Global Research

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

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

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

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

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

Michel Chossudovsky, October 30, 2019

***

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

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

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

MAP 1

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

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

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

MAP 2

Sea Power

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

MAP 2b

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

The Socotra Military Base

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Existing runway and airport

US Naval Facility?

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

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

MAP 3

The Great Game

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Militarization of the Indian Ocean

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

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

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

MAP 4

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

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

AMERICA’S “WAR ON TERRORISM”

by Michel Chossudovsky

CLICK TO ORDER

America’s “War on Terrorism”

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

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

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

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

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

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

CLICK TO ORDER (mail order or online order)

America’s “War on Terrorism”

“El Pueblo Unido Jamás será Vencido”

People united will never be defeated.

Concert-event:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Monday, Telesur reported that President-elect Fernandez

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Originally published on InfoBrics

On October 23rd the Amsterdam District Court issued an order for the seizure of 100% of the shares of the South Stream Transport B.V. company, which is contracted to build the offshore section of the Turk Stream Pipeline. This legal ruling follows a 2018 award by the Stockholm Arbitration Tribunal of $4.6 billion to Naftogaz, the (theoretically) state-owned oil and gas company of Ukraine, in a lawsuit which it had filed against Gazprom in 2014 in relation to alleged contractual violations regarding gas-transit through Ukraine. That $4.6 billion award was later negotiated down to $2.56 billion, but on October 23rd the Amsterdam District Court ordered the seizure of all South Stream Transport B.V. shares as a punitive measure for non-compliance with the Stockholm Arbitration Tribunal order.

Despite this development, Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak said on October 27th that the construction of the Turk Stream Pipeline would be completed on schedule. The 1100-kilometre pipeline, 900 kilometres of which runs under the Black Sea to Turkey, is envisaged to begin delivering a combined total of 30 billion cubic metres of gas to Turkey and South-Eastern Europe per year, beginning in late 2019.

Of course, this is not the first time that Russia’s state-owned concerns have been targeted for plunder by a court or quasi-judicial body convened in the legal jurisdiction of a western country. In July 2014, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague issued an award of $50 billion to former shareholders of Yukos, the oil company previously controlled by the oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Interestingly, the Amsterdam District Court, the same judicial body which has issued this latest ruling, later quashed the 2014 ruling made by the Permanent Court of Arbitration on the grounds that the latter had no legal jurisdiction to issue such a ruling.

One thing which is perfectly clear in context is that these legal rulings are, quite blatantly, both politically and geo-politically motivated. Targetting Gazprom serves multiple geo-political functions. Firstly, the Turk Stream pipeline was devised in order to enable Russia to bypass the territory of a deeply problematic, crisis-ridden, hostile and contractually unreliable neighbour in the task of effecting gas-transit to its markets in Europe. Even before relations between Russia and Ukraine deteriorated following the February 2014 Ukrainian coup d’etat, the siphoning-off of Russian gas while in transit across Ukrainian territory had been a perpetual concern for many years.

However, this goal of rendering Ukraine a geo-political irrelevancy, and therefore nobody else’s problem, is precisely what western geo-strategists are invested in preventing. Ukraine has been transformed by western interests into the failed state that it is now precisely for the purpose of presenting developmental and economic challenges to Russia. Therefore, these same interests must use any counter-measures, including quasi-legal counter-measures, in order to keep Ukraine relevant. This explains the punitive court-order to freeze the shares of South Stream Transport B.V.

Another driver of this western judicial hostility, also a manifestation of current geo-political conditions, pertains to Gazprom specifically. To analyze this, we should look at the role which highly profitable state-owned concerns, Gazprom the most notable among them, play within the Russian economy and in Russian society more broadly.

In spite of maintaining quite a business-friendly tax-environment (Russia has a 13% flat income-tax rate), the Russian government nonetheless manages to maintain (and indeed, to significantly upgrade) the social system. Significant federal investments have already been made in infrastructure and in the modernization of the public healthcare sector, for example. In February, the government announced 12 major development-projects as part of the “Great Society” initiative ranging from agriculture, ecology, infrastructure, the digital economy, and the further technological modernization of public healthcare.

In a country with a 13% flat income-tax rate, revenues from state-owned companies like Gazprom make this kind of state-building and society-strengthening possible. The western alliance (and its judiciaries) understand perfectly well that financial attacks against Gazprom amount in practical terms to attacks on the Russian state, and to counter-measures to the Russian state’s efforts to build the kinds of social systems which are necessary to its long-term self-defence.

Taken to its logical conclusion, from the liberal democratic perspective, the rationalization for this further degree of geo-political weaponization of “international law” would be that, as liberal democracy is believed by the western alliance to be the only political system which has any moral or political legitimacy, it therefore follows that only liberal democratic legal systems have any legal jurisdiction, and that their jurisdiction should be seen as universally extensive.

“Liberal universalism” refers to a sense of moral universality, but also (consequently) to a sense of universality of legal jurisdiction.

This mindset attempts to justify the weaponization of judiciaries, and of judicial bodies established by international law, against all and any states which don’t sign on with the liberal universalist consensus.

Of course, Russia is not the only state which is targeted by this geo-political weaponization of judiciaries. We might recall the 2012 order made by a New York court to freeze $6.5 billion in Iranian government assets in relation to a lawsuit filed by family-members of people killed in the 9/11 attacks. The lawsuit had claimed (quite spuriously and bizarrely) that Iran had aided and abetted the 9/11 attackers, despite the obvious point that Al-Qaeda’s ideology is fanatically anti-Shi’ite. One point which is interesting, considering that state-sponsored piracy has quite recently re-appeared on the high seas (Gibraltar), is that judicial structures established by “international law” are now also being quite explicitly used for the purpose of enabling what we might term “judicial piracy.”

What next? Will the British government start re-issuing “letters of marque” to sea-faring privateers?

However, as with so many geo-political stratagems deployed by the governments of contemporary liberal democracies, the resulting erosion of the judiciary’s independence from the political sphere completely undermines the normative and legal basis of liberal democracy itself.

Originally published on InfoBrics

The renowned author and whistleblower Evaggelos Vallianatos describes British environmentalist and campaigner Dr Rosemary Mason as a “defender of the natural world and public health.” I first came across her work a few years ago. It was in the form of an open letter she had sent to an official about the devastating environmental and human health impacts of glyphosate-based weed killers. What had impressed me was the document she had sent to accompany the letter. It was over 20 pages long and contained official data and referred to a plethora of scientific papers to support the case she was making.

For almost a decade, Rosemary Mason has been writing open letters and sending reports she has compiled to media outlets and prominent officials and agencies in the US, the UK and Europe to question their decisions and/or to inform them of the dangers of pesticides. She has been relentless in exposing conflicts of interest, fraudulent science and institutionalised corruption in regulatory processes surrounding glyphosate and other agrochemicals. Her quest has been fired by a passion to protect the natural world and the public but there is also a personal aspect: she is affected by a serious health condition which she attributes directly to the reckless use of pesticides in South Wales where she resides. And her assertion here is not based on idle speculation. In her reports, she has presented a great deal of evidence about the deterioration of the health of the British public and how agrochemicals play a major contributory role.

She recently sent me a report ‘How glyphosate-based herbicides poisoned our nature reserve and the world‘. It focuses on how she had set up a nature reserve in South Wales. What she and her husband (who has a professional background in conservation and nature) had achieved on that reserve was impressive. But thanks to the local council’s indiscriminate spraying of glyphosate-based herbicides, it was subsequently transformed from a piece of land teeming with flora and fauna into a barren wasteland.

What follows is an interview I conducted with Rosemary Mason about her nature reserve and her campaigning. We discussed her motivation, the support she has received and her feelings after almost a decade of campaigning.

Colin Todhunter: Have you always had a passion for the natural environment?

Rosemary Mason: I was born in the countryside during the war and my mother took us on walks and taught us about wildflowers, which was her passion. My brothers and I fished in the stream for minnows and sticklebacks and set nightlines for pike and chub (we never caught any). When I was a junior doctor, I became interested in bird watching and I am former chair of the West Area, Glamorgan Wildlife Trust. At that time, unlike today, farmland was full of lapwing, oystercatcher and redshank displaying and protecting their nests.

CT: Why did you decide to set up your nature reserve?

RM: In 2006, the Bumblebee Conservation Trust was launched in response to the massive declines in bumblebees, butterflies and insects in general, with the demise of traditional hedgerows, hay meadows, chalk grassland and wildflowers and the intensification of farming and the widening use of pesticides. At the same time, the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council perversely announced the closure of its wildlife research centres for ‘financial reasons’, a decision opposed by 99% of 1,327 stakeholders. Monks Wood centre, which hosted BBC’s Spring Watch, pioneered work on DDT and pesticides in the 1960s and more recently revealed how climate change is affecting wildlife, with spring arriving three weeks earlier. More significantly, the research centres were also involved in assessing the impacts of GM (genetically modified) crops on wildlife, with findings contradicting industry claims that no harm would be caused.

In response, in March 2006, my husband and I decided to establish our own small pesticide-free wildlife reserve after attending a joint meeting of the Welsh Ornithological Society and the British Trust for Ornithology in Aberystwyth.

CT: I have read your new report about your nature reserve. I would certainly encourage everyone to read it. It describes in some detail how you and your husband set about attracting an impressively wide array of bird, insect and plant species to the reserve, many of which had virtually disappeared from the British countryside, mainly as a result of intensive farming practices. What I found impressive is your knowledge of these species and how you were able to identify them. From the narrative provided (which at times reads almost like a novel) and the enthusiasm conveyed, you put in a lot of hard work developing the reserve and what you achieved there was impressive.

RM: In brief, it was a miracle. I think the next five years from 2006 were the most exciting and fulfilling of my life. At the end of 2009, I wrote an account of speckled bush crickets. Judith Marshall, working at the Natural History Museum, is a world expert on grasshoppers and bush crickets. She said it was the first monograph to be written on a single species.

CT: Can you say something about the demise of the nature reserve?

RM: We published a second photo-journal in 2010, ‘The year of the bumblebee: observations in a small nature reserve.’ But in 2011, I knew something was wrong. The moths were disappearing from the area and the orb web spider had gone from the hedge. We were aware that the local council was spraying glyphosate-based herbicides on Japanese knotweed in the valley below and close to our reserve. But we had to be sure.

So, in August 2013 and August 2014, we sent samples of river water and tap water to Leipzig to Prof Dr Monika Kreuger for analysis. Between August 2013 and August 2014, the levels of glyphosate in tap water had increased ten-fold, from 30 ppt to 300 ppt. These were of the order of concentrations that stimulated the growth of breast cancer cells in a laboratory setting.

In August 2013, we asked our then Welsh Assembly Member to request the council to stop spraying glyphosate-based herbicides on Japanese knotweed. The council said they would only stop if they were authorised by the Health and Safety Executive. So, I wrote to the HSE at the beginning of 2014 telling them about measuring increasing glyphosate levels in water and that we had had many cases of breast cancer in our area. They refused to do it because they said that glyphosate-based herbicides were still legal. I begged them to do it on several occasions, as we saw the biodiversity in our reserve plummeting. Finally, they said if I asked the same question again, they wouldn’t reply to me.

CT: You have engaged in a long struggle for many years, trying to get officials at local, national and European levels to act on pesticides. You have written many open letters to policy makers and key officials and have usually attached lengthy reports referring to data and scientific papers in support of your case. I think you began doing this in late 2010. Whose work have you taken inspiration from along the way? 

RM: The work of Dr Henk Tennekes, the independent Dutch toxicologist, was a real eye opener for me. In 2010, he published a paper and wrote a book ‘The Systemic Insecticides: a disaster in the making’. It is about the loss of insects and insect-feeding birds in Europe, caused by neonicotinoid insecticides. The RSPB and the IUCN Charities refused to help fund the book because it ‘wasn’t scientific enough’.  We subsequently discovered that Syngenta had funded neonicotinoid seeds for the RSPB Hope Farm Reserve. Systemic neonicotinoid insecticides are still on the market in the UK and the US nine years later.

I found Henk’s work to be shattering. It actually changed the course of my life. The fact was that he’d worked out that the effect on the brains of insects was irreversible, cumulative and there was no safe level of exposure. What was worse was that the Chemical Regulation Directorate didn’t seem to take it seriously. So, I wrote to Europe and the US EPA and the response was the same: ‘there is no evidence that the neonics are harmful to honeybees.’ Henk had written this book with amazing pictures and artwork showing the impact on insect-feeding birds throughout Europe. Humans had the same receptors; so, imagine the effects on humans if there are lots of neonics around. By March 2011, Henk and I decided that there would be a chemical apocalypse. So here we are, eight years later and bingo, our predictions were spot on!

Francisco Sanchez-Bayo, a toxicologist living in Australia, wrote papers with Henk agreeing that neonicotinoids insecticides irreversibly damaged the brains of insects and that levels built up over time. In 2019, he wrote a paper with a colleague in China, which proved that insect losses were global and due to pesticides.

Then there was the late Dr Maewan Ho of the former Institute of Science in Society who helped me to publish an article in the ISiS magazine in September 2014: ‘How Roundup poisoned my nature reserve’. She sadly died on 16 March 2016 from advanced cancer. She was an amazing woman and gave me much encouragement.

Finally, Polly Higgins, a Scottish barrister and environmentalist, gave up her practice and set up an organisation to end ecocide (destruction of the environment). Polly Higgins was an inspiration and campaigned tirelessly against ecocide. She died from cancer aged 50.

CT: Given all the open letters you have written to officials over the years, I cannot but feel you have by and large been stonewalled. Where does the buck stop?

RM: With David Cameron, the Health and Safety Executive and Defra (Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs) . A ‘Letter from America’ was sent from nearly 60 million US citizens warning Europe not to authorise GM crops and Roundup because of the disastrous effects on human health and biodiversity. Wales and Scotland took that advice. David Cameron received it on 11 November 2014, but he and Defra ignored it on behalf of England and kept it secret from the public. Cameron also appointed Michael Pragnell Founder of Syngenta to be Chairman of Cancer Research UK, which I’ve written about. 

The HSE refused to ask the Council to stop spraying GBH on our reserve because it was ‘still legal’. The European Commission and the European Food Safety Authority ignored the Letter from America too and kept on authorising GM crops for feed and food in the EU.

Of course, there are many others who should be held responsible too, such as Bernhard Url, chief executive of EFSA, and the recently retired Chief Medical Officer for England, Dame Sally Davies.

CT: How do you feel about the destruction of your reserve, the pesticides issue, the state of nature and those officials who have effectively ignored much of what you have said to them? Disappointed? Frustrated?

RM: Those are such inadequate words to express my feelings. I am devastated about the global losses of biodiversity and I weep for our reserve. Sometimes, I dream that it is all reversible, but I know it is not. I read books about nature as ‘comfort food’. I feel sorry for the children who may never see a butterfly or a bumblebee. Indeed, I am a bit disappointed about the lack of support I have had from certain environmental groups and media outlets that report on environmental issues. I would like the mainstream media to acknowledge the role of the pesticides industry, but I don’t suppose they ever will.

However, I have gained some satisfaction from receiving expressions of gratitude and praise via the academia.edu site where my work is archived. And at least Jon Snow (Channel 4 broadcast journalist in the UK) has revealed the chief cause of losses of biodiversity to be poisoning the land, not global warming.

How do I feel? Maybe ‘resigned’ would be the right word to use.

All of Rosemary Mason’s work can be accessed here

Yesterday morning, President Trump announced the death of Abu Bakr Al- Baghdadi and three of his children.   

President Trump said Al-Baghdadi, the founder of ISIS, was fleeing U.S. military forces, in a tunnel, and then killed himself by detonating a suicide vest he wore.

In 2004, Al-Baghdadi had been captured by U.S. forces and, for ten months, imprisoned in both Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca.

I visited Camp Bucca in January, 2004 when, still under construction, the Camp was a network of tents, south of Basra, in an isolated, miserable area of Iraq.

Before our three-person Voices delegation entered Iraq, that month, we waited for  visas in Amman, Jordan. While there, two young Palestinian men visited us and described their experiences during six months of imprisonment in Camp Bucca. Recalling the horrible experience, they remembered how fearful they felt, sleeping in sand infested with desert scorpions; they were paraded naked, for showers, in front of U.S. military women and told to bark like a dog or say “I love George Bush”  before their empty bowls would be filled with food. Unable to communicate with anyone outside the prison, they could only hope for release when their turn finally came to appear before a three-person Tribunal.

Five of their friends were still in the prison. They begged us to visit these friends and plead for their release. All of them were Palestinians studying for professional degrees in Baghdad. Reluctant to lose their chances of eventually graduating, they took a risk and remained in Baghdad throughout the 2003 Shock and Awe bombing. U.S. marines arrived at their dormitory on Baghdad’s Haifa Street and systematically rounded up students with foreign IDs. They were tagged as TCNs, “Third Country Nationals,” and herded off to various prisons.

In Baghdad, our friends in the Christian Peacemaker Teams had already developed a data base of names and prison numbers to help Iraqis discover the whereabouts of missing relatives. They found the prison numbers for two of the young men we were asked to visit and advised us to ask for Major Garrity, a U.S. military officer who was in charge of Camp Bucca.

We traveled to the southernmost town in Iraq, Umm Qasr, and sat on a weathered picnic table outside of Camp Bucca, awaiting Major Garrity’s decision. Prospects were bleak since we learned, upon arrival, that we’d come after visiting hours and the next day to visit was three days later. There was no shade, the sand was coated with black grease, and we constantly spat small black flies out of our mouths. Camp Bucca was one of the most hellish spots I’ve ever encountered. Yet we felt quite grateful when word arrived that Major Garrity had approved our visit.

A military pick-up truck drove us across an expanse of sand, and soon we were witnessing a tearful, tender embrace between one of the prisoners and his brother, a dentist from Baghdad, who had accompanied us. With no prompting, the prisoners, all in their twenties, corroborated the grievances their previously released friends expressed. They spoke of loneliness, monotony, humiliation and the fearful uncertainty prisoners face when held without charge by a hostile power with no evident plans to release them. They were, however, relieved to know we could tell their relatives we had met with them. Later, Major Garrity said the outlook for them being released wasn’t very positive. “Be glad they’re here with us and not in Baghdad,” she said, giving us a knowing look. “We give them food, clothes and shelter here. Be glad that they’re not in Baghdad.” Later, in May of 2004, CNN released pictures from the Abu Ghraib prison. We began to understand what she meant.

The November 3, 2005 issue of the New York Review of Books quoted three officers, two of them non-commissioned, stationed with the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Mercury in Iraq.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, they described in multiple interviews with Human Rights Watch how their battalion in 2003-2004 routinely used physical and mental torture as a means of intelligence gathering and for stress relief… Detainees in Iraq were consistently referred to as PUCs. The torture of detainees reportedly was so widespread and accepted that it became a means of stress relief, where soldiers would go to the PUC tent on their off-hours to “f**k a PUC” or “smoke a PUC.” “F**king a PUC” referred to beating a detainee, while “smoking a PUC” referred to forced physical exertion sometimes to the point of unconsciousness.

“Smoking” was not limited to stress relief but was central to the interrogation system employed by the 82nd Airborne Division at FOB Mercury. Officers and NCOs from the Military Intelligence unit would direct guards to “smoke” the detainees prior to an interrogation, and would direct that certain detainees were not to receive sleep, water, or food beyond crackers. Directed “smoking” would last for the twelve to twenty-four hours prior to an interrogation. As one soldier put it: “[The military intelligence officer] said he wanted the PUCs so fatigued, so smoked, so demoralized that they want to cooperate.

A sergeant told Human Rights Watch, “If he’s a good guy, you know, now he’s a bad guy because of the way we treated him.”

The violence that brought the Islamic State into being has a long history.

In numerous trips to Iraq from 1996 to 2003, our Voices delegation members grew to understand the unbearable weariness and suffering of Iraqi families eking out an uncertain existence under punishing economic sanctions. Between the wars, the death toll in children’s lives alone, from externally imposed economic collapse and from the blockade of food, medicine, water purification supplies and other essentials of survival, was estimated by the U.N. at 5,000 children a month, an estimate accepted without question by U.S. officials.

U.S. assaults, from Desert Storm (1991) to Shock and Awe (2003) — achieved through aerial bombings, children’s forced starvation, use of depleted uranium and white phosphorous, through bullet fire, night raids, blockaded medicines, emptied reservoirs and downed power lines, through abandoned state industries and cities left to dissolve in paroxysms of ethnic cleansing — have all been one continuous war. Along with the abuses of prisoners in places like Camp Bucca, FOB Mercury, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo, U.S. warfare predictably led to the buildup of ISIS and Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi’s commitment to “an eye for an eye.”

Asked, in 2016, to talk about his favorite passage in the Bible, President Trump said “eye for an eye.” He didn’t seem to realize that Jesus rejected this teaching.

“But I say unto you,” Jesus said, “love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you.”

Rather than urge retaliation, Jesus spoke of dignified non-resistance through winning over the opponent.

We need not choose ignorance, or the hatred that lets us be herded in fear. We can instead seek to pay reparations for suffering caused through our wars. We can work to abolish war, mourn the deaths of Al-Baghdadi’s children and question how conditions inside U.S. military camps, in Iraq, led to the extremism of Al-Baghdadi and his ISIS followers.

Picture: Video stills (cropped) of Abu Bakr al-Bagdhadi and of a soldier torturing a prisoner at Abu Ghraib

Kathy Kelly ([email protected]) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org).

Brexit has turned out to be some sort of quasi-crusade for the radical right and their acolytes in the form of buccaneering Brexiteers and swashbuckling ‘Spartans.’ The truth about Brexit is really quite simple when boiled down. After all the bubbling water has turned into steam its real ingredients are eventually revealed. And what has been revealed is nothing but a sour and bitter aftertaste once we’ve taken our first helping. A sort of trade deal has been thrashed out – but not with our European neighbours, but with the American’s.

The withdrawal agreement with the EU agreed by Boris Johnson is worse than Theresa May’s deal that was rejected three times. This is how disaster capitalism works. Grinding down the populace and then offering something to end the pain is its modus operandi. And so it is – we have a worse deal than the original bad deal.

For example – the EU customs arrangements within the new Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB) are allowed to be routinely updated. That bit explains (in Para 23) that “any such updates will be able to take effect without the need for further domestic legislation.” Little things like that leave the door wide open to agreeing to all sorts of things later without debate.

The DUP is, despite its objection is actually incandescent with fury that Johnson’s deal effectively turns Northern Ireland into an EU colony. Strange how the buccaneering Brexiters and their Spartans are completely silent about how the PM is selling Britain into vassalage now that the truth is emerging. And this vassalage is a double-edged sword which will eventually bleed Britain for years.

Leaving aside the trade deal Britain will end up with when it has finally left the biggest trading bloc in the world – it will have already done a deal with America.

Take just one example of what is going to happen in dealing with the USA. The investigation by Channel4’s current affairs programme ‘Dispatches‘ on the the Us/UK trade deal can be boiled down to this. It found that no less than six secret meetings have taken place between senior civil servants and representatives of US pharmaceutical firms where the price the NHS pays for its drugs has been discussed. US drug firms have been given direct access to British trade negotiators and senior British officials and then not declared those meetings. An agreement has been reached that drug pricing caps to American drug companies will be lifted. The fact that US drug companies will be able to increase prices and hold the health of the nation up to ransom as they do in the USA is a fact we should all be aware of. This one example should be taken note of.

If any government in Britain allows the NHS to become beholden to American drug companies – literally anything you can think of is up for grabs. The NHS in Britain is sacrosanct and desecrating its function to the society it serves for profit is a cardinal sin. If there is one thing that riles the citizenry of Britain – its screwing with the NHS. There won’t just be protests – riots will follow. If nothing else, remainers or leavers – both will fight for the NHS. And yet – the government will waive in such desecrations anyway.

How did Boros Johnson get this through? He hasn’t yet. But his plan will unfold when the general election result has been announced. Let’s assume Johnson wins with a workable majority. He has granted himself something known as “Henry VIII powers.”. They’re named after Henry VIII because he was the first person in Britain to use them. What they did was let him change laws without passing new ones. And with Brexit – Johnson has granted nineteen of these laws. Hail – Ceasar.

In essence – a Henry VIII power enables a minister to amend an Act of Parliament without needing another Act of Parliament. Normally this is done by issuing regulations. This is more than just controversial as it reduces the government’s accountability to Parliament. In other words – it gives the government executive powers over the scrutiny of Parliament (representative democracy). While MPs can amend Acts, they can’t do that to regulations.

One of these Henry VIII powers allows the government to change the WAB – any part of it. This has enraged the DUP as they can see what’s coming in Clause 21 of the WAB. The government has given itself powers to even scrap the independent monitoring body whose only role is to protect the rights of EU citizens. Another one of those powers says – that a minister may make regulations that he or she “considers appropriate.”

This overly fluffed up 102-page document published alongside the Withdrawal Agreement Bill effectively hands unprecedented powers to the government that no peace-time government has ever had in Britain. Imagine that in the hands of people like Dominic Cummings and Jacob Rees-Mogg, let alone Boris Johnson. This is what Donald Trump has wet dreams about – not being accountable to congress.

Johnson is ducking and diving and avoiding scrutiny of any type – be it in parliament, select committees or even TV broadcast interviews. He knows a set of quick-fire questions will force another pack of lies on the question of these powers.

Listen carefully to this interview with ex Bank of England boss Mervyn King. He clearly says there is a stark reality behind Brexit – that the only deal required to get freedom from the regulation of others like the EU is a hard no-deal Brexit. And so Boris Johnson is aiming to achieve that by forcing an election. Corbyn knows it’s game over if he loses. He and his followers will be the victim of an ensuing purge – and workers rights will be sold down a river.

Jim Pickard at the FT has picked over the WAB and its associated documents and concludes this – “The British government is planning to diverge from the EU on regulation and workers’ rights after Brexit, despite its pledge to maintain a “level playing field” in prime minister Boris Johnson’s deal.” Pickard went further to describe this as a “significant divergence‘ where the government has no intention of sticking to its deal with the EU and that the leaked government document also said the drafting of workers’ rights and environmental protection commitments “leaves room for interpretation.” When Johnson announced that he is committed to “the highest possible standards” within the WAB – it’s no exaggeration to say he’s lying – again.

A government spokesperson said the UK government “has no intention of lowering the standards of workers’ rights or environmental protection after we leave the EU”. When Jenny Chapman, Labour’s shadow Brexit minister got sight of the leaked documents she said – “These documents confirm our worst fears. Boris Johnson’s Brexit is a blueprint for a deregulated economy, which will see vital rights and protections torn up.”

The sleight of hand here is not just Henry VIII powers and other trickery – under  Johnson’s deal, the legally binding “level playing field” provisions they keep boasting about that remain in the exit treaty are almost exclusively limited to Northern Ireland – but not to the rest of the UK.

So the cold hard truth about Brexit is this. There is only one Brexit as Mervyn King says – a hard-Brexit. And you can wrap it up in all sorts of fluffy comforting soundbites and official documentation dripping with hot wax seals and triumphant photoshoots. The government is going to the polls to extend its powers to the point of authoritarianism in order that it can bypass representative democracy and do as it pleases. Its legacy will be to force a deregulation festival upon Britain if it wins.

All those over the age of 65 who voted for Brexit should take note. You had the benefit of the decades-long fight that gave you working rights, pension rights, maternity rights and more – along with a growing post-war economy that enriched your world beyond the wildest dreams of your forebearers – and have dealt a massive body blow to your children and their children to deny them these things. It is pure fabrication to think anything else. If Brexit was so good why would the government need to pass laws to give it the power to bypass representative democracy? This is what Brexit really is – about executive power.

Exploitative corporate power kept in check by the political strength of post-war social democracy is about to be unchecked. It’s a coup d’etat. The Singapore Scenario we wrote about is soon to become a truth and it is a very ugly looking truth if you’re on the wrong side – and 90% of the population is on the wrong side.

And one last thought for the swashbuckling Brexiteers and their fellow travellers. When a foreign country sits down with the UK and wants to thrash out a trade deal – their first question will be – who are they dealing with. We won’t even be able to answer that. Scotland has just agreed to vote with this government for a general election but only because it wants an independence referendum of its own. For the following few years, trade negotiators will not know if Scotland (40% of UK land, 60% of UK fishing, and huge new oil find) will end up being an EU member state or when. Northern Ireland is now asking itself the same question – and there are even murmurings that Wales is considering it.

It took an American comedian to tell us what’s really happening in America –

“They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you, sooner or later, ’cause they own this fucking place. It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club. And by the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe.” 

George Carlin, bless his soul – is right on the button with these immortal words.

If Boris Johnson wins this election – it’s because we’ve all been conned and you’re about to find out what not being in his club is like.

President Trump is reversing his foreign policy decisions so quickly these days that it almost seems like he overturns himself before making the decision in the first place. Last week he was very clear that the US was pulling its troops out of Syria. “Bringing soldiers home,” he said. “Let someone else fight over this long-bloodstained sand.”

But then he overturned himself later in the same speech. He said:

“We’ve secured the oil and therefore a small number of US troops will remain in the area where they have the oil. And we’re going to be protecting it and we’ll be deciding what we’re going to do with it in the future.”

Where does President Trump think he gets the legal or moral authority to send US troops to illegally occupy foreign territory and determine what that foreign country can or cannot do with its resources? After eight years of Obama’s disastrous “Assad must go” policy, during which the US provided weapons and training to radicals and terrorists with a half million people killed as a result, President Trump had the opportunity to finally close that dark chapter of US foreign policy so the Syrian people could rebuild their country.

Instead he sat down on Thursday with Senator Lindsey Graham, who has been wrong in every foreign policy position he’s ever taken, and decided to follow Graham’s advice to take Syria’s oil. Even though Trump himself has said many times that ISIS is 100 percent defeated, he claims we must take Syria’s oil to keep it from ISIS.

The real reason the neocons want the US military to occupy Syria’s oil fields is they are still convinced they can overthrow Assad by carving out eastern Syria for the Kurds. They don’t want to keep the oil from ISIS, they want to keep it from the Syrian government. They don’t want the oil revenue to be used to help rebuild the country because they still want to make life more unbearable for the population through sanctions so they will overthrow Assad. They don’t care how many innocent civilians die.

So instead of bringing the troops home like he promised, President Trump has allowed himself to be convinced to actually expand the US presence in eastern Syria! Instead of ending a foolish mission, he’s giving them an even more foolish mission – and sending in more troops and weapons. Instead of removing the approximately 200 troops in that region as promised, Trump is going to add more troops to equal about a thousand. He’s also sending in tanks and other armored vehicles, according to the Pentagon.

If President Trump believes following neocon advice on Syria is going to produce results different than the past eight years of following neocon advice on Syria, he’s naïve or worse. This new mission is going to cost tens of millions of dollars per month and will only serve to inspire the next generation of radicals. Trump is right that the people of the region, including Russia, Iran, Syria, and Turkey have all the incentive to keep ISIS at bay. So why does he fold like a cheap suit every time the neocons strong-arm him into another dumb foreign policy position?

Our government is being led by fools who do not understand economics or science and who ignore that the earth burns and our air is toxic and all the while people are dying. And dying in record numbers. It should not be this way. But actually it is getting worse.

Despite the fact that we are living in a climate emergency, despite the fact that California is on fire, and despite the fact that thousands are dying of toxic dirty air, the Denier in Chief, Donald Trump, has instructed his administration to pull the US out of the Paris Climate agreement as soon as possible.

This week, Trump confirmed what we have long known he would do. The US will definitely withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, President Trump said.

But Trump is ignoring the science and the facts that his policies are making people sick. The Washington Post reported this week new research from Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University: “Air pollution worsened in the United States in 2017 and 2018, new data shows, a reversal after years of sustained improvement with significant implications for public health.”

Its not rocket science that clean air regulations give you clean air, and a roll back of regulations allows the polluters to pollute. It is not rocket science that renewables give you cleaner air; fossil fuels give you dirty air, especially those talked about in the study, known as small particulates that lodge in your lungs, known as PM2.5s. Emissions of these have risen over five per cent since 2016.

In 2018 alone, the Post remarks, “eroding air quality was linked to nearly 10,000 additional deaths in the U.S. relative to the 2016 benchmark, the year in which small-particle pollution reached a two-decade low, according to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University.

Another reason in the rise of PM2.5s is wildfires, linked to our warming world. As the Post notes: “Big fires, particularly in California in 2018, played a role in driving up total national air pollution.”

And now California burns again. What is known as the Kincade Fire, which started on Wednesday in California’s Sonoma County, one of the country’s best known wine regions, has now spread to 16,000 acres, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The BBC adds that some 40,000 people have been evacuated.

As Ecowatch adds: “Windy, dry weather in Northern California had already prompted utility company Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) to shut off power to around 27,830 customers in Sonoma County Wednesday and 178,000 statewide. The outages meant that many people had to evacuate their homes in darkness.”

As people flee in the dark, homes are being destroyed: “Aerial footage of the Kincade fire showed homes engulfed in flames propelled by high winds that could become even stronger in the coming days,” notes the Times.

Things could get worse. According to the California Fire Service, only 5 percent of the blaze is currently contained.

#KincadeFire off John Kincade Road and Burned Mountain Road, northeast of Geyserville in Sonoma County is 21,900 acres and 5% contained. Evacuations in place. https://t.co/LwmCR66f6X pic.twitter.com/ouxqhnKpFW

— CAL FIRE (@CAL_FIRE) October 25, 2019

The smoke from the fire is predicted to spread south over the Bay area later today, and red flag warnings and potential power shut offs will continue through the weekend.

The latest smoke forecast from the HRRR model brings smoke from the #KincadeFire into the Bay Area this morning, becoming more widespread this afternoon. #CAwx #CAFire pic.twitter.com/451tYYx03C

— NWS Bay Area (@NWSBayArea) October 25, 2019

But the Kincade Fire isn’t the only place where California burns. In Los Angeles County, the fast-moving Tick Fire has incinerated 5,000 acres with some 50,000 people evacuated. In total there are some 600 wildfires raging in the county, according to a New York Times article, that put the fires on its front-page today.

And things will get worse as climate change takes hold. Earlier this week, academic Naomi Oreskes and economist Nicholas Stern, argued in the New York Times, in an article entitled: “Climate Change Will Cost Us Even More Than We Think”, that “In a worst-case scenario, climate impacts could set off a feedback loop in which climate change leads to economic losses, which lead to social and political disruption, which undermines both democracy and our capacity to prevent further climate damage.”

Indeed, back in May this year, David Wallace-Wells, wrote an article in the New York Magazine, entitled: “Los Angeles Fire Season Is Beginning Again. And It Will Never End.” His article paints an apocalyptic picture of never ending fire and tragedy. Just now reporter Amy Westervelt, tweeted:

Two years ago I was covering a wildfire in Ca and the then-fire chief told me explicitly: “this is climate change. I’ve been a firefighter 30 years. Conditions have changed. We’re not seeing the cooler temps and higher humidity at night, which is when we used to get a break.”

— Amy Westervelt (@amywestervelt) October 25, 2019

The fire-fighters understand. The scientists understand. The majority of the public understand. Journalists understand and are increasingly reporting climate change with the urgency it deserves, like the New York Times today. But Trump doesn’t even understand basic economics and science and why our world is on fire. He doesn’t understand the crucial sentence that “climate impacts could set off a feedback loop in which climate change leads to economic losses.”

Trump’s actions may make Big Oil Executives richer in the short term, but they make all of us poorer in the long-term. In the meantime, the U.S. remains a land on fire, a land that cannot breathe. And a land being led by a fossil fool.

