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President Trump’s announcement, seemingly unilaterally, without advice from his military advisors or the Pentagon, has shocked and rocked American Military’s status quo strategy that has failed us all since post 9/11, yet the overwhelming majority of the American people and the world’s thinking population seem to love Trump’s decision. 

That Trump has said that it’s remaining meagre 2000 troops in Syria will be withdrawn is a popular decision for the people. It’s also very symbolic.

Those American soldiers left in Afghanistan will hopefully no doubt follow.

In short and to be concise, this is why its popular for the people and a disaster for the Deep State:

• It is a sign that the US, well that its President, might finally be abandoning the disastrous ‘regime change’ policy pursuits’ and a sign of the beginning of the end of the stranglehold ‘the Military Industrial and Security Complex’ has on Washington.
• that American military adventures might end eventually in ALL nations. Nations do NOT need US Military protection, whether calling itself ‘a World Peacekeeper’ or the rather more disparaging thing that it really is, a country who believes in stealing gas and oil and land grabbing; as an imperialistic ambitious hyper-super Military State and aspiring ‘American Empire.’
• It would make this OpEd too long to give all the reasons in detail why I now make the following statements. I assume that readers have a sufficiently high standard of political understanding and historical knowledge combined with sophistication, to know.
• If there are that don’t, I suggest they read up on the subjects and educate themselves.
• There is ZERO threat to the United States and the Western world from either Russia or China and (laughable to even have to say it) Iran. There are of course with these countries conflicting economic interests that must be dealt with using diplomacy tools.
• the ONLY country that is affected by US withdrawal from Syria, and it MUST be said, is the illegally created country of Israel and its apartheid Netanyahu regime.
• America must stop trying to be the policeman of the world; stop wars and conflicts which are today at around 15 by, in the main, US surrogates, and spend such money saved on US infrastructure and the American people.
• As far as Britain is concerned, She must ‘regain’ Her independence not only from Europe with a full BREXIT, but She must forget the illusion that Britain any longer have any semblance of a ‘Special Relationship with the US. Moreover Britain must stop ‘following like a puppy’ to paraphrase George Bush’s overheard comment to then British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The insane wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria that America has typically dragged UK Forces into must end. British troops have been injured and died for example especially in Afghanistan, for nothing.

So Trump’s Syria withdrawal caused uproar in Washington. Good. The immediate most prominent protest was by Trump’s defence secretary Mattis, who resigned.

There will be others. And good riddance to these warmongers. The day Bolton and Pompei resign will be the day that people will realise that they are going through the process of freeing themselves of the shackles, the stranglehold of Neocon politics that have dominated the 21st Century in America, remember triggered by ‘their’ 9/11; ‘their’ Pearl Harbour’.

Other less important knee jerk reactions followed Trump’s announcement about military withdrawals, from the usual suspects notably the ‘bought’ Western main stream media being the most vocal.

However, here is the alternative point of view:

As stated earlier herein, it is ludicrous to believe that Russia, China or even Iran pose a real threat to America. It is American militarism and Imperialism that is the uppermost threat to the world.

Russia’s albeit rather dislikable President Putin has raised many times his fears for humanity should a nuclear conflict occur and frankly he makes far more sense than his western counterparts.

Potential nuclear war is one of the three key issues that the worlds leaders should be addressing; the others being the effect of overpopulation and of course the environment.

America withdrawing from conflicts that do not concern it would be a huge boon and relief to the world’s citizens.

The US should spend more time and effort on helping the world address its environmental issues to save the planet and stop denying the scientific evidence on climate change.

The many trillions of dollars the US would save on trimming its Pentagon budget; on stopping Her involvement in pointless world conflicts, benefiting only the 1% super rich, could be much more usefully spent on a new FDR type deal for the people. Examples would be in health, social care, education and improving the lot of the disabled veterans living suffering with the mental and physical effects of fighting in ludicrous pointless wars like Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.

It is clear that the UK does not have any special relationship with the US and should stop being it’s lapdog and sending troops to fight wars that do not pose any threat to Her interests. Again, why does not Britain not concentrate Her efforts closer to home where austerity and Brexit indecision are crippling the nation?

Israel is of course going to be effected by US troops pulling out of Syria – so what. Israel is NOT part of America.

The insanity in America in this regard today is no better exemplified by this example. Can someone explain why an American, a children’s teacher, lost her job for declining to sign a document requiring she refuse to boycott Israel?

The US Government issued document required her to affirm “that she does not currently boycott Israel and will not boycott Israel during the term of the contract.” When she declined to sign, she “was forced to terminate her contractual relationship with the school district.”

What the hell has, what in effect is a pledge of allegiance to Israel got to do with an American citizen? Point made I hope!

In conclusion turning to the great Mark Twain who said that “history does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme”.

Specifically addressing wars in Afghanistan in particular, Winston Churchill had a unique insight and personal experience of that country and its peoples.

A war in Afghanistan is unwinnable. Of that there is no doubt.

Churchill summed up the two British wars against Afghanistan in the 19th Century, which Britain both lost, describing British policy in Afghanistan in 1897 as:

“Financially it is ruinous. Morally it is wicked. Militarily it is an open question and politically it is a blunder.”

What’s changed? This remains absolutely true in the 21st Century.

For anyone with interest in history, the term “North-West Frontier” holds ominous resonances.

In the 21st Century repeat of the folly of going to war in Afghanistan, we see the great truth of Mark Twain’s comment.

How did we so quickly forget that 250,000 Soviet troops in relatively recent history lost their war in Afghanistan?

Why do we never learn the lessons of history?

America’s imperialistic Military Neocon ambitions need to be stopped and one hopes President Trump might be the man to do it.

There can be no more empires is the hope otherwise we must expect nuclear Armageddon this century.

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The investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, in his memoir “Reporter,” describes a moment when as a young reporter he overheard a Chicago cop admit to murdering an African-American man. The murdered man had been falsely described by police as a robbery suspect who had been shot while trying to avoid arrest. Hersh frantically called his editor to ask what to do.

“The editor urged me to do nothing,” he writes. “It would be my word versus that of all the cops involved, and all would accuse me of lying. The message was clear: I did not have a story. But of course I did.” He describes himself as “full of despair at my weakness and the weakness of a profession that dealt so easily with compromise and self-censorship.”

Hersh, the greatest investigative reporter of his generation, uncovered the U.S. military’s chemical weapons program, which used thousands of soldiers and volunteers, including pacifists from the Seventh-day Adventist Church, as unwitting human guinea pigs to measure the impact of biological agents including tularemia, yellow fever, Rift Valley fever and the plague. He broke the story of the My Lai massacre. He exposed Henry Kissinger’s wiretapping of his closest aides at the National Security Council (NSC) and journalists, the CIA’s funding of violent extremist groups to overthrow the Chilean President Salvador Allende, the CIA’s spying on domestic dissidents within the United States, the sadistic torture practices at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq by American soldiers and contractors and the lies told by the Obama administration about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Yet he begins his memoir by the candid admission, familiar to any reporter, that there are crimes and events committed by the powerful you never write about, at least if you want to keep your job. One of his laments in the book is his decision not to follow up on a report he received that disgraced President Richard Nixon had hit his wife, Pat, and she had ended up in an emergency room in California.

Reporters embedded with military units in Iraq and Afghanistan routinely witness atrocities and often war crimes committed by the U.S. military, yet they know that access is dependent on keeping quiet. This collusion between the press and the powerful is a fundamental feature of journalism, one that even someone as courageous as Hersh, at least a few times, was forced to accept. And yet, there comes a time when reporters, at least the good ones, decide to sacrifice their careers to tell the truth. Hersh, relentlessly chronicling the crimes of the late empire, including the widespread use of torture, indiscriminate military strikes on civilian targets and targeted assassinations, has for this reason been virtually blacklisted in the American media. And the loss of his voice—he used to work for The New York Times and later The New Yorker—is evidence that the press, always flawed, has now been neutered by corporate power. Hersh’s memoir is as much about his remarkable career as it is about the death of investigative journalism and the transformation of news into a national reality television show that subsists on gossip, invective, officially approved narratives and leaks and entertainment.

Investigative journalism depends not only on reporters such as Hersh, but as importantly on men and women inside the systems of power who have the moral courage to expose lies and make public crimes. Writing off any institution, no matter how nefarious the activity, as filled with the irredeemable is a mistake.

“There are many officers, including generals and admirals, who understood that the oath of office they took was a commitment to uphold and defend the Constitution and not the President, or an immediate superior,” he writes. “They deserve my respect and got it. Want to be a good military reporter? Find those officers.”

One of the heroes in Hersh’s book is Ron Ridenhour, who served in a combat unit in Vietnam and who initiated the army’s investigation into the My Lai massacre and generously helped Hersh track down eyewitnesses and participants.

The government’s wholesale surveillance, however, has crippled the ability of those with a conscience, such as Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden, to expose the crimes of state and remain undetected. The Obama administration charged eight people under the Espionage Act of leaking to the media—Thomas Drake, Shamai Leibowitz, Stephen Kim, Chelsea Manning, Donald Sachtleben, Jeffrey Sterling, John Kiriakou and Edward Snowden—effectively ending the vital connection between investigative reporters and sources inside the government.

This government persecution has, by default, left the exposure of government lies, fraud and crimes to hackers. And this is the reason hackers, and those who publish their material such as Julian Assange at WikiLeaks, are relentlessly persecuted. The goal of the corporate state is to hermetically seal their activities, especially those that violate the law, from outside oversight or observation. And this goal is very far advanced.

Hersh notes throughout his memoir that, like all good reporters, he constantly battled his editors and fellow reporters as much as he did the government or corporations. There is a species of reporter you can see on most cable news programs and on the floor of the newsrooms at papers such as The New York Times who make their living as courtiers to the powerful. They will, at times, critique the excesses of power but never the virtues of the systems of power, including corporate capitalism or the motivations of the ruling elites. They detest reporters, like Hersh, whose reporting exposes their collusion.

The Bertrand Russell War Crimes Tribunal was held in 1967 in Europe during the Vietnam War. It included the testimony of three American soldiers who spoke of watching soldiers and Marines routinely pump indiscriminate rounds of ammunition into villages with no regard for civilian casualties. Most of the American press dismissed the findings of the tribunal.  The Times foreign affairs columnist, C.L. Sulzberger, launched a venomous attack against the Noble Prize-winning philosopher and mathematician, who was then 94 years old. Sulzberger, a member of the family that owned the paper, wrote that Russell had “outlived his own conscious idea and become clay in unscrupulous hands.” The tribunal, Sulzberger went on, “cannot fairly be laid at the door of the wasted peer whose bodily endurance outpaced his brain.”

Hersh, however, tipped off by the testimony at the tribunal, eventually uncovered the My Lai massacre. But no publication would touch it. Magazines such as Life and Look turned down the story. “I was devastated, and frightened by the extent of self-censorship I was encountering in my profession,” Hersh writes. He finally published the story with the obscure, anti-war Dispatch News Service. Major publications, including The New York Times, along with Newsweek and Time, ignored the report. Hersh kept digging. More lurid facts about the massacre came to light.  It became too big to dismiss, as hard as the mainstream media initially tried, and Hersh was awarded the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. The only officer convicted of the war crime, which left 106 men, women and children dead, was Lt. William Calley, who spent three months and 13 days in prison.

Papers like the New York Times pride themselves on their special access to the powerful, even if that access turns them into a public relations arm of the elites. This desire for access—which news organizations feel gives them prestige and an inside seat, although the information they are fed is usually lies or half-truths—pits conscientious reporters like Hersh against most editors and reporters in the newsroom. Hersh, who at the time was working for the Times, describes sitting across from another reporter, Bernard Gwertzman, who was covering Henry Kissinger and the NSC.

“There was a near-daily ritual involving Bernie that stunned me,” Hersh writes. “On far too many afternoons around 5:00, Max Frankel’s secretary would approach Bernie and tell him that Max [the Times’ bureau chief in Washington] was at that moment on the phone with ‘Henry’ and the call would soon he switched to him. Sure enough, in a few moments Bernie would avidly begin scratching notes as he listened to Kissinger—he listened far more than he talked—and the result was a foreign policy story that invariably led the paper the next morning, with quotes from an unnamed senior government official. After a week or two of observing the process, I asked the always affable and straightforward Bernie if he ever checked what Henry was telling him with Bill Rogers, the secretary of state, or Mel Laird at the Pentagon. “Oh no,’ he said. ‘If I did that, Henry wouldn’t speak to us.’”

The Washington Post broke the Watergate story, in which operatives for the Nixon White House in June 1972 broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office complex in Washington while Hersh was at the Times. Kissinger’s assurances—Hersh writes that Kissinger “lied the way most people breathed”—that it was not an event of consequence saw the top editors at The New York Times initially ignore it. The paper, however, finally embarrassed by the revelations in The Washington Post, threw Hersh onto the story, although the paper’s executive editor, Abe Rosenthal, called Hersh with a mixture of affection and wariness “my little commie.”

Hersh left the paper after a massive expose he and Jeff Gerth wrote about the corporation Gulf and Western, which carried out fraud, abuse, tax avoidance and had connections with the mob, was rewritten by cautious and timid editors. Charles Bluhdorn, the CEO of Gulf and Western, socialized with the publisher Arthur “Punch” Sulzberger. Bluhdorn used his connections at the paper to discredit Hersh and Gerth, as well as bombard the paper with accusatory letters and menacing phone calls. When Hersh filed his 15,000-word expose, the business editor, John Lee, and “his ass-kissing coterie of moronic editors,” perhaps fearful of being sued, neutered it. It was one thing, Hersh found, to go up against a public institution. It was something else to take on a private institution. He would never again work regularly for a newspaper.

“The experience was frustrating and enervating,” he writes. “Writing about corporate America had sapped my energy, disappointed the editors, and unnerved me. There would be no check on corporate America, I feared: Greed had won out. The ugly fight with Gulf and Western had rattled the publisher and the editors to the point that the editors who ran the business pages had been allowed to vitiate and undercut the good work Jeff and I had done. … The courage the Times had shown in confronting the wrath of a president and an attorney general in the crisis over the Pentagon Papers in 1971 was nowhere to be seen when confronted by a gaggle of corporate con men. …”

His reporting, however, continued to relentlessly expose the falsifications in official narratives. The Navy intelligence official, Jonathan Pollard, for example, had been caught spying for Israel in 1985 and given a life sentence. Hersh found that Pollard primarily stole documents on how the United States spied on the Soviet Union. The Israeli government, Hersh suspected, “was trading Pollard’s information to Moscow in exchange for the emigration of Soviet Jews with skills and expertise needed by Israel.” Pollard was released, after heavy Israeli pressure, in 2015 and now lives in Israel.

The later part of Hersh’s career is the most distressing. He was writing for The New Yorker when Barack Obama was elected president. David Remnick, the magazine’s editor, socialized with Obama and was apparently wary of offending the president. When Hersh exposed the fictitious narrative spun out by the Obama administration about the killing of Bin Laden, the magazine killed the story, running instead a report about the raid, provided by the administration, from the point of view of one of the SEALs who was on the mission. Hersh resigned. He published the account of the raid in the London Review of Books, the beginning of his current exile to foreign publications. When we most urgently need Hersh and good investigative reporters like him, they have largely disappeared. A democracy, at best, tolerates them. A failed democracy, like ours, banishes them, and when it does, it kills its press.

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Chris Hedges is a Truthdig columnist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a New York Times best-selling author, a professor in the college degree program offered to New Jersey state prisoners by Rutgers University, and an ordained Presbyterian minister.

Featured image is from Mr. Fish/Truthdig

Russia’s Defense Ministry has said Israel carried out airstrikes on Syrian targets as two civilian flights were landing in Beirut and Damascus, putting passengers at risk.

Pakistan’s recent regulation of International NGOs (INGOs) must be followed up by additional security measures by the counter-intelligence services in order to root out the rest of the foreign intelligence agents that have embedded themselves inside the country, but any possible gains on this front won’t be sustainable unless Islamabad properly addresses the socio-economic issues that make it susceptible to INGO infiltration in the first place.

It’s been roughly two and a half months since Pakistan decreed that 18 International NGOs (INGOs) had 60 days to discontinue their operations in the country prior to reregistering their organizations after complying with Islamabad’s new requirements, making this an appropriate moment to reflect on what might come next. The author’s previous piece on this topic discussed how “Pakistan Hit Back At Hybrid War Plots By Restricting Hostile INGOs” and briefly elaborated on some of the methods that foreign intelligence services have utilized to infiltrate the country under the cover of international aid groups, explaining just how serious of a threat this has become in Pakistan and other “Global South” countries.

Keenly aware of this, the state boldly made the decision to curtail the activities of the most threatening INGOs but prudently allowed them the possibility of continuing to operate in the country as long as they purged themselves of the hostile elements that were interfering with Pakistan’s domestic political processes and surreptitiously carrying out surveillance activities against its citizens. This pragmatic decision could conceivably see some INGOs return to their apolitical socio-economic roots in carrying out important humanitarian functions designed to help the local populace, but it can’t be taken for granted that this will happen unless the proper security measures are in place.

All countries across the world have permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (or “deep states”) that work behind the scenes to secure the citizens’ interests, but none are more important in ensuring Democratic Security than the counter-intelligence operatives who are responsible for identifying the foreign intelligence agents embedded within the country. They probably played a role in exposing how certain spy agencies were abusing INGOs in order to carry out their Hybrid War plots against Pakistan, so it makes sense for them to continue their work in going as high up the chain of command as possible in order to uncover these groups’ in-country handlers.

Foreign intelligence agencies spilled into Pakistan after 9/11 and have been a problem ever since, but it’s only in recent years that Pakistan began to take active measures to root out these threats. It’s in this context that the INGO regulatory move should be seen and from where one can better predict the direction that it might naturally lead. The individuals who abused their INGO roles to carry out hostile activities against the Pakistani state were presumably being handled by foreign intelligence agents inside of the country, so it’s incumbent on the relevant authorities to do everything within their power to identify and remove these forces.

Even in the best-case scenario where the counter-intelligence services fully succeed with their mission, that still won’t be enough to secure the Pakistani state unless a sustainable solution is spearheaded that properly addresses the socio-economic issues that make the country susceptible to INGO infiltration in the first place. These organizations are operating in Pakistan because the state is unable to meet the needs of a certain segment of its population, but China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) could be expanded from its hard infrastructural focus into the realm of social development to assist its ally with this ambitious task.

China, which has one of the world’s strictest INGO regulations, clearly understands the Hybrid War risks that these groups could pose, so it’s in its best interests to help Pakistan liberate itself from these forces by financing Pakistani-run NGOs that will gradually replace them. Just like the US has USAID, BRI could experiment with BRI-Aid in Pakistan prior to perfecting this model for export all across the Silk Road. The host government (in this case Pakistan) could cooperate with local stakeholders to carry out feasibility studies and facilitate China’s financing of the most important projects, thus representing the most effective solution in the long term.

It needs to be remembered that Democratic Security can only be ensured through a combination of counter-intelligence and socio-economic development whereby the nation’s security services deal with Hybrid War threats while its civil society works to remove the conditions that helped them take root. There’s no doubt that the Pakistani state is more than capable of handling the first-mentioned of these requirements, but it might need some help from China to finance the latter half of this solution if it’s to guarantee that foreign intelligence agents aren’t ever able to infiltrate back into the country under the guise of INGO workers.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Stephen Cohen and I are branded “Russian dupes” and “Putin agents,” because we object to the highly orchestrated and false portrayal of Russia as a threat to the West, a portrayal that is leading to war.  The purpose of this orchestration is to prevent President Trump or any future president from reducing the dangerous tensions between nuclear powers that have accumulated since the Clinton regime.  The military/security complex has resurrected its Cold War enemy so necessary for its outsized budget and power and intends to keep Russia as The Enemy.

The Democrats have an interest in the villification of Russia as “Russiagate” explains Hillary’s loss of the 2016 Presidential election and gives Democrats hope of removing President Trump from office.  The media lacks independence, knowledge, and integrity and is the tool used by the military/security complex to control explanations, a prostitution of the media that has made the term “presstitutes” an accurate description.  As strategic and Russian studies are largely funded by the military/security complex, the universities are also complicit in the march toward nuclear war. Republicans are as dependent as Democrats on funding from the military/security complex and the Israel Lobby.

All of this self-serving is driving America and its vassals to war with Russia, which might also mean with China.  The war would be nuclear and be the end of the West, an act of self-genocide. The US national security establishment is so crazed that Trump’s efforts to get off the war track and onto a peace track are characterized as treason and a threat to US national security.  See this for example.

The Russians are aware that the accusations and demonization that they experience are fabrications.  They no longer see the problem as one of misunderstandings that diplomacy can overcome.  What they see now is the West preparing its populations for war.  It is this perception for which the West is solely responsible that makes the situation today far more dangerous than it ever was during the long Cold War.

In his just published book, War With Russia? (reviewed here), Stephen Cohen documents the creation of the “Russian threat” that serves a few material interests at the expense of life on earth.  

In the article below, Cohen asks if it is more important to impeach Trump than to avoid nuclear war.

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Do Russiagate Promoters Prefer Impeaching Trump to Avoiding War With Russia?

by Stephen F. Cohen

The Nation, December 19, 2018

The new Cold War is not a mere replica of its 40-year predecessor, which the world survived. In vital ways, it is more dangerous, more fraught with actual war, as illustrated by events in 2018, among them:

The militarization of the new Cold War intensified, with direct or proxy US-Russian military confrontations in the Baltic region, Ukraine, and Syria; the onset of another nuclear arms race with both sides in quest of more “usable” weapons; mounting, but entirely unsubstantiated, claims by influential Cold War lobbies, such as the Atlantic Council, that Moscow is contemplating an invasion of Europe; and the growing influence of Moscow’s own “hawks.” The previous Cold War was also highly militarized, but never directly on Russia’s own borders, as is this one, from the small nations of Eastern Europe to Ukraine, a process that continued to unfold in 2018.

Russiagate—allegations that President Trump is strongly influenced by or even under the sway of the Kremlin, for which there remains no actual evidence—continued to escalate as a dangerous and unprecedented factor in the new Cold War. What began as suggestions that the Kremlin had “meddled” in the 2016 US presidential election grew into mainstream insinuations, even assertions, that the Kremlin put Trump in the White House. The result has been to all but shackle Trump as a crisis-negotiator with Russian President Putin. Thus, for attending a July summit meeting with Putin in Helsinki—during which Trump defended the legitimacy of his own presidency—he was widely denounced by mainstream US media and politicians as having committed “treason.” And twice subsequently Trump was compelled to cancel scheduled meetings with Putin. Americans may reasonably ask whether the politicians, journalists, and organizations that assail Trump for the same kind of summit diplomacy practiced by every president since Eisenhower actually prefer trying to impeach Trump to avoiding war with Russia.

Are You Tired Of The Lies And Non-Stop Propaganda?

The same question can be asked of major mainstream media outlets that have virtually abandoned the reasonably balanced and fact-based reporting and commentary they practiced during the latter stages of the preceding Cold War. In 2018, for example, their nonfactual, surreal allegation that “Putin’s Russia attacked American democracy” in 2016 became an orthodox dogma and the pivot of their Russiagate and new Cold War narrative. Also unlike during the preceding Cold War, they continued to exclude dissenting, alternative reporting, perspectives, and opinions. Still more, these media outlets persist in relying heavily on former intelligence chiefs as sources and commentators, even though the role of these intel officials in the origins of the Russiagate narrative now seems clear. A striking example of media malpractice was coverage of the maritime conflict between Ukrainian and Russian gunboats on November 25, in the Kerch straits between the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. All empirical evidence available, as well as Ukrainian President Poroshenko’s desperate need to bolster his chances for reelection in March 2019, strongly indicated that this was a deliberate provocation by Kiev. But the US mainstream media portrayed it instead as yet another instance of “Putin’s aggression.” Thus was a dangerous US-Russian proxy war fundamentally misrepresented to the American public.

In large part due to such media malpractice, and despite the escalating dangers in US-Russian relations, in 2018 there continued to be no significant anti–Cold War opposition anywhere in mainstream American political life—not in Congress, the major political parties, think tanks, or on college campuses, only a very few individual dissenters. Accordingly, the policy of détente with Russia, or what Trump has repeatedly called “cooperation with Russia,” still found no significant supporters in mainstream politics, even though it was the policy of other Republican presidents, notably Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan. Trump has tried, but he has been thwarted, repeatedly again in 2018.

Meanwhile, the charge that Russia “attacked American democracy” and continues to do so might best be applied to Russiagate promoters themselves. Their allegations have undermined the America presidency as an institution and cast doubt on US elections. By criminalizing both “contacts with Russia” and proposals for “better relations,” and by threatening to weed out a capacious and nebulous body of “disinformation” in US media, they have considerably diminished the vaunted American marketplace of free speech and ideas. Also under growing assault are traditional concepts of US political justice, which, at least based on what is known in regard to Russia, have been abused in the cases of Gen. Michael Flynn and, in Soviet-like fashion, of Maria Butina. At worst, this young Russian woman seems to have been an undeclared (but candidly open) advocate of “better relations” and an ardent proponent of her own country. For this, something long pursued by young Americans in Russia as well, she was held for months in solitary confinement until she confessed—that is, entered a plea. And this in a nation that has long officially “promoted” democracy abroad.

Finally, while US political and media elites remained obsessed with the fictions of Russiagate—which increasingly appears to be Russiagate without Russia and instead mostly tax-fraud-gate and sex-gate—post–Soviet Russia continued its remarkable rise as a diplomatic great power, primarily, though not only, in the East, as documented recently in three highly

informed publications far from and scarcely noted by the US political-media establishment. Meanwhile, Washington’s primary base of allies in world affairs, the European Union, continued its slide into self-inflicted, ever-deepening crisis. (See this)

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

One of the most important pieces of legislation of our times, one that will impact every person in the United States, is currently being drafted in a non-transparent and non-participatory process by a small group of insiders. Rep. Pramila Jayapal is redrafting HR 676, the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, which has existed for 15 years and is based on the Physician’s Working Group Proposal, the work of the single payer movement.

Single payer activists are calling on Jayapal to share the content of her draft so the extensive expertise of the single payer movement can advise her. On Monday, December 17, 2018, the Health Over Profit for Everyone campaign delivered a letter to Congresswoman Jayapal requesting her to share a draft text of HR 676 with the single payer movement for review and input. See, Letter to Congresswoman Jayapal – Release the text of HR 676.

The letter was developed at an in-depth strategy conference that developed a plan for success, How We Win National Improved Medicare for All. The strategy includes, as an immediate priority, protecting and improving HR 676, which has the support of 123 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives. The letter to Jayapal points out a red flag, stating:

“Some of your public statements recently have caused concern. In particular, statements about your desire to align the text with the Senate bill, S 1804, which is inferior to HR 676. Indeed, the Senate Bill is so deficient that many in the single payer movement cannot support it unless it is significantly revised.”

Click here to take action.

This comparison between the House Bill and S.1804, whose lead sponsor is Sen. Bernie Sanders, describes some of the serious deficiencies of that bill. Many single payer advocates cannot support the Sanders bill because, for example, it leaves out people who require long-term care, protects the profits of investor-owned providers and has loopholes that allow the insurance industry to continue to participate, making it, in essence, a multi-payer bill. HOPE will also focus attention on Sanders and his co-sponsors to push for improvements to that bill, but the threats to the gold standard bill, HR 676, are more imminent.

Jayapal should follow the lead of Green New Deal legislative advocates. They published a Google Doc with the draft of the Green New Deal legislation. This approach would allow the single payer movement to see the draft and provide Jayapal’s office with comments on it. There is a lot of experience and expertise in the single payer movement that should be involved in order to produce the best bill possible.

The letter points out that the single payer movement wants to be a strong ally to Rep. Jayapal and do all it can to help pass HR 676. A transparent and participatory process will ensure a bill is introduced that the movement can support and can feel confident mobilizing people to help make national improved Medicare for all a reality. Jayapal should see mass participation of the movement as a way to strengthen the bill and its chance for passage.

At the same time, there is anger in the single payer movement at Jayapal’s lack of transparency and that a bill that will impact everyone is being drafted by a small group of insiders. People are ready to protest the lack of transparency and participation but want to give Jayapal the opportunity to do the right thing before escalating to protest.

Click here to take action.

The strategy report points out that the Democratic Party has undermined the single payer movement multiple times, pointing to the Clinton era when HillaryCare created concentrated private insurance corporations and required people to buy insurance, and ObamaCare, which required people to buy private insurance as well. Neither administration would consider single payer Medicare for all, despite majority support.

They also point to Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s recent refusal to endorse Medicare for all while listing a host of false policy approaches that will not solve the US healthcare crisis. And Speaker Pelosi is criticized for sending the single payer movement down the false path of state legislation when single payer is not possible at the state level. These refusals by Democratic  leadership to support meaningful reform come when the United States has a major healthcare crisis — 30,000 people die annually because they do not have insurance, the life expectancy of people in the US is decreasing and more than 100,000 deaths could be prevented annually if the US had a single payer system like France or the United Kingdom. There is too much at stake. People will not let the Democrats send the movement off course again.

Everyone should take action because healthcare impacts everyone. Contact Congresswoman Jayapal.  HOPE has created a tool for you to use to Call Rep. Jayapal and urge her to release the text. When you contact her office, let them know about how the Green New Deal draft legislation has been made public and demand the same be done for HR 676.

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Letter To Congresswoman Jayapal – Release The Text Of HR 676

The Honorable Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal
319 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Ms. Jayapal:

We Write To You As Longtime Advocates For National Improved Medicare For All As Embodied In The Current Version Of HR 676. We Have Championed HR 676 For The Past Fifteen Years, Working With Congressman John Conyers And His Staff.

We Have A Deep Appreciation For Your Willingness To Not Only Take On The Lead Sponsorship Of HR 676 But Also To Create A Medicare For All Caucus. We Believe We Share A Common Vision Of A National, Universal, Publicly-Funded, Comprehensive And High-Quality Healthcare System In The United States.

We Understand That You Are Rewriting HR 676 Before You Introduce It In 2019. It Is Important To Us That HR 676 Not Be Weakened In This Process, But Be Made Stronger. We Ask That You Release A Draft Of The Text Of The Revised HR 676 So That Longtime Single Payer Advocates Can Read It And Share Our Views With You Before The Bill Is Introduced.

Transparency Matters Greatly To Us As Does Getting The Policy Right. HR 676 Must Be Strong From The Outset So That As It Goes Through The Legislative Process, We Can Be Sure The Final Bill Will Solve The Healthcare Crisis In The United States.

We Know You Have Met With Representatives Of Some Groups. Opening Up The Process Will Ensure That The Best Information On Expanded And Improved Medicare For All Is Contained In The Bill. And, It Will Ensure That The Whole Single Payer Movement Is In Support Of The Bill.

Some Of Your Public Statements Recently Have Caused Concern. In Particular, Statements About Your Desire To Align The Text With The Senate Bill, S 1804, Which Is Inferior To HR 676. Indeed, The Senate Bill Is So Deficient That Many In The Single Payer Movement Cannot Support It Unless It Is Significantly Revised. We Want The House Bill To Remain Strong And Fully Supported By The Entire Single Payer Movement As The Gold Standard That The Senate Must Measure Up To.

We Are Committed To Winning National Improved Medicare For All And Believe The Movement Is Capable Of Winning This Issue In The Near Future. It Will Be A Historic Victory For The United States. We Want To Help You Succeed In Leading This Effort.

We Urge You To Release A Draft Copy Of The New Legislation Before The End Of The Year So People Can Have Input Before It Is Made Final. We Are Being Asked To Mobilize Support For The New HR 676, But We Cannot Support A Bill We Have Not Seen.

Please Let Us Know As Soon As Possible If You Are Willing To Release A Draft Copy Of The New Legislation For Input And When We Can Expect To Receive It.

Kind Regards,

Margaret Flowers, MD, Coordinator, Health Over Profit For Everyone Campaign

Kip Sullivan, Health Care For All Minnesota

Leigh K. Haynes – People’s Health Movement-USA*

Eric Naumburg, M.D., M.P.H., Healthcare Is A Human Right Maryland

Kevin Zeese, Co-Director, Popular Resistance

Kay Tillow, Coordinator, All Unions Committee For Single Payer Health Care–HR 676

Sumitra Joy, National Consumer Voice Leadership Council-Member Elect*

Health Care For All Minnesota

Bill Moyer, Backbone Campaign

James Squire, MD United For Single Payer

Lee Stanfield, HOPE Steering Committee, Founder Of Single-Payer NOW Tucson*

Jody Coss And Ed Klein, Co-Directors, HOPE In The Midwest

Vanessa Beck, MSW, Coordinating Committee, Black Alliance For Peace*

Anne Scheetz, MD, Physicians For A National Health Program, Illinois Single-Payer Coalition, Chicago ADAPT, HOPE

Donna M. Ellington, M.Ed., EdS, Social Media Influencer

Ethel Long-Scott, Executive Director, Women’s Economic Agenda Project*

Bruce G Trigg, MD,  Addiction Medicine Consultant

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This article was originally published on Health Over Profit.

Featured image is from HOP

The announced withdrawal of the remaining 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria and a partial withdrawal from Afghanistan does not mean an end to the Pentagon’s aggressive militarism and endless U.S. wars – in Syria, in Afghanistan, in the region or globally.

The U.S. military has 170,000 troops stationed outside the U.S. in 150 countries, in more than 800 overseas bases. Nearly 40,000 are assigned to classified missions in locations that Washington refuses to even disclose. Because the Pentagon has continually renamed and shuffled its forces in the Middle East, it’s impossible to know how many troops are on standby and how many are on rotation.

But this surprise “troop withdrawal” announcement — regardless of its limitations, regardless of U.S. military strength — exposes the increasingly untenable U.S. imperialist global position and the fraying condition of all of its historic alliances.

The announcement has opened a chasm within U.S. ruling circles. Resignations from the Trump administration and ensuing denunciations are calling the attention of the masses to the heated conflict.

The top echelons of the Democratic Party and corporate media “talking heads” are in an uproar of opposition. They are attacking Trump for “caving in” to Iran and Russia and allegedly endangering national security — by which they mean he is harming U.S. imperialist interests.

Their charges only confirm that both the racist Trump and his ruling-class opponents are imperialist war criminals and enemies of the people of the world. The pro-militarist criticisms of Trump are themselves reactionary.

A progressive working-class analysis

Trump’s abrupt announcement — with no known discussion with policy makers, without any consultation with co-conspirators in the NATO war alliance — is indeed a departure from the U.S. hegemonic strategy of the past 75 years.

That departure is behind “Mad Dog” Mattis’s resignation as Trump’s Secretary of Defense. Mattis, lauded as the “grownup” in the Trump cabinet, has bulwarked relations with U.S. allies using his Pentagon position. His nickname comes from his infamous statement about U.S. war in Afghanistan: “It’s fun to shoot some people. You know, it’s a hell of a hoot.” (New York Times, Feb. 4, 2005) Mattis is also notorious as the U.S. commander responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Iraqi civilians in Fallujah in 2004.

