Global Research

Last week the Syrian Army (SAA) backed by allied forces broke years-long ISIS siege of Deir Ezzor. Residents of the city were sincerely greeting liberators of the city. According to many experts, the SAA’s success is an important step towards total elimination of ISIS.

This, of course, can be considered as a defeat of the West and its ‘partners’, who had worked with the Syrian armed opposition and radical groups including ISIS hoping to oust Assad.

The real prospect of the SAA would retake control over the oil-rich territories has made the U.S.-led Coalition launch a new military operation in Deir Ezzor. Apparently, the White House makes every effort to prevent the SAA from liberating the city from terrorists.

The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced on Saturday the launching Jazeera storm campaign in Syria’s Deir Ezzor, which was aimed at capturing areas in northern and eastern countryside and advancing towards the Euphrates River.

The U.S. intention to prevent the SAA is confirmed by Major General Rupert Jones, Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the US-led Coalition. Sunday, Jones threatened to strike any units of the SAA if it crossed the Euphrates River.

At the same time, the U.S. takes another step to prevent Assad to establish control over the country. September 22, 2017, the Kurdish-led administration in northern Syria will hold elections for local councils and a regional assembly. In January, 2018, Kurds will hold the elections for the region as a whole. This, undoubtedly, won’t be coordinated with the Syrian government.

Obviously, such kinds of promises were made only by the United States. That’s why the SDF forces fight so selflessly and to give their full support to the U.S. ideas.

Despite all threatens, the Syrian government maintains a firm position. In response to the unprecedented actions of the U.S.-led Coalition, Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal al-Mekdad said the presence of any foreign forces in Syria would be unacceptable. According to Mekdad, the United States forces had better leave Syrian territory on their own, otherwise, they will be treated as “occupying forces.”

Besides, the SAA is planning to cross the Euphrates River in Deir Ezzor Governorate after liberating several areas along the western bank of the river and liberate more oil-rich territory.

It is obvious that for the SAA Deir Ezzor will become the decisive battlefield not only against ISIS terrorists, but also against the hypocritical ambitions of the West, led by the United States.

Anna Jaunger is a freelance journalist at Inside Syria Media Center where this article was originally published.

Featured image is from Al-Masdar News.

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Global Research announces the forthcoming release of  the print edition of Mark Taliano’s Book, “Voices from Syria”  which includes two additional chapters. 

Taliano talks and listens to the people of Syria. He reveals the courage and resilience of a Nation and its people in their day to day lives, after more than six years of US-NATO sponsored terrorism and three years of US “peacemaking” airstrikes.

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On Monday 11 September 2017, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, one of the UN high-ranked officials, ranted at United Nations Human Rights Council (OHCHR), Geneva, condemning the behaviour of the government of Myanmar as “brutal security operation” against the people of Rohingya which was disproportionate to the operation of Rohingya insurgents took place in August 2017.

Hussein demanded from the government of Myanmar to bring its cruel military operation to a halt against the defenceless people of Rohingya.[i] The military operation in Rohingya hitherto has been condemned, on several occasions, by the UN and Amnesty International. On 5 September 2017, António Guterres, the secretary-General of the UN, demanded from the government of Myanmar to desist from its violence against Rohingya people.

According to the report of the UN, more than 313,000 people have been forced to flee from Myanmar to Bangladesh to date. António Guterres announced that this violence can destabilise the region.[ii] About 400,000 of Muslim ethnic minority in western Myanmar are exposed to the hazard of ethnic cleansing. The government of Myanmar has blocked the route of food, water, medicine, and first aid to Rohingya. Amnesty International declared those behaviours, against Rohingya Muslim minority, against the freedom of religion and the freedom of belief. According to the report of Amnesty International, rape, forced labour, arbitrary arrests, torture, and recruitment of child soldiers took place in the process of ethnic cleansing, and the government of Myanmar deliberately has refused from the help and assistance of Muslims in Rohingya.[iii] All the actions took place against the Muslims of Rohingya, by the government of Myanmar, are against the fundamental principles of international law.

Although the problem of discrimination against the minority of Muslim population in Rohingya is not a new problem, the situation of the region, especially after the attack of Rohingya insurgents on the police of Burma in October 2016 has deteriorated. In that attack 9 policemen were killed. The security forces of Burma responded those attacks with clearance operation and have impeded the interference of all humanitarian organisations in the region. Again, on 25 August 2017, when insurgents of Rohingya attacked 24 security sites and killed 12 policemen, the police of Myanmar arranged wider attacks against all the defenceless civilians of Rohingya, rather than separating between ordinary people and Rohingya insurgents.

No report of execution hitherto has been rendered. But it has been reported that the courts of Burma are issuing repeatedly the order of execution. Although the issuance of the orders is contrary to the order of the parliament of Burma in October 2016 according to which 1950 Emergency Provisions Act has been repealed, the courts, drawing upon other rules yet in force, are trying to issue more execution orders. Apart from executions by the orders of the courts, according to unofficial statistics, 3000 people have been killed to date.[iv] Soldiers and security forces of Burma shoot randomly at civilian people, rape women, set fire to villages, arrest the people arbitrarily and torture them.

Although the government of Burma has not been signed and ratified hitherto many crucial documents of human rights including Rome Statue of the International Criminal Court and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (CCPR), Burma was one of 48 states that voted in favour of Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. In addition to these, according to the judgment of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2006, in Case Concerning Armed Activities on the Territory of the Congo, genocide is the infringement of peremptory norms (jus cogens).[v] Next year the ICJ suggested in the same case that the phrase “… Genocide … is a crime under international law …” in article 1 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) means that the rule of the prevention of genocide is a customary rule of international law. It is worth noting that CPPCG in 1948 has been adopted by the general assembly of the UN and became in force on 12 January 1951. CPPCG embraces an international recognised definition of genocide expressed in article 2 thereof. According to article 2 of CPPCG:

“…any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily harm, or harm to mental health, to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

Some jurists maintain that the actions of the government of Myanmar constitutes the infringement of the sections a, b, c of CPPCG, article 2. They suggest that the “intent to destroy” in states, i.e.mental element (mens rea), means the policy of destruction which is seen in the acts of the government of Burma against its Muslim minorities in Rohingya.

Whereas the verification of the “intent to destroy” is pretty difficult, and none of the Burmese officials has expressed explicitly their intention to destroy the Muslims of Rohingya, it can be asserted that the act of the government of Burma is “crime against humanity”.

According to the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda:

“Genocide requires proof of an intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group; this is not required by extermination as a crime against humanity. Extermination as a crime against humanity requires proof that the crime was committed as a part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population, which proof is not required in the case of genocide.”[vi]

Crime against humanity is also, according to reliable international documents, an infringement of international peremptory norms [vii] and, it goes without saying that, its exercise hurts the conscience of international community. Crime against humanity is a part of general customary international law and the language of international documents shows that this crime has a particular situation in international law. In its report of the situation of Myanmar in 2016/2017, Amnesty International, has used two times the term “crime against humanity” and attributed it, probably, to the government of Myanmar. According to the report:

“The response collectively punished the entire Rohingya community in northern Rakhine State and the conduct of the security forces may have amounted to crimes against humanity.”[viii]

Of course the date of the issuance of the report was the time in which the number of the dead had not yet been increased. With every passing day, by increasing actions of the government of Myanmar against international law, the opinion which adheres the thought that the government of Burma is committing crime against humanity is more amplified. An impartial bystander cannot disavow that “ethnic cleansing” in Burma is in process at the moment.

Grisly news attained from Rohingya discovers the depth of the crimes against Muslim minority population of Myanmar. The orchestrated irregular attacks by some radical elements backed by security forces against the people of Rohingya has culminated in losing lives of a considerable number of Muslims and has exacerbated the record of Myanmar in discrimination, injustice, and hopelessness. This exacerbation arouses the feelings of the people of the world, against the government of Myanmar, irrespective of their religion or nationality. In case of not paying attention to the organised widespread infringement of fundamental rights of Muslims of Rohingya, extremism increases and violation spreads even beyond the borders of Myanmar and destabilises the whole region.Expelling people from their own homeland and forcing them to emigrate from their own country cannot solve such a deep-rooted crisis. The government of Myanmar has to take the prolonged anxieties of its Muslim minorities and their plight into consideration and observe their rights effectively and recognise them like other Burmese civilians, protecting them against violation and discrimination.

International community, especially Muslim countries, expect from the government of Myanmar to bring current violations against the Muslim minorities of Rohingya to a halt, and provide their access to humanitarian aids with no limitation. It is also necessary for the government of Myanmar to bring the suspects to trial and take all necessary steps to prevent recurring such events. Unfortunately, no logical response, to this minimum demand of international community, has been received. It is also expected that the UN act as soon as possible and perform all necessary actions to obviate the anxieties of international community about the exacerbating situation of Burma. The protection of the UN from decreasing violence, and gaining assurance from rendering humanitarian aids and assistance to the people in need and finding a sustainable solution for such a crisis seems necessary and the UN must act as soon as possible.

Amir Abbas Amirshekari is PhD in International Law (University of Tehran, Iran), Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, University of Johannesburg, South Africa (2014-2016), Advocate (Iran Bar Association). He can be reached at [email protected].

Notes

[i] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/11/un-myanmars-treatment-of-rohingya-textbook-example-of-ethnic-cleansing

[ii] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/05/more-than-120000-rohingya-flee-myanmar-violence-un-says

[iii] https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/asia-and-the-pacific/myanmar/report-myanmar/

[iv] https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjYuaaP-J3WAhVhG5oKHWVeAsEQqUMILTAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2017%2Fsep%2F11%2Fun-myanmars-treatment-of-rohingya-textbook-example-of-ethnic-cleansing&usg=AFQjCNH1aeVUf3yUqoUHcBAuj8FJHRouCw

[v] Case Concerning Armed Activities on the Territory of the Congo (New Application: 2002) (Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Rwanda), Jurisdiction of the Court and Admissibility of the Application, 3 February 2006, para. 64.

[vi] Prosecutor v. Musema (Case No. ICTR-96-13-A), Judgment, 16 November 2001, para. 363. Also: Prosecutor v. Kajelijeli (Case No. ICTR-98-44A-T), Judgment and Sentence, 1 December 2003, para. 751.

[vii] The 1993 International Tribunal For the Former Yugoslavia and the 1994 International Tribunal for Rwanda statutes include the Statute of the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, U.N. SCOR, 48th Sess., 3217th mtg., at 1, U.N. Doc. S/RES/827 (1993) and the Statute for the International Tribunal for Rwanda, U.N. SCOR, 49th Sess., 3453rd mtg., at 1, U.N. Doc. S/RES/955 (1994), and address Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, and War Crimes. The 1996 Code of Crimes includes these three crimes plus Aggression. See Draft Code of Crimes Against Peace and Security of Mankind: Titles and Articles on the Draft Code of Crimes Against Peace and Security of Mankind adopted by the International Law Commission on its Forty-Eighth Session, U.N. GAOR, 51st Sess., U.N. Doc. A/CN.4L.532 (1996), revised by U.N. Doc. A/CN.4L.532/Corr.1 and U.N. Doc. A/CN.4l.532/Corr.3; Crimes Against U.N. Personnel, in M. CHERIF BASSIOUNI, INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW CONVENTIONS (1997 in print) [hereinafter BASSIOUNI, ICL CONVENTIONS].

[viii] https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/asia-and-the-pacific/myanmar/report-myanmar/

Featured image: NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg 

While the US continued to provocatively intensify tensions with North Korea, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg joined the chorus of condemnation against Pyongyang over its sixth nuclear test on September 3.

Speaking to the BBC yesterday, Stoltenberg denounced North Korea’s “reckless behavior” as “a global threat” that “requires a global response and that of course also includes NATO.” While saying he would not speculate on whether NATO members would be required to join a war against North Korea if the US were attacked, he did not rule it out.

Stoltenberg told the Guardian on Friday the world was “more dangerous” than at any time in his 30-year career.

“It is more unpredictable, and it’s more difficult because we have so many challenges at the same time,” he said, pointing to “weapons of mass destruction in North Korea,” as well as terrorism and “a more assertive Russia.”

The NATO chief was visiting British troops stationed in Estonia, having toured NATO battle groups in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. He claimed the troops were in “defensive” mobilisation as Russia and Belarus prepared for large-scale military exercises this week. In reality, Washington’s military push into Eastern Europe via NATO is fueling a confrontation with Russia.

Similarly, US President Donald Trump, following on from the Obama administration, has dramatically heightened tensions with North Korea, threatening last month to engulf it in “fire and fury like the world has never seen.” In response, the Pyongyang regime has concluded that its only means of preventing a US attack is to develop a nuclear arsenal as quickly as possible.

Speaking to the BBC yesterday, British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon hinted the UK could become involved in a US-led war against North Korea, saying the country could pose a threat to London.

“This involves us,” he said, because “London is closer to North Korea and its missiles than Los Angeles.”

He admitted that North Korean missiles could not reach the UK, but said their range was getting “longer and longer.”

While emphasising the need for a “diplomatic solution,” Fallon insisted:

“We have to get this program halted because the dangers now of miscalculation, of some accident triggering a response, are extremely great.” If attacked, the US “of course, under the United Nations, has the right to ask other members of the United Nations to join in its self-defence.”

The danger of catastrophic war in Asia is provoking deep fears in Europe and exacerbating divisions with Washington. In an interview published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung on Sunday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested that the deal struck in 2015 with Iran to limit its nuclear program might form the basis for negotiations with North Korea.

“Europe and especially Germany should be prepared to play a very active part in that,” she said.

Merkel’s proposal of an Iran-type deal with North Korea will not be welcome in Washington. Trump has repeatedly denounced the agreement with Iran, threatened to pull out of it, and dismissed the possibility of a negotiated end to the standoff with North Korea.

Washington has ratcheted up pressure on China and Russia to agree to a new US resolution to be discussed in the UN Security Council today. The resolution is expected to include a full embargo on oil exports to North Korea, as well as a partial naval blockade that would give UN member states the right to board and inspect ships suspected of breaking sanctions.

China and Russia are expected to oppose a complete oil export ban, which would precipitate an economic and political crisis in Pyongyang. Beijing and Moscow fear that the US and its allies would exploit any breakdown in North Korea to instal a pro-US regime in their backyard.

Last Thursday, Trump declared that US presidents had been “talking, talking, talking” with North Korea for 25 years, but its nuclear program had continued.

“So I would prefer not going the route of the military, but it’s something certainly that could happen,” he warned.

Trump boasted that “our military has never been stronger.” In another threat to North Korea, he stated:

“Each day new equipment is delivered—new and beautiful equipment, the best in the world, the best anywhere in the world, by far. Hopefully we’re not going to have to use it on North Korea. If we do use it on North Korea, it will be a very sad day for North Korea.”

Based on senior White House and Pentagon officials, NBC News reported last Friday that the Trump administration was “readying a package of diplomatic and military moves against North Korea, including cyberattacks and increased surveillance and intelligence operations.”

Trump was also “seriously considering adopting diplomatically risky sanctions on Chinese banks doing business with Pyongyang” and “not ruling out moving tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea should Seoul request them.” South Korea’s defence minister last week suggested the US could place tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea.

Not only would such a move end US claims to be seeking to denuclearise the Korean Peninsula, but greatly heighten the danger of nuclear war, through accident or miscalculation.

According to NBC, the White House had reviewed the full gamut of options, including attacking North Korea with nuclear weapons. The article stated:

“A first use of nuclear weapons would be extremely aggressive and lack support domestically or among international allies, the senior administration official said.”

“We talk about all kinds of crazy stuff we never do,” the official told NBC. “Then you know why you rule it out.”

No one should accept such assurances. The very fact that a nuclear first strike on North Korea is being discussed indicates it is under active consideration. Washington’s constant mantra that “all options are on the table” shows that nothing is ruled out in a US attack on North Korea.

NBC also reported that China warned Trump administration officials that if the US struck North Korea first, Beijing would back Pyongyang. If North Korea hit a US target, however, that “changes everything,” a senior administration official said. In other words, if the Trump administration can goad North Korea into making a military move with its provocative threats and actions, China might stay on the sideline.

This situation highlights the extraordinary recklessness of the US administration. As it prepares for war with North Korea, the US government knows full well that it could rapidly come into conflict with China, which it regards as the chief obstacle to global American dominance.

Un vasto arco di tensioni e conflitti si estende dall’Asia orientale a quella centrale, dal Medioriente all’Europa, dall’Africa all’America latina. I «punti caldi» lungo questo arco intercontinentale – Penisola coreana, Mar Cinese Meridionale, Afghanistan, Siria, Iraq, Iran, Ucraina, Libia, Venezuela e altri – hanno storie e caratteristiche geopolitiche diverse, ma sono allo stesso tempo collegati a un unico fattore: la strategia con cui «l’impero americano d’Occidente», in declino, cerca di impedire l’emergere di nuovi soggetti statuali e sociali. Che cosa Washington tema lo si capisce dal Summit dei Brics (Brasile, Russia, India, Cina, Sudafrica) svoltosi il 3-5 settembre a Xiamen in Cina.

Esprimendo «le preoccupazioni dei Brics sull’ingiusta architettura economica e finanziaria globale, che non tiene in considerazione il crescente peso delle economie emergenti», il presidente russo Putin ha sottolineato la necessità di «superare l’eccessivo dominio del limitato numero di valute di riserva». Chiaro il riferimento al dollaro Usa, che costituisce quasi i due terzi delle riserve valutarie mondiali e la valuta con cui si determina il prezzo del petrolio, dell’oro e di altre materie prime strategiche. Ciò permette agli Usa di mantenere un ruolo dominante, stampando dollari il cui valore si basa non sulla reale capacità economica statunitense ma sul fatto che vengono usati quale valuta globale. Lo yuan cinese è però entrato un anno fa nel paniere delle valute di riserva del Fondo monetario internazionale (insieme a dollaro, euro, yen e sterlina) e Pechino sta per lanciare contratti di acquisto del petrolio in yuan, convertibili in oro.

I Brics richiedono inoltre la revisione delle quote e quindi dei voti attribuiti a ciascun paese all’interno del Fondo monetario: gli Usa, da soli, detengono più del doppio dei voti complessivi di 24 paesi dell’America latina (Messico compreso) e il G7 detiene il triplo dei voti del gruppo dei Brics. Washington guarda con crescente preoccupazione alla partnership russo-cinese: l’interscambio tra i due paesi, che nel 2017 dovrebbe raggiungere gli 80 miliardi di dollri, è in forte crescita; aumentano allo stesso tempo gli accordi di cooperazione russo-cinese in campo energetico, agricolo, aeronautico, spaziale e in quello delle infrastrutture. L’annunciato acquisto del 14% della compagnia petrolifera russa Rosneft da parte di una compagnia cinese e la fornitura di gas russo alla Cina per 38 miliardi di metri cubi annui attraverso il nuovo gasdotto Sila Sibiri, che entrerà in funzione nel 2019, aprono all’export energetico russo la via ad Est mentre gli Usa cercano di bloccargli la via ad Ovest verso l’Europa.

Perdendo terreno sul piano economico, gli Usa gettano sul piatto della bilancia la spada della loro forza militare e influenza politica. La pressione militare Usa nel Mar Cinese Meridionale e nella penisola coreana, le guerre Usa/Nato in Afghanistan, Medioriente e Africa, la spallata Usa/Nato in Ucraina e il conseguente confronto con la Russia, rientrano nella stessa strategia di confronto globale con la partnership russo-cinese, che non è solo economica ma geopolitica. Vi rientra anche il piano di minare i Brics dall’interno, riportando le destre al potere in Brasile e in tutta l’America latina. Lo conferma il comandante dello U.S. Southern Command, Kurt Tidd, che sta preparando contro il Venezuela l’«opzione militare» minacciata da Trump: in una audizione al senato, accusa Russia e Cina di esercitare una «maligna influenza» in America latina, per far avanzare anche qui «la loro visione di un ordine internazionale alternativo».

Manlio Dinucci

Many think tourism is something Israel and Palestine are agreeing and tourism is a peace industry – they may be wrong.

Besides the confirmation hearing for the next UNWTO Secretary General, another important decision is the application by the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Tourism for a full membership as a country into the United Nations World Tourism Organization. The application for Palestine was submitted last year and the full General Assembly has to agree with a two third majority to accept Palestine as a new country to join the organization. The full General Assembly is getting together in Chengdu, China next week. Palestine became a full member of UNESCO in 2011.

Tourism is an important revenue channel for Palestine and also Israel. However, Israel is indirectly in control of Palestine tourism since all international borders are controlled by the Jewish State. The UNWTO “human right for tourists to travel” does not always apply when it comes to visiting Palestine, and having to deal with Israel’s rules.

From time to time, Israel puts more restrictions on tourism to Palestine, including disallowing western visitors to re-enter Israel when staying in a hotel in Palestine.

However, cooperation between Palestine and Israel is an important and successful activity, and organizations including the International Institute for Peace Through Tourism and its founder Louis D’Amore had worked tirelessly for decades to make both Israel and Palestine understand the importance of tourism and peace. Louis d’Amore will be attending the UNWTO General Assembly in Chengdu next week.

The Israel Foreign Ministry’s spokesman said that Israel’s position is that the “State Of Palestine” does not exist, and therefore it cannot be accepted as a state in the UN or in any of its affiliated organizations.

Israel, of course, knows money always talks, and diplomatic pressure has been put on Taleb Rifai, the current Jordanian Secretary General to disallow Palestine’s move. Money talks and Israel’s foreign ministry threatened: Granting state membership to the Palestinians will lead to a greater politicization of the organization and a cut in funding. Furthermore, the Jewish State continues its pressure on UWNTO member states saying:

“We are not expecting any negative impact on Israel or its continued activity in the organization – the expected damage will be to the organization itself.”

“Israel has taken all diplomatic measures to block the request,” an Israel Foreign Ministry spokesman told the Jerusalem Post.

The United States of America is not a member of UNWTO, but Israel Israel has also involved the Americans, who have warned the Palestinians that their joining the organization could have consequences in their relations with the US.

The application for Palestine is expected to be confirmed, especially since countries who could be counted on to support Israel and vote against the move – such as the US, Canada, the U.K.and Australia – are not members of the UNWTO.

Having Palestine as a full voting member of this global community could be an important step forward to secure peace and expand on tourism making the occupied territory seen less occupied and more independent.

Featured image: Ryan Khaldani, a leader of the Popular Mobilization Units-aligned Babylon Battalions

“The American planes bombed our positions to prevent us from reaching the Nineveh Plains”, said Ryan Khaldani, a leader of the Popular Mobilization Units-aligned Babylon Battalions, adding that the countries, known to be hostile to Iraq, are looking for ways to create tensions in the country, especially as regards the post-ISIS era.

In an interview with Al Mayadeen network, Khaldani said that both, the US-led international anti-ISIS coalition and the Kurdish Peshmerga were deliberately making moves that benefited ISIS, while causing damage to the Iraqi forces fighting ISIS.

He also said his movement firmly opposes the forthcoming referendum on independence of the so-called “Iraqi Kurdistan”, noting that his movement will not allow not even an inch of the Nineveh Plains to be taken away from its original inhabitants.

He, however, said that for now his movement will not raise its arms against Peshmerga, although it might resort to tougher measures should the latter try to take the land by force.

On September 24th, the Barazani regime in so-called “Iraqi Kurdistan” will hold a referendum on the province’s independence from Iraq.

Translated by Samer Hussein

In Mariupol, on the territory of the local airport, Ukrainian nationalists organized a concentration camp, which works to this day. In it punishers torture and kill people who don’t agree with the policy that is conducted by Kiev.

This was stated by the participant of the movement of liberation of Mariupol Irina Popova during an interview, reports the correspondent of Politnavigator.

Also she spoke about how exactly in the city another anniversary of the liberation from fascist aggressors was celebrated, and emphasized the fact that, despite all the attempts of the authorities to show that the city continues to lead a peaceful life, the situation there is far from being easy.

Irina Popova: “Events devoted to the Day of liberation of Mariupol from German fascist invaders were held at the initiative of the residents themselves who, for example, on September 9th came to a meeting in a small group in the Levoberezhny district. Also at the initiative of the city’s landscapers 500 bushes of flowers were planted. This day is a celebration of liberation from German fascist invaders, and, as far as Ukrainian propaganda tries to present Mariupol as a city of wellbeing, in reality the situation there is not simple at all, but very difficult.

I will describe it in an everyday picture: a person in Ukrainian military or police uniform comes onto a bus. Passengers immediately stop talking, everyone turns away and looks out of the window. What can be said here? About a normal situation in the city? Of course, no.

Many residents of Mariupol know firsthand how their acquaintances, relatives, and work colleagues disappear without a trace. Members of families of missing persons, being afraid of punishment in regards to their relatives, very often are simply afraid to submit statements to the police about the disappearance of their relatives.

And there is now no doubt that such punishment is being carried out. As such a concentration camp was already at work in Mariupol airport, it still continues to act. Nobody closed this airport. Many are being shown it for the purpose of intimidation. For example, they brought a mother to the airport, whose son had been detained, and they just kept her there for 48 hours. She was simply led to the places of shooting and torture. And I can imagine what mood and what psychological state she was in after what she had seen.

You understand, this person won’t be shown on the Ukrainian television, as well as the airport itself, but that will show the festival ‘Chervona Ruta’. Unfortunately, it is two realities: one is on TV, and another is in the real life of the residents of Mariupol, who wait for liberation and for our arrival.”

I.e., in fact, in Mariupol there is now terror?

Irina Popova: “It is unambiguously terror, and this excess cannot be called anything else.”

Translated by Ollie Richardson and Angelina Siard

The next stage of the case involving the commercialisation of genetically modified (GM) mustard in India is to be heard on 15 September in the Supreme Court (SC). GM mustard could be India’s first commercially cultivated GM food crop, which could very well open the floodgates to the commercialisation of various other food crops that are in the pipeline.

Lead petitioner Aruna Rodrigues is seeking a moratorium on the environmental release of any genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the absence of comprehensive, transparent and rigorous biosafety protocols in the public domain and biosafety studies conducted by independent expert bodies the results of which are made available in public domain.

The petitioners argue that the present circumstances warrant a prohibition on commercial release of DMH-11 mustard in view of the fact that:

• Mustard is a crop of origin/diversity in India
• DMH-11 and parental lines contain herbicide tolerant (HT) traits
• DMH11 has failed to satisfy the prior requirement of ‘need’ of this crop as evidenced from the results of the open field trials
• The conduct of Biosafety Research Level (‘BRL’) trials were comprehensively flawed and are invalid

In this ongoing saga, two government ‘additional affidavits’ were recently submitted to the SC, following the recommendations of the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) to permit the environmental release of DMH-11 and its transgenic parental lines.

The government says that only 15 kilograms of DMH-11 would be planted in the upcoming winter season (beginning from Oct 2017) to demonstrate its yield potential and commercial viability. It has revealed plans for hybrid seed production in preparation for commercial use in approx. two years.

It also reiterates its claims that DMH-11 is not a HT crop. It claims it has been developed through ‘hybridization technology’. The government averred that DMH-11 does not pose any risk to human/animal health or the environment. Furthermore, it urged that the DMH-11 and other hybrids using this technology are necessary to improve yields in mustard in India which has been ‘stagnant around 7-8 MT for the last 20 years’.

The government has not only projected the hybrid seed production of DMH-11 as an innocuous and harmless procedure, but also revealed its predisposed mind to permit commercialisation of GE Mustard.

Exposing the government’s claims

In response to this, Aruna Rodrigues has submitted a 45-page ‘Addtional Affidavit Reply’ (citing all relevant sources and in-depth arguments) to the SC to rebut the claims by the government.

The basis of the rebuttal is stated on pages 3 and 4:

“At the outset, it is stated that the above [government] Affidavits hide more than they reveal. The stand of the Central Government reflects a high degree of technical incompetence and a deliberate intent to obfuscate science. The claims made are also straightforwardly untrue; broad statements, without evidence, presented as fact.”

Based on the Report on Assessment for Food & Environmental Safety (AFES) submitted by the Sub-Committee of GEAC, the government argues that DMH-11 does not pose any risk to human/animal health or the environment.

In response to this, Rodrigues states:

“As such, the AFES Report is not a detailed scientific description of the biosafety of HT DMH-11. The dossier with the raw biosafety data submitted by CGMCP [Centre for Genetic Manipulation of Crop Plants at the University of Delhi, which has developed DMH -11] running into thousands of pages is still concealed, for which the Petitioners were constrained to initiate contempt proceedings against the Respondents which is currently pending for consideration by this Hon’ble Court.”

While Rodrigues expresses deep concern about the government’s attempts to confuse and even mislead on matters of core importance to biosafety, she is also concerned about minutes of a crucial GEAC meeting being suppressed.

The affidavit then discusses the recent report by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science & Technology, Environment and Forests: ‘Genetically Modified Crops and its Impact on Environment’.

The report is scathing in its criticism of the regulation and risk assessment of GMOs, including GM HT mustard. It finds relevant high-level agencies as shockingly casual in their approach to GMOs in agriculture and “takes serious note of the apathy of the concerned government agencies” about the impact of GMOs on the environment (including agriculture) and on human and animal health. It finds the current regulatory framework to lack rigour, expertise, transparency and is seriously ‘conflicted’ (conflict of interest).

The Committee strongly believes that unless the bio-safety and socioeconomic desirability is evaluated by a participatory, independent and transparent process and a retrieval and accountability regime is put in place, no GM crop should be introduced in the country. The report states that with GM mustard being an herbicide tolerant GMO, there is clear evidence on the adverse impacts of such GMOs from elsewhere in the world.

The Committee argues that the government should reconsider its decision to commercialise GM crops in the country and recommends that the whole process of evaluation should be carried out by an independent agency consisting of the people of impeccable credentials in the relevant field to ensure that there is no violation of the existing regulations in this regard.

The above findings are entirely in agreement with four previous official government reports. A short description of these reports is contained in the affidavit, followed by a discussion of the history of regulatory delinquency with special reference to events surrounding GM brinjal. Regrettably and alarmingly, in HT mustard DMH-11, India faces a repeat of the disastrous regulatory history of Bt brinjal, which was eventually prevented from being commercially cultivated.

The affidavit then goes on to deconstruct each aspect of the government’s case for GM mustard. It exposes a catalogue of deceptions and misrepresentations, not least the government’s newly concocted claim that HT stands for ‘hybridisation technology’ and not ‘herbicide tolerant’, which – given the evidence set out by Rodrigues in the affidavit – appears to be a desperate attempt to backtrack given the massive dangers and impracticalities associated with HT crops in a country like India.

As in previous court documents and in various other literature, it is made clear that GM mustard does not improve yields and that there is in fact no need for it. Much is also made of the field trails that were based on invalid tests, poor science and a lack of rigour and is supported by a good degree of technical data and argument. The conclusion is there has been a “regulatory vacuum” and the SC is being misled by the government.

Rodrigues is scathing in her criticisms, not least in the proven dangers posed by the herbicide glufosinate and the contamination of India’s mustard germplasm. The government’s actions indicate:

“a disregard for India’s priceless biodiversity, a heritage that we must ferociously guard and also status as a biodiversity ‘hot spot’… lip service is paid to the certain contamination of India’s germplasm from HT DMH 11. This is outstanding issue that Petitioners emphasise repeatedly, because it is critical. If the GM ‘genie’ escapes, it cannot be bottled again.”

Rodrigues adds:

“In reality, the ruse is to obtain the authorisation of this Hon’ble Court now, to ‘creeping commercialisation’ which will be undertaken in 2 stages. This first stage, (limited to 15 kg of seed), will be the backdoor entry to eventual full commercial release sometime in the future, when there is sufficient seed produced from this first stage for full commercial planting.”

Given the conflicts of interest at work in the regulatory process, the invalid field tests, the lack of transparency, the proven lack of need, the threat to India’s mustard biodiversity and the dangers of glufosinate to health and to agriculture in a nation of small farmers using a multi-cropping system, isn’t it time for the government to come clean? Isn’t it time to follow the recommendation set out in numerous high-level reports.

The developers at Delhi University, the government and the GEAC have been found out.

No one wants GM mustard. Not farmers, not the various states. And do we hear the public speaking out in favour of it?

The game is up. The emperor has no clothes. The fraud has been exposed.

For those who have not been following the issue of GM mustard in India and its implications, additional insight may be obtained by accessing Colin’s previous articles on the matter here.

The next stage of the case involving the commercialisation of genetically modified (GM) mustard in India is to be heard on 15 September in the Supreme Court (SC). GM mustard could be India’s first commercially cultivated GM food crop, which could very well open the floodgates to the commercialisation of various other food crops that are in the pipeline.

Lead petitioner Aruna Rodrigues is seeking a moratorium on the environmental release of any genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the absence of comprehensive, transparent and rigorous biosafety protocols in the public domain and biosafety studies conducted by independent expert bodies the results of which are made available in public domain.

The petitioners argue that the present circumstances warrant a prohibition on commercial release of DMH-11 mustard in view of the fact that:

• Mustard is a crop of origin/diversity in India
• DMH-11 and parental lines contain herbicide tolerant (HT) traits
• DMH11 has failed to satisfy the prior requirement of ‘need’ of this crop as evidenced from the results of the open field trials
• The conduct of Biosafety Research Level (‘BRL’) trials were comprehensively flawed and are invalid

In this ongoing saga, two government ‘additional affidavits’ were recently submitted to the SC, following the recommendations of the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) to permit the environmental release of DMH-11 and its transgenic parental lines.

The government says that only 15 kilograms of DMH-11 would be planted in the upcoming winter season (beginning from Oct 2017) to demonstrate its yield potential and commercial viability. It has revealed plans for hybrid seed production in preparation for commercial use in approx. two years.

It also reiterates its claims that DMH-11 is not a HT crop. It claims it has been developed through ‘hybridization technology’. The government averred that DMH-11 does not pose any risk to human/animal health or the environment. Furthermore, it urged that the DMH-11 and other hybrids using this technology are necessary to improve yields in mustard in India which has been ‘stagnant around 7-8 MT for the last 20 years’.

The government has not only projected the hybrid seed production of DMH-11 as an innocuous and harmless procedure, but also revealed its predisposed mind to permit commercialisation of GE Mustard.

Exposing the government’s claims

In response to this, Aruna Rodrigues has submitted a 45-page ‘Addtional Affidavit Reply’ (citing all relevant sources and in-depth arguments) to the SC to rebut the claims by the government.

The basis of the rebuttal is stated on pages 3 and 4:

“At the outset, it is stated that the above [government] Affidavits hide more than they reveal. The stand of the Central Government reflects a high degree of technical incompetence and a deliberate intent to obfuscate science. The claims made are also straightforwardly untrue; broad statements, without evidence, presented as fact.”

Based on the Report on Assessment for Food & Environmental Safety (AFES) submitted by the Sub-Committee of GEAC, the government argues that DMH-11 does not pose any risk to human/animal health or the environment.

In response to this, Rodrigues states:

“As such, the AFES Report is not a detailed scientific description of the biosafety of HT DMH-11. The dossier with the raw biosafety data submitted by CGMCP [Centre for Genetic Manipulation of Crop Plants at the University of Delhi, which has developed DMH -11] running into thousands of pages is still concealed, for which the Petitioners were constrained to initiate contempt proceedings against the Respondents which is currently pending for consideration by this Hon’ble Court.”

While Rodrigues expresses deep concern about the government’s attempts to confuse and even mislead on matters of core importance to biosafety, she is also concerned about minutes of a crucial GEAC meeting being suppressed.

The affidavit then discusses the recent report by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science & Technology, Environment and Forests: ‘Genetically Modified Crops and its Impact on Environment’.

The report is scathing in its criticism of the regulation and risk assessment of GMOs, including GM HT mustard. It finds relevant high-level agencies as shockingly casual in their approach to GMOs in agriculture and “takes serious note of the apathy of the concerned government agencies” about the impact of GMOs on the environment (including agriculture) and on human and animal health. It finds the current regulatory framework to lack rigour, expertise, transparency and is seriously ‘conflicted’ (conflict of interest).

The Committee strongly believes that unless the bio-safety and socioeconomic desirability is evaluated by a participatory, independent and transparent process and a retrieval and accountability regime is put in place, no GM crop should be introduced in the country. The report states that with GM mustard being an herbicide tolerant GMO, there is clear evidence on the adverse impacts of such GMOs from elsewhere in the world.

The Committee argues that the government should reconsider its decision to commercialise GM crops in the country and recommends that the whole process of evaluation should be carried out by an independent agency consisting of the people of impeccable credentials in the relevant field to ensure that there is no violation of the existing regulations in this regard.

The above findings are entirely in agreement with four previous official government reports. A short description of these reports is contained in the affidavit, followed by a discussion of the history of regulatory delinquency with special reference to events surrounding GM brinjal. Regrettably and alarmingly, in HT mustard DMH-11, India faces a repeat of the disastrous regulatory history of Bt brinjal, which was eventually prevented from being commercially cultivated.

The affidavit then goes on to deconstruct each aspect of the government’s case for GM mustard. It exposes a catalogue of deceptions and misrepresentations, not least the government’s newly concocted claim that HT stands for ‘hybridisation technology’ and not ‘herbicide tolerant’, which – given the evidence set out by Rodrigues in the affidavit – appears to be a desperate attempt to backtrack given the massive dangers and impracticalities associated with HT crops in a country like India.

As in previous court documents and in various other literature, it is made clear that GM mustard does not improve yields and that there is in fact no need for it. Much is also made of the field trails that were based on invalid tests, poor science and a lack of rigour and is supported by a good degree of technical data and argument. The conclusion is there has been a “regulatory vacuum” and the SC is being misled by the government.

Rodrigues is scathing in her criticisms, not least in the proven dangers posed by the herbicide glufosinate and the contamination of India’s mustard germplasm. The government’s actions indicate:

“a disregard for India’s priceless biodiversity, a heritage that we must ferociously guard and also status as a biodiversity ‘hot spot’… lip service is paid to the certain contamination of India’s germplasm from HT DMH 11. This is outstanding issue that Petitioners emphasise repeatedly, because it is critical. If the GM ‘genie’ escapes, it cannot be bottled again.”

Rodrigues adds:

“In reality, the ruse is to obtain the authorisation of this Hon’ble Court now, to ‘creeping commercialisation’ which will be undertaken in 2 stages. This first stage, (limited to 15 kg of seed), will be the backdoor entry to eventual full commercial release sometime in the future, when there is sufficient seed produced from this first stage for full commercial planting.”

Given the conflicts of interest at work in the regulatory process, the invalid field tests, the lack of transparency, the proven lack of need, the threat to India’s mustard biodiversity and the dangers of glufosinate to health and to agriculture in a nation of small farmers using a multi-cropping system, isn’t it time for the government to come clean? Isn’t it time to follow the recommendation set out in numerous high-level reports.

The developers at Delhi University, the government and the GEAC have been found out.

No one wants GM mustard. Not farmers, not the various states. And do we hear the public speaking out in favour of it?

The game is up. The emperor has no clothes. The fraud has been exposed.

For those who have not been following the issue of GM mustard in India and its implications, additional insight may be obtained by accessing Colin’s previous articles on the matter here.

Featured image: Togo President Faure Gnassingbe with Israeli PM Netanyahu

A controversial gathering which was scheduled to be held in the West African state of Togo has been called off amid a burgeoning movement aimed at the removal of a French-backed political dynasty.

Called the Israel-Africa Summit, the event was obviously designed to enhance the political and economic role of Tel Aviv on the continent.

Absent of any serious attempts to resolve the Palestinian question related their right to self-determination and nationhood along with the ongoing occupation of the Golan Heights in Syria, the state of Israel is seeking to undermine any appearance of anti-imperialist sentiments among African leaders. Reversing developments in years pass when progressive and moderate African governments gave diplomatic and material support to the anti-Zionist movement in Palestine and surrounding countries, Israel is making a bold offensive to strengthen relations with African Union (AU) member-states.

The summit was to have taken place in October in Lome the capital. Several leaders in Africa had already objected to the meeting and said they would not attend.

News of the postponement came from the Israeli Foreign Ministry which noted that the President of Togo would not be in a position to hold the summit at this time. Mass demonstrations have erupted in Togo demanding the removal of the administration of President Faure Gnassingbe who has ruled the country since his father’s death, Gnassingbe Eyadema, in 2005. The elder Gnassingbe seized power in a military coup in 1967. Therefore, the country has been ruled by one family for 50 years.

According to an article published by the Associated Press on September 11, it conveys:

“In a statement Monday (Sept. 11), the ministry said the decision had come at the request of Togo’s president, Faure Gnassingbe, after consultations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It said talks would continue ‘to guarantee the full success of the summit.’ The statement gave no reason for the decision. But Togo has been experiencing unrest in recent days, with thousands of protesters demanding presidential term limits amid anger over the 50-year rule of the Gnassingbe family.”

This announcement represents a setback in Israeli foreign policy towards Africa. The convening of such a summit on the continent would represent a major departure from the traditions of solidarity with the struggling peoples of the world particularly in the Middle East.

Largely stemming from the failed British, French and Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956 in the aftermath of the nationalization of the Suez Canal by the-then President Gamal Abdel Nasser, the newly-emerging African states began to look critically at Tel Aviv. Just over a decade later during the so-called “Six Day War” of June 1967 between Egypt, Syria and Jordan against the Israeli state, where Tel Aviv more than doubled its size by seizing control of the Sanai in Egypt right up to the Suez Canal, while at the same time occupying the Golan Heights of Syria and the taking of the West Bank previously under Jordanian authority, most African states severed diplomatic relations with Israel.

Six years later in 1973, Egypt under President Anwar Sadat launched an offensive taking back vast stretches of the Sinai from Israeli control, lead to the escalation of tensions even further. Two years later in 1975, the United Nations General Assembly voted to declare that “Zionism is racism”, intensifying the isolation of Tel Aviv. Eventually in 1991, the resolution against Israel was revoked by the same UN General Assembly.

The London-based Independent newspaper noted that in the current situation:

“A number of African countries were reportedly threatening to boycott the October 23-27 event, in protest at Israel’s conduct in the Palestinian conflict. Morocco’s King Mohamed VI stayed away from a summit of the West African regional bloc ECOWAS in Liberia in June, because Netanyahu was invited. “

Togolese Masses Take to the Streets in Early September

Perhaps the most significant factor in the decision to postpone the summit was the unrelenting mobilizations by opposition parties and coalitions in Togo aimed at the resignation of the current administration of Gnassingbe. During August 19-20, tens of thousands marched and rallied in defiance of the national government.

Reports indicated that as many as 7 people were killed by police and military forces inside the country. Many others were arrested and 15 members of a leading opposition group, the Pan-African National Party (PNP), were sentenced to prison terms.

A new round of mass demonstrations against the Gnassingbe administration erupted on September 6-7. The government in response reportedly shutdown internet connectivity preventing the various opposition groups from communicating among themselves as well as limiting access to information related to developments inside the country and internationally.

Togo opposition on the march for removal of neo-colonial regime in Lome

Thousands of Togolese marched into the central area of Lome on September 7 facing down the security forces. Later police fired teargas to disperse the crowd arresting some 80 people.

Al Jazeera described the September 7 demonstrations emphasizing that:

“The scale of this week’s protests, which the opposition said were attended by hundreds of thousands of people, represented the biggest challenge to Gnassingbe’s rule since the aftermath of his ascension to power in 2005. US-based company Dyn, which monitors the internet, said traffic dropped off at 09:00 GMT in what critics said was a move by the government to suppress protests as other African governments have done. Residents said that text messages had also been blocked. The communications minister could not immediately be reached for comment on the cuts.”

Those seeking to remain informed about the mass demonstrations of September 6-7 were forced to travel to the border between Togo and Ghana in order to have access to internet services. Officials within the Gnassingbe regime admitted that internet services were blocked citing concerns of threats to national security.

Demonstrators told members of the press they wanted a return to the reform constitution enacted in 1992. This document limits the existing administrations from remaining in office for more than two terms.

Nonetheless, after the ascendancy of the current president, amendments were made which allowed the perpetuation of the Gnassingbe family rule. Efforts aimed at reform have been met with fierce repression from the government.

Understanding the mounting mass pressure, members of parliament have announced the need for a bill to institute reforms. Nonetheless, opposition figures are quite skeptical of such a move at this time.

Coalition Broadens Through the Emergence of PNP

These recent demonstrations have reached a critical point with the emergence of the Pan African National Party (PNP) leader Tikpi Atchadam, 50, as a central figure in the mass mobilizations over the last month. The party has reached out to form a broader alliance with the Combat for Political Change (CAP 2015) which brought together opposition groups in over the last few years.

