US senior military officials:

“The US military has long had military advisers embedded with the Syrian Democratic Forces near the Syrian oil fields at Deir Ezzoir ever since the area was captured from ISIS. The loss of those oil fields denied ISIS a major source of revenue, a one-time source of funds that has differentiated the organization from other terror groups.

The oil fields are assets that have also been long sought after by Russia and the Assad regime, which is strapped for cash after years of civil war. Both Moscow and Damascus hope to use oil revenues to help rebuild western Syria and solidify the regime’s hold.

In a bid to seize the oil fields, Russian mercenaries attacked the areas, leading to a clash that saw dozens if not hundreds of Russian mercenaries killed in US airstrikes, an episode that Trump has touted as proof he is tough on Russia. That action helped deter Russian or regime forces from making similar bids for the oil fields.

The US forces near the oil fields remain in place and senior military officials had previously told CNN that they would likely be among the last to leave Syria.”

CNN thus acknowledged that the US military had killed up to “hundreds” of Syrian and Russia-backed fighters seeking to gain access to Syria’s oil fields. It massacred these fighters not for humanitarian reasons, but to prevent the Syrian government from using “oil revenues to help rebuild western Syria.”

This shockingly direct admission flew in the face of the popular myth that the US was keeping troops in Syria to protect Kurds from an assault by NATO member Turkey.

The CNN report was an apparent reference to the Battle of Khasham, a little known but important episode in the eight-year international proxy war on Syria.

The battle unfolded on February 7, 2018, when the Syrian military and its allies launched an attack to try to retake major oil and gas reserves in Syria’s Deir ez-Zour governorate, which were being occupied by American troops and their Kurdish proxies.

The New York Times seemed to revel in the news that the US military massacred 200 to 300 fighters after hours of “merciless airstrikes from the United States.”

The Times repeatedly stressed that Deir ez-Zour is “oil-rich.” And it cited anonymous US officials who claimed that many of the slaughtered fighters were Russian nationals from the private military company the Wagner Group. These unnamed “American intelligence officials” told the Times that the alleged Russian fighters were “in Syria to seize oil and gas fields and protect them on behalf of the Assad government.”

The Times noted that US special operations forces from JSOC were working with Kurdish forces at an outpost next to Syria’s important Conoco gas plant. The Kurdish-led SDF had seized this facility from ISIS in 2017 with the help of the US military. The Wall Street Journal noted at the time that the “plant is capable of producing nearly 450 tons of gas a day,” and was one of ISIS’ most important sources of funding.

The newspaper added, “The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, are racing against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad for territorial gains in Syria’s east.” The commodities monitoring websites MarketWatchand OilPrice.com were closely following the story and analyzing which forces would take over one of Syria’s most important gas plants.

Starving Syria of oil and wheat, the basics of survival

For the Syrian government, regaining control over its oil and gas reserves in the eastern part of its territory is crucial to paying for reconstruction efforts and social programs — especially at a time when suffocating US and EU sanctions have crippled the economy, caused fuel shortages, and severely hurt Syria’s civilian population.

The US has aimed to prevent Damascus from retaking profitable territory, starving it of natural resources from fossil fuels to basic foodstuffs.

In 2015, then-President Barack Obama deployed US troops to northeastern Syria on the grounds of helping the Kurdish militia the People’s Protection Units (YPG) fight ISIS. What started as several dozen US special operations forces quickly ballooned into some 2,000 troops, largely stationed in northeastern Syria.

As these US soldiers enabled the YPG retake territory from ISIS, they solidified Washington’s control over nearly one-third of Syrian sovereign territory — territory that just so happened to include 90 percent of Syria’s oil, as well as 70 percent of its wheat.

The US subsequently forced the Kurdish-led YPG to rebrand as the SDF, and then treated them as proxies to try to weaken the Syrian government and its allies Iran and Russia.

In June, Reuters confirmed that Kurdish-led authorities had agreed to stop selling wheat to Damascus, after the US government pressured them to do so.

The Grayzone has reported how the Center for a New American Security, a leading Democratic Party foreign policy think tank bankrolled by the US government and NATO, proposed using the “wheat weapon” to starve Syria’s civilian population.

A former Pentagon researcher-turned-senior fellow at the think tank declared openly, “Wheat is a weapon of great power in this next phase of the Syrian conflict.” He added, “It can be used to apply pressure on the Assad regime, and through the regime on Russia, to force concessions in the UN-led diplomatic process.”

Donald Trump appeared to echo this strategy in his October 21 cabinet meeting.

“We want to keep the oil, and we’ll work something out with the Kurds so that they have some money, have some cashflow,” he said. “Maybe we’ll have one of our big oil companies to go in and do it properly.”

While Trump has pledged to bring US soldiers home and end their military occupation of Syrian territory – which is illegal under international law – it is evident that the broader regime change war continues.

A brutal economic war on Damascus is escalating, not only through sanctions but through the theft of Syria’s natural treasures by foreign powers.