Mattis’ resignation reflects how the announced withdrawal is a dramatic break with countries that have collaborated with the U.S. in Syria, such as France, Germany, Belgium and Britain. All of them are former colonial powers that destroyed Indigenous cultures and looted the Americas, Africa and Asia.

The rulers of these countries were all determined to re-colonize the Arab world after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Other willing partners in imperialist crime were Saudi Arabia and Israel. They were willing to commit to war on Syria based on the assumption they would share in the looting of the country. Their official threadbare cover was that they were fighting a “war on terror.”

Trump surprised them with this major U.S. policy shift in the region, which  increases imperialist instability.

U.S. tries to exploit national differences

According to numerous media reports, Trump made his decision based on a long phone call with Turkish President Erdogan. Erdogan has threatened to launch a military operation against U.S.-backed Kurdish YPG forces in northeast Syria, where U.S. troops are based. Erdogan made it clear that the U.S. cannot have Turkey as an ally and also have a Kurdish U.S.-proxy statelet.

This is an unsolvable dilemma for the U.S. imperialists, whose corporate rulers have not been able to destabilize Syria and carry out “regime change.” Washington’s open demand from day one was the resignation of President Bashar Assad and all existing government officials. It hasn’t happened.

The U.S. goal was the appointment of a Syrian government, subservient to Western interests, which would establish an electoral process under the control and vetting of the major imperialist powers. This is the meaning of the vague term “regime change.”

On Washington’s drawing board, it looked like an easy plan.

To this end, the U.S. political-military establishment attempted to exploit every possible difference, based on the many religious, ethnic and national groups within Syria, including the Kurdish forces. The entire U.S. and Western effort was to carve Syria into pieces, all in the name of “defending” oppressed nationalities and “democracy.”

This effort to weaponize sectarian differences was implemented with the influence of the reactionary Saudi regime. Foreign-funded mercenary death squads operated openly in Syria. Supplies were air-dropped in massive quantities.

The outside imperialist and Saudi efforts sought to mobilize reactionary elements in the majority Sunni Arab population against Christians, Alawis, Druzes, Shi’a, Yazidis, Armenians, Kurdish, Turkmen and numerous smaller national, ethnic and religious groupings and recent refugees. Among Syria’s 23 million population (counting those who have recently left the country) are more than a half million Palestinian refugees and 1.5 million Iraqi refugees.

The U.S. spent eight years orchestrating participation of Western imperialist powers and Gulf monarchies in its imperialist endeavor. Despite four years of bombing that decimated the country’s infrastructure, the introduction of tens of thousands of heavily armed and well-funded mercenaries, intense international political pressure, and strangling economic sanctions, Syria still remains unconquered.

Solidarity combats sectarian division in Syria

Syria resisted the attempted takeover on two fronts. Of course, the government organized a defensive military struggle. But the most important weapon was the constant reliance on the fact that Syria is a mosaic of many religious, ethnic and national groupings that are all able to coexist through a secular state.

The positive face of the struggle to maintain national independence was visible in every picture, every delegation, every mobilization and every mass rally. These stressed the rich cultural diversity and the unity of the whole people.

Syria also invited Hezbollah’s well-organized military units from Lebanon, and then Iranian and Russian military assistance, to aid in defense against this imperialist attack, part of an expanding regional conflict.

Almost all the tens of thousands of reactionary foreign mercenaries funded and trained by the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have now been defeated, along with the fanatical ISIS forces who held large areas of Syria. Though each armed group was capable of massive destruction, the different mercenary militias were divided and competed with each other, based on who was sponsoring them.

National pride in Syria’s accomplishments and defense of Syria’s sovereignty succeeded in keeping the country intact.

Diminishing U.S. ability to dominate globe

The U.S. has been dealt a different but similar failure in Afghanistan. Despite an open and direct U.S. invasion of the country in 2001 and years of occupation, with the rotation of a million troops, Washington’s brutal “pacification” program in Afghanistan has failed. Corruption may be endemic in an occupation, but so is resistance. Today, not one base of occupation or one national road in the country is secure.

The Afghanistan war is now the longest in U.S. history, with no end in sight and no prospect of establishing a stable puppet regime.

An additional crisis for U.S. imperialism is mounting international opposition to the civilian casualties and starvation in Yemen. Even with U.S.-supplied high-tech arms and a U.S. naval blockade, its proxy, Saudi Arabia, has not succeeded in crushing resistance in Yemen.

Meanwhile, against all possible odds, the Palestinian resistance continues against U.S.-proxy Israel. This resistance is a 21st-century reality that even the latest generation of U.S.-provided weapons cannot seem to reverse.

Despite the confident, aggressive tone of Trump’s sudden announcement, it nevertheless reflects a diminishing U.S. capacity to dominate the world — regardless of who is in the Oval Office. The current media and political brouhaha is about where to lay the blame for this diminished capacity, and how to reverse the slide of U.S. power.

Media speculation is that Trump, faced with a wall of political opposition for his racist, sexist and anti-migrant actions, is cynically trying to shore up his own base. Though Trump’s base is racist and right-wing, it sees no interest for itself in another U.S. war — just like every other sector of the U.S. masses.

Trump actually made campaign promises to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria and end U.S. involvement in Afghanistan — but no one in U.S. ruling circles expected him to follow through on those promises.

Why Syria is on U.S. hit list

Syria has been targeted by the U.S. for decades based on its militant Arab nationalism, its support of the Palestinian struggle, its opposition to the Israeli state — which is an imperialist beachhead in the region — and its nationalized oil and state-regulated economy.

Before being placed on the U.S. hit list, Syria had a relatively high standard of living and rate of development in the region.

The U.S. effort to destroy Syria moved into high gear when President George W. Bush included Syria in his 2002 “Axis of Evil” list of countries slated for overthrow. In 2013, Washington imposed  economic sanctions on Syria that were intentionally dislocating. Washington charged Syria with not making the “right decisions” at the time of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Wikileaks documents exposed CIA subversion plans in 2006, and its efforts in fomenting dissent and supplying weapons drops by 2009.

In 2011 U.S. operatives began to manipulate the mass ferment that toppled U.S.-supported military dictatorships in Egypt and Tunisia, called the “Arab Spring.” This ferment gave the U.S. an opening for undercover efforts to topple the anti-imperialist governments in Libya and Syria.

Seven months of U.S. bombing did succeed in ripping apart Libya in 2011, thereby shredding every development gain in a country that had enjoyed the highest standard of living in Africa. The extensive development aid that Libya had provided throughout Africa was left in ruins. The U.S. immediately seized the opening to position new military bases throughout Africa.

Obama administration officials, especially Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, all but announced that they expected a similar and even faster success in Syria. The early predictions were that, under direct U.S. pressure, the Syrian government would collapse within weeks.

Washington invited all its allies to participate in the shredding of Syria. Not wanting to be left out of the promise for future looting, France, Britain Turkey, Canada, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE funded proxy attack forces. Jordan provided open-border training camps. Israel provided backdoor access through the Syrian province of Golan that Israel has occupied since 1967.

An endless series of international conferences on Syria, hosted by the United Nations or the European Union, were held in Geneva, Washington, London, Paris, Brussels and Berlin. A rotating assortment of collaborators who had no base in Syria were appointed to set up a new proxy government. These puppet forces could not agree with each other and their contending backers maneuvered endlessly.

The existing Syrian government was never a participant in any meaningful way in these grand conferences to decide the future of their country.

Then Secretary of Defense James Mattis repeated the arrogant U.S. demand as recently as August 2018: “Our goal is to move the Syrian civil war into the Geneva process so the Syrian people can establish a new government that is not led by Assad.”

Other “humanitarian conferences” were held to focus on the 5.5 million Syrian refugees who had fled the destruction. But the conferences’ real purpose was also to raise demands for a “negotiated settlement” that gave international bodies some effective control over Syrian sovereignty.

Each of these conferences made it clear that no aid in reconstruction or resettlement would be forthcoming unless there was a government in place that was to their liking.

Additional in the effort to legitimize the U.S. takeover was a multi-pronged effort on social media to demonize Syria and its leadership. It was a campaign intended to silence and demoralize any opposition.

Many good community-based activists, who knew little about Syria, were taken in. Even those who resisted the U.S. war message absorbed a deep suspicion of the forces fighting to defend Syria, as a secular state, from the concerted effort to pull it apart.

What is role of Turkey and Kurds?

The day before Trump’s Dec. 18 announcement to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, there was a meeting in Geneva on Syria — one that excluded the U.S. and imperialist EU countries.

Instead, meeting on the future of Syria were the foreign ministers of Russia, Iran and, surprisingly, Turkey.

These three countries are opposed, for different reasons and interests, to the uninvited, massively destructive U.S. role in Syria. At the recent conference, according to the Guardian newspaper, they pledged to move forward with “a viable and lasting Syrian-owned, Syrian-led, UN-facilitated political process.” (Dec. 18)

Turkey, an especially strategic member of the U.S.-commanded NATO military alliance, has been sharply opposed to the U.S. use of the YPG Kurdish forces in Syria. Turkey is engaged in a decades-long war against the national aspirations of the 15 million oppressed Kurdish population in Turkey, where the Kurds make up almost 20 percent of the population.

The much smaller Kurdish minority in Syria, amounting to 1.5 million, decided to take advantage of the vacuum created by the weakened central Syrian government to establish a long-sought Kurdish homeland as an autonomous area. They did not, however, call for the overthrow of the Syrian government or of President Assad’s ouster.

The political umbrella representing the Syrian Kurds, the SGF, has held official meetings with the Syrian government in Damascus. At these meetings President Assad made it clear that the government welcomed “open doors” and discussion with the Kurds, but that all foreign occupiers, including the U.S. and Turkish forces, must leave Syria.

The Syrian Kurdish delegation made it clear that their goal is a political deal to safeguard their autonomy. The Syrian central government, engaged in a struggle to save the whole country, did not oppose Kurdish autonomy. The future federated status of the Kurds was left open. (tinyurl.com/ycrvng9b)

In May 2017 Washington, anxious to create a statelet or proxy state in the oil-rich area of northeast Syria, armed the Kurdish YPG forces in an effort to create an army dependent on the U.S. With al-Qaeda ISIS forces on one side and a U.S. bombing onslaught on the other, the Kurdish YPG militias were boxed into an alliance with the U.S.

The Turkish regime appeared apprehensive that U.S. arms supplied to Iraqi Kurds with the U.S. aim of keeping Iraq divided, and U.S. arms supplied to Syrian Kurds with the U.S. aim of keeping Syria divided, would easily reach the more numerous and more oppressed Kurds in Turkey.

Current hand wringing by the U.S. media that Trump’s announced withdrawal means a U.S. military presence will no longer “protect” the Kurds in Syria is disingenuous.

The U.S. goal all along has been to establish its own base in the region and keep all other forces divided and in contention.

Now Turkey’s participation with Russia and Iran in the recent conference, and the growing possibility of Turkey’s break with NATO — perhaps even military intervention where Turkey’s army confronts U.S. forces — has caught Washington in a tangled web of its own making.

Russia, Iran or — ?  Which country is next?

Russian and Iranian assistance to Syria is defensive in character.

If the U.S. were to succeed in overturning the government in Syria — as it did in Iraq and Libya — certainly Russia and Iran, which both resist U.S. domination, seem likely to be next on the U.S. list for attack.

The antiwar movement also needs to remain vigilant. U.S. forces are still massed on the ground in the Near East, in drone bases in African countries, in naval convoys off the shores of China and in the Far East.

There are still U.S. troops, aircraft carriers, nuclear subs and drones in the immediate area of Syria, looking for a new opportunity or a staged provocation.

As the Pentagon did in Iraq, there are many ways to rebrand or rename U.S. troops in Syria and launch a new imperialist initiative.

Antiwar and progressive forces need to maintain a clear and consistent demand to bring all U.S. troops and advisors home, close the bases, and end all occupation and sanctions.

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This article was originally published on Workers World.

Sara Flounders has traveled twice to Syria in solidarity delegations during the U.S. war against that country. She is co-director of the International Action Center and helps coordinate the United National Antiwar Coalition, the Hands Off Syria Campaign, and the Coalition Against U.S. Foreign Military Bases. Sara Flounders is a frequent contributor to Global Research

The resignation letter of Secretary of Defense James Mattis that was published last Thursday revealed much of the Deep State mindset that has produced the foreign policy catastrophes of the past seventeen years. Mattis, an active duty general in the Marine Corps who reportedly occasionally reads books, received a lot of good press during his time at Defense, sometimes being referred to as “the only adult in the room” when President Donald Trump’s national security and foreign policy team was meeting. Conveniently forgotten are Mattis comments relating to how to “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.” His sobriquet in the Corps was “Mad Dog.”

In the media firestorm that has followed upon General Mattis’s resignation, he has been generally lauded as a highly experienced and respected leader who has numerous friends on both sides of the aisle in Congress. Of course, the press coverage should be taken with a grain of salt as it is designed less to praise Mattis and more to get at Trump over the decision to leave Syria, which is being assailed by both neoliberals and neoconservatives who believe that war is the health of the state.

The arguments against the Trump decisions to depart from Syria and downsize in Afghanistan are contrived for the most part and based on the premise that American intervention in places that Washington deems not to be sufficiently promoting democracy, rule of law and free trade is a good thing. Peter Ford, former British Ambassador to Syria, put it nicely when discussing the reaction in the media:

“Trump’s critics…will have the vapors about ‘losing ground to Russia’, ‘making Iran’s day’, and ‘abdicating influence,’ but their criticism is ill-founded. Contrary to their apparent belief, the US does not have a God-given right to send its forces anywhere on the planet it deems fit. Withdrawal will see the US in one respect at least follow the international rules-based system we are so fond of enjoining on others, and will therefore be a victory of sorts for upholders of international law.”

The central argument of the Mattis resignation letter that is being cited by critics relates to Washington’s relationship with the rest of the world and is framed as a failure by President Trump to understand who are friends and who are enemies. Mattis wrote

“One core belief I have always held is that our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships. While the US remains the indispensable nation in the free world, we cannot protect our interests or serve that role effectively without maintaining strong alliances and showing respect to those allies.

“Similarly, I believe we must be resolute and unambiguous in our approach to those countries whose strategic interests are increasingly in tension with ours. It is clear that China and Russia, for example, want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model – gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions – to promote their own interests at the expense of their neighbors, America and our allies. That is why we must use all the tools of American power to provide for the common defense.

“My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors are strongly held and informed by over four decades of immersion in these issues. We must do everything possible to advance an international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity and values, and we are strengthened in this effort by the solidarity of our alliances.”

General Mattis does indeed hold views that were shaped by four decades of experience, but most of it was bad and produced wrong conclusions about America’s place in the world. The Cold War was essentially a bi-polar conflict pitting two adversaries that had the ability to destroy all life on the planet. It generated a Manichean viewpoint on good vs. evil that did not reflect reality which was succeeded by a global war on terror declared by Washington that also exploited the good and evil paradigm. Mattis was a product of that kind of thinking, which was also fueled by the concept of American exceptionalism, which saw the United States as the proper promoter and enforcer of universal values.

There is, of course, another viewpoint, which is that American blundering and use of force as a first option has, in fact, created the current dystopia. The United States is not currently venerated as a force for good, quite the opposite. Opinion polls suggest that Washington is overwhelmingly viewed negatively worldwide and it is perceived as being the nation most likely to start wars. That is not exactly what the nation’s Founders envisioned back in 1783.

Trump is right about leaving Syria where nothing beyond prolonging the bloody conflict is being accomplished. Mattis is wrong about supporting “friends.” For an educated man, he misreads history. The First World War and Second World War developed as they did because of alliances. Countries that appear friendly can exploit relationships with other more powerful nations that will have devastating results. Alliances should be temporary, coming and going based on the interests of the nations involved. In the Middle East, Israel and Saudi Arabia are not actually friends of the United States, and are engaged instead in manipulating Washington to suit their own purposes. Mattis does not understand that and sees a permanent state of war requiring the continued existence of NATO, for example, as a vehicle for deterrence and peace. It is neither. Its very existence depends on a perception of being threatened even where no threat exists, which has poisoned the relationship with Russia since the fall of communism. Worse still, that false perception of threat can lead to war and a global nuclear holocaust.

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Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from SCF

Featured image: USS San Joaquin County (LST-1122)’s starboard propeller being removed/changed by divers from USS Ajax (AR-6) date and location unknown. US Navy photo.

First published by Global Research on June 19, 2020

A crucial element of Japan’s 1960 Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security with the United States, was that no nuclear weapons would be stationed within Japanese territory. Unknown to successive pro-American governments in Japan, along with the country’s population, was that this key provision was being violated in the most blatant fashion.

That same year, 1960, a mere couple of hundred yards off the coast of Iwakuni – a little known southern Japanese city – there was anchored an American flat-bottomed ship, the USS San Joaquin County. This seemingly innocuous vessel, at 328 feet long, was acting under the guise of an “electronics repair ship”, having first arrived at Iwakuni in September 1959.

In reality the San Joaquin County, which was afloat in Iwakuni’s tidal waters, was weighed down with nuclear weapons. The vessel, classified as an LST for “Landing Ship, Tank” or alternatively “tank landing ship”, was comfortably positioned within the three-mile limit of Japanese territorial waters. It was therefore stationed well inside the region of Japan, as even the most hawkish US official would have been forced to concede.

Had news of this massive breach of Japanese sovereignty leaked out, it would very likely have resulted in the demise of any American-friendly government in the country. Such a discovery may also have led to the US losing each of its precious military bases in Japan, along with a collapse of diplomatic relations between the states. Worst of all, a new Japanese administration could have shifted alliances toward Communist China and the USSR, in another blow to US hegemony in this key region.

Less than two decades earlier, two of Japan’s cities were leveled by US atomic bombs, some of the defining moments in human history. The attacks led to a nuclear domino effect, beginning with the USSR in 1949, and continuing with a further seven countries now possessing nuclear arsenals. The final death toll from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings is estimated at over 200,000. The Japanese had not forgotten these callous attacks; hence the specific clause in the 1960 mutual security treaty, that no nuclear weapons be situated within Japan’s territory.

USS San Joaquin County (LST-1122) moored pierside Naval Station Yokosuka, Japan in 1968. Photo by Larry Roszkowiak 

Meanwhile, far from having “station ship duties”, the real job description of the San Joaquin County was to deliver its nuclear arsenal to a handful of US bombers, permanently placed at Iwakuni for general war missions. During a nuclear emergency, the San Joaquin County would sail the 200 yards or so ashore, and lay down anchor. The front of the ship opened like a clamshell, whereby amphibious tractors emerged carrying the nuclear bombs; the vehicles rolled down a ramp and into the shallow water, or directly onto the beach. From there, the nuclear-laden tractors would travel to Iwakuni’s airstrip, loading the precious cargo onto the American planes.

A small Marine air base was located at Iwakuni, which had a covert understanding in which its bombers would receive their nuclear weapons after just minutes. They would in fact obtain their nuclear stockpiles six to 10 hours in advance of any other American bombers in Japan. However, in the event of any attacks on Communist states, the likelihood is the Iwakuni aircraft would have been held back. They may well have been ordered to wait until other US planes in Japan were armed with their own nuclear bombs, before flying off at a similar time. The contingencies at Iwakuni, to swiftly attack the USSR and China, would probably have been rendered meaningless in any case.

The nuclear situation at Iwakuni was not well known even among US Air Force and Navy planners. Yet it was common knowledge among personnel at the Iwakuni air base itself. This highly classified information could easily have been leaked, by accident or otherwise, to civilians such as the Japanese girlfriends of American crews at Iwakuni. What’s more, US planners had suspected this secret nuclear arsenal had already been discovered by Chinese or Russian spies – who would reveal their groundbreaking information at the most inopportune time. On some occasions, the San Joaquin County openly rehearsed its landing of the tractors with their cargo, in full view of the coastline.

In a separate instance, it would have been a routine operation for Communist frogmen (military scuba divers) to target the vulnerable “repair ship” with mines. Sabotage directed against the San Joaquin County could have resulted in a partial or full nuclear explosion, releasing huge amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere. Iwakuni is only 26 miles from Hiroshima and, in such a case, that city may have experienced a second catastrophe within a generation.

Despite all the risks, the San Joaquin County remained at Iwakuni through periods of the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administrations. In July 1966, the San Joaquin County sailed to Guam for repairs; months following that in late November 1966, it relocated to Okinawa, a US-controlled island 1,200 km south of Iwakuni. Earlier that year the American ambassador to Japan, Edwin Reischauer, had learned of the ship’s presence at Iwakuni through a leak to his office. Reischauer threatened to resign unless it was moved clear of the Japanese mainland.

USS San Joaquin County (LST-1122) moored pierside at Naval Station Guam in 1968. Photo by Larry Roszkowiak

Gerald W. Johnson, the US special assistant to the secretary of defense for atomic weapons and energy, was responsible for knowing the precise location of every nuclear weapon in the world. However, Johnson was utterly unaware of the nuclear cargo hidden away in the San Joaquin County. Indeed, he was deliberately deceived, being led to believe the ship was present to conduct electronic overhauls – such deception ranking as an extremely serious offense.

Nor was Johnson aware of nuclear arsenals present in other American vessels, on or near, Japanese shorelines. US warships regularly arrived into Japanese ports for rest periods, which was vital for bolstering morale among travel-weary crew members. Also unknown to many in the Japanese government, along with the country’s general population, was that these ships were almost all loaded with nuclear weapons.

This further applied to the aircraft carriers that arrived into Japanese harbors – which carried nuclear bombs destined for American aircraft – and elsewhere, the large US destroyers, which were armed with masses of nuclear torpedoes. None of the American vessels ever bothered to deposit their nuclear arsenals to bases, before sailing into Japanese territorial waters.

These realities were supported by US Rear Admiral Eugene La Rocque, who said in 1974 that:

 “My experience has been that any ship that is capable of carrying nuclear weapons carries nuclear weapons. They do not offload them when they go into foreign ports such as Japan, or other countries. If they are capable of carrying them, they normally keep them aboard ship at all times”.

This seems likely to be the case today.

The American vessels could be stationed at port for weeks on end, so virtually all year round there were nuclear weapons not far from Japanese civilian areas. Soviet Union war planners were undoubtedly aware these American ships were filled to the rafters with nuclear bombs – which in event of attack would be used against the USSR, the Chinese, or (most likely) both. As a result, Japan’s coastal regions constituted high priority targets for possible nuclear attacks directed from Moscow.

What’s more, with so many nuclear-armed craft sailing around in confined areas along Japan’s coasts, there was always a chance of an accidental collision, or other unforeseen incident. This could have led to a semi or full detonation of a nuclear bomb. The risk was small, but when multiplied by the presence of so many American ships straddled along the shorelines, it was hardly insignificant. The political opposition in Japan, along with anti-nuclear activists, would hardly have been impressed (had they known), nor would Emperor Hirohito one can guess.

When top level Japanese officials were asked if the US ships had nuclear bombs aboard, they spoke with baseless confidence that there were none. They would point to not having been notified by the Americans of the presence of such weapons. The US Department of Defense retains the same policy until today – they refuse to confirm or deny the presence, or absence, of nuclear weapons anywhere in the world.

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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Between April and July this year, Nicaragua suffered an extremely violent attempt at regime change supported by the US government and its allies. Crucial integral components of that coup attempt were bad faith reporting by international human rights organizations and extremely distorted news coverage by Western media. Partisan human rights organizations and media falsely blamed Nicaragua’s Sandinista government for almost all the deaths during the coup, when the reverse is true. Over two hundred Sandinista supporters, uninvolved passers-by and police were killed and hundreds suffered intimidation, abuse and torture at the hands of the US supported opposition forces. By default, organizations like the Inter American Commission for Human Rights and Amnesty International make clear they could hardly care less.

The clearest failure in their false reporting of the conflict is the sinister, ridiculous insistence that the Nicaraguan opposition engaged principally in peaceful protest, a claim beyond absurd given the number of Sandinista and police casualties. This deliberately deceitful coverage of events in Nicaragua reflects the broad contamination of Western societies by what economist Bill Black and others call “control fraud” whereby companies, especially powerful financial companies, use superficially legitimate accounts and auditing controls deliberately to mislead investors. Such companies report inflated assets and minimal costs giving a deliberately untrue and misleading view of their company’s financial position. These powerful companies crowd out honest business practice and manipulate political leaders so as to co-opt justice officials and escape criminal prosecution.

The US government’s failed regime change attempt in Nicaragua this year, like the US offensives against Venezuela or Iran, for example, reveal how this corrupt process reaches into Western institutions of all kinds. Western non-profits, news media and multilateral institutions operate as one enormous corrupt combination via an infinite disinformation feedback loop, denying their countries’ peoples a true and fair view of world events. They falsely inflate how good and morally superior they are, their assets, while deceitfully minimizing the costs, the countless victims and the incalculable suffering. So the populations invested in that vast fraudulent concern think the system’s purported controls, like the media and the non governmental sector, work just fine when, in fact, almost everything is corrupt.

In Nicaragua’s case, two events demonstrate this reality very clearly. Firstly, Western reports on Nicaragua either completely omitted or else glibly dismissed the murderous attack last May on a Sandinista media outlet, Nuevo Radio Ya. The attack resulted from a false sensationalist claim by Miguel Mora, of the opposition’s propaganda outlet 100% Noticias, that his TV station was under attack that day. Mora appealed for opposition activists to attack Nuevo Radio Ya, which they did, setting it on fire, holding over 20 radio staff under siege and then shooting at firefighters and police attempting to control the fire and rescue the people inside. Only the bravery of the rescue services and the radio station staff prevented more severe injury and loss of life. That story has never been told in Western media except by probably the only two genuinely independent US writers to visit Nicaragua during the failed coup, Max Blumenthal and Dan Kovalik.

A second incident, among dozens of similar cases, also demonstrates the corruption of the Western human rights industry and their media accomplices. Last week, the Nicaraguan authorities made public the results of a painstaking investigation into one of the headline atrocities the IACHR and Amnesty International attributed to the government when it took place on June 16th. That day a family of six including two children burned to death in an arson attack on their house. Immediately, the virulent opposition human rights organization CENIDH had its activists on the scene falsely accusing the government of the crime. Within hours the IACHR were also attributing the heinous attack to the government. Now, after months of investigation, the police have identified four of the arsonists on the basis of accusations by survivors of the fire, witness identification and testimony, forensic analysis and incriminating material from opposition social media. Two of the accused have been sent for trial and two are fugitives.

Very early during the coup attempt, the Nicaraguan government invited the OAS to send an Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts to assist the Nicaraguan authorities in their investigations as part of the IACHR mission in Nicaragua. But the IACHR presented what it called a final report to the Permanent Council of the OAS before that expert group had even started work. Now, the expert group has presented a report covering events up to May 30th that, predictably, reproduces the self-same false information as the earlier peremptory IACHR report based on reports by opposition media and human rights organizations. Like the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights before it, the IACHR expert group broke the terms of its original agreement with the government by engaging in activities it had no authority to undertake.

The term of the expert group’s visit had already expired when, on December 19th, the government decided to suspend the IACHR bodies’ presence in Nicaragua, accusing them of supporting the country’s minority opposition and its efforts to overthrow Nicaragua’s constitutional government. Earlier, the Interior Ministry on December 14th confirmed the National Assembly’s measure canceling the legal status of nine non-profit organizations who made illegal use of their resources to participate in and actively support the coup attempt. Those NGOs represent 0.2% of around 4300 non-profits registered with the country’s Interior Ministry. In another move to dismantle the opposition networks involved in the failed coup attempt, the government applied the country’s long standing legislation against incitement to hatred and arrested Miguel Mora, head of 100% Noticias, based on dozens of accusations by Sandinista victims of opposition violence, citing Mora for his hateful instigation of attacks suffered by them and their relatives.

As in the case of measures by the Venezuelan authorities to protect their country’s society from similar crimes, Western media coverage of these recent events in Nicaragua misrepresents them as moves by a dictatorship. But for people in Nicaragua they represent legitimate measures to defend the rule of law, economic stability and citizen security. Western media and human rights organization persistently omit sadistic, murderous opposition violence and grotesquely misrepresent steps by the Venezuelan and Nicaraguan governments to protect people from it. By covering up the opposition’s crimes they make themselves accomplices to them, as the Nicaraguan government noted in relation to the IACHR, it “ constitutes a platform for the broadcasting of false information to promote international sanctions against our country as did the IACHR official Maria Claudia Pulido in her visit to the United States last September 27th, promoting from overseas the rupture of constitutional order and the attempted coup d’etat against Nicaragua’s legitimate government, thus violating the impartiality established in the OAS Charter.”

By refusing to acknowledge the reality of wholesale murderous opposition violence during the failed coup attempt, the IACHR and its NGO camp followers like Amnesty International have confirmed they are accessories to the US government’s regime change operation in Nicaragua. They have been willing accomplices to the killing, burning, rape, abuse and torture of hundreds of Sandinistas, which they have tried disgracefully to cover up.

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The US executive order of withdrawal from Syria has been signed off on, indicating that President Trump is determined to recall the few thousands US troops in Syria back home. It is well known that regular troops are much more vulnerable during withdrawal operations than in combat or deployment positions. Accordingly, the withdrawal, which seems to be happening despite widespread scepticism in Syria and Iraq, will likely take less than the announced 100 days to complete. US military command keeps the dates secret to avoid casualties. Although the departure of the US is much welcomed by all parties in and around Syria – except for the Kurds – Trump is intentionally leaving behind a very chaotic situation in the Levant, and is setting a deadly trap for Russia in the first place, but also for Iran and Turkey.

Judging from what Presidents Trump and Erdogan said to each other during their last phone conversations, it seems the US establishment has decided to leave Syria in Turkey’s hands. This is far from an innocent move. Indeed, the Pentagon has deliberately pushed the several thousand ISIS fighters in the area under its control to the shore of the Euphrates river, facing the Syrian Army and its allies on the Deir-Ezzour front. This means that, in case of a fast US withdrawal coordinated with Turkey, Ankara’s troops will be able to move into the Kurdish-Arab province of al-Hasaka, starting perhaps with Manbij or Tal Abiad, facing no opposition from ISIS for the simple reason that there aren’t any ISIS militants in the area. The two cities are hundreds of kilometres away from the ISIS-controlled area along the Euphrates in Deir-Ezzour.

Turkey can eradicate ISIS in Manbij, Tel Abiad, Ain Arab, Raqqah and all the way to Qamishli simply because ISIS is not present in the entire area but along the Euphrates opposite the Syrian Army forces where the US pushed it.

In the case of a sudden Turkish attack, the YPG Kurdish forces (Syrian PKK) will have to rush towards the advancing Turkish troops and try to slow them down, waiting for the Syrian government’s help and allowing civilians to leave towards Damascus controlled areas or to flee toward Iraqi Kurdistan. Such a move will disrupt the Turkish-Russian-Syrian relationship. Moscow has already warned Turkey against moving into the northeast Syria. Any Turkish move, or even the advance of its jihadist proxy forces in Syria, amassed on the border of the Kurdish controlled provinces, will trigger a reshuffle in the relationships between Moscow and Ankara and between Moscow and Damascus. Such a realignment can only be avoided if President Erdogan resists the temptation to invade and accedes to Russia’s clear preference that the US departure be followed by discussions about the future of the area.

Turkey was already contemplating – according to well-informed sources in Syria – annexing the north of Syria rather than occupying it. Any occupation of Syrian territory will generate international complications and lack of recognition worldwide. However, Turkey has learned from Northern Cyprus that annexation can continue for decades with only sporadic reactions from the international community. Russia’s annexation of Crimea might be taken as a precedent.

If Erdogan doesn’t coordinate with Russia and Iran, the Idlib front will be opened. Pretexts are not lacking since the jihadists are continuously violating the cease-fire agreed in Astana. A Turkish invasion will lead the Syrian Army to attack Idlib, the city and rural area under jihadist control, while also attacking ISIS on the Euphrates with a view to a quick victory.

Any possible ISIS future massacre and attacks in the Kurdish controlled provinces will give a retroactive moral legitimacy to the past years of US occupation of Syria territory. Pundits and US establishment officials will tell the world how the illegal US presence in Syria over the years had served to fight terrorism (ISIS).

In Damascus there is a growing understanding between Kurds and government representatives, as negotiations continue,  about how they will face ISIS together once the US pulls out all forces, a withdrawal expected in less than one month.

There is a need for military coordination to create a secure passage for the troops to squeeze ISIS between two forces on several fronts along the Euphrates river before it expands toward the vast area of al-Hasaka. That will require the support of Russian Air Force, the Syrian Special forces, Iranian ground forces allies and Hezbollah to participate in this very decisive battle to end ISIS, a job the USA did not find time for during the last couple of years of its occupation of the same area.

The YPG will find themselves cooperating with Russia after having fought under USA command for many years. Simultaneously, more Syrian and allied forces will be pushed towards Idlib to prevent the jihadists from taking advantage of the ISIS extermination operation to attack.

For Turkey, any unilateral plan to move into Syria without coordinating with Russia is not to its full advantage. US withdrawal will allow Turkey to reach neither ISIS nor the rich oil and gas fields in DeirEzzour, including al-Omar’s abundant oil and Conoco gas fields. These will be targeted and reached by the Syrian government forces and their allies only after the US withdraws its forces. Last February, Damascus ordered its forces to cross the Euphrates in an attempt to attack ISIS and control the oil and gas fields. These were attacked by the US coalition, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of Syrian and Russian Wagner contractors.

Turkish combat skills were not very impressive when Turkish forces clashed with ISIS in many areas, including Jarablus, Al Rai and Dabiq, in 2016. The forces of Ankara were able to control these cities only after a deal with ISIS who managed to absorb the first wave of attack and inflict severe losses on Turkish forces during the first weeks. ISIS pulled out once the battle was doomed and it was attacked from the rear.

It is likely that neither the Turkish army and its allies nor the Kurdish YPG are capable of defeating ISIS alone. The Syrian army, on the other hand, with the help of their allies and the Russians, have driven ISIS out of many places on the Syrian geography including Palmyra, Suweida and surrounding steppe, spread over tens of thousands of kilometres, in urban and open area warfare.

What is certain is that the Kurds have everything to lose from Trump’s decision to withdraw, as he daily gives more indications that he wants to end his occupation of northeast Syria in favour of Turkey. They have profited greatly from the US presence, thinking it would never end. Now they don’t have many choices unless they have developed suicidal tendencies, as their decision in Afrin suggests.

The quick US withdrawal is expected and even designed to create, no doubt, an initial confusion in the triangle Turkey-Syria-Iraq in the first months. ISIS, Turkey, and al-Qaeda may take advantage of this, hoping to turn the situation to their advantage. Nevertheless, this withdrawal will no doubt be a long-term blessing to the Syrian government, whose officials had not dared to hope for such an outcome. The US establishment has been a source of continuous havoc in the Levant and especially to the “Axis of the Resistance”; it has been the protector of al-Qaeda (in Idlib) and ISIS (in the area Trump declares his intention to withdraw from) in Syria and Iraq. Its departure is a sign that the US is coming to grips with the fact that its hegemony is no longer unilateral. Russia is moving forward while the US is backing off in the Middle East.