“Foi como assistir a um filme”, disse o Presidente Trump, depois de testemunhar a eliminação de Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, o Califa, Chefe do ISIS, transmitido na Situation Room da Casa Branca. Aqui, em 2011, o Presidente Obama assistia à eliminação do então inimigo número um, Osama Bin Laden, Chefe da Al Qaeda. O mesmo argumento: os serviços secretos dos EUA tinham localizado,há muito tempo, o inimigo; este não é capturado, mas eliminado: Bin Laden é morto; al Baghdadi suicida-se ou é “suicidado”; o corpo desaparece: o de Bin Laden é sepultado no mar,os restos de al Baghdadi, desintegrados pelo cinto de explosivos,também esses são espalhados no mar. O mesmo produtor do filme: a Comunidade de Inteligência, formada por 17 organizações federais. Além da CIA (Agência Central de Inteligência), existe a DIA (Agência de Inteligência de Defesa), mas cada sector das Forças Armadas, bem como o Departamento de Estado e o Departamento de Segurança Interna, têm o seu próprio serviço secreto.

Para as acções militares, a Comunidade de Inteligência usa o Comando das Forças Especiais, instalado em, pelo menos, 75 países, cuja missão oficial compreende, além da “acção directa para eliminar ou capturar inimigos”, a “guerra não convencional conduzida por forças externas, treinadas e organizadas pelo Comando “. É, exactamente, o que começou na Síria, em 2011, no mesmo ano em que a guerra USA/NATO destrói a Líbia. Demonstram-no as provas documentadas, já publicadas em ‘il manifesto’.

Por exemplo, em Março de 2013, o New York Times publicou uma pesquisa detalhada sobre a rede da CIA, através da qual chegam à Turquia e à Jordânia, com o financiamento da Arábia Saudita e de outras monarquias do Golfo, rios de armas para os militantes islâmicos treinados pelo Comando de Forças Especiais USA, antes de serem infiltradas na Síria.

Em Maio de 2013, um mês após ter fundado o ISIS, al Baghdadi, encontra na Síria uma delegação do Senado dos Estados Unidos chefiada por John McCain na Síria, como mostra a documentação fotográfica.

Em Maio de 2015, um documento do Pentágono datado de 12 de Agosto de 2012 é desclassificado pela Judicial Watch, no qual se afirma que há “a possibilidade de estabelecer um principado salafita na Síria oriental, e é exactamente o que os países ocidentais desejam, os Estados do Golfo e a Turquia, que apoiam a oposição”.

Em Julho de 2016, é desclassificado pelo Wikileaks um email de 2012 no qual a Secretária de Estado, Hillary Clinton, escreve que, dada a relação Irão-Síria, “a destituição de Assad constituiria um imenso benefício para Israel, diminuindo o medo de perder o monopólio nuclear.”  Isso explica por que motivo, não obstante os EUA e os seus aliados iniciarem, em 2014, a campanha militar contra o ISIS, as forças do ISIS podem avançar sem perturbações em espaços abertos, com longas colunas de veículos armados.

A intervenção militar russa em 2015, de apoio às forças de Damasco, reverte o destino do conflito. O objectivo estratégico de Moscovo é impedir a demolição do estado sírio, que provocaria um caos do tipo líbio, vantajoso para os USA e para a NATO, para atacar o Irão e cercar a Rússia.

Os Estados Unidos, irracionais, continuam a jogar a cartada da fragmentação da Síria, apoiando os independentistas curdos e depois abandonando-os para não perder a Turquia, posto avançado da NATO na região.

Neste contexto, compreende-se por que al Baghdadi, como Bin Laden (anteriormente aliado dos USA contra a Rússia, na guerra do Afeganistão), não podia ser capturado para ser processado publicamente, mas que devia desaparecer fisicamente para fazer desaparecer as provas do seu verdadeiro papel na estratégia USA. Por isso, a Trump agradou tanto o filme com um final feliz.

Manlio Dinucci

Artigo original em italiano :

Il Califfo, film Cia tra fiction e realtà

Tradução por Maria Luisa Vasconcelos

«È stato come guardare un film», ha detto il presidente Trump  dopo aver assistito alla eliminazione di Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, il Califfo capo dell’Isis, trasmessa nella Situation Room della Casa Bianca. Qui, nel 2011, il presidente Obama assisteva alla eliminazione dell’allora nemico numero uno,  Osama Bin Laden, capo di Al Qaeda. Stessa sceneggiatura: i servizi segreti Usa avevano da tempo localizzato il nemico; questi non viene catturato ma eliminato: Bin Laden è ucciso, al Baghdadi si suicida o è «suicidato»; il corpo sparisce: quello di Bin Laden sepolto in mare, quello di al Baghdadi disintegrato dalla cintura esplosiva. Stessa casa produttrice del film: la Comunità di intelligence, formata da 17 organizzazioni federali. Oltre alla Cia (Agenzia centrale di intelligence) vi è la Dia (Agenzia di intelligence della Difesa), ma ogni settore delle Forze armate, così come il Dipartimento di stato e quello della Sicurezza della patria, ha un proprio servizio segreto.

Per le azioni militari la Comunità di intelligence  usa il Comando delle forze speciali, dispiegate in almeno 75 paesi, la cui  missione ufficiale comprende, oltre alla «azione diretta per eliminare o catturare nemici», la «guerra non-convenzionale condotta da forze esterne, addestrate e organizzate dal Comando». È esattamente quella che viene avviata in Siria nel 2011, lo stesso anno in cui la guerra Usa/Nato demolisce la Libia. Lo dimostrano documentate prove, già pubblicate sul manifesto.

Ad esempio, nel marzo 2013  il New York Times pubblica una dettagliata inchiesta sulla rete Cia attraverso cui arrivano in Turchia e Giordania, con il finanziamento di Arabia Saudita e altre monarchie del Golfo, fiumi di armi per i militanti islamici addestrati dal Comando delle forze speciali Usa prima di essere infiltrati in Siria.

Nel maggio 2013, un mese dopo aver fondato l’Isis, al Baghdadi incontra in Siria una delegazione del Senato degli Stati uniti capeggiata da John McCain, come risulta da documentazione fotografica.

Nel maggio 2015 viene desecretato da Judicial Watch un documento del Pentagono, datato 12 agosto 2012, in cui si afferma che c’è «la possibilità di stabilire un principato salafita nella Siria orientale, e ciò è esattamente ciò che vogliono i paesi occidentali, gli stati del Golfo e la Turchia che sostengono l’opposizione».

Nel luglio 2016 viene desecretata da Wikileaks una mail del 2012 in cui la segretaria di stato Hillary Clinton scrive che, data la relazione Iran-Siria, «il rovesciamento di Assad costituirebbe un immenso beneficio per Israele, facendo diminuire il suo timore di perdere il monopolio nucleare». Ciò spiega perché, nonostante gli Usa e i loro alleati lancino nel 2014 la campagna militare contro l’Isis, le forze dell’Isis possono avanzare indisturbate in spazi aperti con lunghe colonne di automezzi armati.

L’intervento militare russo nel 2015, a sostegno delle forze di Damasco, rovescia le sorti del conflitto. Scopo strategico di Mosca è impedire la demolizione dello Stato siriano, che provocherebbe un caos tipo quello libico, sfruttabile da Usa e Nato per attaccare l’Iran e accerchiare la Russia.

Gli Stati uniti, spiazzati, continuano a giocare la carta della frammentazione della Siria, sostenendo gli indipendentisti curdi, per poi abbandonarli per non perdere la Turchia, avamposto Nato nella regione.

Su questo sfondo si capisce perché al Baghdadi, come Bin Laden (già alleato Usa contro la Russia nella guerra afghana), non poteva essere catturato per essere pubblicamente processato, ma doveva fisicamente sparire per far sparire le prove del suo reale ruolo nella strategia Usa. Per questo a Trump è piaciuto tanto il film a lieto fine.

Manlio Dinucci

Recently, polls have outlined that up to 66% of Russians “want to go back to the USSR”, almost 30 years after its disintegration. Those outside of Russia may find such realities surprising – especially considering that Vladimir Putin’s approval ratings have, at separate times this decade, been ranked among the highest in the world – though his popularity figures have noticeably decreased during the past year, due to unpopular domestic policies.

Under president Putin, Russia has re-emerged on the international stage such as in Syria, and also by incorporating the Crimea to its territory in 2014; while Moscow reacts to ongoing NATO manoeuvres and flagrant American government interference in neighbouring Ukraine.

Yet one of the chief reasons behind a continued nostalgia for the Soviet Union, is due to the disastrous Western-designed neoliberal “reforms”, first introduced in Russia during the early 1990s.

The ideology of neoliberalism, which began to take off from the 1970s, has been a central factor behind the environmental decline witnessed around the globe, whose beginnings can be traced to about the year 1950, with the arrival of the Anthropocene – the current epoch, when humans became the driving force impacting planetary climactic conditions and life on earth, also resulting in the sixth mass extinction.

The Axis powers’ defeat in World War II was supposed to herald a bright new dawn for humanity, in which the horrors of the previous generation would be left behind. However, our fortunes could hardly have taken a worse turn. No further world wars have occurred, but the indisputable fact is that the planet has since become much more dangerous – first with the completely unnecessary initiation of the nuclear age from 6 August 1945.

Threat of nuclear war is now rivalled by environmental loss and climate change. The neoliberal era which ravaged Russian society, along with other nations past and present, has made it far more difficult to tackle these challenges. Humankind is in effect caught in a vice grips, and which will eventually impact upon all humans, rich and poor.

Principles underlining neoliberalism are, as intended from the outset, eroding of democratic foundations, attacks on social solidarity, reducing the public’s influence in determining policy, accumulating wealth in a few pockets – and other strategies like bank bailouts and austerity for the masses.

In the meantime, nuclear arsenals are “upgraded” while carbon emissions are at a record high. Government attempts to tackle climate change have been dismal to date, particularly from those countries producing the largest emissions: China, America, India and Russia, four states which posted growing carbon levels for 2018. The largest emitter, China, has experienced for the first six months of 2019 another 4% emission increase.

Turning our attention to Russia, following the Soviet collapse, American politicians were overtly interfering in the country’s affairs. In the build-up to the 1996 Russian presidential elections, US leader Bill Clinton was supporting his favourite for a second term, incumbent Boris Yeltsin.

On 21 April 1996, less than two months before Russia’s populace was due to vote, president Clinton said while dining in the Kremlin that, “So I’ve been trying to find a way to say to the Russian people ‘this election will have consequences’, and we are clear about what it is we support”. In other words, the Russian electorate had better vote the right way.

Yeltsin subsequently won a second stint in office, beating the Communist Party candidate, Gennady Zyuganov, with a margin of 54% to 40%. By the time Yeltsin resigned in late 1999, dogged by corruption allegations and having failed to make good on his promises, some forecasts put his approval ratings at as low as 2%.

The Clinton administration’s interference in the 1996 Russian presidential elections are, undoubtedly, much more serious than those charges levelled at Moscow, relating to the 2016 US presidential vote.

There were claims too that Clinton was involved in employing American consultants to advise Yeltsin’s campaign team; and that the Clinton administration’s role in backing an IMF loan, for Yeltsin’s Russia, was an example of deliberate foreign electoral intervention. The $10 billion IMF deal, agreed in February 1996, was publicly supported by Clinton himself. Little of this receives mention in establishment commentary linking the Kremlin to Donald Trump’s election victory.

Another crucial factor behind a yearning for the Soviet years, has been a decline in the quality of Russia’s health service over the past generation. Between 1991 and 1994 alone, average life expectancy in Russia dropped by five years, and come the mid-1990s Russian men were living for just 57 years. A catastrophe had gripped the society.

Despite global scientific advancements made in the field of health, average Russian citizens today are living just five years longer than in 1960 (71 years compared to 66 years). In America, over the same six decade time span, US citizens are now experiencing a lifespan on average 10 years greater.

A 2017 study by the Lancet, one of the most prestigious medical journals, outlined that Russia’s populace had “seen the social safety net provided by the Soviet system abruptly disintegrate, inequities grow sharply, and elderly, sick, and disabled people become left behind while the country painfully and erratically transitioned from a planned economy to capitalism”.

The Lancet author, experienced French physician Michel Kazatchkine, notes that “Another reason for the lingering nostalgia is the persistent perception that health care should be provided by the central government, with little or no responsibility on the part of the individual”. Under the Soviet institution, health care enjoyed “universal coverage, accessible to everyone, even in the most remote parts of the country”.

The death rate in Russia shot up in the immediate years following Soviet demise, and the figures “are unprecedented in a modern industrialised country in peacetime”, according to the BMJ (British Medical Journal), one of the longest-running medical periodicals in the world. Between the period of 1992 to 2001, up to three million Russians died prematurely in middle age.

Yet, it may be the case too, that former Soviet citizens are reminiscing partly through a vision of rose-tinted glasses. While by 1969, the Russian lifespan was just below that of an American, from 1970 life expectancy levels in Soviet Russia remained almost identical up to the 1991 collapse.

Much of the cause behind this was due to the stagnation which occurred under president Leonid Brezhnev – who also remained in power long after his health had deteriorated, before dying in office on 10 November 1982. The Lancet report identifies that the Russian health system “rapidly deteriorated in the 1970s” because of “Reduced funding from the central government and increasing bureaucratic and economic inefficiencies”.

Education standards in Russia likewise appreciably declined in quality, as neoliberal policies were ushered in. With education under the Soviets once comprising a highly centralised government-managed structure, decentralisation of education continued apace from 1991; while vested interest groups began flocking in order to profit from unequal education distribution.

Joseph Zajda, an education and globalisation expert, noted that the assaults upon Russian education “resulted in a new dimension of educational inequality between rich and poor regions, municipalities and cities” and that “Russian policy makers had failed to understand that globalisation was an ideologically driven social change”.

To the south of Russia in neighbouring China, similar regressions in education and health standards have been witnessed during the post-Maoist years – as the Chinese state drifted towards a capitalist-style model following the death of Mao Zedong in September 1976.

It should first be mentioned that currently there are many hundreds of thousands of millionaires in China (4.4 million), and present too are almost 500 billionaires in the country. This brief insight portrays a China that hardly consists of a communist or socialist state, and such pretensions were tacitly abandoned at least three decades ago. China has now surpassed America in numbers pertaining to the world’s richest people.

On a per capita basis (per person) America is, however, still far clear in having a wealthy top brass, with a population of about 330 million, by comparison to China’s 1.4 billion.

Still, Mao Zedong must be turning over in his grave somewhat. He was unable to implement a foundation to prevent a decisive move towards “market reforms”, and which has produced growing levels of inequity in China, not to mention rising privatisation and deregulation.

Detailed, in depth and conservative estimates produced by researchers show that inequality rates in China are “now approaching a level that is almost comparable to the USA”. Modern China is also more unequal “than that of European countries”.

From 1978 to 2015, the level of private wealth in China increased four times over. In 1978, the bottom 50% of Chinese earners had about the same income share as the top 10%. Not equitable even then. By 2015, the bottom half in Chinese society was earning almost three times less than the elite. For the 40% bulk in the middle, their share of national income has actually stagnated in the post-Mao era.

Overall, a Chinese citizen is earning greater wages than 40 years ago, but China is still a poor country – a statement which may surprise those eulogising, or warning about, the purportedly fabulous Chinese economy. The explosion in China’s economic figures is in fact highly misleading. Much of that wealth has accumulated in the top 10%, and increasingly the top 1%, of the nation’s populace.

This receives scarce focus in the many reports on China’s rocketing Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Utilising GDP results to estimate a country’s living state is a deeply flawed concept, and an ideological one, as GDP is concerned with “goods” and “services”, not people. There is no reference at all to the population in such accounts, what sort of wages they are earning, how long they are living, what shape the health and education sectors are in.

To gain a perspective of Chinese societal conditions, it can be important to analyse formats like the Human Development Index (HDI) – which measures per person income, life expectancy, etc. Most recent Human Development Index figures, from 2017, places China in 86th position; below such countries as Armenia (83rd), Azerbaijan (80th), Brazil (79th), Mexico (74th) and Cuba (73rd).

Throughout this decade, readers have been informed that China has “the world’s second largest economy”, and which could soon overtake America. We can cut through the illusions, and examine cold facts on the ground; such as pertaining to Gross National Income (GNI) per capita, which covers a broader area and relates to the “residents of a country”.

According to 2017 HDI figures, the average Chinese citizen earns per annum $15,270, compared to a yearly salary for a typical American of $54,941, more than three times as much. The average Chinese wage per year is also less, for example, than in Thailand ($15,516), Azerbaijan ($15,600), Mexico ($16,944) and Iran ($19,130). These figures surely dismantle much of the myth regarding China’s “economic miracle”.

In recent decades, hundreds of millions in China have been lifted from absolute grinding poverty; nonetheless, a large proportion of China’s population remains poor, especially when compared to living standards in privileged Western countries.

It may be interesting to compare health and education standards per capita between two communist nations: One largely communist in name only (China), and the other (Cuba) which may well be the only communist state in reality remaining on earth.

A Chinese person today lives on average for 76 years, which is less than a Cuban citizen, who enjoys a mean lifespan of almost 80 years. With its long burgeoning “economy”, China has a decidedly inferior health system to Cuba – in spite of the latter being under a decades-long embargo by the most powerful country in history, America.

China’s health care has considerably declined in quality since Mao Zedong’s death over 40 years ago. Indeed, “mortality sharply decreased in China during the Maoist years” as the American political analyst Noam Chomsky wrote but, as he reveals, China endured rising mortality levels “with the initiation of capitalist reforms thirty years ago, and the death rate has since increased”.

Cuba likewise possesses superior education standards to that of China. One statistic is telling from the HDI. The “mean years of schooling” for a child in China totals just shy of eight years altogether. In Cuba, the average youngster enjoys almost 12 years of schooling.

Cuba’s educational system is based on a non-discriminatory and non-fee paying basis, “a free education from the cradle to the grave” – whereas privatisation, fee paying or hidden expenses have crept into Chinese education, inevitably affecting poorer people the most.

The average Cuban receives a notably low annual income, at under $10,000 a year. The reason for this could be the aforementioned and punishing blockade enacted against Cuba. There is no way to tell for certain. Though the Cuban population is far from affluent, inequality was eradicated long ago. By 2004, the Castro government had further eliminated unemployment, drug use, gambling and homelessness, while Cuba has become the only country in the world to achieve sustainable development, according to the Switzerland-based World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). Most of these social ills have plagued Chinese society, along with many other states.

China is, as often reported, rivalling America in GDP terms – but the US is a wealthy state, and a particularly business-run society. Speculation regarding America being ousted by China as the world’s top power any time soon, should be taken with a grain of salt. China’s elite financial muscle might be attempting to match its US counterpart, through such associations as the Beijing-led Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).

This is a concern for Washington, but China also has major domestic problems to deal with: social unrest, a shrinking work force and ageing population, environmental issues, a trade war with the White House, and the fact it is almost surrounded by US military forces seaward.

The United Nations’ independent expert on human rights in the Palestinian territories issued a damning verdict last week on what he termed “the longest belligerent occupation in the modern world”.

Michael Lynk, a Canadian law professor, told the UN’s human rights council that only urgent international action could prevent Israel’s 52-year occupation of the West Bank transforming into de facto annexation.

He warned of a recent surge in violence against Palestinians from settlers, assisted by the Israeli army, and a record number of demolitions this year of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem – evidence of the ways Israel is further pressuring Palestinians to leave their lands.

He urged an international boycott of all settlement products as a necessary step to put pressure on Israel to change course. He also called on the UN itself to finally publish – as long promised – a database that it has been compiling since 2016 of Israeli and international companies doing business in the illegal settlements and normalising the occupation.

Israel and its supporters have stymied the release, fearing that such a database would bolster the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign that seeks to end Israel’s impunity.

Lynk sounded the alarm days after Israel’s most venerated judge, Meir Shamgar, died aged 94.

Shamgar was a reminder that the settlers have always been able to rely on the support of public figures from across Israel’s political spectrum. The settlements have always been viewed as a weapon to foil the emergence of a Palestinian state.

Perhaps not surprisingly, most obituaries overlooked the chicanery of Shamgar in building the legal architecture needed to establish the settlements after Israel occupied the Palestinian territories in 1967.

But in a tweeted tribute, Benjamin Netanyahu, the interim prime minister, noted Shamgar’s contribution to “legislation policy in Judea and Samaria”, using the Israeli government’s term for the West Bank.

It was Shamgar who swept aside the prohibition in international law on Israel as an occupying state, transferring its population into the territories. He thereby created a system of apartheid: illegal Jewish settlers enjoyed privileges under Israeli law while the local Palestinian population had to endure oppressive military orders.

Then, by a legal sleight of hand, Shamgar obscured the ugly reality he had inaugurated. He offered all those residing in the West Bank – Jews and Palestinians alike – access to arbitration from Israel’s supreme court.

It was, of course, an occupier’s form of justice – and a policy that treated the occupied territories as ultimately part of Israel, erasing any border. Ever since, the court has been deeply implicated in every war crime associated with the settlement enterprise.

As Israeli lawyer Michael Sfard noted, Shamgar “legalised almost every draconian measure taken by the defence establishment to crush Palestinian political and military organisations”, including detention without trial, house demolitions, land thefts, curfews and much more. All were needed to preserve the settlements.

Shamgar’s legal innovations – endorsing the systematic abuse of Palestinians and the entrenchment of the occupation – are now being expanded by a new generation of jurists.

Their latest proposal has been described as engineering a “revolution” in the occupation regime. It would let the settlers buy as private property the plots of occupied land their illegal homes currently stand on.

Disingenuously, Israeli officials argue that the policy would end “discrimination” against the settlers. An army legal adviser, Tzvi Mintz, noted recently: “A ban on making real-estate deals based on national origin raises a certain discomfort.”

Approving the privatisation of the settlements is a far more significant move than it might sound.

International law states that an occupier can take action in territories under occupation on only two possible grounds: out of military necessity or to benefit the local population. With the settlements obviously harming local Palestinians by depriving them of land and free movement, Israel disguised its first colonies as military installations.

It went on to seize huge swathes of the West Bank as “state lands” – meaning for Jews only – on the pretext of military needs. Civilians were transferred there with the claim that they bolstered Israel’s national security.

That is why no one has contemplated allowing the settlers to own the land they live on – until now. Instead it is awarded by military authorities, who administer the land on behalf of the Israeli state.

That is bad enough. But now defence ministry officials want to upend the definition in international law of the settlements as a war crime. Israel’s thinking is that, once the settlers become the formal owners of the land they were given illegally, they can be treated as the “local population”.

Israel will argue that the settlers are protected under international law just like the Palestinians. That would provide Israel with a legal pretext to annex the West Bank, saying it benefits the “local” settler population.

And by turning more than 600,000 illegal settlers into landowners, Israel can reinvent the occupation as an insoluble puzzle. Palestinians seeking redress from Israel for the settlements will instead have to fight an endless array of separate claims against individual settlers.

This proposal follows recent moves by Israel to legalise many dozens of so-called outposts, built by existing settlements to steal yet more Palestinian land. As well as violating international law, the outposts fall foul of Israeli law and undertakings made under the Oslo accords not to expand the settlements.

All of this is being done in the context of a highly sympathetic administration in Washington that, it is widely assumed, is preparing to approve annexation of the West Bank as part of a long-postponed peace plan.

The current delay has been caused by Netanyahu’s failure narrowly in two general elections this year to win enough seats to form a settler-led government. Israel might now be heading to a third election.

Officials and the settlers are itching to press ahead with formal annexation of nearly two-thirds of the West Bank. Netanyahu promised annexation in the run-up to both elections. Settler leaders, meanwhile, have praised the new army chief of staff, Aviv Kochavi, as sympathetic to their cause.

Expectations have soared among the settlers as a result. Their impatience has fuelled a spike in violence, including a spate of recent attacks on Israeli soldiers sent to protect them as the settlers confront and assault Palestinians beginning the annual olive harvest.

Lynk, the UN’s expert, has warned that the international community needs to act swiftly to stop the occupied territories becoming a permanent Israeli settler state. Sadly, there are few signs that foreign governments are listening.

A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.

As the Quantum field oversees the disintegration of institutions no longer in service to the public, the Democratic party continues to lose their marbles, perpetuating their own simulated bubble as if they alone are the nation’s most trusted purveyors of truth. 

Since the Mueller Report failed to deliver on the dubious Russiagate accusations, the party of Thomas Jefferson continues to remain in search of another ethical pretense to justify continued partisan turmoil.  In an effort to discredit and/or distract attention from the Barr-Durham and IG investigations, the Dems have come up with an implausible piece of political theatre known as Ukrainegate which has morphed into an impeachment inquiry.    

The Inspector General’s Report, which may soon be ready for release, will address the presentation of fabricated FBI evidence to the FISA Court for permission to initiate a surveillance campaign on Trump Administration personnel.  In addition, the Department of Justice has confirmed that Special Investigator John Durham’s probe into the origin of the FBI’s counter intelligence investigation during the 2016 election has moved from an administrative review into the criminal prosecution realm.  Durham will now be able to actively pursue candidates for possible prosecution. 

The defensive assault from the Democrat hierarchy and its corporate media cohorts can be expected to reach a fevered pitch of manic proportions as both investigations threatened not only their political future in 2020 but perhaps their very existence.       

NBC suggests that the Barr investigation is a ‘mysterious’ review “amid concerns about whether the probe has any legal or factual basis” while the NY Times continues to cast doubt that the investigation has a legitimate basis implying that AG Barr is attempting to “deliver a political victory for President Trump.”   The Times misleads its readers with

“Trump has repeatedly attacked the Russia investigation, portraying it as a hoax and illegal even months after the special counsel closed it.”

when in fact, it was the Russiagate collusion allegations that Trump referred to as a hoax, rather than the Mueller investigation per se.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va), minority leader of the Senate Intel Committee suggested that Attorney General William Barr “owes the Committee an explanation” since the committee is completing a “three-year bipartisan investigation” that has “found nothing to justify” Barr’s expanded effort.  The Senator’s gauntlet will be ever so fascinating as the public reads exactly how the Intel Committee spent three years and came up with “nothing” as compared to what Durham and the IG reports have to say.

On the House side, prime-time whiners Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif) and Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) commented that news of the Durham investigation moving towards criminal liability “raised profound concerns that Barr has lost his independence and become a vehicle for political revenge” and that “the Rule of Law will suffer irreparable damage.”    

Since Barr has issued no determination of blame other than to assure a full, fair and rigorous investigation, it is curious that the Dems are in premature meltdown as if they expect indictments even though the investigations are not yet complete.

There is, however, one small inconvenient glitch that challenges the Democratic version of reality that does not fit their partisan spin. The news that former FBI General Counsel James Baker is actively cooperating with the BD investigation ought to send ripples through the ranks. Baker has already stated that it was a ‘small group’ within the agency who led the counterintelligence inquiry into the Trump campaign; notably former FBI Director James Comey and former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

Baker’s cooperation was not totally unexpected since he also cooperated with the Inspector General’s FISA abuse investigation which is awaiting public release.  As FBI General Counsel, Baker had a role in reviewing the FISA applications before they were submitted to the FISA court and currently remains under criminal investigation for making unauthorized leaks to the media. 

As the agency’s chief legal officer, Baker had to be a first-hand participant and privy to every strategy discussion and decision (real or contemplated).  It was his job to identify potential legal implications that might negatively affect the agency or boomerang back on the FBI.  In other words, Baker is in a unique position to know who knew what and when did they know it. His ‘cooperation’ can be generally attributed to being more concerned with saving his own butt rather than the Constitution.  In any case, the information he is able to provide will be key for getting to the true origins of Russiagate and the FISA scandal.  Baker’s collaboration may augur others facing possible prosecution to step up since ‘cooperation’ usually comes with the gift of a lesser charge..   

With a special focus on senior Obama era intel officials  Durham has reportedly already interviewed up to two dozen former and current FBI employees as well as officials in the office of the Director of National Intelligence.  From the number of interviews conducted to date it can be surmised that Durham has been accumulating all the necessary facts and evidence as he works his way up the chain of command, prior to concentrating on top officials who may be central to the investigation.

It has also been reported that Durham expects to interview current and former intelligence officials including CIA analysts, former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper regarding Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election.

In a recent CNN interview, when asked if he was concerned about any wrong doing on the part of intel officials, Clapper nervously responded “I don’t know.  I don’t think there was any wrong doing.  It is disconcerting to know that we are being investigated for having done our duty and done what we were told to do by the President.”  One wonders if Clapper might be a candidate for ‘cooperating’ along with Baker.

As CIA Director, Brennan made no secret of his efforts to nail the Trump Administration.  In the summer of 2016, he formed an inter agency taskforce to investigate what was being reported as Russian collusion within the Trump campaign.  He boasted to Rachel Maddow that he brought NSA and FBI officials together with the CIA to ‘connect the dots.”  With the addition of James Clapper’s DNI, three reports were released:  October, 2016, December, 2016 and January, 2017 all disseminating the Russian-Trump collusion theory which the Mueller Report later found to be unproven.

Since 1947 when the CIA was first authorized by President Harry Truman who belatedly regretted his approval, the agency has been operating as if they report to no one and  that they never owe the public or Congress any explanation of their behavior or activity or  how they spend the money.  Since those days it has been a weak-minded Congress, intimidated and/or compromised Members who have allowed intel to run their own show as if they are immune to the Constitution and the Rule of Law.  Since 1947, there has been no functioning Congress willing to provide true accountability or meaningful oversight on the intel community.   

Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist with Friends of the Earth and staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She can be found on Twitter @reneedove31

In the event of the death of the Islamic State’s self-styled caliph, Amaq, a news agency affiliated with the Islamic State, reported on 7 August 2019 that the terrorist organization’s chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had appointed Abdullah Qardash as his successor.

 Abdullah Qardash is from Tal Afar, a predominantly Sunni Muslim city in northwestern Iraq, and has served as an army officer during Saddam Hussein’s regime. Besides Qardash, two other close aides who have emerged as al-Baghdadi’s likely successors over the years are Iyad al-Obaidi, his defense minister, and Ayad al-Jumaili, the in charge of security.

Al-Jumaili has already reportedly been killed in an airstrike in April 2017 in al-Qaim region on Iraq’s border with Syria, while the whereabouts of al-Obaidi are unknown. Both al-Jumaili and al-Obaidi have also previously served as security officers in Iraq’s Baathist army under Saddam Hussein.

Regarding the creation and composition of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, apart from training and arms which were provided to Syrian militants in the training camps located in the Turkish and Jordanian border regions adjacent to Syria by the CIA in collaboration with Turkish, Jordanian and Saudi intelligence agencies, another factor that contributed to the success of the Islamic State in early 2014 when it overran Raqqa in Syria and Mosul and Anbar in Iraq was that its top cadres were comprised of former Baathist military and intelligence officers from the Saddam era.

Reportedly, hundreds of ex-Baathists constituted the top and mid-tier command structure of the Islamic State who planned all the operations and directed its military strategy. The only feature that differentiated the Islamic State from all other insurgent groups was its command structure which was comprised of professional ex-Baathists and its state-of-the-art weaponry that was provided to all militant outfits fighting in Syria by the intelligence agencies of the Western powers, Turkey, Jordan and the Gulf states.

Recently, the Islamic State’s purported “terror franchises” in Afghanistan and Pakistan have claimed a spate of bombings against the Shi’a and Barelvi Muslims who are regarded as heretics by Takfiri jihadists. But to contend that the Islamic State is responsible for suicide blasts in Pakistan and Afghanistan is to declare that the Taliban are responsible for the sectarian war in Syria and Iraq.

Both are localized militant outfits and the Islamic State without its Baathist command structure and superior weaponry is just another ragtag, regional militant outfit. The distinction between the Taliban and the Islamic State lies in the fact that the Taliban follow Deobandi sect of Sunni Islam which is a sect native to South Asia, whereas the jihadists of the Islamic State mostly belong to Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi-Salafi denomination.

Secondly, and more importantly, the insurgency in Afghanistan and the border regions of Pakistan is an indigenous Pashtun uprising which is an ethnic group native to Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan, whereas the bulk of the Islamic State’s jihadists in Syria and Iraq was comprised of Arab militants and included foreign fighters from the neighboring Middle Eastern countries, North Africa, the Central Asian states, Russia, China and even radicalized Muslims from as far away as Europe and the United States.

The so-called “Khorasan Province” of the Islamic State in the Af-Pak region is nothing more than a coalition of several breakaway factions of the Taliban and a few other inconsequential local militant outfits that have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State’s late chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in order to enhance their prestige, and draw funds and followers, but which doesn’t have any organizational and operational association with the Islamic State proper in Syria and Iraq.

The total strength of the Islamic State-Khorasan is estimated to be between 3,000 to 5,000 fighters. By comparison, the strength of the Taliban is estimated to be between 60,000 to 80,000 militants. The Islamic State-Khorasan was formed as a merger between several breakaway factions of the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban in early 2015. Later, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a Pakistani terrorist group Jundullah and Chinese Uyghur militants pledged allegiance to it.

In 2017, the Islamic State-Khorasan split into two factions. One faction, based in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province, is led by a Pakistani militant commander Aslam Farooqi, and the other faction, based in the northern provinces of Afghanistan, is led by a former Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) commander Moawiya. The latter faction also includes Uzbek, Tajik, Uyghur and Baloch militants.

In Pakistan, there are three distinct categories of militants: the Afghanistan-focused Pashtun militants; the Kashmir-focused Punjabi militants; and foreign transnational terrorists, including the Arab militants of al-Qaeda, the Uzbek insurgents of Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and the Chinese Uyghur jihadists of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM). Compared to tens of thousands of native Pashtun and Punjabi militants, the foreign transnational terrorists number only in a few hundred and are hence inconsequential.

Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is mainly comprised of Pashtun militants, carries out bombings against Pakistan’s state apparatus. The ethnic factor is critical here. Although the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) like to couch their rhetoric in religious terms, it is the difference of ethnicity and language that enables them to recruit Pashtun tribesmen who are willing to carry out subversive activities against the Punjabi-dominated state apparatus, while the Kashmir-focused Punjabi militants have by and large remained loyal to their patrons in the security agencies of Pakistan.

Although Pakistan’s security establishment has been willing to conduct military operations against the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), which are regarded as a security threat to Pakistan’s state apparatus, as far as the Kashmir-focused Punjabi militants, including the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, and the Afghanistan-focused Quetta Shura Taliban, including the Haqqani network, are concerned, they are still enjoying impunity because such militant groups are regarded as “strategic assets” by Pakistan’s security agencies.

Therefore, recent allegations by regional power-brokers that Washington has provided material support to the Islamic State-affiliate in Afghanistan and the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) as a tit-for-tat response to Pakistan’s security agencies double game of providing support to the Afghan Taliban to mount attacks against the Afghan security forces and their American backers cannot be ruled out.

In November last year, for instance, infighting between the main faction of the Afghan Taliban led by Mullah Haibatullah Akhunzada and a breakaway faction led by Mullah Mohammad Rasul left scores of fighters dead in Afghanistan’s western Herat province.

Mullah Rasul was close to Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar, and served as the governor of southwestern Nimroz province during the Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. After the news of the death of Mullah Omar was made public in 2015, Mullah Rasul broke ranks with the Taliban and formed his own faction.

Mullah Rasul’s group is active in the provinces of Herat, Farah, Nimroz and Helmand, and is known to have received arms and support from the Afghan intelligence, as he has expressed willingness to recognize the Washington-backed Kabul government.