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Ben Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker. He is the assistant editor of The Grayzone, and the producer of the Moderate Rebels podcast, which he co-hosts with editor Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.

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The smorgasbord of Brexit terms has been further plated up with the latest acronym: the WAB or Withdrawal Agreement Bill.  It comes in at 115 pages, with an added bonus of 126 pages of explanatory notes.  For something seemingly so significant, not much time was on offer for those in the Commons to peruse, let alone digest it.  Rushed before the members last Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was hoping that the most significant constitutional change to Britain in decades would be a push over.   

The WAB is intended to give the agreement between the UK and the European Union legal substance. But Halloween looms.  The stress from Prime Minister Boris Johnson is on speed.  What characterises the WAB from previous incarnations under the May government are various hooks to catch members of parliament who might otherwise dismiss it.  A significant concern among Labour party members, for instance, is the issue of workers’ rights.  By all means, initiate Brexit, but what of those protections incorporated under European law?  Are they to go by the wayside in an ugly act of pro-corporation fancy?

The political declaration underpinning the Brexit transition deal for trade talks between the UK and Brussels makes it clear that “the future relationship must ensure open and fair competition, encompassing robust commitments to ensure a level playing field.”  Workers’ rights drawn from EU law will continue in a Brexited Britain, with some unclear commitment to ensure “non-regression” in subsequent laws (that is, any subsequent laws after the transition period not abridge those rights).

The problem with this should have been evident to anyone noting the absence of the level playing field concept in the deal, which is instead found in the words of the non-binding political declaration. What the WAB does is actually make Northern Ireland the subject of level-playing field logic, permitting the rest of the UK to dabble in threatening alternatives.

On Saturday, the sweeteners on bringing in rebel Labour MPs into the fold seemed to sour.  Documents obtained by the Financial Times suggested that commitments on workers’ rights and the environment had left considerable “room for interpretation”.  The Brexit deal might well be, not just a matter of flexible interpretation but a boon for corporate vengeance. 

It gave Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, erratic of late, a platform to suspect the motivations of the government.  Labour shadow Brexit minister Jenny Chapman found the revelations unsettling. 

“These documents confirm our worst fears.  Boris Johnson’s Brexit is a blueprint for a regulated economy, which will see vital rights and protections torn up.”

This might well be true, but the EU can hardly claim a sense of purity in the guardianship of workers’ rights. A certain strain of EU jurisprudence suggests hostility to workers in employment law, while providing certain dispensations to corporations.  Decisions by such bodies as the European Court of Justice have demonstrated that the right to strike is secondary to the freedom of employers to relocate their concern, a feature found in Article 43 of the EC Treaty which strikes at any fetters of “freedom of establishment”.  In 2007, the ECJ notably found in the Viking Line case that a trade union’s threat to strike in an effort to force an employer to conclude a collective agreement constituted a restriction on the freedom of establishment. 

The Laval case furnished another example of pro-company logic over union action.  In that instance, the point of issue was how industrial action might square with freedom of movement under Article 49 of the EC Treaty.  The Swedish building workers’ union had attempted to force Laval’s Swedish subsidiary to accept a collective agreement covering 35 Latvian workers sent to Sweden to refurbish a school.  Negotiations failed; the company was picketed and eventually went bankrupt.  In hearing the case against the union for compensation, the ECJ held that the Posted Workers Directive guaranteeing equal protections for posted workers and those in the host country, was inapplicable.  It was too onerous to expect service provides to take part in peculiar collective bargaining practices.  Economic uncertainty was the enemy.

In a sense, both EU diplomats and their Brexit ministry counterparts have kept up appearances, talking about level playing fields when knowing full well that the corporate sector will be well catered for, Brexit or otherwise.  Tory government ministers, caught unawares, rallied against the leaks discussed by the FT.  The Brexit department decided to ignore the document altogether, a habit that seems to be catching in Whitehall.  The government, according to a spokesperson, “has no intention of lowering the standards of workers’ rights or environmental protection after we leave the EU”. 

Junior business minister Kwasi Kwarteng dismissed it as “completely mad, actually.”  It would make little sense “at all to dilute workers’ rights” given that some nineteen Labour MPs had actually voted for a second reading of the Brexit bill.  Business minister Andrea Leadsom was also quick to deny the veracity of the reports.  “The story is not correct.  UK will maintain (the) highest standards of workers’ rights and environmental standards when we leave the EU.”

The feathers of environmental advocates have also been ruffled.  Affirmations and promises made have been unconvincing.  Benjamin Halfpenny, representing a coalition of environmental groups including Friends of the Earth and the National Trust, insists on additions to the Environmental Bill that will shore up broader European protections.  “The government has had plenty of opportunities to put a commitment to existing standards into law, but has thus far not done so.”

 In the tug-of-war between Brussels and the UK, it is clear that Britain, in angling for future free trade deals, will be tempted by the genie of deregulation and the self-imposed reduction of standards for the sake of a competitive advantage.  It might well be that EU and UK diplomats are being rather sly about this: the EU is facing its own internal challenges and wishes an exit to take place within orderly reason.  It cannot afford a messy divorce, a point that will looked upon by dissenting groups within the bloc.  But should the Johnson’s deal become a reality, fans of working welfare and environmental standards will be left disappointed.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

This article was completed on October 26, 2019.