PNP was formed in 2014 and has no representation in parliament. Atchadam is from the northern region of Togo as is the Gnassingbe family. The willingness of the various opposition parties to work together has created a dynamic movement committed to the toppling of the existing administration.

Atchadam has never before run for president. Parliamentary opposition leader of the National Alliance for Change (ANC), Jean-Pierre Fabre, 65, has also formed a coalition with the PNP in the interests of political transformation.

Fabre has run unsuccessfully for president on several occasions. The ANC leader repeatedly charged that the elections were rigged and not representative of the Togolese political will.

In response to the growing demonstration against President Gnassingbe, members of his ruling Rally for the Togolese People (RPT) have also staged demonstrations in support of the government. At present President Gnassingbe is chair of the regional Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) therefore hampering the capacity of the organization to effectively address the current political impasse inside the country.

All images in this article are from the author.

Alessandro Bianchi: The geographic location of Afghanistan has always occupied a central role. The April peace talks between Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Russia and China seemed to have put an end to the persistent and dominant American presence in the country. What’s your opinion?

Andre Vltchek: What you have mentioned is extremely important, but I’m not ready to celebrate, yet. This could be, at least in theory, the first step towards the end of one of the most destructive and brutal occupations in NATO’s history, or in what the US mainstream press likes to describe as “the longest American war.”

Let us also not call it only the “American presence”. I know some Europeans lately love to portray themselves as some kind of victims, but they are definitely not. Europe is at the core of this entire global nightmare. And the US is nothing else other than its creation: it is Europe’s offspring. In many ways, the United States is Europe.

The UK is now well behind this horror through which Afghanistan is being forced to go through, at least theoretically; a sadistic revenge for all former British defeats in the country. The UK is responsible for more massacres worldwide than any other country on Earth. And now it is shaping the US and in fact the entire Western imperialism, ideologically. Its Machiavellianism, its propaganda machine is second to none.

What I can confirm from my first-hand experience is that by now the people of Afghanistan have had truly enough of this Western imperialist barbarism. They are exhausted after 16 years of the horror invasion. They dislike the West; mistrust the West… But most of them are silent, because they are constantly being frightened into submission. And also remember: collaboration with the Western occupation forces is now the greatest ‘business’ in the country. Afghan diplomats, many politicians, countless military commanders, Western-funded NGOs, even thousands of educators, are all serving the occupiers. Billions of dollars are being made from such shameful collaboration.It is all one huge business, and the mafia of servile Afghan ‘journalists’, diplomats, governors and ‘educators’ will never leave their lucrative positions voluntarily.

Western colonialism corrupts! It corrupts one generation after another in all conquered, occupied countries.

Afghans who are pure, Afghans who are proud, true patriots with beautiful hearts (and there are still many of such people in this country that became one of my favorite places on Earth) have presently no power, no say.

Fortunately, even the elites are now realizing that there is no way forward under the present regime, and under the present foreign rule.

In Kabul and in the provinces, people are beginning to look towards Russia, China, but also Iran, even India. Despite its terrible past track record in this part of the world, even Pakistan cannot be ignored, anymore. Anything is better than NATO.

AB: Like in other parts of the world, the presence of American troops does not fully explain the long-term goals of military planners. Afghanistan in some respects resembles a similar situation to Southeast Asia. In South Korea, the American presence has persisted since 1950, and with it the destabilization of the Korean peninsula. The American surge will not change the delicate balance negotiated between the parties back in April and it will not affect the efforts of Moscow and Beijing to stabilize the country. How do you define the US presence today in Afghanistan?

AV: I define it as inhuman, barbaric and thoroughly racist. And I’m not talking about the US presence only, but also about the European presence, particularly the British one.

There could be absolutely no doubts regarding how deep once-socialist Afghanistan has sank under the NATO cruelty. It is enough to go even to the sites of the UNDP or the WHO and it all there, in details: Afghanistan is now the least ‘developed’ (using HDI criteria) country in Asia. Afghan people have the lowest life expectancy on their continent.

The US alone claims that it has managed to spend, since the invasion in 2001, between 750 billion and 1.2 trillion dollars. That’s huge, an astronomical amount, even bigger than the entire Marshall Plan after WWII (adjusted to today’s dollar)! But has it been spent to help the Afghan people? Of course not! It has gone mainly into corrupting of ‘elites’ and their offspring, into the military, into the salaries of foreign contractors. Huge military bases were built; some were at some point decommissioned, others were moved somewhere else. Airports were constructed – all of them military ones. Private Western security firms are having a ball. I once calculated that if all that money were to be equally divided between all Afghans, the country would have had a much higher income per capita than relatively affluent Malaysia, for 16 consecutive years!

What the West has done to Afghanistan is insane! It is Orwell meeting Huxley, and all mixed with the worst nightmares of painters like George Grosz and Otto Dix.

Old trolley bus lines built by the former Czechoslovakia are gone; only stumps are left. But so much is still surviving. Soviet apartment buildings, so-called Makroyans, are still standing and flats there are in great demand to date. Water ducts in the countryside were built by Soviet Union, and so were irrigation canals around Jalalabad and elsewhere. India built dams. China constructed public medical facilities. What did the West create? Nothing else other than total misery, armed conflicts and above all–countless military barracks, tall concrete walls and fences, the drug trade, intellectual prostitution and as always, dark and complete nihilism!

In 2007, around 700 Afghan civilians were killed by Western airstrikes alone, a great increase even when compared with 2006.

Georgian military contractors who are working for the US occupation army recently told me: US have total spite for Afghan people. They even destroy unused food at its military bases, instead of giving it to starving children.

People of Afghanistan know perfectly well who are their friends, and who are enemies.

AB: The world is changing, and more and more fruitful efforts to replace the chaos wrought by US policies can be seen. The road to economic prosperity and a re-established unity among the Afghan people is still a work in progress, but once the country manages to establish its independence, Washington will have a hard time dictating conditions. Will countries like Russia, China and India be able to prevent a dangerous escalation in Afghanistan?

AV: Many people in Afghanistan are actually dreaming about true independence, and most of them remember with great love, all the kindness and internationalism given to them by the Soviet people. Unlike the Westerners, the Soviets came here first as teachers, doctors, nurses and engineers. They shared with the locals all that they had. They lived among them. They never hid behind fences. To date, in Afghanistan, you say you are Russian, and dozens of people will embrace you, invite you to their homes. It is all in stark contrast to the Western propaganda, which says that Afghans dislike Russians!

When it comes to Russia and China, yes, both countries acting in concert would be able to bring economic prosperity and social justice to Afghanistan. I’m not so sure about India, which is, until now, clearly sitting on two chairs, but definitely China and Russia are ready and able to help.

The problem is that Afghanistan is still very far from any sort of independence. The West has occupied it for 16 years, that’s terrible enough. But the country has also been sacrificed for the even more sinister designs of the US and NATO, for much longer than that: Afghanistan has been, for decades, a training ground for the pro-western jihadi cadres, starting with Al-Qaeda/Mujahedeen (during the ‘Soviet War’ and the war against Afghan socialism). Now the Taliban is ruining the country, but also, increasingly, ISIS are murdering all in sight here. Recently, ISIS have been arriving from Syria and Lebanon, where they are in the process of being defeated by the Syrian army, by the Russians, but also by the Lebanese forces and Hezbollah. The ISIS was, as is well known, created by the West and its allies in the Gulf.

This is essential to understand: two countries that the West wants to fully destabilize are Russia and China. In both of them, Islamist fundamentalists have been fighting and bringing horrible damage. The West is behind all this. And it is using and sacrificing Afghanistan which is absolutely perfect for the Western imperialist designs due to its geographical location, but also because it is now fully destabilized and in a state of chaos. In Afghanistan, NATO is maintaining ‘perpetual conflict’. Jihadi cadres can be easily hardened there, and then they can be ‘exported’; to go and fight somewhere in Northwest China or in the Central Asian parts of Russia.

The destruction of Afghanistan is actually a well-planned genocidal war of the West against the Afghan people. But the country is also a training ground for jihadists who will eventually be sent to fight against Russia and China.

AB: While the United States exhales the last breaths as a declining global power, no longer able to impose its will, it lashes out in pointless acts like lobbing 60 cruise missiles at Syria or sending 4,000 troops to Afghanistan. Such acts do not change anything on the ground or modify the balance of forces in Washington’s favor. They do, however, have a strong impact on further reducing whatever confidence remains in the US, closing the door to opportunities for dialogue and cooperation that might have otherwise got on the table.

AV: Here I have to strongly disagree. I’m almost certain that the West in general, and the United States in particular, are clearly aware of what they are doing. The US has some of the most sinister colonial powers as its advisers, particularly the United Kingdom.

The US will not simply go down the drain without a great fight, and don’t ever think that Europe would either. These two parts of the world were built on the great plunder of the planet. They still are. They cannot sustain themselves just from the fruits of their brains and labor. They are perpetual thieves. The US can never be separated from Europe. The US is just one huge branch growing from an appalling trunk, from the tree of European colonialism, imperialism and racism.

Whatever the US, Europe and NATO are presently doing is brilliantly planned. Never under-estimate them! It is all brutal, sinister and murderous planning, but from a strictly strategic point of view, it is truly brilliant!

And they will never go away on their own! They will have to be fought and defeated. Otherwise they are here to stay: in Afghanistan, in Syria, or anywhere else.

AB: What is the role of Italian troops that you have seen in your last visit to Afghanistan?

Italian troops took over ancient Citadel in Herat City (Source: Andre Vltchek)

AV: It is a usual cocktail consisting of what Italian fascism has been made of throughout its colonialist, fascist and NATO eras: a medley of cruelty, hypocrisy, as well as some great hope in Rome that Italy could finally become a competent and ‘respected’ occupier… I saw the Italian troops in Herat… They occupied an ancient citadel of the city, jumping like members of some second-rate ballet troupe all around, just because some high-ranking Italian officer was bringing his family to visit the site. It was all tremendously embarrassing… I still have some photos from that ‘event’. But the best thing about Italians as occupiers is that they can hardly be taken seriously; they are disorganized, chaotic, and hedonistic even during war.

I actually love to see them in such places like Afghanistan, because they do very little damage. They are true showoffs. The French, Brits, and the US – they are efficient and brutal, true killing machines. Italians are still better at making movies, writing poetry and cooking, than murdering locals in occupied foreign countries.

*

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are revolutionary novel “Aurora” and two bestselling works of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and  “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”. View his other books here. Andre is making films for teleSUR and Al-Mayadeen. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo. After having lived in Latin America, Africa and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter.

Featured image: Colin Kaepernick (Source: ESPN)

“The spectacle is the nightmare of imprisoned modern society which ultimately expresses nothing more than its desire to sleep. The spectacle is the guardian of sleep.” – Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

It is generally accepted that sports, especially spectator sports, serve many social purposes, good and bad, and that they function to distract people from the cares and worries of everyday life, or the “real world.” No doubt this is true. The etymology of the word sport, derived as it is from the word “disport” – divert, amuse, carry away – tells us that.  But often a distraction can also be a reminder, even when that reminder remains shrouded in unconsciousness or forgotten in the moment. Sometimes, however, the reminder can be linked to memories that bring a startling clarity to the present.

Two recent sports news items have reminded me of incidents from my own athletic past. And those memories in turn have brought my reflections back to the current news regarding the failure of any National Football League (NFL) team to sign quarterback Colin Kaepernick to a contract, and the recent boxing match between Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor.

Kaepernick’s case is well-known and much discussed. He took a valiant and principled stand last football season by taking a knee during the national anthem to protest the violent treatment of black Americans by the police and American society in general. History was on his side, unless one was a clear-cut white racist and ignorant of American history. But as a terrific football player and a well-known athlete, his stand was unusual in the world of sports where political protest is very rare and not being reminded of the “real” world is the key to success. The NFL, in particular, is a very conservative organization, long infused with a super patriotic ethos wrapped in the American flag and the song that celebrates it, and Kaepernick’s protest was a diversion from the diverting spectacle on the field and not welcomed by NFL owners, to put it mildly.

Source: notey.com

So as of this writing, Kaepernick, a very good football player who would clearly strengthen an NFL team, remains without a job. That this is because he lacks talent is ridiculous. While pressure against the NFL from multiple media and organizational sources is growing to reverse this situation, even well-meaning writers have implicitly used racist language to describe the situation by saying that Kaepernick is being blackballed. Ironic as it is, our language is filled with such subtle reminders of the white mindset that equates white with good and black with bad.

But there is a deeper irony involved, and language once again reveals it.

First, however, let me briefly tell you of my memories, not because the details are important in themselves, but because they are examples of how we bring to our present perspectives past experiences that can both help to clarify and obfuscate current events. The saying “where you’re coming from” contains truth; our past experiences deeply influence how we see the present.

When I was 19-20 years old, a senior in high school and a Division I college freshman on an athletic scholarship, I was involved in two incidents involving sports and violence. The sport was basketball, not football or boxing, and the violence was minimal, but both are etched in my memory. As a young man, I was rarely involved in fighting, but when I felt abused and disrespected, my Irish temper got the best of me and I would physically defend myself. Otherwise, I was a normal young athlete, fueled by the competitive nature of high-level sports and testosterone. But these incidents taught me that the propensity for violence is in us all, and that certain situations and social arrangements can inflame and promote it, especially when you are most unaware and naïve.

But what do these memories have to do with the news about Kaepernick and Mayweather/McGregor? What I saw in both sports stories was violence; one quite obvious with boxing, the other involving Kaepernick, less so.

I realized that violence has many faces, whether it be minor or major, fisticuffs or “blitzes,” face-to-face or helmet-to-helmet, physical or verbal, racial or political, institutional or personal, etc. It’s largest and most savage one is war, and endless war and preparations for war are the large canvas within which the others lie. Sometimes remembering one’s individual inclinations toward violence can help one see the larger picture.

As usual, the Unites States is currently waging multiple wars, and is fomenting many others, including a nuclear one. Most of the victims of U.S. violence are considered “other,” the expendable people, as were slaves, Native Americans, and other people of color. Nothing has changed since that other heroic black American dissenter said that America is “the greatest purveyor of violence on earth.” And we know that Martin Luther King was murdered by those violent U.S. government forces he criticized in his opposition to war, racial inequality, and economic injustice for all Americans.

I am not equating Kaepernick with MLK, but his protest follows in the King tradition and that of other black athletes who have taken political stands: Mohammed Ali, Tommy Smith, John Carlos, et al. All suffered for their courageous positions.

Of course, Colin Kaepernick has a right to play football, just as Ali had the right to beat people up in the ring. Yet boxing, despite the Mayweather/McGregor extravaganza, has generally been recognized for the brutal “sport” it is, and has grown less popular over the years, perhaps in part because of Ali’s “pugilistic brain syndrome.” Not football.  It has grown to become America’s number one sport, despite the growing evidence of what may be called “football brain syndrome,” and all the violence and other crippling injuries suffered by former players, revealed as far back as 1970 when Dave Meggyesy, a former NFL linebacker, published Out of Their League, his expose of the dehumanizing aspects of football.

But the unspoken truth in the Kaepernick story is that football is the war sport par excellence, extremely violent, and deeply tied to the spectacle of cruelty that dominates American society today and that has caused so much suffering for black people and other people of color for centuries. In the 1960s, Brazilian television, in an effort to distinguish football (soccer) from American football, aptly termed it “military football.” And while it, like other sports, has been an avenue to wealth and “success” for some black Americans (a tiny minority), its war-like structure and violent nature is noted with a nod and a wink. Heck, it’s fun to play and exciting to watch, and is just a colorful spectacle that we can’t do without.

That it’s a conditioning agent for the love of war and violent aggression is usually passed over. Its language, like all good linguistic mind control, becomes powerfully invisible. Colin Kaepernick, like all quarterbacks, is the field general who throws bombs to flankers as he tries to avoid the blitz. Each team defends and conquers the enemy’s territory, pushing its opponent back through frontal assaults and pounding the enemy’s line. This is mixed with deceptive formations and aerial assaults behind the opponent’s line. When none of this works and the enemy goes on the offensive, a different platoon is brought in to defend one’s territory. One’s front line must then defend against a frontal assault and hit back hard. The analogies are everywhere, and as with many aspects of “everywhere,” what’s everywhere is nowhere – its familiarity making it invisible and therefore all the more powerful.

In a society of the spectacle, football is the most spectacular and entertaining mass hypnotic induction into the love of violence that we have. Yes, Mayweather and McGregor beating the shit out of each other satisfies the blood lust of gamblers and a much smaller audience, but boxing is small peanuts compared to football. Most American parents wouldn’t bring their children to a boxing match, but football is deeply ingrained in the American psyche and structured into the fabric of our lives from youth onwards, concussions and violence be damned. It is a microcosm of our militaristic, war-loving culture. Our love of violence disguised as fun.

As an American man, I understand its appeal. I am sometimes drawn in myself, but against my better nature, which embraces MLK’s non-violent philosophy. I appreciate the great athletic prowess of football players, and know that it is enjoyable and a way to recognition for many, and for a smaller number a scholarship to college, and, for even less, a lucrative job in the NFL. But as an opponent of American militarism, I find its violent ethos and the way it disfigures the bodies and minds of participants and spectators alike to be appalling. It functions as an arm of the Pentagon and the growing militarization of the country’s police departments.

As for Conor McGregor, the slum boy from south Dublin, they say he is an artist, a mixed “martial arts artist.” That violence is an art is good to know. I have been living in a bubble, thinking that art was a counterbalance to violence. When I grew out of my adolescent readiness to defend my dignity with my fists and grew into art, I had hoped that the world would grow up with me. No luck. No luck of the Irish. Conor should read our Irish ancestor, the great poet William Butler Yeats, and take the money and run.

“Too long a sacrifice/Can make a stone of the heart.”

So too Colin Kaepernick, whom I greatly admire for his courage to take an ethical stand. He deserves to be offered a job by an NFL team. If he is, I hope he turns it down, and speaks out on the propagandistic nature of the sport that made him famous, on its school of violence and its art of war. In doing that, he would be carrying on the legacy of MLK, Malcom X, Mohammed Ali, and other black leaders who said violence must stop now, war must stop, the violence on people of color must stop, and let it begin with me.

He would be disclosing the taboo truth of an American sporting distraction that does violence to its participants while it brainwashes its fans into the martial spirit. He would be waking an awful lot of people up from the slumber of the spectacle of cruelty that has this country in its grip.

Many people would take a knee in gratitude.

Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely.  He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. A former college basketball player, he teaches the sociology of sports, and writes on a wide range of topics.  His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/

When the Islamic State siege on Deir Ezzor was broken by the Syrian Arab Army we asked:

Will the SAA cross the Euphrates at Deir Ezzor to retake the valuable oilfields east of it? Or will it stay south of the river and leave those oil fields to the Kurdish U.S. proxies in the north?

To cross the river is clearly desirable but also potentially contentious.

Since then several convoys of military bridging equipment have been seen on the road to Deir Ezzor. It is now obvious that the SAA will bridge the river (all regular bridges have been destroyed by U.S. bombing) and send significant forces across. New questions now are: When, where and with what aim?

As soon as the government intent became clear the U.S. pushed its local proxy forces to immediately snatch the ISIS held oilfields. In less than two days they deployed over 30 kilometers deep into the ISIS held areas north of the Euphrates. It is obvious that such progress could not have been made if ISIS had defended itself. I find it likely that a deal has been made between those two sides.

The U.S. diplomat tasked with the job, Brett McGurk, recently met with local tribal dignitaries of the area. Pictures of the meeting were published. Several people pointed out that the very same dignitaries were earlier pictured swearing allegiance to the Islamic State.

Just like during the “Anbar Awaking” in its war on Iraq the U.S. is bribing the local radicals to temporarily change over to its side. This will help the U.S. to claim that it defeated ISIS. But as soon as the payments stop the very same forces will revert back to their old game.

Originally the U.S. had planned to let ISIS take Deir Ezzor. It had twice attacked Syrian government forces in the area killing more than a hundred of them. This had allowed ISIS to capture large chunks of the government enclave and to disable the airport which was need for resupplies:

After Russian support for the SAA changed the balance of power, and after the election of Donald Trump, those plans had to change. Syria and its allies created facts on the ground and it is now again in control of the area it had lost to ISIS. It will also liberate the rest of the city.

Here is current map of the east-Syrian Euphrates area.

Map by Weekend Warrior

The SAA (red) has liberated parts of the city and the airport. The road from Damascus to Deir Ezzor is completely under SAA control. The population, which had nearly starved under the ISIS siege, is receiving fresh food, other necessary goods and medical attention.

The hatched areas of the map show possible next aims for the U.S. proxy campaign (yellow) and the Syrian government forces (red) in their fight against ISIS (grey) and against each other.

Critical oil fields are north and east of Mayadin. The Omar oil field in the east is the biggest one in all Syria. The U.S. wants these under its control to finance its Kurdish and Arab proxies in north-east Syria. The Syrian government needs the oil to rebuild the country. Should the U.S. supported forces try to annex the area we will likely see a direct conflict between them and the Syrian government forces. Would the U.S. and Russia join that fight?

Areas in the north-west and south-west of Syria have been relatively quiet. In recent weeks no relevant change of positions took place. In the south-east around the Syria, Jordan, Iraq border triangle the Syrian government retook several border points. The move comes after an agreement between Russia, the U.S. and Jordan conceded the area back to Syrian government control. The “rebels” in the area were CIA financed but are now out of income. They were ordered by their masters to move to Jordan but several groups refused to do that. The Syrian army and air force will take care of them.

The Syrian government again pointed out that U.S. (and Turkish) forces on its ground are uninvited and that their presence is illegal. The Russian foreign minster made the same point in a press conference today. Yesterday the Turkish president said “we mustn’t allow foreign powers intervene in Syria to serve their own interests.” (His palace seems to lack mirrors.) These are clear signals to the U.S. that its presence and that of a U.S. proxy forces in Syria will not be condoned.

President Trump had clearly said that his only interest in Syria is to get rid of ISIS:

“As far as Syria is concerned, we have very little to do with Syria other than killing ISIS,”

But Trump is now under the influence (or control?) of the U.S. military. The Pentagon and those forces influencing it might have their own plans. The war is mostly decided. The Syrian government will prevail. But the war is not yet over. Undesirable surprises may still come from the U.S. or other interested sides.

Adding: Several recent rumors about incidents in Syria were and are obvious fakes. Please be careful distributing wild claims when these have not been verified by a multitude of sources. The truth is: NO deconfliction line exists east of Deir Ezzor. The SAA did NOT shoot down an Israeli jet over Lebanon. NO U.S. General said that the Syrian army would be bombed if it tried to cross the Euphrates. NO attack on a SAA convoy by the U.S. airforce happened today.

---

Global Research announces the forthcoming release of  the print edition of Mark Taliano’s Book, “Voices from Syria”  which includes two additional chapters. 

Taliano talks and listens to the people of Syria. He reveals the courage and resilience of a Nation and its people in their day to day lives, after more than six years of US-NATO sponsored terrorism and three years of US “peacemaking” airstrikes.

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. 

Special Pre-Publication Offer

**Pre-Order Special Offer: Voices from Syria (Ships mid-September)

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 2 new chapters)

List Price: $17.95

Special Price: $9.95 

Click to order

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

Sanctions don’t solve problems. They create greater ones. Officials in targeted countries are minimally affected at most, ordinary people bearing the brunt of what’s imposed.

That’s America’s intention. Make them suffer enough to oppose their governments, a failed tactic every time, yet used repeatedly.

When actions by one or groups of nations, like Security Council members, impose harshness on targeted countries, their people most often look to their government for help. Where else can they turn?

During years of genocidal sanctions on Iraq, their people looked to Saddam Hussein for whatever help he could provide. No rebellion occurred. The same holds for North Korea.

Punitive sanctions accomplish nothing but pain and suffering for ordinary people. They achieve nothing else. They don’t change policies of targeted nations. They don’t get citizens to rebel against their governments.

In Pyongyang’s case, its leadership is increasingly determined to pursue its nuclear and ballistic missile programs as deterrents against feared US aggression.

Without them, the country is vulnerable to attack. Having them gives aggressors like America pause about striking a nation able to hit back hard, including with nuclear weapons – thousands of US forces in South Korea and Japan in harm’s way if war erupts.

Given the counterproductiveness of sanctions, why do China and Russia usually support them on nations like the DPRK – especially when rhetorically they express opposition, calling them counterproductive.

Their willingness to compromise with Washington to get along is wrongheaded when doing the wrong things. Beijing and Moscow should have vetoed Washington’s draft resolution, even in softer revised form – because it does nothing to resolve contentious issues. Just the opposite is achieved.

On Monday, Security Council sanctions were imposed on the DPRK for the 9th time since 2006, their imposition encouraging, not curtailing, its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

Changes from the original US draft dropped the total ban on oil sales to the DPRK. Instead oil imports are capped at around 30% below current levels. Gasoline, diesel, heavy fuel oil and other refined fuel products are capped well below current levels.

Imports of natural gas and condensates are prohibited. So are purchases of North Korean textiles. Exports of its coal, iron, iron ore, lead and seafood were banned earlier.

The status of North Korean guest workers abroad is uncertain. Nations employing them no longer need renewing their contracts – except when involved in humanitarian-related activities.

Vessels suspected of carrying banned North Korean products can be interdicted and inspected in international waters. Pyongyang won’t permit these hostile actions. Others foreign flag ships can refuse to allow them.

The original draft’s travel ban and asset freeze on Kim Jong-un were dropped. Major Chinese banks indicated they’ll no longer open accounts for North Korean individuals or companies. New deposits won’t be accepted. Existing accounts may be closed.

Around 90% of North Korean exports are now banned. Russia and China insist SC members consider adopting its double-freeze proposal – requiring a halt in provocative US, South Korean, Japanese military exercises in return for Pyongyang suspending its nuclear and ballistic missile testing. If voted on, a US veto is certain.

Newly imposed sanctions will increase economic harshness on the DPRK – heightening regional tensions, not easing them.

While acknowledging that sanctions are counterproductive, Russia and China on Monday supported what they should have vetoed.

At the end of the day, North Korea remains firmly committed to continue developing its nuclear and ballistic missile programs – newly imposed sanctions and earlier ones doing nothing to suspend these programs.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

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

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

Featured image: At the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, President George W. Bush ordered the U.S. military to conduct a devastating aerial assault on Baghdad, known as “shock and awe.”

The New York Times and other Western media have learned few lessons from the Iraq War, including how the combination of a demonized foreign leader and well-funded “activists” committed to flooding the process with fake data can lead to dangerously false conclusions that perpetuate war.

What we have seen in Syria over the past six years parallels what occurred in Iraq in the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion in 2002-03. In both cases, there was evidence that the “system” was being gamed – by the Iraqi National Congress (INC) in pushing for the Iraq War and by pro-rebel “activists” promoting “regime change” in Syria – but those warnings were ignored. Instead, the flood of propagandistic claims overwhelmed what little skepticism there was in the West.

Regarding Iraq, the INC generated a surge of “defectors” who claimed to know where Saddam Hussein was concealing his WMD stockpiles and where his nuclear program was hidden. In Syria, we have seen something similar with dubious claims about chemical weapons attacks.

The Iraqi “defectors,” of course, were lying, and a little-noticed congressional study revealed that the CIA had correctly debunked some of the fakers but – because of the pro-invasion political pressure from George W. Bush’s White House and the U.S. mainstream media’s contempt for Saddam Hussein – other bogus claims were accepted as true. The result was catastrophic.

But the telltale signs of an INC disinformation campaign were there before the war. For instance, by early February 2003, as the final invasion plans were underway, the parade of Iraqi “walk-ins” was continuing. U.S. intelligence agencies had progressed up to “Source Eighteen,” one fellow who came to epitomize what some CIA analysts suspected was systematic INC coaching of sources.

As the CIA planned a debriefing of Source Eighteen, another Iraqi exile passed on word to the agency that an INC representative had told Source Eighteen to “deliver the act of a lifetime.” CIA analysts weren’t sure what to make of that piece of news since Iraqi exiles frequently badmouthed each other but the value of the warning soon became clear.

U.S. intelligence officers debriefed Source Eighteen the next day and discovered that “Source Eighteen was supposed to have a nuclear engineering background, but was unable to discuss advanced mathematics or physics and described types of ‘nuclear’ reactors that do not exist,” according to a Senate Intelligence Committee report on the Iraq War’s intelligence failures.

“Source Eighteen used the bathroom frequently, particularly when he appeared to be flustered by a line of questioning, suddenly remembering a new piece of information upon his return. During one such incident, Source Eighteen appeared to be reviewing notes,” the report said.

Not surprisingly, U.S. intelligence officers concluded that Source Eighteen was a fabricator. But the sludge of INC-connected disinformation kept oozing through the U.S. intelligence community, fouling the American intelligence product in part because there was little pressure from above demanding strict quality controls. Indeed, the opposite was true.

A more famous fake Iraqi defector earned the code name “Curve Ball” and provided German intelligence agencies details about Iraq’s alleged mobile facilities for producing agents for biological warfare.

Tyler Drumheller, then chief of the CIA’s European Division, said his office had issued repeated warnings about Curve Ball’s accounts.

“Everyone in the chain of command knew exactly what was happening,” Drumheller said. [Los Angeles Times, April 2, 2005]

Despite those objections and the lack of direct U.S. contact with Curve Ball, he earned a rating as “credible” or “very credible,” and his information became a core element of the Bush administration’s case for invading Iraq. Drawings of Curve Ball’s imaginary bio-weapons labs were a central feature of Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation to the U.N. on Feb. 5, 2003.

The Syrian Parallel

Regarding Syria, a similar mix of factors exists. The Obama administration’s advocacy for Syrian “regime change” and the hostility from many Western interest groups toward President Bashar al-Assad lowered the bar of skepticism enabling propaganda arms of Al Qaeda and its jihadist allies to have enormous success in selling dubious accusations about chemical attacks and other atrocities.

As with the CIA analysts who tripped up a few of the Iraqi liars, some United Nations investigators have seen evidence of the trickery. For instance, they learned from townspeople of Al-Tamanah about how the rebels and allied “activists” staged a chlorine gas attack on the night of April 29-30, 2014, and then sold the false story to a credulous Western media and, initially, to the U.N. investigative team.

“Seven witnesses stated that frequent alerts [about an imminent chlorine weapons attack by the government] had been issued, but in fact no incidents with chemicals took place,” the U.N. report stated. “While people sought safety after the warnings, their homes were looted and rumours spread that the events were being staged. … [T]hey [these witnesses] had come forward to contest the wide-spread false media reports.”

Accounts from other people, who did allege that there had been a government chemical attack on Al-Tamanah, provided suspect evidence, including data from questionable sources, according to the U.N. report.

The report said,

“Three witnesses, who did not give any description of the incident on 29-30 April 2014, provided material of unknown source. One witness had second-hand knowledge of two of the five incidents in Al-Tamanah, but did not remember the exact dates. Later that witness provided a USB-stick with information of unknown origin, which was saved in separate folders according to the dates of all the five incidents mentioned by the FFM (the U.N.’s Fact-Finding Mission).

“Another witness provided the dates of all five incidents reading it from a piece of paper, but did not provide any testimony on the incident on 29-30 April 2014. The latter also provided a video titled ‘site where second barrel containing toxic chlorine gas was dropped tamanaa 30 April 14’”

Some other witnesses alleging a Syrian government attack offered curious claims about detecting the chlorine-infused “barrel bombs” based on how the device sounded in its descent.

The U.N. report said,

“The eyewitness, who stated to have been on the roof, said to have heard a helicopter and the ‘very loud’ sound of a falling barrel. Some interviewees had referred to a distinct whistling sound of barrels that contain chlorine as they fall. The witness statement could not be corroborated with any further information.”

However, the claim itself is absurd since it is inconceivable that anyone could detect a chlorine canister inside a “barrel bomb” by “a distinct whistling sound.”

The larger point, however, is that the jihadist rebels in Al-Tamanah and their propaganda teams, including relief workers and activists, appear to have organized a coordinated effort at deception complete with a fake video supplied to U.N. investigators and Western media outlets.

For instance, the Telegraph in London reported that

“Videos allegedly taken in Al-Tamanah … purport to show the impact sites of two chemical bombs. Activists said that one person had been killed and another 70 injured.”

The Telegraph also quoted supposed weapons expert Eliot Higgins, the founder of Bellingcat, as endorsing the report.

“Witnesses have consistently reported the use of helicopters to drop the chemical barrel bombs used,” said Higgins. “As it stands, around a dozen chemical barrel bomb attacks have been alleged in that region in the last three weeks.”

To finish up pointing the finger of guilt at the government, the Telegraph added that “The regime is the only party in the civil war that possesses helicopters” – a claim that also has been in dispute since the rebels had captured government air assets and had received substantial military assistance from Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United States, Israel, Jordan and other countries.

The Al-Tamanah debunking received no mainstream media attention when the U.N. findings were issued in September 2016 because the U.N. report relied on rebel information to blame two other alleged chlorine attacks on the government and that got all the coverage. But the case should have raised red flags given the extent of the apparent deception.

If the seven townspeople were telling the truth, that would mean that the rebels and their allies issued fake attack warnings, produced propaganda videos to fool the West, and prepped “witnesses” with “evidence” to deceive investigators. Yet, no alarms went off about other rebel claims.

The Ghouta Incident

A more famous attack – with sarin gas on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta on Aug. 21, 2013, killing hundreds – was also eagerly blamed on the Assad regime, as The New York Times, Human Rights Watch, Higgins’s Bellingcat and many other Western outlets jumped to that conclusion despite the unlikely circumstances. Assad had just welcomed U.N. investigators to Damascus to examine chemical attacks that he was blaming on the rebels.

Assad also was facing a “red line” threat from President Obama warning him of possible U.S. military intervention if the Syrian government deployed chemical weapons. Why Assad and his military would choose such a moment to launch a deadly sarin attack, killing mostly civilians, made little sense.

But this became another rush to judgment in the West that brought the Obama administration to the verge of launching a devastating air attack on the Syrian military that might have helped Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate and/or the Islamic State win the war.

The controversial map developed by Human Rights Watch and embraced by the New York Times, supposedly showing the flight paths of two missiles from the Aug. 21, 2013 sarin attack intersecting at a Syrian military base. But the map was later disproved because only one rocket carried sarin (the one on the right) and it had only a fraction of the necessary range.

Eventually, however, the case blaming Assad for the 2013 sarin attack collapsed. An analysis by genuine weapons experts – Theodore A. Postol, a professor of science, technology and national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Richard M. Lloyd, an analyst at the military contractor Tesla Laboratories – found that the missile that delivered the sarin had a very short range placing its likely firing position in rebel territory.

Later, reporting by journalist Seymour Hersh implicated Turkish intelligence working with jihadist rebels as the likely source of the sarin.

We also learned in 2016 that a message from the U.S. intelligence community had warned Obama how weak the evidence against Assad was. There was no “slam-dunk” proof, said Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. And Obama cited his rejection of the Washington militaristic “playbook” to bomb Syria as one of his proudest moments as President.

With this background, there should have been extreme skepticism when jihadists and their allies made new claims about the Syrian government engaging in chemical weapons attacks, just like the CIA should have recognized that the Iraqi National Congress’s production of some obviously phony “walk-ins” justified doubts about all of them.

After the invasion of Iraq and the U.S. failure to find the promised WMD caches, INC leader Ahmed Chalabi congratulated his organization as “heroes in error” for its success in using falsehoods to help get the United States to invade.

But the West appears to have learned next to nothing from the Iraq deceptions – or arguably the lessons are being ignored out of a desire to continue the neoconservative “regime change” project for the Middle East.

Pressure to Confirm

U.N. investigators, who have been under intense pressure to confirm accusations against the Syrian government, continue to brush aside contrary evidence, such as testimony regarding the April 4 “sarin incident” at Khan Sheikhoun, that suggested a replay of the Al-Tamanah operation.

In a new U.N. report, testimony from two people, who were apparently considered reliable by investigators from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, asserted that anti-government aircraft spotters issued no early-morning warning of a flight leaving the Syrian military airbase of Shayrat, contradicting claims from Al Qaeda’s allies inside Khan Sheikhoun who insisted that there had been such a warning.

If no warplanes left Shayrat airbase around dawn on April 4, then President Trump’s case for retaliating with 59 Tomahawk missiles launched against the base two days later would collapse. The U.S. strike reportedly killed several soldiers at the base and nine civilians, including four children, in nearby neighborhoods. It also risked inflicting death on Russians stationed at the base.

But the U.N. report accepts the version from the activists and rebels inside the Al Qaeda-controlled town and then goes on to endorse other rebel claims regarding alleged Syrian military chemical attacks on at least 20 other occasions.

The New York Times was mightily impressed with the U.N. report’s “unequivocal condemnation” of Assad’s regime and cited it as justification for Israeli warplanes bombing a Syrian military facility on Thursday. Rather than criticize Israel for attacking a neighboring country, the Times framed the action in a positive light as having “brought renewed attention to Syria’s chemical weapons.”

But the journalistic (and intelligence) point should have been that the West was fooled in Iraq by self-interested “activists” flooding the Times, the CIA and the world with fake information — so many bogus walk-ins that they overwhelmed whatever half-hearted process there was to weed out lies from truth. The Syrian “opposition” appears to have adopted a similar strategy in Syria with similar success.

Given the history, skepticism should be the rule in Syria, not credulity. Or, as President George W. Bush once said in a different context, “fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.”

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

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Global Research announces the forthcoming release of  the print edition of Mark Taliano’s Book, “Voices from Syria”  which includes two additional chapters. 

Taliano talks and listens to the people of Syria. He reveals the courage and resilience of a Nation and its people in their day to day lives, after more than six years of US-NATO sponsored terrorism and three years of US “peacemaking” airstrikes.

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. 

Special Pre-Publication Offer

**Pre-Order Special Offer: Voices from Syria (Ships mid-September)

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 2 new chapters)

List Price: $17.95

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Foreign capital is dictating the prevailing development agenda in India. The aim is to replace current structures with a system of industrial agriculture suited to the needs of Western agribusiness, food processing and retail concerns (see this). The plan is for a fraction of the population left in farming working on contracts for large suppliers and large chain supermarkets offering a diet of highly processed, denutrified, genetically altered food based on crops soaked with chemicals and grown in increasingly degraded soils according to an unsustainable model of agriculture that is less climate/drought resistant, less diverse and unable to achieve food security.

Unfortunately, India’s political elites seem to be hellbent on capitulating to the needs of foreign players and their mindset that implies ‘poorer’ nations must be helped out of their awful ‘backwardness’ by the West and its powerful corporations and billionaire ‘philanthropists’. As with Monsanto and the Gates Foundation in Africa and the ‘helping’ of Africans by imposing a controlling system of agriculture, there is more than a hint of ethnocentricity and the old colonialist mentality at work.

The type of ‘development’ or ‘globalisation’ being rolled out by Washington and the World Bank is based on a need to homogenise cultures, production and consumption across the world because powerful transnational corporations’ business models rely on fast profits and global uniformity.

We need look no further than farming to see this at work. To understand what has happened to agriculture, whether in the West or in India, we must begin with the most basic element: how seeds have become increasingly uniform, less genetically diverse and subject to the control of corporate interests.

Eradicating seed diversity

In his report for The Ecologist, Oliver Tickell notes that for millennia, cereals were grown as ‘landraces’. Every field would include maybe half a dozen separate cereal species, divisible into as many as 200 varieties. Each would embody considerable genetic diversity. During the 19th century, however, farmers began to pick out specific lines that yielded higher returns under ideal agronomic conditions. Then, in search of greater stability and uniformity, crop breeders selected single seeds from these lines, bulked them up over successive plantings, then named and marketed them as distinct varieties.

Shortly before the first world war, these named varieties were hybridised in search of the ideal combination of agronomic qualities, putting together, for example, traits for large seed heads and short straw to increase yields yet further (under ideal conditions) and increase profitability for ‘efficient’ farmers.

As a result, plant breeders eradicated genetic diversity. As crops are genetically uniform, they can no longer evolve in the field to withstand insects and fungi and have to be constantly sprayed with pesticides. Moreover, the short straw length means that more of the plants’ energy goes into the grain – but then they can’t grow up above the weeds, so the system relies on repeated use of herbicides.

The use of these proprietary seeds and synthetic chemical inputs used to make them develop is a huge money-spinner for agribusiness companies. While in certain cases, yields have increased, there have been massive environmental, social and economic costs for the type of Green Revolution agriculture that has been rolled out, not least in terms of bad food and diets, degraded soils, water pollution and scarcity, poor health and the destruction of formerly largely self-sufficient rural communities and an increasing dependence on fossil fuels (transportation of food across greater distances, reliance on oil/hydrocarbon-based inputs) with all the implications that entails for climate change.

And as for climate change, genetically diverse crops are now needed more than ever; crops that have evolved to meet changing conditions, producing reliable yields all the time, rather than maximum yield when everything is just right but with the risk of total crop failure when you get flood, or drought, or some new insect or fungus or virus.

The eradication of seed diversity went much further than merely prioritising corporate seeds: it deliberately sidelined traditional seeds kept by farmers that were actually higher yielding. For example, the scientist R.H. Richharia was the director of the Central Rice Research Institute in Cuttack at the time of the Green Revolution in India.

Richharia’s research showed that several indigenous rice varieties gave high yields without the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Unfortunately, these traditional varieties were ignored in favour of the newer corporate seeds. These traditional different varieties are ideal needed for different conditions. Richharia documented the existence of indigenous high-yielding varieties, early-maturing varieties, drought-resistant varieties, scented varieties, special flavour varieties and the like.

Once we began to see genetic diversity being eradicated in the field, what we also saw was a change in farming practices towards chemical-intensive monocropping, often for export or for far away cities rather than local communities, and ultimately the undermining or eradication of self-contained rural economies, traditions and cultures.

Cultural imperialism and the eradication of indigenous culture

Green Revolution technology and ideology imported from the West has merely served to undermine an indigenous farming sector that once catered for the diverse dietary needs and climatic conditions of India and it has actually produced and fuelled drought, degraded soils, illnesses and malnutrition, farmer distress and many other issues.

Environmental scientist Viva Kermani locates India’s traditional farming practices within the framework of deep-seated cultural and spiritual meaning. She notes that centuries before the appearance of the modern-day environmental movement, the shruti (Vedas, Upanishads) and smruti (Ramayana, Mahabharata, Puranas, other scriptures) instructed people that the animals and plants found in India are sacred; that like humans, our fellow creatures, including plants have consciousness; and, therefore, all aspects of nature are to be revered.

The Vedic deities have deep symbolism and many layers of existence. One such association is with ecology. Surya is associated with the sun, the source of heat and light that nourishes everyone; Indra is associated with rain, crops, and abundance; and Agni is the deity of fire and transformation and controls all changes. There was also Vrikshayurveda – an ancient Sanskrit text on the science of plants and trees. It contains details about soil conservation, planting, sowing, treatment, propagating, how to deal with pests and diseases and a lot more.

On the other hand, Kermani notes that the Western religions, especially Christianity, viewed this nature worship as paganism, failing to recognise the scientific and spiritual basis of the relationship between man and nature and how this is the only way to sustain ecological balance.

Similarly, Vandana Shiva outlines the traditional knowledge of women and the biodiversity that protects the earth are threatened by the monocultures, intensive chemical input, and large processing factories that come with GM Mustard – the next push in the treadmill of Green Revolution technology. Women’s caretaking of the seed, food and sacredness of mustard is to be stripped away, while local oil mills are shut down and corporations take over the value chain from seed-to-oil.

In trying to displace a traditional pre-existing system of production with one that is controlled by Western corporations (which, as Kermani implies, regards nature as something to be dominated and subjugated by corporations in a quest for power and profit), there is an underlying assumption that the Indian farmer is backward, ignorant and in need of ‘help’. This type of cultural hegemony helps legitimise the increasing economic domination of Indian food and agriculture by foreign interests.

But nothing could be further from the truth. As described in this paper in the Journal of South Asian Studies, for thousands of years farmers experimented with different plant and animal specimens acquired through migration, trading networks, gift exchanges or accidental diffusion. By learning and doing, trial and error, new knowledge was blended with older, traditional knowledge systems. The farmer possesses acute observation, good memory for detail and transmission through teaching and story-telling.

Moreover, the papers’s authors Marika Vicziany and Jagjit Plahe argue that smallholder farmers (the backbone of Indian agriculture) have traditionally engaged in risk minimising strategies. They took measures to manage drought, grow cereals with long stalks that can be used as fodder, engage in cropping practices that promote biodiversity, ethno-engineer soil and water conservation, use self-provisioning systems on farm recycling and use collective sharing systems such as managing common resource properties.