Regarding Washington’s motives for providing covert support to breakaway factions of the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban and the Islamic State’s affiliate in Afghanistan, the US invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attack, and toppled the Taliban regime with the help of the Northern Alliance comprised of ethnic Tajik and Uzbek warlords.

The leadership and fighters of the Pashtun-majority Taliban resistance movement found sanctuary in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, and mounted an insurgency against the Washington-backed Kabul government. Throughout the occupation years, Washington kept pressuring Islamabad to mount military operations in the tribal areas in order to deny safe havens to the Taliban.

However, Islamabad was reluctant to conduct military operations, which is a euphemism for all-out war, for the fear of alienating the Pashtun population of the tribal areas. After Pakistan’s military’s raid in July 2007 on a mosque (Laal Masjid) in the heart of Islamabad, which also contained a religious seminary, scores of civilians, including students of the seminary, died.

The Pakistani Taliban made the incident a rallying call for waging a jihad against Pakistan’s military. Thereafter, terror attacks and suicide bombings against Pakistan’s state apparatus peaked after the July 2007 Laal Masjid incident. Eventually, under pressure from the Obama administration, Pakistan’s military decided in 2009 to conduct military operations against militants based in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

The first military operation was mounted in the Swat valley in April 2009, the second in South Waziristan tribal agency in October the same year, and the third military operation was launched in North Waziristan and Khyber tribal agencies in June 2014. In the ensuing violence, tens of thousands of civilians, security personnel and militants lost their lives.

Although Pakistani political commentators often point fingers at the Washington-backed Kabul government in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s arch-foe India for providing money and arms to the Pakistani Taliban for waging a guerrilla war against Pakistan’s state establishment, reportedly Washington has provided covert support to the Pakistani Taliban in order to force Pakistan’s military to conduct military operations against militants based in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Keeping this background of Washington’s covert support to breakaway factions of the Afghan Taliban that have waged an insurgency against the US-backed Kabul government and to the Pakistani Taliban that has mounted a guerrilla war against Pakistan’s state establishment in mind, the allegations that Washington has provided material support to the Islamic State’s affiliate in the Af-Pak region in order to divide and weaken the Taliban resistance against American occupation of Afghanistan are not unfounded.

Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism.

He died like a dog.” President Trump could not have scripted a better one-liner as he got ready for his Obama bin Laden close-up in front of the whole world.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, fake caliph, ISIS/Daesh leader, the most wanted man on the planet, was “brought to justice” under Trump’s watch. The dead dog caliph is now positioned as the ultimate foreign policy winning trophy ahead of 2020 reelection.

The climatic scenes of the inevitable-as-death-and-taxes movie or Netflix series to come are already written. (Trump: I “watched it like a movie.”) Cowardly uber-terrorist cornered in a dead-end tunnel, eight helicopter gunships hovering above, dogs barking in the darkness, three terrified children taken as hostages, coward detonates a suicide vest, tunnel collapses over himself and the children.

A crack forensic team carrying samples of the fake caliph’s DNA apparently does its job in record time. The remains of the self-exploded target – then sealed in plastic bags – confirm it: it’s Baghdadi. In the dead of night, it’s time for the commando unit to go back to Irbil, a 70-minute flight over northeast Syria and northwest Iraq. Cut to Trump’s presser. Mission accomplished. Roll credits.

This all happened at a compound only 300 meters away from the village of Barisha, in Idlib, rural northwest Syria, only 5km from the Syria-Turkish border. The compound is no more:  it was turned to rubble so it would not become a (Syrian) shrine for a renegade Iraqi.

The caliph was already on the run, and arrived at this rural back of beyond only 48 hours before the raid, according to Turkish intelligence. A serious question is what he was doing in northwest Syria, in Idlib – a de facto cauldron-like Donbass in 2014 – which the Syrian army and Russian airpower are just waiting for the right moment to extinguish.

There are virtually no ISIS/Daesh jihadis in Irbil, but lots of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, as in al-Qaeda in Syria, known inside the Beltway as “moderate rebels,” including hardcore Turkmen brigades previously weaponized by Turkish intel. The only rational explanation is that the Caliph might have identified this Idlib backwater near Barisha, away from the war zone, as the ideal under-the-radar passport to cross to Turkey.

Russians knew?

The plot thickens when we examine Trump’s long list of “thank yous” for the successful raid. Russia came first, followed by Syria – presumably Syrian Kurds, not Damascus – Turkey and Iraq. In fact, Syrian Kurds were only credited with “certain support,” in Trump’s words. Their commander Mazloum Abdi, though, preferred to extol the raid as a “historic operation” with essential Syrian Kurd intel input.

In Trump’s press conference, expanding somewhat on the thank yous, Russia again came first (“great” collaboration) and Iraq was “excellent”: the Iraqi National Intelligence Service later commented on the break it had gotten, via a Syrian who had smuggled the wives of two of Baghdadi’s brothers, Ahmad and Jumah, to Idlib via Turkey.

There’s no way US Special Forces could have pulled this off without complex, combined Turkish, Iraqi and Syrian Kurd intel. Additionally, President Erdogan accomplishes one more tactical masterpiece, juggling between performing the role of dutiful, major NATO ally while still allowing al-Qaeda remnants their safe haven in Idlib under the watchful eye of the Turkish military.

Significantly, Trump said, about Moscow: “We told them, ‘We’re coming in’ … and they said, ‘Thank you for telling us.’” But, “they did not know the mission.”

They definitely didn’t. In fact, the Russian Defense Ministry, via spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov, said it had “no reliable information about US servicemen conducting an operation to ‘yet another’ elimination of the former Daesh leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in the Turkish-controlled part of the Idlib de-escalation zone.”

And on Trump’s “we told them,” the Russian Defense Ministry was emphatic: “We know nothing about any assistance to the flight of US aircraft to the Idlib de-escalation zone’s airspace in the course of this operation.”

According to ground sources in Syria, a prevalent rumor in Idlib is that the “dead dog” in Barisha could be Abu Mohammad Salama, the leader of Haras al-Din, a minor sub-group of al-Qaeda in Syria. Haras al-Din has not issued any statement about it.

ISIS/Daesh anyway has already named a successor: Abdullah Qardash, aka Hajji Abdullah al-Afari, also Iraqi and also a former Saddam Hussein military officer. There’s a strong possibility that ISIS/Daesh and myriad subgroups and variations of al-Qaeda in Syria will now re-merge, after their split in 2014.

Who gets the oil?

There’s no plausible explanation whatsoever for Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, for years, enjoying the freedom of shuttling back and forth between Syria and Iraq, always evading the formidable surveillance capabilities of the US government.

Well, there’s also no plausible explanation for that famous convoy of 53 brand new, white Toyota Hi-Luxes crossing the desert from Syria to Iraq in 2014 crammed with flag-waving ISIS/Daesh jihadis on their way to capture Mosul, also evading the cornucopia of US satellites covering the Middle East 24/7.

And there’s no way to bury the 2012 US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)  leaked memo that explicitly named “the West, Gulf monarchies, and Turkey” as seeking a “Salafist principality” in Syria (opposed, significantly, by Russia, China and Iran – the key poles of Eurasia integration).

That was way before ISIS/Daesh’s irresistible ascension. The DIA memo was unmistakable: “If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).

True, the fake caliph has been proclaimed definitely dead at least five times, starting in December 2016. Yet the timing, now, could not be more convenient.

The facts on the ground, after the latest ground-breaking Russia-brokered deal between the Turks and the Syrian Kurds, graphically spell out the slow but sure restoration of Syria’s territorial integrity. There will be no balkanization of Syria. The last remaining pocket to be cleared of jihadis is Irbil.

And then, there’s the oil question. The “died as a dog” movie literally buries – at least for now – an extremely embarrassing story: the Pentagon deploying tanks to “protect” Syrian oilfields. This is as illegal, by any possible interpretation of international law, as is, for that matter, the very presence in Syria of US troops, which were never invited by the government in Damascus.

Persian Gulf traders told me that before 2011, Syria was producing 387,000 barrels of oil a day and selling 140,000 – the equivalent of 25.1% of Damascus’s income. Nowadays, the Omar, al-Shadaddi and Suwayda fields, in eastern Syria, would not be producing more than 60,000 barrels a day. Still, that’s essential for Damascus and for “the Syrian people” so admired within the Beltway – the legitimate owners of the oil.

The mostly Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) did in fact take military control of Deir er-Zor when they were fighting ISIS/Daesh. Yet the majority of the local population is Sunni Arab. They will never tolerate any hint of a longtime Syrian Kurd domination – much less in tandem with a US occupation.

Sooner or later the Syrian army will get there, with Russian air power support. The Deep State might, but Trump, in an electoral year, would never risk a hot war over a few, illegally occupied oilfields.

In the end, the “died as a dog” movie can be interpreted as a victory lap, and the closure of a historical arc languishing since 2011. When he “abandoned” the Syrian Demoratic Forces Kurds, Trump effectively buried the Rojava question – as in an independent Syrian Kurdistan.

Russia is in charge in Syria – on all fronts. Turkey got rid of its “terrorism” paranoia – always having to demonize the Syrian Kurd PYD and its armed wing YPG as a spin-off of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) separatists inside Turkey – and this may help to settle the Syrian refugee question. Syria is on the way to recover all its territory.

The “died as a dog” movie can also be interpreted as the liquidation of a formerly useful asset that was a valued component of the gift that keeps on giving, the never-ending Global War on Terror. Other scarecrows, and other movies, await.

Originally published on Asia Times

The Israel lobby in the United States and its counterparts in Europe have been paying particular attention to curtailing the activities of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS). This is because BDS, which is non-violent and based on established human rights principles, is extremely appealing to college students, who will be tomorrow’s leaders. Israel, which promotes its own largely fictional narrative about itself, is reluctant to allow any competing stories about its foundation and current activities, so it has worked hard to exclude any and all criticism of its practices on college campuses and even among students in public high schools.

Unfortunately, many colleges and universities are all too ready to compromise their principles, such as they are, whenever a representative of Israel or of Jewish groups comes calling. A popular line that has proven to be particularly effective is that Jews on campus feel threatened whenever anyone advocates for the Palestinians or Iranians, intended to convey that their civil rights are being violated.

Even if that type of allegation is actually relevant to whether or not one allows free speech and association, one wonders how violated the Palestinians and Iranians must feel when confronted by the endless stream of hostility emanating from the U.S. media and Hollywood as well as from select politicians representing both parties and the White House.

In the most recent manifestation of suppression of views critical of Israel, the federal government’s Department of Education has ordered Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to reorganize the Consortium for Middle East Studies program run jointly by the two colleges based on their failure to include enough “positive” content relating to Christianity and Judaism. The demand came with a threat to suspend federal funding of Title VI Higher Education Act international studies and foreign language grants to the two schools if the curriculum is not changed.

Of course, the demands have nothing to do with Christian groups demanding inclusion and everything to do with organized Jewish pressure to present Israel in a positive light while also casting aspersions on the Jewish state’s perceived enemies in the region and also on university campuses. Anyone who has even cursory knowledge about the Middle East knows that Christians and Jews constitute only a tiny minority in the region, so the emphasis on teaching about Islam, the Arabs, and the Persians makes sense if the instruction is to have any actual relevance.

One particular event that apparently led to an earlier investigation in June launched by the Education Department consisted of a conference in March called “Conflict Over Gaza: People, Politics, and Possibilities.” A Republican congressman was outraged by the development and asked Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to investigate because the gathering was full of “radical anti-Israel bias.”

Even The New York Times acknowledged in their coverage of the story that “Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, has become increasingly aggressive in going after perceived anti-Israel bias in higher education.” Her deputy—who has served as a focal point for the effort to root out anti-Israel sentiment—is Assistant Secretary of Civil Rights Kenneth L. Marcus, who might reasonably be described as “a career pro-Israel advocate.”

Marcus is the founder and president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, a foundation that he has used to exclusively defend the rights of Jewish groups and individuals against BDS and other manifestations of Palestinian pushback against the Israeli occupation of their country. He has not hesitated to call opponents anti- Semites and has worked with Jewish students to file civil rights complaints against college administrations, including schools in Wisconsin and California. In an op-ed that appeared, not surprisingly, in The Jerusalem Post, he observed that even when student complaints were rejected, they created major problems for the institutions involved. “If a university shows a failure to treat initial complaints seriously, it hurts them with donors, faculty, political leaders, and prospective students.”

Last year Marcus reopened an investigation into alleged anti-Jewish bias at Rutgers University that the Obama administration had closed after finding that the charges were baseless. Marcus indicated that the re-examination was called for, as his office in the Education Department would henceforth be using the State Department definition of anti-Semitism that includes “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination,” making much criticism of Israel a hate crime.

In the current North Carolina-Duke case, DeVos and Marcus expressed concern over course content that had “a considerable emphasis placed on understanding the positive aspects of Islam, while there is an absolute absence of any similar focus on the positive aspects of Christianity, Judaism, or any other religion or belief system in the Middle East.” The complaint called for balancing content relating to “the historic discrimination faced by, and current circumstances of, religious minorities in the Middle East, including Christians, Jews, Baha’is, Yazidis, Kurds, Druze, and others.”

Zoha Khalili, a staff lawyer at Palestine Legal, explained how the message coming from Washington is actually quite simple and has nothing to do with balance:

“They really want to send the message that if you want to criticize Israel, then the federal government is going to look very closely at your entire program and micromanage it to death. . . . [It] sends a message to Middle Eastern studies programs that their continued existence depends on their willingness to toe the government line on Israel.”

The possible consequences are very clear. If you are an educational institution that criticizes Israel in any way, shape or form, you will lose any funding you receive from the federal government. The move has nothing to do with budgetary demands or the national security of the United States or even with the efficacy of the programs that are being funded. It has everything to do with promoting Israeli interests. That a demonstrated and outspoken Israeli advocate like Marcus should be placed in a key position to decide who gets what based on his own biases is a travesty, but it is something that we should all be accustomed to by now, as there is apparently no limit to what the Trump administration is willing to do for Israel and for that monstrous country’s powerful, wealthy, and incessantly vocal supporters in the United States.

Originally published on Aletho News

U.S. Special Operations forces eliminated ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi during a nighttime raid into northwestern Syria on October 26, President Donald Trump officially announced. According to the President, Baghdadi died with his 3 young children after activating his suicide vest. Baghdadi’s body was mutilated by the blast. However, Trump said, “test results gave certain and positive identification.”

A large number of Baghdadi’s fighters and companions were killed and 11 young children were moved out of the operation site, the President added. He also thanked Russia, Turkey, Iraq and Syria, including Kurds, for “support”. He praised the “great cooperation” with Russia, which allegedly opened up airspace under its control to allow US aircraft to use the area.

Earlier, reports appeared that eight military helicopters carried out an operation, including delivering strikes, near the village of Barisha in the Syrian province of Idlib, near the Turkish border. At least 7 people, including 3 children, were killed, according to local sources.

Iraqi sources claimed that a group of senior ISIS and al-Qaeda commanders was killed along the ISIS leader. These were Baghdadi’s deputy – Abu Said al-Iraqi, his bodyguard – Ghazwan al-Rawi, the head of ISIS security in Syria – Abu al-Yaman, and Abu Mohamad al-Halabi, a prominent commander of the Syrian al-Qaeda-affiliated militant group, Horas al-Din. The family of Abu Mohamad al-Halabi was also allegedly killed.

The Russian Defense Ministry commented on Trump’s statement by saying that it has no verifiable information confirming the ‘yet another’ elimination of al-Baghdadi. A defense ministry spokesman Maj.Gen. Igor Konashenkov added that Russia also has no info about the supposed opening of airspace for US aircraft.

The Trump administration needed an operation to eliminate al-Baghdadi to once again take credit for ‘eliminating ISIS’ and get a PR success for Trump’s ‘mission accomplished’ claims and the withdrawal of US troops from northern Syria. With these developments, Trump will be able to explain his administration’s Middle East strategy to the internal audience ahead of the upcoming presidential election in 2020.

Another important factor is that the US action once again revealed the double-faced policy of Western states and mainstream media that have been promoting northwestern Syria, including the province of Idlib, as a stronghold of the ‘democratic opposition’ to the ‘bloody regime’ of Bashar al-Assad. In fact, this ‘democratic opposition’ does not exist and the Greater Idlib area is almost fully controlled by various radicals and terrorists. So, the ISIS Leader and his inner circle were free to hide there, near the Turkish border.

“You see them on the street. You watch them on TV. You might even vote for one this fall. You think they’re people just like you. You’re wrong. Dead wrong.” — They Live

We’re living in two worlds, you and I.

There’s the world we see (or are made to see) and then there’s the one we sense (and occasionally catch a glimpse of), the latter of which is a far cry from the propaganda-driven reality manufactured by the government and its corporate sponsors, including the media.

Indeed, what most Americans perceive as life in America—privileged, progressive and free—is a far cry from reality, where economic inequality is growing, real agendas and real power are buried beneath layers of Orwellian doublespeak and corporate obfuscation, and “freedom,” such that it is, is meted out in small, legalistic doses by militarized police armed to the teeth.

All is not as it seems.

This is the premise of John Carpenter’s film They Live, which was released more than 30 years ago, and remains unnervingly, chillingly appropriate for our modern age.

Best known for his horror film Halloween, which assumes that there is a form of evil so dark that it can’t be killed, Carpenter’s larger body of work is infused with a strong anti-authoritarian, anti-establishment, laconic bent that speaks to the filmmaker’s concerns about the unraveling of our society, particularly our government.

Time and again, Carpenter portrays the government working against its own citizens, a populace out of touch with reality, technology run amok, and a future more horrific than any horror film.

In Escape from New York, Carpenter presents fascism as the future of America.

In The Thing, a remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic of the same name, Carpenter presupposes that increasingly we are all becoming dehumanized.

In Christine, the film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel about a demon-possessed car, technology exhibits a will and consciousness of its own and goes on a murderous rampage.

In In the Mouth of Madness, Carpenter notes that evil grows when people lose “the ability to know the difference between reality and fantasy.”

And then there is Carpenter’s They Live, in which two migrant workers discover that the world is not as it seems. In fact, the population is actually being controlled and exploited by aliens working in partnership with an oligarchic elite. All the while, the populace—blissfully unaware of the real agenda at work in their lives—has been lulled into complacency, indoctrinated into compliance, bombarded with media distractions, and hypnotized by subliminal messages beamed out of television and various electronic devices, billboards and the like.

It is only when homeless drifter John Nada (played to the hilt by the late Roddy Piper) discovers a pair of doctored sunglasses—Hoffman lenses—that Nada sees what lies beneath the elite’s fabricated reality: control and bondage.

When viewed through the lens of truth, the elite, who appear human until stripped of their disguises, are shown to be monsters who have enslaved the citizenry in order to prey on them.

Likewise, billboards blare out hidden, authoritative messages: a bikini-clad woman in one ad is actually ordering viewers to “MARRY AND REPRODUCE.” Magazine racks scream “CONSUME” and “OBEY.” A wad of dollar bills in a vendor’s hand proclaims, “THIS IS YOUR GOD.”

When viewed through Nada’s Hoffman lenses, some of the other hidden messages being drummed into the people’s subconscious include: NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT, CONFORM, SUBMIT, STAY ASLEEP, BUY, WATCH TV, NO IMAGINATION, and DO NOT QUESTION AUTHORITY.

This indoctrination campaign engineered by the elite in They Live is painfully familiar to anyone who has studied the decline of American culture.

A citizenry that does not think for themselves, obeys without question, is submissive, does not challenge authority, does not think outside the box, and is content to sit back and be entertained is a citizenry that can be easily controlled.

In this way, the subtle message of They Live provides an apt analogy of our own distorted vision of life in the American police state, what philosopher Slavoj Žižek refers to as dictatorship in democracy, “the invisible order which sustains your apparent freedom.”

We’re being fed a series of carefully contrived fictions that bear no resemblance to reality.

The powers-that-be want us to feel threatened by forces beyond our control (terrorists, shooters, bombers).

They want us afraid and dependent on the government and its militarized armies for our safety and well-being.

They want us distrustful of each other, divided by our prejudices, and at each other’s throats.

Most of all, they want us to continue to march in lockstep with their dictates.

Tune out the government’s attempts to distract, divert and befuddle us and tune into what’s really going on in this country, and you’ll run headlong into an unmistakable, unpalatable truth: the moneyed elite who rule us view us as expendable resources to be used, abused and discarded.

In fact, a study conducted by Princeton and Northwestern University concluded that the U.S. government does not represent the majority of American citizens. Instead, the study found that the government is ruled by the rich and powerful, or the so-called “economic elite.” Moreover, the researchers concluded that policies enacted by this governmental elite nearly always favor special interests and lobbying groups.

In other words, we are being ruled by an oligarchy disguised as a democracy, and arguably on our way towards fascism—a form of government where private corporate interests rule, money calls the shots, and the people are seen as mere subjects to be controlled.

Not only do you have to be rich—or beholden to the rich—to get elected these days, but getting elected is also a surefire way to get rich. As CBS News reports, “Once in office, members of Congress enjoy access to connections and information they can use to increase their wealth, in ways that are unparalleled in the private sector. And once politicians leave office, their connections allow them to profit even further.”

In denouncing this blatant corruption of America’s political system, former president Jimmy Carter blasted the process of getting elected—to the White House, governor’s mansion, Congress or state legislatures—as “unlimited political bribery… a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over.”

Rest assured that when and if fascism finally takes hold in America, the basic forms of government will remain: Fascism will appear to be friendly. The legislators will be in session. There will be elections, and the news media will continue to cover the entertainment and political trivia. Consent of the governed, however, will no longer apply. Actual control will have finally passed to the oligarchic elite controlling the government behind the scenes.

Sound familiar?

Clearly, we are now ruled by an oligarchic elite of governmental and corporate interests.

We have moved into “corporatism” (favored by Benito Mussolini), which is a halfway point on the road to full-blown fascism.

Corporatism is where the few moneyed interests—not elected by the citizenry—rule over the many. In this way, it is not a democracy or a republican form of government, which is what the American government was established to be. It is a top-down form of government and one which has a terrifying history typified by the developments that occurred in totalitarian regimes of the past: police states where everyone is watched and spied on, rounded up for minor infractions by government agents, placed under police control, and placed in detention (a.k.a. concentration) camps.

For the final hammer of fascism to fall, it will require the most crucial ingredient: the majority of the people will have to agree that it’s not only expedient but necessary.

But why would a people agree to such an oppressive regime?

The answer is the same in every age: fear.

Fear makes people stupid.

Fear is the method most often used by politicians to increase the power of government. And, as most social commentators recognize, an atmosphere of fear permeates modern America: fear of terrorism, fear of the police, fear of our neighbors and so on.

The propaganda of fear has been used quite effectively by those who want to gain control, and it is working on the American populace.

Despite the fact that we are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack; 11,000 times more likely to die from an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane; 1,048 times more likely to die from a car accident than a terrorist attack, and 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist , we have handed over control of our lives to government officials who treat us as a means to an end—the source of money and power.

As the Bearded Man in They Live warns, “They are dismantling the sleeping middle class. More and more people are becoming poor. We are their cattle. We are being bred for slavery.”

In this regard, we’re not so different from the oppressed citizens in They Live.

From the moment we are born until we die, we are indoctrinated into believing that those who rule us do it for our own good. The truth is far different.

Despite the truth staring us in the face, we have allowed ourselves to become fearful, controlled, pacified zombies.

We live in a perpetual state of denial, insulated from the painful reality of the American police state by wall-to-wall entertainment news and screen devices.

Most everyone keeps their heads down these days while staring zombie-like into an electronic screen, even when they’re crossing the street. Families sit in restaurants with their heads down, separated by their screen devices and unaware of what’s going on around them. Young people especially seem dominated by the devices they hold in their hands, oblivious to the fact that they can simply push a button, turn the thing off and walk away.

Indeed, there is no larger group activity than that connected with those who watch screens—that is, television, lap tops, personal computers, cell phones and so on. In fact, a Nielsen study reports that American screen viewing is at an all-time high. For example, the average American watches approximately 151 hours of television per month.

The question, of course, is what effect does such screen consumption have on one’s mind?

Psychologically it is similar to drug addiction. Researchers found that “almost immediately after turning on the TV, subjects reported feeling more relaxed, and because this occurs so quickly and the tension returns so rapidly after the TV is turned off, people are conditioned to associate TV viewing with a lack of tension.” Research also shows that regardless of the programming, viewers’ brain waves slow down, thus transforming them into a more passive, nonresistant state.

Historically, television has been used by those in authority to quiet discontent and pacify disruptive people. “Faced with severe overcrowding and limited budgets for rehabilitation and counseling, more and more prison officials are using TV to keep inmates quiet,” according to Newsweek.

Given that the majority of what Americans watch on television is provided through channels controlled by six mega corporations, what we watch is now controlled by a corporate elite and, if that elite needs to foster a particular viewpoint or pacify its viewers, it can do so on a large scale.

If we’re watching, we’re not doing.

The powers-that-be understand this. As television journalist Edward R. Murrow warned in a 1958 speech:

We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.

This brings me back to They Live, in which the real zombies are not the aliens calling the shots but the populace who are content to remain controlled.

When all is said and done, the world of They Live is not so different from our own. As one of the characters points out, “The poor and the underclass are growing. Racial justice and human rights are nonexistent. They have created a repressive society and we are their unwitting accomplices. Their intention to rule rests with the annihilation of consciousness. We have been lulled into a trance. They have made us indifferent to ourselves, to others. We are focused only on our own gain.”

We, too, are focused only on our own pleasures, prejudices and gains. Our poor and underclasses are also growing. Racial injustice is growing. Human rights is nearly nonexistent. We too have been lulled into a trance, indifferent to others.

Oblivious to what lies ahead, we’ve been manipulated into believing that if we continue to consume, obey, and have faith, things will work out. But that’s never been true of emerging regimes. And by the time we feel the hammer coming down upon us, it will be too late.

So where does that leave us?

The characters who populate Carpenter’s films provide some insight.

Underneath their machismo, they still believe in the ideals of liberty and equal opportunity. Their beliefs place them in constant opposition with the law and the establishment, but they are nonetheless freedom fighters.

When, for example, John Nada destroys the alien hyno-transmitter in They Live, he restores hope by delivering America a wake-up call for freedom.

That’s the key right there: we need to wake up.

Stop allowing yourselves to be easily distracted by pointless political spectacles and pay attention to what’s really going on in the country.

The real battle for control of this nation is not being waged between Republicans and Democrats in the ballot box.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the real battle for control of this nation is taking place on roadsides, in police cars, on witness stands, over phone lines, in government offices, in corporate offices, in public school hallways and classrooms, in parks and city council meetings, and in towns and cities across this country.

The real battle between freedom and tyranny is taking place right in front of our eyes, if we would only open them.

All the trappings of the American police state are now in plain sight.

Wake up, America.

If they live (the tyrants, the oppressors, the invaders, the overlords), it is only because “we the people” sleep.

WC: 2446

Originally published by The Rutherford Institute

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His book Battlefield America: The War on the American People is available online at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected]. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

Incisive article originally published by GR in September 2014.  In recent developments, Al Baghdadi the leader of the ISIS terror group is dead.  Hollywood in Real Time: Trump said that “he watched the operation from the Situation Room”. 

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The fact that the United States has a long and torrid history of backing terrorist groups will surprise only those who watch the news and ignore history.

The CIA first aligned itself with extremist Islam during the Cold War era. Back then, America saw the world in rather simple terms: on one side, the Soviet Union and Third World nationalism, which America regarded as a Soviet tool; on the other side, Western nations and militant political Islam, which America considered an ally in the struggle against the Soviet Union.

The director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan, General William Odom recently remarked, “by any measure the U.S. has long used terrorism. In 1978-79 the Senate was trying to pass a law against international terrorism – in every version they produced, the lawyers said the U.S. would be in violation.”

During the 1970’s the CIA used the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as a barrier, both to thwart Soviet expansion and prevent the spread of Marxist ideology among the Arab masses. The United States also openly supported Sarekat Islam against Sukarno in Indonesia, and supported the Jamaat-e-Islami terror group against Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in Pakistan. Last but certainly not least, there is Al Qaeda.

Lest we forget, the CIA gave birth to Osama Bin Laden and breastfed his organization during the 1980’s. Former British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, told the House of Commons that Al Qaeda was unquestionably a product of Western intelligence agencies. Mr. Cook explained that Al Qaeda, which literally means an abbreviation of “the database” in Arabic, was originally the computer database of the thousands of Islamist extremists, who were trained by the CIA and funded by the Saudis, in order to defeat the Russians in Afghanistan.

America’s relationship with Al Qaeda has always been a love-hate affair. Depending on whether a particular Al Qaeda terrorist group in a given region furthers American interests or not, the U.S. State Department either funds or aggressively targets that terrorist group. Even as American foreign policy makers claim to oppose Muslim extremism, they knowingly foment it as a weapon of foreign policy.

The Islamic State is its latest weapon that, much like Al Qaeda, is certainly backfiring. ISIS recently rose to international prominence after its thugs began beheading American journalists. Now the terrorist group controls an area the size of the United Kingdom.

In order to understand why the Islamic State has grown and flourished so quickly, one has to take a look at the organization’s American-backed roots. The 2003 American invasion and occupation of Iraq created the pre-conditions for radical Sunni groups, like ISIS, to take root. America, rather unwisely, destroyed Saddam Hussein’s secular state machinery and replaced it with a predominantly Shiite administration. The U.S. occupation caused vast unemployment in Sunni areas, by rejecting socialism and closing down factories in the naive hope that the magical hand of the free market would create jobs. Under the new U.S.-backed Shiite regime, working class Sunni’s lost hundreds of thousands of jobs. Unlike the white Afrikaners in South Africa, who were allowed to keep their wealth after regime change, upper class Sunni’s were systematically dispossessed of their assets and lost their political influence. Rather than promoting religious integration and unity, American policy in Iraq exacerbated sectarian divisions and created a fertile breading ground for Sunni discontent, from which Al Qaeda in Iraq took root.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) used to have a different name: Al Qaeda in Iraq. After 2010 the group rebranded and refocused its efforts on Syria.

There are essentially three wars being waged in Syria: one between the government and the rebels, another between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and yet another between America and Russia. It is this third, neo-Cold War battle that made U.S. foreign policy makers decide to take the risk of arming Islamist rebels in Syria, because Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, is a key Russian ally. Rather embarrassingly, many of these Syrian rebels have now turned out to be ISIS thugs, who are openly brandishing American-made M16 Assault rifles.

America’s Middle East policy revolves around oil and Israel. The invasion of Iraq has partially satisfied Washington’s thirst for oil, but ongoing air strikes in Syria and economic sanctions on Iran have everything to do with Israel. The goal is to deprive Israel’s neighboring enemies, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Palestine’s Hamas, of crucial Syrian and Iranian support.

ISIS is not merely an instrument of terror used by America to topple the Syrian government; it is also used to put pressure on Iran.

The last time Iran invaded another nation was in 1738. Since independence in 1776, the U.S. has been engaged in over 53 military invasions and expeditions. Despite what the Western media’s war cries would have you believe, Iran is clearly not the threat to regional security, Washington is. An Intelligence Report published in 2012, endorsed by all sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies, confirms that Iran ended its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Truth is, any Iranian nuclear ambition, real or imagined, is as a result of American hostility towards Iran, and not the other way around.

America is using ISIS in three ways: to attack its enemies in the Middle East, to serve as a pretext for U.S. military intervention abroad, and at home to foment a manufactured domestic threat, used to justify the unprecedented expansion of invasive domestic surveillance.

By rapidly increasing both government secrecy and surveillance, Mr. Obama’s government is increasing its power to watch its citizens, while diminishing its citizens’ power to watch their government. Terrorism is an excuse to justify mass surveillance, in preparation for mass revolt.

The so-called “War on Terror” should be seen for what it really is: a pretext for maintaining a dangerously oversized U.S. military. The two most powerful groups in the U.S. foreign policy establishment are the Israel lobby, which directs U.S. Middle East policy, and the Military-Industrial-Complex, which profits from the former group’s actions. Since George W. Bush declared the “War on Terror” in October 2001, it has cost the American taxpayer approximately 6.6 trillion dollars and thousands of fallen sons and daughters; but, the wars have also raked in billions of dollars for Washington’s military elite.

In fact, more than seventy American companies and individuals have won up to $27 billion in contracts for work in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan over the last three years, according to a recent study by the Center for Public Integrity. According to the study, nearly 75 per cent of these private companies had employees or board members, who either served in, or had close ties to, the executive branch of the Republican and Democratic administrations, members of Congress, or the highest levels of the military.

In 1997, a U.S. Department of Defense report stated, “the data show a strong correlation between U.S. involvement abroad and an increase in terrorist attacks against the U.S.” Truth is, the only way America can win the “War On Terror” is if it stops giving terrorists the motivation and the resources to attack America. Terrorism is the symptom; American imperialism in the Middle East is the cancer. Put simply, the War on Terror is terrorism; only, it is conducted on a much larger scale by people with jets and missiles.

Garikai Chengu is a research scholar at Harvard University. Contact him on [email protected]

According to a New York Times report [1], the surprising information about the Islamic State chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s whereabouts came following the arrest and interrogation of one of al-Baghdadi’s wives and a courier in Iraq this past summer.

The report details the chronology of the US Special Ops overnight raid: “Around midnight Sunday morning — 5 p.m. Saturday in Washington — eight American helicopters, primarily CH-47 Chinooks, took off from a military base near Erbil, Iraq. Flying low and fast to avoid detection, the helicopters quickly crossed the Syrian border and then flew all the way across Syria itself — a dangerous 70-minute flight in which the helicopters took sporadic groundfire — to the Barisha area just north of Idlib city, in western Syria.”

Before the publishing of the NY Times report, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported earlier [2] on Sunday that a squadron of eight helicopters accompanied by warplanes belonging to the international coalition, had attacked positions of Hurras al-Din, an al-Qaeda-affiliated group, in Idlib province where the Islamic State chief was believed to be hiding.

Despite detailing the operational minutiae of the Special Ops raid, however, the NY Times deliberately elided over the crucial piece of information that the compound in Barisha village 5 km. from Turkish border where al-Baghdadi was killed belonged to Hurras al-Din, which has previously been targeted several times in the US airstrikes.

Although Hurras al-Din is generally assumed to be an al-Qaeda affiliate, it is in fact regrouping of the Islamic State’s jihadists in northwestern Idlib after the latter terrorist organization was routed from Mosul and Raqqa and was hard pressed by the US-led coalition’s air raids in eastern Syria.

It’s worth pointing out that the distinction between Islamic jihadists and purported “moderate rebels” in Syria is more illusory than real. Before it turned rogue and overran Mosul in Iraq in June 2014, Islamic State used to be an integral part of the Syrian opposition and enjoyed close ideological and operational ties with other militant groups in Syria.

Thus, though practically impossible, even if Washington does eliminate all Islamic State militants from Syria, what would it do with myriads of other militant outfits in Syria, particularly with tens of thousands of al-Nusra Front jihadists, including the transnational terrorists of Hurras al-Din, who have carved out a new sanctuary in Syria’s northwestern Idlib governorate since 2015?

The only practical solution to the conundrum is to withdraw all American troops from Syria and let Damascus establish writ of the state over all of Syria in order to eliminate all militant groups from Syria, including the jihadists of the Islamic State, al-Nusra Front and Hurras al-Din, though the foreign policy hawks in Washington might have objections to strengthening the hands of Iran and Russia in Syria.