Islamic State’s self-styled Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed in a United States Special Ops overnight raid Saturday involving helicopters, warplanes and a ground clash on the Turkey-Syria border while fleeing Syria’s northwestern Idlib Governorate, Reuters and Newsweek are reporting, and President Trump [has made] the major announcement of the biggest symbolic victory of his administration in the war against terrorism soon.

What’s worth noting in the news reports about the killing of al-Baghdadi is the fact that although the mainstream media had been trumpeting for the last several years that the Islamic State chief had been hiding somewhere on the Iraq-Syria border in the east, he was found hiding in the northwestern Idlib Governorate, under the control of Turkey’s militant proxies and al-Nusra Front, and was killed while trying to flee to Turkey in Brisha village on the Syria border.

Reuters reports [1]:

“Two Iraqi security sources and two Iranian officials said they had received confirmation from inside Syria that Baghdadi had been killed. ‘Our sources from inside Syria have confirmed to the Iraqi intelligence team tasked with pursuing Baghdadi that he has been killed alongside his personal bodyguard in Idlib after his hiding place was discovered when he tried to get his family out of Idlib toward the Turkish border,’ one of the Iraqi officials said.”

The reason why the mainstream media scrupulously avoided mentioning Idlib as al-Baghdadi’s most likely hideout in Syria was to cover up the collusion between the militant proxies of Turkey and the jihadists al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State. At its peak in 2014, when the Islamic State declared its “caliphate” in Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria, the Islamic State reportedly had more than 70,000 jihadists.

The divisions within the rank and file of the terrorist organization seem to be growing as it has lost all of its territory, and thousands of Islamic State’s jihadists have been killed in airstrikes conducted by the US-led coalition against the Islamic State and the ground offensives by the Iraqi armed forces and allied militias in Iraq and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in Syria.

Furthermore, due to frequent desertions and detention of hundreds of hardcore militants alongside thousands of innocent Arab villagers held captive by the Kurds in northeastern Syria, the number of fighters within the Islamic State’s ranks has evidently dwindled. But a question would naturally arise in the minds of perceptive observers of the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria that where did the remaining tens of thousands of Islamic State’s jihadists vanish?

The riddle can be easily solved, though, if we bear in mind the fact that although Idlib Governorate in Syria’s northwest has firmly been under the control of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) led by al-Nusra Front since 2015, its territory was equally divided between Turkey-backed rebels and al-Nusra Front.

In a brazen offensive in January, however, al-Nusra Front’s jihadists completely routed Turkey-backed militants, even though the latter were supported by a professionally trained and highly organized military of a NATO member, Turkey. And al-Nusra Front now reportedly controls more than 70% territory in the Idlib Governorate.

The reason why al-Nusra Front has been easily able to defeat Turkey-backed militants appears to be that the ranks of al-Nusra Front have now been swelled by highly motivated and battle-hardened jihadist deserters from the Islamic State after the fall of the latter’s “caliphate” in Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria.

The merger of al-Nusra Front and Islamic State in Idlib doesn’t come as a surprise, though, since the Islamic State and al-Nusra Front used to be a single organization before a split occurred between the two militant groups in April 2013 over a leadership dispute. In fact, al-Nusra Front’s chief Abu Mohammad al-Jolani was reportedly appointed [2] as the emir of al-Nusra Front by Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the leader of Islamic State, in January 2012.

Regarding the nexus between Islamic jihadists and so-called “moderate rebels” in Syria, while the representatives of Free Syria Army (FSA) were in Washington in January last year, soliciting the Trump administration to restore the CIA’s “train and equip” program for the Syrian militants that was shuttered in July 2017, hundreds of Islamic State’s jihadists joined the moderate militants in Idlib in their battle against the advancing Syrian government troops backed by Russian airstrikes to capture the strategically important Abu Duhur airbase, according to a January last year’s AFP report [3] authored by Maya Gebeily.

The Islamic State already had a foothold in neighboring Hama province and its foray into Idlib was an extension of its outreach. The Islamic State reportedly captured several villages and claimed to have killed two dozen Syrian soldiers and taken twenty hostages. And on January 12 last year, the Islamic State officially declared Idlib one of its “Islamic emirates,” according to the aforementioned AFP report.

In all likelihood, some of the Islamic State’s jihadists who joined the battle in Idlib in January last year were part of the same contingent of thousands of Islamic State militants that fled Raqqa in October 2017 under a deal brokered [4] by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes

[1] Islamic State leader Baghdadi reportedly killed in Syria by U.S. forces

[2] Al-Jolani was appointed as the emir of al-Nusra Front by al-Baghdadi

[3] Four years and one caliphate later, Islamic State claims Idlib comeback

[4] Raqqa’s dirty secret: the deal that let Islamic State jihadists escape Raqqa