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“O little town of Bethlehem/How still we see thee lie/Above thy deep and dreamless sleep/The silent stars go by,” runs the famous Christmas carol sung all over the English-speaking world as it celebrates Christmas.

On Christmas Eve midnight mass will sound out from Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity, the legendary birthplace of Jesus Christ, proclaiming he will bring “peace to men on earth”.

The real Bethlehem

Nothing could be further from the truth than the image of a sweet, untroubled Bethlehem as depicted in a carol originally created by the pious imagination of a Victorian Western-Christian. Generations of Christian children have been brought up on it, and its mythical power is such that few of them realise what or even where Bethlehem is.

A well-educated English friend I had known for years was recently surprised to learn that Bethlehem was located in Palestine. In her mind the town was more a legend than an actual place, and connected to Jews, if to anyone.

That idea is still widespread and has been instrumental in keeping Western-Christians disengaged from the real Bethlehem and unsupportive of its struggle for survival. The city I saw on a visit earlier this year was a travesty of the place the Christmas carol depicts and an indictment of Western Christianity’s abject failure to sustain one of its holiest shrines.

In today’s Bethlehem “dreamless sleep” is more like a nightmare, and the town can only “lie still” when Israel’s occupation ends.

Israel’s brutal vandalism

Bethlehem and its outlying villages of Beit Jala and Beit Sahour have been traditionally the most Christian of Palestine’s places, even though Bethlehem has a Muslim majority now. Until Israel’s occupation in 1967 the city had been an important social, cultural and economic hub, and one of Palestine’s most ancient localities. Its name “Beit Lahem” goes back to Canaanite times, when it was a shrine to the Canaanite god, Lahm or Lahem.

Its architecture is testament to its rich history: Roman and Byzantine, when the Empress Helena had the Church of the Nativity built over the supposed cave of Jesus’ birthplace in 327; followed by the Muslim conquests of 637, and then the crusader occupation from 1099 until ended by Saladin in 1187; the succeeding Ottomans built the city’s walls in the early 16th century, their rule terminated by the British Mandate from 1922 to 1948.

In 1995 Bethlehem was transferred to Palestinain Authority control, although it remains under Israel’s overall rule.

Despite their variation, none of these preceding historical periods was ever associated with the brutal vandalism and destructiveness of Israel’s current occupation. Leaving Jerusalem southwards to travel the nine kilometre distance to Bethlehem, I took a wrong turn and found myself on a fast, modern highway without another Palestinain driver in sight.

I had stumbled by accident onto a Jews-only settler bypass road, one of two that skirt Bethlehem and connect with its encircling settlements. I soon realised the purpose of the operation: To pretend that no one else exists in the area but Jews.

A sad place

There are 22 Israeli settlements encircling Bethlehem, cutting off its exits and confiscating its agricultural land. They glower down from the surrounding hills and house more settlers than all of Bethlehem and its neighbourhoods. To the north is Har Homa, a settlement that until 2000 was an ancient, densely wooded hill called Jabal Abu Ghneim.

Israel uprooted the trees and replaced them with a colony of dreary, box-like houses, which it threatened to turn into a Bethlehem look-alike for tourists. Nokidim, to the east, is the current residence of Israel’s hard-line former defence minister, Avigdor Lieberman.

Since 2015 Israel has closed off Bethlehem’s fertile Cremisan Valley to its Palestinain owners, and announced in June of this year a massive settlement expansion along the route between Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

Rachel’s tomb, Bethlehem’s historic landmark on the main Jerusalem-Bethlehem road and an area traditionally buzzing with shops and restaurants, is now blocked off by the wall and reserved exclusively for Jews. Muslim worshippers who venerated the tomb (and built it) cannot go there. It is a sad place, deserted and lifeless. In the shadow of the wall most businesses have closed and as the noose tightens around Bethlehem, none will be left.

Israel’s relentless penetration to the heart of Bethlehem is unmistakable. Bethlehem is deliberately isolated behind the formidable separation barrier, surrounded by checkpoints, and its economy strangulated. Its main source of prosperity had been tourism with two million annual visitors and a thriving souvenir market of classic olive wood and mother-of-pearl carvings.

It was also a rich agricultural area with a successful wine industry. But most of its land has been confiscated, and draconian restrictions on movement to and from Bethlehem have reduced tourism and pilgrim numbers drastically. Today its population of 220,00, including 20,000 refugees, have the highest unemployment rate in the occupied territories, second only to that of Gaza.

Saving Bethlehem

Sitting in the “cafe” outside the Walled Off Hotel at the entrance to Bethlehem, I had a vivid experience of what Israel’s occupation feels like. The hotel is in effect a piece of installation art, created by the British artist, Banksy, to highlight the plight of Bethlehem.

The only view from the hotel windows is of Israel’s hideous eight-metre wall, whose huge grey slabs are a mere car’s width away.

Stretching forward, you can almost touch it. I remember how its sinister watchtowers and surveillance cameras bore down on me oppressively. It was a scene out of a horror film.

To date, and despite church delegations, papal visits, and public expressions of concern, nothing Christians have done has halted or reversed Israel’s destruction of a city so uniquely holy to Christendom. If they can do nothing to save Bethlehem, they can at least stop singing a carol that mocks its sad reality.

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Ghada Karmi is a Palestinian doctor, academic and author.

After the decision made by the Holy and Sacred Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate on November 27, the parishes of the Archdiocese of Russian Orthodox churches in Western Europe are in a brown study on their future. However, they have no choice, really. The resolution of the Synod clearly obliges them to be distributed among the local dioceses of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. If they join any other ecclesiastical jurisdiction, it is most likely that the Phanar will break off canonical relations with them. And the unilateral proclamation of independence will lead them in schism and cause losing of recognition in the Orthodox world.

The governing bodies of the Archdiocese are located in Paris, France. Most parishes and monasteries are also located in this country. Thus, if they decide to comply with the resolution of the Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, they will be headed by the Metropolitan of France, Emmanuel Adamakis. Will it contribute to the integration of believers of the Russian tradition into the structures of the Ecumenical Patriarchate? Most likely it won’t.

And the problem is not just in the arrogant attitude of the Ecumenical Patriarchate hierarchs to non-Greek believers, resulting in the existence of parallel national jurisdictions under the rule of Constantinople in territories that already have their Greek bishops of the Ecumenical Patriarchate (for example, the Ukrainian Orthodox Churches in the USA and Canada overlapping with the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America).

There is one more significant factor: even the Greek believers themselves are not enthusiastic about the reign of Metropolitan Emmanuel. For example, His Eminence has been criticized for promoting unworthy hierarchs, covering frauds and intrigues that ensured their career success. He is also accused of ignoring the immorality and sexual misconduct of the subordinate clergy. For example, police has documented a case of sexual harassment of a parishioner by Fr. Nicholas Kakavelakis. However, Metropolitan Emmanuel did nothing in response.

As a director of the Office of the Orthodox Church under the auspices of the European Union, and then Vice-President of the Council of European Churches, Metropolitan Emmanuel regularly meets with politicians and leaders of various non-governmental organizations whose liberal positions greatly contradict the teaching of the Church. At the same time, he does not communicate concerns of the Orthodox believers about this clearly. Did he express the worries of his flock about the legalization of same-sex marriage by President Hollande in 2013? Did he bring attention to the anti-Christian tendencies in Western society during his meetings with representatives of other churches? Absolutely not.

On the contrary, Metropolitan Emmanuel is a regular guest at the annual galas of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (Conseil Représentatif des Institutions juives de France, CRIF) – an organization that maintains friendly contacts with the French Jewish LGBT group Beit Haverim!

Moreover, there are loud rumors about himself being an alleged sodomite. For example, during his vacation in Lesbos, he was seen in the company of a young man and their relationships were very suspicious. It seems that it was too embarrassing for eyewitnesses to describe what they unwittingly heard from the Orthodox bishop. Therefore, they criticized the least serious violation of the canons, namely, they condemned Met. Emmanuel for beard shaving and wearing frivolous secular clothes.

Thus, although the majority in the former archdiocese of the Russian churches in Europe has become quite indifferent to the Russian tradition and has been largely “Europeanized”, they are still too conservative to accept such behavior and are not willing to have such a Metropolitan as their Primate.

At the same time, the rumors that Metropolitan Emmanuel is the main candidate for Archbishopric Throne of America become more and more widespread. If this is true and European Orthodox will in turn receive a more conservative shepherd, everyone will be satisfied and there will be no serious conflicts.

The difficulty is that the Western European Exarchate has already been dissolved but the Archbishop Demetrios of America is still in full power. Reportedly, His Eminence will not leave at least until next Easter. And an Extraordinary General Assembly of the Diocesan Governing Union of Russian Orthodox Associations in Western Europe (a meeting of clergy and laity) is scheduled for February 23 next year.

Thus, even if the Phanar had a plan to quietly reshuffle the Primates, something must have gone wrong and all their cards were mixed up. As a result, at least for a while, the execution of the resolution of the Synod of Constantinople will mean for Russian parishes in Europe a transition under the authority of Metropolitan Emmanuel of France. And this, despite the fact that the latter has ties to the leadership of the Archdiocese, will not be easy.

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Sophia Iliadi is a freelance blogger from Athens, currently based in the US. She’s written a couple of articles for Veterans Today, voreini.gr, exapsalmos.gr.

“The Axis of Resistance is effectively wiping out terrorism in Syria – terrorism supported by the West – and for this, we should all be grateful,” Mark Taliano said in an interview with the Tasnim News Agency.

“Did the on-going military success against Western-supported terrorism affect Trump’s decision? I would think so,” he said.

“It means the world is shifting towards a multi-polar orientation, and Trump may be aware of this. Maybe he is cutting his losses and seeking a win-win outcome which will benefit both the US and its fabricated enemies,” the analyst added.

Taliano is an author and independent investigative reporter who recently returned from a trip to Syria with the Third International Tour of Peace to Syria. In his new book titled “Voices from Syria”, he combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes mainstream media narratives about the dirty war on Syria.

The following is the full text of the interview.

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Tasnim: As you know, US President Donald Trump has recently decided to withdraw all US troops from Syria. Given that Trump is a businessman and thinks only about profit, what are the reasons behind this decision? What do you think about the possibility of the total withdrawal? Would he keep US strongholds in Syria?

Taliano: Yes, Trump announced that he was going to withdraw all US troops from Syria. It could mean anything, since Western politicians have no credibility. They say one thing and do another. They are largely puppets to deep state, de facto unelected politicians.

Nonetheless, I am very pleased that he at least made the statement for a couple of reasons.

First, it reveals the vacuousness of the fake Left and fake Progressives who infest Western discourse with their empty, uninformed anti-war posturing.  Any person who opposes such a decision (as the fake Left and fake Progressives do) is clearly pro-war of aggression. So they have lost all credibility to anyone who is paying attention.

Second, Trump’s statement means that it might just happen. Maybe he will pull US troops from Syria.  If he does, then that is extraordinarily commendable. Maybe Trump realizes that the neo-con project, spawn of the 911 false flag, is a disaster, as it is. The Western war criminals are perpetuating an overseas holocaust, they are draining public treasuries, and they are gaining nothing apart from permanent residency in the War Criminal Hall of Infamy.  So, from a business perspective, maybe he realizes that it is a lost cause and he should divert public monies to something productive, rather than to the black hole of the Pentagon and assorted agencies.

Tasnim: Trump’s withdrawal plan has been met with widespread opposition inside and outside the US. France’s President Emmanuel Macron has said he deeply regrets the controversial decision. “An ally must be dependable,” said Macron, who reportedly called Trump to warn him against the plan. US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and the US envoy to the global coalition fighting the Daesh terrorist group, Brett McGurk, resigned in protest over Trump’s decision. In your opinion, why is Trump insisting on his decision?

Taliano: As I explain in my book, the entire “war on terror” is a fraud, since the West supports all of the terrorists in Syria, including ISIS (Daesh). Unfortunately, war propaganda in the West’s post-democratic, new Fascist societies is a growth industry so most North Americans have yet to figure this out.  They probably never will.  I am very happy that some of these pro-terrorist, pro-wars of aggression public figures are resigning. I wish they would all face war crimes trials at the Hague and then leave the scene permanently. If Bolton and Pompeo do not resign, they should. Again, I wish they would. If Trump could divest himself of these criminals, then he would be truly “draining the swamp”, and that would be commendable.

President Macron of France is a self-serving puppet for the transnational oligarch class globalists who are destroying the world. French people are generally more sophisticated than their North American counterparts, with a better awareness of geopolitical realities, so they are waking up to the fact that neoliberalism is a failed economic ideology. The international banksters and transnational monopolies are profiting from the warmongering while 99 % of domestic populations are paying the price in terms of taxes, destroyed economies, increased poverty, and so on.  Socialism exists in France and elsewhere, but it is strictly socialism for the publicly bailed-out oligarch classes. The French, and most notably the Gilets Jaunes are seemingly aware of this. I commend the French for rising up against Macron and all that he and his government represent.

Tasnim: Some analysts say that the US withdrawal would be a victory for Iran. What is your assessment of the Islamic Republic’s role in developments which led Trump to take such a decision?

Taliano: Iran has played an important role in the war against international terrorism. Iran’s role in Syria is legal, and effective. The Axis of Resistance is effectively wiping out terrorism in Syria – terrorism supported by the West – and for this we should all be grateful. So, if wiping out terrorists is a victory for Iran, then so be it. It is a well-earned victory. Most North Americans would applaud Iran’s role in Syria if they could only disabuse themselves of the war propaganda that assaults and victimizes them twenty- four hours a day. Iran does not have an empire, nor does it seek an empire.  It does not commit wars of aggression against other countries, and it respects international law and the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other nations, including its own.  Already the West is waging criminal economic war against Iran, and anyone who is paying attention knows that Iran is the West’s next target, so Iran has all the more incentive to fight terrorism. Western-supported terrorism is a direct threat to the Middle East and Iran must defend its national security.

Did the on-going military success against Western-supported terrorism affect Trump’s decision? I would think so. It means the world is shifting towards a multi-polar orientation, and Trump may be aware of this. Maybe he is “cutting his losses” and seeking a “win-win” outcome which will benefit both the US and its fabricated “enemies”. This would be a positive outcome.

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This article was originally published on Tasnim News Agency.

Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017.

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

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

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

List Price: $17.95

Special Price: $9.95 

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Late on December 25, the Israeli Air Force carried out a missile strike on targets in the Damascus International Airport area. According to reports, Israeli F-16I jets launched at least 16 missiles from Lebanese airspace.

The Syrian media stressed that the Air Defense Forces (SADF) had intercepted most of the hostile missiles, but acknowledged that at least 3 Syrian servicemen had been injured in the incident. The SADF also fired several missiles at Israeli jets involved in the strike. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed that they had employed their own air defense systems to protect the jets.

The Syrian side did not use the S-300 air defense system delivered by Russia to repel the airstrike. Syrian personnel have not yet finished the necessary training. According to experts, the Syrian S-300 system will be put on a combat duty in the second half of January or in early February 2019.

The recent Israeli strike came a day after the Russian Defense Ministry announced that 150 servicemen of one of the surface to air-missile regiments of Russia’s Central Military District had returned from Syria.

On December 25, Syrian Army soldiers, backed up by Russian servicemen, entered the village of Arima west of the town of Manbij, a stronghold of the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Previously, Arima was controlled by the SDF. However, its current status is unclear. Pro-SDF sources claim that the village will be jointly controlled by the SDF and the Syrian Army. Pro-government sources claim that the village was handed over to the government.

Local sources claim that this move is the first stage of the implementation of a broader agreement, which may son be reached between the Damascus government, Russia and the Kurdish-dominated SDF.

Since the US decision to withdraw its troops from Syria and the resumption of Turkish threats to launch a new military operation against Kurdish armed groups in northern Syria, the SDF has desperately been seeking a new protector from Ankara. The Damascus government and Russia are one of the options considered by the Kurdish leadership. Another option is to hope that the remaining US personnel and French troops will be able to prevent a Turkish offensive along the entire contact line between the SDF and the Turkish military.

Meanwhile, Ankara continued its military build-up in Turkish regions bordering with northern Syria. Recently, a batch of Leopard 2A4 battle tanks  were reportedly sent to the area.

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“Palestinians continue to live under the threat of random violence by Israeli military and police: disproportionate violence within the West Bank and Gaza, unprompted violence in the face of peaceful protest, and misdirected violence by an Israeli state that systematically fails to distinguish between civilians and combatants….

In recent decades, the Israeli government has moved further and further to the right, normalizing settler colonialism and its accompanying logics of denial, destruction, displacement, and death. Despite international condemnation, settlement expansion has continued. At the same time, home demolitions and state-enforced displacement continue to uproot Palestinian communities. For Gazans, the eleven-year Israeli (and Egyptian) blockade by land, air, and sea has created the largest open-air prison in the world.  …

We have an opportunity to not just offer solidarity in words but to commit to political action, grass-roots action, local action and international action that will give us what justice requires and that is a free Palestine from the river to the sea,” (Marc Lamont Hill, November 28, 2018 at the United Nations)

Fired for telling the truth.

Did CNN fire Mark Lamont Hill following pressures from the Zionist Anti Defamation League (ADL)?

The ADL and others said the “river to the sea” phrase is code for the destruction of Israel often used by Hamas and groups bent on its destruction.

“Those calling for ‘from the river to the sea’ are calling for an end to the State of Israel,” the ADL’s Senior Vice President for International Affairs, Sharon Nazarian, said in a statement, adding that the annual event at the UN “promotes divisiveness and hate.” (Boston Globe, November 30, 2018, emphasis added)

Mark Lamont Hall was fired for telling the truth.

Does anybody at CNN get fired for NOT reporting the crimes committed by Israel against the People of Palestine.

It’s called “lying through omission”. But you will not be fired for lying.

Unspoken Truth:

• From 1945 Until Today – 20 to 30 Million People Killed in US led wars.
• 291,880 bombs and missiles by the U.S. and its allies since 2001 dropped on Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yemen since 2001.

Is it reported by CNN? They might acknowledge the figures without mentioning that it is a crime against humanity.

Terrorism is “Made in the USA”. Al Qaeda is a creation of  the CIA. The “Global War on Terrorism” is a Fabrication used to justify US-NATO military interventions on humanitarian grounds (“Responsibility to Protect”).

That’s the “unspoken truth”. Again best not mention it on CNN if you want to keep your job.

The four year “counter-terrorism” bombing campaign against Iraq and Syria initiated by Obama in 2014 was NOT intended to target the Islamic State (ISIS). Its objective was to destroy Syria and Iraq. That is the unspoken truth.

Lying is the “New Normal” at CNN.

You only get fired for saying the truth. 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, December 26, 2018

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Marc Lamont Hill: Interview on the Breakfast Club 

Marc Lamont Hill’s presentation at the United Nations, November 28, 2018

Full Transcript of Marc Lamont Hill’s statement at the United Nations

Mr Secretary General, chairman, ambassadors, and your excellencies — good afternoon. It is with great honor and humility that I accept the opportunity to speak before you. As a scholar, as an activist, and as a citizen, I am profoundly interested in the plight of the Palestinian people as well as the broader ethical, moral, and political implications of their struggle for freedom and justice, as well as equality. As such, this annual convening represents a critical intervention. It also represents a site of possibility.

On the other hand, it shows considerable irony. As you well know, this year marks the seventieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This declaration was produced out of the rubble and contradictions of World War II, and it was intended to offer a clear ethical and moral outline of the basic rights and freedoms to which all human beings, irrespective of race, religion, class, gender, or geography, are entitled.

This declaration, of course, has been far from perfect, both in design and in execution. Too often we have framed human rights through the lens of the West. We viewed it through the gaze of colonialism, and we have assessed them through the limited prism of our own experiences. Simply put, the powerful have too often attempted to universalize their own particular and local values.

Still, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has offered us a flawed but functional starting point from which to articulate basic moral and ethical ambitions as global citizens. These ambitions have been particularly helpful when attempting to keep track of the vulnerable against the backdrop of imperialism, exploitative economic arrangements, white supremacy, patriarchy, and all the other entanglements of the modern nation state.

For this reason, it is indeed ironic and sad that this year also marks the seventieth anniversary of the Nakba, the great catastrophe in May 1948 that resulted in the expulsion, murder, and to date permanent dislocation of more than a million Palestinians. For every minute that the global community has articulated a clear and lucid framework for human rights, the Palestinian people have been deprived of the most fundamental of them.

While the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that all people are “born free and equal in dignity and rights,” the Israeli nation state continues to restrict freedom and undermine equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel, as well as those in the West Bank and Gaza. At the current moment, there are more than sixty Israeli laws that deny Palestinians access to full citizenship rights simply because they’re not Jewish. From housing to education to family reunification, it is clear that any freedoms naturally endowed to all human beings are actively being stripped away from Palestinians through Israeli statecraft.

While human rights promise the right to life, liberty, and security of person, Palestinians continue to live under the threat of random violence by Israeli military and police: disproportionate violence within the West Bank and Gaza, unprompted violence in the face of peaceful protest, and misdirected violence by an Israeli state that systematically fails to distinguish between civilians and combatants.

While the Universal Declaration of Human Rights protects us against torture and cruel and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Palestinians continue to be physically and psychologically tortured by the Israeli criminal justice system — a term I can only use with irony.

As human rights groups around the world have noted, the use of solitary confinement constitutes a clear and indisputable form of torture, yet in the West Bank, Palestinians are routinely subjected to solitary confinement and indefinite detention — often without any formal charges being filed. Last year, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that physical torture in “exceptional cases,” including ticking time bomb situations, constitutes acceptable means by which to engage in torture.

Although these exceptions are themselves a violation of the absolute human right not to be tortured, Israeli security operates in practice in such a way that nearly all Palestinian cases are viewed as exceptional. Nearly every Palestinian is understood to be a potential terrorist, thereby making them susceptible to ticking time bomb investigation tactics at all times. As such, Israel’s practices are routinely in clear violation of the UN’s convention on torture, which was signed by Israel in 1986 and ratified in 1991.

While the Declaration of Human Rights insists that no one be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile, Palestinians are routinely denied due process of law. West Bank Palestinians are regularly placed under administrative detention, a framework that allows them to be incarcerated for up to six months and can be extended after judicial review without being charged with a crime. The only thing needed for such outcomes is the ambiguous claim of a security threat, a claim used by the Israeli state at all times, at all costs, and for all reasons. Through this vagueness, Palestinians are routinely punished for their political views rather than any actual threat of violence.

The Declaration of Human Rights insists that all humans are entitled to a “fair and public hearing by an impartial tribunal.” Israeli military courts — the exclusive adjudicator, largely, for West Bank residents, and in some cases Palestinian citizens of Israel — have a conviction rate of more than 99 percent. That suggests that Palestinians are either more guilty than any other group in human history, or that the Israeli government is unwilling or incapable of offering fair and impartial trials for Palestinians.

The Declaration of Human Rights promises the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state, as well as the right to leave any country including “his [sic] own” and to return to said country. It is impossible to travel throughout historic Palestine and not see the blatant restriction of movement between cities in the occupied Palestinian territories as well as inside the state of Israel. Standing checkpoints, temporary or flying checkpoints, annexation walls, and other security barriers prevent Palestinians from moving freely both within areas legally designated by the Israeli government and cosigned by the Palestinian Authority under the terms of Oslo. But also we see in Gaza the restriction of movement that is so severe that it literally defines life in the area.

I promise you that I will not exhaust all of my time by enumerating every human rights violation perpetrated by the Israeli government. These are well-known and have been well-documented by every credible human rights organization in the world. Rather, I would like to speak to you about the urgency of the current moment.

As we speak, the conditions on the ground for Palestinian people are worsening. In recent decades, the Israeli government has moved further and further to the right, normalizing settler colonialism and its accompanying logics of denial, destruction, displacement, and death. Despite international condemnation, settlement expansion has continued. At the same time, home demolitions and state-enforced displacement continue to uproot Palestinian communities. For Gazans, the eleven-year Israeli (and Egyptian) blockade by land, air, and sea has created the largest open-air prison in the world.

With only 4 percent potable water, electricity access that is limited to four hours per day, 50 percent unemployment, and the looming threat of Israeli bombs, Gaza continues to constitute one of the most pressing humanitarian crises of the current moment. In the West Bank, conditions are not much better. Unemployment is generally around 18 percent, with frequent loss of income due to Israeli military closures, making it impossible for Palestinian workers to get access to jobs. Settlements and the extra land allocated for them, as well as closed military zones and other restrictions, make it impossible for Palestinian towns to grow.

And in the midst of it all, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s administration has become increasingly indifferent to critique, censure, or even scorn from the international community for its practices. Perhaps the most glaring example of this indifference as well as the urgency of the current moment is the recently passed Nation State Law. Through this basic law, the Israeli state has officially rejected Arabic as an official state language. It has described settlement expansion both inside and outside of the Green Line as a national value, and it has reinforced the fact that Israel is not a state of all of its citizens.

In May of this year, President Trump officially moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, which he recognized as the undivided capital of Israel. This choice not only flew in the face of international law and precedent, but also constituted a powerful provocation and a diplomatic deathblow. In late August, President Trump then permanently reneged on America’s commitment to funding UNRWA [the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East], a move that now leaves millions of Palestinian refugees in medical, economic, and educational peril. Moreover, the move serves as a political strong-arm tactic, whereby the United States is unilaterally attempting to resolve, through the Trump administration, the final status of Palestinian refugees.

While President Trump’s policies have been the most dramatic, it is important that I stress to you, to reiterate to you, that they are not wildly out of step with American policy. Cuts to UNRWA is an idea that has been raised in Washington for years, dating back at least to the George W. Bush administration.

President Trump’s decision to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem caused enormous controversy, but he was merely implementing a bipartisan law Congress passed in 1995. And in so doing, he executed what has already been official United States policy and fulfilled a promise made by every United States president and presidential candidate, Democrat and Republican, for a very long time.

With regard to the question of Palestine, Donald Trump is not an exception to American policy. Rather, Donald Trump is a more transparent and aggressive iteration of it.

As I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks, the words offered today by everyone in this room are a necessary component of our resistance efforts. We need powerful, counterintuitive, dangerous, and courageous words. But we must also offer more than just words. Words will not stop the village of Khan al-Ahmar, with its makeshift schools created by local Bedouin villagers, from being demolished in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Words will not stop poets like Dareen Tatour from being caged in Israeli jails for having the audacity to speak the truth about the conditions of struggle on her own personal Facebook page. Words will not stop peaceful protesters in Gaza from being killed as they fight for freedom against Israel’s still-undeclared borders.

Regarding the question of Palestine, beyond words, we must ask the question: what does justice require? To truly engage in acts of solidarity, we must make our words flesh. Our solidarity must be more than a noun. Our solidarity must become a verb.

As a black American, my understanding of action, and solidarity action, is rooted in our own tradition of struggle. As black Americans resisted slavery, as well as Jim Crow laws that transformed us from a slave state to an apartheid state, we did so through multiple tactics and strategies. It is this array of tactics that I appeal to as I advocate for concrete action from all of us in this room.

Solidarity from the international community demands that we embrace boycott, divestment, and sanctions as a critical means by which to hold Israel accountable for its treatment of Palestinian people. This movement, which emerged out of the overwhelming majority of Palestinian civil society, offers a nonviolent means by which to demand a return to the pre-1967 borders, full rights for Palestinians citizens, and the right of return as dictated by international law.

Solidarity demands that we no longer allow politicians or political parties to remain silent on the question of Palestine. We can no longer, in particular, allow the political left to remain radical or even progressive on every issue — from the environment to war to the economy — except for Palestine.

Contrary to Western mythology, black resistance to American apartheid did not come purely through Gandhian nonviolence. Rather, slave revolts and self-defense and tactics otherwise divergent from Dr King or Mahatma Gandhi were equally important to preserving safety and attaining freedom. If we’re to operate in true solidarity with the Palestinian people, we must allow the same range of opportunity and political possibility. If we are standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people, we must recognize the right of an occupied people to defend itself.

We must prioritize peace. But we must not romanticize or fetishize it. We must advocate and promote nonviolence at every opportunity, but we cannot endorse a narrow politics of respectability that shames Palestinians for resisting, for refusing to do nothing in the face of state violence and ethnic cleansing.

At the current moment, there is little reason for optimism. Optimism, of course, is the belief that good will inevitably prevail over evil, that justice will inevitably win out. In the course of human history — and certainly, even in the course of the United Nations — there is no evidence of such a proposition. Optimism is unsophisticated. Optimism is immature. Optimism is what my students have when they take examinations that they did not study for. Some become quite religious at that time. But regardless of their strategies of optimism, the outcome is far from guaranteed or even likely.

What I’m challenging us to do, in the spirit of solidarity, is not to embrace optimism but to embrace radical hope. Radical hope is a belief that despite the odds, despite the considerable measures against justice and peace, despite the legacy of hatred and imperialism and white supremacy and patriarchy and homophobia, despite these systems of power that have normalized settler colonialism, despite these structures, we can still win. We can still prevail.

One motivation for my hope in the liberation and ultimate self-determination of the Palestinian people comes in August of 2014. Black Americans were in Ferguson, Missouri, in the Midwest of the United States, protesting the death of a young man named Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American male who had been killed by a law enforcement agent. And as we protested, I saw two things that provided hope for the Palestinian struggle.

One was that for the first time in my entire life of activism, I saw a sea of Palestinian people. I saw a sea of Palestinian flags in the crowd saying that we must form a solidarity project. We must struggle together in order to resist, because state violence in the United States and state violence in Brazil and state violence in Syria and state violence in Egypt and state violence in South Africa and state violence in Palestine are all of the same sort. And we finally understood that we must work together and not turn on each other, but instead turn to each other.

And later that night when the police began to tear gas us, Mariam Barghouti tweeted us from Ramallah. She, along with other Palestinian youth activists, told us that the tear gas that we were experiencing was only temporary. They gave us tips for how to wash our eyes out. They told us how to make gas masks out of T-shirts. They gave us permission to think and dream beyond our local conditions by giving us a transnational or a global solidarity project.

And from those tweets and social media messages, we began then to organize together. We brought a delegation of black activists to Palestine, and we saw the connections between the police in New York City who are being trained by Israeli soldiers and the type of policing we were experiencing in New York City. We began to see relationships of resistance, and we began to build and struggle and organize together. That spirit of solidarity, a solidarity that is bound up not just in ideology but in action, is the way out.

So as we stand here on the seventieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the tragic commemoration of the Nakba, we have an opportunity to not just offer solidarity in words but to commit to political action, grassroots action, local action, and international action that will give us what justice requires — and that is a free Palestine from the river to the sea. Thank you for your time.

The North African state of Sudan is currently experiencing serious political War unrest as it attempts to gradually transition from the Saudi-led camp to the Turkish-Qatari one, and the geopolitical fate of this beleaguered but strategically positioned country will have serious implications for the future of multipolarity in Africa.  

Sudan, no stranger to externally provoked conflicts within its borders, is once again suffering from serious Hybrid War unrest as a violent anti-government protest movement exploded onto the national scene over the past week. The North African country had recently invited Russia to construct the segments of the North-South and East-West Trans-African Railways that are expected to traverse through its territory and President Bashar just paid the first-ever visit of an Arab head of state to Syria since that country’s conflict first broke out almost eight years ago, making many observers suspect that the timing of the latest destabilization attempt wasn’t coincidental.

Before going any further, it needs to be objectively recognized that there are genuine socio-economic concerns in Sudan that created the preexisting political conditions that foreign actors are presently exploiting. This means that the blame for the latest turmoil should be partially shared by the government for its many shortcomings, the so-called “international community” for failing to support the country after going along with the US’ decades-long policy of “isolating” it, and the external elements that are actively provoking violence there. This already complex situation is further complicated by the context in which it’s occurring.

It’s one thing for the impoverished masses to protest against their dismal socio-economic conditions and another thing entirely for them to do so violently by torching the local headquarters of the ruling party like they did in the strategic railway hub of Atbara, which was meant to interfere with the rest of the country’s access to the outside world via the nearby Red Sea coastal city of Port Sudan and potentially exacerbate the national crisis. On top of that, an opposition leader returned to the country after self-imposed exile around the same time and openly called for regime change, which proves that an incipient Color Revolution is indeed underway.

Whoever the foreign forces behind this unrest may be, they aren’t targeting Sudan only because of its economic cooperation with Russia and political support to Syria since these are relatively recent developments whereas the ongoing developments evidently took some time to plan beforehand. The real reason why Sudan is under Hybrid War attack is because it’s gradually transitioning from the Saudi-led camp to the Turkish-Qatari one in what is increasingly becoming one of the New Cold War’s most impactful “defections” because of the far-reaching consequences that it could have for multipolarity.

Sudan’s geostrategic position makes it indispensable to China’s Silk Road vision for Africa, but it’s also of premier attractiveness for Turkey too after Ankara clinched a deal almost exactly 12 months ago to rebuild the Red Sea port of Suakin. This alarmed the GCC for a few reasons, not least of which is because Turkey is allied with Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s Qatari nemesis but also because Sudan is supposed to be their military ally in the War on Yemen. Khartoum reiterated its commitment to that conflict just a few days ago but then Qatar extended its full support to Sudan right afterwards.

There’s no doubt that Sudan is trying to realign itself away from the GCC and closer to Turkey and Qatar, both of which are very close to Russia nowadays too, and it shouldn’t be forgotten that Khartoum invited Moscow to build a naval base along its coast during President Bashir’s meeting last year in Moscow with his Russian counterpart. He even warned during that time that the US wants to balkanize his country into five separate parts, a scenario that might be in the process of happening if the current Hybrid War unrest isn’t properly dealt with before it acquires critical mass and passes the point of no return.

Another point to keep in mind is that Sudan is actively cooperating with Russia in seeking to broker a political solution to the long-running conflict in the neighboring Central African Republic (CAR) where Moscow is militarily involved in an indirect capacity per UNSC approval. Although the Khartoum peace process earlier this year didn’t yield any tangible results, it was nevertheless a step in the right direction, one which might be endangered if Sudan continues to slide further into chaos and ultimately becomes a failed state. That could have profoundly negative implications for the CAR’s fledgling peace process and might reverse the progress over the past year.

Altogether, the destabilization of Sudan could undermine China’s Silk Road connectivity plans for Africa as well as spill over into the neighboring countries of CAR, South Sudan, and Ethiopia, all of which are currently struggling with various degrees of unrest of as it is. Russia and Turkey’s strategic interests in the Red Sea region and their Sudanese gateway into the Sahel could also be jeopardized, as could the foothold that Qatar is trying to establish on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula. While the GCC might lose a valuable military ally in the War on Yemen, Sudan’s collapse could conceivably be to their benefit if it spoils Turkey and Qatar’s plans.