Farmers know their micro-environment, so they can plant crops that mature at different times, thereby facilitating more rapid crop rotation without exhausting the soil. By contrast, the authors argue that large-scale industrially-based agricultural production erodes biodiversity by depleting the organisms that live in soil, and making adverse changes to the structure of the soil and the kind of plants that can be grown in such artificially-created environments.

Vicziany and Plahe note that many of the practices of small farmers which were once regarded as primitive or misguided are now recognised as sophisticated and appropriate. For instance, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that globally just 20 cultivated plant species account for 90 percent of all the plant-based food consumed by humans. This narrow genetic base of the global food system has put food security at serious risk.

It is no surprise that various high-level reports have thus called for agroecology and smallholder farmers to be prioritised and invested in order to achieve global sustainable food security. Instead, what we see is (despite progress in Sikkim and Andhra Pradesh) the marginalisation of organic agriculture by corporate interests, not least in India by the powerful agrochemical lobby.

The authors conclude that traditional food production systems depend on using the knowledge and expertise of village communities and cultures in contrast to prioritising imported, industrial–commercial inputs. The widespread but artificial conditions created by the latter work against the survival of traditional knowledge, which creates and sustains unique indigenous farming practices and food culture.

Given that India is still very much an agrarian-based economy with the majority still employed in agriculture or agriculture-related activities, what we continue to see in India is an attack by foreign capital on the social, economic and cultural fabric of the nation.

Whether it is fuelled by Bill Gates, the World Bank’s neoliberal-based rhetoric about ‘enabling the business of agriculture’, or The World Economic Forum’s ‘Grow’ strategy, the implication is that the world’s farmers must capitulate to the West and its powerful corporations and a globalised, corrupt system of capitalism that will funnel profits to these companies while hooking farmers on a chemical treadmill.

What we currently see is the capturing of markets and global supply chains for the benefit of transnational corporations involved in food production. We see the destruction of natural habitat in Indonesia to produce palm oil. We see the use of cynical lies (linked to palm oil production) to corrupt India’s food system with genetically modified seeds. We witness the devastating impact on farmers and rural communities. We see the degradation of soils, health and water resources.

And, in places like India, we also see the transnational corporate commercialisation and displacement of localised productive systems: systems centred on smallholder/family farms that are more productive and sustainable, produce a healthier and more diverse diet, are better for securing local and regional food security and are the life-blood of communities.

Farms worked by farmers who Viva Kermani says have

“legitimate claims to being scientists, innovators, natural resource stewards, seed savers and hybridisation experts are being reduced to becoming recipients of technical fixes and consumers of the poisonous products of a growing agricultural inputs industry.”

The same farmers whose seeds and knowledge was stolen by corporations to be bred for proprietary chemical-dependent hybrids, now to be genetically engineered.

We also see the ripping up of India’s social fabric all for the bottom line of corporate profit.

Featured image is from Your Article Library.

Foreign capital is dictating the prevailing development agenda in India. The aim is to replace current structures with a system of industrial agriculture suited to the needs of Western agribusiness, food processing and retail concerns (see this). The plan is for a fraction of the population left in farming working on contracts for large suppliers and large chain supermarkets offering a diet of highly processed, denutrified, genetically altered food based on crops soaked with chemicals and grown in increasingly degraded soils according to an unsustainable model of agriculture that is less climate/drought resistant, less diverse and unable to achieve food security.

Unfortunately, India’s political elites seem to be hellbent on capitulating to the needs of foreign players and their mindset that implies ‘poorer’ nations must be helped out of their awful ‘backwardness’ by the West and its powerful corporations and billionaire ‘philanthropists’. As with Monsanto and the Gates Foundation in Africa and the ‘helping’ of Africans by imposing a controlling system of agriculture, there is more than a hint of ethnocentricity and the old colonialist mentality at work.

The type of ‘development’ or ‘globalisation’ being rolled out by Washington and the World Bank is based on a need to homogenise cultures, production and consumption across the world because powerful transnational corporations’ business models rely on fast profits and global uniformity.

We need look no further than farming to see this at work. To understand what has happened to agriculture, whether in the West or in India, we must begin with the most basic element: how seeds have become increasingly uniform, less genetically diverse and subject to the control of corporate interests.

Eradicating seed diversity

In his report for The Ecologist, Oliver Tickell notes that for millennia, cereals were grown as ‘landraces’. Every field would include maybe half a dozen separate cereal species, divisible into as many as 200 varieties. Each would embody considerable genetic diversity. During the 19th century, however, farmers began to pick out specific lines that yielded higher returns under ideal agronomic conditions. Then, in search of greater stability and uniformity, crop breeders selected single seeds from these lines, bulked them up over successive plantings, then named and marketed them as distinct varieties.

Shortly before the first world war, these named varieties were hybridised in search of the ideal combination of agronomic qualities, putting together, for example, traits for large seed heads and short straw to increase yields yet further (under ideal conditions) and increase profitability for ‘efficient’ farmers.

As a result, plant breeders eradicated genetic diversity. As crops are genetically uniform, they can no longer evolve in the field to withstand insects and fungi and have to be constantly sprayed with pesticides. Moreover, the short straw length means that more of the plants’ energy goes into the grain – but then they can’t grow up above the weeds, so the system relies on repeated use of herbicides.

The use of these proprietary seeds and synthetic chemical inputs used to make them develop is a huge money-spinner for agribusiness companies. While in certain cases, yields have increased, there have been massive environmental, social and economic costs for the type of Green Revolution agriculture that has been rolled out, not least in terms of bad food and diets, degraded soils, water pollution and scarcity, poor health and the destruction of formerly largely self-sufficient rural communities and an increasing dependence on fossil fuels (transportation of food across greater distances, reliance on oil/hydrocarbon-based inputs) with all the implications that entails for climate change.

And as for climate change, genetically diverse crops are now needed more than ever; crops that have evolved to meet changing conditions, producing reliable yields all the time, rather than maximum yield when everything is just right but with the risk of total crop failure when you get flood, or drought, or some new insect or fungus or virus.

The eradication of seed diversity went much further than merely prioritising corporate seeds: it deliberately sidelined traditional seeds kept by farmers that were actually higher yielding. For example, the scientist R.H. Richharia was the director of the Central Rice Research Institute in Cuttack at the time of the Green Revolution in India.

Richharia’s research showed that several indigenous rice varieties gave high yields without the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Unfortunately, these traditional varieties were ignored in favour of the newer corporate seeds. These traditional different varieties are ideal needed for different conditions. Richharia documented the existence of indigenous high-yielding varieties, early-maturing varieties, drought-resistant varieties, scented varieties, special flavour varieties and the like.

Once we began to see genetic diversity being eradicated in the field, what we also saw was a change in farming practices towards chemical-intensive monocropping, often for export or for far away cities rather than local communities, and ultimately the undermining or eradication of self-contained rural economies, traditions and cultures.

Cultural imperialism and the eradication of indigenous culture

Green Revolution technology and ideology imported from the West has merely served to undermine an indigenous farming sector that once catered for the diverse dietary needs and climatic conditions of India and it has actually produced and fuelled drought, degraded soils, illnesses and malnutrition, farmer distress and many other issues.

Environmental scientist Viva Kermani locates India’s traditional farming practices within the framework of deep-seated cultural and spiritual meaning. She notes that centuries before the appearance of the modern-day environmental movement, the shruti (Vedas, Upanishads) and smruti (Ramayana, Mahabharata, Puranas, other scriptures) instructed people that the animals and plants found in India are sacred; that like humans, our fellow creatures, including plants have consciousness; and, therefore, all aspects of nature are to be revered.

The Vedic deities have deep symbolism and many layers of existence. One such association is with ecology. Surya is associated with the sun, the source of heat and light that nourishes everyone; Indra is associated with rain, crops, and abundance; and Agni is the deity of fire and transformation and controls all changes. There was also Vrikshayurveda – an ancient Sanskrit text on the science of plants and trees. It contains details about soil conservation, planting, sowing, treatment, propagating, how to deal with pests and diseases and a lot more.

On the other hand, Kermani notes that the Western religions, especially Christianity, viewed this nature worship as paganism, failing to recognise the scientific and spiritual basis of the relationship between man and nature and how this is the only way to sustain ecological balance.

Similarly, Vandana Shiva outlines the traditional knowledge of women and the biodiversity that protects the earth are threatened by the monocultures, intensive chemical input, and large processing factories that come with GM Mustard – the next push in the treadmill of Green Revolution technology. Women’s caretaking of the seed, food and sacredness of mustard is to be stripped away, while local oil mills are shut down and corporations take over the value chain from seed-to-oil.

In trying to displace a traditional pre-existing system of production with one that is controlled by Western corporations (which, as Kermani implies, regards nature as something to be dominated and subjugated by corporations in a quest for power and profit), there is an underlying assumption that the Indian farmer is backward, ignorant and in need of ‘help’. This type of cultural hegemony helps legitimise the increasing economic domination of Indian food and agriculture by foreign interests.

But nothing could be further from the truth. As described in this paper in the Journal of South Asian Studies, for thousands of years farmers experimented with different plant and animal specimens acquired through migration, trading networks, gift exchanges or accidental diffusion. By learning and doing, trial and error, new knowledge was blended with older, traditional knowledge systems. The farmer possesses acute observation, good memory for detail and transmission through teaching and story-telling.

Moreover, the papers’s authors Marika Vicziany and Jagjit Plahe argue that smallholder farmers (the backbone of Indian agriculture) have traditionally engaged in risk minimising strategies. They took measures to manage drought, grow cereals with long stalks that can be used as fodder, engage in cropping practices that promote biodiversity, ethno-engineer soil and water conservation, use self-provisioning systems on farm recycling and use collective sharing systems such as managing common resource properties.

Farmers know their micro-environment, so they can plant crops that mature at different times, thereby facilitating more rapid crop rotation without exhausting the soil. By contrast, the authors argue that large-scale industrially-based agricultural production erodes biodiversity by depleting the organisms that live in soil, and making adverse changes to the structure of the soil and the kind of plants that can be grown in such artificially-created environments.

Vicziany and Plahe note that many of the practices of small farmers which were once regarded as primitive or misguided are now recognised as sophisticated and appropriate. For instance, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that globally just 20 cultivated plant species account for 90 percent of all the plant-based food consumed by humans. This narrow genetic base of the global food system has put food security at serious risk.

It is no surprise that various high-level reports have thus called for agroecology and smallholder farmers to be prioritised and invested in order to achieve global sustainable food security. Instead, what we see is (despite progress in Sikkim and Andhra Pradesh) the marginalisation of organic agriculture by corporate interests, not least in India by the powerful agrochemical lobby.

The authors conclude that traditional food production systems depend on using the knowledge and expertise of village communities and cultures in contrast to prioritising imported, industrial–commercial inputs. The widespread but artificial conditions created by the latter work against the survival of traditional knowledge, which creates and sustains unique indigenous farming practices and food culture.

Given that India is still very much an agrarian-based economy with the majority still employed in agriculture or agriculture-related activities, what we continue to see in India is an attack by foreign capital on the social, economic and cultural fabric of the nation.

Whether it is fuelled by Bill Gates, the World Bank’s neoliberal-based rhetoric about ‘enabling the business of agriculture’, or The World Economic Forum’s ‘Grow’ strategy, the implication is that the world’s farmers must capitulate to the West and its powerful corporations and a globalised, corrupt system of capitalism that will funnel profits to these companies while hooking farmers on a chemical treadmill.

What we currently see is the capturing of markets and global supply chains for the benefit of transnational corporations involved in food production. We see the destruction of natural habitat in Indonesia to produce palm oil. We see the use of cynical lies (linked to palm oil production) to corrupt India’s food system with genetically modified seeds. We witness the devastating impact on farmers and rural communities. We see the degradation of soils, health and water resources.

And, in places like India, we also see the transnational corporate commercialisation and displacement of localised productive systems: systems centred on smallholder/family farms that are more productive and sustainable, produce a healthier and more diverse diet, are better for securing local and regional food security and are the life-blood of communities.

Farms worked by farmers who Viva Kermani says have

“legitimate claims to being scientists, innovators, natural resource stewards, seed savers and hybridisation experts are being reduced to becoming recipients of technical fixes and consumers of the poisonous products of a growing agricultural inputs industry.”

The same farmers whose seeds and knowledge was stolen by corporations to be bred for proprietary chemical-dependent hybrids, now to be genetically engineered.

We also see the ripping up of India’s social fabric all for the bottom line of corporate profit.

Featured image is from Your Article Library.

Angela Merkel is tipped to easily win reelection for a fourth term — in power only five years fewer than Vladimir Putin, she is congratulated, while he is accused of running a rigged system — yet many German voters are angry at her for opening Germany’s doors to Muslim refugees and economic migrants. 

North African and Turkish workers are not new to Europe: in the sixties, France and Germany brought over thousands to replenish the ranks of its work force decimated by war, who were encouraged to send for their wives and children. The latter, far from clamoring to return to their parents’ former homes, are Islamizing the Christian continent, just as the anti-immigrant right claims.

Although he stands no chance of becoming Chancellor, the center-right Free Democratic Party candidate, Christian Lindner has come up with an idea that seems admirable: Germany should work to restore peace to the Middle East and Africa, and then ask refugees to go home.

Realistically, it will take decades for this to happen, by which time the children of today’s arrivals will have children of their own, for whom their parents’ lands will be foreign. For comparison, although second and third generation Palestinians still dream of an independent Palestinian state, theirs is a contiguous land which occupation has frozen in time, while Africa and the Middle East will be very different places were the damage of colonialism and war to be repaired.

So why even mention Lindner’s proposal? Precisely because it lays responsibility for the outsized wave of Muslim immigration squarely on the Christian world that is rejecting it. Following the destruction of World War II, Western Europe gratefully accepted American assistance. Although presented as altruistic, it came with obligations that prevented the old world from having an independent foreign policy. Although France and England succeeded in building nuclear deterrents, as part of NATO, they were expected to sign on to US-led wars, never imagining that these would boomerang. While America remained safely isolated from the Eurasian and African continents by two oceans, the victims of its wars and economic rape headed for Europe as the nearest haven.

Contrary to their expectations, Europe let them down. The so-called ‘union’ left Greece to shoulder most of the burden from the Middle East for a year, until it managed to persuade Turkey to take back some refugees in return for hefty financing for holding camps and promises that its application to join would be given new life. 

(For thirty years, as hundreds of thousands of Turkish and North African workers kept German and French industry humming, Muslim Turkey had been trying to become part of Europe. Now it was being asked to take in thousands of foreigners so that Europe could remain “a Christian continent”, while not even granting Turks visa free travel! In 2016, an aborted coup resulted in Turkish President Erdogan cracking down on dissidents, the press and the judiciary, even getting a majority to approve changes to the constitution that increased his powers, putting EU ascension even farther off, and thus making Turkey’s cooperation on refugees more problematic.)

As for Italy, as the closest European country to Libyan ports of departure, it was easily overwhelmed, while France and Spain kept their ports closed to traffickers. (Germany, though having no Mediterranean port, pushed for concerted sea patrols.) Some refugees headed for Rome, where they set up pup tents on a major square near the Central Station, while others were seen climbing over the boulders protecting summer homes from the sea between Ventimiglia and Menton. They got to Calais, six hundred miles away, where they set up a camp that soon came to be known as ‘the jungle’.

From there they tried nightly to cross to England, either on lorries or trains under the Channel Tunnel, more inclined to learn English than French and believing a conservative monarchy would better protect them than France’s socialist government. Soon they were joined by adolescents, and even unaccompanied children. After several years of trash accumulating and locals protesting, the government forced them out,  most scattering before they could be relocated. 

Meanwhile, and unexpectedly, the quotas mandated for each country by Brussels were indignantly rejected by the recently joined nations of Eastern Europe, mainly Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia. Having lived for two generations behind the Wall separating them from Western Europe, they saw no contradiction in putting up walls of their own, using police dogs to convince the refugees that they would never be tolerated.

German voters angry over Angela Merkel’s open door policy, are unlikely to vote for either the socialists or the Greens. However the proposal by the Free Democrats — normally a possible coalition partner — to allow refugees to remain in Germany until the Middle East and Africa are ‘repaired’, will likely help the far-right anti-immigrant party, Alternative for Germany, to pull ahead. 

Most Germans recognize that Merkel is the strongest candidate when it comes to relations with both the US and Russia. But while Lindner’s proposal sounds reasonable, they know deep down that the problem of Muslim immigrants can only grow. (See this and this.)

Deena Stryker is a dual American and French journalist who has lived and worked in half a dozen European countries on both sides of the East-West divide.  She currently contributes to New Eastern Outlook, having been a contributing editor at thegreanvillepost and opednews. Her blog, otherjones.com, foresaw Obama’s win in February, 2007, and has published over a thousand articles since.  She is the author of Cuba: A Diary of the Revolution, Conversations with Fidel, Raul, Che and Celia Sanchez, published by Tayen Lane in 2016 with photos from her Cuba archive at Duke University.  She has written several other books, including Une autre Europe, un autre Monde published with a grant from the Centre National du Livre and which foresaw the reunification of Europe.  She recently travelled to Russia to document American and other expats who have chosen to live there. ‘Russia’s Americans’ is a 60,000 illustrated project nearing completion.

Featured image is from TruePublica.

Sixteen years after a series of coordinated terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda (as the story goes) shook the United States and the world, the number of questions-raised-left-unanswered has perhaps never been any higher. Through their constant probing, investigating and challenging of the official story, world-class journalists, architects, engineers and families of the victims of 9/11 in particular have, however, to their credit, managed to unearth and pool together enough evidence over the years, to make a compelling case to suggest that the “official” narrative of 9/11 is only a “story” and not an accurate narration of what had actually happened.

Having fought tooth and nail, survivors and family members of victims of 9/11 finally forced the US government to release a classified 28-page section of the 9/11 Commission Report only last year and got through a civil suit against Saudi Arabia for its alleged involvement in the events of that day despite the US government’s desperate attempts to thwart it. Meanwhile, the detailed works of Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh and award winning author Professor David Ray Griffin, among others, have raised many other questions particularly in regards to the background of the alleged attackers which the official story completely fails to address.

This, of course, leaves unanswered the most obvious question: “What did really happen on September 11, 2001?” Well, one answer is: “not what the public has been told to accept.” Another (or rather an extension of the previous) answer, would be, that it gave the US government the “catastrophic and catalysing event like a new Pearl Harbour,” which the Project for the New American Century (co-written by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and seven others who went on to serve for the Bush administration) said was needed in a 90-page report titled Rebuilding America’s Defences: Strategies, Forces, and Resources For a New Century, nine months prior to the events of 9/11, to bring about “revolutionary changes” in the Middle East and “secure energy supplies” for the US.

While commemorating the 60th Anniversary of the Japanese attack against Pearl Harbour on December 7, 2001, the then US President George W Bush had even said that 9/11 was, for the US, “a second Pearl Harbour.” Interestingly, since the attack on Pearl Harbour, many declassified US government documents including one from the Office of Naval Intelligence quoted by the likes of The Independent (UK), The Telegraph (UK), The Guardian, among others, have led many to theorise that it had let Japan attack Pearl Harbour, knowing that that would shift public opinion (set against war at the time) in favour of the US entering the Second World War.

Similarly, top US officials also said after 9/11 that regardless of all else, given the sophistication of America’s aerospace defence system, it is impossible that the attacks could have caught the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) and by extension, the US top brass, by surprise. While the PNAC document mentioned earlier had, oddly enough, mentioned among its “four core missions for US military forces”, the need to fight and win “multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars [emphasise mine]”, which itself raises a few eyebrows.

But the water gets murkier when one takes into consideration the testimony of General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO, who said in an interview with Amy Goodman back in 2007 that shortly after the 9/11 attacks, he had received a memo from the then US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld. This memo, according to him, described “how the US government was going to take down seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and finishing off Iran.” And what has been done to all of those countries since 9/11 despite none of them having had any hand in the events of that day? Either exactly what General Clark said would happen, or attempts to bring about those ends.

But even if all of these are merely circumstantial, that the facts presented in the “official story” actually contradict the basic laws of physics and other related sciences still cannot be dismissed and has largely been ignored by the propagators of the establishment’s line. Before going into details, let us recall, however, that the Twin Towers and the Solomon Building (World Trade Centre Building 7) that came down on 9/11 are the only skyscrapers in history anywhere in the world to have ever fallen down from a fire, let alone vertically on their own footprints, which alone is impossible, according to thousands of engineers and experts from other fields.

But let’s take even that out of the equation; where the story must collapse scientifically is when one asks: “How did the steel beams melt in a matter of minutes, allowing for the three buildings to vertically collapse the way that they did?” This is because, according to the official story, the buildings collapsed as they did, after jet fuel had melted the steel beams holding them up. But thousands of experts have contested this by pointing out the irrefutable fact that jet fuel—an ordinary hydrocarbon—has a maximum burning temperature of 1200°F, while steel doesn’t start melting until it reaches a temperature of 2750°F. Then how could jet fuel have melted the steel beams leading to their collapse? Common sense says it couldn’t; and that it never did.

Then there are the other scientific anomalies which the official story cannot or doesn’t even attempt to explain, such as the presence of nano-thermites in dust samples, etc. and why the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) final report on the collapse of World Trade Centre Building 7, issued on November 2008, was examined to have had many flaws by numerous other experts including the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth (a non-profit organisation representing more than 2,500 architects and engineers), which even said that the report included “blatant frauds”. In fairness to the NIST, however, back in 2002, it did say that given that there were “no other known cases of total structural collapses in high-rise buildings caused by fires, it is deeply unusual that it should have happened three times in the space of one day”. Concluding, that the case was “exceptionally bizarre”.

What changed then for the NIST during the six years in between? If we don’t ask, I guess, we may never know. And it is precisely because of the mounting scientific evidence which shows the official story to be a complete fantasy that it must continue to be questioned, if for no other reason.

And some of the most compelling (if there was ever any need for more) such evidences were provided as recently as 2016 in the reputed European physics magazine, Europhysics News, by Steven Jones, former professor of physics at Brigham Young University, Robert Korol, professor emeritus of civil engineering at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, Anthony Szamboti, a mechanical design engineer with over 25 years of structural design experience in the aerospace and communications industries, and Ted Walter, the director of strategy and development for Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Their comprehensive study “directly challenges the establishment narrative and lends to a growing body of evidence that seriously questions the accuracy” of the facts incorporated in the official story of the events of 9/11.

The most damning of them all, experts claimed, after a thorough forensic analysis of video footage of the building’s collapse, was that “it revealed signs of a controlled implosion”. A common theory that had been lurking in the fringes of the official narrative for years.

What is most shocking, however, is that all of the evidence mentioned so far actually pales in comparison to the total number of abnormalities that have credibly been identified in the official 9/11 story. The 9/11 Consensus Panel (a peer reviewed research source) alone, for example, has now in total reviewed 50 official claims and has found each to be “a substantially flawed account”.

However, even in the face of such overwhelming evidence, the propagators of the establishment line, unfortunately, have refused to budge from their position (looking flimsier by the day) even after all these years. And the fact that the truth has been kept hidden for so long is a testament to the lengths those who want to keep it hidden are willing to go, including sticking to the increasingly unbelievable official story that the US government and, shockingly, the entire corporate media have been attempting to sell to the public since day one.

But it is perhaps because the official story is so unbelievable given the hard facts that the public has, at large, refused to buy it. According to a joint New York Times and CBS poll back in 2011, for example, 84 percent of Americans at the time did not believe the official 9/11 story.

And it is perhaps because of their scepticism that there still remains hope that the truth will one day come out. But until it does, all the victims of 9/11 and their families, and all the victims whose death was justified using the excuse of 9/11 and their families, will have to wait their turns for justice.

It is a justice that is long overdue. Nevertheless, one which we must continue to fight for, in honour of the now millions of victims of 9/11.

Eresh Omar Jamal is an Editorial Assistant at The Daily Star, Bangladesh, the  largest circulating English daily newspaper in Bangladesh. He has a  Specialised Honours in Financial and Business Economics from York  University, Canada, and can be reached at [email protected].

This article was originally published by The Daily Star.

Os holofotes político-midiáticos, focalizados nos testes nucleares e de mísseis norte-coreanos, deixam na sombra o quadro geral em que estes se inserem: o de uma crescente corrida aos armamentos que, enquanto mantém um arsenal nuclear em condições de fazer desaparecer a espécie humana da face da terra, torna suas ogivas e vetores high tech cada vez mais sofisticados.

A Federação dos Cientistas Americanos (FAS) estima em 2017 que a Coreia do Norte tinha “matérias físseis para produzir potencialmente 10 a 20 ogivas nucleares, mas não há provas disponíveis de que se tenham tornado operacionais ogivas nucleares transportáveis por mísseis balísticos”.

Sempre segundo a FAS, os EUA possuem 6.800 ogivas nucleares, das quais 1.650 estratégicas e 150 não-estratégicas prontas para lançamento a qualquer momento. Incluindo as francesas e britânicas (respectivamente 300 e 215), as forças nucleares da Otan dispõem de 7.315 ogivas nucleares, das quais 2.200 prontas para lançamento, contra as 7.000 russas, das quais 1.950 prontas para lançamento. Ainda segundo as estimativas da FAS, cerca de 550 ogivas nucleares estadunidenses, francesas e britânicas, prontas para lançamento, foram deslocadas para a Europa nas proximidades do território russo. É como se a Rússia tivesse instalado no México centenas de ogivas nucleares apontadas para os Estados Unidos.

Acrescentando as chinesas (270), paquistanesas (120 a 130), indianas (110 a 120) e israelenses (80), o número total das ogivas nucleares é estimado em cerca de 15.000. São estimativas aproximadas. E a corrida aos armamentos nucleares prossegue com a contínua modernização das ogivas e dos vetores nucleares.

À frente de todos se encontram os Estados Unidos, que efetuam contínuos testes de mísseis balísticos intercontinentais Minuteman III e se preparam para substituir com novos míseis (custo estimado de 85 bilhões de dólares). O Congresso aprovou em 2015 um plano (custo estimado de cerca de um trilhão) para potenciar a força nuclear com mais 12 submarinos de ataque (7 bilhões cada um), armado cada um de 200 ogivas nucleares, e mais bombardeiros estratégicos (550 milhões cada um), armados de 20 ogivas nucleares cada. No mesmo quadro se insere a substituição da bomba nuclear USA B61, deslocada para a Itália e outros países europeus, pelas novas B61-12, armas do pimeiro ataque.

O potenciamento das forças nucleares compreende também o “escudo anti-mísseis” para neutralizar a represália inimiga, como o instalado pelos EUA na Europa contra a Rússia e na Coreia do Sul, não contra a Coreia do Norte, mas na realidade contra a China.

Rússia e China estão acelerando a modernização das suas forças nucleares, para não ficarem para trás. Em 2018 a Rússia instalará um novo míssil balístico intercontinental, o Sarmat, com raio de até 18.000 quilômetros, capaz de transportar de 10 a 15 ogivas nucleares que, reentrando na atmosfera com velocidade hipersônica (mais de 10 vezes a do som), manobram para escapar aos mísseis interceptores furando o “escudo”.

Em tal situação, em que um círculo estreito de Estados mantém oligopólio das armas nucleares, em que quem as possui ameaça os que não as possuem, é sempre mais provável que outros tentem procurar e encontrem. Além dos nove países que já possuem armas nucleares, já são cerca de 35 os que têm condições de construí-las.

Tudo isto é ignorado pelos jornais e telejornais, enquanto fazem alarme sobre a Coreia do Norte, denunciada como única fonte de ameaça nuclear. Ignora-se também a lição que em Pyongyang dizem ter aprendido: Kadafi – recordam – tinha renunciado totalmente a todo programa nuclear, permitindo inspeções da CIA no território líbio. Isto, porém, não o salvou quando os EUA e a Otan decidiram destruir o Estado líbio. Se este tivesse possuído armas nucleares, pensam em Pyongyang, ninguém teria tido a coragem de atacá-lo. Tais raciocínios podem ser feitos também por outros: na atual situação mundial é melhor ter do que não ter armas nucleares.

Enquanto com base nesta perigosa lógica aumenta a probabilidade de proliferação nuclear, o Tratado sobre a proibição das armas nucleares, adotado por grande maioria das Nações Unidas em julho último, é ignorado por todas as potências nucleares, pelos membros da Otan (inclusive a Itália) e por seus principais parceiros (Ucrânia, Japão e Austrália).

É fundamental uma ampla mobilização para impor que também o nosso país adira ao Tratado sobre a proibição das armas nucleares e portanto remova de seu território a bomba nuclear dos EUA, cuja presença viola o Tratado de não-proliferação já ratificado pela Itália. Se falta a consciência política, deveria ao menos haver instinto de sobrevivência.

Manlio Dinucci

Artigo original en italiano :

La Corea del Nord nel grande gioco nucleare

Publicado em italiano por ilmanifesto.it.

Traduzido por José Reinaldo Carvalho para Resistência.

Manlio Dinucci é geógrafo e jornalista.

So you dream of leaving your class-infected, corrupt, and poor homeland oligarchy for America’s legendary freedoms? All the glamour and freedoms generated by Hollywood is irresistible, I know. Today however, in the wake of a new US administration, the ugliness which our tranquil college campuses, Hollywood creations, and Silicon Valley innovations had obscured, is exposed for all to witness. If you want an American reality check, follow attorney John Whitehead.

I really don’t like being a downer; better to avoid reality and watch gritty college football, American Idol, Mad Men, or Ellen DeGeneres. Or take up meditation or organic food. For sure.

Somewhere at the back of my consciousness I had been aware that the USA is a police state. I didn’t let it bother me though; it didn’t seem to interfere with my life agenda.

Perhaps I’m like millions of other immigrants who slide into an economy needing my talents and naivety, along with a fine education acquired elsewhere. No one needed to instruct me about surviving; it was evident: keep your head down (and uncovered), your mouth shut (about abuses you witness), work your butt off, and you may slip below the radar and pass as white. (I didn’t give the price of white privilege much thought, namely my ethnic pride and the challenge all the family faces holding to slivers of our heritage.) Notwithstanding my doctorate from U. London, my quoted academic papers and invitations to international conferences, I remained oblivious to inequities in US society. The police state seemed to operate only in sleazy corners of the underworld.

My career shift to journalism focusing on the Arab lands and my fellow Arab and Muslim peoples changed all that. Witnessing first hand the deceit and murderousness US embargo on Iraq championed by America’s free media, I matured.

I recall a NY gathering in the mid-90s, when those of us challenging US policies complained about newly threatened civil liberties. In response to our alarm, an African American colleague remarked:

“Ah, now you feel it. We have been living with this police terror for more than 400 years, since our arrival as slaves here. Now it’s reaching you (non-Blacks); now you too taste it.”

He had no sympathy for our anxiety.

Reality sunk in when individuals distanced themselves from me; next, I knew I was being watched; then opponents of my journalistic reports shunned me. (Forget about the professors I’d worked with; they’d slithered away long before).

Following the 9/11 attacks, the US police state ballooned and restraints lifted on how police/FBI and the courts treated ‘suspects’. In this phase the targets were Muslim residents, and Muslim visitors. From the start of this period to the present white citizens largely ignored the interrogations, jailings and deportations of Muslim residents. Even civil rights attorneys were scared to defend Muslim suspects. (There is no record of the fate of thousands of affected families; only in recent years, commendable investigative work has revealed that many terror suspects were in fact victims of government ‘sting’ operations.)

Today, under the Trump administration, the sweep has broadened; police are more aggressively targeting undocumented workers, bold white journalists, and non-violent demonstrators. Their invasion is more penetrating thanks to enhanced (digitized) state surveillance tools. I shudder when I read attorney Whitehead’s Sept 7^th “What Country Is This?” and share a few passages for you to ponder.

Whitehead writes: “Our freedoms—especially the Fourth Amendment—are being choked out by a prevailing view among government bureaucrats that they have the right to search, seize, strip, scan, shoot, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation.

“Forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, forced inclusion in biometric databases: just a few ways in which Americans are being forced to accept that we have no control over our bodies, our lives and our property, especially when it comes to interactions with the government.

“Worse, on a daily basis, Americans are being made to relinquish the most intimate details of who we are—our biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to clear the nearly insurmountable hurdle that increasingly defines life in the United States: we are now guilty until proven innocent.

“Such is life in America today that individuals are being threatened with arrest and carted off to jail for the least hint of noncompliance, homes are being raided by police under the slightest pretext, property is being seized on the slightest hint of suspicious activity, and roadside police stops have devolved into government-sanctioned exercises in humiliation and degradation with a complete disregard for privacy and human dignity.

“Consider, for example, what happened to Utah nurse Alex Wubbels after a police detective demanded to take blood from a badly injured, unconscious patient without a warrant. Wubbels refused, citing hospital policy that requires police to either have a warrant or permission from the patient in order to draw blood. The detective had neither. Irate, the detective threatened to have Wubbels arrested if she didn’t comply. Wubbels respectfully stood her ground only to be …while hospital police looked on.

“Michael Chorosky didn’t have an advocate like Wubbels … Chorosky was surrounded by police, strapped to a gurney and then had his blood forcibly drawn after refusing to submit to a breathalyzer test. “What country is this? What country is this?” cried Chorosky during the forced blood draw.

What country is this indeed?… forced blood draws are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the indignities and abuses being heaped on Americans in the so-called name of “national security.”

“Forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies and forced roadside strip searches are also becoming par for the course in an age in which police are taught to have no respect for the citizenry’s bodily integrity whether or not a person has done anything wrong.

“…21-year-old Charnesia Corley was allegedly pulled over by Texas police in 2015 for “rolling” through a stop sign. Claiming they smelled marijuana, police handcuffed Corley, placed her in… the police cruiser, then searched her car…. No drugs were found.

“The Houston Chronicle reported: Returning to his car where Corley was held, the deputy said he smelled marijuana and called in a female deputy to conduct a cavity search. …the female deputy…told Corley to pull her pants down, but Corley protested because she was cuffed and had no underwear on. The deputy ordered Corley to bend over, pulled down her pants and began to search her. …Corley stood up and protested…the deputy threw her to the ground and restrained her while another female was called to assist. When backup arrived, each deputy held one of Corley’s legs apart to conduct the probe. The cavity search lasted 11 minutes. This practice is referred to as “rape by cop.”

“Although Corley was charged with resisting arrest and with possession of 0.2 grams of marijuana, those charges were subsequently dropped.

“David Eckert was forced to undergo an anal cavity search, three enemas, and a colonoscopy after allegedly failing to yield to a stop sign at a Wal-Mart parking lot. Cops…suspected Eckert was carrying drugs because his “posture [was] erect” and “he kept his legs together.” No drugs were found.

“During a routine traffic stop, Leila Tarantino was subjected to two roadside strip searches in plain view of passing traffic, while her two small children waited inside her car. During the second strip search, presumably in an effort to ferret out drugs, a female officer “forcibly removed” a tampon from Tarantino. No contraband or anything illegal was found.

“Thirty-eight-year-old Angel Dobbs and her 24-year-old niece, Ashley, were pulled over by a Texas state trooper on July 13, 2012, allegedly for flicking cigarette butts out of the car window. Insisting that he smelled marijuana, the trooper proceeded to interrogate… “Despite the fact that both women denied smoking or possessing any marijuana, the police officer then called in a female trooper, who carried out a roadside cavity search, sticking her fingers into the older woman’s anus and vagina, then.. on the younger woman… No marijuana was found.

These few examples from Whitehead’s review reflect common US police behavior. More frightening when we consider that this is the nation (like Israel) where many governments worldwide send their police for training.

Featured image: Hurricane season in Havana in March 2007. (Source: mmj71 / Flickr)

Along with the horrifying images of floating corpses, devastating flooding, and people trapped on makeshift islands, another indelible image has emerged from the Hurricane Harvey catastrophe. In the midst of disaster, locals began sharing pictures of hundreds of fire ants forming chain-linked rafts to float on water and protect their queen, eggs, and young.

This striking display of insect solidarity in the face of calamity seemed to contrast with the human response to Harvey, which, however valiant, appeared to remind us of the apparent futility of human resistance in the face of acts of God.

But what if I told you there was a country that has survived its last seventeen hurricanes with only thirty-five deaths? What if that country demonstrated exactly the kind of society-wide solidarity we envy the fire ants for? And what if that country had a GDP that was a fraction of the United States’?

There is such a country: Cuba.

While 2016’s Hurricane Matthew killed forty-four people in the United States, it killed no one in Cuba, despite leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. Ditto for Hurricane Katrina, which left as many as 1,800 people dead in the US. In 2008, Hurricanes Gustav and Ike pummeled Cuba at the peak of their intensity, slaying seven. But in the US, thirty people perished, even though the storm had lost much of its strength. Hurricane Isabel killed more Americans in 2003 than six major hurricanes killed Cubans between 1996 and 2002.

The same pattern holds true for every hurricane that’s struck the two countries. It’s no wonder then that organizations like the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the United Nations have repeatedly cited Cuba as a global model for risk reduction.

So how does Cuba do it? There’s no great secret. After several particularly deadly twentieth-century hurricanes, the country simply put in place a comprehensive, all-hands-on-deck national program of disaster preparation, evacuation, relief, and recovery that involves virtually every citizen, from the national to the local levels.

Rather than a side issue, forgotten until the next time disaster strikes, hurricane preparation and recovery in Cuba are treated as the life-and-death matters that they are. And while some might argue that the Cuban model is only possible because it’s a one-party state, there’s little about its hurricane program that rests on authoritarianism.

Here are four key facets of the Cuban program that set it apart.

1. Cuba is always preparing for the next hurricane.

Cuba quite rightly assumes that another major hurricane is always right around the corner. It therefore has a variety of government entities devoted to predicting and bracing for the next hurricane. Its sixty-eight weather stations track storms, while the National Civil Defense has an early warning system, emergency stockpiles, and rescue teams.

This by itself does not set Cuba far apart from countries like the United States. But as a 2009 delegation to Cuba from Galveston, Texas found, “preparation in Cuba is a year-round event.” All adults are mandated by law to go through a civilian defense training program that teaches them how to help during an evacuation. Every year since 1986, each and every citizen, regardless of age, has taken part in a two-day hurricane drill known as the Ejercicio Meteoro, in which they simulate an evacuation. Schools have incorporated preparedness into the curriculum at all ages.

In addition, emergency plans at the national, provincial, municipal, and local levels are devised and updated annually. As part of this plan, every Cuban is designated a location for refuge well in advance of any storm.

Weather information, meanwhile, is broadcast continuously on state-run media, every six hours, increasing in frequency to every three hours if storms are on their way, while alerts are sounded seventy-two hours before a hurricane hits. In other words, the state of the weather is never far from Cubans’ minds.

2. Everyone is mobilized.

A major reason for the Cuban model’s success, particularly in a country with comparatively few resources, is its philosophy of total mobilization. The hurricane response may be directed from the top down, but it’s carried out by ordinary Cubans in their local communities, building on the regular training they receive.

As Oxfam America found in a 2004 study,

“the single most important thing about disaster response in Cuba is that people cooperate en masse.”

Provincial and municipal leaders are made Civil Defense leaders and put in charge of their particular areas, combining a centralized decision-making process with a decentralized implementation. They call meetings, review emergency plans, assign transportation and equipment, delegate tasks and duties, and more.

In Cuba, everyone has a role. Doctors, school directors, members of mass organizations, and others review emergency plans and check evacuation procedures and supplies. “Everyone, even the children, knew what to do,” observed one foreign aid worker in 1996, noting how everyone in an apartment building would get to work taping up windows, stockpiling rations, cooking food, and advising neighbors on how to safeguard their property. It’s part of what the UN-Habitat has called a culture of safety.

Community members work to move animals to higher ground, rescue those who are stranded, and hurricane-proof homes. If a family home is deemed safe and not at risk for flooding, they take in neighbors. Otherwise, citizens are assigned to a neighbor or family member’s house, or, failing that, to a government-run group shelter (which can be anything from a school to a church).

To get people there, local communities draw on whatever transportation they have on hand, from cars and trucks to boats and horse carts. Citizens are even allowed to bring pets, with veterinarians stationed at evacuation centers ready to tend to them. Municipal bakeries pitch in by providing the shelters with food.

This continues into the recovery phase. Local communities form teams to assess the damage and start cleaning. Citizens work together to clean up and rebuild, collecting clothing and materials for the community. Some continue to live with friends and family, or in shelters, until it’s safe to go back.

Such solidarity is not somehow unique to Cuba. As scenes out of Texas and other disaster-stricken states over the years have shown, ordinary Americans are more than ready to sacrifice to help their neighbors. But such energies are often expended after the fact, when it’s too late, not in advance, as in Cuba.

3. Vulnerable communities are taken care of.

The damage wrought by natural disasters is always lopsided. In the United States, wealth inequality makes this stratification especially acute, but a whole host of other factors — from geography to personal health — also contributes to disparities.

Cuba goes out of its way to identify which of its citizens, areas, and properties are most vulnerable to disaster, at both the macro and micro levels. Municipalities compile detailed biographical information on all citizens annually, from their age to any special services they might require.

Meanwhile, community members such as doctors or representatives of mass organizations assess their own neighborhoods. One explained to Oxfam that she knew the people who lived in the neighborhood and their particular needs, from an elderly woman in a wheelchair to a pregnant woman in need of assistance.

As a hurricane approaches, these local representatives make sure vulnerable people are okay, while community doctors check on patients to see if they need to go to hospital as a precaution.

4. The protection of personal property is guaranteed, among a host of other unique measures.

One of the most unique elements of the Cuban model is the government’s effort to protect ordinary Cubans’ personal property. This is important for financial and sentimental reasons, but also to convince people to follow evacuation orders.

Government officials, police, and the military are sent in to move furniture and other belongings to higher ground or somewhere else safe. Some provinces let residents put their valuables in boxes, and send them away to be stored elsewhere. To give citizens added peace of mind, the government guarantees the replacement of all destroyed property, despite the country’s meager resources.

This is just one of a number of distinct measures the Cuban government takes during a hurricane. Print and broadcast media give detailed instructions for how to secure homes and where to go. Electricity and cooking gas mains are shut down when the wind reaches a certain speed, preventing deaths from electrocution or gas explosions. Harvesting is accelerated in advance of an event, while trees near phone and electrical wires are cleared.

And instead of closing hospitals and other vital services, as is often done in the US, Cuba keeps them open and secures them, to provide medical care and more to its beleaguered people. Such medical help for victims continues long after the disaster is over, a reflection of the government’s insistence that health care is a human right.

We Can Do Better

All of this stands in stark contrast to the United States.

The US’s disaster response is planned and carried out with little to no citizen engagement. Municipalities don’t have to respond to a centralized body concerning evacuation procedures, but instead make their own decisions, which they can’t enforce. There’s no mandatory emergency drill or cooperation that citizens must take part in. Vulnerable communities are not mapped out, and the military’s resources are directed toward fighting far-off wars instead of helping communities back home.

True, the United States doesn’t have a state-run media that can broadcast information in an emergency. Yet privately run media is known to collaborate with the US government to transmit information in times of emergency, as well as cut into regular programming to deliver urgent messages from the president. It’s difficult to believe they would refuse to assist the government when natural disaster strikes.

Some might also point out that the United States can’t force people to evacuate, a major cause of death as residents ignore evacuation warnings. But as the Galveston delegation determined, “an informed populace, more keenly involved and aware of the risk a natural disaster poses, will be more likely to evacuate voluntarily.” In other words, making ordinary people part of the response effort, delegating responsibilities to them and educating them about the dangers of natural disasters, means they’re more likely to take such threats seriously — as is guaranteeing the safety of their personal property.

The Cuban model is not some kind of outlier that is the outgrowth of its authoritarian political system. It’s a product of political will. The government decided they would prioritize the lives of the Cuban people, including the most vulnerable, and built a hurricane response program around that.

Imagine what the United States, a nation with more one hundred times Cuba’s wealth and resources, could do if its politicians made the same decision.

Branko Marcetic is an editorial assistant at Jacobin. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

The US government and Hollywood have always been close. Washington DC has long been a source of intriguing plots for filmmakers and LA has been a generous provider of glamour and glitz to the political class.

But just how dependent are these two centres of American influence? Scrutiny of previously hidden documents reveals that the answer is: very.

We can now show that the relationship between US national security and Hollywood is much deeper and more political than anyone has ever acknowledged.