Before the evacuation of 1,000 American troops from northern Syria to western Iraq, the Pentagon had 2,000 US forces in Syria. After the drawdown of US troops at Erdogan’s insistence in order for Ankara to mount a ground offensive in northern Syria, the US still has 1,000 troops, mainly in oil-rich, eastern Deir al-Zor province and at al-Tanf military base.

Al-Tanf military base is strategically located in southeastern Syria on the border between Syria, Iraq and Jordan, and it sits on a critically important Damascus-Baghdad highway, which serves as a lifeline for Damascus. Washington has illegally occupied 55-kilometer area around al-Tanf since 2016, and several hundred US Marines have trained several Syrian militant groups there.

It’s worth noting that rather than fighting the Islamic State, the purpose of continued presence of the US forces at al-Tanf military base is to address Israel’s concerns regarding the expansion of Iran’s influence in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

Washington’s interest in the Syrian proxy war has been mainly about ensuring Israel’s regional security. The United States Defense Intelligence Agency’s declassified report [3] of 2012 clearly spelled out the imminent rise of a Salafist principality in northeastern Syria – in Raqqa and Deir al-Zor which were occupied by the Islamic State until October 2017 – in the event of an outbreak of a civil war in Syria.

Under pressure from the Zionist lobby in Washington, however, the former Obama administration deliberately suppressed the report and also overlooked the view in general that a proxy war in Syria would give birth to radical Islamic jihadists.

The hawks in Washington were fully aware of the consequences of their actions in Syria, but they kept pursuing the ill-fated policy of nurturing militants in the training camps located in Syria’s border regions with Turkey and Jordan in order to weaken the anti-Zionist Syrian government.

The single biggest threat to Israel’s regional security was posed by the Iranian resistance axis, which is comprised of Tehran, Damascus and their Lebanon-based surrogate, Hezbollah. During the course of 2006 Lebanon War, Hezbollah fired hundreds of rockets into northern Israel and Israel’s defense community realized for the first time the nature of threat that Hezbollah and its patrons posed to Israel’s regional security.

Those were only unguided rockets but it was a wakeup call for Israel’s military strategists that what will happen if Iran passed the guided missile technology to Hezbollah whose area of operations lies very close to the northern borders of Israel. Therefore, the Zionist lobbies in Washington literally coerced then-President Obama to coordinate a proxy war against Damascus and its Lebanon-based surrogate Hezbollah in order to dismantle the Iranian resistance axis against Israel.

Over the years, Israel has not only provided medical aid and material support to militant groups battling Damascus – particularly to various factions of the Free Syria Army (FSA) and al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate al-Nusra Front in Daraa and Quneitra bordering the Israel-occupied Golan Heights – but Israel’s air force virtually played the role of air force of Syrian jihadists and conducted hundreds of airstrikes in Syria during the eight-year conflict.

In an interview to New York Times [4] in January, Israel’s outgoing Chief of Staff Lt. General Gadi Eisenkot confessed that the Netanyahu government approved his shift in strategy in January 2017 to step up airstrikes in Syria. Consequently, more than 200 Israeli airstrikes were launched against the Syrian targets in 2017 and 2018, as revealed [5] by the Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz in September last year.

In 2018 alone, Israel’s air force dropped 2,000 bombs in Syria. The purpose of Israeli airstrikes in Syria has been to degrade Iran’s guided missile technology provided to Damascus and Hezbollah. Though after Russia provided S-300 missile system to the Syrian military after a Russian surveillance plane was shot down in Syria on September 18 last year, killing 15 Russians onboard, Israel’s airstrikes in Syria have been significantly reduced.

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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. 

Notes

[1] C.I.A. Got Tip on al-Baghdadi’s Location From Arrest of a Wife and a Courier

[2] Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi killed in US raid

[3] The United States Defense Intelligence Agency’s declassified report of 2012

[4] An interview with Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, Israel’s chief of staff

[5] Israel Katz: Israel conducted 200 airstrikes in Syria in 2017 and 2018

A future without independent media leaves us with an upside down reality where according to the corporate media “NATO deserves a Nobel Peace Prize”, and where “nuclear weapons and wars make us safer”

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Twenty-six Things About the Islamic State (ISIS-ISIL-Daesh) that Obama (and Trump) Do Not Want You to Know About

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, October 27, 2019

“Capturing or killing him has been the top national security priority of my administration.” Addressing the Nation from the White House, “Trump said al-Baghdadi killed himself and three of his children, detonating a suicide vest as U.S. forces closed in after a “dangerous and daring” U.S.-led air raid in northwestern Syria.” Hollywood in Real Time: Trump says that “he watched the operation from the Situation Room”.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi: Made and Killed by the CIA

By Marc Vandepitte, October 28, 2019

In 2003 the US and Great Britain invaded Iraq. At the time, there was little mention of Al Qaeda or other jihadist terror groups in the region. After the invasion, the US army was confronted with a fierce uprising. To crush it, death squads were used just like in Latin America, what the Americans called the ‘Salvador option’. Moreover, in that dirty war, the Sunnis and Shiites were deliberately set against each other, the tactic of divide and rule. It was in that orgy of religiously provoked violence that Al Qaeda gained a foothold in Iraq under the name ‘Islamic State of Iraq’ (ISI).

ISIS Chief Al-Baghdadi Killed on Turkish Border while Fleeing Idlib

By Nauman Sadiq, October 28, 2019

Islamic State’s self-styled Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed in a United States Special Ops overnight raid Saturday involving helicopters, warplanes and a ground clash on the Turkey-Syria border while fleeing Syria’s northwestern Idlib Governorate, Reuters and Newsweek are reporting, and President Trump [has made] the major announcement of the biggest symbolic victory of his administration in the war against terrorism soon.

ISIS Leader Al-Baghdadi Killed? Trump’s Dubious Announcement. “Fake Politics”?

By Stephen Lendman, October 28, 2019

Whether Baghdadi or others headed ISIS leaves unexplained that the terror group was created, supported and controlled by the US, their fighters used as proxy troops, deployed to Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere, aided by Pentagon terror-bombing. Trump’s Sunday announcement about the alleged elimination of Baghdadi was a political stunt, diverting attention momentarily from Dem efforts to remove him by impeachment, along with aiming to boost his reelection campaign — by falsely claiming he’s combatting terrorism, the scourge created and supported by the US.

Forever War Propaganda: Trump and the Death of al-Baghdadi

By Kurt Nimmo, October 28, 2019

There is no evidence al-Baghdadi killed himself when confronted by US Special Forces in Syria, the same as there is no evidence that Obama killed Osama bin Laden (evidence indicates Osama died in Afghanistan of natural causes in late 2001). Abu “from Baghdad” has died before. In June 2017, Russia said it may have killed him during an airstrike in Syria. The following month, ISIS allegedly admitted al-Baghdadi was killed during an air raid in the Iraqi province of Nineveh. 

US Tries to Reverse Syrian Fortunes with “Baghdadi Raid”

By Tony Cartalucci, October 27, 2019

The supposed military operation – unfolding just miles from the Syrian-Turkish border – comes at a time when the prospects of America’s proxy war in Syria have reached all time lows. First – US proxy forces jointly armed and aided by Turkey as well as other US allies – have been all but eliminated from the battlefield with their remnants residing in Idlib, increasingly encircled by Syrian forces. Attempts by the US to intervene in Syria directly to oversee the overthrow of the government in Damascus was also thwarted by Russia’s military intervention beginning in 2015.

Did John McCain Meet with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Alleged Head of the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh)?

By Global Research News, October 27, 2019

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the alleged leader of ISIS is dead. President Trump confirmed that he was under surveillance and that he had ordered his execution. “He died like a dog, he died like a coward,” the President said he watched the operation from the Situation Room but would not give more details of what type of feed it was. Who is Al Baghdadi, leader of the ISIS? Was he an asset of Western intelligence?

The Caliphate Project, Made in America. Declassified U.S. Government Documents Confirm the US Supported the Creation of ISIS

By Washington’s Blog, October 26, 2019

Judicial Watch has – for many years – obtained sensitive U.S. government documents through freedom of information requests and lawsuits. The government just produced documents to Judicial Watch in response to a freedom of information suit which show that the West has long supported ISIS.   The documents were written by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency on August 12, 2012 … years before ISIS burst onto the world stage.

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A project for Greater Albania – conspiracy or legitimate? According to a 2010 Gallup Balkan Monitor report, 83% of Albanians in Albania supported the idea of a Greater Albania, with 81% and 53% of Albanians in Kosovo and North Macedonia respectively supporting such an ambition.

The ultimate goal? To have Kosovo and the Preševo Valley in Serbia, southern Montenegro, Epirus in Greece and western North Macedonia into a single Greater Albanian state. Although this may not be official policy of the Albanian Republic, it is ingrained into the Albanian mythos. The very idea of a Greater Albania has roots in the 1913 Treaty of London that left roughly 40% of the Albanian population outside the newly established Albanian country. This has been something that the U.S. could weaponize against Russian influence in the Balkans.

Despite the heroics of Albanian national figure and anti-Ottoman guerrilla leader Gjergj Kastrioti, more commonly known as Skënderbej, the Albanians became loyal Ottoman subjects and were used as colonists in more restive and disloyal areas of the empire, especially those inhabited by the Serbs, Bulgarians and Greeks. They often became a majority over the initial inhabitants, like what happened in Kosovo and western North Macedonia.

Although the idea of a Greater Albania may seem like an exaggerated conspiracy, to the Serbian people this is anything but. The Serbian mythos finds itself in the 1389 Battle of Kosovo, where despite their courage, Serbian Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović was martyred and his forces routed by the Ottoman invaders. Although the Serbs achieved sovereignty over Kosovo with the downfall of the Ottoman Empire, the region had already become an Albanian majority on Ottoman orders to weaken Serbian identity to the region.

Kosovo became an autonomous region of Serbia after the establishment of socialist Yugoslavia in the aftermath of World War Two and retained its Albanian-majority. The 1990’s proved this was always a weak point of Serbia. With the U.S. sponsoring the violent destruction of Yugoslavia in the early 1990’s, the status of Kosovo was left unresolved, culminating in the terrorist-led war against the Yugoslav state (in which Serbia was the successor of) in 1999.

The terrorist ethnic-Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) had the backing of NATO and the Albanian Republic. The United Nations and NATO assumed control of the territory, which eventually declared independence in 2008. Since then the region has become a heroin ‘smugglers paradise,’ and a hub for human trafficking, organ harvesting and arms trafficking.

It is for this reason that in an interview on Saturday, the former Serbian Chief of General Staff, General Ljubisa Dikovic, discussed the project for a Greater Albania. Dikovic believes that the area of ​​the Balkan Peninsula cannot be peaceful because of unresolved issues like Kosovo.

“There can easily be big problems if things get out of hand. I hope that there will be enough wisdom and intelligence and that everyone will do what we do, in terms of strengthening security, cooperation and trust. I am free to say that we are in the lead because I do not see on other sides showing desire to build peace. After all, the issue of ‘Greater Albania’ is a matter of the highest security risk. We can ask why this is happening now with Albania and [North] Macedonia? It might be waiting to create a ‘Greater Albania’,” Dikovic said.

His comments come as the economic situation in Kosovo continues to deteriorate and becomes even more reliant upon foreign aid and donations from the unilateral behaving U.S., their former Ottoman masters in Turkey that had gifted lands to them hundreds of years earlier, and Germany who effectively rules the European Union.

The former military man’s comments also come as Serbia leads Exercise “Slovenian Shield 2019” with Russia. Although some Slavic tribes broke off and headed south into the Balkans sometime at around 600AD, they maintained their Slavic kinship with the Russians and shared Christian Orthodox faith, ensuring Serbia has always had a pro-Russia view. Albanian expansionism has therefore become a natural ally of the U.S. to limit Russian influence in the Balkans.

However, this begs the question then why strong efforts for Albanian independence in Greece, Montenegro and North Macedonia has been weak in comparison to those in Serbia. Greece has been a long-time loyal NATO member, with the exception of the disintegration of Yugoslavia, and therefore does not pose a threat to U.S. hegemony in the Balkans, protecting Greece from destabilization efforts via Albanian expansionism. Although Montenegro and North Macedonia also share Slavic kinship with the Serbs and Russians, as well as the Orthodox faith, they have proven to have Globalist ambitions, wanting to join NATO and the EU.

Serbia remains the only anti-EU/NATO state in the Balkans that is overwhelmingly pro-Russia. It is for this reason that Dikovic wants to renew compulsory military service, stating: “One should not gamble and think that there will be no conflict and risk. It is not only up to us, but we must have an answer to everything.”

Although the overwhelming majority of Albanians want a Greater Albania, it is unlikely to be achieved with Washington’s backing in Greece, Montenegro and North Macedonia as they do not pose a threat to U.S. hegemony in the Balkans, but rather serve it, while not encouraging Russian influence in the region. As Serbia is a pro-Russian island in a hostile region, it will continue to be targeted by Albanian expansionism with U.S. backing. Will this drive for expansionism violently spill over into the Preševo Valley? That remains to be seen.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

We talk to Fidel Narvaez, the ousted Ecuadorian diplomat who handled Julian Assange’s case about why Lenín Moreno caved to international pressure, broke his promises, and gave Assange up to British authorities.

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Assange had been granted asylum in 2012, at the height of Latin America’s Pink Tide, when progressive governments across the continent challenged US interference in the region. Six and a half years later, Assange’s expulsion reflects a rightwards shift in Ecuadorian politics and a new president, Lenín Moreno, willing to serve US interests.

For his cooperation, Moreno has been warmly received by Washington, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressing his enthusiasm to “continue to work in partnership” with Ecuador.

To discuss the dynamics behind Ecuador’s decision to expel the Australian Wikileaks founder, Jacobin spoke to Fidel Narvaez, the former Ecuadorian consul in London, who was instrumental in obtaining asylum for Assange in 2012, and who spent six years at the embassy with him.

Stefania Maurizi: When did you first hear about Julian Assange?

Fidel Narvaez: I first heard of Julian in 2010, when Wikileaks began publishing the archives of American military and diplomatic document. I personally approached him in 2011, because my government was interested in making public all the diplomatic cables on Ecuador. We were not looking for privileged access to the cables, but we did want them available in the public domain. To that end, in May 2011, Wikileaks released all those documents — and with no strings attached.

Since then, I had maintained some contact with the Wikileaks team, so when Julian reached the stage where he needed protection, and knocked on Ecuador’s door, he came to me first. I felt very strongly about the idea of protecting him, because my background is not in diplomacy, but in human rights. I was absolutely convinced that he needed protection.

SM: Did you ever perceive that by providing protection to Assange, Ecuador’s then president, Rafael Correa, wanted to antagonize the United States?

FN: The United States is a major superpower. It’s also Ecuador’s most important economic partner, so it’s not in our interest to look for a fight. However, we did want to make clear that we were not prepared to have the same relationships that we historically had. That’s why we said “no” to the Manta US military base: we wanted to exercise our sovereignty in accordance with our new Constitution, which allows no foreign military presence in Ecuador.

When WikiLeaks cables brought to light one American ambassador’s interference in Ecuadorian internal affairs, she was subsequently expelled. We also expelled several CIA agents, because they were interfering with our police forces. We refused to enter free trade agreements with the United States, because they weren’t the best deal for our country. In the case of Julian, we were not obliged to provide asylum, but we saw it as a human-rights issue, and the right thing to do.

SM: What happened immediately after you granted him asylum?

FN: The United States, of course, was not happy, and I think they were acting through the United Kingdom. The official American discourse was to deny that they were going after Julian. But the day before we announced the asylum, the United Kingdom delivered a letter threatening to enter the embassy to arrest Julian. They also deployed a disproportionately large contingent of police, and at night they closed the street to normal traffic. There were policemen everywhere: they were outside every window and they were even inside the building, because there was an interior patio. Ecuadorian diplomacy reacted fast and publicly rejected the threats: you can’t storm an embassy, not even during a war. The British backtracked, and even tried to say that we had misunderstood. In any event, Ecuador stood firm and granted asylum. We protected Julian for six years until the change in government.

SM: What was the most difficult time?

FN: The night the British threatened the embassy was probably the tensest, but after that, I would say the US elections, when WikiLeaks published the documents from the Democratic Party.

SM: Did the United States send any official diplomatic communication on that occasion?

FN: No, not as far as I know. I can only speculate that the pressure was delivered in a diplomatic way, probably through the ambassador in the United States. Also, for the first time, the government suspended Julian’s internet connection during the elections, for something like ten days. However, Ecuador was not going to withdraw protection, not under President Correa. But that was a difficult moment.

SM: Were you ever afraid?

FN: Personally, no. However, during those years, there were a couple of times when the embassy received threats, mostly by post. We also received white powder in envelopes.

SM: How was Julian’s relationship with staff at the embassy?

FN: Contrary to what Moreno’s government led people to believe, there was mutual respect between Assange and the diplomatic and administrative staff at the embassy.

SM: The Spanish newspaper El Paìs recently revealed that UC Global, the security company hired by Ecuador to protect Julian Assange inside the embassy, was actually spying on him, as well as his staff and every journalist, lawyer, and activist who visited him. El Paìs reported that the company shared the information with the CIA. Had you ever suspected anything like that?

FN:  I never trusted the security in the embassy. They were brought on in 2012, two months after Julian’s arrival. We needed security because the embassy didn’t even have cameras installed, but I think the company was very unprofessional. In order to secure their own employment they were misrepresenting Julian’s behavior inside the embassy.

SM: Do you have any examples of this?

FN: Let me describe one small episode. At the very beginning, during the night somebody was throwing something from the streets onto Julian’s windows. Assange immediately went to see the security guard and asked him to look through the security cameras. The guard didn’t speak English, he didn’t know what Julian wanted, he didn’t let Julian look at the cameras, and there was a little argument. What does the company do? It complains about him. On the video, I saw that the British police outside were having fun, throwing coins at Julian’s window at two o’clock in the morning.

So I complained about the company, saying that Julian was not the problem, and asking to see the video — which they never produced, claiming it was lost. I have to say, we did underestimate the extent of this company’s espionage. We knew that UC Global had started to produce very inaccurate reports, misrepresenting what was going on in the embassy. It was in the interest of the company to portray Julian as a problematic presence. Why? Because that way they were justifying their own employment.

SM: It’s the old strategy “keep the problem going, so the money keeps flowing” …

FN: Exactly. We underestimated that. Soon enough, the company’s reports were leaked and, gaining access to those, the Ecuadorian press started to attack Julian, pressuring the government to get rid of him. Then, based on those reports, the international media also rolled out aggressive smear campaigns, especially the Guardian and CNN.

SM: The Guardian even reported on “Russia’s secret plan to help Julian Assange escape from the UK” …

FN: First of all, there is an obsession with trying to link WikiLeaks to Russia. I don’t think there is any ground for this — neither in terms of the Russian state, nor Russian intelligence services. In 2017, Ecuador appointed Julian as a diplomat and requested the UK Foreign Office to register him in the diplomatic list. The idea was to increase protection of the political asylee, in a way similar to what the United Kingdom has done with the journalist Nazanin Rafcliffe [detained by Iran]. The United Kingdom rejected this, and though Ecuador could have taken the case to the International Court of Justice, there was another option: to appoint Julian as a diplomat to a third country that might accept him. So it is true that Ecuador did consider appointing him as a diplomat to Russia, but in the end, it didn’t happen.

SM: Why is that?

FN: I don’t know for sure, but I think that the United States learned of the plan and threatened unfriendly action. That was the breaking point. After that, Ecuador began withdrawing its protection. That’s the fact. The Guardian published a very different story, saying that Russia had devised a secret undercover operation to smuggle Julian out.

SM: A James Bond story …

FN: That’s how the Guardian presented it. The article said that I was Moscow’s contact, in other words that I was plotting with Russia. I filed a complaint against the newspaper, and it is still being assessed.

SM: Why do you think Lenín Moreno stopped protecting Julian?

FN: Lenín Moreno never liked Julian, not even when he was vice president. He doesn’t understand what WikiLeaks is or what they do. At the beginning of his government, Maria Fernanda Espinosa — who became the president of the UN General Assembly soon afterwards — was the one protecting Julian, I think even despite Moreno’s dislike for him. But when she wasn’t there anymore, that was when I think Julian’s fate was decided: they started making the case to end his asylum. How? They isolated him, they tried to break him down, so that he would leave the embassy of his own accord. They failed.

When the isolation started arousing international condemnation, they tried to impose the so-called “protocol,” which was an outrageous prison regime of putting banana peels all over the floor to provoke him and get an excuse to kick him out. That was one of the strategies. Another was to defame him in order to justify his expulsion, and to approach the British and the Americans in order to hand Julian over.

SM: You were no longer a diplomat at that time, right?

FN: No, I left in July 2018, because I was asked to. They didn’t want me anymore — and I didn’t want them anymore either. It was unbearable. Julian’s isolation began when I was there. I witnessed it.

SM: Moreno obtained a 4.2 billion-dollar deal from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Do you think it was related to his decision to stop protecting Assange?

FN: Moreno was desperate to get cash from any source. Under Correa, we avoided deals with the IMF, but with Moreno things were different. I think he would have expelled Julian anyway, even if he hadn’t gotten cash for it, because it is part of his colonial mentality to be subservient, to try to please the United States. I wouldn’t be able to say whether Julian’s expulsion was a condition of the deal, but we do know that the United States has veto power with the IMF.

SM: You lost your privileged position; you are no longer a diplomat. Do you have any regrets?

FN: Of course, I’ve paid a price. I don’t think my job opportunities are very broad. If people Google my name, they see that the Guardian is calling me a “Russian plotter,” and that the government of Ecuador is trying to discredit me. But I don’t regret anything at all. As a diplomat, the most interesting people I met were in connection to providing asylum for Julian Assange, and in trying to help Edward Snowden. I would do it again, for sure.

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Fidel Narvaez is the former Ecuadorian consul in London who was instrumental in obtaining asylum for Assange in 2012, and who spent six years at the embassy with him.

Stefania Maurizi is an investigative journalist for the Italian daily La Repubblica. She has worked on all major WikiLeaks releases and partnered with Glenn Greenwald to reveal the Snowden files about Italy.

Featured image is from Jacobin

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi allegedly headed ISIS, the jihadist group created and supported by the US and its imperial allies.

Years earlier, he was held in Camp Bucca, a US military prison in Iraq, later released, after which the ISIS terrorist group emerged.

Their fighters captured and controlled large parts of Iraq and Syria — heavily armed with US, other Western, Israeli and Turkish weapons, trained by US special forces and CIA operatives at regional Pentagon bases.

Whether Baghdadi or others headed ISIS leaves unexplained that the terror group was created, supported and controlled by the US, their fighters used as proxy troops, deployed to Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere, aided by Pentagon terror-bombing.

Trump’s Sunday announcement about the alleged elimination of Baghdadi was a political stunt, diverting attention momentarily from Dem efforts to remove him by impeachment, along with aiming to boost his reelection campaign — by falsely claiming he’s combatting terrorism, the scourge created and supported by the US.

His announcement was reminiscent of Obama’s fake news about Osama bin Laden’s alleged May 2011 death.

Post-9/11, he became “Enemy Number One,” the nation’s top “security threat.” If he hadn’t existed, he’d have been invented.

He had nothing to do with 9/11. Obama didn’t kill him. Gravely ill with kidney disease and other ailments, he died of natural causes in December 2001 — reported by the NYT, the BBC, Fox News and other Western media at the time.

Influential people reported his death, including then-Pakistani President Musharraf, FBI counterterrorism head Dale Watson, Pakistani intelligence, and Israel’s Mossad, saying supposed messages from him were fake.

Is Baghdadi dead or alive? Does it matter either way? Can anything Trump says be believed? His credibility was long ago lost.

Trump saying Baghdadi was “killed…in a daring nighttime raid” sounded like Obama’s earlier falsely claiming “the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden (by) a targeted operation…carried out…with extraordinary courage and capability (sic).”

Bin Laden was an unwitting CIA asset, later demonized post-mortem for political purposes — Baghdadi serving in a similar capacity.

Whether alive or dead doesn’t matter. ISIS, al-Qaeda and other terrorists ground continue to be used by the Pentagon and CIA as proxy troops.

In response to Trump’s Sunday announcement, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman General Igor Konashenkov said the following:

The ministry “has no reliable information about (involvement of) US servicemen (in) an operation to ‘yet another’ elimination of the former Daesh leader Abu Bark al-Baghdadi in the Turkish-controlled part of the Idlib deescalation zone,” adding:

“No airstrikes performed by US aircraft or aircraft belonging to the so called ‘international coalition’ were detected on Saturday or during the following days.”

No Russian cooperation was provided to the US for the alleged operation, no permission to use deescalation zone airspace, as Trump claimed.

“Since the moment of the final Daesh’s defeat at the hands of the Syrian government army supported by Russian Aerospace Forces in early 2018, yet another ‘death’ of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi does not have any strategic importance regarding the situation in Syria or the actions of the remaining terrorists in Idlib,” Konashenkov stressed.

Reports of his death proved greatly exaggerated a number of times before. If Washington wanted him killed, he’d have been eliminated long ago.

Trump’s Sunday announcement is another example of things allegedly changing but staying the same.

Endless US wars rage in Syria and elsewhere, no near-term prospect for resolving them because bipartisan US hardliners and the nation’s military, industrial, security, media complex oppose restoration of peace and stability to war-torn countries.

A Final Comment

On June 16, 2017, Tass reported that “Baghdadi may have been killed by a Russian airstrike on the southern outskirts of Raqqa in late May, according to the Defense Ministry,” adding:

“The airstrike was carried out overnight to May 28 against a command post, where the IS group’s leaders were meeting to discuss the routes for the terrorists’ exit from Raqqa through the so-called southern corridor, the ministry said in a statement.”

“According to information…the meeting was also attended by the IS leader Ibrahim Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was eliminated in the strike,” the ministry said.

“Russia’s Aerospace Forces killed a number of high-ranking commanders of the Islamic State terrorist group, including 330 field commanders and militants, in the southern suburb of Syria’s Raqqa in late May,” according to its Defense Ministry.

Russian and Syrian forces successfully combated ISIS and other terrorist groups.

The US and its imperial allies pretend to be combating the scourge of ISIS they support — along with al-Qaeda, its al-Nusra offshoot, and likeminded jihadists.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Flickr

Saudi Arabia’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel Al-Jubeir has recently called out Iran for its alleged “support of terrorist groups, its ballistic missile program and its destabilizing effect” in the Middle East even though Iran has not attacked a country in more than 200 years.

The Saudi Gazette, an English-language online daily newspaper published in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia who describes itself as “The Tone of Truth and Moderation” reported on October 21st ‘Iranians are on a rampage — Al-Jubeir’ on a Q&A event that took place at the Chatham House, a think tank based in London with Al-Jubeir. Al-Jubeir claimed that “Iran’s hand is in almost all countries in the region… Iranians are on a rampage and have been on a rampage since 1979″ and that there is an ‘Iran Problem’ — its support of terrorist groups, its ballistic missile program and its destabilizing effect in the region and unless we deal with those problems, “we will always have an Iran problem as they keep on meddling in the internal affairs of other countries.”

Al-Jubeir said the Iran poses problems when it comes to the internal affairs of other countries, so is he talking about Syria who its President, Bashar al-Assad has invited not only Iran but also Russia to help fight the Islamic State? Let’s go back to 2011, during the start of the Syrian conflict which began as an uprising against the Assad government, there were U.S. backed moderate rebels and members of ISIS and other terrorist groups that came from Iraq, Libya and elsewhere who infiltrated the demonstrations.

Professor Tim Anderson, a Senior Lecturer in Political Economy at the University of Sydney and an author of several books including ‘The Dirty War on Syria: Washington, Regime Change and Resistance’ and ‘Daraa 2011: Syria’s Islamist Insurrection in Disguise’ described how the Syrian civil war actually began:

A double story began on the Syrian conflict, at the very beginning of the armed violence in 2011, in the southern border town of Daraa. The first story comes from independent witnesses in Syria, such as the late Father Frans Van der Lugt in Homs. They say that armed men infiltrated the early political reform demonstrations to shoot at both police and civilians. This violence came from sectarian Islamists. The second comes from the Islamist groups (‘rebels’) and their western backers, including the Washington-based Human Rights Watch. They claim there was ‘indiscriminate’ violence from Syrian security forces to repress political rallies and that the ‘rebels’ grew out of a secular political reform movement

Iraq, Libya and Syria did not want to be controlled by the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East including Israel and Saudi Arabia, so they were targeted for regime change, now they are destabilized and the results are never-ending conflicts, increased poverty and even human trafficking in regards to Libya, so the revolution against the Syrian government was anything but organic.

The US-Saudi Alliance: Supporting Terrorists One Step At A Time

Investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh published ‘The Red Line and the Rat Line’ in the London Review of Books in April 2014 where he interviewed an anonymous former pentagon official who claimed that the U.S. diplomatic post located in Benghazi, Libya existed for the purpose of sending weapons through a secret pipeline to the Syrian rebels who were fighting Syrian government forces. Hersh elaborated on the Obama administration’s role in sending weapons from Libya through Turkey and finally into the hands of the terrorists or the moderate rebels within Syria’s borders:

The full extent of US co-operation with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in assisting the rebel opposition in Syria has yet to come to light. The Obama administration has never publicly admitted to its role in creating what the CIA calls a ‘rat line’, a back channel highway into Syria. The rat line, authorised in early 2012, was used to funnel weapons and ammunition from Libya via southern Turkey and across the Syrian border to the opposition. Many of those in Syria who ultimately received the weapons were jihadists, some of them affiliated with al-Qaida

That’s just one side of the story. The majority of fighters that made their way into Syria were trained and armed in Jordan by the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies under ‘Operation Timber Sycamore’ that began in 2011 and supposedly lasted until 2013 according to the mainstream media. The pipeline to ISIS was through Saudi Arabia according to a September 2016 report by The New York Times ‘U.S. Relies Heavily on Saudi Money to Support Syrian Rebels’:

When President Obama secretly authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to begin arming Syria’s embattled rebels in 2013, the spy agency knew it would have a willing partner to help pay for the covert operation. It was the same partner the C.I.A. has relied on for decades for money and discretion in far-off conflicts: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Since then, the C.I.A. and its Saudi counterpart have maintained an unusual arrangement for the rebel-training mission, which the Americans have code-named Timber Sycamore. Under the deal, current and former administration officials said, the Saudis contribute both weapons and large sums of money, and the C.I.A takes the lead in training the rebels on AK-47 assault rifles and tank-destroying missiles

In June 2016, another report by The New York Times ‘C.I.A. Arms for Syrian Rebels Supplied Black Market, Officials Say’ suggested that weapons delivered to Jordan that were intended for the Syrian rebels were stolen by Jordanian intelligence operatives and sold on the black market ending up in the hands of ISIS and other terrorists groups. “The theft, involving millions of dollars of weapons, highlights the messy, unplanned consequences of programs to arm and train rebels — the kind of program the C.I.A. and Pentagon have conducted for decades — even after the Obama administration had hoped to keep the training program in Jordan under tight control.” Well, the world knows who supported ISIS and it was not Iran.

Iran is also guilty in the attacks on the Aramco oil facility according to Saudi Arabia. “Saudi Arabia is convinced, from the evidence we have gathered, that Iran is involved in the Aramco oil facilities attacks” besides the fact that the Houthi
resistance in Yemen has claimed credit for the attacks. Al-Jubeir claimed that “Iran’s targeting of these facilities indicate Tehran’s hostile intentions in the region.” How would Iran even remotely benefit from such an attack in the first place? “We are convinced that the missile attacks on Saudi facilities came from the North, not South” meaning that they are convinced, but in reality, they have no proof “We don’t want war but we also can’t sit idle and be attacked constantly by Iran and its proxies. What Iran needs to do is very simply to act like a normal country and stop its destabilizing the region with murderous actions,” Al-Jubeir said. However, Saudi Arabia itself has been involved in a relentless bombing campaign in Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the Middle East since March of 2015. Death and misery is the only result for the Yemeni people. This geopolitical tragedy is the making of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that has backed the Saudi’s destruction of Yemen. The Guardian’s Mohamed Bazzi wrote an opinion piece on October 19th ‘America is likely complicit in war crimes in Yemen. It’s time to hold the US to account’ on the full-picture of what is actually going on with Saudi Arabia’s barbaric war on Yemen:

The full scope of human suffering in Yemen has been partly obscured because the UN stopped updating civilian deaths in January 2017, when the toll reached 10,000. And while the actual death toll is far higher, many news reports still rely on the outdated UN figures. In June, an independent monitoring group, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, released a report detailing more than 90,000 fatalities since the war began in 2015.

In April, the United Nations Development Programme issued a report warning that the death toll in Yemen could rise to 233,000 by the end of 2019 – far higher than previous estimates. That projection includes deaths from combat as well as 131,000 indirect deaths due to the lack of food, health crises such as a cholera epidemic, and damage to Yemen’s infrastructure

The U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia are the destabilizing factors in the Middle East. Human rights for Saudi Arabia is non-existent in its foreign policy as well as their internal affairs with its own citizens. However, when it comes to human rights in Saudi Arabia, I should mention an important milestone that did occur on September 2017, I mean it was a breakthrough for human rights around the world, Saudi women were finally allowed to drive! Imagine that. Since 1957, Saudi Arabia was the only country in the world where women were not allowed to drive due to Wahhabism, a strict form of Sunni Islam where women and men are not allowed to mix or mingle in any way. Saudi Arabia’s ruler, King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud announced that Saudi women could drive starting on June 24, 2018. What an achievement.

Of course, I am being sarcastic. Saudi Arabia, in my view is possibly the worst dictatorship on the planet is launching an all-out propaganda war against Iran, albeit, Iran is not perfect, it has its own domestic issues, but for a country like Saudi Arabia to criticize and accuse Iran of being hostile and dangerous is absurd. Saudi Arabia is on a rampage in Yemen and Syria, and don’t forget the rampage it has on its own citizens when it comes to women’s rights, torture, public beheadings and other human rights abuses.

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Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his blog, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author

The Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association (RRA) has come out in support of a bill that promotes the human rights of Palestinian children and they’re calling on congress to pass it.

H.R.2407, the Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act, was introduced by Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN) in April. The bill would amend the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 to ensure that U.S. taxpayer money would not go towards the military detention of children in foreign countries, including Israel. A different version of the bill was introduced by McCollum in 2017, but it died at the end of that congressional session.

“While we fully support Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorists, we believe that the detention and interrogation of children is a very last resort only in the most urgent cases. It should never be a normal course of action,” reads a statement put out by RRA.

The Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association was founded in 1974. It has over 300 members and most of them are graduates of Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Pennsylvania, the only seminary connected to Reconstructionist Judaism.

“The RRA represents the rabbinic voice within the Reconstructionist movement, bringing the teachings, stories, and traditions of Judaism to bear on contemporary issues and challenges, and helping to define Reconstructionist positions on Jewish issues for our time,” reads the groups website.

In recent months, the group has also released statements opposing a potential annexation of the West Bank and condemning the Netanyahu government’s decision to bar Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from entering Israel.

Rabbi Elyse Wechterman is the Executive Director of the RRA.

“As Jews and reconstructionist rabbis, we have a long standing commitment to human rights and an awareness that societies are measured by how they treat their most vulnerable – especially children,” she told Mondoweiss, “Our members have been working hard against child detention and family separation on the border here in the United States.  When the issue of child incarceration, torture and detention by the Israeli military was brought to our attention, we felt we could not ignore it – this is part of what it means to fight for justice locally and globally.”