That’s not to say that the GCC has a direct hand in what’s happening just because of a superficial interpretation of the “qui bono” principle, but just that it’s nevertheless capable of turning Sudan’s deepening destabilization into a relative advantage when compared to the strategic losses that China, Russia, Turkey, and Qatar would receive in that scenario. Likewise, Sudan’s successful reorientation away from the GCC would comparatively harm their interests much more than the aforementioned states’, which stand to gain in the event that this happens. Considering this, it’s clear to see that Sudan has suddenly become a country of consequence in the New Cold War.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

First published on February 14, 2015

The objectives of the US military presence in Africa are well documented: counter Chinese influence and control strategic locations and natural resources including oil reserves. This was confirmed more than 8 years ago by the US State Department:

In 2007, US State Department advisor Dr. J. Peter Pham commented on AFRICOM’s strategic objectives of “protecting access to hydrocarbons and other strategic resources which Africa has in abundance, a task which includes ensuring against the vulnerability of those natural riches and ensuring that no other interested third parties, such as China, India, Japan, or Russia, obtain monopolies or preferential treatment.” (Nile Bowie, CIA Covert Ops in Nigeria: Fertile Ground for US Sponsored Balkanization Global Research, 11 April 2012)

At the beginning of February 2015,  AFRICOM’s “head General David Rodriguez called for a large-scale US-led ‘counterinsurgency’ campaign against groups in West Africa during remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC:

In similar remarks at a the US Army West Point academy last week, US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) chief General Joseph Votel said that US commando teams must prepare for new deployments against Boko Haram and the Islamic State. ” (Thomas Gaist, US AFRICOM Commander Calls for “Huge” Military Campaign in West Africa, World Socialist Web Site, February 02, 2015)

Mark P. Fancher highlighted the hypocrisy and the “imperialist arrogance” of western countries, which “notwithstanding the universal condemnation of colonialism”, are evermore willing “to publicly declare (without apologies) their plans to expand and coordinate their military presence in Africa.” (Mark P. Fancher, Arrogant Western Military Coordination and the New/Old Threat to Africa, Black Agenda Report, 4 February 2015)

Now more troops from Benin, Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria and Chad are being sent to fight against Boko Haram.

This new war on yet another shadowy terrorist entity in Africa is reminiscent of the failed Kony 2012 propaganda campaign cloaked in humanitarian ideals. It is used as a smoke screen to avoid addressing the issue of the victims of the war on terror, the real causes of terrorism and to justify another military invasion. It is true that Boko Haram makes victims, however the goal of Western intervention in Africa is not to come to their rescue.

The deadliest conflict in the world since the Second World War and still raging is happening in Congo and the Western elite and its media couldn’t care less. That alone shows that military interventions are not intended to save lives.

To understand why the media focuses on Boko Haram, we need to know what it is and who is behind it.  What is the underlying context, what interests are being served?

Is Boko Haram another US clandestine operation?

Boko Haram is based in northeast Nigeria, the most populated country and largest economy in Africa. Nigeria is the largest oil producer of the continent with 3.4% of the World’s  reserves of crude oil.

In May 2014, African Renaissance News published an in-depth report on Boko Haram, wondering whether it could be another CIA covert operation to take control of Nigeria:

[T]he greatest prize for AFRICOM and its goal to plant a PAX AMERICANA in Africa would be when it succeeds in the most strategic African country, NIGERIA. This is where the raging issue of BOKO HARAM and the widely reported prediction by the United States Intelligence Council on the disintegration of Nigeria by 2015 comes into perspective…(Atheling P Reginald Mavengira, “Humanitarian Intervention” in Nigeria: Is the Boko Haram Insurgency Another CIA Covert Operation? Wikileaks, African Renaissance News, May 08, 2014)

In the 70’s an 80’s Nigeria assisted several African countries “in clear opposition and defiance to the interests of the United States and its western allies which resulted in a setback for Western initiatives in Africa at the time.” (Ibid.)

Nigeria exerted its influence in the region through the leadership of the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG, right), an army consisting of soldiers from various African countries and set up by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and which intervened in the Liberian civil war in the 90’s. Liberia was founded in 1821 by the US and led by American-Liberians for over a century.

The Western powers, first and foremost the US, are obviously not willing to let Africans have a multinational army in which they have no leading role. ACRI, which later became Africom, was formed in 2000 to contain Nigeria’s influence and counter ECOMOG, thus avoiding the emergence of an African military force led by Africans.

According to Wikileaks reports mentioned in Mavengira’s article above, the US embassy in Nigeria serves as an

“operating base for wide and far reaching acts of subversion against Nigeriawhich include but [are] not limited to eavesdropping on Nigerian government communication, financial espionage on leading Nigerians, support and funding of subversive groups and insurgents, sponsoring of divisive propaganda among the disparate groups of Nigeria and the use of visa blackmail to induce and coerce high ranking Nigerians into acting in favour of US interests.” (Mavengira, op., cit., emphasis added)

Mavengira is part of the GREENWHITE Coalition, “a citizen’s volunteer watchdog made up of Nigerians of all ethnic groups and religious persuasions.” He writes that the ultimate goal of the American clandestine operations in his country is “to eliminate Nigeria as a potential strategic rival to the US in the African continent.” (Ibid.)

An investigation into Boko Haram by the Greenwhite Coalition revealed that the “Boko Haram campaign is a covert operation organized by the American Central Intelligence Agency, CIA and coordinated by the American Embassy in Nigeria.” The U.S has used its embassy for covert operations before. The one in Benghazi was proven to be a base for a covert gun-running operation to arm the mercenaries fighting against Bashar Al-Assad in Syria. As for the embassy in Ukraine, a video from November 2013 emerged recently showing a Ukrainian parliamentarian exposing it as the central point of yet another clandestine operation designed to foment civil unrest and overthrow the democratically-elected government.

The Greenwhite Coalition report on Boko Haram reveals a three stage plan of the National Intelligence Council of the United States to “Pakistanize” Nigeria, internationalize the crisis and divide the country under a UN mandate and occupying force. The plan “predicts” Nigeria’s disintegration for 2015. It is worth quoting at length:

The whole [National Intelligence Council] report actually is a coded statement of intentions on how [by] using destabilization plots the US plans to eventually dismember Nigeria […]

Stage 1: Pakistanizing Nigeria

With the scourge of Boko Haram as an existential reality, in the coming months the spate of bombings and attacks on public buildings are likely to escalate.

The goal is to exacerbate tension and mutual suspicion among adherents of the two faiths in Nigeria and leading to sectarian violence […]

Stage 2: Internationalizing the Crisis

[T]here will be calls from the United States, European Union and United Nations for a halt to the violence. […] For effect, there will be carpet bombing coverage by the International media on the Nigerian crisis with so-called experts discussing all the ramifications who will strive to create the impression that only benevolent foreign intervention could resolve the crisis.

Stage 3: The Great Carve out under UN Mandate

There will be proposals first for an international peace keeping force to intervene and separate the warring groups and or for a UN mandate for various parts of Nigeria to come under mandated occupying powers. Of course behind the scenes the US and its allies would have secretly worked out which areas of Nigeria to occupy guided as it were by naked economic interests […] (Ibid., emphasis added)

In 2012, Nile Bowie wrote:

The Nigerian Tribune has reported that Boko Haram receives funding from different groups from Saudi Arabia and the UK, specifically from the Al-Muntada Trust Fund, headquartered in the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia’s Islamic World Society [8]. During an interview conducted by Al-Jazeera with Abu Mousab Abdel Wadoud, the AQIM leader states that Algeria-based organizations have provided arms to Nigeria’s Boko Haram movement “to defend Muslims in Nigeria and stop the advance of a minority of Crusaders” [9].

It remains highly documented that members of Al-Qaeda (AQIM) and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) who fought among the Libyan rebels directly received arms [10] and logistical support [11] from NATO bloc countries during the Libyan conflict in 2011[…]

Image: Abdelhakim Belhadj, rebel leader during the 2011 war in Libya and former commander of the Al-Qaeda-linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.

As covertly supporting terrorist organizations to achieve foreign policy aims appears to be the commanding prerequisite of foreign policy operations under the Obama Administration, Boko Haram exists as a separate arm of the US destabilization apparatus, aimed at shattering Africa’s most populous nation and biggest potential market. (Nile Bowie, CIA Covert Ops in Nigeria: Fertile Ground for US Sponsored Balkanization Global Research, 11 April 2012)

Reports also indicate that some Nigerian commanders may be involved in fuelling the insurgency.

According to the report, a Nigerian soldier in Borno state confirmed that Boko Haram attacked Gamboru Ngala in their presence but their commander asked them not to repel the attack. The soldier told BBC Hausa Service that choppers hovered in the air while the attacks were ongoing. 300 people were killed, houses and a market burnt while soldiers watched and were ordered not to render assistance to those being attacked.  The soldier said that the Boko Haram insurgency will end when superior officers in the army cease to fuel it.

At the abductions of Chibok girls, one soldier in an interview told SaharaReporters,

“…we were ordered to arrest vehicles carrying the girls but just as we started the mission, another order was issued that we should pull back. I can assure you, nobody gave us any directives to look for anybody.”

Some soldiers suspect  that their commanders reveal military operations to the Boko Haram sect. (Audu Liberty Oseni, Who is Protecting Boko Haram. Is the Nigerian Government involved in a Conspiracy?, africanexecutive.com, May 28, 2014)

Could it be that these commanders have been coerced by elements in the U.S. embassy, as suggested by the aforementioned Greewhite Coalition investigation?

Boko Haram: The next chapter in the fraudulent, costly, destructive and murderous war on terror?

It has been clearly demonstrated that the so-called war on terror has increased terrorism. As Nick Turse explained:

[Ten] years after Washington began pouring taxpayer dollars into counterterrorism and stability efforts across Africa and its forces first began operating from Camp Lemonnier [Djibouti], the continent has experienced profound changes, just not those the U.S. sought. The University of Birmingham’s Berny Sèbe ticks off post-revolutionary Libya, the collapse of Mali, the rise of Boko Haram in Nigeria, the coup in the Central African Republic, and violence in Africa’s Great Lakes region as evidence of increasing volatility. “The continent is certainly more unstable today than it was in the early 2000s, when the U.S. started to intervene more directly,” he told me. (Nick Turse, The Terror Diaspora: The U.S. Military and Obama’s Scramble for Africa, Tom Dispatch, June 18, 2013)

What exactly does the U.S. seek in Africa?

When it comes to overseas interventions, decades of history have shown that the stated intents of the U.S. Army are never its real intents. The real intent is never to save humans, but always to save profits and power. US-NATO interventions do not save. They kill.

US-led interventions since the beginning of the century have killed hundreds of thousands, if not over a million innocent people. It’s hard to tell because NATO does not really want to know how many civilians it kills. As The Guardian noted in August 2011, except for a brief period, there was “no high-profile international project dedicated to recording deaths in the Libya conflict”.

In February 2014, “at least 21,000 civilians [were] estimated to have died violent deaths as a result of the war” in Afghanistan according to Cost of War. As for Iraq, by May 2014 “at least 133,000 civilians [were] killed by direct violence since the invasion.”

As for Libya, the mainstream media first lied about the fact that Gaddafi initiated the violence by attacking peaceful protesters, a false narrative intended to demonize Gaddafi and galvanize public opinion in favour of yet another military intervention. As the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs reported, “violence was actually initiated by the protesters.”

It stated further:

The government responded to the rebels militarily but never intentionally targeted civilians or resorted to “indiscriminate” force, as Western media claimed […]

The biggest misconception about NATO’s intervention is that it saved lives and benefited Libya and its neighbors. In reality, when NATO intervened in mid-March 2011, Qaddafi already had regained control of most of Libya, while the rebels were retreating rapidly toward Egypt. Thus, the conflict was about to end, barely six weeks after it started, at a toll of about 1,000 dead, including soldiers, rebels, and civilians caught in the crossfire. By intervening, NATO enabled the rebels to resume their attack, which prolonged the war for another seven months and caused at least 7,000 more deaths. (Alan Kuperman, Lessons from Libya: How Not to Intervene, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, September 2013)

Despite these figures, the media will once again try to convince us that what the world needs most at the moment is to get rid of the terrorist group Boko Haram and that a military intervention is the only solution, even though the so-called war on terror has actually increased terrorism globally. As Washington’s Blog pointed out in 2013, “global terrorism had been falling from 1992 until 2004… but has been skyrocketing since 2004.”

The Guardian reported back in November 2014:

The Global Terrorism Index recorded almost 18,000 deaths last year, a jump of about 60% over the previous year. Four groups were responsible for most of them: Islamic State (Isis) in Iraq and Syria; Boko Haram in Nigeria; the Taliban in Afghanistan; and al-Qaida in various parts of the world. (Ewen MacAskill, Fivefold increase in terrorism fatalities since 9/11, says report, The Guardian, November, 18, 2014)

What the Guardian fails to mention is that all these groups, including Boko Haram and the Islamic State, have been, in one way or another, armed, trained and financed by the US-NATO alliance and their allies in the Middle East.

Thanks to the covert support of Western countries, arms dealers and bankers profiting from killing and destruction, the war on terror is alive and well. The West advocates for endless military interventions, pretending to ignore the real causes of terrorism and the reason why it expands, hiding its role in it and thereby clearly showing its real intent: fuelling terrorism to destabilize and destroy nations, thus justifying military invasion and achieving their conquest of the African continent’s richest lands under the pretext of saving the world from terror.

Selected articles on Boko Haram

Audu Liberty Oseni, Who is Protecting Boko Haram. Is the Nigerian Government involved in a Conspiracy?, africanexecutive.com, May 28, 2014

Kurt Nimmo, U.S. and France Target Boko Haram and Focus on Africa’s Strategic Minerals, Infowars, January 14, 2015

Emile Schepers, Boko Haram: An Extremism Firmly Rooted in Nigeria’s Colonial Past, Morning Star, May 17, 2014

Ajamu Baraka, The Destabilization of Africa and the Role of “Shadowy Islamists”. From Benghazi to Boko Haram, Black Agenda Report 14 May 2014

Glen Ford, Coming Soon: A U.S. Death Squad Program for West Africa Black Agenda Report, May 28, 2014

Adeyinka Makinde, Nigeria: Candidate for Political Destabilization and “Regime Change”?, adeyinkamakinde.blogspot.co.uk, June 15, 2013

Kurt Nimmo, Is Boko Haram An “Intelligence Asset”? Terror Attack in Nigeria Opens Door to Africom, Infowars.com, May 10, 2014

Prof. Horace Campbell, Boko Haram: “Economic Fundamentalism” and Impoverishment Send Unemployed Youths Into Religious Militias, Pambazuka News 4 June 2014

Abayomi Azikiwe, The Militarization of the African Continent: AFRICOM Expands Operations in Cooperation With Europe, Global Research, April 22, 2014

an earlier version of this article  was published by Global Research on April 25, 2103

In the immediate wake of the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush stated in no uncertain terms that  “State sponsors of terrorism” would be considered as “terrorists”.

“We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them”.

But there is always an “Exception that the Proves the Rule”  and that is George W. Bush himself. 

When George W. Bush respectfully kisses King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, does this mean that Dubya could –by some stretch of the imagination– be considered a “suspected terrorist”, who should never have been elected president of the United States of America?

The answer is negative: Kissing  “State sponsors of terrorism” on the mouth is not defined by the FBI as “suspicious behavior”.

The Global War on Terrorism’s  “New Normal“: “Good Guy” Terrorists

Establishing political ties with “State sponsors of terrorism”  is now considered to be part of a “New Normal”, a humanitarian endeavor intent upon spreading  American democracy Worldwide.

NATO  calls it  “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P).

Former Secretary of State John Kerry concurs:  financial aid to Syria’s Al Nusra, an affiliate of Al Qaeda is part of an R2P mandate.

There are now “‘good guy terrorists” and “bad guy terrorists” as well as “moderate terrorists”.

Financial aid is channeled to Al Qaeda “good guy terrorists” to protect Syrians against the terrorists  (New York Times,  April 20, 2013)

 Al Nusra  “Good Guy Terrorists” supported by John Kerry

The Bush and bin Laden Families

Now let us turn our attention to the Bin Laden Family.

The Bushes and bin Ladens are long-time friends.

We know that the late Osama bin Laden was a “bad guy”:  “Enemy Number One”.

He is a disgrace to members of the bin Laden family, who reluctantly provided him with “pocket money”, which was used to develop Al Qaeda (The Base).  He is referred to as a “Black Sheep”.

There is nothing wrong, therefore, in socializing and doing business with family members of terror mastermind Osama bin Laden, including the late Salem bin Laden and Osama’s brother Shafiq bin Laden of the Carlyle Group.

Its all part of a “good guys project” of going after Osama,  the “Black Sheep”,  and waging the “Global War on Terrorism”.

Confirmed by the Washington Post, “fellow investors” of the Carlyle Group Osama’s brother Shafiq bin Laden and former President H.G.W. Bush met at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel one day before 9/11 (see image below):

It didn’t help that as the World Trade Center burned on Sept. 11, 2001, the news interrupted a Carlyle business conference at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel here attended by a brother of Osama bin Laden [Shafiq bin Laden]. Former president Bush [senior, seem image above], a fellow investor, had been with him at the conference the previous day. (Greg Schneider, Pairing the Powerful With the Rich, Washington Post, March 16, 2003)

Launched on September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush is the political architect of the “Global War on Terrorism” commonly referred to as GWOT. 

On the evening of September 11, 2001, president George W. Bush pronounced a historic speech in which he defined the relationship between “terrorists’ and “state sponsors of terrorism”:

The search is underway for those who are behind these evil acts. I’ve directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and to bring them to justice. We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them. 

In a subsequent address to the joint session of the House of Representatives and the Senate on September 20, 2001:

“We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. (Applause.) From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime [state sponsor of terrorism].

“Every nation in every region now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” – President George W. Bush, 20 September 2001

Now let us pause and reflect

Bush seems to be caught up in the contradictions of his own political rhetoric, the  “either you are with us or you are with the terrorists” conundrum:

“I am with myself and I am also with the terrorists” (paraphrase)

The House of Saud provides financial aid to the terrorists. And so does the bin Laden family. Worst Case scenario:  There may be a “conflict of interest”.

According to The Washington based CATO Institute (November 2001) Saudi Arabia is a “prime sponsor of terrorism”

The U.S. government has warned that it will treat regimes that harbor or assist terrorist organizations the same way that it treats the organizations themselves. Yet if Washington is serious about that policy, it ought to regard Saudi Arabia as a prime sponsor of international terrorism. Indeed, that country should have been included for years on the U.S. State Department’s annual list of governments guilty of sponsoring terrorism.

The One Trillion Dollar Foreign Policy Question

What is  ultimately involved is that the US government is the ultimate “state sponsor” of those who sponsor terrorism.

The US government supports the House of Saud. In turn, the Saudi monarchy supports Al Qaeda.

It follows pari passu:  the US government is a “State sponsor of Terrorism”.  QED.

“Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

Bear in mind Dubya is asking the question.

And now we are asking you, our readers, the question:

Is Dubya  “with us”, or “with the terrorists.” either/or, both or neither?

One interview subject, Omar Al-Mustafa — who wanted to be a White Helmet but wasn’t accepted because he wasn’t al Nusra Front (al Qaeda) — recounted the following:

“People evacuated by the White Helmets often did not come back alive.  For example, a person receives a minor injury, is rescued, evacuated, and then brought back with their stomach cut open and with their internal organs missing.  I heard that a little girl was injured.  They took her to Turkey and brought back in three days, dead and with no internal organs. People were scared.  When someone got injured, they were afraid to call the White Helmets and ask for help.”

Grigoriev’s findings, presented at the U.N, are consistent with previous on-the ground investigations, including those of pioneering investigative journalist Vanessa Beeley (also featured in the Roundtable presentation), and Prof. Tim Anderson. 

In October, 2017, locals told Prof. Tim Anderson that the building pictured below had been used for organ trafficking.

Additionally, the Director-General of Syria’s Coroner’s Office, Houssein Noufel, reported in November, 2016, that body organs from 15,000 Syrians were sold over the course of six years. [1]

A litany of crimes committed by the White Helmets is documented in the video below.

.

Equally disturbing, however, is that Western agencies, including Amnesty International, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, and Western media, use the White Helmets as sources for their stories.

A U.K document entitled, “Syria Resilience CSSF Programme Study” states, in reference to the White Helmets, which it names Syrian Civil Defence (SCD),

“In addition to service delivery, SCD provide an invaluable reporting and advocacy role, being nominated again this year for the Nobel Peace Prize. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have stated that SCD are their most routinely reliable source for reporting. Throughout the bombardment by Russia since September 2015, SCD has provided essential corroboration that strikes were not targeting Da’esh but moderate opposition entities. This has provided confidence to statements made by UK and other international leaders made in condemnation of Russian actions.”

Amply documented, the “news” that the White Helmets report to Amnesty, SOHR, and myriad government sources, consists of fake news and staged rescues. Consider these screen grabs from the above video on UNWeb TV:

Colonial media uses terrorist-embedded sources for their criminal disinformation campaigns, and these campaigns amount to (criminal) war propaganda.

Testimonies such as those above provide evidence-based counter-narratives which Western governments and their agencies have disappeared for years.

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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017.

Notes

[1]“Body Organs of Over 15,000 Syrians Sold in Six Years: Coroner’s Office.” FARS NEWS AGENCY, 17 November, 2016. Global Research, 18 November, 2016.( https://www.globalresearch.ca/body-organs-of-over-15000-syrians-sold-in-six-years-coroners-office/5557626) Accessed 25 December, 2018.

[2 ]Syria Resilience CSSF Programme Study. (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/630409/Syria_Resilience_2017.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0B8DBRudQ-bxEo5mESFmnoKgoQgGHa7ibhGeAHizt19Io41zmGEubrN_w) Accessed 25 December, 2018.

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

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

Voices from Syria 

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There is a great uproar over the recent decision by US President Trump to pull US troops out of Syria, announcing his reason for doing so is that ISIS, the so-called Islamic State, has largely been defeated. What lies behind the decision and more important, what was behind the surprise emergence of ISIS across Syria in 2014 brings the spotlight to yet-classified documents of the Obama term. If the reorganized Justice Department is compelled to make these documents public in lawsuits or Freedom of Information requests, it could rock organizations such as the CIA and many in the Obama camp.

In 2010 the US Administration under President Barack Obama developed a top secret blueprint for the most ambitious and far-ranging series of US-backed regime change across the Islamic Middle East since World War I and the Anglo-French Sykes-Picot agreement. It was to set off a wave of wars and chaos, of failed states and floods of war refugees unimaginable to the most cynical veteran diplomat, and beyond the belief of most lay persons in the world.

In August, 2010, six months before Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution was launched by the Washington NGOs including the NED, the Soros Foundations, Freedom House and others, President Obama signed Presidential Study Directive-11 (PDS-11), ordering Washington government agencies to prepare for “change.”  The change was to be a radical policy calling for Washington’s backing for the secret fundamentalist Islamic Muslim Brotherhood sect across the Middle East Muslim world, and with it, the unleashing of a reign of terror that would change the entire world.

According to US Congressional testimony of Peter Hoekstra, former Chairman of the US House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the Obama Administration PSD-11 directive–as of March 2017 still classified Top Secret–“ordered a government-wide reassessment of prospects for political reform in the Middle East and of the Muslim Brotherhood’s role in the process. “

A Grandiose Task Force

To draft the contents of PSD-11, a top secret task force was established within the Obama National Security Council (NSC), headed by Dennis Ross, Samantha Power, Gayle Smith, Ben Rhodes and Michael McFaul.

The PSD-11 Task Force members were remarkable in many regards. Samantha Power, who would go on to become Obama’s UN Ambassador and lead the demonizing of Russia after the CIA’s Ukraine Color Revolution coup in 2014, was to play an instrumental role in convincing President Obama that Libya’s Mohammar Qaddafi must be militarily removed for what she called  “humanitarian reasons.” Dennis Ross, accused by Palestinian opponents of being “more pro-Israeli than the Israelis,” co-founded the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)-sponsored Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP). He was Special Assistant to President Obama and Senior Director at the NSC for the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, Pakistan and South Asia when he was part of the PSD-11 task force.

Gayle Smith would later go on in 2015 to head the USAID, the CIA-linked State Department agency that funneled US taxpayer millions to finance the NGOs of the Arab Spring and other Color Revolution regime changes. Michael McFaul, who once described himself as a “specialist on democracy, anti-dictator movements, revolutions,” was later named Obama’s Ambassador to Moscow where he coordinated opposition protests against Putin.

The Top Secret PSD-11 report that the Task Force drew up was partially revealed in a series of legal Freedom of Information Act requests to the State Department. Released official documents revealed that the NSC Task Force had concluded that the Muslim Brotherhood was a “viable movement” for the US Government to support throughout North Africa and the Middle East. A resulting Presidential directive ordered American diplomats to make contacts with top Muslim Brotherhood leaders and gave active support to the organization’s drive for power in key nations like Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Syria, at the 2011 outset of the “Arab Spring.” The PDS-11 secret paper came to the bizarre conclusion that the Muslim Brotherhood’s brand of political Islam, combined with its fervent nationalism, could lead to “reform and stability.” It was a lie, a lie well known to the Obama PSD-11 Task Force members.

The True Muslim Brotherhood

The Muslim Brotherhood or Ikhwan–Arabic for The Brotherhood–is a secret masonic-like organization with a covert  or underground terrorist arm and a public facade of “peaceful doing of charity.” It was founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna who developed the cult’s guiding motto. The credo of his Society of Muslim Brothers was incorporated into a chant of six short phrases:

Allah is our goal; The Prophet is our Leader; The Qur’an is our Constitution; Jihad is our Way; Death in the service of Allah is the loftiest of our wishes; Allah is Great, Allah is Great.

Al-Banna created a secret or hidden arm of the Ikhwan in Egypt and later worldwide, known as the Special Section (al-nizam al-khass), or, as it was referred to by the British in Egypt, the Secret Apparatus (al-jihaz al-sirri). That was the military wing of the Brotherhood, in effect, the “assassination bureau.” Al-Banna taught his recruits, exclusively male, that “Jihad is an obligation of every Muslim.” He preached the nobility of “Death in the Service of Allah,” and wrote, Allah grants a “noble life to that nation which knows how to die a noble death.” He preached a death cult in which “Victory can only come with the mastery of the ‘Art of Death.’” For the Brotherhood that “mastery” was perfected in the killing of “infidels” in Jihad or Holy War in the name of Allah. The infidels could be other Muslims such as Shi’ite or Sufi who did not follow Al-Banna’s strict Sunni practice, or Christians.

Hasan Al-Banna called for adoption of the very strict Islamic Shari’a law, the complete segregation of male and female students, with a separate curriculum for girls, a prohibition of dancing, and a call for Islamic states to eventually unify in a Caliphate.

During World War II, leading Muslim Brotherhood figures spent exile from British-controlled Egypt by fleeing to Berlin where, among others, Al Banna’s close Muslim brotherhood ally, Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, worked intimately with the SS and Heinrich Himmler to create special Muslim Brotherhood terror units of the SS, so-called Handschar SS, to kill Soviet soldiers and Jews. In the 1950’s the CIA discovered the Nazi Muslim Brotherhood recruits in exile in postwar Munich and decided they could be “useful.”

Virtually every major Jihadist terrorist organization and leader has come out of the Muslim Brotherhood. Osama bin Laden, who worked for the CIA in Pakistan recruiting Jihadist Mujahideen to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, was a Muslim Brotherhood member who was recruited by the CIA and Saudi Intelligence head Prince Turki al-Faisal, to create what came to be called Al Qaeda. Other known terrorist members of the Ikhwan were Al Qaeda’s Ayman Al-Zawahiri, and the blind Sheik Omar Abdul-Rahman who recently died in a US prison serving time for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Sheikh Omar was accused of conspiring to assassinate Egypt’s Mubarak and masterminding the Muslim Brotherhood assassination of Anwar Sadat in addition to the bombing of the World Trade Center.

The members of the Obama Administration National Security Council PSD-11 Task Force that recommended a US Government embrace of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood in Islamic countries of the Arab Middle East, knew very well who they were dealing with. Since the 1950’s the CIA had worked with the Ikhwan around the world. Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda in Iraq and in Syria, al Nusra Front in Syria, as well as the so-called Islamic State or ISIS all were created out of Muslim Brotherhood networks, changing names as a chameleon lizard changes color to suit its surroundings.

The origins of Al Qaeda in Iraq and Syria and later of ISIS , the murderous wars and chaos sweeping across the Arab Middle East and into Western Europe since 2010, could all be directly traced back to those Washington Obama policies, their so-called Arab Spring, coming from that August 2010 PSD-11 Presidential Task Force directive. This is what threatens to come out with declassification of US Justice Department files in the coming months. Some in Washington speak of treason, a strong word.

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

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The Global Economic Crisis

The Great Depression of the XXI Century

Michel Chossudovsky (Editor)

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Each of the authors in this timely collection digs beneath the gilded surface to reveal a complex web of deceit and media distortion which serves to conceal the workings of the global economic system and its devastating impacts on people’s lives.

In all major regions of the world, the economic recession is deep-seated, resulting in mass unemployment, the collapse of state social programs and the impoverishment of millions of people. The meltdown of financial markets was the result of institutionalized fraud and financial manipulation.

The economic crisis is accompanied by a worldwide process of militarization, a “war without borders” led by the U.S. and its NATO allies.

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This book takes the reader through the corridors of the Federal Reserve, into the plush corporate boardrooms on Wall Street where far-reaching financial transactions are routinely undertaken.

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Imperial America and predatory capitalism are the grinches that steal every holiday season, and all other times of the year worldwide.

There’s no joy in war theaters, or for countless millions in America, the West, and elsewhere – one or two missed paychecks from homelessness, hunger and despair.

On any given night in America, more than 600,000 individuals are homeless. Some estimates are much higher, things worsening over time because of bipartisan opposition in Washington to peace, equity and justice for all.

Many of the homeless in America are combat veterans. America treats its own with disdain. No longer involved in US wars of aggression, they’re unwanted, on their own, and out of luck back home.

Other working individuals or families with children, earning poverty or sub-poverty wages, are forced to make tough choices, unable to afford all essentials to life.

The American dream for tens of millions in the country is nightmarish. Imagine trying to survive homeless on Chicago’s mean streets in winter where I live.

According to the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, over 80,000 in city were homeless in 2016, its latest estimate.

The Housing and Urban Development (HUD) definition of homelessness includes individuals or families without “a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence.”

The Department of Education’s definition, focusing on children and youths, includes individuals “sharing the housing of other persons due to loss of housing, economic hardship, or a similar reason; are living in motels, hotels, trailer parks, or camping grounds due to the lack of alternative adequate accommodations; are living in emergency or transitional shelters; or are abandoned…”

Many homeless individuals or families in America double up with others, an unsatisfactory temporary arrangement.

In Chicago and other cities, some ride public transportation all night to stay warm. Others are without shelter of any kind.

Many cities have overnight warming centers. Yet they’re avoided by many homeless persons over safety issues. Women fear possible sexual assault or rape.

Theft, violence, other abuses, and unsanitary conditions make these facilities dangerous and inhospitable.

Homelessness in America is a national scandal, a political and economic issue, affected by cuts in federally funded low-income housing, especially since the 1980s.

Other vital social programs eroded or were eliminated, symptomatic of an uncaring nation. The world’s richest one doesn’t give a damn about its poor and disadvantaged – its resources increasingly earmarked for militarism, endless wars, and corporate handouts.

An August 2018 Food Research & Action Center (FRAC) study, titled “How Hungry is America?” found food insecurity in the country is widespread, affecting nearly one in six households nationwide in 2017.

Children are especially deprived, nearly one in five affected by what the study called “food hardship.”

FRAC president Jim Weill explained that

“food hardship is a serious national problem that requires a serious national response.”

“Too many people in every region, state, and community have been left behind in the economic recovery from the Great Recession, and are still struggling to put food on the table.”

The so-called “Great Recession” is a protracted/unreported Great Depression for tens of millions of Americans, including the 21.3% of unemployed working-age individuals (according to Shadowstats), and countless tens of millions more way underemployed – victims of an unprecedented wealth disparity in the country, the same thing going on throughout the West and most elsewhere.

Low wages don’t keep up with inflation. Benefits provided by companies are eroding. Social justice throughout the West is on a chopping block for elimination.

For tens of millions of suffering people in US war theaters, hardships, dangers, and misery take on entirely new meanings.

There’s no joy to the world this holiday season or any other time of year for most people in most parts of the world – enduring a daily struggle to get by, struggling to stay alive in active war theaters.

They’re victims of US-led dark forces, inflicting enormous harm on most people worldwide to benefit the privileged few.

There’s no dreaming of what the neocon-CIA-connected Washington Post called “a bright Christmas.”

The forecast includes endless wars, growing poverty, human misery and suffering, along with indifference by officials in the West and most other countries for the rights and needs of their citizens and residents.

Joy won’t arrive on Christmas morning for most people most everywhere – nor throughout the holiday period or any other time of year.

How can it for the homeless, hungry, exploited, or otherwise ill-treated millions worldwide.

I’ll spend Christmas and the holiday period like all other times of the year – doing what I love best, writing and speaking out for a nation and world safe and fit to live in, opposing my country’s imperial agenda, denouncing its high crimes.

I can’t change the world. I just hope to push it a little in the right direction.

It’s my way of giving back for my life’s blessings, hoping many others will join in working for responsible change – during the holiday period and all other times of the year.

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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.

Some men simply enjoy guns, battles and all aspects of warfare.

In Churchill’s case, he found his ‘love’ for war during the time he spent in Afghanistan.

“Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.” Winston Churchill said at age 22 in 1897 in Afghanistan.

But he was, as are many great men, a walking paradox.

Little did most know how shaky his hands were on many occasions. Also, for example, for decades, Churchill avoided standing too close to balconies and train platforms.

“I don’t like standing near the edge of a platform when an express train is passing through. I like to stand back and, if possible, get a pillar between me and the train. I don’t like to stand by the side of a ship and look down into the water. A second’s action would end everything. A few drops of desperation.”

Churchill understood it and named it his “black dog”, who also like many great men, suffered from manic depression.

Churchill’s paradoxes were such that he was so paralysed by despair and even sometimes fear of war, aspects of his character not found easily in history books, that he spent time in bed, had little energy, few interests, lost his appetite, couldn’t concentrate. He was minimally functional; and this didn’t just happen once or twice in the 1930s, but also in the 1920s and 1910s and earlier. These darker periods would last sometimes a few months…and then he’d come out of it and be his normal self.

But normal for Churchill was in a sense also abnormal: when he wasn’t severely depressed and low in energy and lying in bed, Churchill had very high energy levels. He wouldn’t go to sleep until two or three in the morning, instead staying up and dictating his dozens of books. He would talk incessantly in a tantivy of whirling thoughts. So much so that the then US President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, once said of him: “He has a thousand ideas a day, four of which are good.” These are manic symptoms, part of the disease of manic-depression.

After some time, Churchill would go back into months of not talking, not having any ideas, not having any energy. And then he’d be back up again. His mood swings were more than likely related to Churchill’s heavy drinking as much as what we now refer to as a bi-polar disorder.

Churchill was also by character very inscrutable, as likely to insult as to charm dinner party guests. He drank a lot, admitting: “I have taken more out of alcohol than it has taken out of me.” He was irascible, clear by his hot temper and easily provoked anger. However he remained self-assured to the point of arrogance, and wilful. Many who shared his conservative politics couldn’t stomach his erratic nature caused in the main by his heavy drinking bouts.