It is a matter of public record that the Pentagon has had an Entertainment Liaison Office since 1948. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) established a similar position in 1996. Although it was known that they sometimes request script changes in exchange for advice, permission to use locations, and equipment like aircraft carriers, each appeared to have passive, and largely apolitical roles.

Files we obtained, mainly through the US Freedom of Information Act, show that between 1911 and 2017, more than 800 feature films received support from the US government’s Department of Defence (DoD), a significantly higher figure than previous estimates indicate. These included blockbuster franchises like Transformers, Iron Man, and The Terminator.

On television, we found over 1,100 titles received Pentagon backing – 900 of them since 2005, from Flight 93 to Ice Road Truckers to Army Wives.

When we include individual episodes for long running shows like 24, Homeland, and NCIS, as well as the influence of other major organisations like the FBI and White House, we can establish unequivocally for the first time that the national security state has supported thousands of hours of entertainment.

For its part, the CIA has assisted in 60 film and television shows since its formation in 1947. This is a much lower figure than the DoD’s but its role has nonetheless been significant.

The CIA put considerable effort into dissuading representations of its very existence throughout the 1940s and 1950s. This meant it was entirely absent from cinematic and televisual culture until a fleeting image of a partially obscured plaque in Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest in 1959, as historian Simon Willmetts revealed last year.

The CIA soon endured an erosion of public support, while Hollywood cast the agency as villain in paranoid pictures like Three Days of the Condor and The Parallax View in the 1970s and into the 1980s.

When the CIA established an entertainment liaison office in 1996, it made up for lost time, most emphatically on the Al Pacino film The Recruit and the Osama bin Laden assassination movie Zero Dark Thirty. Leaked private memos published by our colleague Tricia Jenkins in 2016, and other memos published in 2013 by the mainstream media, indicate that each of these productions were heavily influenced by government officials. Both heightened or inflated real-world threats and dampened down government malfeasance.

One of the most surprising alterations, though, we found in an unpublished interview regarding the comedy Meet the Parents. The CIA admitted that it had asked Robert De Niro’s character not possess an intimidating array of agency torture manuals.

Nor should we see the clandestine services as simply passive, naive or ineffectual during the counterculture years or its aftermath. They were still able to derail a Marlon Brando picture about the Iran-Contra scandal (in which the US illegally sold arms to Iran) by establishing a front company run by Colonel Oliver North to outbid Brando for the rights, journalist Nicholas Shou recently claimed.

The (CIA) director’s cut

The national security state has a profound, sometimes petty, impact on what Hollywood conveys politically. On Hulk, the DoD requested “pretty radical” script alterations, according to its script notes we obtained through Freedom of Information. These included disassociating the military from the gruesome laboratories that created “a monster” and changing the codename of the operation to capture the Hulk from “Ranch Hand” to “Angry Man”. Ranch Hand had been the name of a real chemical warfare programme during the Vietnam war.

In making the alien movie Contact, the Pentagon “negotiated civilianisation of almost all military parts”, according to the database we acquired. It removed a scene in the original script where the military worries that an alien civilisation will destroy Earth with a “doomsday machine”, a view dismissed by Jodie Foster’s character as “paranoia right out of the Cold War”.

The role of the national security state in shaping screen entertainment has been underestimated and its examination long concentrated in remarkably few hands. The trickle of recent books have pushed back but only fractionally and tentatively. An earlier breakthrough occurred at the turn of the century when historians identified successful attempts in the 1950s by a senior individual at the Paramount film studio to promote narratives favourable to a CIA contact known only as “Owen”.

The new FOI documents give a much better sense of the sheer scale of state activities in the entertainment industry, which we present alongside dozens of fresh cases studies. But we still do not know the specific impact of the government on a substantial portion of films and shows. The American Navy’s Marine Corps alone admitted to us that there are 90 boxes of relevant material in its archive. The government has seemed especially careful to avoid writing down details of actual changes made to scripts in the 21st century.

State officials have described Washington DC and Hollywood as being “sprung from the same DNA” and the capital as being “Hollywood for ugly people”. That ugly DNA has embedded far and wide. It seems the two cities on opposite sides of the United States are closer than we ever thought.

Featured image is from Shutterstock.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

The Trump administration rejects dealing with North Korea diplomatically, the only way to resolve contentious issues.

Maintaining hostility toward the DPRK is longstanding US policy. Respecting its sovereign independence would defeat Washington’s regional imperial agenda – to keep northeast Asia heavily militarized, a phony North Korea threat used as justification.

Japan and South Korea are occupied by US forces – China America’s real target, the DPRK a convenient punching bag, used to justify unjustifiable policies.

Sanctioning the country harshly is counterproductive. Saber rattling, threats, intimidation and bullying force its leadership to prepare for possible US aggression – an unthinkable, yet possible option.

The neocon CIA-connected Washington Post urged the Trump administration to impose “crippling sanctions” on Pyongyang, pressuring South Korea and Japan to go along.

Multiple earlier rounds of sanctions encouraged further development of Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. So will new ones no matter how harsh.

Russia and China won’t permit America’s new draft resolution to pass in its current form, a Monday vote scheduled. Its harshness includes cutting off oil shipments to the DPRK, along with interdicting and inspecting its vessels in international waters, among other unacceptable measures.

Neocon House Foreign Relations Committee chairman Edward Royce called for “full throttle…pressure” on the DPRK, including by sanctioning Chinese financial institutions doing business with the country.

In 2016, China accounted for 92% of North Korea’s trade, according to Korea Trade Investment Promotion Agency data, including most of its oil imports.

Sanctioning China’s banking system is a lunatic idea. So is enforcing a US trade embargo on countries doing business with North Korea, an earlier Trump threat, harming America’s economy like targeted nations if imposed.

Section 301 of the unpatriotic Patriot Act empowers the US treasury secretary to designate foreign banks “institutions of primary money laundering concern,” cutting them off from the international financial system.

Preventing Chinese banks from doing business internationally in US dollars would be hugely disruptive economically, incentivizing Beijing to de-dollarize faster than what’s planned. It would cause a major rift in bilateral relations.

Global dollarization finances US militarism and naked aggression, takeovers by corporate America, reckless deficit spending, and speculative excesses creating economic crises at the expense of democratic freedoms, beneficial social change, as well as human and civil rights.

The only way to end destabilizing brinksmanship on the Korean peninsula is by engaging with its leadership diplomatically – a policy the Trump administration rejects.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

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

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

The myth can have a greater effect than an untruth, and those who are in the business of manufacturing and building them never go out of business. France’s President Emmanuel Macron has, for months, busily promoted a new myth: that of being European saviour, the man with healing visions and supportive panaceas, a counter weight to the toxicity of Trumpland.

Things, however, have been rocky. The sheen is coming off, as it was bound to. He is slumming at approval ratings similar to the man he replaced, François Hollande, at around the same time of his tenure. (That is hardly surprising, given that his victory over Marine Le Pen was very much a vote against her, rather than a full hearted endorsement for the youthful opportunist.) He is overseeing a salad-days assembly of freshly elected candidates that make the radical project for renewal less than smooth.

This has led to such cosmetic gestures as the speech on Pnyx Hill in Athens, delivered with the note of warning we have come to expect from the former banker. “In order not to be ruled by bigger powers such as the Chinese and the Americans, I believe in a European sovereignty that allows us to defend ourselves and exist.” So, from this ancient summit of previous assemblies conveyed in antiquity, Macron reflected and even directed.

Central to this is a collective, even civilizational one: Europe, together, wary and ready to combat any threatened sandwiching, or even absorption, by other powers.

“Are you afraid of this European ambition?” he asked rhetorically.

One way of doing so is to draw out the populist sentiment, the cynics, the sceptics, and anyone who feels that the European bloc has begun to drift into bureaucratic, self-imploding oblivion.

“I don’t want a new European treaty discussed behind closed doors, in the corridors of Brussels, Berlin or Paris.”

When a crisis develops and takes hold, the managers and public relations terms counter with a “road map”. This is Macron’s hope: to generate some form of plan that will convince European leaders to open the floodgates to public debate. Gather, insists Macron, the views of European citizens on the bloc.

The European vision Macron insists on pushing is a turbocharged version of centralisation, integration and consolidation, coated with a good amount of liberal market philosophy. It breathes and sings (in so far as visions can) to the same song sheet that populists have trashed and suspected. It panders to a market vision in a manner that edges out, rather than brings in, the social welfare softening that might dull revolution.

His proposed reforms also entail bowing, in some small measure, to the critics Europe’s mobility principle, which he feels has been unduly exploited. The European Commission’s “posted” workers directive, for instance, permitting companies to dispatch employees to other EU countries while still paying taxes and benefits in their own country, is being flagged for reform.[1] To totally remove it would be tantamount to violating a key feature of the EU bloc, so Macron and his tacticians prefer what might euphemistically be termed tightening.

The reason for this, claims Macron, is that cheap labour from member states located in the east – the old story of the European integration project – tends to flow to affluent western states. The result is, horror of horrors, unfair competition and spectre of unemployment in the west.

This issue became the basis of an indignant exchange between France and Poland in August, one that showed the European family is a far from happy one. Macron has taken it upon himself to strut the European theme bossily, lecturing eurosceptics and nationalists with enthusiasm. The Polish government that took office in 2015 was one such target last month. As he claimed in the company of his Bulgarian hosts,

“Poland is not defining Europe’s future today and nor will it define the Europe of tomorrow.”

As part of his central and eastern Europe visit, Macron deemed Europe “a region created on the basis of values, a relationship with democracy and public freedoms which Poland today is in conflict with.”[2] Conflict, in so far as Poland has shrugged off suggestions that it should accept migrants from the Middle East.

Poland’s Prime Minister, Beata Szydło, preferred to turn the tables on the French upstart on the topic of such values, suggesting in no small part that the French president, not Warsaw, was intent on disrupting European unity:

“I advise the president that he should be more conciliatory… Perhaps his arrogant comments are a result of a lack of (political) experience.”[3]

Closer to home, the troubles are not better for Macroland and its adherents. One political thorn, and getting thornier by the day for the Macron project, is that figure of the French left, Jean-Luc Mélechon. His La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) movement, it can scant be forgotten, received a respectable 20 percent of the vote.

For him, Macron is the target, to be repelled and contained by means of an insurrection. Some voters, if one is to take the polling of Paris Match and Sud Radio seriously, suggest that Mélechon is even more of a formidable obstacle than the Front National.[4] Should he going with any degree of impassioned enthusiasm, Macron may well find himself not only short changed but outdone.

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

Notes

Palestinians living near the village of Duma in the occupied West Bank district of Nablus have been told that the sole water pipeline servicing the area will be removed by Israeli occupation forces as it was deemed “illegal”.

Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian official who monitors Israeli settlement activity in the northern occupied West Bank, said that Israeli forces had informed the residents of their intention to remove and destroy the pipeline.

Daghlas said that the pipeline is the sole water source for the area. According to Wafa, 14 Palestinian families live in the area and depend on the pipeline.

A spokesperson for COGAT, the agency responsible for implementing Israeli policies in the occupied Palestinian territory, told Ma’an that the pipe was installed in the area as “part of an attempt to build an illegal residential complex at an archaeological site where construction is prohibited.”

However, rights groups have long reported that Israel’s control of water resources in the occupied West Bank has led to water shortages in Palestinian communities which force Palestinians to buy water directly from Israel. Palestinians are prevented from digging their own wells or other projects to enhance water access.

Featured image is from al-Haq.

Featured image: Karen Koning Abuzayd on the left and Sergio Paulo Pinheiro on the right. (Source: UN Geneva/ flickr)

In mid 2012, as foreign jihadists poured into Syria, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon authorised replacement of the Special Mission on Syria (UNSMIS) with a Geneva-based ‘Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria’ (IICOIOS), co-chaired by US diplomat Karen Koning AbuZayd and Brazilian Paolo Pinheiro.

Unlike UNSMIS, led by Norwegian General Robert Mood and based in Syria, the IICOIOS was based in Geneva, never visited Syria and was deeply compromised by its link to US diplomacy and its reliance on jihadist sources. The US Government, by then, was arming anti-government jihadist groups in Syria. Ban had thus embedded a deep conflict of interest in a nominally ‘independent’ UN agency.

The Abuzayd-Pinheiro group, joined by Italian lawyer Carla del Ponte, issued a series of distant reports which echoed western war propaganda against Syria. Notable amongst these were reports on the 2012 Houla massacre, a report on the 2016 liberation of Aleppo, and a recent report which seeks to blame a series of chemical weapons attacks in 2017 on the Syrian Government. Carla del Ponte, in a better moment, revealed in mid 2013 that the first use of sarin gas in Syria was by Jabhat al Nusra. But none of this appeared in the group’s reports.

In a pretence at even handedness, the group has made criticism of the terrorist groups and the US-led bombardment of Syrian cities. However when it comes to accusations against the Syrian Government it pays literally no attention to genuinely independent evidence, such as that from Syrian civilians who have blamed jihadists for ‘false flag’ massacres, and reports from the US military forensic expert Professor Ted Postol.

The result is what we might expect of a US-embedded organ: a partisan adjunct to official war propaganda, vilifying the Syrian Government and the soldiers of the Syrian Arab Army, as they struggle to defend their country. The UN group’s systematically distorted misinformation, during a war, most likely constitutes a war crime, as propaganda for war is prohibited. Let’s look at three key reports.

The Abuzayd-Pinheiro’s first report, on the May 2012 Houla massacre, set a standard for low grade but well timed war propaganda. As I document in chapter eight of my book The Dirty War on Syria (Anderson 2016), 15 independent witnesses gave great detail about the massacre of over 100 villagers in rural Homs by members of the Farouq Brigade (FSA) and several named local collaborators. The jihadists, expelled from Homs city by the Syrian Army, took revenge on families in Houla who had participated in recent elections, violating the jihadists’ call for a boycott.

UNSMIS head General Robert Mood had recognised conflicting reports coming from Houla, which was then under Farouq-FSA control. However UNSMIS was rapidly disbanded and the Abuzayd-Pinheiro group issued a report which unambiguously blamed pro-army civilian militia (‘shabiha’). Based on a few long-distance interviews, arranged by the Farouq brigade, they IICOIOS tried to blame the atrocity on the Syrian Government. However, unlike the local eyewitnesses (reported by Syrian, European and Russian media), they could provide no names, little detail and no motive (HRC 2012: 20).

Their report came before a UN Security Council meeting in which the US sought authorisation for Libyan-style attacks on Syria in the name of ‘civilian protection’ (a ‘no fly zone’). The manoeuvre failed and the report was strongly criticised at the UNSC, with Russia, China and India refusing to accept it as a basis for action. However it was used as a pretext for many other countries to downgrade their relations with Syria.

Almost five years later the AbuZayd-Pinheiro group tried to portray as a ‘crime’ the liberation of the city of Aleppo from al Qaeda aligned groups. They paid no attention to the thousands of relieved and celebrating civilians who had been rescued from al Qaeda held East Aleppo. Once again the assertions were reckless and partisan. The group falsely claimed that the liberation of the city had involved ‘daily air strikes’ on the eastern part of Aleppo city (HRC 2017: 19). Yet it was reported widely in foreign media that air strikes on the east part of the city were suspended on 18 October (BBC 2016; Xinhua 2016). NPR’s Merrit Kennedy (2016) reported ‘several weeks of relative calm’ during the ‘humanitarian pause, aimed at evacuating civilians. The ‘resumption’ of airstrikes almost one month later was aimed at the armed groups in rural Aleppo, not on the shrinking parts of the city held by the jihadists (Pestano 2016; Graham-Harrison 2016). Of course, al Qaeda aligned ‘media activists’ did claim the city was being continuously bombed (CNN 2016). However the UN commission, as Gareth Porter pointed out, ‘did not identify sources for its narrative … [but rather] accepted the version of the events provided by the ‘White Helmets’’, a jihadist auxiliary funded by the US and UK governments (Porter 2017). This report seemed to belatedly support calls by the UN Secretary General’s representative, Stefan di Mistura, for the Syrian Government to allow jihadist groups to maintain control of a lage part of the country’s second city. Syria would never allow that to happen.

In its most recent report of September 2017 the AbuZayd-Pinheiro group criticised terrorist groups and the US air strikes, in a pretence at impartiality. But it added a remarkable claim that had no basis in independent evidence: that ‘government forces continued the pattern of using chemical weapons against civilians in opposition held areas’. Abuzayd-Pinheiro claimed that 20 of 25 chemical weapons attacks in 2017 ‘were perpetrated by government forces’, referring to incidents at Khan Sheikhoun, al Latamneh and East Ghouta (HRC 2017b: 1, 14). Yet critical, independent evidence from US Professor Ted Postol had disproved the notion that the Khan Sheikhoun incident came from an air strike (Postol 2017). Indeed, the Syrian Government says the Army never once used chemical weapons during the 2011-2017 conflict, and no independent evidence contradicts this position. For example, in chapter nine of my book (Anderson 2016) I document the catalogue of independent evidence that discredited the ‘chemical weapons ‘false flag’ in the East Ghouta, of August 2013.

So, on what evidence were AbuZayd-Pinheiro’s claims based? They refer to interviews with victims and aid providers in jihadist controlled areas, some satellite images, a report of the UN’s OPCW (which did not attribute blame) and a non-response from the Syrian Government (HRC 2017b: 14-16). Clearly Damascus refuses to cooperate with AbuZayd-Pinheiro because of their previous propaganda activity. In the case of Khan Sheikhoun incident, the OPCW refused Russian invitation to visit and investigate, preferring to rely on information and samples provided by jihadist groups and their auxiliaries, such as the US-UK funded ‘White Helmets’. Once again, virtually all evidence cited by the Abuzayd-Pinheiro group came from US-backed and jihadist sources – al Nusra aka Hayat Tahrir al Sham, Ahrar al Sham, Jaish al Islam and Faylaq al Rahman (HRC 2017b: 14-16).

This latest AbuZayd-Pinheiro report came as the Syrian Army broke a three-year ISIS siege on the eastern City of Deir Ezzor. Fake chemical weapons claims at this time might briefly distract from this latest Syrian victory over the NATO-Saudi proxy armies, but they carry less import than before. Nevertheless, this US-led ‘independent’ group showed itself partisan and propagandist to the end.

Dr. Tim Anderson is a Senior Lecturer in Political Economy at the University of Sydney. He researches and writes on development, human rights and self-determination in the Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Middle East. He has published dozens of articles and chapters in academic journals and books, as well as essays in a range of online journals. His work includes the areas of agriculture and food security, health systems, regional integration and international cooperation.

Sources

Anderson, Tim (2016a) The Dirty War on Syria, Global Research, Montreal

Anderson, Tim (2016b) ‘Daraa 2011: Syria’s Islamist Insurrection in Disguise’, Global Research, 16 March, online:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/daraa-2011-syrias-islamist-insurrection-in-disguise/5460547

BBC (2016) ‘Syria war: Russia halts Aleppo bombing for humanitarian pause’, 18 October, online:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-37689063

CNN (2016) ‘Syria: Aleppo pounded by ‘heaviest bombardment’ since war began’, 21 November, online:

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/20/middleeast/syria-aleppo-airstrikes/index.html

HRC (2012) ‘Oral Update of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic’, Human Rights Commission, 26 June, online:

http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/CoISyria/OralUpdateJune2012.pdf

HRC (2017) ‘Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic’ [Aleppo report], A/HRC/34/64, 2 February, online:

https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G17/026/63/PDF/G1702663.pdf?OpenElement

HRC (2017b) ‘Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic‘, 8 August, A/hrc/36/55, online

Porter, Gareth (2017) ‘A Flawed UN investigation on Syria’, Consortium News, 11 march, online:

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/03/11/a-flawed-un-investigation-on-syria/

Graham-Harrison, Emma (2016) ‘Aleppo airstrikes restart as Russia announces major Syria offensive’, The Guardian, 16 November, online:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/15/aleppo-airstrikes-resume-as-russia-announces-major-syria-offensive

Kennedy, Merrit (2016) ‘After Rocky Pause, Airstrikes Resume On Syria’s Aleppo’, NPR, 15 November, online:

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/15/502129917/after-rocky-pause-airstrikes-resume-on-syrias-aleppo

Pestano, Andrew V. (2016) ‘Aleppo airstrikes resume after 3-week pause’, UPI, 15 November, online:

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2016/11/15/Aleppo-airstrikes-resume-after-3-week-pause/8561479211543/

Xinhua (2016) ‘News Analysis: Suspended Russian airstrikes encourage rebels to unleash major offensive in Aleppo’, 29 October, online:

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-10/29/c_135788805.htm

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

The day will live in infamy, the attacks planned well in advance. Bin Laden and so-called “crazed Arabs” had nothing to do with destroying the twin towers and striking the Pentagon.

The Big Lie persists. Most Americans no longer believe the the 9/11 whitewash commission’s official account of what happened.

Bin Laden was an unwitting CIA asset transformed into “Enemy Number One.” In December 2001, he died of natural causes in a Pakistani hospital, widely reported at the time – including by The New York Times (several months later), Fox News and the BBC.

Obama didn’t kill Osama. In September 2001, CBS News anchor Dan Rather said he was admitted to a Rawalpindi, Pakistan hospital on September 10, 2001. France’s Le Figaro reported:

“Dubai…was the backdrop of a secret meeting between Osama bin Laden and the local CIA agent in July (2001).”

“A partner of the administration of the American Hospital…claims that (bin Laden) stayed (there) between the 4th and 14th of July (and) received visits from many members of his family as well as prominent Saudis and Emiratis.”

“(During the same period), the local CIA agent, known to many in Dubai, was seen taking (the hospital’s) main elevator (to) bin Laden’s room.”

Pakistani intelligence confirmed his December 2001 death. Yet the myth of his responsibility for 9/11 persists. The FBI later admitted it had no evidence linking him to the attack.

The official 9/11 account was fabricated to conceal state-sponsored terrorism, dark forces in Washington responsible for what happened.

It became a pretext for waging endless wars on humanity at home and abroad. It was the wrong time to be Muslim in America.

They’ve been disgracefully victimized, vilified, and persecuted for their faith, ethnicity, prominence, activism, and charity – innocent men and women bogusly called terrorists, used for political advantage.

More than any other ethnic/religious group, Western discourse unfairly portrays Muslim Arabs stereotypically as culturally inferior, dirty, lecherous, untrustworthy, religiously fanatical, and violent.

Ongoing US wars against predominantly Muslim countries, along with Trump’s travel ban against targeted Islamic ones is a cross millions of people threatening no one are forced to bear because of Washington’s imperial ruthlessness.

Following 9/11, America became a fascist police state. GW Bush’s declared war on terrorism was US state-sponsored terrorism on humanity.

A week after 9/11, congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) declared it – on the phony pretext of combating forces “responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.”

Bush/Cheney took full advantage – flagrantly abusing executive power, most congressional members acting as co-conspirators.

Bush/Cheney’s Military Order Number 1 let them usurp authority to capture, kidnap or otherwise arrest any non-citizens (later citizens as well) anywhere in the world if involved in international terrorism – real or fabricated – holding them indefinitely without charge, due process or judicial fairness.

Obama further institutionalized indefinite detentions and military commission injustice, violating America’s Fifth Amendment protections.

Post-9/11, torture became official US policy, Guantanamo symbolizing ruthless injustice against Muslims in nearly all cases guilty only of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, uninvolved in violence or other criminal actions.

Anyone designated a threat to US national security is vulnerable to arrest, imprisonment and indefinite detention – how police states operate worldwide.

Post-9/11, the unpatriotic Patriot Act (prepared months in advance), Homeland Security Act, National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directives, the Detainee Treatment Act, Military Commissions Act, amending the 1807 Insurrection Act and 1878 Posse Comitatus protections, Big Brother spying on Americans and others worldwide, police state presidential executive orders, criminalizing peaceful protests, and other harsh measures transformed America into a fascist police state – with bipartisan support.

It continues under Trump. Full scale militarization of the country is the law of the land – at the federal, state and local levels, constitutional rights increasingly ignored.

Everyone everywhere suffers from US imperial arrogance. Neocons in charge threaten world peace.

Their rage for unchallenged global dominance risks potentially catastrophic nuclear war – sovereign independent Russia, China and Iran potential targets

State-sponsored 9/11 made America unsafe and unfit to live in. Full-blown tyranny may be another major false flag away, possibly happening any time.

Unthinkable nuclear war, if launched, may be the greatest price to pay for what happened on that fateful day. The possibility should terrify everyone.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

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

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

As senior Arizona Senator John McCain (once considered a moderate Republican) threatens North Korea with “extinction” over its non-existent acts of aggression, German Chancellor Angela Merkel offers to play an “active role” in diplomacy. Meanwhile, US President Trump, who has threatened to destroy North Korea since the year 2000, gives mixed signals, saying that war isn’t inevitable but “could happen.”

Bruce K. Gagnon is Coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. He co-wrote (with this author) Voices for Peace: War, Resistance and America’s Quest for Full-Spectrum Dominance, an edited anthology also featuring original contributions from John Pilger, Noam Chomsky, Cynthia McKinney and other leading activists and researchers. I asked Bruce about the ominous threat of nuclear war or accident with North Korea.

T.J. Coles: What’s the likelihood of war? And what would such a war look like? 

Bruce K. Gagnon: Crazy hot-headed Americans might trigger something or do a false flag to justify a response.  South Korea doesn’t want war, but sadly their government is run by Washington. South Korea would be devastated by conventional North Korea artillery and missiles, US soldiers would die by the thousands on their bases inside the country, and NK would be bombed (again, just like in 1950-53) back to the stone age. The war would likely spill over into Japan and could go nuclear quite quickly.  It’s madness.

TJC: How does America’s North Korea strategy fit into its targeting of China and Pivot to Asia?

BKG: NK is the foil – used by the US to justify massive military expansion in the region which is actually aimed at China and Russia. NK is no real military threat to the US – despite their tough talk. But sometimes things don’t go as planned and accidents happen. The NK foil allows the US to now be talking about returning its own nuclear weapons to the Korean peninsula which makes China and Russia very worried.  And NATO is now talking about NK being “global problem” that the “Atlantic alliance” must deal with – so they are using this to expand into the global war machine that they’ve been developing since the end of the Cold War.

TJC: North Korea has a border with Russia, which, like China and the US, also has nuclear weapons. Where does Russia fit into this scenario?

BKG: During the Korean War (North Korea called it the American War) Gen. Douglas MacArthur sent US warplanes over the border into Russia and bombed Vladivostok trying to draw Moscow into the war.  They didn’t take the bait. The US has always wanted regime change in Moscow – even now when they’ve gone capitalist.  Russia has the world’s largest supply of natural gas and as the Arctic ice melts the fossil fuel companies want to drill-baby-drill in that region – but guess who has the largest land border with the Arctic?

TJC: Can you talk about resistance to US missiles and troops in Japan and South Korea?

BKG: The resistance to US base expansion and “missile defense” systems (key elements in Pentagon first-strike attack planning) is strong and growing in South Korea and Okinawa.  People in those places are fighting to preserve their environment, their culture and the peace because they know they’ve become prime targets in a war.  They protest daily – something activists in the US and UK should be doing as our two countries are largely responsible for this out-of-control war machine that we are paying for with cuts in human needs programs and services.

TJC: How can we “Westerners” show our support and solidarity with people in the “Eastern” countries?

BKG: We’ve got to call our own governments to the carpet and identify them as the initiators of global chaos and endless war.  We’ve got to pay more attention to what is going on in South Korea, Okinawa, Guam, Japan and other Asia-Pacific nations.  We’ve got to bring the heart and spirit of these struggling folks in Asia-Pacific to our own streets, US military bases, and military production factories and demand an end to the imperial madness.  We must demand conversion of the war machine to appropriate sustainable technologies so that we can quickly deal with our real problem, which is called climate change…

***

Title: Voices for Peace

Author: T. J. Coles

Publisher: Clairview Books, 1 September 2017

ISBN: 9781905570898

Click here to order.

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This article was originally published by PIPR.

Featured image is from The Sun.

The events that took place in the United States on September 11, 2001 were real and they were extremely violent. As David Griffin has recently shown in detail, they also had catastrophic real-life consequences for both the United States and the world. [1]

But these events were also deeply filmic (like a film) and they were presented to us through a narrative we now know to be fictional. This “9/11 movie” reveals itself to careful investigators as scripted, directed and produced by the U.S. national security state. The movie does not represent the real world. It violates the rules operative in the real world, including the laws of physics. Audiences will remain in thrall to the spectacle and violence of the War on Terror only as long as they remain mesmerized by the B-movie of 9/11.

The Filmic Nature of the September 11 Events

Many people caught a whiff of Hollywood on September 11, 2001. According to Lawrence Wright (screenwriter of The Siege),

“It was about an hour after the first trade centre came down that I began to make the connection with the movie, this haunting feeling at the beginning this looks like a movie, and then I thought it looks like my movie.”[2]

Steve De Souza (screenwriter, Die Hard I and II) has said:

“Well it did look like a movie. It looked like a movie poster. It looked like one of my movie posters.”[3]

The 9/11 attacks were filmic in at least the following ways:

• Given the complex and coordinated nature of these attacks, they had been scripted and given a timeline in advance;
• given the need to make decisions as the attacks progressed (for example, when an aircraft went off course or was delayed), it is clear that there was a director;
• given the overall vision, the need for funds, resources and international coordination over a period of years, it is obvious that there had been a producer;
• given the numerous roles played in this event (for example, by the “hijackers”), there were undoubtedly actors.

In addition, the event included the key dramatic elements of conflict, violence and spectacle.[4] The entire production was filmed from several angles, and the films, sometimes in the rough and sometimes cleverly edited, were shown many, many times all over the world.

Official U.S. sources rapidly acknowledged the remarkably filmic nature of these events. In October, 2001 some two dozen Hollywood writers and directors were assembled “to brainstorm with Pentagon advisers and officials in an anonymous building in L.A.”[5] The Army’s Institute for Creative Technologies was the lead organization.[6] The assembled group was assumed to have relevant expertise and was asked to brainstorm about what future attacks might look like so that the Pentagon could be prepared. (“We want some left-field, off-the-wall ideas; say the craziest thing that comes into your mind”).[7]

While the bare fact of this consultation was widely reported by news media, further details about the three-day consultation have been hard to come by. Reporters have had their FOIA requests denied.[8]

Beneath this consultation lay the “failure of imagination” hypothesis. Although the hypothesis emerged almost immediately after September 11, it was given especially clear expression in a BBC Panorama programme aired on March 24, 2002.[9] Steve Bradshaw interviewed representatives of Hollywood and of national security institutions. The Pentagon, we were supposed to believe, is a typical large bureaucracy characterized by inertia. It is unable to imagine, and to rapidly respond to, new and emerging threats. It is stuck in the past. It is also afraid to irritate the general population by appearing to be politically incorrect–by looking, in this case, at Islam as a threat. Fortunately, there are two sets of people with imagination and courage: a small number of people within the national security apparatus who were trying to warn the Pentagon but were ignored, and Hollywood screenwriters and directors, who had imagination, who had some contact with the national security dissidents, and who had the courage to risk being called Islamophobic.[10]

So the planes of September 11, when they burst on the scene, confirmed the imaginative prescience of Hollywood, supported the courageous faction of the national security apparatus, and embarrassed the national security bureaucracy, which had to lower itself in October, 2001 to meet with the purveyors of fiction in order to stimulate its sclerotic brain.

This failure of imagination hypothesis was supported by statements by George W. Bush[11] and, even more famously, by Condoleeza Rice:

“I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile.”[12]

The hypothesis became more or less official when it was adopted by the 9/11 Commission in its report on the attacks.[13]

Of course, given the filmic nature of 9/11, it is clear that, according to these official U.S. sources, there was another group–beyond Hollywood and a few national security malcontents–that had imagination, namely al-Qaeda.

Robert Altman (director of MASH, McCabe and Mrs. Miller and many other films) said in 2002 that Hollywood was to blame for the 9/11 events.

“The movies set the pattern, and these people have copied the movies…Nobody would have thought to commit an atrocity like that unless they’d seen it in a movie.”[14]

Presumably, by “these people” Altman meant al-Qaeda. Perhaps it was while munching popcorn and watching a Hollywood movie that Osama bin Laden and his high-level companions got the idea for 9/11? This is possible. But would it not make sense to ask if it is true that the Pentagon has no imagination, and that it was incapable of picturing attacks like those of the fall of 2001?

Collaboration between Hollywood and U.S. government agencies goes back at least as far as WW II. Indeed, a 1943 memo from the OSS (forerunner of the CIA) noted that,

“The motion picture is one of the most powerful propaganda weapons at the disposal of the United States.”[15]

Many Hollywood films and TV programs have, therefore, been supported by the Pentagon, and some have been supported by the CIA. Such support can be crucial for films that require U.S. military assets such as planes and helicopters. But support is not automatic. The script must first be approved, and emendations may be demanded by the national security agency in question. In a recent book on this subject (National Security Cinema: The Shocking New Evidence of Government Control in Hollywood), authors Tom Secker and Matthew Alford list 814 films and 1133 TV titles that received DOD support.[16]

Since many of these films are highly imaginative constructions, how can it be that the national security agencies that have helped bring them to fruition have remained trapped in their grey, unimaginative world? Presumably, we are to believe that it is the nature of a bureaucracy to restrict these imaginative insights to one part of the organization–say, the Army’s Institute for Creative Technologies–while neglecting to disseminate them to other parts of the national security state. But is this true?

Those familiar with the History Commons research project on 9/11 will know that it is not true at all. Here are 16 titles from that project (selected from a much longer list) that refer to pre-9/11 exercises and simulations by U.S. government agencies:[17]

November 7, 1982: Port Authority Practices for Plane Crashing into the WTC

(1998-September 10, 2001): NORAD Operations Center Runs Five ‘Hijack Training Events’ Each Month

1998-2001: Secret Service Simulates Planes Crashing into the White House

October 14, 1998: ‘Poised Response’ Exercise Prepares for Bin Laden Attack on Washington

Between 1999 and September 11, 2001: NORAD Practices Live-Fly Mock Shootdown of a Poison-Filled Jet

Between September 1999 and September 10, 2001: NORAD Exercises Simulate Plane Crashes into US Buildings; One of Them Is the World Trade Center

November 6, 1999: NORAD Conducts Exercise Scenario Based around Hijackers Planning to Crash Plane into UN Headquarters in New York

June 5, 2000: NORAD Exercise Simulates Hijackers Planning to Crash Planes into White House and Statue of Liberty

October 16-23, 2000: NORAD Exercise Includes Scenarios of Attempted Suicide Plane Crashes into UN Headquarters in New York

May 2001: Medics Train for Airplane Hitting Pentagon

June 1-2, 2001: Military Conducts Exercises Based on Scenario in which Cruise Missiles Are Launched against US [“Osama bin Laden is pictured on the cover of the proposal for the exercise”]

July 2001: NORAD Plans a Mock Simultaneous Hijacking Threat from inside the US

Early August 2001: Mass Casualty Exercise at the Pentagon Includes a Plane Hitting the Building

August 4, 2001: Air Defense Exercise Involves the Scenario of Bin Laden Using a Drone Aircraft to Attack Washington

September 6, 2001: NORAD Exercise Includes Terrorist Hijackers Threatening to Blow Up Airliner

September 9, 2001: NEADS Exercise Includes Scenario with Terrorist Hijackers Targeting New York

It is not necessary to find an exercise here that perfectly matches the attacks of the fall of 2001. The point is that there is far too much imagination and far too much similarity to the actual attacks of the fall of 2001 to support the “failure of imagination” hypothesis. Hollywood participants in the October, 2001 brainstorming exercise, who thought they were being tapped for their imagination, were conned.

Who was better prepared, through both imagination and logistical capacity, to carry out the attacks of the fall of 2001–Bin Laden’s group or the U.S. national security state? The latter had been practising steadily, in relevant scripted training operations, for years, and it had the power and resources to bring the imaginative scenarios to reality. Al-Qaeda was not remotely its match.

Not Just Filmic, But Exclusively Filmic

If this business of the filmic nature of the September 11 attacks involved only Hollywood scriptwriters we might be tempted to regard it as nothing but a minor distraction. But what we find is that even members of the Fire Department of New York, risking their lives at the scene, were shocked by the filmic nature of what they witnessed. [18]

“I thought I was at an event at Universal Studios, on the side, watching a movie being taped.” (EMS Chief Walter Kowalczyk)

“I remembered hearing Lieutenant D’Avila coming over the radio and saying Central be advised, a second plane just went into the second tower. We ran out and we saw the second plane. It was like watching a movie. It really was.” (EMT Peter Cachia)

“I looked over my shoulder and you could see the whole top of the south tower leaning towards us. It looked like it was coming over. You could see the windows pop out just like in the picture, looked like a movie. I saw one floor of windows pop out, like poof, poof. I saw one and a half floors pop out.” (Chief Steve Grabher)

“The building started collapsing, the north tower started collapsing. It tipped down first and then the thing fell within itself. It was an amazing sight to see. It was really unbelievable. I thought I was watching a movie with special effects.” (EMT Michael Mejias)

“As I’m looking up at this stuff that’s going on up there now, I just like — I’m saying to myself I’ve seen this in a movie. My whole recollection is going back to a movie or something I saw. I just saw this before.” (Fire Marshal Steven Mosiello)

“… it looked like a bomb, of course, had gone off, almost like a nuclear bomb. That’s all I could think of. I’ve never been at war. I equated it to being like when I saw something like when I was a kid and I saw Godzilla in the movies or something, when he crushes those buildings and stuff like that, that’s what it looked like to me.” (Firefighter Edward Kennedy)

“I’m standing on top of the rig between the bucket and the cab, between the ladder and the cab. People were blessing themselves in this gloominess of going down. It was like out of a movie. I couldn’t believe what was going on.” (Firefighter Tiernach Cassidy)

“I just recall that those first — those first minutes from the time that sound started, the rumbling started to occur and the dust started to fall and then stopped to get gear and equipment from the fire truck and then continue down to West Street and getting there and seeing the crushed fire trucks, crushed cars, vehicles on fire. It was like a movie set.” (Firefighter Daniel Lynch)

“Then like a Godzilla movie, everybody that had been standing in that little park there across from One Liberty Plaza and had been just looking up and watching the north tower burn just started running eastbound like they were being chased by someone.” (Battalion Chief Brian Dixon)

“Then, you started to run, your [sic] helping people, helping them run. You saw it, it was amazing…like out of a movie, you know, the cloud’s just chasing you. As you look back, you see it engulf people.” (EMP Peter Constantine)

“… as I turned on Albany I looked over my shoulder and I saw the big cloud of dust that was already on the ground like just making its way down the block, just like a movie.” (EMS Captain Frank D’Amato)

“The first thing came in my mind was the movie Armageddon, and this was reality, with the black smoke 30 floors high, debris falling everywhere….Because I have never seen anything like that in 21 years of emergency work.” (EMT Russell Harris)

“Then as soon as we got over there, as soon as we got off of the Brooklyn Bridge, the people were running like it was a Godzilla movie, and we had to stop there for a while. People were overcome, were shaken, were scared…” (EMT Christopher Kagenaar)

“But I ran and ran, and finally I could see the light. When I got to where the tunnel was, I’m looking everywhere. It was just like that movie the day after with the atomic bomb. They drop it and nobody’s left and I’m the only one.” (Paramedic Robert Ruiz)

“I remember seeing the rubble, seeing the rubble fall and actually start to chase down the street, and, you know, it’s strange because you wouldn’t expect — you wouldn’t expect debris to do that, but it literally traveled, like, you would see these movies with like a tidal wave that flows through the streets and hits down any path it can.” (Rosario Terranova)

These comments, selected from a wider set of similar comments, are intriguing, but what is their significance? As we examine them closely we recognize that the September 11 event was not just filmic but exclusively filmic. By this I mean that the narrative presented to us by authorities could not have unfolded outside of a film.

Since at least as early as 1902, when the French film  A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la Lune) took its viewers into space, audiences have been enjoying the ability of movies to deliver dramatic action through special effects, and especially by suspending, fictionally, the laws of physics. This is part of the power of film and there is nothing inherently wrong with it. But it is important to know when we are in the theatre and when we are not.

In the original 1933 film, King Kong, director Merian Cooper was determined to make the appearance of his monster dramatically powerful, and to this end was prepared to change the monster’s size repeatedly to fit particular scenes.

“I was a great believer in constantly changing Kong’s height to fit the settings and the illusions. He’s different in almost every shot; sometimes he’s only 18 feet (5.5 m) tall and sometimes 60 feet (18.3 m) or larger…but I felt confident that if the scenes moved with excitement and beauty, the audience would accept any height that fitted into the scene.”[19]

Cooper understood what mattered in a movie. But imagine what would happen if audiences remained convinced by the suspension of the laws of physics after they left the theatre? This, it seems to me, is what has happened with the events of September 11, 2001. Many people are still deceived by the special effects. They are still captured by the movie of 9/11.

Consider two of the most traumatizing elements in the attacks, the disappearance of the Twin Towers and the ensuing debris cloud.

The destruction of the Twin Towers stunned first responders. Their previous experiences, including experiences with high-rise fires, did not lead them to suspect these buildings would come down.

“I’ve worked in Manhattan my whole career in high rises and everything else…you looked back, all you see–you know how fast those buildings came down…it just doesn’t click that these buildings can come down…you just couldn’t believe that those buildings could come down…there’s no history of these buildings falling down.” (Lieutenant Warren Smith, 9110223)[20]

“whoever in their right mind would have thought that the World Trade Center would ever fall down…Nobody in the world, nobody ever would ever have thought those buildings were coming down.” (EMS Captain Mark Stone, 9110076)[21]

Investigations over the last 16 years have demonstrated that the first responders’ surprise was justified. The explanations offered by official U.S. agencies have been shown to violate basic laws of physics.[22]

Awed by the spectacle of the Twin Towers coming down, and by the later fall of World Trade 7, we are supposed to forget our high school physics. We are not supposed to notice that the official explanations given to us leave these spectacles every bit as peculiar as King Kong’s ever-changing size.

So this central dramatic element, as edited for TV, interpreted by ponderous official voices, and played repeatedly for a world audience, belonged to the 9/11 movie. Behind the scenes the director had ordered that explosive charges be set in the buildings.

Well over one hundred members of the Fire Department of New York witnessed explosions at the beginning of the so-called collapses of the Twin Towers.[23] Their testimony fits with the controlled demolition hypothesis and does not fit with the script of the 9/11 movie. Since promotion of the government’s movie would have been difficult if these voices were heard, they were suppressed.

The second deeply impressive event of September 11, which appears repeatedly in the FDNY musings about the filmic nature of what they witnessed, was the cloud of material that rushed through the streets of Manhattan in the wake of the destruction of each of the Towers. Several films are mentioned by name in this connection, including those featuring Godzilla, King of Monsters, created for Japanese films less than ten years after the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a deliberately provocative meditation on the forces of the nuclear age.[24]

The FDNY World Trade Center Task Force interviews give a lively sense of what it felt like to be trapped in this debris cloud.[25]

“I’m about ten feet in front of it, running, actually sprinting because I’m an athlete and I’m running…Ash came around another building in front of me, and it caught me in front of me and in back of me, and everything was pitch-black. Where it hit me from the front and the back, it actually lifted me off the ground and threw me. It was like someone picked me up and just threw me on the ground.

Everything was pitch-black. You couldn’t see anything. All I saw was big bolts of fire, fire balls. I could feel the heat around me. It was pitch-black. I couldn’t see anything at all. My lungs, my airways, everything filled up with ash. I couldn’t breathe.” (EMT Renae O’Carroll)

“All of a sudden the noises stopped, the sound of the building falling stopped. We all turned around and it was dark now. We really couldn’t see…The cloud was in there. All eating the cloud, whatever it was like, very thick. I keep saying it was like a 3 dimensional object. It wasn’t smoke. It was like everything. It was like a sand storm.” (Firefighter Timothy Burke)

“So I’m running, and people are running in front of me. They stop. They turn around. I think everything’s over with. So I stop, all of a sudden the thing is coming at us. It was like in dark hell, like a nuclear blizzard. I couldn’t explain it. You couldn’t see in front of you. You couldn’t breathe. You’re inhaling. You’re coughing. You’re running. You can’t see anything.” (EMT Mary Merced)

“You still can’t see it because it’s dark as a mother. You can’t breathe. It’s so heavy with smoke and dust and ash.