Earlier this month, Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-CA) became the 22nd member of Congress to co-sponsor McCollum’s bill. The legislation continues to gain support amidst a wider national discussion on the subject of conditioning aid to Israel. Democratic presidential candidates Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren have all indicated that they might be open to the idea of leveraging aid to impact Israel’s policies. A recent report released by the progressive think tank Data for Progress indicates that a net majority of Democratic voters support cutting aid to Israel over their human rights violations.

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Michael Arria is the U.S. correspondent for Mondoweiss.

Featured image is from RRA Facebook

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the alleged head of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) renamed ISIS-ISIL-Daesh in 2014. This Al Qaeda jihadist group was created and supported by the US and its allies.

The following video features Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton who candidly acknowledges that America created and funded Al Qaeda as a terrorist organization in the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war:  

““Let’s remember here… the people we are fighting today we funded them twenty years ago

… let’s go recruit these mujahideen. 

“And great, let them come from Saudi Arabia and other countries, importing their Wahabi brand of Islam so that we can go beat the Soviet Union.” 

And that is precisely what the US is doing in Syria: using their Al Qaeda “Moderates” to fight against Syria and Russia. For Moscow, it is “Déjà Vu.

The plan in Afghanistan was to destroy the secular state and install a proxy U.S. Islamic State.  The same objective prevails in Syria. 

What Hillary does not mention is that at no time in the course of the last 36 years has the US ceased to support and finance Al Qaeda as a means to destabilizing sovereign countries. It was “a pretty good idea”, says Hillary, and it remains a good idea today: 

Amply documented, the ISIS and Al Nusrah Mujahideen are recruited by NATO and the Turkish High command, with the support of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel. 

And Trump has endorsed US support for Al Qaeda and ISIS “rebels” in Syria. America is a state sponsor of terrorism, which uses Al Qaeda affiliated mercenaries to wage war on Syria.

US, French and Israeli operatives are fighting alongside Al Qaeda in Southern Syria.

Michel Chossudovsky, Jun 27, 2018

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The Global War on Terror (GWOT) is led by the United States. It is not directed against Al Qaeda.

Quite the opposite: The “Global War on Terrorism” uses Al Qaeda terrorist operatives as their foot soldiers.

“Political Islam” and the imposition of  an “Islamic State” (modeled on Qatar or Saudi Arabia) is an integral part of US foreign policy.

America is the Terror State.

The GWOT is a diabolical instrument of Worldwide conquest.

It is a means to destabilizing sovereign countries and imposing “regime change”.

Clinton’s successor at the State Department, John Kerry is in direct liaison with Al Nusra, an Al Qaeda affiliated organization in Syria, integrated by terrorists and funded by the US and its allies.

In a bitter irony, John Kerry is not only complicit in the killings committed by Al Nusra, he is also in blatant violation of US anti-terrorist legislation. If the latter were to be applied to politicians in high office, John Kerry would be considered as a “Terror  Suspect”.

New Normal? Al Nusra is on the State Department blacklist of terrorist organizations and the US Secretary of State is channeling money and weapons to Al Nusra.

Support to Al Qaeda operatives in different countries by the US government is known and documented.

In this upside down World,  the Lie prevails: The Protagonists of the “Global War on Terrorism” and the “Responsibility to Protect” are the Terrorists.

Its a circular relationship, a vicious circle: Those who lead the “Global War on Terrorism” in the name of “Democracy” are those who are supporting and financing terrorist organizations, which they themselves created.

TRANSCRIPT AND VIDEO

“Let’s remember here… the people we are fighting today we funded them twenty years ago… and we did it because we were locked in a struggle with the Soviet Union.

“They invaded Afghanistan… and we did not want to see them control Central Asia and we went to work… and it was President Reagan in partnership with Congress led by Democrats who said you know what it sounds like a pretty good idea… let’s deal with the ISI and the Pakistan military and let’s go recruit these mujahideen.

“And great, let them come from Saudi Arabia and other countries, importing their Wahabi brand of Islam so that we can go beat the Soviet Union.

“And guess what … they (Soviets) retreated … they lost billions of dollars and it led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“So there is a very strong argument which is… it wasn’t a bad investment in terms of Soviet Union but let’s be careful with what we sow… because we will harvest.

“So we then left Pakistan … We said okay fine you deal with the Stingers that we left all over your country… you deal with the mines that are along the border and… by the way we don’t want to have anything to do with you… in fact we’re sanctioning you… So we stopped dealing with the Pakistani military and with ISI and we now are making up for a lot of lost time.” (HILLARY CLINTON)

C’est le monde à l’envers.

Now that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of IS, has been eliminated, there is a great deal of joy and relief in the US and the West. What they don’t mention is that this barbaric terror group is a product of their own foreign policy in the region.

The emergence of IS

In 2003 the US and Great Britain invaded Iraq. At the time, there was little mention of Al Qaeda or other jihadist terror groups in the region. After the invasion, the US army was confronted with a fierce uprising. To crush it, death squads were used just like in Latin America, what the Americans called the ‘Salvador option’. Moreover, in that dirty war, the Sunnis and Shiites were deliberately set against each other, the tactic of divide and rule. It was in that orgy of religiously provoked violence that Al Qaeda gained a foothold in Iraq under the name ‘Islamic State of Iraq’ (ISI).

Then came the Arab Spring of 2011. To overthrow Gaddafi, NATO collaborated with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) under the leadership of Abdelhakim Belhaj, a former leader of al-Qaeda in Libya. When the uprising started in Syria, Belhaj sent hundreds of armed fighters to that country to expel Assad from power. The security services of the US and GB cooperated in transferring Libyan arsenals to Syrian rebels.

In 2012, the US, Turkey and Jordan set up a training camp for Syrian rebels in Safawi, northern Jordan. French and British instructors were also involved. Parts of these rebel groups would later join ISIS.

There were many Syrians in the ranks of Al Qaeda in Iraq. At the start of the civil war in Syria, many of them returned to their homeland to establish the al-Nusra Front. In April 2013, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISI, declared that his group and Al-Nusra had merged under the name Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and later Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Al Qaeda, however, distanced itself from it and from now on both terrorist organizations went their own way.

In this ‘wasp’s nest‘ ISIS, later called IS, originated and became strong. The terror organization expanded rapidly, conquered a lot of ground from 2014 onwards and proclaimed itself a caliphate in June of that year. The US Military Intelligence Service (DIA) had known for some time that there were plans for such a caliphate. But according to Michael Flynn, former National Security Advisor under President Trump, the U.S. government looked the other way. Such a caliphate was an excellent Sunni buffer to weaken Syria and reduce the influence of Shia Iran.

Graham Fuller, one of the most respected Middle Eastern analysts and former CIA agent, is very clear:

“I think the United States is one of the key creators of ISIS. The United States did not plan the formation of ISIS, but its destructive interventions in the Middle East and the war in Iraq were the basic causes of the birth of ISIS.”

There’s nothing new under the sun

The Pentagon’s flirting with extremist Islamic groups is not new. Remember the mudjahedin, from 1979 they were recruited, armed and trained by the US to expel the communist government in Afghanistan. Rambo 3 by Silverster Stallone, is a Hollywood version of this collaboration. It is from these mudjahedin circles that al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden later came.

In the 1990s, the extremist and even more violent Taliban fighters became Washington’s preferred partner in Afghanistan. This cooperation came to an end when it became clear that the Taliban could no longer serve US interests.

During the civil war in Yugoslavia (1992-1995) the Pentagon had thousands of Al Qaeda fighters flown over to Bosnia, in support of the Muslims in the area.

In 1996 the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was trained by Al Qaeda officers just across the border with Albania. At the same time there was help from British and US soldiers.

We have already referred to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and NATO working together to overthrow Gaddafi. After 2011, this terrorist organization formed an alliance with the Islamist rebels of Mali. The latter, together with the Tuaregs, managed to conquer the north of Mali for several months. Thanks to NATO bombardments, LIFG was able to plunder the Libyan army’s arms depots. The very weapons that jihadis are using today in Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, Chad and Mali. The Financial Timessees a link between these events and the geopolitical rivalry with China: “The militarization of US policy in Africa post 9/11 has long been contentious, perceived in the region as an attempt to shore up US control of resources and counter China’s burgeoning commercial role.”

Nor can it be ruled out that Western intelligence services may be directly or indirectly involved in the terrorist activities of the Chechens in Russia and of the Uyghurs in China.

We are therefore talking about a systematic and deliberate policy on the part of Washington and its allies to maintain control of the region.

The strategy of chaos

Today, the war on terror has turned into its opposite, the spread of terror. The failed operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria clearly demonstrate that the US and the West are no longer able to mold the region of the Middle East as they would like it.

Washington and its allies are in danger of losing their grip more and more and are increasingly turning to sub-contractors of the worst kind. They argue: ‘if we cannot control the area ourselves, then certainly no one else either’.

That is what could be described as the strategy of chaos, or perhaps better ‘the chaos of strategy’. In any case, it is the pinnacle of immorality.

One thing’s for sure. The terror in the region will not be eradicated by the same forces that brought them to life. Or, as an unsuspected source such as Dominique de Villepin, France’s former Minister for Home and Foreign Affairs, put it strongly:

“The wars lost in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya favor separatism, failed states, the brazen law of armed militias. Never have these wars made it possible to overcome terrorists swarming over the region. On the contrary, they legitimize the most radical. … Each Western intervention creates the conditions for the next. We must stop this.”

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For about 70 years the CIA has been undermining a free press.  It began with Operation Mockingbird, a Cold War operation against communism.  The CIA recruited journalists into a propaganda network.  The CIA paid journalists to write fake stories or to publish stories written by the CIA in order to control explanations that served the agency’s agendas.  Student and cultural organizations and intellectual magazines, such as Encounter, were suborned into the CIA’s propaganda network.  Thanks to the German journalist, Udo Ulfkotte, we know that every European journalist of any significance is a CIA asset.  In 1977 Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame wrote in Rolling Stone that the CIA “has secretly bankrolled numerous foreign press services, periodicals and newspapers—both English and foreign language—which provided excellent cover for CIA operatives.”  Like most other people, Western journalists were all too willing to sell out their integrity for money.  The few who were not were blackmailed into submission.

The few honest journalists who remain have been forced out of the “mainstream” or “presstitute media” onto Internet websites.  Wikileaks is by far the best news organization of our time.  To bring this organization to heel Washington, using its Swedish, British, and Ecuadoran vassals, has persecuted Wikileaks’ founder, Julian Assange, for years.  The CIA’s media vassals, including the New York Times and The Guardian, both of which published the material leaked to Wikileaks that is being used to destroy Assange, have joined wholeheartedly in the persecution of the World’s Best and Most Honest Journalist.  

Currently Assange is being tortured, apparently to death, while bring held in solitary confinement in a maximum security British prison awaiting his extradition to the US on false charges.  As the CIA cannot be certain it has suborned all the federal judges, Washington is just as happy if Assange dies in a British prison as there is no valid case against him under current US law.  Probably the absence of a valid case doesn’t matter as the rule of law in the US is very difficult to find.

The lack of any valid case against Assange is the reason the distinguished documentary film maker John Pilger describes Assange’s persecution as a Stalinist Show Trial.

What is astonishing about the CIA’s destruction of Julian Assange is the silence of American law schools and bar associations, the silence of universities, the absence of student and labor union protests, the absence of any protection of Assange’s rights from courts as the last news organization willing and capable of holding governments accountable for their crimes is destroyed openly in full view of the law schools, intellectuals, bar associations, courts, and print and TV media.  

The CIA’s control over explanations is as complete as the control Big Brother has in George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984.  And this doesn’t bother the citizens of the US, UK, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Europe.  Only a few individuals speak out for Assange, and they, too, are demonized in turn.  

The Age of Tyranny has now descended upon the Western World. 

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog, Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Snopes.com

Trump said he talked to Syrian Democratic Forces leader Gen. Mazloum Abdi on Thursday. As usual, Trump’s report of the conversation is marred by outright lies and bizarre allegations. He said,

.

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I really enjoyed my conversation with General @MazloumAbdi. He appreciates what we have done, and I appreciate what the Kurds have done. Perhaps it is time for the Kurds to start heading to the Oil Region!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2019

We know that Abdi (who sometimes goes by the nom de guerre Mazloum Kobanê) is not actually happy with “what Trump did,” in inviting Turkey to invade the Kurdish regions of northeast Syria because he repeatedly said so.

What Trump was likely referring to was Abdi’s relief at the pause in fighting arranged by vice president Mike Pence last week, which gave Russia time to impose severe limits on Turkey’s advance into Syria.

Trump had earlier said,

“This was an outcome created by us, the United States, and nobody else, Now we’re getting out. … Let someone else fight over this long-bloodstained sand.”

Trump goes back and forth between dismissing Syria as an unimportant desert and playing up its small oil reserves. Northeast Syria, from which Trump pulled 1,000 US special operations personnel, is the most fertile agricultural area in Syria and is for the most part not desert.

As for the issue of oil, Syria’s reserves are mostly in the east, with the bulk in the southeast province of Deir al-Zor (Deir Ezzor). Its population is largely Sunni Arab and it had been controlled by ISIL, but Abdi’s Kurdish troops and some Arab allies fought down there. The al-Assad regime wants this region back, and even risked tangling with the US over a Conoco Gas plant in 2018.

The Guardian’s Julian Borger points out that Trump administration officials are talking about the possibility of a US tank force invading Deir al-Zor from Iraq and occupying it. The goal would be to deny the oil resources to a resurgent ISIL but also to keep them out of the hands of the Syrian government. Also, the US is somehow convinced, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that it can block Iranian personnel and supply lines into Syria with this southeast garrison.

h/t Energy Consulting Group

Trump appears to have encouraged a massive Kurdish population movement down to Deir al-Zor from the northeast in order to deny ISIL and Damascus the petroleum. This suggestion would please Turkey, which dreams of kicking hundreds of thousands of Syrian Kurds out of their homes and replacing them with Sunni Arab Syrian refugees now resident in Turkey. As Samantha Power observed, Trump is signing on to Erdogan’s
ethnic cleansing effort, for his own purposes.

Although the YPG took military control of Deir al-Zor during its fight with ISIL, the local Arab population is not happy with even this light Kurdish presence. The Kurds are unlikely actually to emigrate to Deir al-Zor in any numbers. And anyway, they have invited Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian Arab Army into their territory to protect them from Turkey, so their presence to the south wouldn’t keep al-Assad from having a presence in Deir al-Zor.

The notion of a US invasion and occupation of Deir al-Zor is entirely illegal in international law. The US has no grounds for militarily occupying part of Syria after it withdrew from another part. Washington also has no grounds for denying Syrian oil resources to the Syrian government.

Also, wouldn’t this require Congressional approval?

As Borger points out, occupying Deir al-Zor would certainly take a big US force, much bigger than the 1000-strong spec ops soldiers who have just been withdraw. So much for Trump binging the troops home.

Iraq would also have to cooperate with this move, which seems to me unlikely.

Sen. Lindsay Graham and other senators want to bring Abdi to Washington for consultations and have asked secretary of state Mike Pompeo to expedite his visa.

The senators are concerned about the impact of Trump’s withdrawal in favor of Turkey on the continued fight against ISIL extremism in eastern Syria, which Trump has endangered by demoralizing his Kurdish allies.

About 100 hardened ISIL fighters have escaped in the chaos.

In response, the Turkish government threatened to have Abdi extradited to Turkey for terrorism, branding him a member of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which both the US and Turkey consider a terrorist organization. Ankara does not make a distinction between the People’s Protection Units (YPG) of the Syrian Democratic Union Party and the PKK, even though they are quite distinct. Abdi is YPG. Abdi, moreover, is the general who led the campaign against ISIL and took their capital of Raqqa, losing 10,000 of his men in the effort. Turkey did almost nothing against ISIL. Let’s just say I don’t think the US justice system is very likely to extradite Abdi to Turkey.

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Hundreds of American soldiers are remaining in Syria to occupy its oil reserves and block the Syrian government from revenue needed for reconstruction. Trump said openly, “We want to keep the oil.”

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US President Donald Trump has reassured supporters that he is “bringing soldiers home” from the “endless” war in Syria. But that is simply not the case.

While Trump has ordered a partial withdrawal of the approximately 1,000 American troops on Syrian territory — who have been enforcing an illegal military occupation under international law — US officials and the president himself have admitted that some will be staying. And they will remain on Syrian soil not to ensure to safety of any group of people, but rather to maintain control over oil and gas fields.

The US military has already killed hundreds of Syrians, and possibly even some Russians, precisely in order to hold on to these Syrian fossil fuel reserves.

Washington’s obsession with toppling the Syrian government refuses to die. The United States remains committed to preventing Damascus from retaking its own oil, as well as its wheat-producing breadbasket region, in order to starve the government of revenue and prevent it from funding reconstruction efforts.

The Washington Post noted in 2018 that the US and its Kurdish allies were militarily occupying a massive “30 percent slice of Syria, which is probably where 90 percent of the pre-war oil production took place.”

Now, for the first time, Trump has openly confirmed the imperialist ulterior motives behind maintaining a US military presence in Syria.

“We want to keep the oil,” Trump confessed in a cabinet meeting on October 21. “Maybe we’ll have one of our big oil companies to go in and do it properly.”

Three days earlier, the president tweeted, “The U.S. has secured the Oil.”

…..this thinking years ago. Instead, it was always held together with very weak bandaids, & in an artificial manner. There is good will on both sides & a really good chance for success. The U.S. has secured the Oil, & the ISIS Fighters are double secured by Kurds & Turkey….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 18, 2019

The New York Times confirmed the strategy on October 20. Citing a “senior administration official,” the newspaper reported:

“President Trump is leaning in favor of a new Pentagon plan to keep a small contingent of American troops in eastern Syria, perhaps numbering about 200, to combat the Islamic State and block the advance of Syrian government and Russian forces into the region’s coveted oil fields.

… A side benefit would be helping the Kurds keep control of oil fields in the east, the official said.”

Trump then explicitly reiterated this policy in a White House press briefing on the Syria withdrawal on October 23.

“We’ve secured the oil (in Syria), and therefore a small number of US troops will remain in the area where they have the oil,” Trump said. “And we’re going to be protecting it. And we’ll be deciding what we’re going to do with it in the future.”

Using ISIS as an excuse to occupy Syria’s oil fields

US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper – the former vice president of government relations at top weapons manufacturer Raytheon, before being promoted by Trump to the head of the Pentagon – revealed the actual US policy on Syria in a press conference on the 21st:

“We have troops in towns in northeast Syria that are located next to the oil fields. The troops in those towns are not in the present phase of withdrawal.

… Our forces will remain in the towns that are located near the oil fields.”

Esper added that the US military is “maintaining a combat air patrol above all of our forces on the ground in Syria.”

Unlike Trump, Esper offered an excuse to justify the continued US military occupation of Syria’s oil fields. He insisted that American soldiers remain to help the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) hold on to the resources and prevent ISIS jihadists from taking them over.

This led mainstream corporate media outlets like CNN to report, “Defense secretary says some US troops will temporarily stay in Syria to protect oil fields from ISIS.”

But any observer who carefully parsed Esper’s comments during his press conference would have been able to detect the real goal behind the prolonged US presence in northeastern Syria. As Esper said, “A purpose of those [US] forces, working with the SDF, is to deny access to those oil fields by ISIS and others who may benefit from revenues that could be earned.”

An excerpt from the Pentagon’s official transcript of the Mark Esper press conference

“And others who may benefit from their revenues earned” is a crucial qualifier. In fact, Esper used this language – “ISIS and others” – two more times in his presser.

Who exactly Esper meant by “others” is clear: The US strategy is to prevent Syria’s UN-recognized government and the Syrian majority that lives under its control from retaking their own oil fields and reaping the benefits of their revenue.

US military massacred hundreds to keep control of Syrian oil fields

This is not just speculation. CNN made it plain when it reported the following in an undeniably blunt passage, citing anonymous US senior military officials:

“The US military has long had military advisers embedded with the Syrian Democratic Forces near the Syrian oil fields at Deir Ezzoir ever since the area was captured from ISIS. The loss of those oil fields denied ISIS a major source of revenue, a one-time source of funds that has differentiated the organization from other terror groups.

The oil fields are assets that have also been long sought after by Russia and the Assad regime, which is strapped for cash after years of civil war. Both Moscow and Damascus hope to use oil revenues to help rebuild western Syria and solidify the regime’s hold.

In a bid to seize the oil fields, Russian mercenaries attacked the areas, leading to a clash that saw dozens if not hundreds of Russian mercenaries killed in US airstrikes, an episode that Trump has touted as proof he is tough on Russia. That action helped deter Russian or regime forces from making similar bids for the oil fields.

The US forces near the oil fields remain in place and senior military officials had previously told CNN that they would likely be among the last to leave Syria.”

CNN thus acknowledged that the US military had killed up to “hundreds” of Syrian and Russia-backed fighters seeking to gain access to Syria’s oil fields. It massacred these fighters not for humanitarian reasons, but to prevent the Syrian government from using “oil revenues to help rebuild western Syria.”

This shockingly direct admission flew in the face of the popular myth that the US was keeping troops in Syria to protect Kurds from an assault by NATO member Turkey.

The CNN report was an apparent reference to the Battle of Khasham, a little known but important episode in the eight-year international proxy war on Syria.

The battle unfolded on February 7, 2018, when the Syrian military and its allies launched an attack to try to retake major oil and gas reserves in Syria’s Deir ez-Zour governorate, which were being occupied by American troops and their Kurdish proxies.

The New York Times seemed to revel in the news that the US military massacred 200 to 300 fighters after hours of “merciless airstrikes from the United States.”

The Times repeatedly stressed that Deir ez-Zour is “oil-rich.” And it cited anonymous US officials who claimed that many of the slaughtered fighters were Russian nationals from the private military company the Wagner Group. These unnamed “American intelligence officials” told the Times that the alleged Russian fighters were “in Syria to seize oil and gas fields and protect them on behalf of the Assad government.”

The Times noted that US special operations forces from JSOC were working with Kurdish forces at an outpost next to Syria’s important Conoco gas plant. The Kurdish-led SDF had seized this facility from ISIS in 2017 with the help of the US military. The Wall Street Journal noted at the time that the “plant is capable of producing nearly 450 tons of gas a day,” and was one of ISIS’ most important sources of funding.

The newspaper added, “The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, are racing against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad for territorial gains in Syria’s east.” The commodities monitoring websites MarketWatchand OilPrice.com were closely following the story and analyzing which forces would take over one of Syria’s most important gas plants.

Starving Syria of oil and wheat, the basics of survival

For the Syrian government, regaining control over its oil and gas reserves in the eastern part of its territory is crucial to paying for reconstruction efforts and social programs — especially at a time when suffocating US and EU sanctions have crippled the economy, caused fuel shortages, and severely hurt Syria’s civilian population.

The US has aimed to prevent Damascus from retaking profitable territory, starving it of natural resources from fossil fuels to basic foodstuffs.

In 2015, then-President Barack Obama deployed US troops to northeastern Syria on the grounds of helping the Kurdish militia the People’s Protection Units (YPG) fight ISIS. What started as several dozen US special operations forces quickly ballooned into some 2,000 troops, largely stationed in northeastern Syria.

As these US soldiers enabled the YPG retake territory from ISIS, they solidified Washington’s control over nearly one-third of Syrian sovereign territory — territory that just so happened to include 90 percent of Syria’s oil, as well as 70 percent of its wheat.

The US subsequently forced the Kurdish-led YPG to rebrand as the SDF, and then treated them as proxies to try to weaken the Syrian government and its allies Iran and Russia.

In June, Reuters confirmed that Kurdish-led authorities had agreed to stop selling wheat to Damascus, after the US government pressured them to do so.

The Grayzone has reported how the Center for a New American Security, a leading Democratic Party foreign policy think tank bankrolled by the US government and NATO, proposed using the “wheat weapon” to starve Syria’s civilian population.

A former Pentagon researcher-turned-senior fellow at the think tank declared openly, “Wheat is a weapon of great power in this next phase of the Syrian conflict.” He added, “It can be used to apply pressure on the Assad regime, and through the regime on Russia, to force concessions in the UN-led diplomatic process.”

Donald Trump appeared to echo this strategy in his October 21 cabinet meeting.

“We want to keep the oil, and we’ll work something out with the Kurds so that they have some money, have some cashflow,” he said. “Maybe we’ll have one of our big oil companies to go in and do it properly.”

While Trump has pledged to bring US soldiers home and end their military occupation of Syrian territory – which is illegal under international law – it is evident that the broader regime change war continues.

A brutal economic war on Damascus is escalating, not only through sanctions but through the theft of Syria’s natural treasures by foreign powers.

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Ben Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker. He is the assistant editor of The Grayzone, and the producer of the Moderate Rebels podcast, which he co-hosts with editor Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.

Featured image is from The Grayzone

The smorgasbord of Brexit terms has been further plated up with the latest acronym: the WAB or Withdrawal Agreement Bill.  It comes in at 115 pages, with an added bonus of 126 pages of explanatory notes.  For something seemingly so significant, not much time was on offer for those in the Commons to peruse, let alone digest it.  Rushed before the members last Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was hoping that the most significant constitutional change to Britain in decades would be a push over.   

The WAB is intended to give the agreement between the UK and the European Union legal substance. But Halloween looms.  The stress from Prime Minister Boris Johnson is on speed.  What characterises the WAB from previous incarnations under the May government are various hooks to catch members of parliament who might otherwise dismiss it.  A significant concern among Labour party members, for instance, is the issue of workers’ rights.  By all means, initiate Brexit, but what of those protections incorporated under European law?  Are they to go by the wayside in an ugly act of pro-corporation fancy?

The political declaration underpinning the Brexit transition deal for trade talks between the UK and Brussels makes it clear that “the future relationship must ensure open and fair competition, encompassing robust commitments to ensure a level playing field.”  Workers’ rights drawn from EU law will continue in a Brexited Britain, with some unclear commitment to ensure “non-regression” in subsequent laws (that is, any subsequent laws after the transition period not abridge those rights).

The problem with this should have been evident to anyone noting the absence of the level playing field concept in the deal, which is instead found in the words of the non-binding political declaration. What the WAB does is actually make Northern Ireland the subject of level-playing field logic, permitting the rest of the UK to dabble in threatening alternatives.

On Saturday, the sweeteners on bringing in rebel Labour MPs into the fold seemed to sour.  Documents obtained by the Financial Times suggested that commitments on workers’ rights and the environment had left considerable “room for interpretation”.  The Brexit deal might well be, not just a matter of flexible interpretation but a boon for corporate vengeance. 

It gave Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, erratic of late, a platform to suspect the motivations of the government.  Labour shadow Brexit minister Jenny Chapman found the revelations unsettling. 

“These documents confirm our worst fears.  Boris Johnson’s Brexit is a blueprint for a regulated economy, which will see vital rights and protections torn up.”

This might well be true, but the EU can hardly claim a sense of purity in the guardianship of workers’ rights. A certain strain of EU jurisprudence suggests hostility to workers in employment law, while providing certain dispensations to corporations.  Decisions by such bodies as the European Court of Justice have demonstrated that the right to strike is secondary to the freedom of employers to relocate their concern, a feature found in Article 43 of the EC Treaty which strikes at any fetters of “freedom of establishment”.  In 2007, the ECJ notably found in the Viking Line case that a trade union’s threat to strike in an effort to force an employer to conclude a collective agreement constituted a restriction on the freedom of establishment. 

The Laval case furnished another example of pro-company logic over union action.  In that instance, the point of issue was how industrial action might square with freedom of movement under Article 49 of the EC Treaty.  The Swedish building workers’ union had attempted to force Laval’s Swedish subsidiary to accept a collective agreement covering 35 Latvian workers sent to Sweden to refurbish a school.  Negotiations failed; the company was picketed and eventually went bankrupt.  In hearing the case against the union for compensation, the ECJ held that the Posted Workers Directive guaranteeing equal protections for posted workers and those in the host country, was inapplicable.  It was too onerous to expect service provides to take part in peculiar collective bargaining practices.  Economic uncertainty was the enemy.

In a sense, both EU diplomats and their Brexit ministry counterparts have kept up appearances, talking about level playing fields when knowing full well that the corporate sector will be well catered for, Brexit or otherwise.  Tory government ministers, caught unawares, rallied against the leaks discussed by the FT.  The Brexit department decided to ignore the document altogether, a habit that seems to be catching in Whitehall.  The government, according to a spokesperson, “has no intention of lowering the standards of workers’ rights or environmental protection after we leave the EU”. 

Junior business minister Kwasi Kwarteng dismissed it as “completely mad, actually.”  It would make little sense “at all to dilute workers’ rights” given that some nineteen Labour MPs had actually voted for a second reading of the Brexit bill.  Business minister Andrea Leadsom was also quick to deny the veracity of the reports.  “The story is not correct.  UK will maintain (the) highest standards of workers’ rights and environmental standards when we leave the EU.”

The feathers of environmental advocates have also been ruffled.  Affirmations and promises made have been unconvincing.  Benjamin Halfpenny, representing a coalition of environmental groups including Friends of the Earth and the National Trust, insists on additions to the Environmental Bill that will shore up broader European protections.  “The government has had plenty of opportunities to put a commitment to existing standards into law, but has thus far not done so.”

 In the tug-of-war between Brussels and the UK, it is clear that Britain, in angling for future free trade deals, will be tempted by the genie of deregulation and the self-imposed reduction of standards for the sake of a competitive advantage.  It might well be that EU and UK diplomats are being rather sly about this: the EU is facing its own internal challenges and wishes an exit to take place within orderly reason.  It cannot afford a messy divorce, a point that will looked upon by dissenting groups within the bloc.  But should the Johnson’s deal become a reality, fans of working welfare and environmental standards will be left disappointed.

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

This article was completed on October 26, 2019.

Islamic State’s self-styled Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed in a United States Special Ops overnight raid Saturday involving helicopters, warplanes and a ground clash on the Turkey-Syria border while fleeing Syria’s northwestern Idlib Governorate, Reuters and Newsweek are reporting, and President Trump [has made] the major announcement of the biggest symbolic victory of his administration in the war against terrorism soon.

What’s worth noting in the news reports about the killing of al-Baghdadi is the fact that although the mainstream media had been trumpeting for the last several years that the Islamic State chief had been hiding somewhere on the Iraq-Syria border in the east, he was found hiding in the northwestern Idlib Governorate, under the control of Turkey’s militant proxies and al-Nusra Front, and was killed while trying to flee to Turkey in Brisha village on the Syria border.

Reuters reports [1]:

“Two Iraqi security sources and two Iranian officials said they had received confirmation from inside Syria that Baghdadi had been killed. ‘Our sources from inside Syria have confirmed to the Iraqi intelligence team tasked with pursuing Baghdadi that he has been killed alongside his personal bodyguard in Idlib after his hiding place was discovered when he tried to get his family out of Idlib toward the Turkish border,’ one of the Iraqi officials said.”

The reason why the mainstream media scrupulously avoided mentioning Idlib as al-Baghdadi’s most likely hideout in Syria was to cover up the collusion between the militant proxies of Turkey and the jihadists al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State. At its peak in 2014, when the Islamic State declared its “caliphate” in Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria, the Islamic State reportedly had more than 70,000 jihadists.

The divisions within the rank and file of the terrorist organization seem to be growing as it has lost all of its territory, and thousands of Islamic State’s jihadists have been killed in airstrikes conducted by the US-led coalition against the Islamic State and the ground offensives by the Iraqi armed forces and allied militias in Iraq and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in Syria.

Furthermore, due to frequent desertions and detention of hundreds of hardcore militants alongside thousands of innocent Arab villagers held captive by the Kurds in northeastern Syria, the number of fighters within the Islamic State’s ranks has evidently dwindled. But a question would naturally arise in the minds of perceptive observers of the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria that where did the remaining tens of thousands of Islamic State’s jihadists vanish?

The riddle can be easily solved, though, if we bear in mind the fact that although Idlib Governorate in Syria’s northwest has firmly been under the control of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) led by al-Nusra Front since 2015, its territory was equally divided between Turkey-backed rebels and al-Nusra Front.

In a brazen offensive in January, however, al-Nusra Front’s jihadists completely routed Turkey-backed militants, even though the latter were supported by a professionally trained and highly organized military of a NATO member, Turkey. And al-Nusra Front now reportedly controls more than 70% territory in the Idlib Governorate.

The reason why al-Nusra Front has been easily able to defeat Turkey-backed militants appears to be that the ranks of al-Nusra Front have now been swelled by highly motivated and battle-hardened jihadist deserters from the Islamic State after the fall of the latter’s “caliphate” in Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria.

The merger of al-Nusra Front and Islamic State in Idlib doesn’t come as a surprise, though, since the Islamic State and al-Nusra Front used to be a single organization before a split occurred between the two militant groups in April 2013 over a leadership dispute. In fact, al-Nusra Front’s chief Abu Mohammad al-Jolani was reportedly appointed [2] as the emir of al-Nusra Front by Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the leader of Islamic State, in January 2012.

Regarding the nexus between Islamic jihadists and so-called “moderate rebels” in Syria, while the representatives of Free Syria Army (FSA) were in Washington in January last year, soliciting the Trump administration to restore the CIA’s “train and equip” program for the Syrian militants that was shuttered in July 2017, hundreds of Islamic State’s jihadists joined the moderate militants in Idlib in their battle against the advancing Syrian government troops backed by Russian airstrikes to capture the strategically important Abu Duhur airbase, according to a January last year’s AFP report [3] authored by Maya Gebeily.

The Islamic State already had a foothold in neighboring Hama province and its foray into Idlib was an extension of its outreach. The Islamic State reportedly captured several villages and claimed to have killed two dozen Syrian soldiers and taken twenty hostages. And on January 12 last year, the Islamic State officially declared Idlib one of its “Islamic emirates,” according to the aforementioned AFP report.

In all likelihood, some of the Islamic State’s jihadists who joined the battle in Idlib in January last year were part of the same contingent of thousands of Islamic State militants that fled Raqqa in October 2017 under a deal brokered [4] by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

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

Notes

[1] Islamic State leader Baghdadi reportedly killed in Syria by U.S. forces

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

[3] Four years and one caliphate later, Islamic State claims Idlib comeback

[4] Raqqa’s dirty secret: the deal that let Islamic State jihadists escape Raqqa

“What’s wrong with the bees?” 

I’ve been asked that question frequently over the years.  My friends, family and most of my work colleagues know that I’ve been a beekeeper for decades, so it’s a reasonable question and it usually leads to an extended and enjoyable conversation about bees and ultimately to food. 

I’ve found that most people are aware there is something wrong with bees and that they should be concerned.  What many people don’t realize is how dependent our food system is upon the honey bee and how the problems that bees face is putting our very food system at risk.

With this in mind, I set off on a multi-year documentary film project to tell the story of commercial migratory beekeepers, their honey bees and the role they play in agriculture.  The resulting film, The Pollinators has been busy on the film festival circuit this year and is just coming out in cinemas across the country now.

Watch the trailer:

A national screening day for “The Pollinators” in the U.S. is taking place on Wednesday, November 6. Find a screening near you here. If there isn’t a screening near you, find out how to request one here.

I met beekeeper Dave Hackenberg in a truck stop off I-495 in Massachusetts. He was returning home to Pennsylvania after bringing a truckload of honey bees to Maine to pollinate blueberries, one of the many crops that his honey bees pollinate.  Dave and his son Davey are part of a multigenerational family business, which is typical of many migratory beekeepers. Officially called pollination services, the beekeepers work in a niche sector of agriculture. They move millions of bee hives all around the country into the fields and orchards that require honey bee pollination when they bloom.  Most people are not aware that honey bees are moved at all because the bees are typically moved at night when the bees are in their hives and often placed in remote areas on the edges of fields where they will be out of sight.