Churchill was no pacifist in fact, in the middle of World War I, he confessed:

“I think a curse should rest on me because I love this war. I know it’s smashing and shattering the lives of thousands and yet I can’t help it, I enjoy every second of it.”

Winston Churchill was a complex, sometimes paradoxically contradictory and larger than life man who wrestled alcoholism and depression in addition to all these contradictions swirling in a cocktail nearing, some might say a form of insanity, a manic depressive personality that remained with him throughout his lifetime.

In 1897, British forces launched a savage campaign against Afghanistan’s Pashtun tribesmen, forebears of the Taliban, on the North West Frontier. It was the first time for Winston Churchill an aspiring journalist/war correspondent, while also ranked as a junior (lieutenant) cavalry officer, took part in serious and bloody military actions.

Rudyard Kipling best described what the experienced British soldier felt about ‘the locals’ in his ‘The Young British Soldier’: “When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains, And the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains…”

War profoundly affects men which makes their love and hate for it like two sides of the same coin.

To conclude, it might seem an over simplification but must be said; women have more sense. Why I don’t know!

On December 25, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces continued their low-intensity effort to defeat ISIS in the Hajin pocket in eastern Syria. Clashes were reported near the settlements of Abu Hasan, Abu Khatir and Susah. Technically, the SDF had captured Hajin, but it has not secured it yet.

On December 24, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) released a fresh propaganda video showing the group’s efforts against ISIS in the Hajin pocket. The video shows the YPG’s “deep” involvement in anti-ISIS efforts of the US-led coalition and is aimed at showing the importance of the group in this field.

It is interesting to note that with the development of the situation with the US troops withdrawal and the growing threat of a Turkish operation in northeastern Syria, the media forgery called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) is collapsing. In the current situation, almost no pro-SDF and mainstream sources are able to pretend that the SDF is a multi-ethnic coalition with a limited participation of the YPG. All was forced to admit that the SDF is a Kurdish-dominated group, with the key role of the YPG and its political wing in its leadership.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), the YPG/SDF is currently redeploying large forces from the Deir Ezzor province, including a frontline with ISIS, to the area of Manbij where the group is preparing to repel an expected Turkish advance.

In turn, the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) and Turkish-backed militants have continued their build up along the contact line with the SDF-held areas. Over the past few days up to 100 armoured vehicles and artillery pieces have been spotted moving in Turkey towards the border with Syria.

In the Idlib de-escalation zone, militants continue to violate the ceasefire regime on a constant basis. The most intense clashes were spotted in northern Hama.

On December 24, more than 1,000 refugees returned to Syria from Lebanon in the framework of the operation organized by the Syrian government, the Russian Center for Reconciliation and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Chief of Lebanon’s General Security Directorate Abbas Ibrahim told media December 21 that about 110,000 Syrians had returned to their homeland since July.

The Damascus government, with help from Russia, continue to recover infrastructure to create favorable conditions for returnees. As for December 23, 2018, 30,908 houses, 713 educational facilities and 121 medical centers has been restored and 926km of roads have been repaired.

A total of 209,513 persons have been granted amnesty in the framework of the ongoing reconciliation process.

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The dubious performance (failure) of genetically engineered Bt cotton, officially India’s only GM crop, should serve as a warning as the push within the country to adopt GM across a wide range of food crops continues. This article provides an outline of some key reports and papers that have appeared in the last few years on Bt cotton in India.

In a paper that appeared in December 2018 in the journal Current Science, P.C. Kesavan and M.S. Swaminathan cited research findings to support the view that Bt insecticidal cotton has been a failure in India and has not provided livelihood security for mainly resource-poor, small and marginal farmers. This paper was not just important because of its content but also because M.S. Swaminathan is considered to be the father of the Green Revolution in India.

The two authors provided evidence that indicates Bt crops are unsustainable and have not decreased the need for toxic chemical pesticides, the reason for these GM crops in the first place.

The authors cite the views of Dr K.R. Kranthi, former Director of the Central Institute for Cotton Research in Nagpur. Based on his research, he concluded in December 2016:

“Bt-cotton plus higher fertilizers plus increased irrigation also received a protective cover from the seed treatment of neonicotinoid insecticides such as imidacloprid, without which majority of the Bt-cotton hybrids which were susceptible to sucking pests would have yielded far less. It can safely be said that yield increase in India would not have happened with Bt-cotton alone without enhanced fertilizer usage, without increased irrigation, without seed treatment chemicals, and the absence of drought-free decade.”

In effect, levels of insecticide use are now back to the pre-Bt era as is productivity due to pest resistance and crop failures.

Following on from this, an April 2018 paper in the journal Pest Science Management indicates there has been progressive bollworm resistance to Bt cotton in India over a seven-year period. The authors conclude:

“High PBW [pink bollworm] larval recovery on Bt‐II in conjunction with high LC₅₀ values for Cry1Ac and Cry2Ab in major cotton‐growing districts of central and southern India provides evidence of field‐evolved resistance in PBW to Bt‐I and Bt‐II cotton.”

This alongside other problems related to Bt cotton has had disastrous consequences for farmers. In a 2015 paper Professor Andrew Paul Gutierrez and his colleagues say:

“Bt cotton may be economic in irrigated cotton, whereas costs of Bt seed and insecticide increase the risk of farmer bankruptcy in low-yield rainfed cotton. Inability to use saved seed and inadequate agronomic information trap cotton farmers on biotechnology and insecticide treadmills. Annual suicide rates in rainfed areas are inversely related to farm size and yield, and directly related to increases in Bt cotton adoption (i.e., costs).”

In a new December 2018 paper, Gutierrez sends a warning to those considering rolling out GM food crops in India:

“… recent calls by industry and its clients to extend implementation of the hybrid technology in aubergine (brinjal, eggplant) and mustard and likely other crops in India will only mirror the disastrous implementation of the failed hybrid Bt technology in Indian cotton and, will only serve to tighten the economic hybrid technology noose on still more subsistence farmers for the sake of profits.”

He concludes that Bt cotton has placed many resource-poor farmers in a stranglehold. Bt cotton prevents seed saving and farmers must purchase costly seed, which leads to suboptimal planting densities. Stagnant/low yields have followed, insecticide use has grown and new pests resistant to insecticide/Bt toxins have emerged.

Giterriez says that leading Indian agronomists have proposed that adoption of pure-line high density short-season varieties of rainfed cotton which could more than double current yields and would avoid heavy infestations of pink bollworm, thus reducing insecticide use and pesticide disruption. This cotton is not a new technology and predates Bt cotton.

Given what Gutierrez says, it is quite timely that Kesevan and Swaminathan question regulators’ failure in India to carry out a socio-economic assessment of GMO impacts on resource-poor small and marginal farmers. They call for “able economists who are familiar with and will prioritize rural livelihoods and the interests of resource-poor small and marginal farmers rather than serve corporate interests and their profits.”

This mirrors what Gutierrez and his colleagues argued in 2015 that policy makers need holistic analysis before new technologies are implemented in agricultural development.

Naturally, corporations and many pro-GM scientists wish to avoid such things as much as possible. They try to convince policy makers that as long as the science on GM is sound (which it isn’t, despite what they proclaim), GM should be rolled out regardless. They regard regulators and regulations as a mere hindrance that is preventing GM from helping farmers. Deregulating GM is the order of the day. It’s a reckless approach. We need only look at Indian cotton farmers whose lives and livelihoods have been devastated due to the ill thought out roll-out of Bt technology.

Kesavan and Swaminathan criticise India’s GMO regulating bodies due to a lack of competency and endemic conflicts of interest and a lack of expertise in GMO risk assessment protocols, including food safety assessment and the assessment of environmental impacts. Many of these issues have been a common thread in five high-level official reports in India that have advised against the commercialisation of GM crops:

The ‘Jairam Ramesh Report’, imposing an indefinite moratorium on Bt Brinjal [February 2010];

The ‘Sopory Committee Report’ [August 2012];

The ‘Parliamentary Standing Committee’ [PSC] Report on GM crops [August 2012];

The ‘Technical Expert Committee [TEC] Final Report’ [June-July 2013]; and

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science & Technology, Environment and Forests [August 2017].

In her numerous submissions to India’s Supreme Court, prominent campaigner Aruna Rodrigues has been scathing. She recently told me that:

“It is proven in copious evidence in the Supreme Court in the last 13 years that our regulators are seriously conflicted: they promote GMOs openly, fund them (as with herbicide-tolerant mustard and other public sector GMOs) and then regulate them. Truth is a massive casualty. This is not lightly stated.”

She added that “failed hybrid Bt cotton in India” has put farmers on a pesticide treadmill as increasing levels of pest resistance becomes manifest.

Prior to this, in 2017, Rodrigues also said:

“Never has an agri-tech been sold as a ‘magic bean’ to farmers, like Bt cotton, with opprobrium attaching to our regulators and ministries of governance who supported and continue to support this technology-castle built on sand, in the absence of evidence and when the hard data said the opposite.”

In the rush to plant these ‘magic beans’, the area planted under Bt cotton has often displaced vital food crops at a time when India should surely have been looking to achieve food security and self-sufficiency.

Writing in India’s The Statesman newspaper in 2015, for example, the knife-edge existence of the people that rich corporations profit from was highlighted in the case of Babu Lal and his wife Mirdi Bai who had been traditionally cultivating wheat, maize and millet on their farmland in Rajasthan. Their crops provided food for several months a year to the 10-member family as well as fodder for farm and dairy animals, integral to the mixed farming system employed.

Company agents (unspecified – but Monsanto and its subsidiaries dominate the GM cotton industry in India) approached the family with the promise of a lump-sum payment to plant Bt cotton seeds in two of their fields. Lal purchased pesticides to help grow the seeds in the hope of receiving the payment, which never materialised because the company agent said the seeds produced had ‘failed’ in tests.

The family faced economic ruin, not least because the food harvest was much lower than normal as the best fields and most labour and resources had been devoted to Bt cotton. It resulted in Lal borrowing from private moneylenders at a high interest rate to meet the needs of food and fodder. On top of this, the company’s agent allegedly started harassing Lal for a payment of about 10,000 rupees in lieu of the fertilisers and pesticides provided to him. Several other tribal farmers in the area also fell into this trap.

The promise of a lump-sum cash payment can be very enticing to poor farmers, and when companies co-opt influential villagers to get new farmers to agree to plant Bt cotton, farmers are reluctant to decline the offer. When production is declared as having failed, solely at the company’s discretion it seems, a family becomes indebted.

According to that article, there was growing evidence that the trend to experiment with Bt cotton has disrupted food security in certain areas and had introduced various health hazards and had damaged soil due to the use of chemical inputs.

Before finishing, it is certainly worth mentioning Stone and Flachs’s 2017 paper on how certain interests within and beyond India are attempting to break traditional farming cotton cultivation practices with the aim of placing farmers on yet another corporate treadmill. This time, the aim appears to be to introduce herbicide-tolerant (HT) cotton in India on the back of Bt cotton. The authors indicate just how hugely financially lucrative for corporations the relatively ‘undeveloped’ herbicide market is in India. These HT cotton seeds have now appeared illegally on the market.

Ultimately, as Gutierrez implies, the bottom line is cynical corporate interest and profit – not helping Indian farmers or some high-minded notion about feeding the world. Just ask Babu Lal and thousands like him!

Of course, given the track record of HT crops, it is another disaster in the making for Indian farmers and the environment. This warning has already been made clear by the Supreme Court appointed Technical Expert Committee, which regards HT crops as being wholly inappropriate for India.

With various GM crops waiting in the wings, India should continue to adopt a precautionary approach towards GMOs as advocated by Jairam Ramesh and not implement another reckless gamble with farmers’ livelihoods, the nation’s health and the environment. About nine years ago, based on a rigorous consultation with international scientific experts regarding the commercialisation of Bt brinjal, Ramesh concluded that without any management of resistance evolution, Bt brinjal would fail in 4-12 years. Jairam Ramesh pronounced a moratorium on Bt brinjal in February 2010 founded on what he called “a cautious, precautionary principle-based approach.”

Isn’t such failure what we now witness with Bt cotton?  It serves as a timely warning for implementing a widespread GMO food crop regime in India. The writing is on the wall.

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Colin Todhunter was named in August 2018 by Transcend Media Services as one of 400 Living Peace and Justice Leaders and Models in recognition of his journalism. Join him on Twitter.

Featured image is from Down to Earth

As he lay in a hospice awaiting his next excursion as he would call it, Walt DeYoung has honored this writer with his presence for the past 15 years. Infirmed and using a walker, he still went about his street corner activism undaunted. The man has always been downright amazing!

To list his accomplishments as an activist would take too long and too much paper. Let me just say this: The man was out there marching for civil rights for our Afro-American brothers and sisters during the ‘Jim Crow’ early sixties in the ‘still Dixie ‘ Maryland Eastern shore. He was out there in New Jersey as a labor activist leading protests and strikes in the 70s, with a mob contract on his head. No kidding! Walt, early on in the Vietnam War protests, was out there raising hell. He even was a bodyguard for MLK’s widow at a Central Park anti war rally. He seemed to be everywhere! In the Minnesota area Walt stood with the American Indians in their protests of the environmental damages done by corporate malfeasance.

When this writer met Walt DeYoung after the Bush/Cheney Cabal invaded Iraq, he was always the first to show up at meetings and protests. Always! He feared no one from the power structure, whether it be local or national. He stood in front of a city council meeting in Port Orange and shared his knowledge while lobbying for city run community vegetable gardens. He knew his thing, because he created one right next door to his home in New Smyrna Beach. What a guy!

Imagine if we could get some of our millennial young folks to become active in regards to this empire. Walt DeYoung always spoke to his younger peers about his lifelong experiences with empire etc. He never tired of ‘ Speaking Truth to Power’ wherever he went. As a ‘topping’ to his ‘cake of life’ Walt would have ended it best with his famous Nuff Said!

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Philip A Farruggio is a son and grandson of Brooklyn, NYC longshoremen. He has been a free lance columnist since 2001, with over 400 of his work posted on sites like Global Research, Greanville Post, Off Guardian, Consortium News, Information Clearing House, Nation of Change, World News Trust, Op Ed News, Dissident Voice, Activist Post, Sleuth Journal, Truthout and many others. His blog can be read in full on World News Trust, whereupon he writes a great deal on the need to cut military spending drastically and send the savings back to save our cities. Philip has a internet interview show, ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid’ with producer Chuck Gregory, and can be reached at [email protected]. 

It is significant that US President Donald Trump has decided to withdraw his troops from Syria. The 14^th December decision was followed immediately by another announcement by the President to pull out a sizable number of soldiers from Afghanistan where the US has been involved in a war for the last 17 years — the longest war in its history.

Both the decisions, especially the one on Syria, have been condemned by a lot of US Senators and Members of the House of Representatives. They feel that the decisions undermine the US’s role as a global power. US allies such as Britain and France have also criticised the pull-outs. By getting out of Syria in particular, the US has made it easier for certain powers from within and without the region to exert even more influence over the politics of that country and that of its neighbours to the detriment of the West. Most of the international media argue that US success in fighting the terrorists in Syria which Trump cited as the reason for the withdrawal will be rendered meaningless in no time since terrorist cells are still alive and capable of striking at civilians. In the case of Afghanistan, the US cut-back, the media contends, will expedite the Taliban’s goal of gaining total control over the country.

Conventional wisdom suggests that whether or not the US is around the Taliban will emerge victorious sooner than later. If anything, the US military presence — a foreign power on Afghan soil — has enhanced the Taliban’s reputation as a resistance force among the ordinary people. The eventual total withdrawal of the 16,000 US soldiers will allow the Afghan people themselves to determine their future which will be influenced to some extent at least by Afghanistan’s important neighbours, Pakistan, Iran, China, India and Russia.

If we now turn to the situation in Syria, we would realise that the US role in combating terrorism was limited. The Syrian Army, with the backing of the Lebanese Hezbollah, Iranian militias and the Russian military were primarily responsible for the defeat of the multitude of terrorist outfits in the country between 2012 and 2017. Indeed, there is more than enough evidence to show that some of the more prominent terrorist outfits were in different times and in different circumstances aided and abetted by institutions and organisations associated with the US, Britain and France and countries in the region such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. They provided financial assistance, military training and critical intelligence, apart from establishing regional and global networks to buttress the activities of the terrorists.

Viewed against this backdrop, the end of the US military operation in Syria may well accelerate efforts within the country to bring about much needed constitutional and political reforms which Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had tried to initiate in 2001. In formulating these reforms, he will have to work closely with his allies, Iran and Russia. But at the end of the day it is the Syrian people themselves who will determine the destiny of their historically and culturally rich nation.

Suppressing the independence and sovereignty of the Syrian nation — and not combatting terrorism – was the real reason behind the active intervention and involvement of numerous actors from within and without the region in the 7 year Syrian conflict. Simply put, the aim was to oust Bashar, the protector of Syrian sovereignty, to achieve regime change in pursuit of the US-Israeli agenda of perpetuating their hegemony. Trump realised even before he became President that he would not be able to achieve this. Hence, his troop withdrawal.

This should not give us the impression that Trump is in any way opposed to US-Israeli hegemony. His staunchly pro-Israel policy; his intimate relationship with the Saudi elite; his military support for the Saudi-led war on the people of Yemen; his aggressive stance against Venezuela and his lukewarm attitude towards Cuba; his perpetuation of sanctions against Russia stemming from US policy on Crimea and the Ukraine; and his trade war against China aimed at curbing its economic dynamism all seem to indicate that he believes in flexing US power on the global stage. Besides, under Trump US military expenditure has remained high at 610 billion dollars in 2017.

What are the real reasons then that persuaded Trump to act the way he did on Syria and Afghanistan?  In both countries the prospect of imminent defeat was a factor that influenced Trump’s decision. More than that was the financial cost of war in the two countries. It is estimated that the Syrian war would cost the US 15.3 billion dollars in 2019. The figures are even more staggering for Afghanistan. With 16,000 troops in the country, the war costs the US taxpayer 45 billion dollars a year. Between 2010 and 2012 when the US had 100,000 troops on the ground, the Afghan war cost a 100 billion a year.

Will some future analyst conclude that in withdrawing US troops from Syria and Afghanistan, Donald Trump acted on his well-honed business instincts?

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Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is the President of the International Movement for a Just  World (JUST). He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

The military-industrial complex revolving door keeps revolving. Sunday morning, President Donald Trump announced in a Twitter post that he plans to replace outgoing Secretary of Defense James Mattis, temporarily at least, with current Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick M. Shanahan. Shanahan will assume the job on January 1 — two months before the departure date Mattis had proposed. Before taking on their current government jobs, Mattis and Shanahan worked for two of the largest military contractors — Mattis as a General Dynamics board of directors member and Shanahan as a Boeing senior vice president.

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What was the reaction to the warning by Russian President Putin when he said that the world underestimates the peril of nuclear war, and that this tendency is increasing?

The commentary in the La Republica is significant, speaking of his “highly alarming tone”. The almost absolute silence of the whole Parliamentarian arc is also eloquent. As if Italy had nothing to do with the race to stock up nuclear weapons which, warned Putin in his end-of-year Press conference, could lead to the “destruction of all civilisation or even the whole planet”. The scenario is not alarmist, but a realistic assessment by scientists who study the effects of nuclear weapons.

A specific danger – emphasises Putin – is the “tendency to lower the bar for the use of nuclear weapons, by creating tactical low-impact nuclear charges which may lead to a world-wide nuclear disaster”. This is the category including the new B61-12 nuclear bombs which the USA will begin to deploy in Italy, Germany, Belgium, Holland, and perhaps in other European countries, during the first half of the year 2020.

“High precision and the possibility of using less destructive warheads”  – warns the Federation of American Scientists – “may lead military commanders to insist on the use of nuclear  bombs in an attack, knowing that radioactive fallout and collateral damage would be limited”.

Italy shares the responsibility for the growing danger of nuclear war, since, in  violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and not being a signatory of the UNO Treaty forbidding nuclear weapons, it is providing the United States with a primarily anti-Russian capacity, not only with its bases, but also aircraft and pilots for the deployment of nuclear bombs. This comes with the explicit or implicit consent (by renouncing real opposition) of the entire arc of Parliament.

The other danger – warns Putin – is the “disintegration of the international system for arms control”, initiated by the retreat of the United States from the ABM Treaty (Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty) in 2002. Created in 1972 by the USA and the USSR, it forbade each of the two parties to deploy interceptor missiles which, by neutralising reprisals by countries under attack, would have favoured a « first strike », in other words a surprise nuclear attack. Since then, the United States have developed the “anti-missile shield”, stretching from Europe to the borders of Russia – two ground installations in Romania and Poland, and four warships cruising the Baltic and the Black Sea.  Equipped with launch tubes, these ships are able to launch interceptor missiles and also cruise missiles with nuclear warheads.

Italy shares the responsibility in this case also – the installation of the JTAGS (Joint Tactical Ground Station) at Sigonella (Sicily). This a US satellite station for the “anti-missile shield”, one of five on the planet. The situation is made worse by the fact that the USA now want to retire from the 1987 INF Treaty (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty) – which eliminated the US nuclear missiles based in Comiso – in order to be able to deploy in Europe anti-Russian ground-based intermediate-range nuclear missiles. The Italian government is also implicated, since it endorsed this plan at the North Atlantic Council of 4 December, and is without a doubt favourable to the installation of these missiles in Italy.

“If these missiles arrive in Europe, the West should not be astonished if we react” said Putin.

A warning which was ignored by Conte, Di Maio and  Salvini (1) who continue to beat the drum for the anti-migrant “Security Decree”. But when US nuclear bombs and missiles arrive and put the real security of Italy in danger, they see nothing, hear nothing and say nothing.

Source: PandoraTV

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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.

Translated by Pete Kimberley

Manlio Dinucci is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Note

(1) – President and vice-presidents of the current Italian government.

On December 19, Donald Trump announced in a Twitter message: “Our boys, our young women, our men, they’re all coming back and they’re coming back now. We won”. Shortly thereafter, Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said in a statement: “We have started the process of returning US troops home from Syria as we transition to the next phase of the campaign”.

The reasons for Donald Trump’s move are many, but they are mainly driven by US domestic concerns. The temperature is heating up for Trump following the midterms, as the Democrats prepare to take command of the House of Representatives in January, something that Trump had always hoped to avert. He surrounded himself with generals, in the forlorn hope that this would somehow protect him. If the last two years of his presidency were constantly under the cloud of Mueller’s investigation, or insinuations of being an agent of Putin, from January 2019 the situation is going to get much more complicated. The Democratic electoral base is baying for the President’s impeachment, the party already in full pre-primary mode, with more than 20 candidates competing, with the incumbent of the White House offering the rallying cry.

The combination of these factors has forced Trump to change gears, considering that the military -industrial -intelligence -media- complex has always been ready to get rid of Trump, even in favor of a President Pence. The only option available for Trump in order to have a chance of reelection in 2020 is to undertake a self-promotion tour, a practice in which he has few peers, and which will involve him repeating his mantra of “Promises Made, Promises Kept”. He will list how he has fought against the fake-news media, suffered internal sabotage, as well as other efforts (from the Fed, the FBI, and Mueller himself) to hamper his efforts to “Make America Great Again”.

Trump has perhaps understood that in order to be re-elected, he must pursue a simple media strategy that will have a direct impact on his base. Withdrawing US troops from Syria, and partly from Afghanistan, serves this purpose. It is an easy way to win with his constituents, while it is a heavy blow to his fiercest critics in Washington who are against this decision. Given that 70% of Americans think that the war in Afghanistan was a mistake, the more that the mainstream media attacks Trump for his decision to withdraw, the more they direct votes to Trump. In this sense, Trump’s move seems to be directed at a domestic rather than an international audience.

The decision to get out of Syria is timed to coincide with another move that will also very much please Trump’s base. The government shutdown is a result of the Democrats refusing to fund Trump’s campaign promise to build a wall on the Mexican border. It is not difficult to understand that the average citizen is fed up with the useless wars in the Middle East, and Trump’s words on immigration resonate with his voters. The more the media, the Democrats and the deep state criticize Trump on the wall, on the Syria pull out and on shutting down the government, the more they are campaigning for him.

This is why in order to understand the withdrawal of the United States from Syria it is necessary to see things from Trump’s perspective, even as frustrating, confusing and incomprehensible that may seem at times.

The difference this time around was that the decision to withdraw US troops from Syria was Trump’s alone, not something imposed on him by the generals that surround him. The choice to announce to his base, via Twitter, a victory against ISIS and the immediate withdrawal of US troops was a smart election move with an eye on the 2020 election.

It is possible that Trump, as is his wont, also wanted to send a message to his alleged French and British allies present in the northeast of Syria alongside the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and US soldiers. Trump may be now taunting: “Let’s see what you can do without the US!”

It is as if Trump is admonishing these countries in a more concrete way for not lifting their weight in terms of military spending. Trump is vindictive and is not averse, after taking advantage of his opponent, to kicking him once he is down. Trump could be correct in this regard, and maybe French and British forces will be forced to withdraw their small group of 400 to 500 illegal occupiers of Syrian territory. Macron has for now reacted angrily at Trump’s decision, intensifying the division between the two, and is adamant that the French military presence in Syria will continue.

There is also a more refined reason to justify the US withdrawal, even if Trump is probably unaware of it. The problem in these cases is always trying to peer through the fog of war and propaganda in order to discern the clear, unadulterated truth.

We should begin by listing the winners and losers of the Syrian conflict. Damascus, Moscow, Tehran and Hezbollah have won the war against aggression. Riyadh, Doha, Paris, London, Tel Aviv and Washington, with their al Qaeda, Daesh and Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist proxies, failed to destroy Syria, and following seven years of effort, are forced to scurry away in defeat.

Those who are walking a tightrope between war and defeat are Ankara and the so-called SDF. The withdrawal of the United States has confirmed the balance on the ledger of winners and losers, with the clock counting down for Erdogan and the SDF to make their next determinative move.

The enemies of Syria survive thanks to repeated bluffs. The Americans of the military-industrial-intelligence apparatus maintain the pretence that they still have an influence in Syria, what with troops on the ground, attacking Trump for withdrawing. In fact, since the Russians have imposed a no-fly-zone across the country, with the S-300 systems and other sophisticated equipment that integrate the Syrian air-defenses into the Russian air defenses, US coalition planes are for all intents and purposes grounded, and the same goes for the Israelis.

Of course the French and British in Syria are infected with the same delusional disease, choosing to believe that they can count for something without the US presence. We will see in the near future whether they also withdraw their illegal presence from Syria.

The biggest bluff of all probably comes from Erdogan, who for months threatened to invade Syria to fight ISIS, the Kurds, or any other plausible excuse to invade a sovereign country for the purposes of advancing his dreams of expanding Turkish territory as far as Idlib (which Erdogan considers a province of Turkey). Such an invasion, however, is unlikely to happen, as it would unite the SDF, Damascus and her allies to reject the Turkish advance on Syrian territory.

The Kurds in turn seem to have only one option left, namely, a forced negotiation with Damascus to give back to the Syrian people, in exchange for protection, the control of their territory that is rich in oil and gas.

Erdogan wants to eliminate the SDF, and until now, the only thing that stood in his way was the US military presence. He even threatened to attack several times, even in spite of the presence of US troops. Ankara has long been on a collision course with NATO countries on account of this. By removing US troops, Trump imagines, relations between Turkey and the US may also improve. This of course is of little interest to the US deep state, since Erdogan, like Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), is considered unsuitable, and is accordingly branded a “dictator”.

Trump probably believes that with this move, as with his defense of MBS concerning Khashoggi, that he can try and establish a strong personal friendship with Erdogan. There are even talks about the sale of Patriot systems to the Turks and the extradition of Gulen.

When Will They Leave, and Cui Prodest?

It remains to be confirmed when and to what extent US troops will leave Syria. If the US had no voice in the future in Syria, with 2,000 men on the ground, now it has even less. Leaving behind 200 to 300 special forces and CIA operatives, together with another 400 to 500 French and British personnel, will, once they are captured with their Daesh and al Qaeda friends, be an excellent bargaining chip for Damascus, as they were in Aleppo.

The military-industrial-intelligence-media complex considers Trump’s decision the worst of of all possible moves. Mattis even resigned on account of this. The presence of US troops in Syria allowed the foreign-policy establishment to continue to formulate plans (and spend money to pay a lot of people in Washington) based on the delusion that they are doing something in Syria to change the course of events. For Israel, it is a double disaster, with Netanyahu desperate to survive, seeking to factor in expected elections in a now-or-never political move. Trump probably understands that Bibi is done for, and that at this point, the withdrawal of troops, fulfilling a fundamental electoral promise, counts more than Israeli money and his friendship to Bibi.

Erdogan has two options before him. On the one hand, he can act against the Kurds. On the other hand, he can sit down at the negotiating table with Damascus and the SDF, in an Astana format, guided by Iran and Russia. Putin and Rouhani are certainly pushing for this solution. Trump, on the other hand, would like to see Turkey enter Syria in the place of US forces, to demonstrate he concluded a win-win deal for everyone, beating the deep-state at their own game.

Erdogan does not really have the military force necessary to enter Syria, which is the big secret. He would be against both the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and the SDF, though the two not necessarily in an alliance.

There is a triple bluff going on, and this is what is complicating the situation so much. On the one hand, the SDF is bluffing in not wanting help from Damascus in case Erdogan sends in his forces; on the other hand, Erdogan is bluffing in suggesting he is able to conquer the territory held by the SDF; and finally, the French and British are bluffing by telling the SDF they will be able to help them against both Erdogan and/or Assad.

Iran, Russia, Syria are the only ones who do not need to bluff, because they occupy the best position – the commanding heights. They view Trump’s decisions and his allies with distrust. They know very well that these are mostly moves for internal consumption by the enemies of Syria.

If the US withdraws, there is so much to be gained. The priority then becomes the west of Syria, sealing the borders with Jordan, removing the pockets of terrorists from the east, and securing the al-Tanf crossing. If the SDF will request protection from Damascus and will be willing to participate in the liberation of the country and its reconstruction, Erdogan will be done for, and this could lead to the total liberation of Idlib. It would be the best possible outcome, an important national reconciliation between two important parts of the population. It would give Damascus new economic impetus and prepare the Syrian people to expel the remaining invaders (ISIS and the FSA/ Turkish Armed Forces) from the country, both in Idlib and in the northeast in Afrin.

Russia is aware of the risk that Erdogan is running with the choices he will take in the coming days. Perhaps the reason why Putin chose diplomacy over war with Turkey after the downing of a Russian Su-24 in 2015 was in order to arrive at this precise moment, with as many elements as possible present to convince Erdogan to stick with Russia and Iran instead of embracing Trump’s strategy and putting himself on an open collision course with Damascus, Moscow and Tehran.

Putin has always been five moves ahead. He is aware that the US could not stay long in Syria. He knows that France and the UK cannot support the SDF, and that the SDF cannot hold territory it holds in Syria without an agreement with Damascus. He is also conscious that Turkey does not have the strength to enter Syria and hold the territory if it did. It would only be able justify an advance on Idlib with the support of the Russian Air Force.

Putin has certainly made it clear to Erdogan that if he made such a move to attack the SDF and enter Syria, Russia in turn would militarily support the SAA with its air force to free Idlib; and in case of incidents with Turkey, the Russian armed forces would respond with all the interest earned from the unrequited downing of the Su-24 in 2015.

Erdogan has no choice. He must find an agreement with Damascus, and this is why he found himself commenting on Trump’s words the following day, criticizing US sanctions on Iran in the presence of Iranian president Rouhani. The SDF know that they are between a rock and a hard place, and have already sent a delegation to start negotiations with Damascus.

Trump’s move was driven by US domestic politics and aimed at the 2020 elections. But in doing so, Trump inevitably called out once and for all the bluffs built by Syria’s enemies, infuriating in the process the neoliberal imperialist establishment, revealing how each of these factions has no more cards to play and is in actual fact destined for defeat.

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Federico Pieraccini is an independent freelance writer specialized in international affairs, conflicts, politics and strategies. 

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President Donald Trump’s order to withdraw from Syria has been greeted, predictably, with an avalanche of condemnation culminating in last Thursday’s resignation by Defense Secretary James Mattis. The Mattis resignation letter focused on the betrayal of allies, though it was inevitably light on details, suggesting that the Marine Corps General was having some difficulty in discerning that American interests might be somewhat different than those of feckless and faux allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia that are adept at manipulating the levers of power in Washington and in the media. Mattis clearly appreciates that having allies is a force multiplier in wartime but fails to understand that it is a liability otherwise as the allies create an obligation to go to war on their behalf rather than in response to any actual national interest.

The media was quick to line up behind Mattis. On Friday, The New York Times featured a lead editorial entitled “Jim Mattis was right” while neocon twitter accounts blazed with indignation. Prominent chickenhawk mouthpieces David Frum and Bill Kristol, among many others, tweeted that the end is nigh.

During the day preceding Mattis’s dramatic announcement, the press went to war against the Administration over Syria and also regarding other reports that there would be troop reductions in Afghanistan. The following headline actually appeared on a Reuters online article the day after the announcement by the president: “In Syria retreat, Trump rebuffs top advisers and blindsides U.S. commanders.” It would be difficult to imagine stuffing more bullshit into one relatively short sentence. “Retreat,” “rebuffs” and “blindsides” are not words that are intended to convey any sort of even-handed assessment of what is occurring in U.S. policy towards the Middle East. They are instead meant to imply that “Hey, that moron in the White House has screwed up again!”

Consider for a moment the agenda that Reuters is apparently pushing. It is supporting an illegal and unconstitutional invasion of Syria by the United States that has a stated primary objective of removing a terrorist organization which is already mostly gone and a less frequently acknowledged goal of regime change for the legitimate government in Damascus and the expulsion of that government’s principal allies. Reuters is asserting that staying in Syria would be a good thing for the United States and also for its “allies” in the region even though there is no way to “win” and no exit strategy.

Reuters is presumably basing its assessment on the collective judgments of a group of “top advisers” who are warmongers that the rest of the world as well as many Americans consider to be psychopaths or possibly even insane. And then there are the preferences of the “blindsided” generals, like Mattis, who have a personal interest in career terms for maintaining a constant state of warfare. If you want to really know how what the military thinks about an ongoing war ask a sergeant or a private, never a general. They will tell you that they are sick of endless deployments that accomplish nothing.

The New York Times lead story headline on Thursday also let you know that its Editors were not please by Trump’s move. It read “U.S. ExitSeen as a Betrayal of the Kurds, and a Boon for ISIS.” They also editorialized “Trump’s Decision to Withdraw From Syria Is Alarming. Just Ask His Advisers.”