I can’t breathe. I have, for lack of a better term, dust impaction in my ears, in my nose. I was coughing it out of my mouth. It felt like I had a baseball in my mouth. I was just picking it out with my fingers.” (Paramedic Louis Cook)

People on 9/11 running from the debris cloud

As is clear from these testimonies, words like “smoke” and “dust” do not do justice to the cloud in which people were trapped. That is because the clouds were the Towers. Each Tower was converted in less than 20 seconds from a powerful, massive structure over 415 metres (1362 feet) high into cut steel and pulverized matter. While the steel lay on the ground, much of the remainder was rapidly propelled through the streets of Manhattan.

Just as the dramatic tale of building destruction involved deception, so did the equally dramatic tale of this engulfing cloud. This cloud was not the result of a gravitational collapse caused by Muslim terrorists flying planes into buildings. It was the result of an explosive building demolition.

That this cloud could not have been caused in the manner claimed by the official narrative has been argued several times, beginning at least as early as 2003.[26] The demonstrations are independent of the proofs of explosive destruction of the buildings.

Credible scientists have calculated the amount of potential gravitational energy in the Twin Towers–the only major form of energy available, according to the official narrative, at the time of the “collapse” since the energy contributed at that point by the fires was minimal and indirect–and have compared it to the amount of energy that would have been required to create the pulverized debris cloud.

Professor emeritus of civil engineering, Robert Korol, has recently discussed this issue.[27] He has calculated the gravitational potential energy of each of the Towers at 508.4 x 10⁹ joules. He has calculated the energy required to pulverize the concrete of each Tower at 857.5 x 10⁹ joules; the energy to destroy the perimeter columns at 219 x 10⁹ joules; and the energy to destroy the core columns at 178 x 10⁹ joules. The total energy required for the concrete and columns is 1,254.5 x 10⁹ joules.

Simply put, these figures suggest that it would have taken about two and a half times the amount of energy available through gravity to have destroyed the Towers as witnessed.

Professor Korol’s calculations are based on experimental work he has done in the laboratory, the results of which have been published in peer-reviewed journals. He has pulverized concrete. He has buckled and crushed columns. He has measured the force required in each case. His calculations with respect to the Twin Towers are extremely conservative in that they do not attempt to include all forms of destruction attested, such as pulverizing of walls, furniture and human bodies.

If, moreover, we were to add to his calculations the energy required to propel the pulverized buildings in all directions through the streets of Manhattan, as some authors have done, we would find the impossibility of the official narrative even more striking.[28] The comment by the FDNY’s Terranova, quoted earlier–“you wouldn’t expect debris to do that–” is an understatement.

We cannot avoid the conclusion that the gravity-caused debris cloud was exclusively filmic just like King Kong’s fluctuating height. Both honoured the rules of dramatic action by violating the laws of physics.

The apparently fanciful references to Godzilla by first responders are actually perceptive. Gravity was aided by an extremely muscular destructive force. But in Godzilla movies the monster is visible, while the monster of the 9/11 movie was invisible and must be made visible through investigation.

Our Challenge

In the 1958 trailer for the B-movie, The Blob, film-goers are shown sitting in a theatre as a horror movie begins.[29] They are frightened, but only in the distant way that film audiences allow themselves to feel frightened by fictional representations. Then we notice the monster (“the Blob”) oozing into the theatre itself. As the movie-goers wake up to this reality and sense the real danger, they tear their eyes from the screen and run from the theatre.

As audiences today watch the War on Terror, hypnotized by the extremist evil-doers, a pitiless oligarchy creeps unseen into the room. Our challenge is to break the spell of the B-movie of 9/11. Only when people sense the genuine danger and leave behind fiction and special effects will they be in a position to deal with the real monster that confronts us.

Notes

[1] Bush and Cheney: How They Ruined America and the World (Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2017)

[2] “September 11: A Warning from Hollywood,” BBC Panorama (BBC, March 24, 2002).

[3] Ibid.

[4] Spectacle, the visual aspect of dramatic action, was included in Aristotle’s Poetics as an essential element of drama. As for conflict and violence, see Lew Hunter, Lew Hunter’s Screenwriting 434 (New York: Perigee, 1993), pp. 19, 22 ff.

[5] “Hollywood: The Pentagon’s New Advisor,” BBC Panorama (BBC, 2002); Sharon Weinberger, “Hollywood’s Secret Meet,” Wired, March 16, 2007.

[6] Weinberger, “Hollywood’s Secret Meet.”

[7] “Hollywood: The Pentagon’s New Advisor.”

[8] Weinberger, “Hollywood’s Secret Meet.”

[9] “September 11: A Warning from Hollywood.”

[10] Ibid.

[11] George W. Bush, “President Addresses the Nation in Prime Time Press Conference,” (U.S. government archives, April 13, 2004).

[12] Condoleezza Rice, “Press Briefing by National Security Advisor Dr. Condoleezza Rice,” (U.S. government archives, May 16, 2002).

[13] Alec Russell, “9/11 Report Condemns ‘failure of Imagination,’” The Telegraph, July 23, 2004.

[14] Sean Alfano, “Iconic Director Robert Altman Dead At 81,” CBS/AP, November 21, 2006.

[15] “The Motion Picture As A Weapon of Psychological Warfare.” Matthew Alford, National Security Cinema: The Shocking New Evidence of Government Control in Hollywood (Drum Roll Books, 2017), p. 31. The document itself can be found on the Internet.

[16] Ibid.

[17] “History Commons: Military Exercises Up to 9/11,” n.d., http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?

before_9/11=militaryExercises&timeline=complete_911_timeline.

[18] The New York Times, having obtained the World Trade Center Task Force interviews from the City of New York through a lawsuit, hosts the documents on its website. The interviews are in the form of separate PDF files. Each file is identified by the interviewee’s name.

“World Trade Center Task Force Interviews” (City of New York, 2002 2001), http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/met_WTC_histories_full_01.html.

[19] From an interview with Cooper quoted in “King Kong,” Wikipedia, accessed August 6, 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Kong#CITEREFVan_Hise1993.

[20] “World Trade Center Task Force Interviews.” See note 18.

[21] Ibid. See note 18.

[22] The best summary in recent years is Ted Walter, BEYOND MISINFORMATION: What Science Says About the Destruction of World Trade Center Buildings 1, 2, and 7 (Berkeley, California: Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Inc., 2015).

[23] Graeme MacQueen, “118 Witnesses: The Firefighters’ Testimony to Explosions in the Twin Towers,” Journal of 9/11 Studies, August 2006.

[24] Tim Martin, “Godzilla: Why the Japanese Original Is No Joke,” The Telegraph, May 15, 2014.

[25] “World Trade Center Task Force Interviews.” See note 18.

[26] The earliest attempt I know of is by Jim Hoffman. See “The North Tower’s Dust Cloud: Analysis of Energy Requirements for the Expansion of the Dust Cloud Following the Collapse of 1 World Trade Center, Version 3.1,” 9-11 Research, October 16, 2003. http://911research.wtc7.net/papers/dustvolume/volumev3_1.html.

[27] Walter, BEYOND MISINFORMATION: What Science Says About the Destruction of World Trade Center Buildings 1, 2, and 7. See Chapter 3, note 13. Full references to Korol’s articles can be found at Adnan Zuberi’s compilation accompanying “9/11 in the Academic Community: Academia’s Treatment of Critical Perspectives on 9/11—Documentary”:

Academic Papers

[28] Hoffman, “The North Tower’s Dust Cloud: Analysis of Energy Requirements for the Expansion of the Dust Cloud Following the Collapse of 1 World Trade Center, Version 3.1”; Reijo Yli-Karjanmaa, “Energetic Examination of the Collapse of the North Tower of the WTC, Version 3.1,” June 18, 2005, http://www.11syyskuu.net/energia3.htm.

[29] Trailer, The Blob, 1958, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdUsyXQ8Wrs.

Images in this article are from the author.

The leader of Kurdistan Iraq, President Masoud Barzani, has called for a (second) general referendum on Independence, setting the date as 25^th of September this year. He is determined to materialise the dream of establishing a Kurdish state in the Middle East.

This coincides with support from the US administration for Kurdish Syrians in al-Hasaka, Raqqah and Deir al-Zour northern provinces. The aim is to see another Kurdish Federation that can follow the path or even precede their Iraqi “brothers”.

Both the steps in Iraq and Syria relating to the Kurds are linked, regardless of borders. Nevertheless, the regional countries directly concerned – i.e. Ankara, Tehran, Baghdad and Damascus – believe that it is the US’s intention to reshape the region and form a “new Middle East,” as promoted during President George Bush’s eraby ex-US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice..

Will the countries, which are neighbours to the Kurds, allow the US to divide the Middle East by taking advantage of 22-25 million enthusiastic and committed Kurds, dreaming of having their own state?

The Kurds in the Middle East represent the largest ethnicity in the world, to-date, without a state. They are spread mainly through Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Lebanon, with a less numerous presence in the rest of the world. It is certainly not the US’s blessing or its strategy which is vital to the creation of a Kurdish state in both Iraq and Syria, but the consensus of Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria.

Unfortunately for the Kurds, these countries can and will overcome their differences and their conflicting objectives in Syria, above all to uniting to prevent the creation of this Kurdish state. In fact, just following the announcement of Masoud Barzani of his intention for a general referendum for independency, knowledgeable sources informed me that Iranian, Turkish and Syrian intelligence and security officers met at the highest level to discuss the possible “devastating consequences” on their respective countries following Barzani’s announcement of the referendum and the effect on the Middle East of an independent Kurdish state. The security officers believe the US is using the Kurdish dream of a State of their own, in order to divide the Middle East and test the other countries’ reaction to it.

It is a legitimate Kurdish dream, from the Kurds’ perspective: they have a right to their own state. But the countries of the region believe it is a premature step that will increase the Kurds’ problems. Therefore it is essential to bury this “US project” as quickly as possible and put it forward in time: until the wars in Syria and Iraq are over.

Countries like Iran, Syria and Iraq believe that the US and Israel are behind such a plan, taking advantage of the Kurds emotional approach towards the idea of having a State in order to partition the Middle East. This would leave the “axis of resistance” dominating over weak and divided states, particularly bearing in mind that the plans to overthrow the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (after over 6 years of war), establish an ISIS caliphate, and allowing the natural consequences of the war in Iraq to create another Sunnistan state have all been foiled to date.

Turkey also believes the US is not against weakening the position of President Erdogan as punishment for his growing role in the Middle East, his direct involvement in Syria, his opposition to a Syrian Kurdish State in Syria (where the US is trying to build an alternative military base to Incirlik in due course), and it is encouraging a Kurdish State on the Turkish border under the control of the PKK, mainstream Turkey’s fiercest enemies. There is no doubt that the Syrian Kurds will probably follow the same path as Iraqi Kurdistan: already the US is building several military bases and airports in north-eastern Syria, to occupy part of the country and maintain a long-term US presence.

High-ranking officials I spoke to in Tehran, Baghdad and Damascus believe the US does not have a clear strategy in Syria and Iraq. Regardless of this inaccurate assessment, and watching the events unfold, the US administration actually seems pretty confident of its strategy in Iraq and Syria. The US’s illegal occupation forces supported a major attack on al-Badiya (the Syrian semi-desert, rich in oil and gas) with Syrian “moderate” groups, so as to expand its control over the Syrian steppe linked to the Iraqi Sunni Anbar and the Jordanian – Saudi desert. It occupied al-Tanaf and tried to exert tremendous pressure (in vain) on Baghdad to prevent the Popular Mobilisation Unities from reaching the border with Syria. It attacked Raqqah with the aid of its Kurdish proxies and is about to liberate it from ISIS. And it has preserved access to oil fields and dams in rural Raqqah to make sure that a future Kurdish Syrian “State” or Federation can survive independently of Damascus. And, as if this were not enough, it is supplying its Kurdish proxies with lethal weapons and heavy artillery. All indications lead to the conclusion that the US is trying – with the Kurds in Syria and Iraq simultaneously – to see which one may succeed first in giving a shape to a state, imposing it as a fact on central governments, all the time aware that this policy will encourage Kurds in other parts (Iran and Turkey) to follow the same path of independence.

The US is not concerned about the Erdogan and the Turkish government’s reaction to its plan in favour of a Kurdish state in both Syria and Iraq because it is in the US’s interest to destabilise Ankara (for a number reasons) even though Turkey is a NATO member. In American eyes, Erdogan is considered “out of the US’s control and orbit,” ever since the failure of the coup d’état : the US promotion of the Syrian Kurds and support for their possible independent state along the Turkish-Syrian borders confirms this. In fact, both the Turkish Prime Minister and Foreign Minister describe the Kurdistan move as an “irresponsible and grave mistake”. Turkey won’t fight the YPG, for now, because these fighters are under the US protection, but it will certainly fight the Kurds in Afrin, on the other side of Rojava.

Iran also, through its supreme leader Say’yed Ali Khamenei, has stated clearly that Iran wouldn’t allow a Kurdish state on its borders with Iraq. This clear, overt and harsh position towards the Kurds springs less from an animosity towards the Kurdish people, more because the US stands behind the timing and the strategy of the “independence project”, particularly at this moment when the partition of the Middle East is still a strong option, and following the failure of ISIS to divide the Levant and Mesopotamia.

This is exactly why Erdogan pushed his forces from Jarablus to al-Bab, disregarding the US presence, and divided Rojava in two parts. This is also the reason why Iran pushed its forces above al-Tanaf to close the road on the US from al-Badiya towards the north-east and in advancing south-east within al-Badiyah, recovering over 30.000 sq km, to prevent the US and its proxy forces from extending their control over that arena. The US plan, in Tehran-Damascus-Ankara’s eyes, is to establish a Kurdish state in Iraq and/or Syria and to open the path to a Sunni state in Iraq, a country considered in US eyes as an Iranian governorate. The “Sunni uprising” in Syria failed because the country is composed of over 70%Sunni who control the economy whereas the Alawites have the military command of the country in their hands.

Now, according to decision makers in the region, the Kurds may be committing a particularly serious mistake by earning the animosity of the surrounding countries because, in a State that can be attacked or surrounded by both land and air- and which has no access to the sea- they cannot survive without co-operation..

Masoud Barzani, of course, believes the timing is perfect to hold the “biding referendum” (it will almost certainly win over 90% in favour of the independent state) on the 25^th of September, and he also believes that the Kurdish population accepts the risks that will come with such a decision. Masoud is excluding an immediate announcement of the independent state but considers it to be the beginning of a long peaceful dialogue and negotiation with Baghdad to meet the Kurdish population’s wishes. Masoud, according to high-level sources in Kurdistan, doesn’t want to encourage the Kurds in other countries to follow in his footsteps because the Kurds in Iraq have a different agenda and ideology from the Kurds in Syria, Turkey, and Iran.

But despite what the Kurdish leader believes and says, there are no such guarantees or processes that give independence to one Kurdish nation in one country and which will exclude the others. In point of fact, Barzani cannot guarantee the reaction of the same Iraqi Kurds in the longer term even if these now declare overtly their support for his decisions. Behind closed doors, many anti-Barzani Kurds express their disagreement with the referendum at this critical moment in the Middle East.

What many ignore is the fact that Kurds in both Iraq and Syria did not take a neutral position during the on-going wars in Syria and Iraq: Masoud Barzani gave substantial military support to Bashar al-Assad for many years by allowing men and weapons to reach the Syrian Army. Moreover, the Syrian Kurds offered the same support to the besieged Syrian cities bordering Afrin that were surrounded by al-Qaeda and their allies. Damascus believes the security and well being of the Kurds is the result of its Arab and Muslim entourage: it will certainly not be created by the partition of the country they live in, nor by following US policy. In fact, the problems between Damascus and al-Hasaka started when the Americans landed in the north east of Syria. This is when Saleh Muslim, chairman of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), attacked Iran and praised Saudi Arabia’s role in the region following the US’s unlawful intervention in Syria. The US claims to be fighting ISIS, but it also hits the Syrian Army and its allies in many circumstances. So the relationship between the Syrian Kurds and Damascus has not yet reached a dead end.

The US intervention and the Kurds’ hostile attitude towards Syrian allies pushed Damascus, Moscow and Iran away from being Kurdish protectors. (Moscow and the Syrian Army originally created a demarcation line around Manbij to pay back the Kurds, protect these and prevent Turkey from taking the city that the Kurds had liberated from ISIS.) This attitude then allowed Turkey to attack Afrin and lift the Kurds’ “protection,” disrupting the US plan to occupy part of Syria and divide the country.

There were serious contradictions in the latter years in the dynamic relating to Turkey and the Kurds, in both Syria and Iraq:

• Turkey allowed the Peshmerga to fight along with their enemies, the Syrian Kurds YPG, in Kobane (or Ain al-Arab) when ISIS was about to take control of the city. The same Turkey will work hard today to stop Kurdistan from declaring its independence in Iraq, and will do anything to prevent the Kurds in Syria from creating their State, Rojava, and certainly won’t hesitate to hit those (Syrian Democratic Forces) who became the US proxies in Bilad al-Sham.
• Masoud Barzani, in 2014, praised ISIS by calling it a “tribes’ revolution” because he believed the terrorist group would establish a Sunnistan and therefore allow an independent Kurdistan, with Iraq divided into three states. Masoud realised immediately later that the extremist group wanted the rich-oil Kirkuk: they attacked Erbil and aimed to enslave the Kurds. This is when he changed his stance towards ISIS, joined Baghdad in its fight against terrorism, and fought along with the Iraqi Army for three years to protect the unity of Iraq. Today, the Kurdish Leader wants to declare the independence of Kurdistan following the referendum he has called. But, also today, Masoud cannot simply ask for the support of Turkey and Iran in his plan of independence and then give a green light to internal troubles in these countries where there are millions of Kurds all with a claim to independence.
• Iran supported the Kurds by providing weapons to protect its autonomous federation in 2014 when Peshmerga had only old AK-47 and few mortars to defend themselves against ISIS, following the fall of Mosul. The US delayed their military support and war on terrorism in Iraq, allowing a strong bond to be established between Masoud Barzani and Tehran (mainly with the IRGC-Quds commander Qassem Soleimani) where the Peshmerga exchanged the Iranian courtesy by establishing a supply line between Kurdistan and the Syrian Army, Tehran’s ally. Today, the same Iran will do its best to prevent the birth of an independent state in Kurdistan and will join Turkey in preventing such a partition from taking place.

The Iraqi Kurds disagree with the PKK in Sinjar and even fought against them on some occasions. They don’t get on with the YPG and the PKK in general due to differences in ideology and objectives. But when there is a danger to fight against, all Kurds become united under one national identity and one ethnicity. This is why countries hosting Kurds in the Middle East are certain that the independence declaration of Kurds in one country will be contagious to all Kurds in all countries. This is mainly why many countries in the Middle East will do everything in their power to prevent their independence.

Baghdad considers Kurdistan as an autonomous federation protected by the constitution. The officials in Baghdad recognise they did not implement the constitution: they neither resolved the disputed area nor did they fulfil their financial commitments towards Erbil. Iraqi officials see no purpose in following a referendum in Kurdistan for independence because this will invite the Sunni also to ask for an independent state and indeed the radical Shia to claim their own state. This may also spread towards the Shia in other parts of the Middle East.

Baghdad is also expected to stop all kinds of collaboration with Kurdistan if Masoud calls for an independent state. Kurds living under the central government face an unknown future, even if most Shia politicians in power have Kurdish origins. No future financial support will be granted and the central government in Baghdad may prevent any aircraft from reaching Kurdistan, a State surrounded by land and without access to the sea. It will be a silent war against Kurdistan, the real war against ISIS will not be over. The PMU may prevent the Peshmerga from recovering disputed areas, leaving Erbil as a state with continuing insecurity.

The Gulf countries will definitely support a partition of Iraq and Syria because that would give them what they have lost in Bilad al-Sham and Mesopotamia through many years of war. Saudi Arabia failed to divide Iraq by creating a Sunni State and failed to overthrow Bashar al-Assad by allowing Sunni extremists to take control of the country.

If the Kurds declare independence Kurdistan is expected to suffer serious recession, but the countries of the region, mainly Saudi Arabia, will be happy to help by attracting the Kurds into their orbit. In fact, Saleh Muslim already took this path: soon we will have Barzani praising Saudi Arabia.

Masoud Barzani needs to prepare solid ground before any independent Kurdistan adventure. He is sending envoys to Baghdad, Tehran, Ankara and the GCC to get feedback from these capitals about his independence project. He is also saying the referendum doesn’t mean immediate independence: it is only a question of timing. But this perilously premature announcement may prevent the future Kurdish generation from ever fulfilling their dream of a State.

Saudi Arabia, Israel and the US are not in themselves enough to secure and protect a prosperous and peaceful Kurdish State because the timing – amazingly seen by Barzani to be the best opportunity – could not be worse. The situation remains so volatile that every single move could take off in a dramatic direction, and reshape the entire Middle East. What is common between the 25^th of September 2017 referendum and the 2005 referendum is that both should remain stored in a drawer.

Elijah J. Magnier is a Senior Political Risk Analyst with over 32 years’ experience covering Europe & the Middle East. Acquiring in-depth experience, robust contacts and political knowledge in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan and Syria. Specialized in political assessments, strategic planning and thorough insight in political networks.

 

There is an element of confusion which has served to divide the 9/11 Truth movement. Saudi Arabia is said to have supported the alleged 9/11 highjackers. 

What are the implications of “the Saudi did it” narrative?

It is very convenient to say that Saudi Arabia was behind the 9/11 terrorists. Why, because it upholds the official narrative of the 9/11 Commission Report and it whitewashes the US Deep State including its military and intelligence apparatus. 

The official narrative –which has been amply refuted– states that 19 Al Qaeda hijackers brought down the WTC towers, i.e Muslims were behind the attack on America, –i.e. it was not an “inside job” or a false flag.

And now what is happening is that Saudi Arabia is blamed for having supported the al Qaeda hijackers.

And if Saudi Arabia is held responsible, pari passu the official narrative holds, namely the hijackers did it with the support of the House of Saud. 

And now 9/11 truth activists are holding a demonstration on September 11, 2017 in front of the Saudi embassy in Washington which will receive extensive coverage by the US corporate media.

What this means is that many 9/11 truthers have been sucked into the “Saudi Arabia did it” narrative, which serves to divide the 9/11 Truth movement, while upholding the official narrative, i.e “the CIA, the Pentagon et al were not involved”. 

And the families of the victims are waging a legal battle against Saudi Arabia.

Why is this a red herring which serves to perpetuate the “Big Lie”.

Yes, Saudi Arabia is a sponsor of al Qaeda. That is amply documented. But it is a sponsor of al Qaeda on behalf of the US. And this also applies to Saudi support of Al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

Saudi Arabia’s intelligence services work hand in glove with the CIA

But Al Qaeda WAS NO BEHIND THE COLLAPSE OF THE WTC TOWERS. And going after the House of Saud serves a very useful purpose: it whitewashes the US Deep State including the CIA and the Pentagon of any involvement in the 9/11 attacks.

It is fairly well established that the hijackers did not bring down the towers; they were brought down through controlled demolition.

And the hijackers allegedly led by Osama bin laden did not have the ability to implement the pulling down of the WTC buildings, not to mention WTC Building Seven, which collapsed mysteriously in the afternoon of 9/11, with CNN and BCC reporting the collapse 20 minutes before the actual occurrence.

But there is a lot more to the “Saudi did it” saga which serves as a convenient instrument of propaganda.

The two key figures behind this wave of propaganda (initiated in 2014) are former Senator Bob Graham, who led the joint inquiry of the Senate and the House intelligence committees together with Rep. Porter Goss, a career CIA official who was subsequently appointed Director of National Intelligence (DNI) by the Bush administration.

Graham coordinated the drafting and editing of the joint Senate-House report including a 28 classified pages on Saudi Arabia’s alleged role. These 28 pages were eventually declassified.

Framed in a “Tele Novela” style scenario featuring wealthy Saudis in the plush suburban surroundings of Sarasota, Florida two weeks before 9/11, the New York Post described the circumstances of Saudi involvement (quoting the FBI 9/11 Review Commission Report and the 28 pages of the joint inquiry report) in an article entitled How the FBI is whitewashing the Saudi connection to 9/11: .

Former Democratic Sen. Bob Graham, who in 2002 chaired the congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11, maintains the FBI is covering up a Saudi support cell in Sarasota for the hijackers. He says the al-Hijjis “urgent” pre-9/11 exit suggests “someone may have tipped them off” about the coming attacks.

Graham has been working with a 14-member group in Congress to urge President Obama to declassify 28 pages of the final report of his inquiry which were originally redacted, wholesale, by President George W. Bush. ….

Sources who have read the censored Saudi section say it cites CIA and FBI case files that directly implicate officials of the Saudi Embassy in Washington and its consulate in Los Angeles in the attacks — which if true, would make 9/11 not just an act of terrorism, but an act of war by a foreign government. The section allegedly identifies high-level Saudi officials and intelligence agents by name, and details their financial transactions and other dealings with the San Diego hijackers. It zeroes in on the Islamic Affairs Department of the Saudi Embassy, among other Saudi entities.

The [FBI] review commission, however, concludes there is “no evidence” that any Saudi official provided assistance to the hijackers, even though the panel failed to interview Graham or his two key investigators — former Justice Department attorney Dana Lesemann and FBI investigator Michael Jacobson — who ran down FBI leads tying Saudi officials to the San Diego hijackers and documented their findings in the 28 pages. (emphasis added)

While Graham is now heralded by the mainstream media as a 911 Truther, the evidence suggests that immediately in the wake of 9/11, he was involved (together with Porter Goss) in a coverup on behalf of Bush-Cheney.

The 28 pages have nothing to do with 9/11 Truth.  This alleged Saudi involvement in the 9/11 attacks has served to precipitate segments of the 9/11 Truth movement into an erroneous and contradictory discourse.

Saudi Arabia may have supported the 9/11 Al Qaeda terrorists, but the terrorists did not bring down the WTC towers.

The objective of the Saudi connection propaganda ploy is to ultimately sustain the official narrative which states that Islamic terrorists were behind the 9/11 attacks, which has been disproved by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. 

Even assuming that Al Qaeda were behind the attacks, it is amply documented that al Qaeda, “the Base” was a creation of the CIA and that Osama bin Laden was a CIA intelligence asset. In this regard,  Saudi Arabia as well Pakistan were involved in close liaison with the CIA in the recruitment and training of terrorists.

And because Bob Graham accused the FBI and the federal government, the 9/11 Truth movement applauds without realizing that these accusations directed against the FBI are “framed” with a view to sustaining the mainstream 9/11 narrative.

What is at stake is a desperate ploy to uphold the legend that Muslims were behind 9/11 and that Saudi Arabia was behind the terrorists giving them money, with the FBI involved in a coverup, George W. Bush  protecting his Saudi cronies because the Bushes and the bin Ladens were “intimo amigos”.

Below is an excerpt of my April 2015 article Saudi Arabia’s Alleged Involvement in the 9/11 Attacks:

Graham’s staged accusations thereby serve to distract the American public’s attention from the real evidence, amply documented  that the WTC towers were brought down through controlled demolition and that Islamic terrorists were not behind the 9/11 attacks. The issue of Saudi financial support of al Qaeda is not only known and documented since the heyday of the Soviet Afghan war, it is irrelevant in establishing who was behind the terror attacks. Moreover, the contents of the 28 classified pages are known.

In a bitter irony, Graham’s track record (mentioned above) in supporting the official 9/11 narrative on behalf of Bush-Cheney is not mentioned: 

Former Senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.), who co-chaired a congressional inquiry into 9/11 — separate from the 9/11 Commission — stated, as though now it was obvious, “None of the people leading this investigation think it is credible that 19 people — most who could not speak English and did not have previous experience in the United States — could carry out such a complicated task without external assistance.”

Now, Graham says, a breakthrough may finally be around the corner with the upcoming declassification of the 28 pages of the “Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001.”

Calling for the official release and publication of the 28 page classified section of the joint inquiry report pertaining to Saudi Arabia is an obvious red-herring. The objective is to confuse matters, create divisions within the 9/11 Truth movement and ultimately dispel the fact that the 9/11 attacks were a carefully organized False Flag event which was used to declare war on Afghanistan as well as usher in sweeping anti-terrorist legislation.

Both the Congressional inquiry as well the 9/11 Commission report are flawed, their objective was to sustain the official narrative that America was under attack on September 11, 2001. And Graham’s role in liaison with the CIA, is “damage control” with a view to protecting those who were behind the demolition of the WTC towers as well sustaining the Al Qaeda legend, which constitutes the cornerstone of US military doctrine under the so-called “Global War on Terrorism”.

Without 9/11 and the “Global War on Terrorism”, the warmongers in high office would not have a leg to stand on. In turn, 9/11 Truth is an encroachment which undermines war propaganda and the US-led campaign of Islamophobia, which is sweeping the Western World.  (Michel Chossudovsky,  Saudi Arabia’s Alleged Involvement in the 9/11 Attacks, Global Research, April 14, 2015)

The length to which Hillary Clinton and her team will go to shift blame onto others for President Trump’s victory last November is stunning. Adam Parkhomenko, a long time aide to Hillary Clinton, took to Twitter Friday evening to rant about how great his boss’s presidential campaign was in 2016, while taking shots at her primary opponent Bernie Sanders. 

In the middle of Parkomenko’s thread, the Clinton aide insinuates something quite explosive — Bernie Sanders may have colluded with Russia in the Democratic primary.

“PS…you seem to ignore the Russia support online for Bernie during the primaries. The guy is hiding something. Not sure I want to know what,” the aide tweeted.

Ready for Hillary was a movement. Was proud to run the PAC. We didn't sell those. Also, how could "Bernie would have won" when Bernie lost? https://t.co/DAtt1ZRYNI

— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) September 9, 2017

So much fake news. You go to bed at night praying a fake Democrat runs again in 2020. Brady. Amber. Magnitsky. Sanctions.

— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) September 9, 2017

Below is the tweet (and screenshot) where the insinuation was made.

PS…you seem to ignore the Russia support online for Bernie during the primaries. The guy is hiding something. Not sure I want to know what

— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) September 9, 2017

Meanwhile, once again, Bernie called the most qualified candidate for president ever unqualified. Then said of course she is. Not an apology

— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) September 9, 2017

Who is Adam Parkomenko? He’s one of the two campaign aides Hillary Clinton hired for her “Resistance” super PAC and worked as a state political director for Clinton as far back as 2008.

Buzzfeed reports:

Hillary Clinton has hired two political operatives from her 2016 presidential campaign to help manage Onward Together, the project she founded this spring with former governor Howard Dean to fund and support a coalition of Democratic groups led by activists and organizers.

The new additions, Emmy Ruiz and Adam Parkhomenko, held central roles on Clinton’s campaign: Ruiz delivered key victories as state director in Nevada during the primary and in Colorado during the general election; Parkhomenko worked in headquarters as her director of grassroots engagement before moving to the Democratic National Committee. Both served on Clinton’s first presidential bid in 2008.

Dean, the Onward Together co-founder, confirmed the recent hires on Friday. The two former campaign aides will be working on Onward Together as consultants.

Clinton’s new group, registered in May as a 501c4 organization with an affiliated super PAC, is working to establish a small but diverse cooperative of about 10 to 12 grassroots efforts, each one focused on a different area of the energy and activism set off by Donald Trump’s election and presidency. Dean said they are still in the process vetting groups to add to the coalition, which already includes organizations such as Swing Left, Emerge America, and Run For Something.

Failed Democratic presidential candidate and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders recently fired back at Hillary Clinton’s comments regarding Sanders in her upcoming book detailing her election loss.

Sanders speculated whether anyone actually believed any of her ridiculous stories. While on “All In with Chris Hayes” on MSNBC, Sen. Sanders responded to an excerpt from Clinton’s book wherein her policy adviser Jake Sullivan called Sanders’ policy ideas reminiscent of a scene from “Something About Mary” wherein a hitchhiker comes up with a plan to make 7-minute abs to top 8-minute abs:

“I.e., Bernie Sanders just stole all of Hillary Clinton’s ideas. Does anybody really believe that? The truth is, and the real story is, that the ideas that we brought forth during that campaign, which was so crazy and so radical, have increasingly become mainstream.”

Sanders went on to cite his ludicrous proposal of a $15 minimum wage, $1 trillion infrastructure overhaul program, his bogus “tuition free college” (meaning – free at the expense of taxpayers) and “Medicare for all.”

The excerpt via the Hill reads:

“That’s what it was like in policy debates with Bernie. We would promise a bold infrastructure investment plan or an ambitious new apprenticeship program for young people, and then Bernie would announce basically the same thing, but bigger. On issue after issue, it was like he kept promising four-minute abs, or even no-minutes abs. Magic abs!”

Watch the video below:

.@SenSanders reacts to @HillaryClinton book excerpt: "Does anybody really believe that?" #inners https://t.co/Z7ah7oJBWz

— All In w/Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) September 8, 2017

Excerpts from Hillary’s  book have been released and she reportedly takes a few swipes at primary opponent Bernie Sanders.

CNN contributor Brianna Keilar responded to Hillary’s swipes:

It speaks to an issue that Hillary Clinton has had. I think we’ve all seen this where she struggles sometimes to take responsibility… But she came in with weaknesses that were completely self-created and for an opponent to ignore those things, to not really run the emails, and those things, to not really capitalize on them would have been political negligence.

And this was after Bernie endorsed Hillary and campaigned with her after she stole the primary from him!

Wow.

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The Alleged 9/11 Hijackers: The Claim that Mohamed Atta Had Become a Fanatically Religious Muslim

By Consensus911.org, September 10, 2017

In addition to the fact that Mohamed el-Amir was reportedly very devout, whereas the reported behavior of the man known as Mohamed Atta in America indicated that he was not, very different adjectives were commonly used to describe the two men’s character traits.

Fake 9/11 Activism on 9/11. “Saudi Arabia was Behind the Attacks”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, September 10, 2017

There is an element of confusion which has served to divide the 9/11 Truth movement. Saudi Arabia is said to have supported the alleged 9/11 hijackers. What are the implications of “the Saudi did it” narrative?

It is very convenient to say that Saudi Arabia was behind the 9/11 terrorists. Why, because it upholds the official narrative of the 9/11 Commission Report and it whitewashes the US Deep State including its military and intelligence apparatus.

Does 9/11 Still Matter? Conversations with Richard Gage and Michel Chossudovsky

By Michael Welch, Prof Michel Chossudovsky, and Richard Gage, September 09, 2017

 

The ‘new normal’ was ushered in on September 11, 2001. Americans, suddenly realizing how vulnerable they were to attack from this outside enemy, backed their president’s plan to reek vengeance on the ‘evildoers’ who ‘hate us for our freedoms.’ Americans also seemed to invite the ‘necessary’ steps of enhancing state surveillance powers, and liberty undermining ‘anti-terrorism’ measures like the PATRIOT Act as a safeguard against the terrorist menace lurking under their beds.

Where Was Osama bin Laden on September 10, 2001? One Day Before 9/11 He Was in a Pakistani Military Hospital…

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, September 08, 2017

The Pakistani military headquarters located in Rawalpindi is integrated by resident US military and intelligence advisers working with their Pakistani colleagues, who routinely report to Washington. It would be impossible for Osama bin Laden to enter a Pakistani military hospital unnoticed. Osama is a CIA “intelligence asset”. His whereabouts are known.

9/11: The Pentagon’s B-Movie

By Graeme MacQueen, August 31, 2017

The events that took place in the United States on September 11, 2001 were real and they were extremely violent. As David Griffin has recently shown in detail, they also had catastrophic real-life consequences for both the United States and the world.

Real Americans Question 9/11

By Kevin Ryan, April 17, 2017

It’s important to know what makes someone an American and what does not. Here are some examples of what does not make someone an American.

The 9/11 Attacks, “Keeping the Lid on the Lie”: Media Response to the Growing Influence of the 9/11 Truth Movement

By Elizabeth Woodworth, March 12, 2014

This collective human experience has been so powerful and haunting that no equally powerful and pervasive experience has emerged to show that the Twin Towers were not brought down by Muslim hijackers run by Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan.

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For those of us committed to systematically reducing and, one day, ending human violence, it is vital to understand what is causing and driving it so that effective strategies can be developed for dealing with violence in its myriad contexts. For an understanding of the fundamental cause of violence, see ‘Why Violence?’

However, while we can tackle violence at its source by each of us making and implementing ‘My Promise to Children’, the widespread violence in our world is driven by just one factor: fear or, more accurately, terror. And I am not talking about jihadist terror or even the terror caused by US warmaking. Let me explain, starting from the beginning.

The person who is fearless has no use for violence and has no trouble achieving their goals, including their own defence, without it. But fearlessness is a state that few humans would claim. Hence violence is rampant.

Moreover, once someone is afraid, they will be less likely to perceive the truth behind the delusions with which they are presented. They will also be less able to access and rely on other mental functions, such as conscience and intelligence, to decide their course of action in any context. Worse still, the range of their possible responses to perceived threats will be extremely limited. And they will be more easily mobilised to support or even participate in violence, in the delusional belief that this will make them safe.

For reasons such as these, it is useful for political and corporate elites to keep us in a state of fear: social control is much easier in this context. But so is profit maximization. And the most profitable enterprise on the planet is violence. In essence then: more violence leads to more fear making it easier to gain greater social control to inflict more violence… And starting early, by terrorizing children, is the most efficient way to initiate and maintain this cycle. See ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

So, for example, if you think the massive number of police killings of innocent civilians in the United States – see ‘Killed by Police’ and ‘The Counted: People killed by police in the US’ – is a problem, you are not considering it from the perspective of maintaining elite social control and maximizing corporate profit. Police killings of innocent civilians is just one (necessary) part of the formula for maintaining control and maximising profit.

This is because if you want to make a lot of money in this world, then killing or exploiting fellow human beings and destroying the natural world are the three most lucrative business enterprises on the planet. And we are now very good at it, as the record shows, with the planetary death toll from violence and exploitation now well over 100,000 human beings each day, 200 species driven to extinction each day and ecological destruction so advanced that the end of all life (not just human life) on Earth is postulated to occur within decades, if not sooner, depending on the scenario. See, for example, ‘The End of Being: Abrupt Climate Change One of Many Ecological Crises Threatening to Collapse the Biosphere’.

So what forms does this violence take? Here is a daily accounting.

Corporate capitalist control of national economies, held in place by military violence, kills vast numbers of people (nearly one million each week) by starving them to death in Africa, Asia and Central/South America. This is because this ‘economic’ system is designed and managed to allocate resources for military weapons and corporate profits for the wealthy, instead of resources for living.

Wars kill, wound and incapacitate a substantial number of civilians, mostly women and children, as do genocidal assaults, on a daily basis, in countries all over the planet. Wars also kill some soldiers and mercenaries.

Apart from those people we kill every day, we sell many women and children into sexual slavery, we kidnap children to terrorise them into becoming child soldiers and force men, women and children to work as slave labourers, in horrific conditions, in fields and factories (and buy the cheap products of their exploited labour as our latest ‘bargain’).

We condemn millions of people to live in poverty, homelessness and misery, even in industrialized countries where the refugees of western-instigated wars and climate-destroying policies are often treated with contempt. We cause many children to be born with grotesque genetic deformities because we use horrific weapons, like those with depleted uranium, on their parents. We also inflict violence on women and children in many other forms, ranging from ‘ordinary’ domestic violence to genital mutilation.

We ensnare and imprison vast numbers of people in the police-legal-prison complex. See ‘The Rule of Law: Unjust and Violent’. We pay the pharmaceutical industry and its handmaiden, psychiatry, to destroy our minds with drugs and electro-shocking. See ‘Defeating the Violence of Psychiatry’.We imprison vast numbers of children in school in the delusional belief that this is good for them. See ‘Do We Want School or Education?’And we kill or otherwise exploit animals, mostly for human consumption, in numbers so vast the death toll is probably beyond calculation.

We also engage in an endless assault on the Earth’s biosphere. Apart from the phenomenal damage done to the environment and climate by military violence: we emit gases and pollutants to heat and destroy the atmosphere and destroy its oxygen content. We cut down and burn rainforests. We cut down mangroves and woodlands and pave grasslands. We poison the soil with herbicides and pesticides. We pollute the waterways and oceans with everything from carbon and nitrogenous fertilizers to plastic, as well as the radioactive contamination from Fukushima. And delude ourselves that our token gestures to remedy this destruction constitutes ‘conservation’.

So if you are seeking work, whether as a recent graduate or long-term unemployed person, then the most readily available form of work, where you will undoubtedly be exploited as well, is a government bureaucracy or large corporation that inflicts violence on life itself. Whether it is the military, the police, legal or prison system, a weapons, fossil fuel, banking, pharmaceutical, media, agricultural, logging, food or water corporation, a farm that exploits animals or even a retail outlet that sells poisonous, processed and often genetically-mutilated substances under the label ‘food’ – see ‘Defeating the Violence in Our Food and Medicine’ – you will have many options to help add to the profits of those corporations and government ‘services’ that exist to inflict violence on you, your family and every other living being that shares this biosphere.

Tragically, genuinely ethical employment is a rarity because most industries, even those that seem benign like the education, finance, information technology and electronics industries, usually end up providing skilled personnel, finance, services or components that are used to inflict violence. And other industries such as those in insurance and superannuation, like the corporate banks, usually invest in violence (such as the military and fossil fuel industries): it is the most profitable.

So while many government bureaucracies and corporate industries exist to inflict violence, in one form or another, they can only do so because we are too scared to insist on seeking out ethical employment. In the end, we will take a job as a teacher, corporate journalist or pharmaceutical drug pusher, serve junk food, work in a bank, join the police or military, work in the legal system, assemble a weapons component… rather than ask ourselves the frightening questions ‘Is this nonviolent? Is this ethical? Does it enhance life?’

And yes, I know about structural violence and the way it limits options and opportunities for those of particular classes, races, genders…. But if ordinary people like us don’t consider moral issues and make moral choices, why should governments and corporations?

Moral choices? you might ask in confusion. In this day and age? Well, it might seem old-fashioned but, in fact, while most of us have been drawn along by the events in our life to make choices based on such considerations as self-interest, personal gain and ‘financial security’, there is a deeper path. Remember Gandhi? ‘True morality consists not in following the beaten track, but in finding the true path for ourselves, and fearlessly following it.’

Strange words they no doubt sound in this world where our attention is endlessly taken by all of those high-tech devices. But Gandhi’s words remind us that there is something deeper in life that the violence we have suffered throughout our lives has taken from us. The courage to be ourselves and to seek our own unique destiny.

Do you have this courage? To be yourself, rather than a cog in someone else’s machine? To refuse to submit to the violence that surrounds and overwhelms us on a daily basis?

If you are inclined to ponder these questions, you might also consider making moral choices that work systematically to end the violence in our world: consider participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’, signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’ and/or helping to develop and implement an effective strategy to resist one or the other of the many threats to our survival using the strategic framework explained in Nonviolent Campaign Strategy.

Of course, these choices aren’t for everyone. As Gandhi observed: ‘Cowards can never be moral.’

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.

Donald Trump isn’t going to start a war with North Korea. That’s just not going to happen.

Not only does the United States not have the ground forces for such a massive operation but, more important, a war with the North would serve no strategic purpose at all. The US already has the arrangement it wants on the Peninsula. The South remains under US military occupation, the economic and banking systems have been successfully integrated into the US-dominated western system, and the strategically-located landmass in northeast Asia provides an essential platform for critical weapons systems that will be used to encircle and control fast-emerging rivals, China and Russia.

So what would a war accomplish?

Nothing. As far as Washington is concerned, the status quo is just dandy.

And, yes, I realize that many people think Trump is calling the shots and that he is an impulsive amateur who might do something erratic that would trigger a nuclear conflagration with the North. That could happen, but I think the possibility is extremely remote. As you might have noticed, Trump has effectively handed over foreign policy to his generals, and those generals are closely aligned to powerful members of the foreign policy establishment who are using Trump’s reputation as a loose cannon to great effect. For example, by ratchetting up the rhetoric, (“fire and fury”, “locked and loaded”, etc) Trump has managed to stifle some of the public opposition to the deployment of the THAAD missile system which features “powerful AN/TPY-2 radar, that can be used to spy on Chinese territory, and the interceptors are designed to protect US bases and troops in the event of nuclear war with China or Russia.”

THAAD is clearly not aimed at North Korea which is small potatoes as far as Washington is concerned. It’s an essential part of the military buildup the US is stealthily carrying out to implement its “pivot to Asia” strategy.