Dave and Davey Hackenberg—like all migratory beekeepers—are an essential link in our food system because very simply, if there is no pollination, there will not be a viable crop. For many farmers, bringing honey bees onto their farm is somewhat of an insurance policy to guarantee sufficient pollination. The farmer pays the beekeeper by the hive to provide this service.  As many as 400 common fruits, nuts and vegetables that we eat every day depend upon insect pollination and represent the most nutritious and tasty foods in our diets. While honey bees have been moved for pollination for decades, the scale and dependency upon pollination services has expanded and become essential in some parts of the country over the last couple of decades.  This is due to some systemic changes in agriculture techniques and also the decline of native bees that cannot survive in the chemically dependent monocultures that much of agriculture has moved towards. The migratory beekeepers have responded to these changes in farming and are filling this need through pollination services.

Like most migratory beekeepers, the Hackenberg’s and the other beekeepers I filmed, move their bees out to California in February for the almond pollination, which is the biggest pollination event in the world—and also the most lucrative.  Beekeeper Bret Adee who along with his family, runs the largest bee operation in the country states that, “Almost the entire US bee supply is moved out to California for almond pollination.” Alarm bells should be going off now. After the almond bloom is over, there is nothing else for the bees to eat so they are loaded up and moved into other pollinations around the country.

The bees pollinate many crops after almonds from blueberries, apples, cranberries to pumpkins and also the seeds for next seasons carrots, onions and other important row crops.

Along this pollination journey, the bees and beekeepers can face many serious challenges and risks.  I quickly came to realize that these hardworking and iconoclastic beekeepers are anxious about the alarming rate of the bee losses they face, which have been ranging from 33 to 50 percent annually and sometimes more.  Not many businesses can sustain losses like this every year. The commercial beekeepers work hard to split and create new hives out of older ones in order to maintain the numbers they need for pollination and try to keep ahead of the losses. They know this is not a sustainable situation and are desperate for other solutions.  Thirty years ago, losing 10 percent of one’s hives was alarming, but now any commercial beekeeper would be happy to lose that few hives. According to the scientists and beekeepers I spoke with, bee colony losses are due to multiple and interactive causes including parasites, pesticides, viruses, poor nutrition and habitat loss.  Climate change is a factor that is being studied, but studies are indeed showing a negative effect on bees. Despite what people may think, the actual movement of bees is not a significant contributor to annual losses and the bees are trucked by drivers used to handling livestock and know how to take care of them.

Beekeepers are eager to get the word out about their plight because their current methods are unsustainable and we are in serious trouble if we don’t come up with answers to stem these losses.

If these beekeepers are worried, we all should be: our diet depends upon pollination for one of every three bites we eat.

The good news is there are people that are implementing new methods in agriculture and making a positive difference.  Former USDA scientist, Dr. Jonathan Lundgren is an active proponent of regenerative agriculture as a key solution. According to Dr. Lundgren, we need to stop tilling the ground, eliminate excessive chemical inputs, stop planting monocultures and adopt time proven methods of cover cropping, rotation and diversity on the landscape. He believes that we need to fix the soil to fix the bee problem.

A pesticide-free and diverse habitat creates a healthy diet for pollinators and attracts many species of other beneficial insects that can minimize many pests. Specific troublesome pests can be targeted through integrated pest management techniques.

Farmers Lucas and William Criswell along with neighbor farmer Alan Ard have put this into practice and are literally changing the landscape in the Pennsylvania valley where they live and farm. Their successes are inspiring their neighbors who farm traditionally to adopt the same regenerative techniques that are working for the Criswell’s and the Ard’s.

Dan Barber, the chef and co-owner of Blue Hill restaurant gave me a big picture view of the regenerative farm practices at the Stone Barns Center in Westchester County, New York. He states “We really have to create a system, a pattern of eating that supports the kind of diversity that the landscape needs to be healthy”.  Jack Algiere, the farm director at the Stone Barns Center, speaks eloquently about that diversity of our landscape and the importance of crop rotation and soil health to create a healthy environment from which we can grow healthy, delicious food and educate and inspire others in the process.  Environmentalist and author Bill McKibben gave me his thoughts about how efficiency and simplification in agriculture has eliminated diversity and resiliency at a high cost to the natural world.

There is something about honey bees that touches people: their beauty, their indefatigable work ethic, their efficiency with fascinating and complex societies that are a window into the natural world that we all long for.  While most people have heard that bees are in trouble and are interested in knowing more, the threats to bees are a certainly a complex and interwoven set of problems and there are no easy solutions, no silver bullet.

But we also have a lot of opportunities to fix these problems and we have more power to change things than we think we do.  Every one of us can do things big and small to make it better. This topic is completely actionable and our own choices really matter.  We vote with our dollars when we buy food and make a difference by deciding what we grow in our own landscapes. A green grassy lawns is a monocultures and food desert for bees.  Asking questions about our food and learning where our food comes from, supporting local farmers, educating our children and working with our legislators to create pollinator friendly policies in our communities are all key components to changing this broken system.  Many states have taken the lead on pollinator protection legislation since our current federal agency’s leadership tends to side with corporate interests, so promoting and supporting state and local legislation is proving to be a very effective tool.

The answer is not going to come from the top, but is going to come from our own citizen actions on a grassroots level.

When I started beekeeping over 30 years ago, I had no idea that ultimately it would lead me to making a film about migratory beekeepers, bees and our food system.  Yet the intersection of these elements was a story I felt had not been fully explored and one that desperately needed to be told. We can make this better and it has to start with us.  Many small changes in our individual lives can add up to make a big difference.

A national screening day for “The Pollinators” in the U.S. is taking place on Wednesday, November 6. Find a screening near you here. If there isn’t a screening near you, find out how to request one here.

From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

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Peter Nelson is a filmmaker, director, and beekeeper.

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1. At the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit held in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Friday, Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro lashed out at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and announced that the U.S. economic and financial aggressions are as lethal as its armies.

The Bolivarian leader said that “the new modes of international war are economic aggressions” against the most vulnerable population groups, among which are children, women and the elderly.

“In the years to come, our movement must raise an alternative to the inhuman, exclusionary and impoverishing model which the IMF and the World Bank intend to impose,” Maduro urged.

“The imposition of brutal neoliberal economic measures, which are designed by the IMF and applied by Washignton’s satellite governments, include pension and salary cuts, brutal increases in public service fares and curtailment of the right to education and health.”

Besides evidencing the social effects of economic warfare, Maduro stressed that the IMF policy packages are driving “a massive violation of human rights” in developing countries around the world.

RT NicolasMaduro: Luego del primer día de deliberaciones en la XVIII Cumbre del MNOAL, nos sentimos felices porque 120 países han ratificado su decidido respaldo a Venezuela. Con orgullo seguiremos defendiendo la verdad de nuestro pueblo. No estamos solo… pic.twitter.com/31b0E2Y0Nd

— David Prado (@shasta_1183) October 25, 2019

“Nicolas Maduro: After the first day of deliberations at the 18th NAM Summit, we feel happy because 120 countries have ratified their strong support for Venezuela. With pride we will continue to defend the truth of our people. We are not alone.”

“That is why we denounce the imposition of economic, financial and trade policies as acts of aggression, which have such a devastating effect as military actions. Nowadays some powers’ economic and financial aggressions are as lethal as their armies.”

With regard to the externally-induced problems that Venezuela faces, Maduro recalled that his government prefers to place its policy emphasis on the people, which makes “decadent empires” impose blockages which are contrary to international laws.

“Venezuela is resisting and will continue to resist and, in addition, it is overcoming. We are overcoming a multiform economic warfare. The future holds for us growth, recovery and prosperity,” the Bolivarian president said.

Maduro also recalled that global powers violate international laws each time they implement “unilateral coercive measures, which are applied as political pressure instruments and blackmailing devices” aimed at inflicting collective punishment.

Sostuve un importante encuentro con el hermano Presidente de la República Islámica de Irán, Hasán Rohaní. Reiteramos nuestra firme disposición y compromiso de consolidar los lazos de cooperación, hermandad y amistad existente entre nuestros pueblos. pic.twitter.com/urZ7yYXgp4

— Nicolás Maduro (@NicolasMaduro) October 25, 2019

“I had an important meeting with the brother President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hassan Rohani. We reiterate our firm willingness and commitment to consolidate cooperation, brotherhood and friendship ties between our peoples.”

Moreover, Maduro warned about the limitations of the current multilateral governance system, which generates problems instead of promoting peace among nations.

“The multilateral system as a whole faces a complex crisis… military interventions, imposition of regime change policies, coups, disinformation media campaigns and undercover operations, all of which are aimed at the political, economic and financial destabilization of the NAM members.”

At the Baku Summit, the Republic of Azerbaijan will take over the chairmanship of the Non-Aligned Movement for the upcoming 3 years.

The NAM was established in 1961 as a forum for independent dialogue and cooperation among 120 developing countries.

As the late Cuba’s President Fidel Castro said, the NAM aims at ensuring “national independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of non-aligned countries” in their “struggle against imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, racism, and all forms of foreign aggression, occupation, domination, interference or hegemony as well as against great power and bloc politics.”​​​​​​​

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The ongoing theatrical absurdity of twisted forever war propaganda went over the top on Sunday when President Trump announced the death of the elusive leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. 

Trump announced the death (said to be by way of suicide vest) while reading from a teleprompter, a skill he has yet to master. 

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“He was a sick and depraved man, and now he’s gone. Baghdadi was vicious and violent and he died in a vicious and violent way”

US President Donald Trump says the “world is now a much safer place” after the killing of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadihttps://t.co/yePDgUsGuJ pic.twitter.com/WBB3nUjC4r

— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) October 27, 2019

There is no evidence al-Baghdadi killed himself when confronted by US Special Forces in Syria, the same as there is no evidence that Obama killed Osama bin Laden (evidence indicates Osama died in Afghanistan of natural causes in late 2001). 

Abu “from Baghdad” has died before. In June 2017, Russia said it may have killed him during an airstrike in Syria. The following month, ISIS allegedly admitted al-Baghdadi was killed during an air raid in the Iraqi province of Nineveh. 

There is scant evidence Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi existed as described by the US military and the corporate war propaganda media. 

“Reclusive even when IS was at the peak of its power, the 47-year-old Iraqi, who suffers from diabetes, was rumored to have been wounded or killed several times,” the AFP reported this past April. “His whereabouts have never been confirmed.” He was known as “The Ghost” (al-Shabah in Arabic), the invisible caliphate leader.

There is little if any reliable factual information on al-Baghdadi. “There are disputes over his career depending on whether the source is ISIS itself, US or Iraqi intelligence,” the Independent reported in 2014. 

He was born in Samarra, a largely Sunni city north of Baghdad, in 1971 and is well educated. With black hair and brown eyes, a picture of al-Baghdadi taken when he was a prisoner of the Americans in Bocca (sic) Camp in southern Iraq between 2005 and 2009, makes him look like any Iraqi man in his thirties.

The newspaper reports it “believes” al-Baghdadi “was born in Samarra, a largely Sunni city north of Baghdad, in 1971 and is well educated. With black hair and brown eyes, a picture of al-Baghdadi taken when he was a prisoner of the Americans in Bocca Camp in southern Iraq between 2005 and 2009, makes him look like any Iraqi man in his thirties.”

We are told al-Baghdadi rose to the leadership of Al-Qaeda in Iraq (Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn) after the supposed targeted murder of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, yet another elusive character who may not, in fact, have existed as described by the government and its media. 

The media, however, did report on the “Zarqawi program,” a psychological operation run out of the Pentagon. According to the Post: 

The Zarqawi campaign is discussed in several of the internal military documents. “Villainize Zarqawi/leverage xenophobia response,” one U.S. military briefing from 2004 stated. It listed three methods: “Media operations,” “Special Ops (626)” (a reference to Task Force 626, an elite U.S. military unit assigned primarily to hunt in Iraq for senior officials in Hussein’s government) and “PSYOP,” the U.S. military term for propaganda work…

The military’s propaganda program largely has been aimed at Iraqis, but seems to have spilled over into the U.S. media. One briefing slide about U.S. “strategic communications” in Iraq, prepared for Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top U.S. commander in Iraq, describes the “home audience” as one of six major targets of the American side of the war.

The Zarqawi myth was engineered specifically for the “home audience.” It was an effort to condition the American people to accept the war on terror abroad and a police and surveillance state at home. 

Prof. Michel Chossudovsky writes:

The practice of “successful propaganda” in relation to the Iraq war has gone well beyond the official boundaries contained in military manuals. Propaganda creates an “outside enemy”. Al Qaeda led by Osama and Al Qaeda in Iraq led by Zarqawi. Al Qaeda is behind most news stories regarding the  “war on terrorism” including  the suicide attacks. What is rarely mentioned is that this outside enemy Al Qaeda is a CIA “intelligence asset”, used in covert operations.

According to the official narrative, Baghdadi, aka Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai, was captured in Fallujah in 2004 and sent as a “civilian internee” to the Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca detention centers. 

Major General Doug Stone, the head of Task Force 134, Detainee Operations in Iraq, told Andrew Keane Woods of Lawfare in 2016 Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca served as “universities” for jihadi terror:

Stone had been brought in to clean things up after Abu Ghraib; at the time, he was a high-ranking marine reservist willing to take a job that many lifetime military folks wouldn’t touch.  Stone was shocked at what he found:  not just a few bad apples torturing a few prisoners, but rather a dysfunctional detention regime, one that seemingly had no purpose and was a proving grounds for young militants. 

This is a standard fallback story. It is similar to the “intelligence failures” that supposedly led to 9/11. The “detention regime” at these illegal prison facilities was not “dysfunctional,” but rather part of an operation to crank out terrorists and feed the war on terror, which is designed to last forever. 

The official explanation from the Bush administration upon revelations of torture and murder at Abu Ghraib was that the torture was “isolated” and not indicative of US policy. In fact, the opposite was true—Abu Ghraib was part of a wider pattern of torture and brutal treatment at detention centers, including those in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay (see Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror—a case against Donald Rumsfeld?).

The “enhanced interrogation” used in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay was conceived by the CIA, not for interrogation but, as the CIA’s MKUltra demonstrates, for breaking down and brainwashing individuals. The techniques used were similar to those developed by the CIA and SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) developed by DoD and housed at Fairchild AFB, Washington, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and Fort Rucker, Alabama. SERE was based on supposed Chinese brainwashing techniques.

The truth about Abu Ghraib was revealed during the trial of Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell, two CIA “psychologists” sued by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of two former prisoners and the family of one detainee who died of extreme cold in a secret CIA prison.

“Concealed from Congress and the public, the CIA had spent the previous half-century developing and propagating a sophisticated form of psychological torture meant to defy investigation, prosecution, or prohibition—and so far it has proved remarkably successful on all these counts,” writes Alfred McCoy. “Even now, since many of the leading psychologists who worked to advance the CIA’s torture skills have remained silent, we understand surprisingly little about the psychopathology of the program of mental torture that the Bush administration applied so globally.”

The CIA program of “mental torture” was not used to gain information on al-Qaeda and the Islamic State—it is well-known torture does not work and is counterproductive—but rather to breakdown detainees, vacate their personalities, and rebuild them as terrorists and suicide bombers. The “psychopathology of the program” is designed to keep the war on manufactured terror alive and the military-industrial complex fat and happy. 

“Enhanced interrogation” is an Orwellian term for trauma-based techniques engineered to brainwash and control individuals. However, as should be expected, the Pentagon has a cover for its behavior. From a US Army publication:

Task Force 134’s current strategy regards detention facility operations as a legitimate part of America’s overall counterinsurgency fight. The detention facility is not just a repository for those plucked from the “real” insurgency, but a legitimate arena for counterinsurgency actions. The task force has shifted detention operations from warehousing insurgents to engaging them. The strategy focuses on touching the human spirit and aligning detainee goals and aspirations with those of a peaceful and prosperous Iraq. 

In other words, working to have the Iraqi people accept the brutal invasion of their country, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, targeting of water and agriculture resources, and the murder of a million and a half people. 

I don’t believe the US military seriously attempted this, primarily because it is virtually impossible—the Iraqi people know who is responsible for the destruction of their country and the murder of more than a million of their fellow citizens. It is absurd to believe a half-baked “counterinsurgency” program would result in forgiveness of the neocons and George W. Bush. If Iraqis invaded your city or town and began killing your family and neighbors, would you be in a frame of mind to forgive and forget? 

No, I believe the real story of Camp Bucca and Abu Ghraib is a secret Pentagon program designed to make certain conflict continues in the Middle East. The ruling elite responsible for the invasion of Iraq is not interest in the “goals and aspirations” of the Iraqi people. It is determined to balkanize and terrorize Arabs, Muslims, and especially the Shias of Iran. An endless cadre of jihadi (Wahhabi) terrorists is required to accomplish this feat and make sure the client states of Israel and Saudi Arabia are the dominant powerbrokers in the Middle East. 

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Kurt Nimmo writes on his blog, Another Day in the Empire, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. 

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Protests that started over a hike in public transport fares boiled into massive marches. The government responded with heavy repression. At least 18 people have been killed, hundreds have been injured, and over 7,000 arrested.

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Over one million people are marching in the streets of the Chilean capital, responding to the convocation of students and labor unions who organized on social media “The Largest March in Chile” on Friday afternoon, with rallies paralyzing major cities.

The march started between 5-6 p.m., local time, from the Plaza Italia, demanding among others the government to send back the Armed Forces to their military base, and to convoke a Constituent Assembly in order to outline a new Constitution.

They are holding banners like “Chile woke up” and “We are not at war,” as Chile’s military has taken over security in Santiago, a city of 6 million now under a state of emergency with night-time curfews.

1 millón de personas solo en un sector de Santiago, confirmado por la Intendencia. El resto de Chile también está movilizado 💪🏻#LaMarchaMasGrandeDeChile pic.twitter.com/im6wDjdwz6

— fER 👽 (@Heeroin13) October 25, 2019

#LaMarchaMasGrandeDeChile
Ya la autoridad reconoce que A LO MENOS es la #marchadelmillon pic.twitter.com/LMslDbd429

— Mónica Rincón González (@tv_monica) October 25, 2019

“These protests were necessary,” said fruit vendor Sergio Perez to Reuters. “But they’ve made everything difficult, especially getting around.”

Many shops and schools in downtown Santiago remained closed.

Many bus drivers in Santiago also staged a walk-off on Friday after one of their number was shot.

“I used to take one bus to get to work, now I have to take four. This must stop,” said Julio Herrera, 71, as he waited in a long line at a street corner for what few buses remained.

On Friday morning, trucks, cars and taxis also slowed to a crawl on major roads, honking horns, waving Chilean flags and bearing signs of protest. “No more tolls! Enough with the abuse!” read bright yellow-and-red signs plastered to the front of vehicles.

Pinera, a billionaire businessman, told the nation on Thursday he had heard “loud and clear” the demands of Chileans.

He has sent lawmakers legislation to overturn a recent hike in electricity rates, and called for reforms to guarantee a minimum wage of US$480 a month and introduce state medical insurance – only in the case of “catastrophes.”

Seated with a group of elderly Chileans over lunch on Friday, Pinera put finishing touches on a bill to hike minimum pensions by 20 percent. “We must approve these projects with the urgency that Chileans demand,” Pinera said.

So far, the biggest rallies, according to the interior ministry’s estimate, took place on Wednesday, with 424,050 people rallying nationwide.

An online poll conducted by local company Activa Research of 2,090 people between Oct. 22-23 found 83 percent of respondents said they supported the goals of the demonstrators.

The principal causes of the protests were low salaries, utility prices, pensions and economic inequality, the poll said.

U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet, former social-democrat President of Chile, said she would send a mission to her homeland to investigate allegations of rights violations by security forces.

The Chilean government said it would welcome a U.N. delegation, along with representatives of global NGO Human Rights Watch.

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Featured image: The popular movement against Piñera’s neoliberal government and its repressive policies, is unprecedented in Chile’s modern history | Photo: teleSUR

In a special comment written for Consortium News, John Pilger, legendary filmmaker, journalist and friend of Assange, describes the troubling scene inside a London courtroom this week where the WikiLeaks publisher appeared in his U.S. extradition case.

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The worst moment was one of a number of ‘worst’ moments. I have sat in many courtrooms and seen judges abuse their positions, This judge, Vanessa Baraitser—actually she isn’t a judge at all; she’s a magistrate—shocked all of us who were there.

Her face was a progression of sneers and imperious indifference; she addressed Julian with an arrogance that reminded me of a magistrate presiding over apartheid South Africa’s Race Classification Board. When Julian struggled to speak, he couldn’t get words out, even stumbling over his name and date of birth.

When he spoke truth and when his barrister spoke, Baraister contrived boredom; when the prosecuting barrister spoke, she was attentive. She had nothing to do; it was demonstrably preordained. In the table in front of us were a handful of American officials, whose directions to the prosecutor were carried by his junior; back and forth this young woman went, delivering instructions.

The judge watched this outrage without a comment. It reminded me of a newsreel of a show trial in Stalin’s Moscow; the difference was that Soviet show trials were broadcast. Here, the state broadcaster, the BBC, blacked it out, as did the other mainstream channels.

Having ignored Julian’s barrister’s factual description of how the CIA had run a Spanish security firm that spied on him in the Ecuadorean embassy, she didn’t yawn, but her disinterest was as expressive. She then denied Julian’s lawyers any more time to prepare their case – even though their client was prevented in prison from receiving legal documents and other tools with which to defend himself.

Her knee in the groin was to announce that the next court hearing would be at remote Woolwich, which adjoins Belmarsh prison and has few seats for the public. This will ensure isolation and be as close to a secret trial as it’s possible to get. Did this happen in the home of the Magna Carta? Yes, but who knew?

More Important Than Dreyfus

Julian’s case is often compared with Dreyfus; but historically it’s far more important. No one doubts — not his enemies on The New York Times, not the Murdoch press in Australia – that if he is extradited to the United States and the inevitable supermax, journalism will be incarcerated, too.

Who will then dare to expose anything of importance, let alone the high crimes of the West? Who will dare publish ‘Collateral Murder’? Who will dare tell the public that democracy, such as it is, has been subverted by a corporate authoritarianism from which fascism draws its strength.

Once there were spaces, gaps, boltholes, in mainstream journalism in which mavericks, who are the best journalists, could work. These are long closed now. The hope is the samizdat on the internet, where fine disobedient journalism is still practised. The greater hope is that a judge or even judges in Britain’s court of appeal, the High Court, will rediscover justice and set him free. In the meantime, it’s our responsibility to fight in ways we know but which now require more than a modicum of Assange courage.

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John Pilger is an Australian-British journalist and filmmaker based in London. Pilger’s Web site is: www.johnpilger.com. In 2017, the British Library announced a John Pilger Archive of all his written and filmed work. The British Film Institute includes his 1979 film, “Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia,” among the 10 most important documentaries of the 20^thcentury. Some of his previous contributions to Consortium News can be found here.  

Featured image is from 21st Century Wire

Malaysian prime minister, Mahathir Mohammad, announced on Friday that his country is to open an accredited embassy to Palestine, Anadolu News Agency reported.

“We know that Israel will not allow Malaysia to open an embassy in the Occupied Territory. As such, we will open the embassy in Jordan,” Mohammad announced.

Mohammad revealed that the embassy would be accredited to Palestine, and it would more freely facilitate the extension of aid to Palestinians.

Addressing the 18th summit of Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Azerbaijan, Mohammad criticised the silence of the international community for “doing nothing” against Israeli actions.

Leaders and representatives of at least 120 member countries of the NAM are meeting in Baku.

“I would also like to bring to this occasion the fate that awaits our poor Palestinian brothers. Palestine remains occupied by a brutal regime. This regime continues to expand illegal settlements on land that rightfully belongs to the Palestinians,” he stated.

Mohammad added

“it is unfortunate that a world organisation set up by powerful nations now sees those very people ignoring the resolutions of that world body. Now, we see others doing the same.”

Meanwhile, he criticised Israel for its plans to annex parts of the West Bank, as well as claiming Jerusalem as its capital.

“Many western countries are supporting this move by relocating, or vowing to relocate, their embassies there. Malaysia does not agree with this,” he explained.

Mohammad called on NAM member countries that have relocated their Israeli embassies to Jerusalem, or are planning to do so, to reconsider their decision.

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It was just a matter of time before the Bolivian government would be the target of a reactionary opposition. Indeed it happened at its most vulnerable time during an election process that had not officially ended. Following popular protests against neoliberal structural changes imposed by the governments of Ecuador and Chile, it was the conservative opposition in Bolivia that attempted to prevent the presidential re-election of Evo Morales.

In an already political tense situation in Latin America with major protracted protests in Ecuador and Chile, the OAS threw fuel to the fire by issuing a statement of its Electoral Observation Mission in Bolivia. Just a day after elections in Bolivia on October 20 and before the polls were officially closed, the Mission expressed “its deep concern and surprise at the drastic and hard-to-explain change in the trend of the preliminary results.” The trend in question was in favor of Evo Morales. But more damaging, the statement said, “the Mission will issue a report with recommendations ahead of a second round.” That last sentence sounded like an announcement that a second round must take place when in reality the final ballot count was not at hand. A runoff election is called if there is no majority winner or the margin of votes over the second candidate is less than 10%.

The untimely OAS statement has been criticised by the Mexican government as not being “objective”, and it may well have been a call for the supporters of opposition candidate Carlos Mesa to immediately respond with violent protests in La Paz and other cities for alleged fraud. They destroyed properties, set one electoral building on fire and looted business. Expressions of “concern” about the election from Argentina, Brazil and the White House could only have further emboldened the opposition.

After final ballots count and with a margin over the second candidate of 10.5%, Evo Morales has officially been re-elected president of Bolivia at the same time that he is warning of a coup attempt being “carried out by the right-wing with foreign support.” The corporate media is already creating a conspiracy by calling Morales’ presidency “illegitimate”. This is an all familiar term often repeated in the case of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. We all know the dangerous political consequences.

Ecuador has seen major protests since the beginning of October triggered by a controversial government decree enforcing stringent IMF imposed neoliberal policies. The protests have come to a relative calm following a timely dialogue between the Moreno government and the mostly indigenous organization protesters.

However, the OAS has again taken the opportunity to find the culprit of the unrest in Ecuador and the rest of the region, not in the IMF or the unpopular decree, but in Venezuela and Cuba. A statement from the office of the OAS Secretary General declared,

“The crisis in Ecuador is an expression of the distortions that the Venezuelan and Cuban dictatorships have installed in the political systems of the continent.” And more broadly, “The present currents of destabilization of the political systems of the continent have their origin in the strategy of the Bolivarian and Cuban dictatorships.”

The situation in Chile is still developing. Protests were initiated mid-October by mostly students opposing a public transportation fare increase by the Sebastian Piñera government. The violent police repression chasing and arresting students widely reported on social media has surely contributed to larger sectors of the population to join the protests. As the government imposed a curfew, the actions in Chile have also escalated to include a call to a general strike. As a union leader concisely put it,

“The problem is not 30 pesos [transit fare increase]. It’s 30 years of corruption and abuse of the political class, the church and the Armed Forces.”

That is a reference to the brutal military dictatorship in Chile from 1973 to 1990 under Augusto Pinochet who also continued as the Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army until 1998. Pinochet came to power following a US backed coup that toppled elected president Salvador Allende. Under his rule numerous human right violations and crimes were reported including murder, illegal imprisonment, torture, disappearances, political repression, and financial corruption. A trial on many of those charges was still underway when he died in 2006.

During the current protests so far, 15 people have been reported killed and thousands arrested.

Many believe that Pinochet’s legacy has not totally been erased as long as the current Chilean constitution remains in place. The constitution was drafted during Pinochet’s rule by government appointed individuals and ratified by a highly dubious plebiscite in 1980. Under this constitution the presence of the National Security Council (COSENA) is still today one of the major concerns because it concentrates a lot of power in the hands of the three branches of the armed forces and the police. This may explain the prompt display and repression of the military in today’s manifestations. Civil groups in Chile are participating in public discussion around the constitution acting as virtual popular constituent assembly as part of the demonstrations against the neoliberal policies of Sebastian Piñera.

In geopolitical terms, we may be witnessing a rekindling of the progressive movement in Latin America. On October 27 two important elections will take place. One in Argentina that has already indicated a rejection of neoliberal policies of Mauricio Macri in the preliminaries last August and will decide in the upcoming run-off elections. The other election will be in Uruguay where the leftist party Frente Amplio has maintained a very stable government for ten years and has a strong candidate in the incumbent Daniel Martinez. We expect progressive victories in those elections. However, it is hard to predict the impact that the more recent events in the region may have on the voters on October 27.

The continued intervention with US-aligned declarations and statements by the OAS seems to be another factor intended to confuse and put pressure on voters with an obsessive condemnation of Venezuela and Cuba. This is consistent with the stark reality that there are forces intent on destabilising countries by changing the balance of forces from revolutionary to neoliberal.

It has not worked in Bolivia in terms of the ballot results, although it may contribute to create some degree of political instability in the country. But it is also possible that the “Venezuela and Cuba” component, together with the events in Ecuador and Chile, may actually be positive contributing factors in setting the example that there are risks worth taking to help the revolutionary movement. This will be totally consistent with the rebellious history of Latin America.

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Nino Pagliccia is an activist and freelance writer based in Vancouver. He is a retired researcher from the University of British Columbia, Canada. He is a Venezuelan-Canadian who follows and writes about international relations with a focus on the Americas. He is the editor of the book “Cuba Solidarity in Canada – Five Decades of People-to-People Foreign Relations” (2014). He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Promoters of genetic modification (GM) in agriculture have long argued that genetically engineered Golden Rice is a practical way to provide poor farmers in remote areas with a subsistence crop capable of adding much-needed vitamin A to local diets. Vitamin A deficiency is a problem in many poor countries in the Global South and leaves millions at high risk for infection, diseases and other maladies, such as blindness.

Some scientists believe that Golden Rice, which has been developed with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, could help save the lives of around 670,000 children who die each year from Vitamin A deficiency and another 350,000 who go blind.

Meanwhile, critics say there are serious issues with Golden Rice and that alternative approaches to tackling vitamin A deficiency should be implemented. Greenpeace and other environmental groups say the claims being made by the pro-Golden Rice lobby are misleading and are oversimplifying the actual problems in combating vitamin A deficiency.

Many critics regard Golden Rice as an over-hyped Trojan horse that biotechnology corporations and their allies hope will pave the way for the global approval of other more profitable GM crops. The Rockefeller Foundation might be regarded as a ‘philanthropic’ entity but its track record indicates it has been very much part of an agenda which facilitates commercial and geopolitical interests to the detriment of indigenous agriculture and local and national economies.

Smears and baseless attacks

As Britain’s Environment Secretary in 2013, Owen Paterson claimed that opponents of GM were “casting a dark shadow over attempts to feed the world”. He called for the rapid roll-out of vitamin A-enhanced rice to help prevent the cause of up to a third of the world’s child deaths: 

“It’s just disgusting that little children are allowed to go blind and die because of a hang-up by a small number of people about this technology. I feel really strongly about it. I think what they do is absolutely wicked.”

Just recently, Robin McKie, science writer for The Observer, wrote a piece on Golden Rice that uncritically presented all the usual industry talking points. On Twitter, The Observer’s Nick Cohen chimed in with his support by tweeting:

“There is no greater example of ignorant Western privilege causing needless misery than the campaign against genetically modified golden rice.”

Yes, that Nick Cohen; the one who cheer-led for the illegal invasion of Iraq and who remains unrepentant.

Whether it comes from the likes of corporate lobbyist Patrick Moore, Owen Paterson, biotech spin-merchant Mark Lynas, well-remunerated journalists or from the lobbyist CS Prakash who engages more in spin that fact, the rhetoric takes the well-worn cynically devised PR line that anti-GM activists and environmentalists are little more than privileged, affluent people residing in rich countries and are denying the poor the supposed benefits of GM crops. 

Golden Rice does not work and opponents are not to blame

Despite the smears and emotional blackmail employed by supporters of Golden Rice, in a 2016 article in the journal Agriculture & Human Values Glenn Stone and Dominic Glover found little evidence that anti-GM activists are to blame for Golden Rice’s unfulfilled promises. Golden rice was still years away from field introduction and may fall far short of lofty health benefits claimed by its supporters.

Professor Glenn Stone from Washington University in St. Louis stated that: 

“Golden Rice is still not ready for the market, but we find little support for the common claim that environmental activists are responsible for stalling its introduction. GMO opponents have not been the problem.”

Stone added that the rice simply has not been successful in test plots of the rice breeding institutes in the Philippines, where the leading research is being done. While activists did destroy one Golden Rice test plot in a 2013 protest, it is unlikely that this action had any significant impact on the approval of Golden Rice.

Stone said:

“Destroying test plots is a dubious way to express opposition, but this was only one small plot out of many plots in multiple locations over many years. Moreover, they have been calling Golden Rice critics ‘murderers’ for over a decade.”

Believing that Golden Rice was originally a promising idea backed by good intentions, Stone argued:

“But if we are actually interested in the welfare of poor children – instead of just fighting over GMOs – then we have to make unbiased assessments of possible solutions. The simple fact is that after 24 years of research and breeding, Golden Rice is still years away from being ready for release.”

Researchers continue to have problems developing beta carotene-enriched strains that yield as well as non-GM strains already being grown by farmers. Stone and Glover point out that it is still unknown if the beta carotene in Golden Rice can even be converted to vitamin A in the bodies of badly undernourished children. There also has been little research on how well the beta carotene in Golden Rice will hold up when stored for long periods between harvest seasons or when cooked using traditional methods common in remote rural locations.

Claire Robinson, an editor at GMWatch, has argued that the

rapid degradation of beta-carotene in the rice during storage and cooking means it’s not a solution to vitamin A deficiency in the developing world. There are also various other problems, including absorption in the gut, the low and varying levels of beta-carotene that may be delivered by Golden Rice in the first place and the rapid degradation of beta-carotene when stored.

In the meantime, Glenn Stones says that, as the development of Golden Rice creeps along, the Philippines has managed to slash the incidence of Vitamin A deficiency by non-GM methods.

In whose interest?

The evidence presented here might lead us to question why supporters of Golden Rice continue to smear critics and engage in abuse and emotional blackmail when they are not to blame for the failure of Golden Rice to reach the commercial market. Whose interests are they really serving in pushing so hard for this technology? 

In 2011, Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, a senior scientist with a background in insect ecology and pest management asked a similar question: 

“Who oversees this ambitious project, which its advocates claim will end the suffering of millions?”

She answered her question by stating:

“An elite, so-called “Humanitarian Board” where Syngenta sits – along with the inventors of Golden Rice, Rockefeller Foundation, USAID and public relations and marketing experts, among a handful of others. Not a single farmer, indigenous person or even an ecologist, or sociologist to assess the huge political, social, and ecological implications of this massive experiment. And the leader of IRRI’s Golden Rice project is none other than Gerald Barry, previously Director of Research at Monsanto.”

Sarojeni V. Rengam, executive director of Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific, has called on the donors and scientists involved to wake up and do the right thing:

“Golden Rice is really a ‘Trojan horse’; a public relations stunt pulled by the agri-business corporations to garner acceptance of GE crops and food. The whole idea of GE seeds is to make money… we want to send out a strong message to all those supporting the promotion of Golden Rice, especially donor organizations, that their money and efforts would be better spent on restoring natural and agricultural biodiversity rather than destroying it by promoting monoculture plantations and genetically engineered (GE) food crops.” 