The Washington Post was not far behind. It immediately ran an op-ed by the redoubtable neocon chickenhawk Max Boot, whom Caitlin Johnstone has dubbed The Man Who Has Been Wrong About Everything. The piece was entitled Trump’s surprise Syria pullout is a giant Christmas gift to our enemies making a twofer with an incredible “Fuck the EU” Victoria Nuland’s piece entitled “In a single tweet Trump destroys U.S. policy in the Middle East,” which appeared simultaneously. That anyone would regard Boot and Nuland as objective authorities on the Middle East given their ultimate and prevailing loyalty to Israel has to be wondered at, but then again Fred Hiatt is the editorial/opinion page editor and he is of the same persuasion, both ethnically and philosophically. They are all, of course, devoted Zionists and the big lie about what is going on in the region is apparently always worth repeating. As Joseph Goebbels put it in 1941 “…when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it…even at the risk of looking ridiculous.”

Comments relating to the articles, op-eds and editorials in the Post and Times bordered on the hysterical, sometimes suggesting that readers actually believe that Trump was following orders from Russian President Vladimir Putin. And what was stirring at Reuters, The Times, and the Post was only the tip of the iceberg. The mainstream television news providers united in condemning the audacity of a president who might actually try to end a war while the only favorable commentary on Trump’s having taken a step that is long overdue came from the alternative media.

One might profitably recall how Trump has only been praised as “presidential” by the Establishment twice – when he staged cruise missile attacks on Syria based on faulty intelligence. The Deep State wants blood, make no mistake about it and it is not interested in “retreat.” And Trump will also get almost no support from Congress, with only longtime critics of Syrian policy Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee as well as Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard praising the move initially.

The arguments being made to criticize the Trump initiative were essentially cookie cutter neocon soundbites. The Reuters piece in its first few lines of text asserts that the reversal of policy “stunned lawmakers and allies with his order for U.S. troops to leave Syria, a decision that upends American policy in the Middle East. The result, said current and former officials and people briefed on the decision, will empower Russia and Iran and leave unfinished the goal of erasing the risk that Islamic State, or ISIS, which has lost all but a sliver territory, could rebuild.” The article goes on to quote an anonymous Pentagon source who opined that “… Trump’s decision was widely seen in the Pentagon as benefiting Russia as well as Iran, both of which have used their support for the Syrian government to bolster their regional influence. Iran also has improved its ability to ship arms to Lebanese Hezbollah for use against Israel. Asked who gained from the withdrawal, the defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, replied: ‘Geopolitically Russia, regionally Iran.’”

Another so-called expert Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute was also cited in the article, saying

“It completely takes apart America’s broader strategy in Syria, but perhaps more importantly, the centerpiece of the Trump administration policy, which is containing Iran.”

Israel is also turning up the heat on Trump, claiming that the move will make it more insecure. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to increase air attacks on Iranian targets in Syria as an added security measure to make up for the American betrayal. Normally liberal American Jews have joined the hue and cry against Trump on behalf of Israel. Filmmaker Rob Reiner tweeted on Thursday that the president is a “childish moronic mentally unstable malignant narcissist” who is “committing Treason” against the United States.

The real story, lost in the wailing and gnashing to teeth, is that even after conceding that Donald Trump’s hyperbolic claim that the United States had defeated ISIS as the motive for the withdrawal is nonsense, there is still no good reason for Washington to continue to keep troops in Syria. The U.S. in reality did far less in the war against the terrorist groups infesting the region than did the Russians, Iranians or the Syrians themselves and, as a result, it will have less say in what kind of Syria emerges from the carnage. That is almost certainly a good thing for the Syrian people.

But let’s assume for sake of argument that the U.S. invasion really was about ISIS. Well, ISIS continues to hold on to a small bit of territory near the Euphrates River and is reported to have between one and two thousand remaining fighters. There are other estimates suggesting that between 10,000 and 20,000 followers have dispersed and gone underground awaiting a possible resurgence by the group. The argument that ISIS will reorganize and re-emerge as a result of the American withdrawal assumes that it is the 2,000 strong U.S. armed forces that are keeping it down, which is ridiculous. The best remedy against an ISIS recovery is to support a restored and re-unified Syria, which will have more than enough resources available to eliminate the last bits of the terrorist groups remaining in its territory.

So we go to fallback argument B, which is “containing Iran.” “Containment” was a U.S. policy devised by George Kennan in 1947 to inhibit the expansion of a powerful and sometimes aggressive soon-to-be nuclear armed Soviet Union, which was rightly seen as a serious threat. Iran is a second world country with a small military and economy with no nuclear arsenal and it neither threatens the United States nor any of its neighbors. But Israel supported by Saudi Arabia does not like Iran and has induced Washington to follow its lead. Withdrawing from Syria recognizes that Iran is no threat in reality. Positioning American military forces to “counter” Iran does not reduce the threat against the United States because there was no threat there to begin with.

And then there is the argument that the U.S. departure empowers Iran and Russia. Staying in Syria is, on the contrary, a drain on both those countries’ limited resources. The more money and manpower they have to commit to Syria the less they have to become engaged elsewhere and it is hard to imagine how either country would exploit the “victory” in Syria to leverage their involvement in other parts of the world. Both would be delighted if a final settlement of the Syrian problem could be arrived at so they can get out.

And as for the United States, the military should only be deployed anywhere to defend the U.S. itself or vital interests. There is nothing like that at stake in Syria. So, is American national security better or worse if the U.S. leaves? As Russian and American soldiers only confront each other directly in Syria, U.S. national security would in fact be greatly improved because the danger of igniting an accidental war with Russia would be dramatically reduced. There have reportedly already been a dozen incidents between U.S. and Russian troops, including some involving shooting. That has been a dozen too many. Even the possibility of starting an unintended war with Iran would potentially be disastrous for the United States as well as for everyone else in the region, so it is far better to put some distance between the two sides.

And finally, it is necessary to go to the argument for disengagement from Syria that is too little heard in the western media or from the usual bonehead politicians named Graham and Rubio who pronounce on foreign policy. How has American intervention in the Middle East and south and central Asia benefited the people in the countries that have been invaded or bombed? Not at all. By some estimates four million Muslims have been killed as a consequence of the wars since 2001 and millions more displaced. More than eight thousand U.S. military have died in the process in wars that had no purpose and no exit strategy. And the wars have been expensive – $6 trillion and counting, much of it borrowed. War without end means killing without end and it has to stop.

Withdrawing from Syria is the right thing to do, though one has to be concerned that there might be some secret side deals with Israel or Turkey that could actually result in more attacks on Syria and on the Kurds. Donald Trump is already under extreme pressure coming from all directions to reverse his decision to leave Syria and it is quite possible that he will either fold completely or bend at least a bit. It is to be hoped that he will not do so as a Christmas present to the American people. And he might want to think of a Christmas present for 2019. One might suggest a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Unz Review

As our nation debates the merits of President Trump’s call for withdrawing US troops from Syria and Afghanistan, absent from the debate is the more pernicious aspect of US military involvement overseas: its air wars. Trump’s announcement and General Mattis’ resignation should unleash a national discussion about US involvement in overseas conflicts, but no evaluation can be meaningful without a clear understanding of the violence that U.S air wars have unleashed on the rest of the world for the past 17 years.

By our calculations, in this “war on terror,” the U.S. and its allies have dropped a staggering 291,880 bombs and missiles on other countries—and that is just a minimum number of confirmed strikes.

As we contemplate that overwhelming number, let’s keep in mind that these strikes represent lives snuffed out, people maimed for life, families torn apart, homes and infrastructure demolished, taxpayer money squandered and resentment that only engenders more violence.

After the horrific crimes of September 11th, 2001, Congress was quick to pass a sweeping Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). While three presidents have claimed that the 2001 AUMF legally justifies these endless wars as a response to the crimes of 9/11, no serious reading of the Authorization could interpret it that way.  What it actually says is:

“That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”

As former Nuremberg prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz told NPR a week after 9/11,

“It is never a legitimate response to punish people who are not responsible for the wrong done… We must make a distinction between punishing the guilty and punishing others. If you simply retaliate en masse by bombing Afghanistan, let us say, or the Taliban, you will kill many people who don’t believe in what has happened, who don’t approve of what has happened.”

And yet here we are, 17 years later, mired in wars in which we are bombing ever more “nations, organizations (and) persons” who had absolutely nothing to do with the crimes committed on September 11th.  We don’t have a single real or lasting success we can point to in 17 years of war in 7 countries and “counter-insurgency” operations in a dozen more.  Every country the U.S. has attacked or invaded remains trapped in intractable violence and chaos.

Please look at this chart, and take a few moments to reflect on the mass destruction it represents:

Numbers of bombs and missiles dropped on other countries by the U.S. & its allies since 2001

These figures are an absolute minimum of confirmed strikes, based on U.S. Airpower Summaries for Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria; the Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s count of confirmed drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen; the Yemen Data Project‘s count of Saudi-led airstrikes on Yemen; and other published statistics.  Figures for 2018 are through October for Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan; through November for Yemen; and incomplete for other countries.

There are several categories of airstrikes that are not included on this chart, so the real total is certainly much higher. These are:

• Helicopter strikes: Military Times published an article in February 2017 titled, “The U.S. military’s stats on deadly airstrikes are wrong. Thousands have gone unreported.”  The largest pool of airstrikes not included in U.S. Airpower Summaries are strikes by attack helicopters.  The U.S. Army told the authors its helicopters had conducted 456 otherwise unreported airstrikes in Afghanistan in 2016.  The authors explained that the non-reporting of helicopter strikes runs throughout the post-9/11 wars, and they still did not know how many actual missiles were used in those 456 attacks in Afghanistan in 2016.
• AC-130 gunships: The airstrike that destroyed the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan in 2015 was not conducted with bombs or missiles, but by a Lockheed-Boeing AC-130 gunship.  These machines of mass destruction, usually flown by US Air Force special operations forces, are designed to circle a target on the ground, pouring howitzer shells and cannon fire into it, often until it is completely destroyed.  The U.S. has used AC-130sin Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia and Syria.
• Strafing runs:  U.S. airpower summaries for 2004-2007 include a note that their tally of “strikes with munitions dropped… does not include 20mm and 30mm cannon or rockets.” But the 30mm cannons on A-10 Warthogs and other ground attack planes are powerful weapons, originally designed to destroy Soviet tanks.  They fire up to 65 shells per second and can blanket a large area with deadly and indiscriminate fire, but that does not count as a “weapons release” in U.S. airpower summaries.
• Yemen: Journalist Iona Craig, who has reported from Yemen for many years and manages the Yemen Data Project (YDP), told us she doesn’t know what proportion of actual airstrikes its data represents, and that the number of bombs or missiles recorded in each “air raid” in the YDP’s data is only a minimum confirmed number. Whatever fraction of total air raids YDP’s data represents, the actual number of bombs dropped on Yemen is certainly higher than these figures. YDP just doesn’t know how much higher.
• The U.S. and allies conducting “counter-insurgency” operations in West Africa and other regions.

The U.S. public soon lost its appetite for sending our own sons and daughters to fight and die in all these wars.  So, like Nixon with Vietnam, our leaders reverted to bombing, bombing and more bombing, while small deployments of U.S. special operations forces and larger numbers of foreign proxies do most of the real fighting on the ground.

Our enemies call us cowards, especially when we use drones to kill by remote control, but more importantly, we are behaving like arrogant fools.  Our country is acting as an aggressor and a bull in a china shop at a critical moment in history when neither we, nor the rest of the world, can afford such dangerous and destabilizing behavior from a hyper-militarized, aggressive imperial power.

After U.S.-led bombing, artillery and rocket fire destroyed two major cities in 2017, Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria, the U.S. and its allies conducted fewer airstrikes in 2018, but actually increased the number of strikes in Afghanistan.

We are heading into 2019 with new initiatives to reduce U.S. military involvement overseas. In Yemen, that initiative is the result of massive grassroots pressure on Congress, and is being done in opposition to Trump’s continued support for Saudi aggression in Yemen. In the case of Syria and Afghanistan, it is coming from Trump himself, with broad popular support but bipartisan opposition from Congress and DC elites.

Those who are part of the bipartisan war consensus should reflect on the growing public awareness of the murderous futility of U.S. overseas wars. A survey by the Committee for a Responsible Foreign Policy revealed “a national voter population that is largely skeptical of the practicality or benefits of military intervention overseas.” Donald Trump seems to realize this public disdain for endless war, but we shouldn’t let him get away with reducing U.S. troop presence but continuing—and in some cases escalating—the devastating air wars.

A good New Year’s resolution for the United States would be to put an end to the wars we have been engaged in for the past 17 years, and to make sure we do not allow the same military madness that got us into this mess to sucker us into new wars on North Korea, Iran, Venezuela or other countries.  Yes, let’s bring the troops home, but let’s also stop the bombing. Sustained advocacy toward the Trump administration and the new Congress by peace-loving Americans will be critical if we are to fulfill this resolution.

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This article was originally published on Common Dreams.

Nicolas J S Davies, a researcher for CODEPINK, is the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq and of the chapter on “Obama At War” in Grading the 44th President: A Report Card on Barack Obama’s First Term as a Progressive Leader.

Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK for Peace, is the author of the new book, Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Her previous books include: Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection and Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control

Featured image is from the authors

Managing a bank will always be a more lucrative criminal enterprise than raiding one but this Brechtian styled analysis only goes so far.  A closer look at the extraordinary nature of Goldman Sachs and its operations reveals not merely a bank but a cult of considerable proportion, brazen in its operations and indifferent to authorities.  While states have been surrendering their functions to banks with more regularity than unconscious organ donors, the catch-up was bound to happen. In Malaysia, a country at times irritable with the liberties taken by financial institutions, a retaliation of sorts is taking place.

Three weeks ago, Mullah Abdul Manan Akhund, a powerful Taliban commander in the southern Afghan province of Helmand, was killed by an American drone strike. Several journalists and political observers, both Afghan and foreign, shared the news on their Twitter feeds and beyond. Mullah Manan’s death was a big headline, and it also strengthened the 17-year narrative of the so called ‘War on Terror’, which is supposed to be a success.

On the very same day that Mullah Manan was killed, another event occurred in Paktia, a province in eastern Afghanistan. At least 12 civilians were killed in one night of airstrikes and night raids conducted by Afghan and American forces. In fact, the Afghan forces who have been involved – the CIA-backed Khost Protection Force (KPF) – is notorious for killing and torturing civilians.

The next day, family members of the victims buried their loved ones in public, and by holding this ceremony, they also expressed their protest.

Such an event is not rare in Afghanistan. While the world’s – especially the Western public’s focus – often lies on Kabul and other cities, the country’s rural areas have become the main setting of brutal night raids, drone strikes and other military operations.

Often, civilians are killed. In recent weeks, massacres like the one in Paktia took place in several other provinces such as Nangarhar or Helmand, where Mullah Manan was killed. But contrary to the death of the Taliban commander, civilian casualties often go unnoticed. Nobody cares about some ‘alleged militants’, as civilian victims are regularly described in news reports and their families in Afghanistan’s uncovered hinterland. They are, for many, just collateral damage.

In fact, drone strikes like the one that killed Mullah Manan, rarely kill militant leaders. The very first drone operation in the history of mankind took place in October 2001 in Kandahar, and its target – Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar – survived. Years later, he died naturally, the many drones did not kill him but instead killed others, people without faces and names. Other American hunts were unsuccessful too.

Recently, it has been revealed that Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani, a senior Taliban leader, is dead. He death was caused by sickness and old age, not by a Hellfire rocket. During the last 17 years, Haqqani – who is also considered as the founder of the so-called ‘Haqqani network’ – has been declared dead a couple of times.

Other people, such as Al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, have been ‘killed’ several times by drone strikes. According to Reprieve, a human rights organisation based in the United Kingdom, between 2002 and 2014, at least 1,147 people in Pakistan and Yemen have been killed by drone strikes for the sake of 41 actual targets.

In some cases, targets have been killed after several drone strikes. In others, like in the case of al-Zawahiri, they are still alive today. The question remains, who has been killed instead of them in all these attacks?

This is also one of the reasons why it is problematic that some journalists, analysts and politicians decided to highlight Mullah Manan’s death, despite seemingly not caring about the many civilian casualties of drone strikes and similar operations in the past. It is just strengthening the flawed narrative of ‘precise’ drones and killer squads that solely kill ’terrorists’.

Another such strike took place last weekend in Logar province. According to different reports, at least 12 civilians were killed.

“They were driving home and were mistaken for Taliban fighters. Will this make it on to the news anywhere? Will, anyone, be brought to justice for this?”, a victim’s relative said on social media.

According to recent US military figures, more than 5,000 bombs have been dropped on Afghanistan in 2018. This is a record in the in the 17-year long war. Numbers from 2001 to 2003 are not available. Besides, it is also known that the military’s numbers are flawed and problematic. Last year, research by the Military Times revealed that US military data from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan was factually wrong.

“The American military has failed to publically disclose potentially thousands of lethal airstrikes conducted over several years,” the media outlet reported.

In short, many more bombs have been dropped. They just did not want to tell us.

While Afghanistan and Afghans are being bombed more than ever, the Taliban – Afghanistan’s largest insurgent group – is controlling more territory than it has since 2001. Additionally, Daesh, also known as Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP), has made crucial gains too and is capable of conducting complex brutal attack in the middle of big cities like Kabul.

Unsurprisingly, many people are asking themselves the following: Who are these bombs killing?

The answer is simple: Definitely not militants, because the nameless and faceless people who are getting killed regularly are civilians, and the mass murder of these people has created a massive blowback. Thus, militancy and extremism have increased in the region.

Just as in many other places on Earth, the US War on Terror has failed in Afghanistan too. While at least some American policymakers and observers have understood this reality, their Afghan allies in Kabul and their supporters apparently have not. Over the last few years, war crimes committed by Afghan forces have increased significantly.

At this very moment, the Afghan National Army and brutal militias such as the CIA-backed KPF are using American weapons, and they use them much more brutally than the Americans themselves, as whistle-blower who used to be part of the US drone programme, told me after Afghan forces bombed a religious school in the northern province of Kunduz last April.

At least 36 civilians, mostly children, were killed back then while the Kabul government spread fake news, claiming that a ‘Taliban meeting’ took place inside the school.

After the UN confirmed the civilian casualties, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani apologised in public. Since then, his government has done nothing to prevent more civilian casualties but continues to create more of them.

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Were charges evidence-based or politically motivated? Most likely the latter. More to develop on this ahead.

Hostile US political, economic, and financial actions against China, Russia and Iran risk developing into something much more serious than already.

China is America’s main economic rival – why Canada acted as a US proxy in the arrest and detention of Huawei Technologies’ chief financial officer Sabrina Meng Wanzhou, still holding her as a virtual prisoner under house arrest.

The action was all about aiding corporate America over foreign competition, notably China’s aim to be an economic, industrial and technological powerhouse, well on its way toward achieving it.

Huawei is a cutting-edge, privately owned, Chinese tech giant, a pioneering firm, the world’s largest multinational telecom equipment maker, the second largest smartphone maker – behind Samsung, ahead of Apple.

It’s a Fortune top 100 global company, its revenue last year around $92 billion, a market leader in scores of countries worldwide – competing successfully against rival US firms.

The Trump regime wants US telecom/tech companies, getting an international advantage over Huawei by fair or foul means – what targeting Meng is all about.

It’s notably an effort to undermine Huawei’s efforts to become the world’s leading fifth generation (5G) cellular communications company.

The same thing appears to lie behind the Trump regime’s Justice Department action against two Chinese nationals, Zhu Hua and Zhang Shilong, reportedly employed by Huaying Haitai Science and Technology Development Company.

They’re accused of being hackers for a group known as APT 10, standing for Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) – undetected cyberattacks over a prolonged period. They’re more about monitoring network activity than data theft or attempts to damage invaded networks or organizations.

Zhu and Zhang were indicted on dubious charges of conspiracy to commit computer intrusions, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft.

According to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, ‘(t)he  indictment alleges that the defendants were part of a group that hacked computers in at least a dozen countries and gave China’s intelligence service access to sensitive business information,” adding:

“This is outright cheating and theft, and it gives China an unfair advantage at the expense of law-abiding businesses and countries that follow the international rules in return for the privilege of participating in the global economic system.”

FBI Christopher Wray claimed “China’s goal…is to replace the US as the world’s leading superpower—and they’re breaking the law to get there, adding:

“They’re using an expanding set of non-traditional and illegal methods. And Chinese state-sponsored actors are the most active perpetrators of economic espionage against us.”

Hostile actions against Huawei and the above named Chinese nationals may undermine Sino/US trade talks.

In response to charges against Zhu and Zhang, Beijing accused the Trump regime of “fabricating” them, “smearing the Chinese side on cybersecurity issues.”

Trump’s Justice Department alleges that Zhu and Zhang acted on behalf of Beijing’s Ministry of State Security (MSS). China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying responded strongly to the charges, saying:

“The US move is vicious in nature, severely violating the basic norms governing international relations and damaging cooperating between the two countries. China resolutely opposes the accusations and has lodged a solemn representations to the US side,” adding:

“The Chinese government’s position on cybersecurity issues is consistent and clear. China is a staunch defender of cybersecurity and has consistently opposed and cracked down on any form of cybersecurity.”

“For a long time, it has long been an open secret for the relevant departments of the United States to conduct large-scale and organized network theft and monitoring and monitoring activities for foreign governments, enterprises and individuals.”

Washington’s Five Eyes partnered countries, jointly cooperating in signals intelligence – Australia, Britain Canada, and New Zealand – are in cahoots with the Trump regime in lodging charges against China.

Will hacking charges and unacceptable treatment of Meng derail Sino/US talks to resolve major differences between the world’s dominant economies?

Are further hostile US actions against China coming? Is Beijing’s patience with the Trump regime wearing thin?

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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.

Is it simply business as usual or a corporate conspiracy to destroy the planet? However one characterizes it our planet is being cooked so already wealthy people can make even more profit.

Last Friday the New York Times published a front-page story titled “The Oil Industry’s Covert Campaign to Rewrite American Car Emissions Rules.” The article pointed out that Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Marathon Oil, Koch Industries and other oil/refining interests won “rollbacks” to vehicle fuel mileage rules that “have gone further than the more modest changes automakers originally lobbied for.” The legislative changes are expected to “increase greenhouse gas emissions in the United States by more than the amount many midsize countries put out in a year.”

With internal combustion engines consuming nearly two-thirds of US petroleum, industry profits are threatened by measures that cut gasoline consumption (be it better fuel mileage, diverting funds from roadway, eliminating auto infrastructure, etc.). About 150,000 gas stations do hundreds of billions of dollars in sales every year. In The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World Paul Roberts explains that the oil industry’s business model is planned around the gasoline pump, “from the kind of crude oil it sought to the kind of refineries it built, to its intense focus on retail marketing.”

The oil industry’s recent opposition to regulating automakers is consistent with its history of promoting automobility, as I and Bianca Mugyenyi detail in Stop Signs: Cars and Capitalism on the Road to Economic, Social and Ecological Decay. As far back as 1925, oil representatives packed a committee organized by the US surgeon-general concerning the health effects of leaded gas. They successfully argued that lead was harmless despite the fact that companies such as Standard Oil of New Jersey knew leaded gasoline  was a health threat. Over the next 60 years lead levels increased a hundred-fold until it was finally banned in 1986.

In the 1930s and 40s Standard Oil of California and Phillips Petroleum were part of the corporate conspiracy against trolleys  that changed the face of urban landscapes across North America. With General Motors and other companies they set up a network of front organizations that ripped up, converted and resold a hundred electric transit systems in 45 cities.

Amidst increasing smog in California in the 1950s, oil interests engaged in a fight against anti-pollution legislation. They financed  the Stanford Research Institute to contest the findings of Professor Arie J. Haagen-Smit who demonstrated that automobiles  and oil refineries were the major sources of smog.

In 1970 oil companies helped defeat  California’s Proposition 18, an initiative to divert a small portion of the state gas tax to public transit.

Oil companies were part of the National Highway Users Conference (NHUC) that was set up during the Depression to lobby for roadway funding. When the Chicago Transit Authority proposed using $30 million in state fuel tax to finance improvements to mass transit in the mid-1950s, the NHUC sent in two full-time workers to successfully coordinate opposition (with the Illinois Highway Users Conference) against the proposal.

In 1951, the NHUC launched Project  Adequate Roads, which called for a national highway system. Project Adequate Roads helped win the massive Interstate Highway System.

Oil interests were part of another group that lobbied for the Interstate. Beginning in 1942 the “Road Gang”, a secret society of men representing, automobile, truck and tire makers as well highway engineers, top highway bureaucrats, etc. met regularly in a private Washington, DC, restaurant to push for more roadway.

The private automobile has risen to dominance in large part because of its ability to draw together a wide array of powerful corporate interests from steel makers to real estate developers, rubber companies to big box retailers. During the automobile’s embryonic phase, the oil industry was already big business. At that time, oil was mainly used to fuel the kerosene lamp, a business destroyed by the emergence of gas and electrical illumination. The powerful oil interests of the day, led by the Rockefeller family, were bailed out of this crisis and set up for life with the advent of the automobile. And as barrel upon barrel was drained from the earth and pumped into gas tanks, big oil swam in its profits.

So, in many respects, oil interests lobbying against restrictions on automakers is simply business as usual, given their history of promoting automobility. But, given the dangers of climate disturbances ‘business as usual’ takes on the appearance of a criminal corporate conspiracy to destroy civilization.

Today the Department of Agriculture released a final rule to implement the mandatory GMO disclosure law passed in 2016. It will allow the genetically engineered ingredients in many foods to remain hidden from consumers. Below is a statement from Scott Faber, senior vice president of government affairs for the Environmental Working Group:

No one should be surprised that the most anti-consumer, anti-transparency administration in modern times is denying Americans basic information about what’s in their food and how it’s grown.

The Trump administration has yet again put the interests of pesticide and biotech companies ahead of the interests of ordinary Americans.

The final GMO disclosure rule fails to meet the clear intent of Congress to create a mandatory disclosure standard that includes all genetically engineered foods and uses terms that consumers understand. A fair standard should address the needs of consumers who don’t have expensive phones or who live in rural places with poor cell service but the rule put forward today simply fails to do that.

At a time when consumers are asking more and more questions about the use of genetic engineering, today’s rule will further undermine the technology by sowing greater confusion among Americans who simply want the right to know if their food is genetically modified – the same right held by consumers in 64 other countries.

Despite today’s disappointing, and likely unlawful, decision, we are pleased that companies that trust consumers – including Campbell’s, Mars, Danone, Kellogg’s, Coca-Cola and Unilever – will voluntarily disclose all GMOs in all their foods, not just in those required by the final rule.

EWG is announcing today that it has created a new portal on its Food Scores website for consumers who want to seek out certified organic and non-GMO options. The website lists more than 3,000 food products that are both certified organic and certified GMO-free.

The Environmental Working Group is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization that empowers people to live healthier lives in a healthier environment. Through research, advocacy and unique education tools, EWG drives consumer choice and civic action.

The US suddenly and unexpectedly announced the withdrawal of US troops from Syria after years of illegally occupying the country. The US presence aimed at ousting the Syrian government, boosting militant groups the US and its partners have armed and backed since the 2011 conflict started, and denying Damascus access to its own resources, particularly oil concentrated east of the Euphrates River.

The US occupation of Syria is only one part of a much larger, decades-long campaign of achieving, maintaining, and expanding US hegemony across North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia – as well as the ultimate goal of encircling and containing both Russia and China.

A genuine withdrawal from the Syrian conflict would signal a seismic shift in US foreign policy and mark an irreversible decline in American hegemony.

It is difficult to believe such a seismic shift could happen, and so suddenly.

It is also a shift not founded in US foreign policy or fact.

There are several key possibilities to consider:

• A US withdrawal paves way for unilateral Israeli strikes;
• It also paves the way for an expanded Turkish incursion;
• US troops won’t be on the ground as targets in the immediate aftermath of any wider conflict Israel or Turkey provokes;
• US troops can re-enter theater with renewed pretext to fight Damascus directly in defense of allies Israel or Turkey and;
• US troops can re-enter theater along the better formed and protected front Turkey seeks to create.

US Withdrawal From Syria Removes Obstructions to Escalation, Not Peace 

US policymakers have drawn up plans for years regarding US primacy in the Middle East. In the 2009 policy paper published by corporate-financier funded think tank – the Brookings Institution – the use of US proxies like Israel to carry out major attacks on Iran were given its own chapter.

However, the only obstruction to this option was the necessity of Israeli warplanes to fly over either US-ally Jordan or US-occupied Iraq.

The report would claim under a chapter titled, “Leave it to Bibi: Allowing or Encouraging an Israeli Military Strike” (.pdf) that (emphasis added):

An Israeli air campaign against Iran would have a number of very important differences from an American campaign. First, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) has the problem of overflight transit from Israel to Iran. Israel has no aircraft carriers, so its planes must take off from Israeli air bases. It also does not possess long-range bombers like the B-1 or B-2, or huge fleets of refueling tankers, all of which means that unlike the United States, Israel cannot avoid flying through someone’s air space. The most direct route from Israel to Iran’s Natanz facility is roughly 1,750 kilometers across Jordan and Iraq. As the occupying power in Iraq, the United States is responsible for defending Iraqi airspace. 

It would also state (emphasis added):

From the American perspective, this negates the whole point of the option—distancing the United States from culpability—and it could jeopardize American efforts in Iraq, thus making it a possible nonstarter for Washington. Finally, Israeli violation of Jordanian airspace would likely create political problems for King Abdullah of Jordan, one of America’s (and Israel’s) closest Arab friends in the region. Thus it is exceedingly unlikely that the United States would allow Israel to overfly Iraq, and because of the problems it would create for Washington and Amman, it is unlikely that Israel would try to fly over Jordan.

And finally, the Brookings paper would claim (emphasis added):

An Israeli attack on Iran would directly affect key American strategic interests. If Israel were to overfly Iraq, both the Iranians and the vast majority of people around the world would see the strike as abetted, if not authorized, by the United States. Even if Israel were to use another route, many Iranians would still see the attack as American supported or even American orchestrated. After all, the aircraft in any strike would be American produced, supplied, and funded F-15s and F-16s, and much of the ordnance would be American made. In fact, $3 billion dollars in U.S. assistance annually sustains the IDF’s conventional superiority in the region.

Thus, by removing US troops from Iraq regarding 2009 US plans to have Israel strike Iran then – or to have US troops withdrawn from Syria to distance the US from culpability ahead of Israeli strikes in the near future – the US can remove this critical obstruction toward greater escalation and even major war – not toward peace.

As to what the US would do in the wake of a supposedly “unilateral” Israeli strike – Brookings had an answer for that too (emphasis added):

However, as noted in the previous chapter, the airstrikes themselves are really just the start of this policy. Again, the Iranians would doubtless rebuild their nuclear sites. They would probably retaliate against Israel, and they might retaliate against the United States, too (which might create a pretext for American airstrikes or even an invasion). And it seems unlikely that they would cease their support for violent extremist groups or efforts to overturn the regional status quo in the aftermath of Israeli airstrikes. Their opposition to an Arab-Israeli peace treaty would likely be redoubled. Hence the United States would still need a strategy to handle Iran after completion of the Israeli airstrikes, and this could mean a much longer time frame to achieve all of America’s goals.

This policy within a Syrian context could mean major, unprecedented Israeli strikes on Syrian targets – a major escalation from previous and more limited strikes – but avoiding Russian targets, under the assumption Moscow will fall short of retaliating to avoid full-scale war.

Israel has already made its intentions clear that it will continue confronting “Iran” in Syria after the withdrawal of US forces.

Any retaliation by Damascus – real or staged – will be used to bring the US back into the conflict with a wider claimed pretext to take on Damascus directly – with the added benefit of not having US troops on the ground serving as easy targets in the immediate fallout of a much larger conflict.

Turkey Too? 

There is also Turkey to consider – a nation that has played a central role in facilitating the proxy war against Syria since it began in 2011. US policymakers have included Turkey in tandem with Israel as two coordinating pressure points against Damascus for decades.

A 1983 document signed by former CIA officer Graham Fuller titled, “Bringing Real Muscle to Bear Against Syria” (PDF), states (their emphasis):

Syria at present has a hammerlock on US interests both in Lebanon and in the Gulf — through closure of Iraq’s pipeline thereby threatening Iraqi internationalization of the [Iran-Iraq] war. The US should consider sharply escalating the pressures against Assad [Sr.] through covertly orchestrating simultaneous military threats against Syria from three border states hostile to Syria: Iraq, Israel and Turkey. 

The report also states:

If Israel were to increase tensions against Syria simultaneously with an Iraqi initiative, the pressures on Assad would escalate rapidly. A Turkish move would psychologically press him further. 

More recently, US policymakers in 2012 Brookings Institution document titled, “Saving Syria: Assessing Options for Regime Change” (PDF), which stated (emphasis added):

Some voices in Washington and Jerusalem are exploring whether Israel could contribute to coercing Syrian elites to remove Asad. 

The report continues by explaining (emphasis added):

Israel could posture forces on or near the Golan Heights and, in so doing, might divert regime forces from suppressing the opposition. This posture may conjure fears in the Asad regime of a multi-front war, particularly if Turkey is willing to do the same on its border and if the Syrian opposition is being fed a steady diet of arms and training. Such a mobilization could perhaps persuade Syria’s military leadership to oust Asad in order to preserve itself. 

Regarding events on the ground now – Turkey is already signaling its intentions to enter Syria east of the Euphrates and expand its military occupation across more Syrian territory.

Turkish forces entering into Syria would serve as a front against Syrian forces in the outbreak of wider war with supply lines protected all the way to the Turkish border and deep into Turkish territory. US forces re-entering the theater can do so from Turkey and avoid being cut off in US bases currently scattered across eastern Syria.

Whether or not Russia and Iran have created a sufficient amount of incentives and deterrents to place  between Turkey and its continued role in destabilizing Syria since then remains to be seen. Only Moscow, Tehran, and Damascus can know what deals they have with Ankara and where its apparent plans to enter Syrian territory fit into them.

Empire Dies Hard 

US involvement in Syria was always aimed at eventually undermining, encircling, containing, and eventually overthrowing first Iran, then closing around Russia further.

Unless we are to believe the US has abandoned its wider hegemonic ambitions – and there is no evidence to suggest that it has – it is irrational and ill-advised to believe the US is truly walking away from Syria without plans to dangerously escalate the conflict while minimizing its own culpability.

The United States has gone from an uncontested global superpower at the end of the Cold War, to an increasing dangerous, desperate fading hegemon today. The weaker it appears, the more unpredictable and dangerous its actions are becoming. A genuine withdrawal from Syria would neither fit America’s current global ambitions, nor fit its recent pattern of increasingly dangerous and desperate policies implemented from Eastern Europe to the Middle East and North Africa, into Central Asia, and across East Asia.

A skeptical public leaves no room for the US to capitalize on the apparent “good will” the US is trying to cultivate through its supposed withdrawal from Syria ahead of provocations by proxy it will have fully underwritten and will immediately move to exploit toward greater war.

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Tony Cartalucci is 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.

Featured image is from NEO

Escalating U.S. military confrontations, political threats, extreme tariffs and an ominous trade war against China are having global repercussions. These provocations impact the economy and the political alliances of every country, not only China.

The emerging policies of China and the U.S. reveal, in the starkest light, a fundamental difference in the form of each state. The two countries are all too often lumped together as “superpowers.” This hides the underlying struggle.