Trump’s belligerence has also prompted a response from the North which has accelerated it ballistic missile and nuclear weapons testing.  The North’s reaction has stirred up traditional antagonisms which has helped to undermine the conciliatory efforts of  liberal President Moon Jae-in. At the same time, the North’s behavior has strengthened far-right groups that –among other things– want to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in the South. By playing to the right wing and exacerbating hostilities between North and South, Trump has helped to fend off efforts to reunify the country while creating a justification for continued US military occupation. In other words.

The crisis has clearly tightened Washington’s grip on the peninsula while advancing the interests of America’s elite powerbrokers. I seriously doubt that Trump conjured up this plan by himself. This is the work of his deep state handlers who have figured out how to use his mercurial personality to their advantage.

A Word About North Korea’s Nukes

Leaders in North Korea don’t want to blow their money on nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles when their people are on the brink of starvation. But what choice do they have? The primary responsibility of every government is to provide security for their people. That’s hard to do when the nation is still technically at war with a country that has toppled or tried to topple 50 sovereign governments in the last 70 years. The Korean War did not end with a treaty, it ended with an armistice which means the war is ongoing and could flare up at any time. And Washington won’t sign a treaty with the North because it despises their form of government, and is just waiting for the opportunity to force them from power. Trump is no different from most of his predecessors in this regard. He hates the leadership in Pyongyang and makes no bones about it.

Bottom line: The US refuses to provide the North with any written guarantees that it won’t resume hostilities, kill its people and blow their cities to smithereens. So, naturally, the North has taken steps to defend itself. And, yes, Kim Jong-un fully realizes that if he ever used his nukes in an act of aggression, the United States would –as Colin Powell breezily opined– “turn the North into a charcoal briquette.” But Kim is not going to use his nukes because he has no territorial ambitions nor does he have any driving desire to be subsumed into a fiery ball of ash.  His nukes are merely bargaining chits for future negotiations with Washington. The only problem is that Trump doesn’t  want to bargain because US geopolitical interests are better served by transforming a few pathetic missile tests into an Armageddon-type drama. No one knows how to exploit a crisis better than Washington.

Does Trump know anything about the history of the current crisis?  Does he know that North Korea agreed to end its nuclear weapons program in 1994 if the US met its modest demands?  Does he know that the US agreed to those terms but then failed to hold up its end of the bargain?   Does he know that the North honored its commitments under the agreement but eventually got tired of being double-crossed by the US so they resumed their plutonium enrichment program?  Does he know that that’s why the North has nuclear weapons today, because the United States broke its word and scotched the agreement?

That’s not conjecture. That’s history.

Here’s a clip from an article in the Independent that provides a brief outline of the so called  Framework Agreement:

“Under the terms of the 1994 framework, North Korea agreed to freeze and ultimately dismantle its nuclear programme in exchange for “the full normalisation of political and economic relations with the United States”. This meant four things:

By 2003, a US-led consortium would build two light-water nuclear reactors in North Korea to compensate for the loss of nuclear power.

Until then, the US would supply the north with 500,000 tons per year of heavy fuel.

The US would lift sanctions, remove North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, and – perhaps most importantly – normalise the political relationship, which is still subject to the terms of the 1953 Korean War armistice.

Finally, both sides would provide “formal assurances” against the threat or use of nuclear weapons.” (“Why America’s 1994 deal with North Korea failed – and what Trump can learn from it”, The Independent)

It was a totally straightforward agreement that met the requirements of both parties. The North got a few economic perks along with the security assurances they desperately wanted and, in return, the US got to monitor any and all nuclear sites, thus, preventing the development of weapons of mass destruction.  Everyone got exactly what they wanted, right? There was only one glitch: The US started foot-dragging from Day 1. The lightwater reactors never got beyond the foundation stage and the heavy fuel deliveries got more and more infrequent. In contrast, the North Koreans stuck religiously to the letter of the agreement. They did everything that was expected of them and more. In fact, according to the same article, four years after the agreement went into effect:

 “both the US and the international atomic energy agency were satisfied that there had been ‘no fundamental violation of any aspect of the framework agreement’ by North Korea. But on its own pledges, Washington failed to follow through.” (Independent)

There you have it: The North kept its word, but the US didn’t. It’s that simple.

This is an important point given the fact that the media typically mischaracterizes what actually took place and who should be held responsible. The onus does not fall on Pyongyang, it falls on Washington. Here’s more from the same article:

“On its own pledges, Washington failed to follow through. The light-water reactors were never built. …Heavy fuel shipments were often delayed….North Korea was not removed from the state department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism until 2008, though it had long met the criteria for removal….Most importantly, no action was taken to formally end the Korean War – which was never technically ended – by replacing the 1953 ceasefire with a peace treaty. The “formal assurances” that the US would not attack North Korea were not provided until six years after the framework was signed.”  (Independent)

When Bush was elected in 2000,  things got much worse. The North was included in Bush’s the Axis of Evil speech, it was also listed as  a “rogue regime against which the US should be prepared to use force”, and the Pentagon stepped up its joint-military drills in the South which just added more gas to the fire. Eventually, Bush abandoned the agreement altogether and the North went back to building nukes.

Then came Obama who wasn’t much better than Bush, except for the public relations, of course.  As Tim Shorrock points out in his excellent article at The Nation,  Obama sabotaged the Six-Party Talks, suspended energy assistance to pressure the North to accept harsher “verification plans”,  “abandoned the idea of direct talks” with Pyongyang, and “embarked on a series of military exercises with South Korea that increased in size and tempo over the course of his administration and are now at the heart of the tension with Kim Jong-un.”

So although Obama was able to conceal his cruelty and aggression behind the image of “peacemaker”, relations with the North continued to deteriorate and the situation got progressively worse.

Check out these brief excerpts from Shorrock’s article which help to provide a thumbnail sketch of what really happened and who is responsible:

“The Agreed Framework led North Korea to halt its plutonium-based nuclear-weapons program for over a decade, forgoing enough enrichment to make over 100 nuclear bombs. “What people don’t know is that North Korea made no fissile material whatsoever from 1991 to 2003.”

“…the framework remained in effect well into the Bush administration. In 1998, the State Department’s Rust Deming testified to Congress that  “there is no fundamental violation of any aspect of the framework agreement.”

“…Pyongyang was prepared to shut down its development, testing, and deployment of all medium- and long-range missiles.”

“By 1997…the North Koreans were complaining bitterly that the United States was slow to deliver its promised oil and stalling on its pledge to end its hostile policies…”

“It was against this backdrop—Pyongyang’s growing conviction the US was not living up to its commitments—that the North in 1998 began to explore” other military options.”

“Bush tore up the framework agreement, exacerbating the deterioration in relations he had sparked a year earlier when he named North Korea part of his “axis of evil” in January 2002. In response, the North kicked out the IAEA inspectors and began building what would become its first bomb, in 2006, triggering a second nuclear crisis that continues to this day.”  (“Diplomacy With North Korea Has Worked Before, and Can Work Again”, Tim Shorrock, The Nation)

Now the North has hydrogen bombs and Washington is still playing its stupid games. This whole fake crisis is a big smokescreen designed to conceal Washington’s imperial machinations. Trump is using Kim’s missile tests as a pretext to extend the Pentagon’s military tentacles deeper into Asia so the US can assume a dominant role in the world’s fastest growing region. It’s the same game Washington has been playing for the last hundred years.  Unfortunately, they’re pretty good at it.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at [email protected].

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said Thursday that Venezuela will be looking to “free” itself from the U.S. dollar next week, Reuters reports. According to the outlet, Maduro will look to use the weakest of two official foreign exchange regimes (essentially the way Venezuela will manage its currency in relation to other currencies and the foreign exchange market), along with a basket of currencies.

According to Reuters, Maduro was referring to Venezuela’s current official exchange rate, known as DICOM, in which the dollar can be exchanged for 3,345 bolivars. At the strongest official rate, one dollar buys only 10 bolivars, which may be one of the reasons why Maduro wants to opt for some of the weaker exchange rates.

“Venezuela is going to implement a new system of international payments and will create a basket of currencies to free us from the dollar,” Maduro said in a multi-hour address to a new legislative “superbody.” He reportedly did not provide details of this new proposal.

Maduro hinted that the South American country would look to using the yuan instead, among other currencies.

“If they pursue us with the dollar, we’ll use the Russian ruble, the yuan, yen, the Indian rupee, the euro,” Maduro also said.

Venezuela sits on the world’s largest oil reserves but has been undergoing a major crisis, with millions of people going hungry inside the country which has been plagued with rampant, increasing inflation. In that context, the recently established economic blockade by the Trump administration only adds to the suffering of ordinary Venezuelans rather than helping their plight.

According to Reuters, a thousand dollars’ worth of local currency obtained when Maduro came to power in 2013 is now be worth little over one dollar.

A theory advanced in William R. Clark’s book Petrodollar Warfare – and largely ignored by the mainstream media – essentially asserts that Washington-led interventions in the Middle East and beyond are fueled by the direct effect on the U.S. dollar that can result if oil-exporting countries opt to sell oil in alternative currencies. For example, in 2000, Iraq announced it would no longer use U.S. dollars to sell oil on the global market. It adopted the euro, instead.

By February 2003, the Guardian reported that Iraq had netted a “handsome profit” after making this policy change. Despite this, the U.S. invaded not long after and immediately switched the sale of oil back to the U.S. dollar.

In Libya, Muammar Gaddafi was punished for a similar proposal to create a unified African currency backed by gold, which would be used to buy and sell African oil. Though it sounds like a ludicrous reason to overthrow a sovereign government and plunge the country into a humanitarian crisis, Hillary Clinton’s leaked emails confirmed this was the main reason Gaddafi was overthrown. The French were especially concerned by Gaddafi’s proposal and, unsurprisingly, became one of the war’s main contributors. (It was a French Rafaele jet that struck Gaddafi’s motorcade, ultimately leading to his death).

Iran has been using alternative currencies like the yuan for some time now and shares a lucrative gas field with Qatar, which may ultimately be days away from doing the same. Both countries have been vilified on the international stage, particularly under the Trump administration.

Nuclear giants China and Russia have been slowly but surely abandoning the U.S. dollar, as well, and the U.S. establishment has a long history of painting these two countries as hostile adversaries.

Now Venezuela may ultimately join the bandwagon, all the while cozying up to Russia, as well (unsurprisingly, Venezuela and Iran were identified in William R. Clark’s book as attracting particular geostrategic tensions with the United States). The CIA’s admission that it intends to interfere inside Venezuela to exact a change of government — combined with Trump’s recent threat of military intervention in Venezuela and Vice President Mike Pence’s warning that the U.S. will not “stand by” and watch Venezuela deteriorate — all start to make a lot more sense when viewed through this geopolitical lens.

What initially sounded like a conspiracy theory seems to be a more plausible reality as countries that begin dropping the U.S. dollar and opting for alternative currencies continuously — and without exception — end up targeted for regime change.

If the U.S. steps up its involvement in Venezuela, the reasons why should be clear to those who have been paying attention.

Renewal of the so-called Trident nuclear deterrent is a political decision not a military one and is being driven by political considerations rather than the actual requirement of Britain’s national defence. Furthermore, any actual deployment of ICBMs would, in practice, require the approval of the US president i.e. currently Donald Trump, his family and his Likud-leaning Congress.  Britain would require prior authority from Washington who in turn would probably seek advice from non-NATO member, Israel.

As the UK becomes increasingly vulnerable [allegedly] to threat from international terrorism, the so-called Trident [submarine-launched], nuclear deterrent should now be scrapped and replaced with 21st century, NATO sourced, military technology to defend our people and our shores – technology that is not dependent on the political agenda of a foreign state, either across the Atlantic or the Red Sea.

Unfortunately, European security has already been dangerously compromised by German Chancellor Merkel’s unilateral decision to supply Israel with a nuclear-ready submarine fleet having a second-strike capability but the European Parliament and Commission were never consulted. Furthermore, the state of Israel is not a party to the nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) nor the Chemical and Biological Weapons Conventions that banned the use of such weapons more than 20 years ago.

Netanyahu’s brand of Revisionist Zionism treats Chancellor Merkel and all Evangelical Christians as ‘useful idiots’ to be exploited for Israel’s political and military purposes. As a consequence, the evangelical German Chancellor and the allegedly corrupt Israeli prime minister have managed to irrevocably alter the global balance of power to satisfy their own political and religious agendas.

Britain’s national defence now needs to be put in the sole hands of our own elected Parliament as opposed to the US Congress or other foreign legislature.

Note: Angela Merkel was born nine years after WW2, on 17 July 1954, and has been German Chancellor since 2005. Being of Polish Lutheran ancestry she is a staunch member of the Evangelical Church of Berlin. 

In a speech to the Knesset in 2008, she declared that:

“Israel’s security was and Is a very important matter for every German Chancellor – and so it will be in the future, too. My statement must be understood in a very comprehensive way. It is frequently reduced to the military aspect, but it refers to an entirely fundamental commitment to Israel’s security. We are certainly not neutral.”

However, Merkel’s political agenda is based on her evangelical religious belief that requires all Jews to be baptised into the Church of Christ. It is, of course, a dangerous nonsense into which Britain should never have allowed itself to be drawn.

Scratch the skin of a saint, claimed George Orwell, and you are bound to find a sinner with an extensive resume. Such resumes are evaluated in these modern times by accolades, awards, and summits. The Noble Peace Prize tends to be crowning affirmation that somewhere along the line, you sufficiently fouled up to merit it.

The calls, some even shrill, to have the Nobel Prize taken off Aung San Suu Kyi, are distressed lamentations of misplaced loyalties, even love. The de facto leader of Myanmar is showing what others have in the past: partiality, a harsh streak, and a cold blooded instinct. The saint, in other words, has been scratched, and the unquestioning followers are startled.

When asked to respond to the arrival in Bangladesh of almost 150,000 stateless Muslim Rohingyas since August, the result of violence in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state, the leader sternly rebuked suggestions that there was a problem. After all, the initial violence had been perpetrated by assaults on an army base and police posts by Rohingya insurgents since October.

The problem she sought to address was that others were faking the record to advance the interests of terrorists, supplying the world with “a huge iceberg of misinformation”. (How delightful is Trumpland, with its tentacles so global and extensive they have found themselves in the speeches and opinions of a secularly ordained saint.)

Faking the fleeing of tens of thousands of persecuted souls would surely be a challenge. The response from Suu Kyi is a salutary reminder that genocides, atrocities and historical cruelties can be often denied with untroubled ease. Her statement in response to the crisis was one of conscious omission: the Rohingyas barely warranted a mention, except as a security challenge.

The statement issued from her office on Facebook claimed that the government had “already started defending all the people in Rakhine in the best way possible.” The misinformation campaign, she insisted, was coming from such individuals as the Turkish deputy prime minister, who deleted images of killings on Twitter after discovering they were not, in fact, from Myanmar.

The approach to misinformation taken by the government has been one of silence and containment. National security advisor Thaung Tun has made it clear that China and Russia will be wooed in efforts to frustrate any resolution that might make its way to the UN Security Council.

“China is our friend and we have a similar relationship with Russia, so it will not be possible for that issue to go forward.”

As for calls of terrorists sowing discord, Suu Kyi may well get her wish. Protests organised in Muslim regional powers are already pressing for the cutting of ties with Myanmar. Turkey is pressing for answers. The Islamist tide, should it duly affect the Rohingyas, will itself become a retaliatory reality.

This sting of crisis and realpolitik was all too much for certain members of the Suu Kyi fan club. It certainly was for veteran Guardian columnist George Monbiot. He, along with others, had looked to her when jailed (house arrest or otherwise) as pristine, the model prisoner, the ideal pro-democracy figure. When held captive, the purity was unquestioned.

Hopes were entrusted, and not counterfeit ones.

“To mention her was to invoke patience and resilience in the face of suffering, courage and determination in the unyielding struggle for freedom. She was an inspiration to us all.”[1]

Not so now. Crimes documented by the UN human rights report of February have been ignored. The deliberate destruction of crops, avoided. Humanitarian aid has been obstructed. The military, praised. When violence has been acknowledged, it has only been to blame insurgents who represent, in any case, an interloping people who are denied their ethnicity by the 1982 Citizenship Law.

“I believe,” writes Monbiot, “the Nobel Committee should retain responsibility for the prizes it awards, and withdraw them if its laureates later violate the principles for which they were recognised.”

How often has history shown that the prison is merely the prelude to a recurring nastiness, political calculation, and revenge? Far from enlightening the mind and restoring faith, it destroys optimism and vests the inmate with those survival skills that, when resorted to, can result in carnage and misery. Suu Kyi, in other words, is behaving politically, fearing the loss of her position, aware that behind her is a military that needs to be kept, at least partly, in clover.

Other Nobel Laureates have also added their voices to the roll call of concern, less of condemnation than encouragement. One is Professor Muhammed Yunus.

“These are her own people. She says ‘these are not my people, someone else’s people’, I would say she has completely departed from her original role which brought her the Nobel Prize.”[2]

Yunus, however, is more optimistic that the selfish, distancing leader will return to her peaceful credentials. From a dark sleep, she will rise.

“I still think she is the same Aung San Suu Kyi that won the Nobel Peace Prize; she will wake up to that person.”

Another is Desmond Tutu, who took the route of an open letter:

“My dear sister: If the political price of your ascension to the highest office in Myanmar is your silence, the price is surely too steep… We pray for you to speak out for justice, human rights and the unity of our people. We pray for you to intervene.”

The Nobel Institute, obviously moved by a sufficient number of calls to comment on the status of the award for the 1991 recipient, deemed the decision immutable.

“Neither Alfred Nobel’s will nor the statutes of the Nobel Foundation,” confirmed its head Olav Njølstad, “provide the possibility that a Nobel Prize – whether for physics, chemistry, medicine, literature or peace – can be revoked.”[3]

As for the prize itself, it is long axiomatic that persons who tend to get it have blood on their hands. The terrorist, reborn, is feted by the Nobel Prize Committee. Before ploughshares came swords. Before peace, there was the shedding of blood. But, in some cases, it may well be the reverse: from the ploughshares come the swords, and the Rohingyas are tasting that awful fact.

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

Notes

Featured image: Palestinians shop at the market in preparation for Eid. Sellers and vendors have seen a decrease in customers due to the austerity Palestinians are facing due to PA’s policies. [Mohammed Asad/Middle East Monitor]

Israel is attempting to thwart a Palestinian bid to join the United Nation’s World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO), arguing that the “State of Palestine” does not exist, according to the Jerusalem Post.

The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) Ministry of Tourism applied for membership into the organisation last year, and the issue is on the meeting agenda of the UNWTO General Assembly in China, which begins on Monday and runs through Saturday.

The UNWTO is based in Madrid, and describes itself as “responsible for the promotion of responsible, sustainable and universally accessible tourism”.

Israel has endeavoured to block the move by appealing to the outgoing WTO Secretary-General, Jordanian diplomat Taleb Rifai, and China where the conference is being held.

Tel Aviv has also involved the US, which has reportedly asked PA President Mahmoud Abbas to refrain from engaging in international organisations until the US releases its updated peace plan, warning that to act otherwise could damage their bilateral relations.

“Israel has taken all diplomatic measures to block the request,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman said. “We are not expecting any negative impact on Israel or its continued activity in the organisation – the expected damage will be to the organisation itself.”

If the bid is successful, it would be the second UN organisation, after UNESCO, to which the Palestinians have full membership. Human rights groups and Palestinian officials have regularly called on the UN to condemn the crimes of the Israeli occupation. Israel has ignored all resolutions contrary to their favour, and denounces the UN’s limited recognition of Palestine.

Israel was also angered in July following UNESCO rulings that condemned the continued occupation of Jerusalem and recognised Hebron as a Palestinian Heritage Site under threat from Israel. In response, Israel cut its funding to the international organisation by $1 million, with Defence Minister Avigdor Lierberman labelling the UN branch “anti-Semitic”.

The “Race for Raqqa” might have long been over ever since the Kurdish-led “Syrian Democratic Forces” (SDF) reached the northern edge of Daesh’s so-called “capital” a few months ago, but that didn’t mean that the battle for northeastern Syria was anywhere close to finished. So long as the besieged desert town of Deir ez-Zor remained under the terrorists’ occupation and the small contingent of Syrian Arab Army (SAA) troops heroically held out there for the past couple of years, then Damascus always had a shot at regaining most of its sovereignty in this corner of the country. Even so, none of this could have been taken for granted, as the Kurds have been racing through the desert to attack this town just as they’ve done with Raqqa, all with the intent of capturing it so as to increase the odds that they can either annex it into their self-declared “federation” or “trade” it back to Damascus in exchange for the central government recognizing their autonomy.

Now, though, that plan has been dealt a major blow ever since the SAA beat the Kurds to Deir ez-Zor, though there is the possibility that the Kurds might still launch their own uncoordinated operation against it from the north. Either way, however, the point is that Damascus stopped the Kurdish advance south and beyond the Euphrates, and that it now has a chance to even cross the mighty river downstream in achieving a bridgehead that could later be used for liberating the Kurdish-occupied territories if the order was ever given. That’s what the “Dash for Deir ez-Zor” was always about, determining the post-Daesh battle lines between Damascus and the Kurds, and whether it would be the “natural border” of the Euphrates or if one side could get a cross-river advantage against the other like how the Kurds did with Manbij and Tabqa further upstream. The reason why all of this is important is because it will play a role in deciding Syria’s internal political arrangement after the war.

To elaborate a bit on this, the Kurds want to create a de-facto independent sub-state “federalized”, or internally partitioned, political entity all to their own, which perfectly overlaps with the US’ plans for entrenching its existing military presence in the heart of the Mideast via a proxy entity such as this one. If the so-called “Rojava” of northeastern Syria could be strategically linked with a newly independent “Kurdistan” in northern Iraq, then the US would succeed in its quest to establish a wide belt of forward-operating bases at the pivotal crossroads between Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran, which in turn would enable it to indefinitely continue functioning as the most destabilizing divide-and-rule actor in this crucial region through the consecration of the “second geopolitical ‘Israel’” of “Kurdistan”. However, if Damascus emerges victorious in the “Dash for Deir ez-Zor”, then it has a chance to dismantle the illegal pro-American “federalized” entity on its territory so long as it can acquire a beachhead presence on the other side of the Euphrates River further downstream afterwards.

The post presented is the partial transcript of the CONTEXT COUNTDOWN radio program on Sputnik News, aired on Friday Sept 8, 2017:

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare.

Featured image is from the author.

---

Global Research announces the forthcoming release of  the print edition of Mark Taliano’s Book, “Voices from Syria”  which includes two additional chapters. 

Taliano talks and listens to the people of Syria. He reveals the courage and resilience of a Nation and its people in their day to day lives, after more than six years of US-NATO sponsored terrorism and three years of US “peacemaking” airstrikes.

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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Google forced Forbes magazine to remove a story documenting the tech giant’s manipulation of search results to promote Google Plus, its social media network, according to a former writer for the magazine.

Kashmir Hill, a longtime technology reporter for Forbes and current contributor to Gizmodo, went public with the revelation last Thursday in a post titled, “Yes, Google Uses Its Power to Quash Ideas It Doesn’t Like—I Know Because It Happened to Me”

In 2011, Hill participated in a meeting between Google salespeople and Forbes employees, in which representatives of the search giant sought to encourage Forbes to integrate its web site with Google Plus, Google’s failed competitor to Facebook.

The salespeople told her that adding a “share” button for Google Plus would boost their domain’s results in search rankings. Hill wrote,

“This sounded like a news story to me. Google’s dominance in search and news gives it tremendous power over publishers. By tying search results to the use of Plus, Google was using that muscle to force people to promote its social network.”

“I asked the Google people if I understood correctly: If a publisher didn’t put a +1 button on the page, its search results would suffer? The answer was yes.”

Hill then asked Google’s press office, explicitly identifying herself as a reporter, to confirm what she had heard in the sales meeting.

“They didn’t deny what their sales people told me: If you don’t feature the +1 button, your stories will be harder to find with Google,” she wrote.

Google responded to the publication of the story by demanding that Hill withdraw it, saying that the sales meeting was covered under a non-disclosure agreement. This was despite the fact, Hill said, that

“I had signed no such agreement, hadn’t been told the meeting was confidential, and had identified myself as a journalist.”

Google officials demanded that the article be removed, implying that Google might demote Forbes in search results if the magazine did not do what it wanted.

“The implication was that it might have consequences for Forbes, a troubling possibility given how much traffic came through Google searches and Google News,” Hill wrote.

Hill eventually agreed under pressure from Forbes to remove the article. Even more surprisingly, all cached versions of the article were almost immediately removed from Google’s servers, a phenomenon that other technology writers commented on at the time, with some implying that Google deliberately deleted the cached versions.

Initially, Google’s PR team told Hill

“there was no way to know whether Google was responsible for deleting the cache,” and declared that the story was removed because it was “not reported responsibly.”

Google’s vice president of global communications, Rob Shilkin, then gave her a different story, explicitly telling her

“we had nothing to do with removing the article from the cache.”

While whether the meeting was actually covered under a non-disclosure agreement is an issue of legal controversy, Google’s demand that the story be removed in its entirety (instead of being amended), and Forbes’ compliance, points to the degree of monopolistic power wielded by the search giant over not just its clients and competitors, but the press.

Hill’s account is just one of many similar reports of Google using its weight and influence to intimidate public discourse.

Hill’s revelation followed less than two weeks after press reports documented the fact that Google pressured the New America Foundation to fire its Open Markets team after they posted a statement supporting anti-trust action against the technology giant.

Even more significant is the ongoing efforts by Google to block access to political views it sees as antithetical to the interests of its billionaire shareholders and their political allies.

Beginning last month, the WSWS extensively documented the fact that changes to Google’s search algorithms, justified on the basis of promoting “authoritative” content, led search traffic to left-wing and anti-war sites to plummet, with search traffic to the World Socialist Web Site falling by over two thirds.

Google’s attempt to censor the WSWS and other left-wing sites has led to a broad international response. So far, the WSWS’s petition calling for Google to end its censorship of the Internet has received over 3,400 submissions from more than 80 countries.

These are extremely dangerous times for the world. North Korea is exposing the futility of deterrence theory and causing nuclear weapons all over the world to be dusted down, at a time when a maverick outsider in the White House has been captured by a bunch of Generals who make Dr Strangelove look rational. Anybody who thinks sending occupying troops into Afghanistan is ever going to work is clearly certifiable.

The febrile state of the American political system has resulted in a peculiar McCarthyist witch-hunt against Russia, in which people who you would presume must have some capacity for rational thought, such as the editors of the Washington Post and New York Times, have abandoned that rationality in favour of anti-Russian hysteria.

As a British diplomat I cultivated contacts with Ken Saro Wiwa and his circle in Nigeria as they pushed against the tyrannical regime of President Abacha and the environmental destruction of their region, most notably by Shell. I cultivated Alexander Kwasniewski as a young opposition leader who eventually defeated the great Lech Walesa. I cultivated John Kufuor, opposition leader in Ghana, who like Kwasniewski went on to be President. I cultivated Mohammed Solih’s people in Uzbekistan. The later stages of all this are covered in my books The Catholic Orangemen of Togo and Murder in Samarkand.

As a diplomat it is your job to have relations not only with those in government, but to prepare in case the government changes. It is also your job, where you can get away with it, to push the political landscape in the direction your own government wishes. That is of the very essence of diplomacy.

If the Russians – and every other major government – had not been putting work into cultivating Trump and his circle, they would not have been carrying out the functions of diplomacy in the way they are carried on by every single country in the world – and by none more than the United States. For every contact between any Russian and anyone connected to Trump’s circle, now to be dredged up one after another and conflated into some master plot by Putin to take over the whole world, is complete nonsense. It is not just nonsense but dangerous nonsense because it is pumping up international tension between nuclear powers beyond cold war levels, and there is no shortage of potential flashpoints where things could go horribly wrong.

Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump both reflected disillusionment at the massive exploitation of ordinary people by the ruling Establishment, though unfortunately the American people were cheated – most instrumentally by Clinton, the DNC and the rigged primary contest – into getting Trump rather than Sanders. The political system has still not adjusted to a new reality. Radical change is coming in both the US and the UK, but in both countries the Establishment for now still controls enough of the legislature and judiciary to hold the line. But I do not anticipate the demand for greater social justice will die down. The successful diversion of the revolutionary impulse by the Establishment media to the cause of the alt right in the United States and of racist Brexit in the UK, I believe will prove a temporary phenomenon.

But when so much bad blood is rushing around the body politic, the odd boil will erupt through the skin. One such boil is Louise Mensch, the former British Tory MP and multi-millionaire now recast as anti-Russian cheerleader in the United States, where she is given an astonishing amount of mainstream media space for her crazed theories.

Yesterday I got Louise Mensch all excited:

The tweet that made her say “On my God” was this one. We got not just an “Oh my God” out of Louise but also a “Christ!”:

Precisely what Mensch’s new God-fearing chums make of her choice of expletives I know not. But a rational person may wonder what about these tweets could cause such ecstasy in Ms Mensch.

Louise has taken up online with one of the crazed self-styled security experts who is jumping on the anti-Russian bandwagon in the United States, named Chris Nethery. Mr Nethery believes and has convinced Ms Mensch (so far as I can judge) that Sarah Kendzior, Uzbek opposition leader Mohammed Solih and I are members of a Russian intelligence cell which is undermining America. Those tweets appear to the rather strange mind of Ms Mensch to prove compelling evidence of this.

Ms Kendzior is a journalist. About seven or eight years ago she did some excellent academic work on Uzbekistan which I praised on this blog. I may have met her at that time but do not recall doing so. I have certainly not heard from her since. I have no emails from her. But still more hilarious is Nethery’s evidence that Mohammed Solih is a Russian agent. Mohammed is in exile in Turkey and like many opposition figures would be rather likely to be handed over for execution to the Uzbek regime should he come into Putin’s clutches. The Russian “expert” Nethery’s evidence of Solih being a Russian agent is that “Solih participated in the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968”.

It is not a secret that Uzbekistan was part of the Soviet Union. In 1968 Mohammed Solih was 18 years old and would have been compulsorily conscripted into the Soviet armed forces. Nethery’s accusation is ludicrous. It is like blaming the vets for the Vietnam war.

The Trump White House is dysfunctional and that clearly indicates the rottenness of the American political system. Xenophobia has become the rule. The anti-immigrant xenophobia of Trump’s supporters is mirrored by the equally irrational anti-Russian xenophobia of Trump’s opponents. Laughable figures like Mensch get to write columns in formerly great newspapers. I did not expect to see the United States decline so quickly.

SAVE CRAIG MURRAY

I face a libel suit in the High Court in England brought by Jake Wallis Simons, Associate Editor of the Daily Mail Online, and his lawyer Mark Lewis. The judge has approved over £100,000 in costs for Mr Lewis and £40,000 damages are sought in addition. I have been directly threatened with bankruptcy. All help against England’s draconian anti-free speech laws is much appreciated.

DONATE TO THE CRAIG MURRAY DEFENCE FUND

Featured image is from the author.

Instead of unvarnished truth-telling crucial for global risk management in the face of existential nuclear, poverty and climate threats, humanity is fed fake news through lies of omission and commission by the Mainstream Yellow Press and effective free speech is only granted to dissenters who provide an acceptably soft version of the Awful Truth (e.g. corporate-backed, climate-lite 350.org that wants to reduce atmospheric CO2 to 350 ppm from the present disastrous 405 ppm CO2, as compared to 300.org that has a science-informed target of the pre-Industrial Revolution circa 300 ppm CO2).

“Inglorious Empire. What the British did to India” by Shashi Tharoor is a must-read and powerful but flawed and iconoclast-lite excoriation of 2 centuries of deadly British rule over India [my additions within square brackets]:

“[In 1947] The British left a society with 16 per cent literacy, a life expectancy of 27, practically no domestic industry and over 90 per cent living below what today we would call the poverty line. Today, the literacy rate is up to 72 per cent [74%], average life expectancy [68 years] is nearing the Biblical three score and ten, and 280 million people have been pulled out of poverty in the twenty-first century [30% of 1,324 million Indians or about 400 million are below the $1.90 per day poverty line]”.

By way of comparison, China has 95% literacy, a life expectancy of 76 years, and (unreported by Mainstream media) has eradicated deadly endemic poverty so that annual avoidable deaths from deprivation are zero (0) for socialist China as compared to 4.5 million for neoliberal India.

History is written by the victors, and even dissenting writers like Tharoor are only granted effective free speech by the Establishment because they wittingly or unwittingly soften the Awful Truth and “don’t frighten the horses”. Thus Tharoor variously totally ignored or hugely underestimated the 10 million Indian deaths in the 1769-1770 Great Bengal Famine; 10 million Indian deaths in a decade of British reprisals after the 1857 Rebellion; scores of Indian famine locations in a 2-century Indian Holocaust in which 1,800 million Indians died avoidably from imposed deprivation; 6-7 million Indian deaths in the UK-imposed and Australia-complicit WW2 Bengal Famine (i.e. not just the 4 million perishing in Bengal but also those in the neighbouring provinces of Assam, Bihar and Orissa); the 2-century British policy of subjugating several hundred million Indians by keeping them on the edge of starvation under the heel of well-fed British and “native” troops; and massive white-washing of the Indian Holocaust in part or in whole by generations of mendacious Mainstream journalists, writers, politicians and academics in the English-speaking world.

History ignored yields history repeated. Thus ignoring the ongoing Indian Holocaust (holocaust ignoring is far, far worse than repugnant holocaust denial that at least admits refutation and debate) means continuing annual avoidable deaths from deprivation totalling 4.5 million for neoliberal India as compared to zero (0) for socialist China; a continuing Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust in which presently 17 million people die avoidably from deprivation each year on Spaceship Earth with neoliberal One Percenters in charge of the flight deck; and a worsening Climate Genocide in which an estimated 10 billion people will die this century unless requisite action is taken against man-made climate change, this predicted carnage including 2 billion Indians, 0.5 billion Bengalis, 0.3 billion Pakistanis and 0.3 billion Bangladeshis (global warming increases sea level, precipitation and hurricane intensity – one third of Bangladesh, population 165 million, is presently under water, the Caribbean is presently being devastated by 3 variously massive hurricanes, and the Paris Agreement upper target of a catastrophic 2 degrees Centigrade average temperature rise is now unavoidable in a worsening Climate Emergency, Climate Holocaust and Climate Genocide…

Instead of unvarnished truth-telling crucial for global risk management in the face of existential nuclear, poverty and climate threats, humanity is fed fake news through lies of omission and commission by the Mainstream Yellow Press and effective free speech is only granted to dissenters who provide an acceptably soft version of the Awful Truth (e.g. corporate-backed, climate-lite 350.org that wants to reduce atmospheric CO2 to 350 ppm from the present disastrous 405 ppm CO2, as compared to 300.org that has a science-informed target of the pre-Industrial Revolution circa 300 ppm CO2).

“Inglorious Empire. What the British did to India” by Shashi Tharoor is a must-read and powerful but flawed and iconoclast-lite excoriation of 2 centuries of deadly British rule over India [my additions within square brackets]:

“[In 1947] The British left a society with 16 per cent literacy, a life expectancy of 27, practically no domestic industry and over 90 per cent living below what today we would call the poverty line. Today, the literacy rate is up to 72 per cent [74%], average life expectancy [68 years] is nearing the Biblical three score and ten, and 280 million people have been pulled out of poverty in the twenty-first century [30% of 1,324 million Indians or about 400 million are below the $1.90 per day poverty line]”.

By way of comparison, China has 95% literacy, a life expectancy of 76 years, and (unreported by Mainstream media) has eradicated deadly endemic poverty so that annual avoidable deaths from deprivation are zero (0) for socialist China as compared to 4.5 million for neoliberal India.

History is written by the victors, and even dissenting writers like Tharoor are only granted effective free speech by the Establishment because they wittingly or unwittingly soften the Awful Truth and “don’t frighten the horses”. Thus Tharoor variously totally ignored or hugely underestimated the 10 million Indian deaths in the 1769-1770 Great Bengal Famine; 10 million Indian deaths in a decade of British reprisals after the 1857 Rebellion; scores of Indian famine locations in a 2-century Indian Holocaust in which 1,800 million Indians died avoidably from imposed deprivation; 6-7 million Indian deaths in the UK-imposed and Australia-complicit WW2 Bengal Famine (i.e. not just the 4 million perishing in Bengal but also those in the neighbouring provinces of Assam, Bihar and Orissa); the 2-century British policy of subjugating several hundred million Indians by keeping them on the edge of starvation under the heel of well-fed British and “native” troops; and massive white-washing of the Indian Holocaust in part or in whole by generations of mendacious Mainstream journalists, writers, politicians and academics in the English-speaking world.

History ignored yields history repeated. Thus ignoring the ongoing Indian Holocaust (holocaust ignoring is far, far worse than repugnant holocaust denial that at least admits refutation and debate) means continuing annual avoidable deaths from deprivation totalling 4.5 million for neoliberal India as compared to zero (0) for socialist China; a continuing Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust in which presently 17 million people die avoidably from deprivation each year on Spaceship Earth with neoliberal One Percenters in charge of the flight deck; and a worsening Climate Genocide in which an estimated 10 billion people will die this century unless requisite action is taken against man-made climate change, this predicted carnage including 2 billion Indians, 0.5 billion Bengalis, 0.3 billion Pakistanis and 0.3 billion Bangladeshis (global warming increases sea level, precipitation and hurricane intensity – one third of Bangladesh, population 165 million, is presently under water, the Caribbean is presently being devastated by 3 variously massive hurricanes, and the Paris Agreement upper target of a catastrophic 2 degrees Centigrade average temperature rise is now unavoidable in a worsening Climate Emergency, Climate Holocaust and Climate Genocide…

In order to understand how effective Daesh’s propaganda campaign has been, it’s important to analyze the plethora of information included in this compilation article. This extensive article discusses many different aspects of the Daesh propaganda machine. It also discusses the US/NATO narrative which it preaches in hopes that the public will sheepishly believe and support their “fight” against Daesh. As well as explaining how Daesh is actually a US/NATO invention to further allow foreign intervention under the pretentious guise of “protecting itself” in a fight against terrorism.

Daesh narratives can be divided into three main themes: Political, Religious, and Social. The main efforts of the information strategy can be divided into four types of messages or Lines of Effort (LOE)—to Unite, Frighten, Support, and Inform.

IS/Daesh is using social media platforms such as Twitter (primarily), Facebook, and YouTube to recruit, inform (or rather misinform) potential recruits and gain supporters for their devious and deadly “cause”.  These social media platforms play a vital role in Daesh’s information campaign, especially in reaching young people susceptible to recruitment and radicalization. The NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence(NATO StratCom COE)  conducted research into ‘Daesh’s detrimental use of social media and specifically from an information warfare perspective’ to show how Daesh is using adaptive networks to respond to allied efforts of curbing propaganda dissemination worldwide.

“This report provides a short history of the development of the terrorist organisation and its various names, its present structure, at both the global and provincial levels, and a short description of its objectives. An analysis of the Daesh information strategy; its core message, narrative themes, lines of effort, and target audiences follow. The report further describes the communication tools and influence techniques Daesh uses regionally and globally”.

In a debate/poll on debated.org the question was asked: Did the United States support ISIS and other extremist groups in Syria? 71% of participants answered yes.

Obama is Protecting the Terrorists, America to the Rescue of ISIS-ISIL-Daesh. Per Testimonies of Syrian Soldiers Who Witnessed the US Airstrikes. 

In this article by Prof Michel Chossudovsky he explains why “The United States of America is not fighting the terrorists in Syria. The Obama administration, with the support of its allies including Turkey and Saudi Arabia, is supporting the Islamic State (ISIS Daesh)”. 

And then they tell us (i.e the Western media) that the Islamic State is threatening the Western World, that ISIS-Daesh cells are responsible for the terror attacks in Europe and the US. “The US homeland is under attack and we must defend ourselves.” Nonsense! Washington and its allies are the State Sponsors of Terrorism. The various jihadist organizations including ISIS-Daesh and al Nusra are supported and funded by the Western military alliance. In the words of Oliver Stone: We’re Not under Threat. We Are the Threat.

The image above shows child Daesh soliders right before they executed Kurdish prisoners in Syria, from left to right the children are Uzbekistani, Kurdish, Tunisian, British, and Egyptian, here is an article that includes a video of the execution. 

The Salafi terrorist organization Daesh, also known as the ‘Islamic State/IS/ISIS/ISIL’, is currently engaged in direct military actions in Syria, Iraq, and Libya, has announced that it wants to establish a global Caliphate and annihilate all opposition. Daesh has launched an extremely sophisticated information campaign targeting a wide range of audiences around the world to gain support for its expansion in the Middle East. The NATO StratCom COE was asked to conduct research into Daesh’s information strategy in order to gain a better understanding of how the Daesh information campaign is managed and to propose practical solutions concerning the situation in the Middle East.

On 18 December 2014, Army Lt Gen James L. Terry used the name ‘Daesh’ repeatedly during a 30-minute news conference. When asked why he was no longer using the name ‘Islamic State’ he explained that partner nations in the Middle East had asked him not to use that name or any of its related acronyms, ISIS and ISIL, out of concern that doing so legitimises the militants’ aspiration to establish a caliphate, a sovereign Islamic sphere that would replace existing governments and borders. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius also made an announcement about the name and concluded, ‘This is a terrorist group and not a state… the term Islamic State blurs the lines between Islam, Muslims, and Islamists.’ The minister was amongst the first few who avoided calling the group with the name ‘Islamic State’ and put effort on calling them the acronym ‘Daesh’.  Read More.

Read the article about Brian McCarty’s surprise discovery that his photo was stolen and used as propaganda by Daesh.

Daesh Propaganda Videos – Warning very graphic and real executions, beheadings etc.

ISIS propaganda alive and kicking, as Amaq publishes new images from frontlines

“Despite desperate situation on several fronts in Syria and Iraq, media wing of the so-called “Islamic State” (IS, formerly ISIL/ISIS), Amaq agency, keeps regularly publishing images and video materials intended to demonstrate military victories of the designated terror group, no matter how much significance these victories bear”. – AMN May 29th, 2017

War Propaganda: Syria’s Destruction by the Lies of the Western Media “Washington will Never let Go, Their Target is World Hegemony”

“The propaganda coming out of the Western mass media outlets and indoctrination-spreading institutions are so thorough, so professional, that to most of the people all over the world everything related to Syria appears to be blurry, murky, and incredibly complex. President al-Assad is demonized on a daily basis. Heroic resistance is called the “regime’s brutal actions”, pro-western terror groups are described as “moderate opposition.”– Global Research

INSIDE THE ISIS SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN

The study estimates that between September and December 2014, there were at least 46,000 ISIS-supporting Twitter accounts, though not all were active at once. In fact, the authors found that a minimum of 1,000 ISIS-supporting accounts were suspended during that time frame. One reason for the suspensions is that ISIS’s social media strategy is known for its violent content. – Newsweek

CONFRONTING THE ‘CALIPHATE’ | This is part of an occasional series about the rise of the Islamic State militant group, its implications for the Middle East, and efforts by the U.S. government and others to undermine it.

National Security By Greg Miller and Souad Mekhennet November 20, 2015 (I’ve included the complete article below as it might not be accessible to all viewers by clicking on the source)

RABAT, MOROCCO — The assignments arrive on slips of paper, each bearing the black flag of the Islamic State, the seal of the terrorist group’s media emir, and the site of that day’s shoot. “The paper just gives you the location,” never the details said Abu Hajer al-Maghribi, who spent nearly a year as a cameraman for the Islamic State.

Sometimes the job was to film prayers at a mosque, he said, or militants exchanging fire. But, inevitably, a slip would come with the coordinates to an unfolding bloodbath. For Abu Hajer, that card told him to drive two hours southwest of the Syrian city of Raqqa, the capital of the caliphate, or Islamic realm, declared by the militant group.

There, he discovered that he was among 10 cameramen sent to record the final hours of more than 160 Syrian soldiers captured in 2014. “I held my Canon camera,” he said, as the soldiers were stripped to their underwear, marched into the desert, forced to their knees and massacred with automatic rifles. His footage quickly found a global audience, released online in an Islamic State video that spread on social media and appeared in mainstream news coverage on Al Jazeera and other networks.

Why the Islamic State propaganda arm is more important than its fighters

Abu Hajer, who is now in prison in Morocco, is among more than a dozen Islamic State defectors or members in several countries who provided detailed accounts to The Washington Post of their involvement in, or exposure to, the most potent propaganda machine ever assembled by a terrorist group.

What they described resembles a medieval reality show. Camera crews fan out across the caliphate every day, their ubiquitous presence distorting the events they purportedly document. Battle scenes and public beheadings are so scripted and staged that fighters and executioners often perform multiple takes and read their lines from cue cards.