And she makes a valid point. To tackle disease, malnutrition and poverty, you have to first understand the underlying causes – or indeed want to understand them. Walden Bello notes that the complex of policies that pushed the Philippines into an economic quagmire over the past 30 years is due to ‘structural adjustment’, involving prioritizing debt repayment, conservative macroeconomic management, huge cutbacks in government spending, trade and financial liberalization, privatization and deregulation, the restructuring of agriculture and export-oriented production. 

And that restructuring of the agrarian economy is something touched on by Claire Robinson who notes that leafy green vegetables used to be grown in backyards as well as in rice (paddy) fields on the banks between the flooded ditches in which the rice grew. She argues that the ditches also contained fish, which ate pests. People thus had access to rice, green leafy veg, and fish – a balanced diet that gave them a healthy mix of nutrients, including plenty of beta-carotene.

But indigenous crops and farming systems have been replaced by monocultures dependent on chemical inputs. Robinson says that green leafy veg were killed off with pesticides, artificial fertilizers were introduced and the fish could not live in the resulting chemically contaminated water. Moreover, decreased access to land meant that many people no longer had backyards containing leafy green veg. People only had access to an impoverished diet of rice alone, laying the foundation for the supposed Golden Rice ‘solution’.

Whether it concerns The Philippines, Ethiopia, Somalia or Africa as a whole, the effects of IMF/World Bank ‘structural adjustments’ have devastated agrarian economies and made them dependent on Western agribusiness, manipulated markets and unfair trade rules. And GM is now offered as the ‘solution’ for tackling poverty-related diseases. The very corporations which gained from restructuring agrarian economies now want to profit from the havoc caused. 

Genuine solutions

In finishing, let us turn to what the Soil Association argued in 2013: the poor are suffering from broader malnourishment than just vitamin A deficiency; the best solution to vitamin A deficiency is to use supplementation and fortification as emergency sticking-plasters and then for implementing measures which tackle the broader issues of poverty and malnutrition.

Tackling the wider issues includes providing farmers with a range of seeds, tools and skills necessary for growing more diverse crops to target broader issues of malnutrition. Part of this entails breeding crops high in nutrients; for instance, the creation of sweet potatoes that grow in tropical conditions, cross-bred with vitamin A rich orange sweet potatoes, which grow in the USA. There are successful campaigns providing these potatoes, a staggering five times higher in vitamin A than Golden Rice, to farmers in Uganda and Mozambique.

The Soil Association says, despite the fanfare, Golden Rice has not yet actually helped a single person and if commercialised it will not be helping to reduce people’s reliance on a rice based diet. It believes that we could have gone further in curing blindness in developing countries years ago if only the money, research, and publicity that have gone into Golden Rice over the last 15 years had gone into proven ways of curing the Vitamin A deficiency that causes blindness.

However, instead of pursuing genuine solutions, we continue to get smears and pro-GM spin in an attempt to close down debate.

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Colin Todhunter is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research.

The current military and diplomatic situation in the Middle East demonstrates that the capability and quality of air defense forces is especially important for states operating in a tense geopolitical environment.

Saudi Arabia with Patriot surface-to-air missiles appeared to be unable to defend itself from missile and drone attacks by the Houthis. Thus, the Kingdom lost its remaining chances to achieve a military victory in the Yemeni war and resumed negotiations with the Houthis.

Devastated by the war on terrorism, Syria and Iraq are suffering from regular Israeli strikes carried out under a pretext of combating the so-called Iranian threat. The Trump administration strongly supports these actions and together with its Israeli counterparts fuel the anti-Iranian hysteria to justify its own policies in the region. In a recent interview to Jerusalem Post, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed that Israel has a “fundamental right” to bomb what it wants to “ensure” its own “security”. In the event of a new round of tensions in the Persian Gulf, Iran’s ability to defend its territory from a possible aerial attack will be one of the factors shaping the course of the possible escalation.

The Islamic Republic already demonstrated its air defense capability on June 20, 2019, when forces of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) shot down a U.S. RQ-4A Global Hawk BAMS-D surveillance drone that violated Iranian airspace near the Strait of Hormuz. Iran says that the Global Hawk was downed with its developed surface-to-air missile (SAM) system Khordad-3.

As a part of its multi-layered air defense, Iran employs a variety of short-, medium- and long-range systems. Earlier, the core of Iran’s air defense was foreign-made systems, including Russian, Chinese, and even US models. Today, Iranian air defense actively employs domestically produced systems. Most of foreign systems were locally modernized. The most capable foreign air defense system acquired by Iran is the Russian-made S-300, the delivery of which was completed in 2016. The most-widely known Iranian indigenous SAMs are the Bavar-373, the Khordad-15 and the Khordad-3.

Watch the video here.

The Bavar-373 is a multi-channel long-range SAM system created in Iran. According to the Iranian military, the system has a range of up to 200 km and altitude of up to 27 km. It is reportedly capable of hitting stealth air targets, cruise missiles and even warheads of ballistic missiles. Official Teheran says that the Bavar-373 is superior to the Russian S-300 and only slightly inferior to the S-400.

In 2019, Iran unveiled the medium-range SAM system Khordad-15. The system is capable of detecting fighter jets, cruise missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles in a range of 150km and track them within a range of 120 km. The Sayyad-3 missile, employed by the system, has a range of 200 km. The Khordad-15 reportedly can detect stealth targets in a distance of 85 km and can intercept and destroy them within a range of 45km.

There are more SAM systems of Iranian design: Talash and Raad. Each unit of the Talash system includes three vehicles, a truck carrying Patriot-style missile launchers and two command and control vehicles. The Talash-1 is employed for low and medium altitudes, the Talash-2 – for medium to high altitudes, and the Talash-3 – for high and very high altitudes. The Talash-2 can engage targets at a range of up to 120 km, and an altitude of up to 27km. Some sources say that the Talash concept originates from the Patriot.

The Raad SAM family externally resembles the Russian Buk and Buk M2 systems. According to Iranian sources, it is designed to confront hostile aircraft, cruise missiles, smart bombs, and unmanned aerial vehicles. The system’s Taer-2 missiles can trace and hit targets in ranges up to 50 km and in altitudes of up to 25-27 km. Another missile employed by the SAM is the Sayyad-2. It has a range of 75km and a top altitude of 30. The most modern version of this SAM system is the Khorad-3 employed against the US Global Hawk in June.

The development of these systems is the visible demonstration of successes of the Iranian military industrial complex. Pro-Iranian sources say that Iran successfully joined the United States, China and Russia in the club of the countries capable of producing effective long-range SAM systems. However, the tactical and technical data of the latest Iranian SAMs that are presented in the open press is very limited, and there are almost no data on the probability of interception of various types of targets. The degree of protection of Iranian SAMs from electronic warfare also remains a question. Accordingly, their real combat capabilities in the event of an armed conflict with a high-tech enemy cannot be estimated using the existing data. Another question is how successful can Iran’s multi-layered air defense be against combined drone, ballistic and cruise missiles strikes that Saudi Arabia experienced during the past years.

Representatives of the Trump administration, including the US president himself, repeatedly threatened Iran with a military action. However, no threats were ever turned into reality, even in a form of a symbolic move like the US missile strike on Syria’s Sharyat airfield. The US stance of empty threats and symbolic gestures is likely not a result the powerful Iranian air-defenses nor Washington’s attempts to avoid an open military escalation in the region. During the years of sanction pressure and military threats, Iran developed a complex asymmetric warfare doctrine. This doctrine provided the Iranian leadership with a number of means and measures that it can employ to deliver a painful blow to its adversaries, which consist primarily of the Israeli-US-Saudi alliance. Therefore, the cost of a military aggression against the Islamic Republic in the current conditions appears to be too high for sides that could be involved.

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This article was originally published in 2011.

At the beginning of 2010, right-wing billionaire Sebastian Piñera Echenique defeated Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, candidate of the “Concertacion” coalition of social democrats and centrists, which has ruled Chile since the end of the Pinochet dictatorship, by a margin of 51 to 49 percent in a runoff election. In October of that year, Piñera managed to manipulate the media into giving him credit for the rescue of 33 miners in a collapsed copper mine, and his popularity rating went up to 63 percent.

Now, as the latest of blows from a mass upsurge not seen since the days of socialist President Salvador Allende, Piñera’s popularity rate is at 31 percent. And 31 of the 33 miners are suing the Chilean government for negligence, for not having properly supervised safety conditions at the privately owned San Jose copper and gold mine in the bleak Atacama region. The mine had a history of safety problems, which the plaintiffs say were not properly dealt with by the responsible government agency, the National Service of Geology and Mines (Sernageomin). They are asking courts for the equivalent of U.S. $16 million. They are also suing the owners, according to AFP.

The announcement of the suit comes on top of massive student demonstrations, a one-day strike in the biggest copper mine in the world, and a long running fight against the construction of a huge hydroelectric project farmers and environmentalists say will wreck an environmentally sensitive area. In the Chilean Congress, deputies from the Communist Party and its allies have introduced legislation to nationalize private mining concerns.

The student protests have roots in the measures taken in education by the military regime of General Agosto Pinochet Ugarte, who overthrew socialist President Salvador Allende Gossens on September 11, 1973. Pinochet broke up the national education system by devolving control to local communities, which had the effect of greatly increasing inequality of educational resources and quality between rich and poor students.

Earlier this year, the Ministry of Education announced sharp cuts to the budgets for schools and universities. Almost immediately, protests arose.  Tens of thousands of students and teachers, in this country of 15 million people, have been marching and protesting since the middle of June. Protesters want an end to the decentralized system and its inequities, and budget increases to increase educational opportunities from kindergarten to university for the poor and working class.

Students in the United States can sympathize, especially, with the Chilean students’ complain that to study, they have to get themselves deeply into debt through student loans. At writing, Piñera made an offer of an increase in scholarship funds, but student and teacher organizations are holding out for much more money and a complete restructuring of the system.

On July 14, a particularly militant demonstration in downtown Santiago, Chile’s capital, led to a wild melee between students and police, with a number of injuries and arrests. Chilean Communist Party deputy Lautero Carmona hailed the marchers and denounced the repression, pointing out that, against the expectations of the government, the students had managed to put together a protest of over 150,000 people. Carmona also warned that repressive actions toward protesters reflect nostalgia for the Pinochet days within the present government.

On July 11, as many as 40,000 unionized employees and subcontracted workers, members of the Federacion de Trabajadores de Cobre (Copper Workers Federation), carried out a highly effective one-day strike at the Chuquicamata mine, the largest copper mine in the world, which is run by the government’s Codelco company. Other Codelco units were also struck. The strike by the miners, who have some of the best pay and benefit scales in Chile, was in response to “restructuring” plans announced by management. Management wants to cut about 2,600 jobs, but the union suspects that privatization schemes are also in the works.

Chuquicamata produces about a third of Chile’s copper, which is a big part of copper production worldwide. The Chuquicamata mine was nationalized by Allende’s socialist government in 1971, and never re-privatized up till now. But the head of Codelco is now Diego Hernandez, who formerly headed Chilean operations of the private Anglo-Australian mining company BHP Billiton, giving the appearance of a conflict of interest.

The environmental and farmers protests in southern Chile have to do with a massive hydroelectric project to be carried out by the HidroAysen Company, the BBC reports. The project, designed to increase the generation of power other than from fossil fuels, involves damming two important rivers in Patagonia, in the far south of the country. Local farmers object to being forced off their lands, and environmentalists worry that the damming of the rivers will upset delicate ecological balances. They also say that Chile would not need huge expansions of its electrical generating capacity if the huge overuse of power by private industry, especially the mines, were better regulated. Opponents of the dams have gone to court to stop them, as well as protesting.

To these massive protests one may add a long conflict over the treatment of the Mapuche people, the major indigenous group in Chile, and investigations into the real circumstances of the 1973 deaths of President Allende and of communist poet and Nobel Prize winner Pablo Neruda.

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Emile Schepers is a veteran civil and immigrant rights activist. Emile Schepers was born in South Africa and has a doctorate in cultural anthropology from Northwestern University. He has worked as a researcher and activist in urban, working-class communities in Chicago since 1966. He is active in the struggle for immigrant rights, in solidarity with the Cuban Revolution and a number of other issues. He now writes from Northern Virginia.

It is a pity that some groups and individuals are urging palm oil importers in India to refrain from buying the commodity from Malaysia. The Solvent Extractors Association of India, India’s top vegetable oil trade body is one such outfit. Apparently, this boycott is a sort of “punishment” for Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s remarks on Kashmir at the United Nations General Assembly on 27^th September 2019.

The Indian government has reportedly protested against Dr Mahathir’s criticism of Indian action in Kashmir. However so far it has not voiced support for the call to boycott Malaysian palm oil. There are also groups such as the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee that have come out against  the reduction of Malaysian palm oil imports by India because of the possibility of retaliatory measures that could impact adversely upon workers from Tamil Nadu employed in the information technology sector and restaurant business in Malaysia.

This is one of the dangers of trade boycotts and the like in bilateral relations. They escalate quite easily doing irreparable damage to ties that have been cultivated over a long period of time. It is commendable that the two governments have displayed a degree of restraint. Vested interests, political parties and civil society groups in India and Malaysia should also demonstrate their maturity and approach the issue at hand in a balanced manner.

Since both countries are practising democracies, criticisms of certain aspects of the policies and practices of one another should be viewed as integral to their underlying value system. A democracy does not overact to a critical comment about its policy or practice. This is especially so if the state in question is also the world’s largest democracy.

Besides, one should examine the view expressed by Mahathir without any blinkers. Its main thrust was that the longstanding Kashmir conflict should be resolved “by peaceful means.”  UN resolutions on Kashmir should not be disregarded. This is a position that a number of other governments have also expressed from various platforms.

At the crux and core of the UN’s stand on Kashmir is the solemn recognition that the wishes of the people of Jammu and Kashmir should be accorded primacy. This is why right from the outset the UN had urged all sides involved in the conflict to allow for a UN supervised plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir which would decide the destiny of the people of that region. In other words, the people of Jammu and Kashmir should exercise their sacred right of self-determination.

In the early decades, self-determination was understood as the people of Jammu and Kashmir joining either India or Pakistan. In recent years, a new dimension has emerged.  Self-determination in the real sense must also mean the people’s right to establish their own independent, sovereign state of Jammu and Kashmir which is part of neither Pakistan nor India.

Whatever the eventual goal, self-determination as a principle has not only been ignored but often suppressed. Uprisings by the people have been mercilessly crushed, the most infamous of which was the Jammu Massacre of 6^thNovember 1947. It is alleged that Indian occupation forces alongside Dogra forces and RSS militants killed around half a million Kashmiri Muslims. Killings have continued in the last seven decades. It was this that Mahathir alluded to in his UN speech.

It is important to emphasise that these massacres have spawned the rise of militants and militancy in Kashmir. While militancy in Kashmir is largely home-grown and is intimately interwoven with the legitimate struggle for self-determination, it is quite conceivable that it receives material and moral support from elements in the Pakistani power stratum. This support and the militancy itself have now complicated the quest for a just solution to the conflict.

Sometimes political decisions made by New Delhi intensify — perhaps unwittingly — militancy among Kashmiris. The recent revocation of Kashmir’s special status through the abrogation of Article 370 in the Indian Constitution on the 5^th of August 2019 is a case in point.  A portion of Kashmiris will interpret the revocation and all that it implies in terms of ownership of land, the right of settlement and the alteration of ethnic and religious demographics as the wilful annexation of Indian occupied Kashmir into the Indian Union and therefore a clear repudiation of the desire of the Kashmiri people to determine their own future.

It appears that the abrogation of Article 370 will only perpetuate the violence and the bloodshed associated with one of the longest political conflicts in modern times.

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Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is the President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST). he is Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

In December, 1990, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 678, which “authorized” the devastating saturation bombing of Iraq (at one point the UK dropped one bomb per minute on Baghdad, according to the NY Times), which “destroyed the infrastructure necessary to support human life in Iraq,” and, as described by former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who visited Iraq following the UN authorized massacre of Iraqis, left the formerly developed country in such horrific ruins that hospitals had no electricity and surgeons operated by candlelight;  Clark witnessed a 17 year old girl whose leg was so mangled by the bombings that it had to be amputated without anaesthesia, which was no longer available as a result of the bombings.

Though war was abhorrent to Malaysia and Columbia, their acquiescence to the War Resolution 678 was obtained by coercion of their Foreign Ministers by US Secretary of State James Baker; the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse, and lacked the strength to veto the resolution, and China was not yet the world power it became in the next 25 years.  Formerly stable Iraq has become destitute, and the incubator of terrorism.

In March, 2011, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1973 “authorizing” the bombing of Libya, and under Medvedev, the Russian Federation abstained in the voting, and the Resolution passed.  Though Russia claimed it did not anticipate the complete destruction of the Libyan state, which became destitute, and another incubator of terrorism, it is difficult to believe that Russia was so naïve.  China also abstained, allowing the abhorrent resolution to pass. Libya’s leader of a previously fully functioning state, Omar Khadafy, was captured, tortured to death, sodomized with a bayonet

With these “successes” in transforming the UN into an instrument of war, in complete betrayal of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s purpose in founding the UN, and with the West’s success in “legitimizing” the destruction of oil producing states, leaving them barren of protection of their national resources, and ripe for plunder of their natural patrimony, barely four months had passed when suddenly the condition of “human rights” in Syria became the obsession of the UN Security Council, and President Assad was demonized, as formerly Saddam Hussein and Khadafi had been prior to UN “authorized” slaughter.  Once again, the West tried to force another Chapter VII War Resolution through the Security Council, but this time, Russia no longer pretended ignorance of the horrors such a resolution would inflict,  China had seen enough of this now predictable abuse of the Security Council, and during ensuing years through 2013, each time the West tried to force through another war resolution both Russia and China vetoed this, three times in succession, and it became clear that the game was over.  Though Russia and China were, of course, blamed for the Security Council’s “paralysis,” in fact, they saved Syria from the genocidal Chapter VII Resolutions. The trajectory of slaughter, from Iraq to Libya and onward was broken, and Syria and its government were saved from the horrors of Security Council “authorized” massacres.

Nevertheless, by numerous devices, the war in Syria continued until today, as the West tried to obliterate President Assad’s government by all methods of disinformation, propaganda, training and funding and incitement of terrorists from throughout the world, attacking the Syrian government, until, finally both Russia and the United States were drawn directly into the crucible of Syria.  On October 19, 2019 two draft resolutions were put to a vote at the Security Council.  The first, submitted by Belgium, Germany and Kuwait, and opening the door to a follow-up War Resolution under Chapter VII was vetoed by Russia and China, following a brilliant speech by Russian Ambassador Nebenzia, exposing the hypocrisy and ulterior motivation of that draft resolution.  The second draft resolution submitted by Russia and China S/2019/757 was opposed by the US, the UK, France and six other members of the Council, with four abstentions, including Indonesia and South Africa. The UK was particularly defamatory and venal in their accusations against China.  Pathological Russophobia is now a given, throughout the West, in a new McCarthyism, possibly more dangerous than the original one.

Syrian Ambassador Bashar Ja’afari ended the meeting with one of the most powerful statements in memory:

“Once again, we find ourselves in the Security Council, facing a surreal, absurd scene that the three Western Permanent members of the Council keep repeating as they don the mantle of the humanitarian penholders…It is now confirmed that the ink of that pen dries up when it comes to the war crimes and crimes against humanity that were committed and are still being committed by what is called the international coalition, led by the United States and its proxies from terrorist organizations and affiliated illegitimate militias….We also have tens of thousands of documents that we have obtained from terrorist hideouts, documents written by terrorists, containing vast amounts of information demonstrating that certain Gulf parties are complicit in sponsoring terrorism in Syria….Support is being provided to terrorism in Syria and Iraq.  Did Daesh and the Al-Nusra Front, this human garbage, appear out of thin air?  Who sponsored those terrorists and issued them visas?  Who allowed them to move across international capitals?  Who gave $2,500 to each terrorist in order to work as a sniper and kill Syrians?  Who trained them?  How are they being redeployed from Idlib to Nigeria, Algeria, Afghanistan and Yemen?…What we are suffering today will hit others tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. If Council members are negligent about fighting terrorism in Syria, terrorism will beset them all.  Monsters have come to us from Europe, Arab States and Central Asia.  They are human-shaped monsters.  They must be returned to their homes if international humanitarian law is to be enforced.  Let the monsters return to the countries and capitals they came from.  We do not want them.  We have the right to fight them until the very last among them.  It is a matter of sovereignty under international law.”

The West, having failed to get Security Council “authorization” to attack Syria militarily, using “all necessary means, thanks to the sanity and genuine humanitarian concerns of Russia and China, has, for the past half-decade attempted to totally dismember Syria by “all other means,” either directly, or through its proxy, Saudi Arabia, using the most barbarous terrorists, imported, trained and funded indirectly.

This was denounced on yet another Security Council meeting, September 30:

Mr. Seifi Pargou (Islamic Republic of Iran):

“It is very unfortunate that, not just in this meeting but in each and every meeting, the Saudis are trying to divert people’s attention from the realities in our region.  It is a fact that Saudi Arabia is the major problem; it is the main source of instability in our region.  Look at the seminaries from Central Asia to Libya. Who is nourishing them?  Who provides financial assistance to the seminaries who train the takfiri and other extremists who have spread throughout the region and elsewhere, destabilizing them entirely?  I do not want to go into our history with Saudi Arabia, but it is well known that its hostility towards Iran is boundless–$110 billion dollars during the course of the war to kill and maim around 1 million Iranians—or for terrorism in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.  Who provides those terrorists with arms?  They make accusations against us with regard to human rights, inter alia, while their dark human rights record is so well known.  Eleven out of fifteen of the perpetrators of the crimes on 11 September 2001 here in the United States were Saudi Citizens.”

Today the U.S. military is ostensibly leaving Syria.  Turkey is now engaged, and the Kurds may be switching alliance to the Syrian government. It is impossible to predict future developments within a world today convulsed by riots against austerity measures and deteriorating living standards, from Chile to Lebanon, Spain, Egypt, Iraq, India, etc. etc.  On October 21 the Financial Times reported fears of recession and a background outlook of gloom at the IMF and World Bank meetings in Washington.  Is the last crisis of capitalism imminent, or will an army of “Killer Robots” programmed by the financial elites crush global protest against this obscene level of inequality potentially leading to global fascism?

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Carla Stea is Global Research’s correspondent at United Nations Headquarters, New York, N.Y. she is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

Neoliberalism is all about serving privileged interests at the expense of ordinary people, exploiting them so the wealthy and powerful can benefit.

It’s about dominance over democracy, profits over populism, and private interests over the public welfare – a zero-sum game benefitting monied interests over all others, societies made unsafe and unfit to live in for ordinary people.

Adam Smith long ago said governments are “instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor.”

Ruling authorities and business partner for their own self-interest at the expense of the rights and welfare of working class people — notably in the West and its client states.

For the past two weeks, millions of Chileans have been protesting against exploitive neoliberal harshness, inequality, and deep-seated corruption  — in Santiago, the nation’s capital, and elsewhere in the country.

They demand billionaire/fascist president Sebastian Pinera’s resignation, new ruling authorities replacing him and his cronies, better wages, education, healthcare, and pension reforms, along with a new constitution, stressing equity and justice for all Chileans.

After declaring a state of emergency on October 18, a greater Santiago area curfew a day later, Pinera deployed military forces to the streets for the first time since Pinochet’s fascist rule replaced Salvador Allende’s social democracy.

Pinochet’s 17-year reign of terror (1973-1990) included mass arrests, disappearances, torture and murder. Opposition government officials, academics, union heads, independent journalists, student leaders, activists, and other suspected regime opponents were targeted for elimination.

On 9/11/73, tanks, troops and warplanes attacked government buildings, Pinochet elevated to power with CIA help.

Blood in the streets, the presidential palace in flames, and Allende’s elimination ended the most vibrant democracy in the Americas.

A state of siege and “caravan of death” followed. Chicago School fundamentalism triumphed, its brave new world forcefully imposed on Chileans, nonbelievers targeted for elimination.

Neoliberal harshness followed, including mass privatizations, deregulation, deep social spending cuts, corporate tax breaks, trade union crackdowns, and fascist tyranny replacing Chile’s model social democracy.

In Pinochet’s first year in office, inflation hit 375%, thousands lost jobs, US and other Western imports forced closure of local businesses. Hunger, homelessness, poverty, and deprivation replaced equity and justice for all.

Pinochet’s Chile featured repression and unfairness. Unfettered capitalism replaced social safety net protections.

By the late 1980s, nearly half of Chilean households were impoverished. Privileged elites benefitted hugely.

Inequality remains extreme today. Chile is one of Latin America’s most unequal societies. Longstanding policies shifted wealth to its privileged class at the expense of its ordinary people.

Predatory capitalism creates wastelands. Chile remains a model of economic unfairness, its working class exploited so its ruling class and monied interests can benefit.

Promises made by ruling authorities to cool mass outrage are hollow, largely ignored and forgotten when calm is restored.

From the other 9/11 in 1973 to today, ordinary Chileans have been exploited to benefit its privileged class and the West.

Since protests began, Pinera declared war on long-suffering Chileans, wanting equity and justice they’re denied.

They want governance serving everyone, not just the privileged few. Chilean inequality created a wasteland for its working class, the way its been for decades.

Pinochet is gone. His ghost remains. Sebastian Pinera was a firm supporter of the Pinochet regime. Chileans want it exorcised – similar protests for social justice ongoing in France, Haiti, Lebanon, Iraq, Algeria, Gaza, and elsewhere. They can erupt wherever injustice exists.

Notably in Chile and Lebanon, millions are involved against decades of social injustice, controlling the streets, going on strike, engaging in disruptive civil disobedience.

They’re undeterred by police state tactics, staying the course, demanding long denied equity and justice.

In response, Pinera arrogantly declared: “We are in a war against a powerful enemy…one that does not respect anything and is willing to use violence and delinquency without limits.”

Dominant local and Western media echo his false narrative, supporting privileged interests over the rights and welfare of long-exploited Chileans.

Reportedly on Saturday, Pinera asked his ministers to resign. The military ended days of curfew.

According to Reuters, a document it obtained “suggested Pinera was considering replacing the heads of at least nine ministries, including the ministries of interior, defense, economy, transportation and environment.”

Chileans was him and all ruling authorities gone, a clean sweep for change.

The struggle for the nation’s soul continues, what’s needed throughout the hemisphere, the West, and elsewhere.

Positive change never comes top down, always bottom up, popular revolution the only way to achieve it.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The Opening Scene

The 14^th September 2019 attack which had caused significant damage to Saudi based Aramco Oil plants in Abqaiq and Khurais, was the trigger for much of the recent rise in regional tension  at least when it comes to Saudi- Iran relations.

However, given the way that recent events have unfolded, it seems that a commitment to a comprehensive and fair investigation is not exactly on the agenda.

If anything, there seems to be a more concerted effort in doubling down on a narrative that Iran is responsible for the attack despite the mind-boggling irrationality of why Iran would commit such an aggressive action where it stands to gain almost nothing from it.

Iran doesn’t need to worry about competing with Saudi Arabia over oil markets given the ridiculously draconian economic sanctions placed upon it by the U.S. To attack Saudi Arabia in such an open fashion would only result in loss of global political standing while risking retaliation and antagonism which opens up more avenues for potential conflict which Iran, given its historical experience dealing with the global hegemonic warmongering engine that is the U.S, does not want to risk entering.

In short from a geo-political strategic standpoint, Iran doesn’t benefit at all, from such a move.

So why would it commit such a bold and brazen attack?

Mystery and Misdirection

Nonetheless, various officials from the United States of America, almost without hesitation have jumped into a murky pool of unsubstantiated conjectures while hyping up the sensationalized fictional bogeyman of Iran. Their primary motivation is nothing more than their own antagonistic foreign policy stance and agenda against the Iranian state.

Even when Yemen’s Houthi rebels’ armed forces, claimed responsibility for the attack, as payback for Saudi Arabia’s continuous aggression towards the Yemeni people (which is completely backed and supported by the US government) their claim was dismissed with the argument that the 10 unmanned drone operation of 14^th September was something far beyond the capabilities of the Yemeni people.  The attack, US officials and others alleged, was far more effective and too “neat” compared to previous attempts by the rebels and “likely originated from Iraq”.[1]

It should also be mentioned that this attack is also a significant embarrassment for the Saudis and the U.S. as the Saudi government had spent a significant amount to purchase the U.S. air defence system which had failed to defend their oil installations

Analysis of the drone parts however, revealed some interesting factors, namely that the drone parts developed was beyond the technological capability of both Yemen and Iran. Historically speaking, Iran’s missile arsenal, while formidable in its own right, has long been plagued by poor reliability and guidance problems. This fact alone would debunk the Saudi narrative.  The logistical and technological assets are just not in the capabilities of the Iranians at this time.

The missiles on the other hand which were shown through pictures supplied by the Saudi Defence Ministry itself had indicated through the number MC 79050 a Joint Electronics Type Designation System (JETDS). This particular missile type is one of many developed by the Counter Electronics High Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP), all of which were confirmed by the Saudis to have been fired from the Iraq-Kuwait border. The missiles themselves were speculated to have been supplied from Ukraine. Some have even gone on to suggest that it may have been the work of rogue U.S. elements [2]

However with the Saudis bullishly pushing through this narrative, it becomes clearer, that the agenda here is to implicate Iran as the instigator, wilfully ignoring the lack of evidence and the lack of plausible motive while simultaneously not giving credence to the plight faced by the Yemeni people.

Even when China’s own Xi Jinping, expressing concern over the issue as the attack had caused quite a stir within the International energy market, called for a comprehensive and just investigation into the incident[3]  — a fairly standard and sensible approach to calming the tensions between the Saudis and the Iranian state for the sake of international energy security — China was rewarded with new rounds of American sanctions against it for dealing with Iran on oil.

Considering all these factors, one begins to wonder about a few things.

Firstly why is there such an insistence that Iran be painted as the criminal in this story despite the poor foundation of the accusations?

Second, as we have shown, Iran does not stand to benefit from this event, which is why the question has to be asked: who benefits the most from this whole debacle?

The answers are found among the role-players themselves who are now in a situation that can only be called grand geo-political theatrics with the protagonists being the U.S. and its allies, Saudi Arabia the hapless victim, and Iran, the proverbial bad guy.

Heroes, Villains and Victims

Saudi Arabia has called for retaliation against the Iranian state and has played its role as a victim of aggression. Saudi Arabia play-acting is what is perhaps best described as bad comedy and to many who have followed the issue, the irony is not lost. Since 2015, the Saudis have been massacring the civilian population of Yemen. According to data collected by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, 67 percent of all reported civilian casualties in Yemen have been caused by Saudi-led coalition air strikes making them the “most responsible for civilian deaths” in Yemen since 2015. The current death toll now exceeds over 90,000 with many more suffering from treatable diseases in the midst of crumbling social infrastructure due to the on-going hostilities by the Saudis.[4]

The leading role of the hero will most likely be the U.S. and its allies who not only perpetuate the narrative against Iran but also, as we have noted, militarily support the brutal war against the Yemeni people, one of the poorest people on earth. Apart from supplying arms to the unpopular Yemeni government, the US is also helping to enforce a naval blockade. A recent article by Amnesty International observes that a laser guided bomb manufactured by US company Raytheon, was used in a Saudi-led attack which killed six Yemeni civilians, three of whom were children.[5] In addition to this mess, the United Kingdom government has come out saying that it “unreservedly” apologised for authorising arms deals to Saudi Arabia in breach of a court ruling against the sale of weapons that could be used in the war in Yemen.[6]

With the U.S. and the Saudi state fanning the flames, one should also ask: what would be their motive for perpetuating and escalating conflict in the region?

Some have laid the blame directly at the U.S. administration and President Donald Trump, accusing the president of going back on his election promise to end US involvement in military conflicts in West Asia.

But is that true?

Trump, despite many other failings, has shown considerable restraint by rejecting demands to launch major attacks on Iran. If his previous actions are any indication of what his stance on conflict escalation is, notably on wanting to draw down forces from Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria (his decision to pull out of Syria resulted in the resignation of his then Secretary of Defense James “Mad Dog” Mattis), Trump is more inclined to avoid getting caught in another costly war.  He would rather strike a deal with his foe.

One simply has to recall during the previous Presidential Election Campaign when Trump adamantly labelled the entire Middle East Wars as “stupid” and given that he is aiming to contest for the U.S. Presidential election next year, it makes little to no sense to commit American lives to another senseless war. It also goes without saying that should the US involve itself in a military operation against Iran, it will only expose its forces in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan Somalia and other places in the region to hostilities and possible Iranian guerrilla attacks[7].

So while it may be an admittedly contestable conjecture at this point, if we entertain the idea that this whole scenario was a false flag operation (something the U.S. has been historically known to do to attack sovereign foreign governments), it stands to reason it is not Trump’s administration that is directly coordinating these events in recent weeks and in fact there may be those within the U.S. government that seek to oppose the President on his own foreign policy stance.

The murky swamp that is the deep state of the U.S. largely controlled by the neocons, has always been the lever  of power within the U.S. administration and many in it have served to advance the Zionist project of the Israeli State. Exemplifying this is perhaps people like prolific warmonger John Bolton, who unlike Trump, seeks very much to enter into military conflict with Iran. He was quoted in 2017 by the Mujahedeen Khalq, MEK, which is represented by members of the Iranian exile group, as saying that the Trump Administration should embrace their goal of “regime change” in Iran and that before 2019, they will “celebrate in Tehran”.

Lest we forget, it was John Bolton, who vigorously campaigned against Tehran, and he was the one who ultimately demolished the hard and long struggle for the Iran Nuclear deal, tearing it to pieces and causing further rifts between Iran and the U.S. and essentially damaging U.S. foreign policy for the Trump Administration.

Bolton succeeded to some extent but in early September 2019, he was asked by President Donald Trump to resign as the National Security Advisor, noting that he “strongly disagrees” with many of Bolton’s suggestions “as did others in the administration”[8].

Perhaps it is coincidental, but one cannot help but draw a connection between Bolton’s resignation, and the Saudi oil plant attack as it had occurred soon afterwards.

With all that was mentioned previously, it would seem that the U.S. and Donald Trump’s Administration would benefit very little from this event and may face more backlash from it. Why then does the U.S. insist on pushing this poorly structured narrative of Iran’s involvement in the September 14 attack?

Does Bolton and his neo-con friends in the deep state have anything to do with this attack, and if so why and what would they have to gain?

Perhaps at this stage we must look beyond the theatrical show being presented to us and have a peek behind the proverbial red curtain and follow the puppet strings that are being pulled.

Hidden Hands Behind the Curtain

President Donald Trump’s call for John Bolton’s resignation via twitter had sent some shockwaves within the bureaucracy of the U.S. Administration, especially with Trump now having gone through a total of three National Security Advisers, H.R. McMaster, Michael Flynn and now Bolton.

Bolton’s dismissal brings us back to the question of who stands to gain?

To encapsulate, there is no credible evidence to suggest Iranian involvement. The Trump Administration gains almost nothing from the attack. So who stands to benefit from it?