The current threats against China are an extension of the U.S. military policy called the “Pivot to Asia.” This is an overarching strategy to rebalance and realign U.S. military power to focus on China as a rising power. It was initiated in the Obama administration in 2012 by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

It was recognition that, counter to the hopes of Wall Street, the People’s Republic of China had not collapsed in chaos under the weight of U.S. capitalist investment and political pressure.

Now 400 of the U.S.’s 800 overseas military bases encircle China. The goal, in the terminology of military planners, is to create a “ring of steel,” a “perfect noose” around the large developing country whose very existence is a threat to U.S. global domination.

Aircraft carriers, destroyers, nuclear submarines, jet aircraft, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile batteries and satellite surveillance infrastructures are being moved into place across the Pacific region. The U.S. military presence is, by its very nature, an assault on the sovereignty of the host countries.

On existing U.S. bases, building is underway for additional aircraft parking, hangars, fuel storage tanks and ammunition storage facilities.

Chokehold threat

The realignment of U.S. policy is more than a vast construction project. It also involves constant military operations to demonstrate U.S. power in so-called “freedom of navigation” (FON) operations by aggressively sailing warships, overflights by combat aircraft and positioning troops in China’s territorial waters in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait.

U.S. imperialism has long used blatant and open military threats, economic destabilization and strangulation, along with sanctions and blockades, to impose concessions on targeted countries.

Along with high-tech equipment of death and destruction comes the media barrage of demonization and blatant propaganda. This, in turn, is picked up by politicians, think tanks, social media and well-funded nongovernmental organizations.

A great deal of U.S. strategy is focused on how the Pentagon’s vast military capacity can be used to strangle China by cutting off shipping routes for its export industries as well as blockading its access to needed imports of oil and raw materials.

More than 80 percent of the materials essential for China’s economy come into the South China Sea through the Straits of Malacca, a narrow waterway running between Malaysia and Indonesia that also passes the strategic city-state of Singapore. One U.S. aircraft carrier battle group could choke the Straits closed.

Each FON operation by the U.S. Navy in the South China Sea is a threatening reminder to the Chinese government of its vulnerability.

In what was formerly an impoverished, semicolonized country with uneven development, the People’s Republic of China is still in an intense struggle for survival. Its national sovereignty and continuing development are at stake.

In response to U.S. military threats, China is building its military capability and reinforcing islands it claims in the South China Sea.

But it is also doing something that the U.S. government and its corporate rulers are incapable of doing: conducting vast, unfolding construction and economic integration projects that benefit China as well as many other countries. This coordinated loan and aid program is known as the Belt and Road Project.

Cooperation, not competition

Following the U.S. Pivot to Asia, President Xi Jinping announced China’s Belt and Road Initiative in 2013 as a plan to create an infrastructure corridor linking China to Central Asia and Europe through new rail and road networks as well as shipping routes.

Four years later, at the 2017 Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, Xi described its goal: to build “land, maritime, air and cyberspace connectivity” and create “networks of highways, railways and sea ports.”

Securing sea lanes and developing ports and refueling stations will help China’s exporters reach overseas markets and give China uninterrupted access to energy imports. Establishing overland connections, pipelines, warehouses and roads to the Indian Ocean through Pakistan, Thailand and Myanmar will make China less vulnerable to chokepoints.

This global project is an opportunity for China to put to more active use its large but vulnerable currency reserves, most of which are in U.S. Treasury notes.

Some of China’s currency reserves have been used in the creation of the New Development Bank, which provides funds for the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), as well as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the proposed Shanghai Cooperation Organization Bank.

The construction projects and trade being financed are especially helpful in furthering China’s predominance of state-owned industries. This makes China less dependent on precarious Western investments.

The scale and scope of these initiatives are staggering. Estimates vary, but more than $300 billion has already been spent, and China plans to spend $1 trillion more in the next decade or so.

The vast network of new road, rail and pipeline projects is also a huge boon to development throughout a vast region.

In addition to infrastructure development, the initiative now includes efforts at “financial integration,” “cooperation in science and technology,” “cultural and academic exchanges” and the establishment of trade “cooperation mechanisms.”

Larger than the World Bank

Many developing countries in Africa, Central Asia and Latin America are embracing conscious planning for connective infrastructure as a way to stimulate economic activity in their most remote and rural areas.

Within a few decades, China has gone from being an aid recipient to a donor, following its emergence as the world’s second-largest economy. In the 1980s and 1990s, China was the world’s largest recipient of World Bank and Asian Development Bank loans. Now it makes more loans to developing countries than does the World Bank.

This undermines the ability of U.S. and European banks to impose onerous conditions on developing countries’ financial dealings. China’s loans and development plans are increasingly more popular, because they have fewer strings attached. This has become a growing source of contention with U.S. imperialism, which has had unrivaled dominance over the world’s financial system since World War II.

The top 10 recipients of official Chinese development aid are eight African countries, Cuba and Cambodia. Meanwhile, according to CIA figures, 92 countries counted China as their largest export or import partner in 2015 — far more than the 57 partnering with the U.S.

A fundamental struggle

What should be the attitude of the progressive and working-class movement to this growing confrontation? Is it just a rivalry between two superpowers? Or is there a more fundamental struggle at the root of the confrontation?

Compared to U.S. imperialism’s vast construction projects — which number hundreds of military bases — China’s response to U.S. military encirclement shows a fundamental difference in the character of the two states.

The U.S. capitalist economy is dominated by “defense” contractors and oil industries. These giant corporations have enjoyed the highest rates of profit for decades. They predominate in the U.S. economy.

Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, United Technologies and the banks behind them are assured a guaranteed multibillion-dollar subsidy on military contracts. War is profitable. Arms sales and weapon transfers predominate in U.S. foreign aid.

Trump recently signed legislation establishing the International Development Finance Corporation, with $60 billion in funds to finance investments in developing countries. That amounts to only 6 percent of China’s $1 trillion development project.

U.S. humanitarian aid for famine, earthquakes and other disasters is a meager 14 percent of total U.S. aid. That includes State Department and Defense Department disaster relief efforts, as well as purchases of U.S. agricultural goods and funding for the International Red Cross.

In fiscal year 2019, the total U.S. government spending for defense is budgeted at $952 billion. It is clear what U.S. imperialism’s priority is.

The big problem

U.S. aid is based on war. It generates war and military confrontations, which in turn lead to the sale of more U.S. weapons.

U.S. intelligence agencies and military contractors have a material interest in antagonizing relations with neighboring countries, creating terror threats, coups and civil wars. It’s good for business.

Military aid, advisors and trainers further dislocate the economy and the social fabric of receiving countries. Military aid is designed to strengthen the military and police apparatus and all the most repressive institutions of the receiving country. It enriches the most corrupt individuals and ruling families.

The arms industry invests heavily in an army of well-paid lobbyists. Some 700 to 1,000 each year besiege Capitol Hill to keep the subsidized funds and contracts flowing. Most of the lobbyists are well-connected retired military officers and congressional staffers.

The U.S. infrastructure of bridges, roads, housing, sewage and sanitation is collapsing from neglect and lack of funding for the same reason that U.S. aid is not directed to development or planning infrastructure around the world.

In the U.S. 20 million people a year get sick from contaminated water. Life expectancy is declining. But it is more profitable to bomb sanitation, sewage and irrigation structures than it is to build or repair them, whether in the U.S. or around the world.

Aid and development projects are based on maximizing profits for the largest U.S. corporations. As we have noted, these happen to be military corporations, military services and base support services.

In fiscal year 2016, the Pentagon issued $304 billion in contract awards to corporations. The top five firms grabbed $100 billion in government funds, or about one-third of all contracts. But military spending is also good for lots of other small capitalists. More than 600,000 private contractors receive funds from the military budget.

Korea: Bases or reunification?

Looking beyond the confrontation with China, U.S. imperialism is facing similar problems in Korea.

After 70 years of a state of war, the U.S. military occupation that divides Korea is now confronted by the enormous enthusiasm shown by Koreans, north and south, for trade, exchanges and mutual cooperation. Reunification is the aspiration of millions of Koreans. The last right-wing, pro-U.S. government in South Korea was literally overwhelmed by millions of Koreans who demonstrated every week for a year in order to bring it down and move the country in a new direction. An opening to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the north was unstoppable.

Despite the meeting between President Trump and President Kim Jong Un of the DPRK, the real response of the U.S. to the people of South Korea has been the construction of the largest overseas U.S. military base in the world — Camp Humphreys, just a few miles from Seoul.

The U.S. Army calls Camp Humphreys “the largest power projection platform in the Pacific.” It has the busiest U.S. Army airfield in Asia and a 8,124-foot runway.

More than 650 buildings are being built or renovated across a land area the size of Washington, D.C.

The decade-long expansion project is costing $10.8 billion. When fully operational, the base is expected to house 45,000 troops, contractors and family members.

How to spend $1 trillion

While China plans to spend $1 trillion in the coming years on its Belt and Road development program, the Pentagon’s plan is to spend more than $1 trillion on a whole new generation of nuclear-armed bombers, submarines, and land- and air-based missiles.

The United States has more than 4,000 nuclear warheads in its active stockpile, with 1,700 deployed and ready to be launched at a moment’s notice.

That is a danger to the whole planet.

U.S. imperialism can dump surplus agricultural products or equipment, or it can plunk down factories to take advantage of cheap labor if this is profitable for individual corporations. But the capitalist economy in the U.S. is not geared to developing economic competitors.

The United States today is the world’s largest capitalist economy, but its predatory practices around the world are suddenly being challenged in a wholly unexpected way. New programs coming from China are radically different from the alliances and aid programs coming from the U.S.

In a capitalist economy investment money will overwhelmingly go into producing what will earn the highest rate of profit. This is an inexorable pull. The entire system is based on maximizing profit, not on producing what is needed by society.

While it justifies interventions and sanctions with claims of counterterrorism or just being at odds with the West, the U.S. ruling class will find it harder to impose its will. Because there is now a clear alternative.

State-owned enterprises

China has 150,000 state-owned enterprises, of which 50,000, or one third, are owned by the central government; the remainder are owned by local and state governments. They account for 30 to 40 percent of the gross domestic product, and that is growing.

Twelve of the largest Chinese firms listed on the Fortune 500 are state-owned industries. (“Top Ranks of China’s Fortune 500 Still Dominated by State-Owned Enterprises,” chinabankingnews.com, Aug. 1, 2017)

Nevertheless, it is very obvious that the capitalist market has made enormous inroads into China. China has a mixed economy, which the government calls “market socialism.”  But central planning has been maintained under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. Based on this reality, such leadership is able to make far more rational and planned decisions. The state is able to consciously subsidize the state sector and plan development. This has dramatically improved the lives of hundreds of millions of working people.

China’s foreign loans and infrastructure development are not mainly based on revolutionary solidarity, although Cuba is the largest recipient of Chinese aid. For the most part, economic decisions are pragmatic, spurred by the need to break out of the hostile imperialist encirclement and imposed isolation.

Nevertheless, the development of roads, industries, ports, telecommunications, sanitation and health as interconnected infrastructure across wide regions will enlarge and strengthen the working class in both China and the other countries. This will also break down competition and aid cooperation.

Originally published on Workers World

Throughout the long Cold War Stephen Cohen, professor of Russian studies at Princeton University and New York University was a voice of reason. He refused to allow his patriotism to blind him to Washington’s contribution to the conflict and to criticize only the Soviet contribution. Cohen’s interest was not to blame the enemy but to work toward a mutual understanding that would remove the threat of nuclear war. Although a Democrat and left-leaning, Cohen would have been at home in the Reagan administration, as Reagan’s first priority was to end the Cold War. I know this because I was part of the effort. Pat Buchanan will tell you the same thing.

In 1974 a notorious cold warrior, Albert Wohlstetter, absurdly accused the CIA of underestimating the Soviet threat. As the CIA had every incentive for reasons of budget and power to overestimate the Soviet threat, and today the “Russian threat,” Wohlstetter’s accusation made no sense on its face. However he succeeded in stirring up enough concern that CIA director George H.W. Bush, later Vice President and President, agreed to a Team B to investigate the CIA’s assessment, headed by the Russiaphobic Harvard professor Richard Pipes. Team B concluded that the Soviets thought they could win a nuclear war and were building the forces with which to attack the US.

The report was mainly nonsense, and it must have troubled Stephen Cohen to experience the setback to negotiations that Team B caused.

Today Cohen is stressed that it is the United States that thinks it can win a nuclear war. Washington speaks openly of using “low yield” nuclear weapons, and intentionally forecloses any peace negotiations with Russia with a propaganda campaign against Russia of demonization, villification, and transparant lies, while installing missile bases on Russia’s borders and while talking of incorporating former parts of Russia into NATO. In his just published book, War With Russia?, which I highly recommend, Cohen makes a convincing case that Washington is asking for war.

I agree with Cohen that if Russia is a threat it is only because the US is threatening Russia. The stupidity of the policy toward Russia is creating a Russian threat. Putin keeps emphasizing this. To paraphrase Putin: “You are making Russia a threat by declaring us to be one, by discarding facts and substituting orchestrated opinions that your propagandistic media establish as fact via endless repetition.”

Cohen is correct that during the Cold War every US president worked to defuse tensions, especially Republican ones. Since the Clinton regime every US president has worked to create tensions. What explains this dangerous change in approach?

The end of the Cold War was disadvantageous to the military/security complex whose budget and power had waxed from decades of cold war. Suddenly the enemy that had bestowed such wealth and prestige on the military/security complex disappeared.

The New Cold War is the result of the military/security complex’s resurrection of the enemy. In a democracy with independent media and scholars, this would not have been possible. But the Clinton regime permitted in violation of anti-trust laws 90% of the US media to be concentrated in the hands of six mega-corporations, thus destroying an independence already undermined by the CIA’s successful use of the CIA’s media assets to control explanations. Many books have been written about the CIA’s use of the media, including Udo Ulfkotte’s “Bought Journalism,” the English edition of which was quickly withdrawn and burned.

The demonization of Russia is also aided and abeted by the Democrats’ hatred of Trump and anger from Hillary’s loss of the presidential election to the “Trump deplorables.” The Democrats purport to believe that Trump was installed by Putin’s interference in the presidentail election. This false belief is emotionally important to Democrats, and they can’t let go of it.

Although Cohen as a professor at Princeton and NYU never lacked research opportunities, in the US Russian studies, strategic studies, and the like are funded by the military/security complex whose agenda Cohen’s scholarship does not serve. At the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where I held an independently financed chair for a dozen years, most of my colleagues were dependent on grants from the military/security complex. At the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, where I was a Senior Fellow for three decades, the anti-Soviet stance of the Institution reflected the agenda of those who funded the institution.

I am not saying that my colleagues were whores on a payroll. I am saying that the people who got the appointments were people who were inclined to see the Soviet Union the way the military/security complex thought it should be seen.

As Stephen Cohen is aware, in the original Cold War there was some balance as all explanations were not controlled. There were independent scholars who could point out that the Soviets, decimated by World War 2, had an interest in peace, and that accommodation could be achieved, thus avoiding the possibility of nuclear war.

Stephen Cohen must have been in the younger ranks of those sensible people, as he and President Reagan’s ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack Matloff, seem to be the remaining voices of expert reason on the American scene.

If you care to understand the dire threat under which you live, a threat that only a few people, such as Stephen Cohen, are trying to lift, read his book.

If you want to understand the dire threat that a bought-and-paid-for American media poses to your existence, read Cohen’s accounts of their despicable lies. America has a media that is synonymous with lies.

If you want to understand how corrupt American universities are as organizations on the take for money, organizations to whom truth is inconsequential, read Cohen’s book.

If you want to understand why you could be dead before Global Warming can get you, read Cohen’s book.

Enough said.

Originally published on PaulCraigRoberts.org

All the pieces were in place for it to happen sooner than later, but striking Syria on Christmas night sent a terrifying message that’s sure to backfire against “Israel” but will probably also get people to wonder why the S-300s didn’t deter this from happening in the first place. 

Reports are streaming in that “Israel” launched an attack against Syria on Christmas night after a brief hiatus of a couple of months following what President Putin previously described as the “chain of tragic circumstances” that led to the downing of a Russian spy plane over the Arab Republic’s airspace in mid-September. Many people are shocked by the audacity of striking Syria on one of the world’s holiest days but a lot of those who have also been following the country’s conflict lately are surprised that it even happened at all.

Certain forces in the Mainstream and Alternative Medias pushed forth the narrative that Russia’s highly publicized dispatch of S-300 anti-air missiles to Syria in the aftermath of the mid-September incident was supposed to have made this scenario impossible, though the reality is that the Russian military has yet to hand control of these systems over to the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and might ultimately never end up doing so as part of a possible backroom deal between Moscow and Tel Aviv in order for “Israel” to continue having the so-called “freedom” to strike IRGC and Hezbollah positions in the country at its convenience.

Those same voices who said that this wouldn’t ever happen again tended to also gloss over the developments of the past few weeks which saw Russia and “Israel” publicly set aside their largely exaggerated differences since September by exchanging high-level military delegations and agreeing to once again cooperate with one another. Coming in the immediate run-up to Trump’s decision to initiate the US’ conventional on-the-ground withdrawal from Syria, the writing was on the wall that “Israel” would soon resume its bombing operations in the country at America’s behest.

One of the Mideast’s worst kept “secrets” is that Russia passively facilitated over 200 of these same bombings from January 2017 to September 2018 by the admission of its own Defense Ministry following the aforementioned midair incident that tragically downed its spy plane, having tacitly done as as part of its regional “balancing” strategy aimed at indirectly creating the conditions for Iran’s military drawdown and ultimate “phased withdrawal” from Syria as one of the main steps in President Putin’s unofficial peace plan for the country. 

All arguments aside that might be made by its lobbyists about “Israel’s” “right to ensure its security”, it’s generally understood in the West that Christmas is supposed to be a time of peace where hostilities between rival parties are unofficially frozen until the celebrations are finally over after sunrise the next day, but Tel Aviv literally blew that presumption to pieces with its latest bombing. Although not a surprise in and of itself and likely to end up being yet another self-inflicted wound to “Israel’s” soft power, the proverbial “sliver lining” might be that people finally begin to wonder why this happened at all in spite of the much-publicized deployment of S-300s to Syria prior to putting the pieces together and eventually understanding the complex reality of contemporary Mideast geopolitics that made it possible.

*

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

“In the history of democracy… there isn’t one case in which a country has been attacked on so many different fronts … both from the internal power factors to foreign governments over such an extended period of time as in the case of Venezuela.” – Steve Ellner (from this week’s talk.)

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This week’s Global Research News Hour features a radio version of an October 19 2018 Winnipeg talk, delivered by Steve Ellner.

The presentation, delivered at the historic Fort Garry Hotel to about 100 audience members was entitled What is Really Happening in Venezuela. The main sponsor of the talk was the Winnipeg-based Venezuela Peace Committee, a group which sprang up in 2017 in reaction to the hostile actions, including sanctions, taken by the U.S. and Canadian governments toward the Venezuelan government.

According to a recent report coordinated by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the UN Refugee, the UN Refugee Agency, and the International Organization for Migration, the outflow in recent times of more than 3 million Venezuelans to neighbouring countries and beyond constitutes “the largest in the modern history of Latin America and the Caribbean.” The same report attributes this exodus to “the ongoing political, human rights and socio-economic developments in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.” Based on current trends, fully 5.3 million refugees and migrants will have left the country by the end of 2019. [1][2]

Further, a series of anti-Maduro protests have erupted inside Venezuela in the last four years with efforts to disrupt them being blamed for violence resulting in a death toll exceeding 170. [3]

Critics in the countries like the U.S. and Canada invariably use this crisis to bolster the claim that mismanagement on the part of the Maduro government and President Chavez before him. Nevertheless, such analyses conceivably ignore some of the recent historical and geopolitical context in which the Venezuelan people are now situated. [4]

Steve Ellner, who admits the Venezuelan situation is ‘complex’ attempts to provide that context in this Winnipeg presentation, recorded by Community videographer Paul Graham, and edited for radio by Global Research News Hour host / producer Michael Welch.

The complete unabridged presentation is included below.

Steve Ellner is Professor of Economics at the University of Oriente in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela. His published works include ‘Implications of Marxist State Theory and how they Play Out in Venezuela‘ and an upcoming volume – ‘The Pink Tide Experiences: Breakthroughs and Shortcomings in Twenty-First Century Latin America’ (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019). His blogsite is steveellnersblog.blogspot.com

(Global Research News Hour episode 242)

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca . Excerpts of the show have begun airing on Rabble Radio and appear as podcasts at rabble.ca.

The Global Research News Hour now airs Fridays at 6pm PST, 8pm CST and 9pm EST on Alternative Current Radio (alternativecurrentradio.com)

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

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

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

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

Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the North Shore to the US Border.

It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia, Canada. – Tune in  at its new time – Wednesdays at 4pm PT.

Radio station CFUV 101.9FM based at the University of Victoria airs the Global Research News Hour every Sunday from 7 to 8am PT.

CORTES COMMUNITY RADIO CKTZ  89.5 out of Manson’s Landing, B.C airs the show Tuesday mornings at 10am Pacific time.

Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 6am pacific time.

Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in  Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 10am.

Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday Morning from 8:00 to 9:00am. Find more details at www.caperradio.ca

RIOT RADIO, the visual radio station based out of Durham College in Oshawa, Ontario has begun airing the Global Research News Hour on an occasional basis. Tune in at dcstudentsinc.ca/services/riot-radio/

Radio Fanshawe: Fanshawe’s 106.9 The X (CIXX-FM) out of London, Ontario airs the Global Research News Hour Sundays at 6am with an encore at 4pm.

Los Angeles, California based Thepowerofvoices.com airs the Global Research News Hour every Monday from 6-7pm Pacific time. 

Notes: 

1. https://www.unhcr.org/news/press/2018/12/5c136d834/emergency-plan-refugees-migrants-venezuela-launched.html
2. ‘Regional Refugee and Migrant Response Plan for Refugees and Migrants in Venezuela: January – December 2019’ (pg. 11, 14), Response for Venezuelans: Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela; https://s3.amazonaws.com/unhcrsharedmedia/2018/RMRP_Venezuela_2019_OnlineVersion.pdf
3. https://in-venezuela.com/killed-during-the-protests/
4. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-36319877

All memorialised events, when passing into mythology, must be seen critically. In some cases, there should be more than a hint of suspicion. The Christmas Truce of 1914 remains one sentimentalised occasion, remembered less to scold the mad mechanised forces of death led by regressive castes than to reflect upon common humanity.

Common humanity, left to be butchered before the next grand stratagem, is the first casualty of the war room and, in many cases, parliaments. These are places where commemoration ceremonies are drafted and encouraged; they are also the places where the common soldier is left for ruin.

The Christmas Truce of the First World War arose out of a blood-bathed irony: the troops from both sides, Allies and German, were not meant to be slaughtering each other at that point. They should have been home to celebrate their respective victories or lick respective wounds. The diplomats and politicians could then celebrate what was meant to be a puerile skirmish waged in conditions more reminiscent of an old cavalry charge than mud-soaked death.

Pope Benedict XV, after his election on September 3, 1914, kept busy attempting to halt a war he deemed “the suicide of civilized Europe.” In December, he attempted, in vain, to persuade the belligerents to halt the murderous party, asking “that the guns may fall silent at least upon the night the angels sang.” This would be a prelude to discussions towards an honourable peace.

The sequence written about and recalled every year with the monotonous reflection of a prayer goes something like this: Stille nacht, heilige nacht comes from the German side of the trenches at the Ypres Salient. (The Hun proved troublingly festive and did not seem up for the killing.) The British, initially wary, show interest. Shots are not fired. The First Noel comes in reply. “Then,” remembered a British soldier, “we started up O Come All Ye Faithful and the Germans immediately joined in singing the same thing to the Latin words of Adeste Fideles.”

The gestures were repeated along the Western Front in pockets of small “truces”. British, German and French soldiers, in open defiance of orders, went to No Man’s Land in a spiritual reclamation of sorts under the pretext of burying the dead. An economy of gifting came to the fore: tobacco and chocolate; beer and pudding; sausage and Christmas trees; badges and buttons. The Allies were astonished by the goods they could receive in the exchange: the German armies were, at that point, better supplied.

Then came the football matches, though the legend here is inflated. Socks wrapping a tin of bully beef, for instance, were substitutes for soccer balls. The scores at these matches remain a subject of conjecture, as do the matches themselves.

Peter Stanley of the University of New South Wales, when asked about the record in 2014, suggested that such matches would have taken place behind the respective lines of the soldiers, if, in fact, they took place at all. The papers of the day ran “pictures of the truces, with lots of photos of men smoking but no photos of soccer matches. So what does that tell you?”

But Stanley’s insistence does not withstand the accounts of some subalterns, who describe scenes, not of 10-a-side but “a question of 70 Germans against 50 Englishmen” involving a ball with an adventurous fate. In January 1, 1915, The Times received a letter from an anonymous major that an English regiment “had a football match with the Saxons, who beat them 3-2.” (At least, mused historian Gerard DeGroot, “it did not end in penalties.”)

The legacy of the truce is somewhat estranged. While it might well have been the last gasp of civility in modern warfare – if you fall for that notion that civility was ever a part of the killing business – the truce has become a matter of commercialisation and celluloid. There are films such as the 2005 French film Joyeux Noel. Then come the commodities.

Supermarket chains such as Sainsbury’s have found the prospect of making money out of the memory irresistible. A 2014 ad, specifically, was reviled and yet admired by The Guardian for its “startling array of emotional depth within a few short minutes” marked by “breathtaking” cinematography. Slaughter might be futile, fought in the name of obscene abstractions, but making money is as clear enough a mission as any.

The truce compelled Arthur Conan Doyle to deem it “one human episode amid all the atrocities which have stained the memory of the war.” But it remains an episode celebrated with lessons to be ignored. The classroom of history troubles the demagogues and political practitioners, as it did those war planners in 1914 alarmed by the loss of faith in killing shown by the truce makers. Political figures and generals could not; soldiers could.

In many instances, the participating units in question were relieved by fresh men untainted by the temptation of mutual respect. As the war wore on in all its barbarity, such truces became infrequent. The enemy had to be hated. Common humanity, so goes that most salient lesson of all, remains a common mineral to be exploited and manipulated rather than revered.

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

Minister for Defence Elisabetta Trenta (5-Star Movement), on the mike of a musical radio station, sang « C’era un ragazzo che come me amava i Beatles e i Rolling Stones », and declared « This song makes me think about the value of peace, a priceless value that we must always preserve ».

Ten days later, in Afghanistan, the military-garbed Minister praised « our armed presence outside of the frontiers of Italy, guided by the values of our Constitution, on a fundamental mission for peace ».

The mission is Resolution Support, initiated by NATO in Afghanistan in 2015, after the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), a United Nations mission of which NATO  had taken command by armed force in 2003.

So the US/NATO war continues in Afghanistan, now in its eighteenth year. It was launched by the USA on 7 October 2001 on the official motive of hunting down Osama Bin Laden, accused of the attacks of 11 September, who was supposedly hiding in an Afghani cave under the protection of the Taliban.

The true reasons were revealed by the Pentagon in a report published one week before the beginning of the war  – « There is a possibility that a military rival is emerging in Asia with a formidable base of resources. Our armed forces must maintain the capacity to impose the will of the United States on any adversary, in order to change the régime of an enemy State  or occupy a foreign territory until US strategic objectives are realised ».

In the period preceding 11 September 2001, there had been strong signals of a rapprochement between China and Russia, which were actualised when the two countries signed the « Treaty of Good Neighbourship and Friendly Cooperation » on 17 July 2001. Washington considered that this rapprochement between China and Russia was a challenge  to US interests, at the critical moment when the USA were trying to fill the void left in Central Asia by the disintegration of the USSR – a region of capital importance both for its geostrategic position in terms of Russia and China, and for its border reserves of oil and natural gas in the Caspian. The key position for the control of this region is Afghanistan.

This explains the headstrong engagement in a war which has already cost the United States alone more than 1,000 billion dollars. The mission which is currently under way is presented by NATO as a « non-combat mission ». But on the basis of official data, in the first ten months of 2018, the US Air Force dropped approximately 6 thousand bombs and missiles on targets over Afghanistan. As well as fighters and armed drones, they used B-52 heavy bombers equipped with rotary launchers, which increase by two thirds the already enormous destructive capacities of the aircraft by enabling it to drop as many as 30 powerful precision-guided bombs in one mission.

Apart from this visible war there is another, hidden, waged by US and Allied Special Forces, with the mission to assassinate Taliban chieftains, or those presumed to be chieftains, and other people who are considered to be dangerous. The result is disastrous for NATO – as the number of civilian victims increases, so the Taliban gain ground.

Italy has been participating in the Afghanistan war for more than 15 years, under US command and in violation of Article 11 of the Constitution. Its contingent is ranked third out of 39 participants, after the United States and Germany. Italian officers are deployed in Tampa, Florida with the USA Command, and in Bahrein as liaison personnel with the US forces there.

And while the war continues to crush its victims, our Minister of Defence declares – at the Herat Orphanage – that Italian soldiers gave about two hundred winter outfits to « young and less fortunate children ».

Translation: Pete Kimberley

Originally published on Il Manifesto (Italy)

According to Bloomberg News, Trump is furious about Powell’s rate hikes while financial markets are slumping badly. More on this below.

In 2016, presidential aspirant Trump said Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen should be “ashamed” of herself for keeping short-term interest rates too low.

Months earlier, he said low rates are “the best thing going for us,” calling any increase “scary.” In December 2008, the Fed cut its benchmark interest rate to near-zero (a range of zero to 0.25%).

From then to December 2015, the Fed funds rate remained at near-zero. After seven years of unprecedented accommodative monetary policy, including a tsunami of quantitative easing (QE easy money) for years, an October 29, 2014 Fed press release said the following:

The Open Market Committee (FOMC) “decided to conclude its (QE) asset purchase program this month.”

It’s “maintaining its existing policy of reinvesting principal payments from its holdings of agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities in agency mortgage-backed securities and of rolling over maturing Treasury securities at auction.”

“This policy, by keeping the Committee’s holdings of longer-term securities at sizable levels, should help maintain accommodative financial conditions.”

Months earlier, former Reagan-era Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director David Stockman called QE “high grade monetary heroin,” adding “(o)ne day, it’ll “kill the patient,” adding:

Over the last quarter of a century,

“(w)hat has been growing is the wealth of the rich, the remit of the state, the girth of Wall Street, the debt burden of the people, the prosperity of the beltway, and the sway of the three great branches of government which are domiciled there – that is, the warfare state, the (corporate) welfare state and the central bank.”

“What is failing…is the vast expanse of the Main Street economy where the great majority has experienced stagnant living standards, rising job insecurity, failure to accumulate any material savings, rapidly approaching old age and the certainty of a Hobbesian future where, inexorably, taxes will rise and social benefits will be cut.”

“And what is positively falling is the lower ranks of society whose prospects for jobs, income and a decent living standard have been steadily darkening.”

The above remarks describe the dystopian new normal. Wall Street, other corporate favorites, and high-net-worth individuals never had things better – while ordinary Americans struggle to get by, a few missed paychecks from possible homelessness, hunger and despair, what years of thirdworldizing the nation is all about.

Monied interests run things. The president, Congress, and the courts serve them. Until rolling back QE began, along with raising interest rates, years of unrestrained monetary heroin showed how far off the rails the Fed strayed.

Money printing madness doesn’t stimulate growth or create jobs when used for speculative investments, mergers and acquisitions, high salaries, and big bonuses – while wages for ordinary Americans fail to keep pace with inflation and vital benefits erode.

Helicopter Ben Bernanke dropped lots of money on Wall Street and into the pockets of wealthy investors. Virtually none went to  Main Street where it’s vitally needed.

When people have money they spend it. A virtuous cycle of prosperity follows. America once was sustainably prosperous growth. Today the nation is in decline. It’s heading for third world status. It’s more a kleptocracy than democracy.

America’s super-rich got fabulously richer by investing their wealth to create more of it. During the height of the 2008-09 financial crisis, a popular slogan was: “Banks got bailed out.” Ordinary people “got sold out.”

Fed chairmen Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke were maestros of misery, creating financial bubble conditions. America’s 1% profited hugely at the expense of the vast majority of ordinary people.

As Fed chairman, Bernanke handed speculators over $20 trillion, mostly interest-free, amounting to legalized bank robbery, creating unsustainable bubble conditions.

From December 2015 under Fed Chairwoman Yellen to December 19, 2018 under Jerome Powell, succeeding her on February 5, 2018, the Fed raised its benchmark short rate nine times.

It’s currently at 2.25 – 2.50%, historically low, no drag on economic growth. Powell signaled fewer hikes in 2019, perhaps two instead of four this year.

According to Bankrate’s chief financial analyst Greg McBride, “(t)he Fed downshifted (its) projections of 2019 economic growth, inflation, and interest rate hikes – not in a big way but enough to remove the urgency of repeated rate hikes.”

Powell signaled that future moves will be data-dependent. When economic contraction occurs, rates will be cut, perhaps along with resumption of QE.

Trump railed against Powell’s latest rate hike. According to Bloomberg News, he “discussed firing (him) as his frustration with the central bank chief intensified following this week’s interest-rate hike and months of stock-market losses, according to four people familiar with the matter,” adding:

“Advisers close to Trump aren’t convinced he would move against Powell and are hoping that the president’s latest bout of anger will dissipate over the holidays, the people said on condition of anonymity.”

“Some of Trump’s advisers have warned him that firing Powell would be a disastrous move. Yet (he) privately spoke about firing Powell many times in the past few days, said two of the people.”

What unfolds in the post-holiday period remains to be seen. Presidents, congressional members, their appointed bureaucrats, and the courts are servants of money power running America.

The Federal Reserve isn’t federal. It’s privately owned and controlled by major Wall Street bankers. They decide who runs it.

It’s been this way since enactment the 1913 Federal Reserve Act, creating the Fed, a coup d’etat by powerful Wall Street bankers. The same year’s Revenue Act imposed a federal income tax for the public to pay interest on the federal debt.

As long as giant Wall Street banka control the nation’s money, ordinary people will be entrapped in a “web of debt,” Ellen Brown explained – amounting to permanent debt bondage, the national wealth increasingly transferred from the public to private bankers, most people none the wiser.

If Congress controlled the nation’s money as mandated under the Constitution’s Article I, Section 8, none of this would have happened.

Bankers choose Fed chairmen and governors. It’s always been this way. Presidents have no say. They announce pre-selected choices while pretending otherwise.

Wall Street bankers chose Powell as Fed chairman. They’ll decide if he stays, goes, and who’ll replace him one day.

Longterm speculative excess is mainly behind current market turbulence, not current interest rates, still historically low, hugely benefitting investors at the expense of savers, the nation’s elderly harmed most.

It’s unclear whether sharp equity price declines signal a more protracted erosion of valuations, or if the current selloff is short-term – the fullness of time to tell.

What’s going on now will be best be understood in hindsight. Before his untimely passing in June 2012, International Forecaster owner and editor Bob Chapman said America is in terminal decline.