Cameras, computers and other video equipment arrive in regular shipments from Turkey. They are delivered to a media division dominated by foreigners — including at least one American, according to those interviewed — whose production skills often stem from previous jobs they held at news channels or technology companies.

In a propaganda war against ISIS, the U.S. tried to play by the enemy’s rules

Senior media operatives are treated as “emirs” of equal rank to their military counterparts. They are directly involved in decisions on strategy and territory. They preside over hundreds of videographers, producers, and editors who form a privileged, professional class with status, salaries and living arrangements that are the envy of ordinary fighters.

“It is a whole army of media personnel,” said Abu Abdullah al-Maghribi, a second defector who served in the Islamic State’s security ranks but had extensive involvement with its propaganda teams.

“The media people are more important than the soldiers,” he said. “Their monthly income is higher. They have better cars. They have the power to encourage those inside to fight and the power to bring more recruits to the Islamic State.”

Increasingly, that power extends beyond the borders of the caliphate. The attacks in Paris were carried out by militants who belonged to a floating population of Islamic State followers, subjects who are scattered among dozens of countries and whose attachments to the group exist mainly online.

Abdel­hamid Abaaoud, the alleged architect of the attacks who was killed in a raid in France, had appeared repeatedly in Islamic State recruiting materials. The barrage of videos and statements released afterward made clear that the overriding goal of the Islamic State is not merely to inflict terror on an adversary but also to command a global audience. The United States and its allies have found no meaningful answer to this propaganda avalanche.

A State Department program to counter the caliphates messaging has cycled through a series of initiatives with minimal effect. Islamic State supporters online have repeatedly slipped around efforts to block them on Twitter and Facebook.

The Propaganda Wars since 9/11

Overmatched online, the United States has turned to lethal force. Recent U.S. airstrikes have killed several high-level operatives in the Islamic State’s media division, including Junaid Hussain, a British computer expert. FBI Director James B. Comey recently described the propaganda units of the Islamic State, also known as ISIL and ISIS, as military targets.

“I am optimistic that the actions of our colleagues in the military to reduce the supply of ISIL tweeters will have an impact,” Comey said at an event last month in Washington. “But we’ll have to watch that space and see.”

Research for this article involved interviews with Islamic State defectors and members, as well as security officials and counter-terrorism experts in six countries on three continents. The most authoritative accounts came from seven Islamic State defectors who were either in prison in Morocco or recently released after facing terrorism charges upon their return from Syria. All spoke on the condition that they be identified only by the adopted names that they used in Syria.

Why the Islamic State leaves tech companies torn between free speech and security

Those interviews were conducted with the permission of the Moroccan government in the administrative wing of a prison complex near the nation’s capital. The prisoners said they spoke voluntarily after being approached by Moroccan authorities on behalf of The Post. Other prisoners declined. Most of the interviews took place in the presence of security officials, an arrangement that probably led participants to play down their roles in the Islamic State but seemed to have little effect on their candor in describing the caliphate’s media division.

The Camera Man

Abu Hajer, a soft-spoken Moroccan with a thin beard and lean physique, said he had been active in jihadist media circles for more than a decade before he entered Syria in 2013. He began participating in online Islamist forums after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, he said, and later became an administrator of an influential site known as Shamukh, giving him authority to admit new members and monitor the material other militants posted.

Those credentials cleared his path to coveted assignments within the Islamic State, a group that began as al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq before splitting off from that terrorist network in an ideological rupture two years ago.

The group has an elaborate system for evaluating and training new arrivals. Abu Hajer said that shortly after entering Syria he was groomed to be part of the Islamic State’s media team. He spent two months undergoing basic military training before he was admitted to a special, month-long program for media operatives.

The program “specializes in how to do the filming. How to mix footage. How to get the right voice and tone” in interviews, he said. After completing the course, he was given a Canon camera, a Samsung Galaxy smartphone and an assignment with the caliphate’s media unit in Raqqa.

Why did victims in Islamic State beheading videos look so calm? They didn’t know it was real.

Abu Hajer, who is in his mid-30s, had come from an impoverished corner of Morocco. Now that he is in prison, his wife and children have returned to the encampment where they lived before departing, a shanty village of corrugated tin and plywood with no running water near a cement plant on the outskirts of Rabat.

In Syria, they were given a villa with a garden. Abu Hajer was issued a car, a Toyota Hilux with four-wheel drive to enable him to reach remote assignments. He was also paid a salary of $700 a month — seven times the sum paid to typical fighters — plus money for food, clothes, and equipment. He said he was also excused from the taxes that the Islamic State imposes on most of its subjects.

He quickly settled into a routine that involved getting his work assignments each morning on pieces of paper that also served as travel documents enabling him to pass Islamic State checkpoints. Most jobs were mundane, such as capturing scenes from markets or celebrations of Muslim holidays.

Abu Hajer said he encountered only one Western hostage, John Cantlie, a British war correspondent who was kidnapped in Syria in 2012. Cantlie was cast by his captors in a series of BBC-style news reports that touted the caliphate’s bustling economies and adherence to Islamic law while mocking Western governments.

Abu Hajer said he filmed Cantlie in Mosul in 2014, and he said that by then the British broadcaster was no longer wearing an orange jumpsuit or confined to a darkened room and was allowed to wander among the markets and streets of Mosul for camera crews.

“I cannot tell you whether he was coerced or threatened. He was walking freely,” Abu Hajer said, an assertion that is at odds with what is known about Cantlie’s captivity.

A video released in January shows Cantlie in multiple locations in Mosul, including one in which he is riding a motorcycle with an armed militant seated behind him. It was among his final appearances before the series was halted with no explanation or subsequent indication of Cantlie’s fate, although articles attributed to him have since appeared in the caliphate’s magazine.

One of Abu Hajer’s next assignments took him to an elaborately staged scene of carnage, a mass execution-style killing choreographed for cameras in a way that has become an Islamic State signature. After arriving at the site, he said that he and the other camera operators gathered to “organize ourselves so that we wouldn’t all film [from] the same perspective.”

Abu Hajer said he had grave objections to what happened to the Syrian soldiers in the massacre that he filmed in the desert near Tabqa air base. But he acknowledged that his misgivings had more to do with how the soldiers were treated — and whether that comported with Islamic law — than any concern for their fates.

Islamic State video shows British hostage John Cantlie

As the soldiers were stripped and marched into the desert, Abu Hajer said he filmed from the window of his car as an Egyptian assistant drove alongside the parade of condemned men.

“When the group stopped, I got out,” he said. “They were told to kneel down. Some soldiers got shot. Others were beheaded.”

The video, still available online, shows multiple camera operators moving in and out of view as Islamic State operatives fire hundreds of rounds.

“It wasn’t the killing of soldiers that I was against,” Abu Hajer said. “They were Syrian soldiers, Nusairis,” he said, referring to the religious sect to which Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his closest supporters belong. “I thought they deserved to get shot.” “What I didn’t like was that they were stripped to their underwear,” he said, an indignity that he considered an affront to Islamic law.

Abu Hajer also said he kept his lens aimed away from the beheadings because of his objections to the practice. But asked whether he considered refusing to record the massacre, he said he feared that would consign him to the fate of those he filmed.“You don’t want to do it,” he said, “but you know that you cannot say, ‘No.’ ”

The Machine
The contradictions of the Islamic State’s propaganda apparatus can make its structure and strategy seem incoherent. The group exerts extraordinarily tight control over the production of its videos and messages but relies on the chaos of the Internet and social media to disseminate them. Its releases cluster around seemingly incompatible themes: sometimes depicting the caliphate as a peaceful and idyllic domain, other times as a society awash in apocalyptic violence.

Life in the ‘Islamic State’: Spoils for the rulers, terror for the ruled

The dual messages are designed to influence a divided audience. The beheadings, immolations and other spectacles are employed both to menace Western adversaries and to appeal to disenfranchised Muslim males weighing a leap into the Islamist fray.

A separate collection depicts the Islamic State as a livable destination, a benevolent state committed to public works. Videos show the construction of public markets, smiling religious police on neighborhood patrols and residents leisurely fishing on the banks of the Euphrates.

Even the concept of the caliphate has a dual aspect. The terrorist group’s rise is a result mainly of its demonstrated military power and the tangible territory it has seized. But a remarkable amount of its energy is devoted to creating an alternative, idealized version of itself online and shaping how that virtual empire is perceived.

That project has been entrusted to a media division that was operational well before the Caliphate was formally declared in 2014. U.S. intelligence officials said they have little insight into who controls the Islamic State’s propaganda strategy, although it is presumed to be led by Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the caliphate’s main spokesman.

The media wing has relied on veterans of al-Qaeda media teams, young recruits fluent in social media platforms, and a bureaucratic discipline reminiscent of totalitarian regimes. Defectors and current members said that phones and cameras they brought to Syria were impounded upon arrival by the Islamic State to prevent unauthorized and potentially unflattering images from finding their way online.

Only sanctioned crew members were allowed to carry cameras, and even they were to follow strict guidelines on the handling of their material. Once finished with a day’s shooting, the crews were to load their recordings onto laptops, transfer the footage to memory sticks, then deliver those to designated drop sites.

In an Islamic State enclave near Aleppo, the media division’s headquarters was a two-story home in a residential neighborhood, defectors said. The site was protected by armed guards, and only those with permission from the regional emir were allowed to enter.

Each floor had four rooms packed with cameras, computers and other high-end equipment, said Abu Abdullah, 37, who made occasional visits to the site as a security and logistics operative. Internet access went through a Turkish wireless service. The house served as an editorial office of Dabiq, the Islamic State’s glossy online magazine. Some also worked for al-Furqan, the terrorist group’s main media wing, which accounts for the majority of its videos and mass-audience statements. Overall, there were more than 100 media operatives assigned to the unit, Abu Abdullah said. “Some of them were hackers; some were engineers.”

Images from the Islamic State media obtained by The Washington Post are seen in screen grabs taken from the mobile messaging service Telegram, a promotional and recruitment platform for Islamic State.

Abu Abdullah had no affiliation with the media arm, but he often did its bidding. At one point he was tapped to install a generator at the media headquarters so that it would not lose power when the electricity went down.

Another assignment involved recovering corpses from battle scenes and arranging them to be photographed for propaganda videos exalting their sacrifice. He would wash away dried blood, lift the corners of dead fighters’ mouths into beatific smiles, and raise their index fingers in a gesture adopted by the Islamic State as a symbol of its cause.

Many in the American public were introduced to the Islamic State through wrenching videos in which Mohammed Emwazi — a masked, knife-wielding militant with a British accent known as “Jihadi John” — slit the throats of Western hostages, including Americans James Foley and Steve Sotloff.

‘Jihadi John’: Islamic State killer is identified as Londoner Mohammed Emwazi

Scrutiny of those and other videos revealed an extraordinary level of choreography. Discrepancies among frames showed that scenes had been rehearsed and shot in multiple takes over many hours.

The releases showed professional-caliber attention to lighting, sound and camera positioning. Certain videos, including one showing a decapitated American Peter Kassig, appear to have employed special effects software to digitally impose images of Kassig and his killer against a dramatic backdrop.

Those production efforts were reserved for videos aimed at mass Western audiences and were addressed explicitly to President Obama. But defectors said that even internal events not intended for a global viewership were similarly staged.

Abu Abdullah said he had witnessed a public execution-style killing in the city of Bab in which a propaganda team presided over almost every detail. They brought a whiteboard scrawled with Arabic script to serve as an off-camera cue card for the public official charged with reciting the condemned man’s alleged crimes. The hooded executioner raised and lowered his sword repeatedly so that crews could catch the blade from multiple angles.

The beheading took place only when the camera crew’s director said it was time to proceed. The execution wasn’t run by the executioner, Abu Abdullah said.

“It’s the media guy who says when they are ready.”

The Brand

For two decades, the dominant brand in militant Islam was al-Qaeda. But the Islamic State has eclipsed it in the span of two years by turning the older network’s propaganda playbook on its head.

Al-Qaeda’s releases always exalted its leaders, particularly Osama bin Laden. But the Islamic State’s propaganda is generally focused on its fighters and followers. Appearances by leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi or his senior lieutenants have been rare.

Rejecting the lecture format employed by al-Qaeda, the Islamic State’s videos are cinematic, emphasizing dramatic scenes, stylized transitions and special effects.

“The group is very image-conscious, much like a corporation,” said a U.S. intelligence official involved in monitoring the Islamic State’s media operations. Its approach to building its brand is so disciplined, the official said, “that it’s very much like saying ‘This is Coca-Cola’ or ‘This is Nike.’”

The propaganda competition with al-Qaeda is a high priority, defectors said. One former Islamic State fighter said that he came under enormous pressure from the organization after it learned that his father had been a high-ranking al-Qaeda operative killed in Pakistan in a CIA drone strike.

The Islamic State was dumped by al-Qaeda a year ago. Look where it is now

Islamic State media figures pushed the recruit to appear in a video renouncing his father’s organization, said the son, who spoke on the condition that neither he nor his father be identified. His refusal, and reluctance to fight al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, damaged his standing in the Islamic State, and he said he fled in fear for his life.Al-Qaeda has typically required extraordinary patience from its audience. Even its most media-savvy affiliate, the al-Qaeda branch in Yemen, often takes months to release new issues of its online magazine, Inspire.

The frequency and volume of releases by the Islamic State are staggering by comparison. The group has produced hundreds of videos in more than a half-dozen languages, puts out daily radio broadcasts and garners as many as 2 million mentions per month on Twitter.

Twitter and Facebook have moved to shut down accounts associated with the Islamic State and ban the distribution of its messages, but users have found ways to resurface. Thousands of loyalists have also flocked to new services that are less vulnerable to government scrutiny, including Telegram, a messaging application created by a Russian software entrepreneur, although Telegram began shutting down Islamic State channels after the Paris attacks.

The Islamic State has also exploited apparent connections to news organizations in the Middle East. A video that surfaced in 2013 appeared to show an Al Jazeera correspondent working with a cameraman, Reda Seyam, a militant who had been linked to terrorist plots and is a senior figure in the Islamic State.

In a comprehensive examination of the terrorist group’s media releases in the summer, Charlie Winter, until recently an analyst at the Quilliam Group in the United Kingdom, identified 1,146 distinct pieces of propaganda, including photos, videos, and audio releases, during a single month-long stretch.Winter counted as many as 36 separate media offices that answer to the Islamic State’s headquarters in Raqqa — including affiliates in Libya, Afghanistan, and West Africa — and saw evidence of extraordinary coordination across the network.

At one point during his study, on July 19, he noticed that every affiliate had simultaneously shifted to a new logo with the same stylized Arabic script. The icon appeared in the same location on every image and in the initial frame of every video release.

The highly-stylized Islamic State logo is yet another example of the group’s propaganda machine

This logo plays before most Islamic State videos as the group is “very image conscious, much like a corporation,” according to a U.S. Intelligence official. (TWP)

“There was clearly a communique issued,” Winter said in an interview. “The Islamic State is constantly striving to be as formalized, as bureaucratic-seeming as possible, to keep up the appearance of being a state.”

That effort to simulate legitimacy is particularly pervasive inside the caliphate. The same videos employed to shock outsiders are used internally to cow the group’s less enthusiastic subjects. A constant stream of utopian messages is designed to convince residents, in Soviet-style fashion, of the superiority of the Islamic State.

While Internet access is often restricted to the public, propaganda units set up giant viewing screens in neighborhoods where residents come out in the evenings to watch approved videos streamed from laptops.

“It’s like a movie theater,” said Abu Hourraira al-Maghribi, a 23-year-old with a shaved head who wore an Adidas hoodie when he met with reporters in prison. The videos are drawn from the Islamic State’s expanding film library, he said, depicting “daily life, [military] training and beheadings.”

The Islamic State’s most notorious videos — including those showing the beheadings of Western hostages and the burning of a caged Jordanian fighter pilot — were shown over and over, he said, long after their audiences beyond the caliphate dissipated.

Abu Hourraira said he attended one screening on a street near the University of Mosul that attracted about 160 people, including at least 10 women and 15 children. One of the videos showed an execution by Emwazi, who is believed to have been killed this month in a U.S. drone strike.

“The kids, they are not looking away — they are fascinated by it,” Abu Hourraira said. Jihadi John became a subject of such fascination that some children started to mimic his uniform, he said, wearing all “black and a belt with a little knife.”

The Americans

The Islamic State maintains strict bureaucratic boundaries within its media wing. Camera crews were kept separate from the teams of producers and editors who stitched the raw footage together, adding titles, effects, and soundtracks. Real names were almost never exchanged. But Abu Hajer and two other defectors said that an American in his late 30s with white skin and dark-but-graying hair was a key player in some of the Islamic State’s most ambitious videos. “The American does the editing,” Abu Hajer said, and was the creative force behind a 55-minute documentary called “Flames of War” that was released in late 2014. The film strives to create a mythology surrounding the Islamic State’s origin and connection to the historic Muslim caliphate.

5 stories you should read to really understand the Islamic State

It culminates with scenes of Syrian soldiers digging their own graves while a masked fighter, speaking English with a North American accent, warns that “the flames of war are only beginning to intensify.”

Another American-sounding figure surfaced more recently, delivering daily news broadcasts that appear to emanate from a radio station that the Islamic State overran last year in Mosul. After the attacks in Paris, his voice was the one that most English-speaking audiences heard describing France as “the capital of prostitution and vice” and warning that governments involved in strikes in Syria “will continue to be at the top of the target list.

”U.S. officials said they have been unable to determine the identity of that speaker or others with North American accents. The militant who appeared in the “Flames of War” film remains the subject of an entry on the FBI’s Web site appealing to the public for help identifying him.

The Defectors

The Islamic State’s relentless media campaign has fueled a global migration of militants. More than 30,000 foreign fighters from more than 115 countries have flooded into Syria since the start of that country’s “civil” war. At least a third arrived within the past year, the vast majority of them to join the Islamic State, according to U.S. intelligence estimates.

Of the defectors interviewed by The Post, all but one said their decisions to leave for Syria could be traced to videos they saw online or encounters on social media, that ignited a jihadist impulse. The only outlier said that he had been prodded by a friend to come to Syria and was promptly imprisoned for refusing to fight.

Foreign fighters flow to Syria

Abu Hourraira, who spent months fighting in Iraq, said he began searching online for material about the Islamic State as the group began to dominate headlines about the war in Syria. He decided to abandon his job at a dry-cleaning business in Casablanca only after watching the group’s emotionally charged videos.

“Some were like Van Damme movies,” he said, referring to Jean-Claude Van Damme, the Hollywood action star. “You see these men fighting, and you want to be one of these brave heroes.”

Like many countries in the region, Morocco has struggled to offset that pull. Moroccan security officials said that more than 1,500 men had left the country to fight in Iraq and Syria, plus more than 500 women and children, many of them seeking to join their spouses, sons or fathers.

Several of the attackers in Paris, including the alleged architect, were of Moroccan descent, but were born and grew up in Europe.

“The fight now is with the propaganda because it plays a very big role in these numbers,” said a senior Moroccan security official who spoke on the condition that neither he nor his agency be identified. Al-Qaeda recruitment relied almost exclusively on direct contact in mosques or other settings, he said, but “now, 90 percent are being recruited online.”

Defectors offered conflicting views on whether the Islamic State would endure. Some said that a cohort of young males in Iraq and Syria are already coming of age immersed in the group’s propaganda and ideology and that a generation of children was being raised to idealize its masked militants.

But all attributed their decisions to leave Iraq and Syria to a combination of factors, including not only fears for their safety but also a disenchantment that set in when the reality of the caliphate failed to match the version they had encountered online.

Some said they were haunted by scenes of cruelty they saw firsthand but that Islamic State propaganda teams edited out. Abu Abdullah, who wore a hood to disguise his identity during an interview, said he witnessed a mass killing near Aleppo in which Islamic State fighters fired into a crowd of Alawites including women and children.

When a 10-year-old boy emerged alive, the highest-ranking militant on hand “pulled out a gun and shot him,” Abu Abdullah said. The slaying was recorded by the ever-present camera crews, he said, but the footage “was never aired.”

Abu Hajer, the former cameraman, said his standing with the group began to slip when he became involved in helping to administer the Islamic State’s religious courts. After sharing views that he said were at odds with his superiors, the perks of his media position were withdrawn.

Military, Defense and Security at Home and Abroad

“They took away my weapons, my monthly income,” as well as his villa and car, he said.

A relative told a Post reporter that Abu Hajer finally pulled his family out of Syria after he had received a warning in which an Islamic State militant dragged a finger across his throat. A sympathetic colleague gave Abu Hajer the paperwork he needed to pass Islamic State checkpoints on the way out of Syria, he said. Another friend gave him cash to put his family on a flight out of Turkey. Moroccan authorities were waiting for him at the Casablanca airport. He now shares a crowded cell with other militants in a high-walled Moroccan prison, with two years remaining on a three-year sentence. Asked whether he worries that his work will induce others to join the Islamic State, he gave an equivocal answer.

“To a certain extent I feel responsible,” he said. “But I am not the main reason”.

His videos continue to circulate online.

What can you do? 

Now, you might be wondering what you can do to anonymously report Daesh activity on social media.  Here is an article that explains “How to report Daesh’s terrorist propaganda“.

Obama’s “Fake War” against the Islamic State (ISIS). The Islamic State is Protected by the US and its Allies by Prof Michel Chossudovsky

According to figures released by U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), 

“the U.S. and its coalition partners have struck 10,684 targets including 3,262 [so-called] ISIS buildings, 119 commandeered tanks, 1,202 vehicles and 2,577 fighting positions.”

The term “ISIS buildings” is a fake concept. Those buildings (including residential areas) are part of the civilian infrastructure of Iraq and Syria. The number of  targets struck suggests an intense carpet bombing campaign geared towards the destruction of both Iraq and Syria.

The ISIS-US Empire – Their Unholy Alliance Fully Exposed by Joachim Hagopian

For over three and a half decades the US has been funding mostly Saudi stooges to do its dirty bidding in proxy wars around the world, beginning in Afghanistan in the 1980’s to fight the Soviets with the mujahedeen-turned al Qaeda that later would mutate into ISIS. Reagan and Bush senior gave Osama bin Laden his first terrorist gig. Our mercenary “Islamic extremists” for-hire were then on the CIA payroll employed in the Balkans during the 1990’s to kill fellow Moslem Serbs in Kosovo and Bosnia. For a long time now Washington’s been relying on the royal Saudi family as its chief headhunters supplying the United States with as needed terrorists on demand in order to wage its geopolitics chessboard game of global hegemony, otherwise known by the central banking cabal as global “Theft-R-Us.”

As recently as a month ago it was reported that an Islamic State operative claimed that funding for ISIS had been funneled through the US. Of course another “staunch” US-NATO ally Turkey has historically allowed its territory to be a safe staging ground as well as a training area for ISIS. It additionally allows jihadist leaders to move freely in and out of Syria through Turkey. Along with Israel and all of US Empire’s Moslem nation states as our strategic friends in the Middle East, together they have been arming, financing and training al Qaeda/ISIS to do its double bidding, fighting enemies like Gaddafi in Libya and Assad in Syria while also posing as global terrorist boogie men threatening the security of the entire world. Again, Washington cannot continue to double speak its lies from both sides of its mouth and then expect to continue having it both ways and expect the world to still be buying it.

Disclaimer from The Rabbit Hole & Sarah Abed: I understand that there is some objection to the term “Islamic State” being used in reference to Daesh. This is a legitimate concern, Daesh is anti-Islamic and has killed more Muslims than non-Muslims. However, they do refer to themselves as such and some of the sources above refer to them as such. I apologize in advance. I however prefer the derogatory term Daesh when referring to them. 

Back in September 2015, ISIS had been rampaging across Syria, slaughtering civilians and destroying towns and cities, for about 4 years. At that time, there was good reason to believe that the Syrian Arab Army would soon be defeated by ISIS and ‘rebel’ forces, and the Syrian government ousted. This was despite the fact that a US-led coalition had allegedly been ‘bombing ISIS’ for almost a year, with the strange effect that the jihadis had steadily increased their territory across Syria and Iraq. Obviously, at this point, it’s pretty clear that the only reason that band of paid mercenaries called ‘ISIS’ was ever in a position to threaten Syria was because it was receiving massive funding, weapons and training from the USA and its Gulf Allies. 

Once the Russian military intervened on September 30th 2015, however, ISIS and the assorted other jihadi ‘rebel’ groups saw their territory and numbers rapidly reduced, US government aid and support for ISIS and the rebels notwithstanding. After the liberation of Aleppo by Russian forces late last year, several more dramatic victories by the Syrian Army (backed by the Russian air force) have followed with the most recent, and perhaps definitive, victory coming in this week’s liberation of the Syrian city of Deir ez Zor.

It may have escaped your notice, but over the course of the last two years, the Western media and Western governments have consistently ignored or criticized the victories of the Syrian Army backed by the Russian air campaign. This is, of course, not surprising given that ISIS is nothing more than a US and Gulf State proxy army, specifically designed to wage war on the Syrian people, destroy Syria as a nation and remake it in the West’s image of a vassal of Empire. On the occasions that the Western press saw fit to comment on the achievements of the Syrian and Russian militaries, they chose to cynically condemn them as ‘Russian aggression’ or ‘Assad killing his own people’.

This week’s liberation of Deir ez Zor is a case in point. While there have been no specific condemnations, you’ll find it difficult to find even one American mainstream media outlet report on the most recent news that a Russian air strike on an underground command center near the city killed 40 ISIS members, including four field commanders. Among the senior militants killed is internationally wanted Abu-Muhammad al-Shimali, the self-proclaimed “emir of Deir ez-Zor.”

An Iraqi-born Saudi citizen (surprise, surprise!) and a former Al-Qaeda member, al-Shimali pledged his allegiance to ISIS in 2015 (in return for a fat check) and became notorious for smuggling terrorists into Syria (on behalf of the USA and Saudi Arabia). But just to keep the charade going, Al-Shamali was designated a ‘high profile target’ by the US State Department, which offered a bounty of up to $5 million for information leading to his capture in 2015. Several European intelligence agencies also claimed that Al-Shimali was involved in the November 2015 Paris attacks. Now you might think that, with the news that this brutal killer responsible for so much carnage in Syria and France has been taken out of action, the US State Dept. and the French government might put aside their ridiculous anti-Russian ideology and make a public statement of congratulations to the Russian and Syrian militaries and governments for this admirable achievement. But you’d be wrong. They have nothing to say; in fact, they are probably having a hard time controlling their urge to scream bloody murder that Russia just killed some of their favorite assets.

Gulmurod Khalimov, the Pentagon’s ISIS man in Syria, or Russia, or wherever they plant him

But hold their tongues they will, and for good reason, lest the name of another ‘ISIS commander’ killed in the same compound gets too much attention: Gulmurod Khalimov, a Tajik and Islamist military commander who ‘defected to ISIS’ in 2015 after he had received years of training in the USA through the US State Dept.’s Diplomatic Security/Anti-Terrorism Assistance program. After ‘defecting’, Khalimov said that he planned to return home to establish Sharia Law in his Central Asian nation and to take jihad to Russia. What a coincidence. Of course, the Pentagon and CIA are no strangers to spending $$billions of US taxpayers’ money on training and arming jihadis.

There is also the little matter of the claim by an unnamed ‘diplomatic source’ that at least a dozen ISIS field commanders, including two of ‘European origin’ were evacuated from Deir ez Zor by a US Air Force plane at the end of August when it became clear the city would fall to the Syrian army. I’m usually skeptical of claims by ‘unnamed diplomatic sources’, but on this occasion the allegation is credible given what is known about US direct support to jihadis in Syria. In June this year, the commander of Russian forces in Syria, Col. Gen. Sergei Surovikin, said that ISIS fighters were allowed to leave two villages southwest of Raqqa and move toward Palmyra. Surovikin said that the U.S. coalition, along with allied Kurds, “collude with the leaders of ISIS, who surrender the areas under their control and head to provinces where Syrian government forces operate.”

But I suppose I shouldn’t complain too much, or expect too much from the psycho warmongers in the Pentagon and the CIA, their disgusting headchopper friends in Saudi Arabia, and the Western media that is a propaganda arm of all three. Their little plan for phony civil war-induced regime change in Syria has fallen flat on its face thanks to the Russian military under the stewardship of Vladimir Putin and the stellar efforts of Lebanese Hizb’allah and the Iranian militias. Nothing can change that now, not even the US’ ‘plan b’ to carve out a Kurdish state in northern Syria.

While the reality-creators in Washington might like to think that a US-allied Kurdish enclave in northern Syria and Iraq can secure continued American ‘ownership’ of the Middle East and prevent the rise of Russia and Iran as the dominant powers in the region, this is a literal and figurative pipe dream. If a Kurdistan is cut out of Syria and Iraq, it will only be with the consent of Iran, Turkey, Syria and Iraq, all of whom have very good reasons (and effective means) to prevent the establishment of a Kurdish homeland. Both the geopolitical and geographic reality of the situation therefore means that an official Kurdish state would be allied with its immediate neighbors, not imperial warmongers and blow-in headchoppers.

Joe Quinn is the co-author of 9/11: The Ultimate Truth (with Laura Knight-Jadczyk, 2006) and Manufactured Terror: The Boston Marathon Bombings, Sandy Hook, Aurora Shooting and Other False Flag Terror Attacks (with Niall Bradley, 2014), and the host of Sott.net’s The Sott Report Videos and co-host of the ‘Behind the Headlines’ radio show on the Sott Radio Network.

All images in this article are from the author.

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Global Research announces the forthcoming release of  the print edition of Mark Taliano’s Book, “Voices from Syria”  which includes two additional chapters. 

Taliano talks and listens to the people of Syria. He reveals the courage and resilience of a Nation and its people in their day to day lives, after more than six years of US-NATO sponsored terrorism and three years of US “peacemaking” airstrikes.

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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Immediately after Israel’s latest unprovoked strike on Syria we posed the question, did Benjamin Netanyahu just panic? The answer is yes, Israel is now acting from a position of desperation as it has failed in its goal of regime change in Syria. Overnight (Wed. evening/Thursday early morning), Israel attacked a Syrian military base near the town of Masyaf at about 3:00 a.m. which Syria has now confirmed in a statement that warns of “serious repercussions”. Syria reported two troop deaths in the attack. It appears to have been a massive strike – grainy photos show a large fireball lighting up the night sky outside of Masyaf.

Israel appears to have timed its attack to occur on the very night a controversial U.N. report was released earlier in the day (Wednesday) which blames the Assad government for using chemical weapons against civilians at Khan Sheikhoun in April. A number of Israeli analysts and media reports purport the Masyaf base to be a site for chemical and non-conventional weapons storage (such as “barrel bombs”) while claiming the attack was motivated by “humanitarian” concern for Syrian civilians.

First image produced from Israeli strike on Al-Tala’i facility near Masyaf. Via Twitter.

But this is the reason for Israeli media and defense officials quickly claiming that the strike at Masyaf was on a chemical weapons facility: they know the “humanitarian” angle sells in the West, especially when coupled with allegations of civilians being gassed. Currently, this is putting the dubious and contested claim that the Syrian government attacked Khan Sheikhoun with sarin gas back in the spotlight at a time when Israel is eager to sell war for regime change while casting its actions in terms of protecting and defending civilians from a brutal dictator. In typical fashion the big newsrooms, which rarely report from inside Syria but instead opt for the comfort of Beirut, are uncritically echoing the “humanitarian airstrike” narrative. The New York Times, in a report filed from Jerusalem, narrates the attack as follows while relying on unnamed “former Israeli officials” and a single Syrian pro-opposition outlet:

Israeli officials did not comment on the strike, but a Syrian monitoring group and two former Israeli officials said it had targeted an installation of a government agency that produced chemical weapons and a military base that produced advanced missiles.

The strike came a day after a United Nations commission accused the Syrian government of using chemical weapons in an attack in April that killed dozens in the town of Khan Sheikhoun and flooded clinics with victims gasping for breath.

Initially some Syria observers questioned how the Israeli Air Force could strike so deep inside Syria with no response from the country’s advanced Russian made S-400 anti-aircraft system. But it appears Syrian airspace was never violated as the Israeli jets reportedly fired from over Lebanon. Masyaf lies west of Hama and just north of the Lebanese border. While Israel’s incursion into sovereign Lebanese airspace is illegal according to international law, Lebanon cannot respond as it has no air force nor does it possess adequate anti-aircraft missiles.

Close-up of the Israeli airstrike aftermath. Image source: Al-Masdar News

It is further significant that Israel chose to fire from over Lebanon (not for the first time) even though it has routinely violated Syrian air space in previous attacks. It appears that Israel calculated it’s strike position to be in the vicinity of Russian military presence yet without forcing a Russian response by directly violating air space. The attack comes just over two weeks after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Vladimir Putin in Sochi. By many accounts the meeting was contentious as Netanyahu warned Putin that Israel would not tolerate Iranian presence in Syria. It was further revealed that a senior Israeli official accompanying Netanyahu on the trip threatened to assassinate Syrian President Assad by bombing his palace in Damascus, while further adding that Israel will seek to derail the US-Russia brokered de-escalation deal reached in Astana, Kazakhstan earlier this summer.

Russia’s Pravda described a frantic and upset Netanyahu at the Sochi talks with the following: “according to eyewitnesses of the open part of the talks, the Israeli prime minister was too emotional and at times even close to panic. He described a picture of the apocalypse to the Russian president that the world may see, if no efforts are taken to contain Iran, which, as Netanyahu believes, is determined to destroy Israel.”

At first glance it does appear that Netanyahu is now making good on his threats, but is this latest flagrant aggression against Syria a sign of more attacks to come? Will Netanyahu pursue escalation in the hope of dragging the US and other allies into war? It’s not likely. Realistically that possibility ended when Syria retook Aleppo and with the US-Russia Astana ‘de-escalation’ deal which tacitly legitimized Iranian presence in Syria. Even some within the pro-opposition regime change crowd took to social media after the strike to say “too little, too late”. Simply put, Israel lost the covert war and is now left “holding the bag” while its more powerful allies pull out of the full push for regime change.

But what is clear is that Israel remains deeply uncomfortable with the Syrian Army’s overwhelming momentum of late (just this week the army initiated the liberation of Deir Ezzor from ISIS) and seeks to keep the fires burning in Syria, at least enough to bog down Assad and Iran. Worse for Netanyahu, Hezbollah seems stronger than ever, along with the so-called ‘resistance axis’ that stretches from Tehran to South Lebanon.

Israeli officials have gone so far as to declare their preference for Islamic State terrorists on their border rather than allies of Iran. But as we’ve repeatedly pointed out, Israel is acting from a position of weakness and desperation. All that Netanyahu can hope for now is that an Israeli provocation leads to a direct Syrian military response, but it appears that Assad is not taking the bait.

In 2013 when Israel launched a massive missile attack against a Syrian defense technology facility in Jamraya outside of Damascus, it claimed to be attacking a parked Hezbollah weapons convoy. Perhaps more brazen was the 2016 attack targeting Damascus International Airport, which killed a well-known Hezbollah commander. And in a significant admission earlier this month, the head of Israel’s air force acknowledged nearly one hundred IDF attacks on convoys inside Syria over the course of the past 5 years.

Netanyahu himself was recently caught on a hot mic bragging that Israel had struck Syrian targets at least “a dozen times”. And this is to say nothing of Israel’s covert support to al-Qaeda linked groups in Syria’s south, which has reportedly involved weapons transfers and treatment of wounded jihadists in Israeli hospitals, the latter which was widely promoted in photo ops involving Netanyahu himself. As even former Acting Director of the CIA Michael Morell once directly told the Israeli public, Israel’s “dangerous game” in Syria consists in getting in bed with al-Qaeda in order to fight Shia Iran.

Indeed Assad has not taken the bait for years now. While pro-government Syrians have themselves at times complained about Israel’s seeming ability to strike inside sovereign Syrian territory with impunity, Assad has the long-game in mind of “survival now, retaliation later”. It was clear from the start that Israel’s attacks on largely non-strategic targets were more about provocation: should Damascus lob missiles back in Israel’s direction Netanyahu would launch an all-out assault while Syria was at its weakest in the midst of a grinding and externally funded al-Qaeda insurgency.

Israel has also been careful to frame its actions in terms of counter-terror strikes on Hezbollah targets for the sake of maintaining an air of legitimacy to its aggression. But as the Astana agreement demonstrates (a strategic victory for Russia-Iran-Syria),  Syria’s ability to absorb Israel’s repeat provocations seems to be part of a strategic “waiting game” born of an accurate self assessment of past and current vulnerabilities. As The Century Foundation concludes:

Syria’s contemporary leaders seem to have adopted a simplified version of the “long breath strategy” of the former president—and father of Syria’s current leader—Hafez al Assad. This strategy was named for Syria’s ability to draw a deep breath and weather short-term pain and setbacks in pursuit of a better deal.

And this strategy seems to be working, resulting in a shift in perspective which is even beginning to permeate at least part of the Israeli defense establishment:

A formerly very high-placed source in Israel’s security system spoke to Al-Monitor last week. He said on condition of anonymity, “It’s high time to admit that perhaps all our assessments were erroneous. The prevailing consensus of the last five years was that Syria will never return to its former state. We thought that however this turns out, the Syrian state as we knew it had passed from the world. But evidently we were wrong.”

Israel’s top decision-makers have not changed course, but it is likely that such arguments are heard in private discussions, and top-secret intelligence assessments see it as a real possibility that Assad is capable of outsmarting those who prematurely eulogized him and Syria as we knew it.

“Syria is returning, that is clear now,” said the source. “It’s not about the quantity of territory, it’s about central rule. If nothing unexpected happens, in the near future, Assad will be declared the final, unequivocal winner of this war. Following that, the path to Syria’s rebuilding and reconstruction will be short.”

Concerning Israel’s adventurist military action this week, contrary to the claims of unnamed “Israeli officials” who say the latest attack was against a branch of Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC), it is likely that this week’s air strike was yet another “routine” attack on a Hezbollah weapons depot.

Wrong: It was a Hezbollah/Iran warehouse. Russia won't take part of Israel-Hez struggle and the action is not newhttps://t.co/f2w8LHiNIF

— Elijah J. Magnier (@ejmalrai) September 7, 2017

According to Elijah Magnier – a veteran Kuwait-based Middle East journalist, fluent Arabic speaker, and one who reports from on the ground in Syria (and has done so for years) – Israel in truth hit another Hezbollah weapons storehouse (not a chemical weapons production facility). But with renewed claims that Syrian government possesses and has used sarin gas, Israel is seeking to maximize the propaganda value of the strike. After all, the world’s attention now seems far away from Syria and the Israeli gloves are off. Israel will do and say whatever it can to get the wheels of internationally backed regime change in motion again.

Many people still want to believe that the United Nations engages in impartial investigations and thus is more trustworthy than, say, self-interested governments, whether Russia or the United States. But trust in U.N. agencies is no longer well placed; whatever independence they may have once had has been broken, a reality relevant to recent “investigations” of Syrian chemical weapons use.

There is also the larger issue of the United Nations’ peculiar silence about one of its primary and original responsibilities, shouldered after the horrors of World War II – to stop wars of aggression, which today include “regime change” wars organized, funded and armed by the United States and other Western powers, such as the Iraq invasion in 2003, the overthrow of the Libyan government in 2011, and a series of proxy wars including the ongoing Syrian conflict.

After World War II, the Nuremberg Tribunals declared that a “war of aggression … is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

That recognition became a guiding principle of the United Nations Charter, which specifically prohibits aggression or even threats of aggression against sovereign states.

The Charter declares in Article One that it is a chief U.N. purpose “to take effective collective measures … for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace.” Article Two, which defines the appropriate behavior of U.N. members, adds that

“All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state…”

However, instead of enforcing this fundamental rule, the United Nations has, in effect, caved in to the political and financial pressure brought to bear by the United States and its allies. A similar disregard for international law also pervades the U.S. mainstream media and much of the European and Israeli press as well.

There is an assumption that the United States and its allies have the right to intervene militarily anywhere in the world at anytime solely at their own discretion. Though U.S. diplomats and mainstream journalists still voice outrage when adversaries deviate from international law – such as denunciations of Russia over Ukraine’s civil war – there is silence or support when a U.S. president or, say, an Israeli prime minister orders military strikes inside another country. Then, we hear only justifications for these attacks.

Shielding Israel

For instance, on Friday, The New York Times published an article about Israel conducting a bombing raid inside Syria that reportedly killed two Syrians. The article is notable because it contains not a single reference to international law and Israel’s clear-cut violation of it. Instead, the article amounts to a lengthy rationalization for Israel’s aggression, framing the attacks as Israeli self-defense or, as the Times put it,

“an escalation of Israel’s efforts to prevent its enemies from gaining access to sophisticated weapons.”

The article also contains no reference to the fact that Israel maintains a sophisticated nuclear arsenal and is known to possess chemical and biological weapons as well. Implicit in the Times article is that the U.S. and Israel live under one set of rules while countries on the U.S.-Israeli enemies list must abide by another. Not to state the obvious but this is a clear violation of the journalistic principle of objectivity.

But the Times is far from alone in applying endless double standards. Hypocrisy now permeates international agencies, including the United Nations, which instead of pressing for accountability in cases of U.S. or Israeli aggression has become an aider and abettor, issuing one-sided reports that justify further aggression while doing little or nothing to stop U.S.-backed acts of aggression.

For instance, there was no serious demand that U.S. and British leaders who organized the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, should face any accountability for committing the “supreme international crime” of an aggressive war. As far as the U.N. is concerned, war-crimes tribunals are for the little guys.

This breakdown in the integrity of the U.N. and related agencies has developed over the past few decades as one U.S. administration after another has exploited U.S. clout as the world’s “unipolar power” to ensure that international bureaucrats conform to U.S. interests. Any U.N. official who deviates from this unwritten rule can expect to have his or her reputation besmirched and career truncated.

So, while harshly critical of alleged abuses by the Syrian military, U.N. officials are notoriously silent when it comes to condemning the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, Israel and other countries that have been “covertly” backing anti-government “rebels” who have engaged in grave crimes against humanity in Syria.

The U.S. and its allies have even mounted overt military operations inside Syrian territory, including airstrikes against the Syrian military and its allies, without permission of the internationally recognized government in Damascus. Yet, the U.N. does nothing to curtail or condemn these clear violations of its own Charter.

Breaking the Independence

The reason is that, for much of this century, the U.S. government has worked to bring key agencies, such as the U.N. Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), under U.S. control and domination.

This drive to neutralize the U.N.’s independence gained powerful momentum after the 9/11 attacks and President George W. Bush’s launching of his “global war on terror.” But this effort continued under President Obama and now under President Trump.

In 2002, after opening the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and effectively waiving the Geneva Convention’s protections for prisoners of war, Bush bristled at criticism from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary C. Robinson.

Soon, Robinson was targeted for removal. Her fierce independence, which also included criticism of Israel, was unacceptable. The Bush administration lobbied hard against her reappointment, leading to her retirement in 2002.

Also, in 2002, the Bush administration engineered the firing of OPCW’s Director General Jose Mauricio Bustani who was viewed as an obstacle to the U.S. plans for invading Iraq.

Bustani, who had been reelected unanimously to the post less than a year earlier, described his removal in a 2013 interview with Marlise Simons of The New York Times, citing how Bush’s emissary, Under-Secretary of State John Bolton, marched into Bustani’s office and announced that he (Bustani) would be fired.

“The story behind [Bustani’s] ouster has been the subject of interpretation and speculation for years, and Mr. Bustani, a Brazilian diplomat, has kept a low profile since then,” wrote Simons. “But with the agency [OPCW] thrust into the spotlight with news of the Nobel [Peace] Prize [in October 2013], Mr. Bustani agreed to discuss what he said was the real reason: the Bush administration’s fear that chemical weapons inspections in Iraq would conflict with Washington’s rationale for invading it. Several officials involved in the events, some speaking publicly about them for the first time, confirmed his account.”

The official U.S. explanation for getting rid of Bustani was incompetence, but Bustani and the other diplomats close to the case reported that Bustani’s real offense was drawing Iraq into acceptance of the OPCW’s conventions for eliminating chemical weapons, just as the Bush administration was planning to pin its propaganda campaign for invading Iraq on the country’s alleged secret stockpile of WMD.

Bustani’s ouster gave President Bush a clearer path to the invasion by letting him frighten Americans with the prospect of Iraq sharing its chemical weapons and possibly a nuclear bomb with Al Qaeda terrorists.