One suspect is the Saudi elite with its prolonged proxy war against the state of Iran, more commonly known as the Iran-Saudi proxy conflict. The Saudi elite sees itself as a regional power. It views Iran as a direct challenge to that ambition.  This conflict is primarily political and economic in practice, but there have been attempts to exacerbate religious tensions especially between the Sunni and Shia sects within the Muslim Ummah.  This has repercussions beyond West Asia. Its impact upon Malaysia is an example. Influential Saudi trained preachers continue to demonize and vilify Shia groups and religious practices. Though there is hardly an indigenous Shia community in Malaysia, this vilification obviously serves the larger Saudi agenda of marginalising Shias and Iran.

However if we do not wish to entertain the idea that Saudi Arabia is willing blow up its own oil infrastructure to begin a false flag  operation to justify military action against Iran, then we have to abandon “the  Saudis did it theory”. Besides, the attack as we have acknowledged was a sophisticated technological exercise beyond Saudi capabilities. Even a false flag operation would play into the hands of the local Shia population that inhabits that particular geographical area in Saudi Arabia and for that reason would undermine the interests of the Sunni helmed Saudi state.

This leaves us with one other country that fits the proverbial bill and perhaps stands to gain the most from the deliberate targeting of Iran. It is the Zionist state of Israel.

Israel’s link to the lobbyist movement in America, its relationship with the neo-cons and its close historical ties with the deep state are all embodied in its intimate tie with John Bolton.

The Israeli government, in particular Benjamin Netanyahu, had hoped that by working through Bolton, there would be a more vigorous US policy against Iran, especially as mentioned before, Bolton clearly had been campaigning for maximum pressure against Iran, with him calling for more sanctions and the cancellation of the Iran Nuclear Deal as soon as he became National Security Adviser in April 2018.

All for the state of Israel.

Upon John Bolton’s dismissal from the Trump government, there were definitely segments in the Israeli Administration that were left uneasy by his departure. As a case in point, Amos Yadlin, the head of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv stated that “There’s no doubt that there’s sadness in Jerusalem” as John Bolton had “greatly amplified the Prime Minister’s position [on the issue]. But even with Bolton, Washington’s Iran Policy wasn’t heading in a direction that Netanyahu wanted.” [9]

Much like how the attacks at the Saudi Oil Plant happened a few days after Bolton’s dismissal, it is also coincidental that the attack had occurred around the same time as Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to annex more Palestinian land, especially Palestine’s Jordan Valley.

The biggest fear for Israel, is that if the Trump Administration, suddenly favours détente with Iran, Israel may have to stand alone against Iran, something it has never had to do being backed by US   Administrations all along.

So perhaps this whole incident may have been a response to that. Escalation of military tensions, justifying military aggression towards Iran, will not benefit Saudi Arabia and the U.S. but it will benefit Israel’s agenda centring around its perpetual quest for continuous land annexation, expansion of  power and enhanced control over the region. The one country that seeks to counter this parasitic drive for power and control is Iran. Iran’s presence in the region balances Israel’s and the U.S’s . hegemonic expansionism and quest for total dominance. Because the Iranian people have suffered so much from decades old US sanctions and Israeli manipulations, they are determined to protect their sovereignty, independence and dignity at all costs.

Seen from this perspective, the Saudi oil attack may have been an Israeli ploy to draw the US and the Saudi government into a more serious conflict with Iran. It is a misstep because the ploy has not worked. Both the US and the Saudis are very much aware of the dangers of a military conflict with Iran.

In fact, the whole 14^th September episode reveals how complex the geopolitical game in West Asia is. We don’t know how the game will end. We only hope that the theatrics that we have witnessed so far will not culminate in a huge tragedy for the people of West Asia and indeed for the entire human family

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Hassanal Noor Rashid is JUST Programme Coordinator, Kuala Lumpur

Notes

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/14/middleeast/yemen-houthi-rebels-drone-attacks-saudi-aramco-intl/index.html

[2] Eric Margolis Eric Margolis (2019), Who launched that Mystery Attack, 24 September 2019

[3] Xinhua (2019) Xi Condemns Saudi Oil Strike

[4] Matthias Sulz (2019) Political Violence &Protes Events, Yemen, January 2015-June 2019, https://www.acleddata.com/2019/06/18/yemen-snapshots-2015-2019/

[5] Amnesty International (2019) https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190926-amnesty-us-arms-used-to-kill-civilians-in-yemen/

[6] Middle East Eye (2019) UK apologises for Saudi arms sales in breach of court ruling, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uk-government-apologizes-inadvertent-arms-sales-saudi-arabia-breach-court-ruling

[7] Eric Margolis (2019), Who launched that Mystery Attack, 24 September 2019

[8] Zachary Cohen, Kaitlan Collins and Kevin Piptak (2019) Trump Fires John Bolton,  https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/10/politics/trump-john-bolton-out/index.html

[9] Neri Zelber (2019), What Bolton’s Departure Means for Israel, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/09/12/what-john-bolton-departure-means-for-israel-netanyahu-iran-trump/

A popular anecdote is currently doing the rounds on Twitter:

“The year is 2192. The British Prime Minister visits Brussels to ask for an extension of the Brexit deadline.  No one remembers where this tradition originated, but every year it attracts many tourists from all over the world.”

It may be a joke, but it expresses something of the helplessness of the current Brexit gridlock, which has no end in sight. With Parliament passing a motion to delay the vote on Boris Johnson’s recently negotiated Brexit deal to allow proper scrutiny and debate, and the EU considering whether or not to grant an extension to the negotiation period, we seem no closer to a Brexit date than we were three years ago.

The EU looks set to grant a further extension to the negotiation period, as Boris Johnson was forced by parliament to write a letter asking for a further delay last week. It’s not clear however how long for, although at the moment the likelihood is it will be till the end of January, according to European Council President Donald Tusk. Tusk is reported to have phoned the leaders of the 27 member states this week to ask their thoughts on giving a further extension and also to establish whether they would be happy ratifying such an extension without coming to Brussels (as is normally required). So far, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar has endorsed Tusk’s proposal, with doubts only being expressed about view of France’s President Macron, who in the past has indicated he would not support a further extension. In any case it seems that critical to the EU’s decision will be whether or not the UK government can explain a reason for delaying Brexit further, and given the fact that Johnson himself does not want an extension, it’s not clear whether such information will be provided to the EU.

We’re somehow getting used now to the dual narrative coming out Number 10; for months the Prime Minister has said he wanted a Brexit deal with the EU, but all other indications suggested he was holding out for a No Deal Brexit on 31st October. Even as recently as Wednesday, despite having negotiated a deal with the EU, and likely to be gifted an extension, he stated that he still wanted the UK to leave the EU on 31st October. However Johnson has now been forced to abandon this idea once and for all; writing to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on Thursday night to say he would give parliament one last opportunity to examine his withdrawal agreement bill and ‘get Brexit done’ by 6th November. In exchange for this he is tabling a motion under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act for Monday which will ask for a general election. Such a motion requires the backing of two-thirds of MPs – 434 altogether.

In his letter to Corbyn, the PM wrote: ‘An election on 12th December will allow a new parliament and government to be in place by Christmas. If I win a majority in this election, we will then ratify the great new deal that I have negotiated, get Brexit done in January and the country will move on’. However, although he may get the support of the Scottish Nationalists for this, both the Labour opposition and Liberal Democrats have indicated they will not support such an election until the EU has given its verdict on an extension. But Labour have said they won’t make any final decision till the EU have said whether they will grant an extension and it’s been reported Labour MPs have been instructed either to abstain from Monday’s general election vote or vote against it.

As yet, the EU have not announced their verdict on granting an extension, and there is no evidence that they will be speedy in delivering their response. According to The Guardian, sources said the French government wants to see the outcome of Monday’s vote before deciding whether to allow a further delay, reportedly because they don’t want to be seen to influence UK politics. On Friday it was reported that Michel Barnier said they would grant an extension, but so far the EU has not confirmed how long for. It has to be said the organisation has been extremely long-suffering in what has been 3 years of stalemate and fruitless talks. Nevertheless, it’s clear that patience is running thin with the UK’s indecisiveness. Last week, President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker said Brexit was a ‘waste of time and energy’ as he expressed regret for how much time he had spent on it. Such Brexit fatigue will only play into Boris Johnson’s hands as we head towards a general election…

There are also a number of falsehoods being spun at present which muddy the waters even further. Boris Johnson has repeatedly said his withdrawal deal has been ‘passed by parliament’ when in fact it hasn’t – it’s only just passed its second reading. This is not the first time Johnson has been creative with the truth since he came to office, and while his motivation may be to boost the government’s position, it has the effect of sowing further mistrust in the Prime Minister and his cabinet. However, Labour MPs are also not blameless, as they continue to repeat that they will not vote for a general election till ‘No Deal’ is taken off the table. Indeed they must know that in order for No Deal to be ruled out, a general election would have to be called.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Johanna Ross is a journalist.

In this post, I make a preliminary attempt at assessing the provision made in the EU (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill – or WAB – for the scrutiny of the legislative powers which it delegates to the executive.  My conclusions are not positive.  The scrutiny procedures it seeks to enact are inadequate – so inadequate that it would be a constitutional mistake for Parliament to approve this aspect of the WAB without significant amendment.  At the very least (or so I suggest) the Bill ought to be amended to incorporate the so-called “sifting process” developed for equivalent delegated powers under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (EUWA).  Better still, this should be seen as an opportunity to embrace further incremental improvements on that process.

The scrutiny provisions in the WAB are comparable to – indeed they are partly modelled on – the arrangements initially proposed for delegated legislation under EUWA as originally published.  But in that original form, those proposals did not survive parliamentary scrutiny.  They were widely condemned as an inappropriate transfer of power to the executive, emphatically criticised by multiple parliamentary committee inquiries, and ultimately amended.  In other words, the scrutiny arrangements in WAB are an attempt to revisit an approach to scrutinising delegated legislation which Parliament has already recently rejected and amended.   Enacting them would be a regrettable step backwards in terms of scrutiny of executive legislative activity, and would contradict the considered Parliamentary verdict on this issue elaborated during the passage of the 2018 Act.

At the time of writing, the government’s first programme motion – which proposed an extremely compressed timetable for scrutiny of the Bill – has been rejected by the House of Commons.  But it remains government policy to pursue an extremely fast passage through Parliament for the WAB, certainly fast enough to inhibit thorough scrutiny of its proposals.  With that accelerated context in mind, this post is not comprehensive – I generalise a little, I omit discussion of some important delegations and some nuances, I necessarily speculate on the full substantive importance of some clauses, and I have undoubtedly missed things (particularly but not exclusively connections between various aspects of the overall scheme in the Bill).

Still, the structure of the key elements of the Bill’s approach to delegated legislation is relatively clear.  Alongside many discrete delegations (which I do not discuss here) two significant bundles of delegations can be discerned.  All of the powers in each of these two bundles are “Henry VIII” powers – i.e. they extend to the amendment of primary legislation.  And moreover (because they each rely on the definition of “enactment” in clause 37) all are prospective Henry VIII clauses.  That is, these two main bundles of delegated powers in the WAB both empower the executive to amend primary legislation, including primary legislation passed after the passage of the WAB itself.

The first group, which I will call the Implementation Powers, consists of provisions concerning the domestic regulation of the Implementation Period.  These take the form of insertions by the WAB into EUWA (in particular new sections 8A, 8B and 8C, which themselves take effect alongside and can be used to moderate the application of new sections 7A and 7B).  Now, the substantive scope of the first two of these powers is not necessarily clear on the face of the Act.  Section 8A would empower the executive to modify how provisions of EU law (saved from the repeal of the ECA by section 1A) are read in domestic law. And Section 8B empowers the executive to implement Part 3 of the Withdrawal Agreement, that is the “Separation Provisions” concerning the winding down of the application of EU law in the domestic legal order and the disentanglement at the end of the implantation period, including the regulation of the continued circulation of goods placed on the market before separation, ongoing customs procedures, taxation, intellectual property and police cooperation.  It is hard to confidently anticipate the possible uses of this kind of power.   This substantive opacity of these delegations is comparable to the similar characteristic of EUWA s8.  And as the use of s8 for a remarkably broad range of policy interventions has demonstrated, this kind of substantively opaque delegation has the potential for staggering scope (for discussion and examples, see here and here).  It would be unwise to assume that these powers are tightly constrained by the Treaty they are designed to implement and sensible to anticipate that as the substantive scope of s8A and s8B emerges, they will have the potential to be used in similar ways, and with similar range, to the s8 power.   On the other hand, Section 8C is a remarkable clause whose substantive potential is plain on its face – it delegates to the executive essentially full authority over the implementation of the Northern Ireland Protocol. Proper scrutiny of that task – which has been at the heart of negotiations throughout, and whose resolution remains delicate – is fundamental to the legitimacy of the withdrawal process.

The scrutiny requirements for the exercise of these Implementation Powers are – consistent with the existing logic of the EUWA – inserted into Schedule 7 of that Act.  Schedule 7’s existing provisions famously (following the amendments secured in Parliament during that Act’s passage) include the “sifting mechanism” through which dedicated committees (in each House) can recommend that some statutory instruments which would otherwise be subject only to negative procedures be upgraded to affirmative procedures.  Whilst those recommendations are not binding, they have generally been followed by the government.  And the institutionalisation of that process has resulted in the development of a parliamentary practice of case-by-case reflection on the appropriate scrutiny level for different instances of delegated legislation and an increasingly sensitive engagement with the underlying question of what kinds of delegated legislation ought to be subject to what kinds of scrutiny.  Unfortunately, the WAB’s insertion into Schedule 7 of scrutiny requirements for the Implementation Powers does not tie into this sifting mechanism.  Instead, it simply repeats precisely the approach which Parliament had previously judged inadequate.  The scrutiny requirements for each of ss8A, 8B and 8C are organised around the simple formulaic presumption (which appears again and again, not just here but throughout the WAB) that instruments be subject to negative procedures unless they amend primary legislation (or, roughly equivalent, what is known in the withdrawal scheme as “principal EU legislation”).  That is, the use of these powers as Henry VIII powers is the primary trigger for affirmative parliamentary scrutiny.  But this is a problematic presumption – the use of delegated powers to amend primary legislation is, of course, an important activity which needs proper scrutiny.  But the prominence of this presumption risks masking the – often equally significant – uses to which delegated legislation can be put without altering primary legislation.  Some other specific substantive uses of these powers do also trigger affirmative scrutiny – in particular, 8C (the NI protocol implementation power) cannot be used to reform public authorities, impose fees, create new criminal offences, create legislative powers, or modify market access rules without parliamentary approval.  But the bulk of legislative activity under these clauses will, under the scheme as published, be subject only to negative procedures in Parliament. In summary: 8A, 8B, and 8C empower the executive to legislate with significant scope in important policy areas, and a substantial proportion of exercises of those power – certainly much higher than under comparable delegations in the EUWA – will not be subject to affirmative scrutiny in Parliament and cannot be upgraded to undergo such scrutiny.

The second significant group of delegated powers, which I will call the Citizens’ Rights powers, are created in WAB clauses 7-14.  They empower the executive to implement the whole range of provisions in the Withdrawal Agreement for citizens’ rights including residence, entry, frontier workers, recognition of professional qualifications, social security coordination, discrimination and employment rights, and the creation and administration of appeals or review mechanisms against some decisions taken in those contexts.  In contrast to the Implementation Powers, this bundle is far from opaque.  The substantive significance of this delegation of legislative power is plain to see; it covers essentially the entirety of one of the broadest, most sensitive and most important policy areas in the withdrawal process.  And, again, whilst they are undoubtedly subject to some constraints in that they are limited to the implementation of the Withdrawal Agreement, they clearly empower extensive intervention by the government.

The scrutiny requirements for these Citizens’ Rights powers are set out in WAB Schedule 6.  They follow the same formulaic pattern that we saw applied to the Implementation Powers above:  the starting point is that their use as Henry VIII powers is subject to affirmative scrutiny.  The first uses of each of the cl.7-9 powers (which need not be far-reaching) are also subject to affirmative scrutiny.  But other and subsequent exercises of these powers (which certainly could be far-reaching) will be subject only to negative scrutiny, again with no provision made for any mechanism to upgrade the scrutiny given to negative instruments.

The WAB’s provisions for the scrutiny of delegated legislative power are, then, consistently arranged around an inadequate formulaic approach, which guards mainly against the abuse of delegated powers as Henry VIII clauses, but (due to the limitations of the prevailing negative procedures) leaves most other exercises of these powers essentially unscrutinised.  Furthermore, the combination of formulaic criteria with the absence of a sifting mechanism means that the allocation of scrutiny mechanisms to these powers is wholly inflexible – no provision is made to enable the upgrading to affirmative procedures of significant exercises of the delegated powers which would otherwise be subject only to annulment; and it would in effect require subsequent primary legislation to introduce any such flexibility into the scheme.  The range of policy areas to be subjected to this inflexible and inadequate framework – and thus left to the executive shielded from effective Parliamentary scrutiny – is extremely broad. On its face, it encompasses two of the most significant policy arenas of the whole withdrawal process, the Northern Ireland protocol and Citizens’ Rights.  And the Implementation Powers will undoubtedly be used to legislate in other important policy areas.

What amendments ought to be made is, however, an awkward problem given that time pressures are suppressing the usual institutional mechanisms for exploring this kind of problem and carefully proposing alternative approaches.  In normal circumstances (and using the passage of EUWA as a guide) this issue would be tackled, drawing on a wide range of expertise, by multiple parliamentary committees, likely including (in the House of Commons) the Procedure Committee and (in the House of Lords) the Constitution Committee and the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee.  And the committees involved in the sifting process under EUWA – the European Statutory Instruments Committee and the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee in the Commons and Lords respectively – might also take the opportunity to share their experiences with that scheme. The probable bypassing of this aspect of the normal legislative process on the WAB is a startling illustration of the scrutiny gap between this Bill and more typically timetabled legislation.

On the substance, the starting point for amendments on this issue must be an acknowledgement that under-scrutiny of delegated legislation is a standing problem in the UK constitution.  Accordingly, statutes delegating significant substantive powers to legislate (like the WAB, but also more generally) should incrementally innovate in order to improve the situation.  Yet as published, the WAB proposes a step backwards.  And even the sifting process in EUWA represented only modest progress.  On the one hand, section 8 instruments are among the best scrutinised in the UK constitution.  But on the other hand, experience has shown that there are still important (but in principle avoidable) limitations on the effectiveness of even that scrutiny process:  far-reaching policy changes are still subject to little or no proper scrutiny even under the sifting mechanism.  So at the very least, WAB should maintain the standards set in EUWA:  the provisions on scrutiny of the Implementation Powers and the Citizen’s Rights powers should be amended in order to bring legislation made under those powers into the regime of the sifting mechanism.  On further examination, this is likely also to be the case for other powers which I have not covered here.  Ideally, amendments would go further still, in the light of the experience of that sifting mechanism. In particular, consideration should be given to making the recommendations of the sifting committees binding (or perhaps, at the very least, more difficult to circumvent) and to ways of enabling them to prompt better informed and more far-reaching debate (where appropriate) on the floor of the House.

The scale of the withdrawal process makes large scale delegation inevitable; its very nature entails a shift of authority towards the executive.  This issue needs careful management – yet the approach to scrutiny taken in the WAB is wholly unsatisfactory.  It was rejected by Parliament last time it was proposed.  It should be rejected again in favour of more intrusive scrutiny techniques.

I am grateful to Mike Gordon, Alexandra Sinclair and Joe Tomlinson who generously commented on earlier drafts of this post at – obviously – very short notice.

Adam Tucker, University of Liverpool

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The Western media is reporting that US military forces have killed the supposed leader of the so-called “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” (ISIS) in Syria’s northern governorate of Idlib.

Newsweek in its article, “Trump Approves Special Ops Raid Targeting ISIS Leader Baghdadi, Military Says He’s Dead,” claimed:

The United States military has conducted a special operations raid targeting one of its most high-value targets, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State militant group (ISIS), Newsweek has learned. President Donald Trump approved the mission nearly a week before it took place. 

The article also claimed:

Amid reports Saturday of U.S. military helicopters over Syria’s northwestern Idlib province, a senior Pentagon official familiar with the operation and Army official briefed on the matter told Newsweek that Baghdadi was the target of the top-secret operation in the last bastion of the country’s Islamist-dominated opposition, a faction that has clashed with ISIS in recent years.

Newsweek would include “details” of the supposed raid worthy of a Hollywood action movie finale, claiming:

The senior Pentagon official said there was a brief firefight when U.S. forces entered the compound and that Baghdadi then killed himself by detonating a suicide vest. Family members were present. According to Pentagon sources, no children were harmed in the raid but two Baghdadi wives were killed, possibly by the vest detonation.

As with most every claim the Western media or the US military makes without any sort of evidence, this most recent story cannot or shouldn’t be trusted, especially when there’s little to nothing that can be verified about it.

Timing is Everything 

The supposed military operation – unfolding just miles from the Syrian-Turkish border – comes at a time when the prospects of America’s proxy war in Syria have reached all time lows.

First – US proxy forces jointly armed and aided by Turkey as well as other US allies – have been all but eliminated from the battlefield with their remnants residing in Idlib, increasingly encircled by Syrian forces.

Attempts by the US to intervene in Syria directly to oversee the overthrow of the government in Damascus was also thwarted by Russia’s military intervention beginning in 2015.

US forces have most recently retreated from the Syrian-Turkish border in Syria’s northeast, setting the stage for a joint Russian-Turkish agreement that appears poised to see the disarmament of Kurdish militants or their possible integration into Syria’s security forces. The deal also aims at fully restoring Syria’s territorial integrity – fully derailing Washington’s secondary plans to “Balkanize” Syria.

The Russian-Turkish deal comes at a time when US-Turkish relations are particularly shaky, with Ankara realigning itself within a Middle East emerging out from under decades of US hegemony.

Despite alleged ISIS leader al Baghdadi lurking about Syria and Iraq throughout the duration of Syria’s war – why has the US with all its vast resources only now been able to “find” and “eliminate” him? The timing and location couldn’t have been better for the US if the entire incident was staged.

And regardless of whether the US staged the operation or not – the truth about who truly created and directed ISIS throughout the duration of the Syrian war – resigns al Baghdadi’s death ultimately as theater.

The US Created ISIS to Begin With… 

The US has admittedly spent billions of dollars arming militants throughout the duration of the Syrian war.

Articles like Foreign Policy’s, “The Pentagon Is Spending $2 Billion Running Soviet-Era Guns to Syrian Rebels,” or the New York Times,’ “C.I.A. Arms for Syrian Rebels Supplied Black Market, Officials Say,” in headlines alone indicate the extensive nature of US efforts to arm militants fighting against the Syrian government from 2011 onward.

If the US and its allies were providing billions in weapons, equipment, and other forms of support to militants claimed to be “moderates,” who was providing even more weapons, equipment, and other forms of support allowing extremist organizations like ISIS to rise to prominence and even supposedly displace or lure over US-backed militants?

The answer is simple – the US – as it has in all of its other wars of aggression – simply lied. There were never any “moderate” militants. The US deliberately misled the public about the nature of its proxy war in Syria. From the beginning – in fact long before the beginning of the Syrian war – the US was knowingly funneling aid into the hands of extremists with ties to groups like Al Qaeda and its various affiliates.

Far from mere speculation, it was the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) itself in a 2012 leaked memo that admitted, “the West, Gulf monarchies, and Turkey” were behind the rise of a what at the time was being called a “Salafist principality.”

The leaked 2012 report states (emphasis added):

If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).

To clarify precisely who these “supporting powers” were that sought the creation of a “Salafist” (Islamic) principality” (State), the DIA report explains:

The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime.

In other words, the US, its European allies, and its closest allies in the Middle East, sought the rise of a “Salafist” (Islamic) “principality” (State) in eastern Syria, precisely where ISIS eventually manifested itself.

Stories like USA Today’s “The U.S. bought weapons for Syrian rebels — and some wound up in the hands of ISIS terrorists,” sought to incrementally spin how ISIS suddenly found itself awash with weapons and in a dominate position among Syria’s “opposition” alongside other Al Qaeda affiliates like Al Nusra.

In reality – as journalist like Seymour Hersh warned as early as 2007 in the pages of the New Yorker – US plans from the beginning centered around the arming and unleashing of extremists against Syria and its allies.

What is the Meaning of the Baghdadi Raid? 

Thus – at best – a US military operation eliminating the figurehead of ISIS is more akin to liquating one’s own assets rather than any sort of “victory.” Much more likely still – is that the operation is mere theater – with the US seeking relevance and leverage amid the conflict it itself engineered, triggered, and deliberately perpetuated – but now finds itself being evicted from.

While the world waits for evidence – if any evidence even emerges – analysts and interested parties alike would benefit more from looking at how the US plans to leverage and move onward from this supposed “raid” rather than obsessing over the supposed details of it.

One may hope the US uses it as a spectacular finale before fully withdrawing from Syria – including from its oilfields – and allowing the nation and its people to finally and fully restore order while undertaking the long process of reconstruction.

The proximity to Turkey’s border and recent rhetoric coming out of Washington suggests it may be leveraged to prolong the conflict further.

One may also hope diplomatic efforts by Syria’s allies are underway to coax Washington toward adopting the former option instead of the latter.

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Tony Cartalucci is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the alleged leader of ISIS is dead.

President Trump confirmed that he was under surveillance and that he had ordered his execution.

“He died like a dog, he died like a coward,”

The President said he watched the operation from the Situation Room but would not give more details of what type of feed it was.

Who is Al Baghdadi, leader of the ISIS? Was he an asset of Western intelligence?

Relevant article first published by GR on December 28, 2015.

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The visit took place on May 27, 2013.

According to news reports:

Arizona Senator McCain crossed into Syria form Turkey with General Salem Idris, who leads the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army, and stayed there for several hours before returning back.

The senator met with assembled leaders of Free Syrian Army units in both Turkey and Syria.

McCain with al-Baghdadi from TV report

Mugshot of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi

According to AP, McCain crossed the border near Kilis, Turkey, and spent two hours meeting with ‘rebel leaders’ near Idlib, Syria. The article further states that McCain made the trip in order to demand “aggressive military action in the 2-year-old Syrian civil war, calling for the establishment of a no-fly zone and arming the rebels”.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/31/john-mccain-syrian-rebels_n_3368036.html

Presidential Spokesman Jay Carney said “the White House was aware in advance of McCain’s plans to travel to Syria. Carney declined to say whether McCain was carrying any message from the administration, but he said White House officials looked forward to hearing about his trip”.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/28/john-mccain-syria_n_3346886.html

Here is an ABC News report on the visit, posted to YouTube: it speaks for itself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbfsTcJCKDE

McCain’s two-hour visit has garnered a lot of attention because some bloggers claim that two of the rebel leaders seen in the photos that McCain posted to his Twitter account look very much like leaders of the Islamic State: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Muahmmad Noor.

https://socioecohistory.wordpress.com/2014/08/13/senator-john-mccains-whoops-moment-photographed-chilling-with-isis-chief-al-baghdadi-and-terrorist-muahmmad-noor/

Al-Baghdadi profile

The New York Times, on Sept. 11, 2014 mentioned the blog Socioeconomic History in an article  that attempted to help McCain by simply claiming that the Internet “rumors” were “false”; however the Times didn’t provide any details: only a denial by McCain’s communications director and another denial by the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a DC lobbying organization led by a Palestinian employee of AIPAC, which arranged the senator’s visit.

http://www.voltairenet.org/article185085.html

(http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/12/world/middleeast/try-as-he-may-john-mccain-cant-shake-falsehoods-about-ties-to-isis.html)

While information about Muahmmad Noor is hard to find, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is the alleged leader of the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh).

Other blogs have denied that the man seen talking to McCain is al-Baghdadi, pointing to decoy photographs provided afterwards by the US and the Iraqi government.

However, the photographs that McCain posted to his Twitter account and a video published by the IS on July 5, 2014, in which al Baghdadi is leading Friday prayers in Mosul, are eerily alike.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SZJMMdWC6o)

Al-Baghdadi in meeting with McCain

Closeup of al-Baghdadi speaking to McCain 

Not only that, the man in the first photograph of Al-Baghdadi released by the U.S. in 2011 looks identical to the man who met with McCain.

Mugshot of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

Closeup of al-Baghdadi outside with McCain

The United States held al-Baghdadi in a military prison in Iraq named Camp Bucca from 2005 to 2009 (or 2010) and then released him, allegedly at the request of the Iraqi government. As he was being turned over to the custody of the Iraqi government, he reportedly told his US military captors, “I’ll see you in New York”. (quoted by Fox News)

http://insider.foxnews.com/2014/06/13/next-bin-laden-isis-leader-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi

Camp Bucca is worth more attention, as it may have been a recruiting and training center for fighters who would go on to lead the IS.

Right after al-Baghdadi was freed, the Islamic State emerged out of nowhere and rapidly took over important swaths of Iraq and Syria. The U.S. officially designated al-Baghdadi a terrorist on October 4, 2011, and offered the $10 million reward for his capture or killing. This was when the U.S. released its first photograph of its former prisoner.

Subsequently, the U.S. released another mug shot from Camp Bucca, which doesn’t look like the first, partly because the man has glasses and a heavy beard. A really bad photograph released by the Iraqi Interior Ministry, like the second US mug shot, also seems to be a decoy intended to cover up al-Baghdadi’s connections with the U.S. government. It doesn’t appear to be the same man.

The details about al-Baghdadi’s background are as blurry as the Iraqi Interior photograph. He is reported to have been born in Samarra, north of Baghdad, on July 28, 1971. According to an article in The Telegraph, he was a Salafi, who became al-Qaeda’s point man in Qaim in Iraq’s western desert. The article states:

“Abu Duaa was connected to the intimidation, torture and murder of local civilians in Qaim”, says a Pentagon document. “He would kidnap individuals or entire families, accuse them, pronounce sentence and then publicly execute them.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/10566001/Meet-al-Qaedas-new-poster-boy-for-the-Middle-East.html

Al-Baghjdadi would be only 43 when he was filmed leading prayers in Mosul in 2014, and 42 when he met with John McCain in 2013. The McCain photos and the Mosul videos show a man of about that age.

Al-Baghdadi in Mosul

Senator McCain has a long relationship with the CIA as the president of the State Department-funded International Republican Institute. The IRI organized the overthrow of Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide in 2004, and has been involved in many other overthrow operations, including the coup in Ukraine.

According to journalist Thierry Meyssan, who is based in Damascus, McCain participated in every color revolution over the past 20 years. Also according to Meyssan, McCain chaired a meeting held in Cairo on February 4, 2011, which NATO had organized to launch the “Arab Spring” in Libya and Syria. The so-called uprising in Syria began shortly afterward. http://www.voltairenet.org/article185085.html

Meyssan’s claim that McCain is intimately involved with CIA-organized overthrows makes lot more sense than the fiction that nobody knows who Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is or how this violent Iraqi al-Qaeda leader ended up meeting of ‘Syrian rebels’ with the senator inside of Syria. The inescapable conclusion is that all of the men at the meeting, including al-Baghdadi are CIA assets, and that IS is a CIA creation.

GR. Editor’s Note: The author of this article has requested that his name not appear due to the sensitive nature of this text.  While GR has verified the sources and evidence presented herewith, the usual disclaimer applies (see below). 

276 more Russian Military Police officers and 33 additional equipment pieces will be deployed in Syria, Russia’s state media reported. These forces will likely participate in security operations along the Syrian-Turkish border to the east of the Euphrates River.

Additionally to the deployment in Kobane, the Russian Military Police already started carrying out patrols near the city of Qamishly.

On October 24, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin announced that Kurdish forces had started withdrawal from the border area.

Watch the video here.

Nonetheless, the implementation of the ceasefire is not going without difficulties. On October 24 afternoon, the Syrian Army repelled an attack by Turkish-backed militants near the villages of al-Kozleya and Tell al-Laban in northern al-Hasakah. Clashes between the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and Turkish-backed groups also took place near the villages of Assadiya, Mishrafa and Manajer.

Pro-Turkish sources say that these attacks were conducted in response to ceasefire violations by Kurdish militias. The Turkish Defense Ministry revealed that 5 soldiers were injured in the Syrian province of al-Hasakah on October 24 in a series of attacks by Kurdish forces. However, the official Turkish version claims that its forces do not violate the ceasefire regime.

The SDF are ready to discuss the idea of joining the Syrian military once a political solution is reached in the war-torn country, a spokesman for the Kurdish-led group, Mustafa Bali, told Russian media. Bali claimed that “all parties must recognize that there is a political crisis that needs to be resolved by political means”. This kind of statements is quite different from the language of ultimatums, which the SDF used when US troops were present in northern Syria. This change indicates that a political solution is in fact can be reached.

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After nearly eight and a half years of conflict, the Syrian government and the country’s armed forces finally seems to be consolidating a victory over the Islamic State and other opposition forces that had formerly dominated the bulk of the land area of the West Asian country.

By the end of August, the Syrian military forces’ had recaptured a former rebel stronghold – the strategic town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province – a major victory in its efforts to re-establish control of Syrian territory.

Shortly after, at the beginning of October, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that his country’s military would be launching a military assault in the northeast section of Syria, a region controlled by U.S.-backed Kurdish militia. The Trump Administration then announced it would be withdrawing troops stationed in the region in the face of bipartisan outrage and concern that America’s allies in the area, the Syrian Kurds, would be left at the mercy of the attacking Turkish army.

As of this writing, a new peace agreement, secured by Russian President Putin and Turkish President Erdogan, has halted the Turkish offensive.

The larger picture, however, is that Syria, like Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya before it, has been targeted by the U.S. for regime change. A sophisticated propaganda apparatus has concealed this agenda of conquest behind the benign aphorism of ‘humanitarian intervention’ – protecting vulnerable freedom loving Syrians from a brutal dictatorial leader.

Consequently, elements of the anti-imperialist Left have accepted the demonization of Assad, and have condemned Trump’s U.S. troop withdrawal even though U.S. Force presence in Syria is illegal. The Kurds, for their part have attracted the sympathies of the American mainstream, as well as the anarchist and feminist Left.

Debunked claims about the use by Assad of chemical weapons against his own people or the ‘heroic’ White Helmets rescuing civilians from the rubble of the Syrian war go unchallenged.

This week’s Global Research News Hour radio program examines and deconstructs some leading pro-war Syrian narratives as the Russia-Turkish peace deal takes effect.

In our first half hour, we hear from Laith Marouf. This political commentator and Middle East analyst provides some historical context for the recent Turkish incursion and the agreement brokered recently to resolve that situation. We next hear from a member of the Syrian diaspora in Canada, Majd Zooda, about the removal of Waseem Ramli from a high profile Syrian representative post in Montreal and what it means for Syrian and non-Syrian Canadians. Finally, we re-air part of an interview by Chris Cook of CFUV’s Gorilla-Radio with Journalist Vanessa Beeley about her August article on Canadian human rights lawyer Irwin Cotler and his championing of the White Helmets.

Laith Marouf is a long time multimedia consultant and producer and currently serves as Senior Consultant at the Community Media Advocacy Centre (www.cmacentre.org) and the coordinator of ICTV, a project to secure a national multi-ethnic news television station in Canada (www.tele1.ca). Laith derives much of his understanding of Middle Eastern Affairs from his ancestral background of being both of Palestinian and of Syrian extraction. He is currently based in Beirut.

Majd Zooda is a Ph.D. Candidate in science education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. She was born in Kuwait but moved to Damascus in 2005 where she lived until 2012 before moving to Canada.

Vanessa Beeley is an independent investigative journalist and photographer. She is associate editor at 21st Century Wire. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 274)

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