Dismissing Iraq’s insistence that it had destroyed its chemical weapons and didn’t have a nuclear weapons project, Bush launched the invasion in March 2003, only for the world to discover later that the Iraqi government was telling the truth.

Compliant Replacements

In comparison to the independent-minded Bustani, the biography of the current OPCW director general, Ahmet Uzumcu, a career Turkish diplomat, suggests that the OPCW could be expected to slant its case against the Syrian government in the current Syrian conflict.

Not only has Turkey, a NATO ally of the United States, been a key player in supporting the proxy war to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but Uzumcu also served as Turkey’s ambassador to Israel, which has long sought regime change in Syria and has publicly come out in favor of the anti-government rebels.

Another one-time thorn in the side of the U.S. “unipolar power” was the IAEA when it was under the control of Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, an Egyptian. The IAEA challenged the Bush administration’s claims about Iraq having a nuclear program, when one really didn’t exist.

However, being right is no protection when U.S. officials want to bring an agency into line with U.S. policy and propaganda. So, early in the Obama administration – as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was pushing for a hardline on Iran over its nascent nuclear program – the U.S. government engineered the insertion of a pliable Japanese diplomat, Yukiya Amano, into the IAEA’s top job.

Before his appointment, Amano had portrayed himself as an independent-minded fellow who was resisting U.S.-Israeli propaganda about the Iranian nuclear program. Yet behind the scenes, he was meeting with U.S. and Israeli officials to coordinate on how to serve their interests (even though Israel is an actual rogue nuclear state, not a hypothetical or fictional one).

Amano’s professed doubts about an Iranian nuclear-bomb project, which even the U.S. intelligence community agreed no longer existed, was just a theatrical device to intensify the later impact if he were to declare that Iran indeed was building a secret nuke, thus justifying the desire of Israeli leaders and American neoconservatives to “bomb-bomb-bomb” Iran.

But this U.S. ploy was spoiled by Pvt. Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning’s leaking of hundreds of thousands of pages of U.S. diplomatic cables. Among them were reports on Amano’s hidden collaboration with U.S. and Israeli officials; his agreement with U.S. emissaries on who to fire and who to retain among IAEA officials; and even Amano’s request for additional U.S. financial contributions.

The U.S. embassy cables revealing the truth about Amano were published by the U.K. Guardian in 2011 (although ignored by The New York Times, The Washington Post and other mainstream U.S. news outlets). Despite the silence of the major U.S. news media, Internet outlets, such as Consortiumnews.com, highlighted the Amano cables, meaning that enough Americans knew the facts not to be fooled again. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Did Manning Help Avert War with Iran?”]

A Collective Collapse

So, over the years, there has been a collective collapse of the independence at U.N.-related agencies. An international bureaucrat who gets on the wrong side of the United States or Israel can expect to be fired and humiliated, while those who play ball can be assured of a comfortable life as a “respected” diplomat.

But this reality is little known to most Americans so they are still inclined to be influenced when a “U.N. investigation” reaches some conclusion condemning some country that already is on the receiving end of negative U.S. propaganda.

The New York Times, CNN and other major U.S. news outlets are sure to trumpet these “findings” with great seriousness and respect and to treat any remaining doubters as outside the mainstream. Of course, there’s an entirely different response on the rare occasion when some brave or foolhardy human rights bureaucrat criticizes Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. Then, the U.N. finding is just a sign of anti-Israeli bias and should be discounted.

In the far more frequent cases when a U.N. report is in line with U.S. propaganda, American journalists almost never turn a critical eye toward the quality of the evidence or the leaps of logic. We saw that happen this week with a thinly sourced and highly dubious U.N. report blaming the Syrian government for an alleged sarin incident on April 4. A major contradiction in the evidence – testimony given to OPCW investigators undercutting the conclusion that a Syrian warplane could have dropped a sarin bomb – was brushed aside by the U.N. human rights investigators and was ignored by the Times and other major U.S. news outlets.

But what is perhaps most troubling is that these biased U.N. reports are now used to justify continued wars of aggression by stronger countries against weaker ones. So, instead of acting as a bulwark to protect the powerless from the powerful as the U.N. Charter intended, the U.N. bureaucracy has turned the original noble purpose of the institution on its head by becoming an enabler of the “supreme international crime,” wars of aggression.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

All images in this article are from the author.

Introduction

As shown in the previous Point (“The Claim that the Hijackers Were Devout Muslims”), the alleged 9/11 hijackers did not live up to the 9/11 Commission’s description of them as devout Muslims – especially Mohamed Atta, said to have become fanatically religious after going to Germany. [1] The present Point provides an explanation of how Mohamed Atta could have been very devout while in Germany, even though Mohamed Atta’s behavior in America suggested that he was not.

The Official Account

The 9/11 airliners were hijacked by devout Muslims, ready to die for a cause. In the words of The 9/11 Commission Report, the hijackers had become a “cadre of trained operatives willing to die.” [2] The Report also said that Mohamed Atta, called the ringleader, had by 1998 become very religious, even “fanatically so.” [3]

The Best Evidence

In addition to the media stories about the hijackers in general, discussed in Point H-3, suggesting that they were not really devout Muslims, there were many stories about Atta in particular.

For example, stories in newspapers in Venice, Florida, reported that Atta had lived there for several months. Investigative reporter Daniel Hopsicker went to Venice, where he learned that Atta and a young woman named Amanda Keller had taken a trip to Key West with a few other people, during which they drank heavily and used cocaine. [4]

Another example involves one of the best-known stories about Atta’s non-Muslim behavior. This episode involved a restaurant named “Shuckums” in Hollywood, Florida. According to a Florida newspaper, two of the hijackers were “knocking back glasses of Stolichnaya and rum and Coke at a fish joint in Hollywood the weekend before [9/11].” [5] According to the restaurant’s manager, “The guy Mohamed was drunk [and] his voice was slurred.” [6] According to the bartender, Atta and his companion “were wasted.” [7]

According to a third story:

In Florida, several of the hijackers – including reputed ringleader Mohamed Atta – spent $200 to $300 each on lap dances in the Pink Pony strip club. [8]

At the first hearing of the 9/11 Commission (March 31 – April 1 2003), a member of the press asked Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste:

“If Atta belonged to the fundamentalist Muslim group, why was he snorting cocaine and frequenting strip bars?”

Ben-Veniste replied: “You know, that’s a heck of a question.” [9]

But it was a question that the 9/11 Commission never addressed.

How could Atta’s behavior as reported in the press be reconciled with the portrait of him as very devout? The two views of Atta could be explained if the man the world came to know as Mohamed Atta was not the original Mohamed Atta. There is good evidence, moreover, that this is the case.

Two Attas?

A young Egyptian man whose full name was Mohamed Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta had studied urban planning at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg in the 1990s. As reported by researcher [9a] Elias Davidsson,

“His friends in Hamburg knew him as Mohamed el-Amir, not as Mohamed Atta.” [10]

In fact, Professor Dittmar Machule, who was Mohamed el-Amir’s tutor and thesis advisor, said:

“I do not know the name Mohamed Atta,” until “after the 11th of September.”

Professor Machule said that this student was “very religious,” prayed regularly, and never touched alcohol.

“I would put my hand in the fire,” said the professor, “that this Mohamed El-Amir I know will never taste or touch alcohol.”

Also, by contrast with the man known as Mohamed Atta in America, the student the professor knew as Mohamed El-Amir Atta would not even shake hands with a woman on being introduced to her. [11]

A German urban planner named Ralph Bodenstein, who worked with Mohamed in 1995 studying traffic patterns in Cairo’s historic part, said:

“[H]e was a very religious person. He was growing a beard, he had just come back from a small hajj. He did pray five times a day. On the other hand, he was very full of idealism and he was a humanist. He was very much interested in social work.” [12]

Volker Hauth, an architect who knew Mohamed el-Amir while he studied in Hamburg, and who went with him on trips to the Middle East, said:

“The religious convictions of both of us – his Islamic and mine Protestant – were a kind of bonding for us. In Germany at that time, there were a lot of students from East Germany with no religion, and this was something difficult for Mohamed.” [13]

In addition to the fact that Mohamed el-Amir was reportedly very devout, whereas the reported behavior of the man known as Mohamed Atta in America indicated that he was not, very different adjectives were commonly used to describe the two men’s character traits.

According to Elias Davidsson, those who described Mohamed el-Amir commonly used terms such as “reserved, introvert, polite, intelligent, very nice.” For example:

On the other hand, said Davidsson, those who said anything about the character of the man known in America as Mohamed Atta “described him as an unpleasant, arrogant and obnoxious man.”

Moreover, the contrast was not simply behavioral but also physical. The American Atta was described as 5’8″ and sometimes as 5’10” tall. [20] By contrast, Professor Machule, said of his former student that he was not a “bodyguard type” but “more a girl looking type,” [21] and described him as “very small,” being “one meter sixty-two” in height, which means slightly under 5’4″.

Conclusion

Featured image: Mohamed Atta al-Sayed, an Egyptian who allegedly led the September 11 attacks. Picture from his Florida driver’s license. It appeared on the FBI’s website shortly after the attacks. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The Official Account

The four 9/11 planes were hijacked by devout Muslims. According to The 9/11 Commission Report, Mohamed Atta, the ringleader, had “adopted fundamentalism.” [1] The hijackers, by virtue of their beliefs, had become a “cadre of trained operatives willing to die.” [2]

The Best Evidence

The official account depends on the idea that the 9/11 planes were hijacked by devout Muslims – devout enough to die for the cause. And yet the mainstream media contained many stories contradicting the claim that the alleged hijackers were devout Muslims.

Five days after 9/11, a story in London’s Daily Mail contained this report:

At the Palm Beach bar Sunrise 251, [Mohamed] Atta and [Marwan] Al Shehhi spent $1,000 in 45 minutes on Krug and Perrier-Jouet champagne. … Atta was with a 6ft. busty brunette in her late twenties; the other man was with a shortish blonde. Both women were known locally as regular companions of high-rollers. [3]

One month after 9/11, a Boston Herald story, entitled “Terrorists Partied with Hooker at Hub-Area Hotel,” reported:

A driver for a pair of local escort services told the Herald yesterday that he drove a call girl to the Park Inn in Chestnut Hill on Sept. 9 around 10:30 p.m. where she bedded down with one of the mass murderers. It was her second trip to the terrorist’s room that day. Two of the hijackers aboard Flight 11 that crashed into the World Trade Center – Waleed M. Alshehri and Wail Alshehri – spent Sept. 9 in the Route 9 hotel, sources said. … The dirty Hub dalliances of the terrorists is just the latest link between the Koran-toting killers and America’s seedy sex scene. [4]

A week earlier, a San Francisco Chronicle article, “Agents of Terror Leave Their Mark on Sin City,” reported that at least five of the “self-styled warriors for Allah,” including Mohamed Atta, had “engaged in some decidedly un-Islamic sampling of prohibited pleasures [including lap dances] in America’s reputed capital of moral corrosion,” Las Vegas. The group, investigators said, had “made at least six trips here.” The story then quoted Dr. Osama Haikal, president of the board of directors of the Islamic Foundation of Nevada, as saying:

“True Muslims don’t drink, don’t gamble, don’t go to clubs.” [5]

On October 10, the Wall Street Journal summarized these stories in an editorial entitled “Terrorist Stag Parties.” [6] Whereas the Journal’s editorial pointed to the contradiction only implicitly, by means of its ironic title, the problem had already been drawn out explicitly, five days after 9/11, by a story in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel entitled “Suspects’ Actions Don’t Add Up.”

Three guys cavorting with lap dancers at the Pink Pony Nude Theater. Two others knocking back glasses of Stolichnaya and rum and Coke at a fish joint in Hollywood the weekend before committing suicide and mass murder. … [This] is not a picture of devout Muslims, experts say. Let alone that of religious zealots in their final days on Earth. … [A] devout Muslim [cannot] drink booze or party at a strip club and expect to reach heaven, said Mahmoud Mustafa Ayoub, a professor at Temple University in Philadelphia. …

“It is incomprehensible that a person could drink and go to a strip bar one night, then kill themselves the next day in the name of Islam. … Something here does not add up.” [7]

The 9/11 Commission did not explain how its characterization of the hijackers as devout Muslims was consistent with these press stories. It simply ignored them. For example, referring to a trip to Las Vegas by Atta and two other hijackers roughly a month before 9/11, the Commission wrote:

“Beyond Las Vegas’s reputation for welcoming tourists, we have seen no credible evidence explaining why, on this occasion and others, the operatives flew to or met in Las Vegas.” [8]

Conclusion

The reported behavior of the men said to have hijacked the 9/11 planes cannot be reconciled with the claim that they were devout Muslims.

The 9/11 Commission made no effort to reconcile the contradiction. It simply claimed that the men were devout, with their leader having become a fundamentalist, while simply ignoring all the reports that contradict that claim.

Had the mainstream media drawn out the implications of its own stories, which contradict the 9/11 Commission’s claims about devout Muslims, the American public would have been made aware that the 9/11 attacks could have provided no pretext for attacks on Muslim countries.

Notes

1. The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, authorized edition (W. W. Norton, 2004), 160 (pdf: 177). The text says: “When Atta arrived in Germany, he appeared religious, but not fanatically so. This would change … ”

2. Ibid., 154.

3. Eric Bailey, “It Was a Little Strange. Most People Want to Do Take-Offs and Landings. All They Did Was Turns,” Daily Mail, 16 September 2001.

4. David Wedge, “Terrorists Partied with Hooker at Hub-Area Hotel,” Boston Herald, 10 October 2001.

5. Kevin Fagan, “Agents of Terror Leave Their Mark on Sin City,” San Francisco Chronicle, 4 October 2001.

6. “Terrorist Stag Parties,” Wall Street Journal, 10 October 2001.

7. Jody A. Benjamin, “Suspects’ Actions Don’t Add Up,” South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 16 September 2001.

8. The 9/11 Commission Report, 248 (pdf: 265).

---

by Michel Chossudovsky

ISBN Number: 9780973714715

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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.

UPDATE [8.09.2017 23:24 CEST]: Dear friends, few moments ago Youtube removed one of the two “Community Guidelines strikes” from SouthFront’s channel and restored our video “Syrian War Report – September 8, 2017: US-led Coalition Rescues ISIS Commanders From Deir Ezzor?”.  This means that SouthFront is now able again to upload new videos to our Youtube channel.

However, the Community Guidelines strike that was added to the channel on September 6 remained. (You can find more about it in the text below)

The remaining strike directly impacts SouthFront’s ability to provide exclusive content. We cannot more host live streams because our Youtube channel has a Community Guidelines strike.

Furthermore, it’s clear that a threat that SouthFront’s YouTube channel might be closed down or once again frozen (as a result of false flagging by the project’s ill-wishers or by ‘mistake’ of the Youtube system) remains while the channel still has one Community Guidelines strike.

Original Post:

The project’s YouTube channel received two community guidelines strikes over the past 48 hours. With two community guidelines strikes, SouthFront cannot upload new videos on YouTube. Work on YouTube is now fully blocked.

This is a clear violation of the freedom of speech and an attempt to eliminate an independent media.

On September 8, 2017, SouthFront’s war report video “Syrian War Report – September 8, 2017: US-led Coalition Rescues ISIS Commanders From Deir Ezzor?” (You can watch the deleted video here) was removed because it allegedly violated “YouTube Community Guidelines”. The video included no graphic content, but was nevertheless flagged and deleted.

On September 6, 2017, SouthFront’s Youtube channel received a community guidelines strike when Youtube deleted our video “Foreign Policy Diary ‘War on Terror’ [remastered]” that was already reviewed by Youtube on February 15, 2016. (You can find more about the previous case HERE [strike added] and HERE [strike removed])

In February 2016, the system deleted the video and the project channel received a community guidelines strike. However, the strike was removed after SouthFront’s appeal. The video remained deleted. SouthFront didn’t re-uplad the video.

Now, it seems that the video “Foreign Policy Diary ‘War on Terror’ [remastered]” was somehow restored (automatically? when?) and deleted again because it allegedly violated “YouTube Community Guidelines” and SouthFront’s YouTube channel received a community guidelines strike.

All SouthFront content is produced with informational purpose in mind and is aimed to provide an independent coverage of the threats of international terrorism as well as the geo-political, military and security issues of our time.

SouthFront faces systematic ‘false flagging’ on YouTube.

The project faced previous attempt to censor our YouTube channel on August 17, 2017 when our video analysis “The Battle for Mosul: Concept Versus Reality” released on December 12, 2016 was deleted because it allegedly included some content violating “YouTube Community Guidelines”.

However, as a result of SouthFront’s appeal and thanks to your support, YouTube removed a “Community Guidelines strike” from SouthFront’s channel and restored the video. (You can find more info HERE)

This series of hostile and disingenuous actions, as well as YouTube’s prejudicial treatment against SouthFront poses a real threat that SouthFront’s YouTube channel might soon be closed down. In this case, SouthFront informs that you can watch all SouthFront videos at the projectwebsite, http://southfront.org

With the recent attack on police in Myanmar by terrorists described by Reuters as “Muslim insurgents,” and ongoing terrorism plaguing the Philippines where forces are engaged with militants from the so-called “Islamic State,” it would appear that terrorism has spread into Southeast Asia with no signs of waning. 

However, the sudden uptick in violence comes at a time when America’s so-called “pivot to Asia” has ground to a complete halt, providing the United States with an all-too-convenient pretext to reengage and establish itself across the region in a much more insidious manner. 

US Sought Military Presence in Southeast Asia for Decades but Lacked a Pretext, Until Now 

The United States has openly conspired to establish and expand a permanent military presence in Southeast Asia as a means to confront, encircle, and contain China for decades.

As early as the Vietnam War, with the so-called “Pentagon Papers” released in 1969, it was revealed that the conflict was simply one part of a greater strategy aimed at containing and controlling China.

“…the February decision to bomb North Vietnam and the July approval of Phase I deployments make sense only if they are in support of a long-run United States policy to contain China.”

“China—like Germany in 1917, like Germany in the West and Japan in the East in the late 30′s, and like the USSR in 1947—looms as a major power threatening to undercut our importance and effectiveness in the world and, more remotely but more menacingly, to organize all of Asia against us.” 

“there are three fronts to a long-run effort to contain China (realizing that the USSR “contains” China on the north and northwest): (a) the Japan-Korea front; (b) the India-Pakistan front; and (c) the Southeast Asia front.” 

While the US would ultimately lose the Vietnam War and any chance of using the Vietnamese as a proxy force against Beijing, the long war against Beijing would continue elsewhere. 

More recently, an American policy think tank, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) in a 2000 paper titled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” (PDF) would unabashedly declare its intentions to establish a wider, permanent military presence in Southeast Asia.

The report would state explicitly that: 

…it is time to increase the presence of American forces in Southeast Asia.

It would elaborate in detail, stating:

In Southeast Asia, American forces are too sparse to adequately address rising security requirements. Since its withdrawal from the Philippines in 1992, the United States has not had a significant permanent military presence in Southeast Asia. Nor can U.S. forces in Northeast Asia easily operate in or rapidly deploy to Southeast Asia – and certainly not without placing their commitments in Korea at risk. Except for routine patrols by naval and Marine forces, the security of this strategically significant and increasingly tumultuous region has suffered from American neglect. 

Noting the difficultly of placing US troops where they are not wanted, the PNAC paper notes:

This will be a difficult task requiring sensitivity to diverse national sentiments, but it is made all the more compelling by the emergence of new democratic governments in the region. By guaranteeing the security of our current allies and newly democratic nations in East Asia, the United States can help ensure that the rise of China is a peaceful one. Indeed, in time, American and allied power in the region may provide a spur to the process of democratization inside China itself.

It should be noted that the paper’s reference to “the emergence of new democratic governments in the region” is a reference to client states created by the United States on behalf of its own interests and in no way constituted actual “democratic governments” which would otherwise infer they represented the interests of the very people possessing the “national sentiments” that opposed US military presence in the region in the first place.

It should also be noted that in 2000, the United States was cultivating a number of such proxy governments across Southeast Asia including Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy in Myanmar, Thaksin Shinawatra in Thailand, and Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia.

Since 2000, all but one of these proxies have been removed from power with Anwar Ibrahim residing in prison and Thaksin Shinawatra fleeing Thailand to evade a 2 year jail term.

Only Suu Kyi managed to ascend to power as a result of billions spent by her US and European sponsors via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its numerous subsidiaries and affiliates. One of these affiliates – The US Institute of Peace – has openly enumerated how the US on virtually every imaginable level is now dictating the outcome of Myanmar’s development from directing its political processes to organizing its economy. It is also providing “technical assistance” on “counter-terrorism.”

In the Philippines, attempts by the US to reestablish its military presence and use the nation in its self-serving, elective conflict with Beijing has suffered many setbacks.

US to Fight US-Saudi Sponsored Terrorism in Asia

Most recently Washington found its relationship with Manila unraveling irrevocably in favor of Manila’s increasing ties with Beijing. This was until the fortuitous arrival of militants from the so-called “Islamic State” on the nation’s shores, overwhelming an entire city in the nation’s southern region.

In Myanmar, terrorists have likewise – suddenly – appeared and are operating on unprecedented levels just in time for another push by the United States to establish a permanent military presence in the country to provide “technical assistance” on “counter-terrorism.”

Such terrorists – however – have not simply sprung from oblivion. Such organizations conducting operations on the scale seen in the Philippines, southern Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Myanmar require immense sums of money, organizational capacity, logistical, and political support.

And indeed, it is confirmed that not only does such support exist, it flows from a very logical and familiar source of state-sponsored terrorism – America’s oldest and closest ally in the Middle East – Saudi Arabia.

The Wall Street Journal in an article titled, “Asia’s New Insurgency Burma’s abuse of the Rohingya Muslims creates violent backlash.” reports in regards to terrorism in Myanmar that (emphasis added):

Now this immoral policy has created a violent backlash. The world’s newest Muslim insurgency pits Saudi-backed Rohingya militants against Burmese security forces. As government troops take revenge on civilians, they risk inspiring more Rohingya to join the fight.

The Wall Street Journal elaborates, stating (emphasis added):

Called Harakah al-Yaqin, Arabic for “the Faith Movement,” the group answers to a committee of Rohingya emigres in Mecca and a cadre of local commanders with experience fighting as guerrillas overseas. Its recent campaign—which continued into November with IED attacks and raids that killed several more security agents—has been endorsed by fatwas from clerics in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, the Emirates and elsewhere. 

Rohingyas have “never been a radicalized population,” ICG notes, “and the majority of the community, its elders and religious leaders have previously eschewed violence as counterproductive.” But that is changing fast. Harakah al-Yaqin was established in 2012 after ethnic riots in Rakhine killed some 200 Rohingyas and is now estimated to have hundreds of trained fighters.

The foreign-baked terrorism sponsored by Saudi Arabia and literally directed from within its own borders all-too-conveniently creates a pretext for US military presence in Myanmar it otherwise could not justify or in any shape, form, or way pursue.

A similar superhighway of cash and weapons flows from terrorists operating in the Philippines to Riyadh and its partners in Washington, resulting in a similar opportunity for the US to establish a permanent military presence there in reaction to a crisis of its own intentional engineering. 

While the US proposes an expansive US military presence across Southeast Asia for “counter-terrorism” assistance, it is clear that it is Washington’s own aid and support to Riyadh that is at the very source of the security crisis and that simply withdrawing aid and penalizing this state sponsor of terrorism is the solution. 

Yet the United States is not making this most logical of conclusions, nor is it taking this most obvious course of action – indicating full complicity with Saudi state-sponsorship of terrorism and placing responsibility for the death and destruction sown by terrorism across Southeast Asia squarely on Washington.

While the US frames its military presence in Southeast Asia as a cornerstone of peace and stability, it is in fact a policy representing a symptom of the sort of very real instability and chaos the United States and its self-proclaimed “international order” represents. It is particularly ironic that not only is the increasingly rampant terrorism across Southeast Asia a result of intentional Washington policy, it is being used as a pretext for setting the stage of a greater and potentially more devastating regional conflict with China.

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

This article was originally published by New Eastern Outlook.

All images in this article are from the author.

The United States shows the world such a ridiculous face that the world laughs at us. 

The latest spin on “Russia stole the election” is that Russia used Facebook to influence the election. The NPR women yesterday were breathless about it. 

We have been subjected to ten months of propaganda about Trump/Putin election interference and still not a scrap of evidence. It is past time to ask an unasked question: If there were evidence, what is the big deal? All sorts of interest groups try to influence election outcomes including foreign governments. Why is it OK for Israel to influence US elections but not for Russia to do so? Why do you think the armament industry, the energy industry, agribusiness, Wall Street and the banks, pharmaceutical companies, etc., etc., supply the huge sum of money to finance election campaigns if their intent is not to influence the election? Why do editorial boards write editorials endorsing one candidate and damning another if they are not influencing the election?

What is the difference between influencing the election and influencing the government? Washington is full of lobbyists of all descriptions, including lobbyists for foreign governments, working round the clock to influence the US government. It is safe to say that the least represented in the government are the citizens themselves who don’t have any lobbyists working for them.

The orchestrated hysteria over “Russian influence” is even more absurd considering the reason Russia allegedly interfered in the election. Russia favored Trump because he was the peace candidate who promised to reduce the high tensions with Russia created by the Obama regime and its neocon nazis—Hillary Clinton, Victoria Nuland, Susan Rice, and Samantha Power. What’s wrong with Russia preferring a peace candidate over a war candidate? The American people themselves preferred the peace candidate. So Russia agreed with the electorate.  

Those who don’t agree with the electorate are the warmongers—the military/security complex and the neocon nazis. These are democracy’s enemies who are trying to overturn the choice of the American people. It is not Russia that disrespects the choice of the American people; it is the utterly corrupt Democratic National Committee and its divisive Identity Politics, the military/security complex, and the presstitute media who are undermining democracy.

I believe it is time to change the subject. The important question is who is it that is trying so hard to convince Americans that Russian influence prevails over us?

Do the idiots pushing this line realize how impotent this makes an alleged “superpower” look. How can we be the hegemonic power that the Zionist neocons say we are when Russia can decide who is the president of the United States?

The US has a massive spy state that even intercepts the private cell phone conversations of the Chancellor of Germany, but his massive spy organization is unable to produce one scrap of evidence that the Russians conspired with Trump to steal the presidential election from Hillary. When will the imbeciles realize that when they make charges for which no evidence can be produced they make the United States look silly, foolish, incompetent, stupid beyond all belief? 

Countries are supposed to be scared of America’s threat that “we will bomb you into the stone age,” but the President of Russia laughs at us. Putin recently described the complete absence of any competence in Washington:

“It is difficult to talk to people who confuse Austria and Australia. But there is nothing we can do about this; this is the level of political culture among the American establishment. As for the American people, America is truly a great nation if the Americans can put up with so many politically uncivilized people in their government.”

These words from Putin were devastating, because the world understands that they are accurate. 

Consider the idiot Nikki Haley, appointed by Trump in a fit of mindlessness as US Ambassador to the United Nations. This stupid person is forever shaking her fist at the Russians while mouthing yet another improbable accusation. She might want to read Mario Puzo’s book, The Godfather. Everyone knows the movie, but if memory serves somewhere in the book Puzo reflects on the practice of the irate American motorist who shakes a fist and gives the bird to other drivers. What if the driver receiving the insult is a Mafia capo? Does the idiot shaking his fist know who he is accosting? No. Does the moron know that the result might be a brutal beating or death? No.

Does the imbecile Nikki Haley understand what can be the result of her inability to control herself? No. Every knowledgeable person I know wonders if Trump appointed the imbecile Nikki Haley US ambassador to the world for the purpose of infuriating the Russians. 

Ask Napoleon and the German Wehrmacht the consequence of infuriating the Russians. 

After 16 years the US “superpower” has been unable to defeat a few thousand lightly armed Taliban, who have no air force, no Panzer divisions, no worldwide intelligence service, and the crazed US government in Washington is courting war with Russia and China and North Korea and Iran.

The American people are clearly out to lunch in their insouciance. Americans are fighting among themselves over “civil war” statues, while “their’ government invites nuclear armageddon.

The United States has an ambassador to the world who shows no signs of intelligence, who behaves as if she is Mike Tyson or Bruce Lee to the 5th power, and  who is the total antithesis of a diplomat. What does this tell about the United States?

It reveals that the US is in the Roman collapse stage when the emperor appoints horses to the Senate.

The United States has a horse, an uncivilized horse, as its diplomat to the world. The Congress and executive branch are also full of horses and horse excrement. The US government is completely devoid of intelligence. There is no sign of intelligence anywhere in the U.S. government. Of or morality. As Hugo Chavez said:

Satan is there; you can smell the sulphur.

America is a joke with nuclear weapons, the prime danger to life on earth.

How can this danger be corralled?

The American people would have to realize that they are being led to their deaths by the Zionist neocon nazis who, together with the military/security complex and Wall Street, control US foreign policy, by the complicity of Europe and Great Britain desperate to retain their CIA subsidies, and by the harlots that comprise the Western media.

Are Americans capable of comprehending this? Only a few have escaped The Matrix.

The consequence is that America is being locked into conflict with Russia and China. There is no possibility whatsoever of Washington invading either country, much less both, so war would be nuclear.  

Do the American people want Washington to bring us this result? If not, why are the American people sitting there sucking their thumbs, doing nothing? Why are Europe and Great Britain sitting there permitting the unfolding of nuclear armageddon? Who murdered the peace movement?

The World and the American people need desperately to rein in the warmonger United States, or the world will cease to exist.

An International Court To Preserve Life On Earth needs to be assembled. The US government and the war interests it serves need to be indicted and prosecuted and disarmed before their evil destroys life on earth.  

Billions More for Crony Capitalist Insurance or Improved Medicare for All

This week we attended a hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) committee where there was broad bi-partisan support for giving billions more to the insurance industry to “stabilize the market.” The government already gives for-profit insurance $300 billion annually and their stock values have risen dramatically since passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), so the rush to give them more was disheartening.

That was contrasted with a meeting with the staff of Senator Bernie Sanders about the improved Medicare for all bill he plans to introduce on September 13. Sanders, along with other Senators, is seriously trying to figure out how to transform health care from being a profit center for big business to being a public good that serves the people. That means doing away with the health insurance industry, not giving them billions of public dollars.

The contrast reinforced the need to advocate for improved Medicare for all and push for the best healthcare system we can create.

Healthcare a Commodity or a Human Right?

Senators are back from their long summer recess, and they started off with health care back at the top of the agenda. The Senate HELP committee held its first of four hearings on September 6, and Senator Bernie Sanders is preparing to introduce a Medicare for All bill on September 13. The two efforts are a clear example of the underlying dilemma that we have faced in the United States for the past 100 years: Is health care a commodity or a public good? It can’t be both.

The failed efforts to repeal and replace the ACA took up a lot of time and energy this year and left the country in no better position to deal with the ongoing healthcare crisis. Now, time is really short because private health insurers are announcing their rates for 2018, and they are, not surprisingly, screaming for more money because they have to (*gasp*) pay for health care.

A group of us attended the first Senate HELP committee hearing to convey the message that the people are ready to undertake the serious work of creating a National Improved Medicare for All. Typically, before and sometimes during a hearing, attendees are allowed to hold signs as long as they are not disruptive. On that day, the committee chair, Senator Lamar Alexander, ordered that signs be put away before the hearing even began. He told Dr. Carol Paris, a steering committee member of the Health Over Profit for Everyone campaign, that “we are not talking about improved Medicare for All now.”

Instead, the entire hearing focused on “stabilizing the insurance market,” even though their stock values have quadrupled since 2010. Five health insurance commissioners from different states testified before the senators and answered questions. It appeared that all had been well-prepped by the health insurance industry. The committee members patted each other on the back for being bi-partisan, unfortunately they were working together for the insurance industry, not for the people.

The bi-partisan hearing discussed three main points: making sure that public dollars were available to subsidize insurance costs, reinsuring private health insurers so they would be protected if they had to spend ‘too much’ money on health care and incentives to entice private insurers back into areas that are not profitable. Coincidentally, these were the same points raised in the bi-partisan proposal published this year by the Center for American Progress, a Democratic Party think tank financed in part by health insurance lobbyists. Both parties are clearly on the side of health care as a commodity.

Not one person participating in the hearing questioned whether health care belonged in the market. At least one Senator, Rand Paul, complained about Big Insurance coming to Washington with their hands out and said he would rather pay directly for health care than give the money to Big Insurance. His ideology is far from supporting Improved Medicare for All, but he did call out the corruption.

Perhaps the most disappointing of the day was Senator Al Franken, who has completely bought into the ‘health care is a commodity’ camp. Not only did he advocate for subsidizing and reinsuring private insurers, but he called for a federal reinsurance program to cover the costs of people who need health care, at least after Big Insurance takes their cut. And Franken, who tried to make jokes about the hearing, called for more money to advertise and lure youth into the insurance market, which is about as unethical as pushing cigarettes or candy, and wants heavier enforcement of mandates to purchase health insurance. Franken touted a ‘virtuous cycle’ of giving more money to health insurers so that they lower premiums and more people buy insurance. The problem is that there is nothing very virtuous about spending billions to subsidize an industry that has a greater responsibility to pay its Wall Street investors than to pay for necessary health care. The insurance industry has shown itself to be insatiable, and ready to use their power to extort Congress because they hold people’s lives in their hands.

It was a difficult hearing to attend. The whole time we wanted to stand up and ask whether they could possibly see how ridiculous this all appeared and whether they thought private health insurers added any benefit. But, the Capitol Police made it clear from the start that they would arrest anyone who disrupted without warning, and we had a meeting scheduled with Senator Sanders’ staff after the hearing. We did manage to squeeze out a few “Medicare for All’s” during the hearing.

Healthcare Without the For-Profit Insurance Industry

The meeting with Senator Sanders’ staff was like night and day. We began from the premise that health care is a human right and had a frank discussion of how that could be achieved. The text of his upcoming bill was not available, but for 90 minutes we discussed many of the details of the bill. This meeting was scheduled because of a letter that the Health Over Profit for Everyone steering committee sent to the Senator’s health staffers raising concerns about what was reported to be in the bill. An initial response was lacking, but once the letter was widely circulated in progressive blogs, the staff were ready to meet.

There has been a movement for National Improved Medicare for All in the United States for a long time. People in the movement have debated and reached consensus about how an improved Medicare for all system ought to be structured. Much of that is embodied in John Conyers’ legislation, HR 676: The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, which has 118 co-sponsors. Senator Sanders and his group, Our Revolution, are raising funds and working to build more support for Improved Medicare for All, but they still need to cooperate with those who have been advocating for this if they want full support.

Fortunately, Senator Sanders has demonstrated that he is responsive to public pressure. He started the year off not intending to introduce Medicare for all legislation, but he received push back and changed his mind. Then he started talking about fixing the ACA and introducing a public option, and there was pushback against that. There has also been pressure about the contents of the bill. When it was learned that there would be co-pays, many organizations, including Physicians for a National Health Program, contacted his office to say that co-pays add more complexity to the system and cause people to delay or avoid necessary health care. His staff reported that co-pays have been removed in the bill except for purchasing drugs, in order to encourage the use of generic drugs.

In the process of winning a single payer healthcare system, the movement for National Improved Medicare for All has the role of being the watchdog to make sure that we create the best system we can. We want this system to work for everyone and to be a system that improves health, a system that the United States can be proud of. This is a role that will be ongoing even after we win because we will have to improve the system and constantly guard against those who would try to privatize it so they can profit.

After meeting with Senator Sanders’ staff, we felt more reassured that his intention is to ultimately create a strong National Improved Medicare for All system. There are many provisions in the bill that are to be applauded – providing care to every person in the United States and offering fairly comprehensive coverage – and a few that we will have to work on – such as including long term care, abolishing investor-owned health facilities and a more rapid transition period. On September 13, if all goes well, the text of the bill will be released and we will assess it.

The People Can Win Improved Medicare for All

All in all, we are in a strong position. The Senate HELP committee hearing showed how out of touch many of our legislators are with the people, who favor Improved Medicare for All or are just yearning for affordable health care no matter what form that takes.

Source: Health Over Profit

And, we know members of Congress can be moved, some more easily than others. This week the architect of the ACA in Congress, former Senator Max Baucus, who had us arrested with six others in 2009 when we stood up and called for single payer to be included in the debate, joined the choir. Baucus said single payer is the answer, commenting “we’re getting there, it’s going to happen.” We were arrested demanding that he put single payer on the table and he refused, calling for more police instead. Now, more than 100,000 preventable deaths later, he supports it. The ACA was born out of the corruption by healthcare profiteers and everyone involved from Obama to Baucus knew it, and everyone from Alexander to Franken knows that remains true today.

The tide is shifting in the United States. After a century of what Professor David Barton Smith, a health historian calls, “more palatable approaches” that have each “self-destructed,” we are clear that health care is a public service, not a financial profit center. We are ready to do the work to make what was once considered impossible, National Improved Medicare for All, become inevitable. Each week, new support for single payer arises. The other surprise this week was the support of centrist Democrat, Senator Jon Tester of Montana, who explained that his farmer parents never had insurance until they were old enough for Medicare.

Hopefully, more legislators will arrive at the wisdom that, as Professor Smith describes:

“The practical mechanics of how to make such a universal health insurance system work are a lot easier than patching together the existing hopelessly fragmented private-public health insurance system. The Medicare program actually does this quite well and the cry of Medicare for all has never been silenced. Indeed, no one has ever objected to their ‘mandated’ coverage under Medicare.”

The people have the power to finally make the government do the right thing. No more compromises. No more false solutions. Onward to National Improved Medicare for All.

Featured image is from HuffPost.

A recent report by the U.N Commission of Inquiry^[1] on Syria, fruit of terrorist- perpetrated false flag attacks, such as the incident at Khan Shaykhun, in Idlib province, is yet another example of the U.S Empire’s corrosive influence in world affairs.

Circumstances surrounding the incident at Khan Shaykhun are the rule, rather than the exception.

The U.N Commission’s findings are clearly flawed since they rely on al Qaeda terrorists as witnesses, since the chain of custody for evidence was not secured, and for numerous other well-documented reasons. But the report will nonetheless have some (limited) traction because it serves criminal propaganda agendas of those who still seek to expand the war, to destroy the forces of international law and order, to empower terrorism, and to force duly-elected and much-loved President Assad “to go”.

Washington regularly uses fake intelligence to provide fake pretexts for war and more war. Time and again, we see that policies are first established (i.e the invasion of any number of countries), and then intelligence is “fixed” around the previously established policy to “justify” that which is not justifiable.

Author David Ray Griffin, demonstrates in Bush and Cheney|How They Ruined America And The World that “(e)very claim made by the Bush-Cheney administration about WMD (in Iraq) proved to be false.” In reaching this conclusion, Griffin shows that in every instance where solid intelligence did not support invasion plans, fake/corrupt “intelligence” was used instead.  Intelligence was “fixed” around policy.^[2]

NATO terrorists have used “fixed” intelligence for all of their false flag terror incidents in Syria, and the incident at Khan Shaykhun^[3] is no exception.

The U.N has proven itself, yet again, to be an agency for corruption and imperialism rather than as an agency for peace and the rule of law.

Notes

[1] Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic

(http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/IICISyria/Pages/IndependentInternationalCommission.aspx) Accessed September 8, 2017.

[2] David Ray Griffin, Bush and Cheney|How They Ruined America And The World (Northampton, Olive Branch Press, 2017), 57.

[3] Mark Taliano, “Syria Chemical Weapons Red Flags and False Flags.” Global

Research, April 6, 2017.

(http://www.globalresearch.ca/syria-chemical-weapons-red-flags-and-false-flags/5583616) Accessed September 8, 2017.

Featured image is from honestreporting.com

---

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China recently announced they will trade oil for yuan “backed” by gold. The story has gotten some press (none of it mainstream mind you), and many have questions as to what it really means. While quite complicated as a whole, when you break this down into pieces I believe it is a quite simple and logical end to Bretton Woods.

For a background, China has had an exchange open for about a year where gold can be purchased with yuan, though the volumes so far have been miniscule to this point.

China has also been all over the world inking trade deals (in yuan) and investing in all sorts of resources from oil to gold to grains, they have made no secret about this.

With the most recent example here. They have trade arrangements and treaties with Russia, Iran and many other non Western nations. They have also “courted” many Western nations privately (remember their meeting with the King of Saudi Arabia?) and actually lured many with their “Silk Road” plans via the AIIB which was huge news last year (but nearly forgotten by Americans at this point?).

We also know China has been a huge importer of gold for the last 4-5 years and done so publicly via Shanghai receipts and deliveries.

So what exactly does “oil for yuan” mean? In my opinion, China is basically leading a “mutiny FOR the bounty” (we’ll explain this shortly). The only things holding the dollar up from outright death for many years has been the oil trade (and other trade commerce) between nations and settled in dollars. Anyone wanting to buy oil had to first buy dollars in order to pay for the trade. Anyone getting out of step and suggesting they would accept currency other than dollars was dealt with swiftly and harshly (think Saddam and Mohamar). In other words, the U.S. military “enforced” the deal Henry Kissinger made with the Middle East (lead by Saudi Arabia) where ALL oil was settled in dollars. International trade settlement alone supported the dollar after the Nixon administration defaulted on its promise to exchange one ounce of gold for $35.

China is now suggesting THEY will be the ones to trade oil and not use the dollar for settlement. Instead, settlement will be in yuan. But why now?

I believe for one of two reasons or more likely both. First, and as we have recently spoken about, it very well may be that the US military technology has been cracked or leap frogged. It is looking like a distinct possibility and if so, China/Russia now have less fear of U.S. military “retribution”.

The other possibility pertains to gold. We have no way of knowing whether or not the “bottom of the barrel” as far as gold reserves is in sight but we can have a pretty good idea.

Physical demand for gold has exceeded mine supply by some 1,500 tons for the last 20 years, “Scrap” supply can not have made up the shortfall. The only place the gold to supply for delivery can have come from are Western (think Ft. Knox) vaults. If the Chinese know their “supplier” of gold is at or near zero, this could also explain “why now”. My bet is both, military technology AND lack of gold supply are at work here.

The next question is this, does China want to become the world’s reserve currency? I do not think so as they have seen economies of the issuers of the reserve currency destroyed time after time throughout history. Rather, China wants to lead the parade away from the dollar or at least steer it. Whether via a larger slice of the SDR pie, or another as yet to be introduced currency I do not know.

What we do know: the U.S. is broke and very likely nearly out of gold. The U.S. has “led” the world with an iron fist and trampled many in its wake …pissing off nations all the while over the last 20+ years in particular. China knows this and also knows the rest of the world will follow them just as school kids will follow the one who stands up to the school bully. Besides, on the surface it certainly looks like better (more fair) trade and settlement terms for anyone who goes along.

Wrapping this up, we need to know “what” all this means? Most importantly it means the world will have an alternative to settling in dollars …which means less overall demand for dollars. This alone will weaken the dollar much further than the huge move we have already seen. A weaker dollar will mean much higher prices (inflation) for the imported goods we no longer manufacture at home.

There is a bigger problem here that few are thinking of yet. How will the U.S. settle trade if the dollar becomes so weak it becomes shunned …AND we have no gold for international settlement left? This is a very serious question and one pertaining directly to the standard of living for Americans.

Answering the question as to the meaning of “mutiny for the bounty”, this is simple. You can think of “bounty” as “prosperity” if you will. Prosperity in today’s world means you produce goods and trade, trade, trade! By and large I believe the world wants peace and prosperity …which go hand in hand and are not mutually exclusive. If the world is offered a “more fair” way to settle trade, will they go for it? You bet! Especially if they are offered “cover” or protection from the U.S. military …for trading in a currency they deem more fair than dollars!

So it seems to me, China is leading a world that is ready to follow in a direction away from dollars. As for gold, it will explode in price in terms of a weakening dollar but there is potentially more. China without ANY DOUBT is THE largest holder of gold on the planet. It is for this reason China now has the ability to “price” gold wherever they want to. In other words, China can mark the price of gold to the moon which will do several things. It will make them the wealthiest nation on the planet while at the same time making it extremely expensive and difficult for anyone to catch up by amassing their own gold horde.

As to the yuan becoming gold backed, I doubt it in reality. I highly doubt they will ever “exchange” their current gold horde. It is more likely they will only exchange further gold accumulated from this point forward but that is a story for another day.

We have speculated for several years that China might try to supplant the dollar. It now makes sense and one would have to wonder why they wouldn’t lead the mutiny if they were to become the new captain?

This article was originally published by Jim Sinclair’s MineSet.

Featured image is from King World News.