Powerful interests went too fair, and they know it, he stressed, adding they’re waging a losing rear guard action. It never worked before and won’t now.

Money printing madness assures bad endings. Chapman’s advice to investors was sound. He predicted a major day of reckoning ahead, its timing to be determined by events.

If the moment of truth arrived, Chapman’s warning will be borne out. If not now and coming later, the fullness of time will explain what’s only guesswork now.

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.

Two recent reports from the United States strongly suggest the United States is planning a major war with Russia and China, but are far from certain that they could in fact succeed in such a war. The reports also provide insights into how the United States will meet the budgetary demands of such war preparations, but almost zero appreciation of the social and human costs of such policies.

The first of these reports is entitled “Providing for the Common Defence” (November 2018). It is the report prepared for the purpose of assessing the National Defence Strategy document released in early 2018.

It acknowledges that changes “at home and abroad are diminishing US military advantages,” and that this diminution of these “advantages” poses a threat to “vital United States interests.”

Geopolitical shifts in the regional power structures are “undermining deterrence of United States adversaries and confidence of United States allies, thus increasing the likelihood of military conflict”. Should such a conflict eventuate, the United States could “suffer unacceptably high casualties and a loss of major capital assets.”

The report says that “America is losing its advantage in key war fighting areas such as air and missile defence, cyber and space operations, anti-surface and anti- submarine warfare, long range ground-based fires, and electronic warfare”.

It further acknowledges that “America’s edge is diminishing or has disappeared in many key technologies that underpin US military superiority”.

Such frankness is not without precedent in US strategy papers and the implications of the above quotations are a probable reason why the report has received almost zero coverage in the western mainstream media.

Acknowledgements of technological deficiency and strategic disadvantage do not sit comfortably with the image of an all-powerful America willing and able to defeat any threat to its own global interests or those of its allies. The latter prefer the comfortable delusion of an omnipotent US “umbrella.”

The Commission’s strategy for addressing this perceived falling behind and consequent loss of military omnipotence is however itself fatally flawed. The proposed “solution” is to spend vastly greater sums of money at a rate of 3-5% above inflation.

That means that a significantly greater share of the federal budget would have to be devoted to military spending. The only way that could be achieved, given that the United States government already has a huge growing deficit ($22 trillion and counting) would have to come, the report acknowledges, by cuts to social spending such as pensions, Medicare and social security. The “trade-offs” the report acknowledges will be “difficult”, a statement that seriously under- estimates the social devastation that such cuts would bring about.

This argument is put forward in a society which already spends more on defence than that spent by the next eight national military budgets combined. United States national infrastructure, in everything from bridges to schools is already crumbling; and these proposals will only accelerate that downward trend.

It does not seem to occur to the report writers that the entire premise that the United States should maintain its attempt to control the world for the benefit of the United States is neither desirable nor wanted by the vast majority of the worlds nations as evidenced by multiple UN General Assembly resolutions.

The second report is issued by the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) and is entitled: National Security: Long Range Emerging Threats Facing the United States as Identified by Federal Agencies (December 2018.) It has received even less publicity then the ‘Providing for the Common Defence’ document.

The probable reason for this mainstream media reticence is because the GAO report actually details where the United States is lagging in military capability viz a viz its two perceived principal rivals: Russia and China.

The fact of relative military weakness is not new. Andrei Martyanov in his book Losing Military Supremacy (2018) provided a detailed analysis of why Russian military technology was superior to the United States in several important fields. What Martyanov said about Russia applies with equal validity to Chinese technology.

Martyanov’s argument was dramatically illustrated by President Putin’s 1^st March 2018 address to the Russian Parliament. The initial American reaction was to discount Putin’s claims, although within days the military industrial complex was demanding more funds to counteract the superiority of Russian weaponry outlined in Putin’s speech.

The GAO Report now provides an authoritative acknowledgement that Putin was not bluffing. Under the section of the report headed “Weapons” it has this to say:

Hypersonic weapons. China and Russia are pursuing hypersonic weapons because their speed, altitude, and maneuverability may defeat most missile defence systems, and they may be used to improve long range conventional and nuclear strike capabilities. There are no existing countermeasures.

Missiles. Adversaries are developing missile technology to attack the United States in novel ways and challenge US missile defence, including conventional and nuclear ICBMs, sea launched land attack missiles, and space based missiles that could orbit the earth.

Aircraft. China and Russia are developing new aircraft, including stealth aircraft, which could fly faster, carry advanced weapons, and achieve greater ranges. Such aircraft could force US aircraft to operate at further distances and put more US targets at risk.

There is more in the same vein. The only caveat to add to those points is the use of the conditional tense. The use of such words as “may” or “could” is redundant. That technology is already operational (www.thesaker.is 1 March 2018).

A number of commentators have argued that the technology gap between Russian and Chinese systems and that of United States is now measured in decades. There is no evidence to suggest this gap could be bridged in the foreseeable future. A more likely scenario is that the technological gap could widen.

Although there are powerful voices in the United States administration and ‘deep state’ generally sufficiently delusional and frankly crazy enough to believe that the United States could “win” a nuclear war with Russia and/or China, the GAO report should act as a constraint on their wilder ambitions.

History demonstrates that it is unwise to underestimate the extent to which the United States will go to maintain its self appointed role is the world’s dominant hegemon, (see Michael Pembroke’s Korea (2018). The reality is that the era of United States dominance is now well past.

Rather than risk a nuclear war that would wreak unimaginable losses upon all the world’s peoples, including for the first time the United States, the more likely scenario will be an intensification of what Andrei Korybko calls ‘hybrid warfare.’ A current illustration of this is the campaign being waged against Huawei, ostensibly because of the potential for Chinese cyber espionage but in reality to weaken and undermine China’s 2025 program for leadership in artificial intelligence, quantum information and other sophisticated technologies, and enforce America’s allies to buy their inferior products.

Proxy wars in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America are also likely to increase exponentially.

These two reports demonstrate that the United States has lost its previous technological and military superiority, but equally, that it is willing to go to extraordinary lengths to prevent any further erosion of its world wide role and its replacement by the two emerging countervailing superpowers, Russia and China. Whether or not that American determination will tip the world into a catastrophic nuclear exchange will be one of the major questions for 2019.

James O’Neill, an Australian-based Barrister at Law, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

The US war against Syria was one that people almost stopped. President Obama was unable to get Congress to authorize the war in 2013, but the Pentagon and foreign policy establishment, who have long wanted to control Syria, pushed forward with war anyway.

It has been a disaster. The war has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and injuries as well six million people displaced within the country and five million people who have fled the country.

The people were right, and the military was wrong. The war on Syria never should have happened and now must end.

President Trump announced withdrawal from Syria this week. This creates an opportunity to end the war on Syria. We have work to do to make peace a reality.

Image: Peace Insurrection on Capitol Hill 2013, CODE PINK. Photo by Cool Revolution.

The People Almost Prevented the US War in Syria

In 2013, amidst highly-doubted, unproven allegations of a chemical attack by Syrian President Assad (debunked a year later), the threat of war escalated, and so did opposition to the war. Protests against an attack on Syria took place around the world. In the the US, people were in the streets, and speaking out at town halls. Obama was forced to bring the issue to Congress for authorization.

Congress was barraged with a Peace Insurrection encamped outside its doors, sit-ins in Congressional offices, and a massive number of phone calls with 499 to 1 opposing the war. Obama could not get the votes to support the war. Harry Reid surrendered to the public by never holding a vote.

The other superpower, the people, had stopped a war. Obama became the first president to announce a bombing campaign who was forced to back down by the people. But the victory would be temporary, neocons and militarists continued to push for war. Based on new fake terror fears, and false chemical attack allegations, the ‘humanitarian’ destruction of Syria proceeded.

WSWS described how the war escalated under Obama, writing, “The illegal US occupation of Syria, begun under the Obama administration in October 2015 without authorization from either the United Nations or the Syrian government.” There was a shift from CIA support for Al Qaeda-linked militias to war to bring down the Assad government. US troops coordinated a campaign of airstrikes that reduced the city of Raqqa and other Syrian communities to rubble. Amnesty International, after conducting field investigations, reported the US has committed war crimes in Syria. Vijay Prashad described the US creating “hell on Earth” in Syria.

Despite this, the US was losing the war in Syria. With Russia coming to the aid of its ally, Assad was not going to be removed.

Trump escalated and drove the US deeper into the Middle East quagmire betraying the non-interventionist base who elected him. The corporate media praised Trump was as ‘becoming president’ for bombing Syria based on another unproven chemical attack. Later, even General Mattis admitted there was no evidence tying Assad to chemical attacks.

Early this year, the Trump administration was talking about having a permanent presence in one-third of Syria with 30,000 Syrian Kurds as the ground forces, US air support and eight new US bases. Protests continued against the bombing of Syria throughout the spring in the US and around the world.

Now, as Andre Vltchek describes, the Syrian people have prevailed and most of the country is liberated. People are returning and rebuilding.

Image: Boston Anti-War Protest: ‘Hands Off Syria! No War! Nov. 21 2016 by ShaunaDorothy in Socialist.    

Trump Announces Withdrawal

President Trump’s announcement that he is withdrawing from Syria over the next 60 to 100 days has been met with a firestorm of opposition. Trump tweeted on Wednesday, “We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.”

Russia is drawing down its military activities with Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu reporting Russia was carrying out 100 to 110 flights per day at its peak and now they do no more than two to four flights per week, chiefly for reconnaissance purposes. Putin agreed that ISIS had been defeated and supported Trump’s decision but cast doubt on Washington’s plans, saying, “We don’t see any signs of withdrawing US troops yet, but I concede that it is possible.”

There has been very little support for withdrawal from elected officials. Many Republicans and the corporate media are criticizing Trump. The first two Democrats to step forward to support the removal of troops were Rep. Ted Lieu, a frequent Trump critic who applauded the action, and Rep. Ro Khanna. But, the bi-partisan war Congress opposes Trump.

Secretary of Defense Mattis resigned after Trump’s announcement. In his resignation, he expressed disagreements with Trump over foreign policy. The media is mourning the exit of Mattis, neglecting his history as a likely war criminal who targeted civilians. Ray McGovern reminds us Mattis was famous for quipping, “It’s fun to shoot some people.”

Mattis is the fourth of “My Generals,” as Trump called them, to leave the administration, e.g. Director of Homeland Security and then Chief of Staff, John Kelly, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, and National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. This leaves neocon extremist John Bolton and pro-militarist Mike Pompeo as the biggest influences on Trump’s foreign policy.

Popular Resistance supports the withdrawal of troops from Syria.

We are not alone in supporting Trump’s withdrawal announcement. Medea Benjamin of CODE PINK described the withdrawal as “a positive contribution to the peace process,” urging “all foreign powers that have been involved in Syria’s destruction, including the United States, take responsibility for rebuilding this nation and providing assistance to the Syrian people, including the refugees, who have suffered so tragically for over seven years.”

Veterans for Peace supports the withdrawal saying the US has “no legal right to be [there] in the first place” and describing the brutal destruction caused by US bombs.

Black Alliance for Peace supports the withdrawal writing  the war”should have never been allowed in the first place.” They denounce the corporate press and members of the political duopoly for opposing the withdrawal. BAP also recognizes that the foreign policy establishment will fight this withdrawal and promises to work to end all US involvement in Syria and other nations.

Image: New York Times reports the coup which overthrew the country’s democratically elected government. Stephen J. Meade, the U.S. assistant military attaché was a CIA officer, worked with the Syrian chief of staff, Husni Zaim, to plan a coup. The US was concerned about Syria’s stance on Israel, border disputes with Turkey, and oil pipelines, and worried that the left was growing in power and that the government was growing friendlier to the Soviet Union. 

Will the Long History Of US Regime Change In Syria End?

Trump is being fought because the US has a long history of trying to control Syria dating back to the 1940s.  CIA documents from 1986 describe how the US could remove the Assad family.

While the bulk of destruction of Syria occurred during the Obama administration, plans for the current war and overthrowing Assad date back to the George W. Bush administration. A State Department cable, “Influencing the SARG In The End Of 2006”, examines strategies to bring about regime change in Syria.

This is not the first time President Trump said the war on Syria would be ending. He did so in March, but in April, Mattis announced expanding the US military in Syria. As Patrick Lawrence writes in Don’t Hold Your Breath on US Troop Withdrawal from Syria, “By September the Pentagon was saying. . .U.S. forces had to stay until Damascus and its political opponents achieved a full settlement.“

In response to Trump’s newest announcement, the Pentagon announced it will continue the air war in Syria. They would do so at least for as long as troops were on the ground, adding “As for anything post-US troops on the ground, we will not speculate on future operations.” The Pentagon has not given any details on a withdrawal timeline, citing “force protection and operational security reasons.”

Trump’s removal of US troops from Syria challenges the foreign policy establishment, which seemed to be planning a long-term presence in Syria.

 Image: Stop Endless Wars from the Anti-War Committee.

The People Must Ensure the End of the War on Syria

The peace movement should do all it can to support Trump’ call for withdrawal because he needs allies. Patrick Lawrence describes the experience thus far during the Trump administration:

“As Trump finishes his second year in office, the pattern is plain: This president can have all the foreign policy ideas he wants, but the Pentagon, State, the intelligence apparatus, and the rest of what some call ‘the deep state’ will either reverse, delay, or never implement any policy not to its liking.”

We saw this scenario play out earlier this month when Trump complained about the Pentagon’s out-of-control budget and pledged to cut it. As Lawrence points out, just days later the president met with Mattis and the chairmen of the House and Senate Armed Services Committee and announced that the three had agreed on a 2020 defense budget of $750 billion, a 5 percent increase.

Trump has made no progress on North Korea since their first meeting and has been prevented from making progress on positive relations with Russia. The foreign policy establishment of the Pentagon, State Department, Intelligence Agencies, Weapons Makers and Congressional hawks are in control. Trump will need all the help he can get to overcome them and withdraw from Syria.

We should urge Trump to be clear that ALL troops are leaving Syria. This should include not only the troops on the ground but the air force as well as private contractors. The CIA should also stop its secret war on Syria. And the US should leave the military bases it has built in Syria. Similarly, the movement should support Trump’s calls to withdraw from Afghanistan.

The US has done incredible damage to Syria and owes restitution, which is needed to help bring Syria back to normalcy.

Syria and Afghanistan join the list of failed and counterproductive US wars. These are more signs of a failing empire. The people of the United States must rise up to finish the job we started in 2013 — stop the war on Syria, a war that never should have occurred.

Syrian government and pro-Iranian sources have increased their activity in the eastern part of Syria in response to the announced decision of the US administration to withdraw troops from the country.

On December 22, a spokesperson for Iraq’s Kata’ib Hezbollah, Jafar al-Husseini, told al-Mayadeen TV that the group is ready to coordinate with the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in order to protect Syrian Kurds.

He noted that the U.S. withdrawal had been expected and revealed that Kata’ib’ Hezbollah has “continuous and intensive communications” with Kurdish commanders in northeastern Syria. According to al-Husseini, the U.S. is planning to hand over its role in the country to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

On December 21, reports appeared that the SAA’s Tiger Forces were set to be redeployed from northern Hama to the government-held area on the western bank of the Euphrates. A source in the Tiger Forces confirmed this to SouthFront and said that the redeployment process will take several days. However, he declined to provide further information.

Reports indicate that the Tiger Forces as well as several other pro-government factions will be involved in further operations to eliminate ISIS cells in the Homs-Deir Ezzor desert.

On December 22, US President Donald Trump continued Twitter revelations and said that “ISIS is largely defeated and other local countries, including Turkey, should be able to easily take care of whatever remains. “ The interesting part is that the US president said that the US entered Syria 7 years ago. This contradicts with the official version of the previous US administration that the operation in the country started in 2014 as a campaign to defeat ISIS.

Trump’s decision to pull troops out of Syria has not found support among some members of his administration and US congress members. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and special envoy for the global coalition to defeat ISIS Brett McGurk are resigning as a result of this disagreement.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which mostly consist of Kurdish armed groups, are deeply concerned with a possible US withdrawal. The SDF already blamed Trump for the resumption of ISIS activity in the area of Hajin, called on France to establish a no-fly zone over northeastern Syria and even stated that it does not mind if the Assad government institutions return to Manbij in case if the self-administration is allowed. The SDF also revealed that it is currently engaged in talks with the Damascus government.

The SDF’s main concern that after the withdrawal of the main forces, a limited number of US Special Operations troops will not stop Turkey from launching its operation east of the Euphrates.

France is also going to keep its troops in Syria, but it has only about 200 servicemen and 3 CAESAR self-propelled howitzers deployed. This is not enough to keep the entire contact line between the SDF-held area and the Ankara-controlled territories.

Summing up, it appears clear that even a partial pullout of US troops from Syria will remain a vacuum, which all the sides involved in the conflict will try to fill with own influence.

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The “Gilets Jaunes” will not let go. Not even – or especially not – after Macron‘s half-hearted, rather cynical and grandstanding concessions – of “too little and too late” – which when analyzed constitute a new lie, especially regarding the increase of the minimum wage. It was clear from his face, these concessions, of a President who campaigned on the basis of “never make any concessions”, were fake, as fake as his fake attitude of an apologist could be. Even without listening to his words, his body language of arrogance gives him away.

This past weekend, on Saturday, 15 December, another more than 100,000 Yellow Vests were marching on Paris; countrywide some 200,000. The police to oppress them, as officially reported, was about the same as the weekend before, 8,000 in Paris, close to 90,000 throughout France. Military assistance was not missing. Besides, in a state of emergency, who distinguished between police and military?

Interestingly, the international press – the MSM – is taking it seriously. Why? They fear that this relentless movement may spread to other countries, even countries beyond Europe – like “Trump Land”, the United States of America. And why not. The same malaise of capital being shifted upwards to the detriment of the poor and middle class exists everywhere, may even be most pronounced in the US, but nobody talks about it and pays attention to it, lest the people would have awakened to the growing disparity long ago – and taken to the streets massively – within the inner circles of the Washington Belt Way.

Chapeau to the French. Although their forefathers were among the most vicious and miserable exploiters,  in human history – when they ravaged for hundreds of years West Africa – and the elite still does, unbeknown even to (most) of the Yellow Vets.

Is this movement going to change the future – the future of Europe, the future of the values of the western world, that has been so adamant in propagating neofascist ideas – that they have become the new normal; in most people’s brains? There is a saying: “When fascism comes again, it will not come saying I’m the new Fascism; it will come saying, I’m the Anti-Fascism”.

Isn’t that already true when you look at todays Europe, what is called the EU – The European (non) Union (as I call it)? – And it includes even those countries – Switzerland and Norway – not EU members, but which are ever faster moving to the neoliberal right. Let alone those (still) 28 EU countries, like, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Germany, Holland, where political parties have been divided, splintered to pieces, so that the oddest combinations of ‘coalition’ governments have to govern, mostly in an ungovernable fashion. It’s a success for the over-arching elite, call it the world’s dark and deep state – that is behind it with priceless media lies and propaganda, social media, Cambridge Analytica and the like. Anybody with common sense has no saying, simply because the money is on the other side.

And that money is endless, as it still stems from the FED, or better even, from private banks, that produces it at random with every loan they make, new cash is created. There is enough liquidity, as needed for their purpose, i.e. the propaganda war machine. Though, not much longer. The dollar hegemony is on its last stretch. Yes, we have been saying this for a while – but what is a “while” in geopolitics and in geo-time spans? – A few years, are a few seconds. The alternative – the Eastern Block, SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization), the Eurasian Economic Union, the newly created Caspian Sea Association of the five Caspian riparian nations (Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan). This association just signed an important deal under which they are sharing the tremendous wealth under the sea, i.e. 50 billion barrels of oil and just under 300 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-08-caspian-sea-nations-landmark.html#jCp,

The Eastern Block allies are working on getting their solid act together, mostly based on the little mentioned (in the west) China’s President Xi’s initiative, the New Silk Road, or the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – a China-sponsored economic program that will encircle the globe with infrastructure, research, transport lines, industrial development, cultural exchange, education and friendly trade. But no offensive, war-like industries.

BRI advances are fast and solid. They are unstoppable. Once they are well established and many western countries are highly eager to join the initiative – the western economy will sing its Swan Song.

Seeing Macron from this perspective, he is just a little boy and a little full of himself, having been implanted by the foremost western banking clan, the Rothschild family, to help salvage what can be salvaged, i.e. milk to the bones the French and by association, the European Social system what’s left of it. Greece was a test case. And look at Greece – the Elite is still so greed-driven that they ‘d rather salvage their billions stashed away in Swiss banks, instead of showing some integrity and out of solidarity tell the EU and its fake currency the Euro, to go to hell. No, they won’t. Greece could have been an example for the rest of Europe.

Greece on her own, with their local currency the Drachma, local public banks for the development of the country, would today be on the way to prosperity, with jobs for most people, with an economy that could feed everybody and with a health care and education system that would bring up a new generation of Greek politicians – Greek politicians, who like after WWII displayed a solidarity that made them exemplary for many European countries.

With all the lying, miserably lying European statistics that Greece is now recovering and improving and that Greece is becoming autonomous and can borrow directly from the capital markets again – people are still dying from lack of medication, of medical care, of famine, of lack of shelter, especially in the winter – and of ever-increasing suicide rates. That’s Greece, the Troika’s (EU / EC; ECB, IMF) example of ‘salvation’.– Last Saturday, what looked like an endless crowd of ‘gilets jaunes’ was marching down Champs Elysees, in the front with a huge French flag. Stamped on the left on the blue strip of the flag was “1789”, in the middle white strip was “1968” and in the red strip to the right, was inscribed “2018”. An interesting – and indeed ambitious and bold allegation to the legendary 1789 storm of the Bastille, that changed world history. The current set-up of the EU certainly does not belong to anything called a “revolution”. It rather must be dismantled under a revolution.

These days simultaneous protests take place in Victor Orbán’s Hungary; in Belgium, with the Prime Minister, Charles Michel, having just resigned, leaving again a country without a government. In Germany, Merkel is slowly fading away – but who will follow? – In Italy, Deputy, PM Salvini, of the junior partner of the popular (not the derogatory ‘populist’) coalition, the extreme right-wing Lega Norte, is calling the shots – and they are clearly as anti-EU as can be. At issue is foremost Brussels unilateral meddling in Italy’s budget, while other countries, like France, who have been running budget deficits for years, are getting away with a soft call to attention (Macron naturally is Brussels Holy Child). – Will Italy succeed bringing and end to this unholy non-Union?

Then there is BREXIT, leaving Theresa May hanging on a cliff – of, say, no-return? She may not survive. Who will follow her. The madman Johnson? – The pressure of his rightwing supporters may be such that he has no choice than calling another referendum. And we can only guess with the propaganda of the Washington apologists and Atlantists how that will end. – Would a new no-Brexit vote, reversing the past two years of negotiating to zilch, cause an internal revolution? An internal collapse that could no longer stand up to the demands of Brussels, even with a manipulated “stay” vote?

The likely truth is that the Yellow Vests will mean the end of the very short-lived arrogant Macron era – and – who will replace him? – There is nobody prepared for it. The left-wing Mélenchon, good ideas, but conveys bitterness, has no charisma – and the right-wing Le Pen – is, though joining the left in extremis, aiming at getting out of the EU and of the Euro, but other than that, it’s outright fascism, ready for an alliance with Kiev. – Who else? – Chaos in the making, a good basis for a revolution, a revolution that may bring about more than meets the eye – a Europe-wide upheaval that brings back local sovereign states (whether Greece wants it or not!) with local money and local public banks that work for the public and for the local economy rather than for international profit and greed minded shareholders.

Wouldn’t that be a real revolution? – It would open the gate to Russia, Eurasia, China – the New Silk Road, a gate to a “New Deal” of the 21^st Century, a New Deal of Inclusion from Europe throughout Asia and Africa. Think about it – the map surely shows a super Continent that hardly needs transatlantic relations, especially not those that the masters in Washington propagate – their rules, their guns, their dictate, their monetary hegemony. No thank you, West. And good riddens, Macron.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21^st Century; TeleSUR; The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.

Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

First published by the New Eastern Outlook – NEO

Quale reazione ha suscitato in Italia l’avvertimento del presidente russo Putin che il mondo sottovaluta il pericolo di guerra nucleare e che tale tendenza si sta accentuando? Significativo il commento de La Repubblica che parla di «toni molto allarmistici». Eloquente il silenzio praticamente assoluto dell’intero arco parlamentare. Come se l’Italia non avesse niente a che fare con la corsa agli armamenti nucleari che, ha avvertito Putin nella conferenza stampa di fine anno, potrebbe portare alla «distruzione dell’intera civiltà o forse dell’intero pianeta». Scenario non allarmistico, ma previsto dagli scienziati che studiano gli effetti delle armi nucleari. 

Un particolare pericolo – sottolinea Putin – è rappresentato dalla «tendenza ad abbassare la soglia per l’uso di armi nucleari, creando cariche nucleari tattiche a basso impatto che possono portare a un disastro nucleare globale». A tale categoria appartengono le nuove bombe nucleari B61-12 che gli Usa cominceranno a schierare in Italia, Germania, Belgio, Olanda e forse in altri paesi europei nella prima metà del 2020. «L’alta precisione e la possibilità di usare testate meno distruttive – avverte la Federazione degli Scienziati Americani – possono portare i comandanti militari a premere perché, in un attacco, si usi la bomba nucleare, sapendo che la ricaduta radioattiva e il danno collaterale sarebbero limitati». L’Italia è corresponsabile del crescente pericolo di guerra nucleare poiché, violando il Trattato di non-proliferazione e non aderendo al Trattato Onu per la proibizione delle armi nucleari, fornisce agli Stati uniti in funzione principalmente anti-Russia non solo basi, ma anche aerei e piloti per l’uso delle bombe nucleari. Ciò avviene con il consenso esplicito o implicito (attraverso la rinuncia a una reale opposizione) dell’intero arco parlamentare.

Conte, Di Maio e Salvini

L’altro pericolo – avverte Putin – è rappresentato dalla «disintegrazione del sistema internazionale di controllo degli armamenti», iniziata con il ritiro degli Stati uniti nel 2002 dal Trattato Abm.  Stipulato nel 1972 da Usa e Urss, esso proibiva a ciascuna delle due parti di schierare missili intercettori che, neutralizzando la rappresaglia del paese attaccato, avrebbero favorito un first strike, ossia un attacco nucleare di sorpresa. Da allora gli Stati uniti hanno sviluppato lo «scudo anti-missili», estendendolo in Europa a ridosso della Russia: due installazioni terrestri in Romania e Polonia e quattro navi da guerra, che incrociano nel Baltico e Mar Nero, sono dotate di tubi di lancio che, oltre ai missili intercettori, possono lanciare missili da crociera a testata nucleare. Anche in questo caso l’Italia è corresponsabile: a Sigonella è installata la Jtags, stazione satellitare Usa dello «scudo anti-missili», una delle cinque nel mondo. La situazione è aggravata dal fatto che gli Usa vogliono ora ritirarsi anche dal Trattato Inf del 1987 (quello che eliminò i missili nucleari Usa schierati a Comiso), così da poter schierare in Europa contro la Russia missili nucleari a raggio intermedio con base a terra. Anche qui con la corresponsablità del governo italiano, che al Consiglio Nord Atlantico del 4 dicembre ha avallato tale piano ed è sicuramente disponibile all’installazione di tali missili in Italia. «Se arriveranno i missili in Europa, poi l’Occidente non strilli se noi reagiremo», ha detto Putin. Avvertimento ignorato da Conte, Di Maio e Salvini* che, mentre battono la grancassa sul «decreto sicurezza» anti-migranti, quando arrivano bombe e missili nucleari Usa mettendo a rischio la vera sicurezza dell’Italia, non vedono, non sentono e non parlano.

Manlio Dinucci   

*Presidente del Consiglio e vicepresidenti dell’attuale governo itaiano.

On December 17, 2018, the UN General Assembly Plenary adopted a series of resolutions, many denounced for their double standards,  with fierce official statements of protest against the “country-specific” resolutions, the most nefarious and hypocritical of all. 

The voting on the morning resolutions is revealing:

Item 74(b) A/73/589/Add2. Draft Resolution VII  “Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order.

The United States voted “No” against the Resolution.  The DPRK voted “Yes,”  in support of the Resolution.

Item 74(b) A/73/589/Add.2  Draft Resolution IX:  “The Right to Food”

The United States voted “No” against the Resolution.  The DPRK voted “Yes,” in support of the Resolution.

Item 74(b) A/73/589/Add.2 Draft Resolution VIII:  “Promotion of Peace as a Vital Requirement For the Full Enjoyment of All Human Rights By All”:

The United States voted “No,” against the Resolution.  The DPRK voted “Yes,” in support of the Resolution

Regarding Draft Resolution XI:  “Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, Including the Rights to Peaceful Assembly and Freedom of Association,”  it is interesting to note that the United States voted “Yes,” despite its history of persecuting the millions of Americans who assembled, peacefully, to oppose the US war against Vietnam, the persecution, murder, destruction of families, and harassment of millions of American citizens for their political beliefs and associations during the infamous McCarthy witch hunts, and the criminal FBI Cointelpro program which secretly assassinated peaceful dissenters from official US Government policy and covertly destroyed the families and lives of others, forcing taxed American citizens to support the murderous regimes of Pinochet, Suharto, Geisel, Castelo-Branco, etc. etc,. whose human rights abuses and atrocities were among the most egregious in human history.

The afternoon of December 17 dramatically exposed the chicanery and double standards of the “country-specific” resolutions adopted by the Third Committee on “Human Rights.” Several nations opposed to these resolutions described the notorious methods by which “developed” countries (the US, UK, etc.) threatened and forced more vulnerable countries to support these resolutions, which were, in reality, a violation of the vulnerable country’s own interests.  These threats included cutting funds for development and humanitarian aid to more vulnerable countries, and the weaponizing of food and medicine, which were threatened to be withheld from weaker nations unless they obeyed the commands of the imperial states.

The Resolutions, themselves, and their sponsors would be best described as clowns in a ribald comedy, except that the consequences of the political propaganda the resolutions served resulted in human tragedy, deaths from starvation, deaths from curable diseases, etc., in the nations victimized by this display of crocodile tears in the name of “human rights.”

The climax of absurdity was Japan’s sponsorship of the resolution condemning human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, ignoring the fact that Japan was responsible for the barbaric murder of at least 25 million Chinese citizens during their occupation of China, and had refined biological warfare methods tested on human prisoners, Chinese, Korean and American in their Unit 731, taken over by the United States;  Japan had never fully compensated or taken responsibility for the regime of sexual slavery they enforced upon Korean and Chinese women, and the situation remains virulent today.    Although it was announced that Resolution A/C.3/73/L.40* was adopted by “consensus,” this was a fraudulent “consensus,” as some of the most powerful and principled member states of the UN disassociated themselves from the “consensus,” and required that their statements explicitly stating their reasons for opposition to the resolution be entered into the permanent verbatim record of the General Assembly.

In the Third Committee, the DPRK could have requested a recorded vote on this Resolution, revealing which countries opposed the resolution, and which supported it.  But the DPRK elegantly dismissed the entire travesty of “country-specific” resolutions,  thereby trivializing the propaganda abuse of “human rights” and the entire grotesque performance, intended to hoodwink a gullible public.

Russia spoke first, denouncing the country-specific resolutions, opposing, in particular, the one against the DPRK, and emphatically disassociated Russia from any “consensus” on the Resolution.

China next spoke against the “country-specific” resolutions, and again, disassociated China from any “consensus” on the resolution on the “Situation of Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”

Iran delivered a powerful and eloquent address detailing the criminally unethical methods by which the “developed” nations forced submission of the more vulnerable developing nations, compelling them to support the Resolution against the DPRK, and others.  Iran disassociated itself, in particular, from any “consensus” on that resolution against the DPRK.

The Syrian Ambassador stated unequivocally that his country opposed the gross hypocrisy, and of course disassociated Syria from the ridiculous “consensus” on the Resolution against the DPRK.

The Cuban delegate stated, unequivocally, that Cuba is disassociated from this preposterous “consensus” on the DPRK resolution.

What kind of “consensus” is this, which is publicly and fiercely opposed by nations whose populations compose more than half of humanity?

The Report on the DPRK was based on the discredited UN “Commission of Inquiry,” headed Michael Kirby, who had never set foot in the DPRK, and made reference to the report by Rapporteur Tomas Quintana, who had also never set foot in the DPRK.  (Quintana privately admitted to me that he was well aware that sanctions were deliberately targeting the most vulnerable, and their purpose is “regime change.”) The two reports were based exclusively on the highly paid,  lucrative and subsequently acknowledged to be fabrications by defectors, whose incentive to juice-up their slanders with salacious details was heightened by lots of money paid for their “testimony,” (which, was recognized by Assistant Secretary-General Ivan Simonovic as failing to meet the threshold of proof required to be admitted as evidence in a court of law.)

Nevertheless, perpetrations of falsehoods as UN “Human Rights Resolutions” did not trouble the conscience – or lack of intellectual integrity of those sponsors of these resolutions.  And with stupefying temerity, Saudi Arabia sponsored the resolution against Syria.  This was breathtakingly arrogant:  Saudi Arabia condemned journalist Raif Badawi to ten years in prison and 1000 lashes for his writings critical of the Saudi regime; Saudi Arabia is currently embroiled in the criminal investigation of the murder and dismemberment of Washington Post journalist Kashoggi, and Saudi Arabia is today responsible for, in the words of Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Mark Lowcock, the worst humanitarian disaster in the world.

The impact of these defamatory resolutions cannot be overlooked:  this week the DPRK issued a press release stating:

“  Recently, the U.S. is resorting to anti-DPRK human rights plot in such a way that it carries deliberate provocation by adding high-ranking government officials of the DPRK, a sovereign state, to its unilateral sanctions list, while taking issue with the non-existent “human rights issue.” ….If the high-ranking politicians within the US administration including the State Department had calculated that they could drive us into giving up nuclear weapons by way of increasing the anti-DPRK sanctions and pressure and human rights racket to an unprecedented level, which has nothing to do with confidence building, it will count as greatest miscalculation, and it will block the path to denuclearization on the Korean peninsula forever – a result desired by no one.”

In a recent article published on the India-based News18 site (CNN), prominent US biologist Nina Federoff was reported as saying it is time for India to grant farmers access to genetically modified (GM) crops. In an interview with the site, she says there is no evidence that GM crops are dangerous when consumed either by people in food or by animals in feed. Federoff says that the commercial release of various GM crops in India has been halted by the Indian government due to opposition from environmental activists.

She adds that we are rapidly moving out of the climate regime in which our primary crops were domesticated, arguing that that they do increasingly worse and will yield less as temperature extremes become common and pest and pathogen populations change. She says GM will become more or less essential in an era of climate change.

In recent weeks, aside from Federoff’s intervention, GM has been a hot topic in India. In late November, a paper appeared in the journal Current Science which argues that India doesn’t need GM crops and that the track record of GM agriculture is highly questionable. The paper is notable not just because of what it says but because of who is saying it: distinguished scientist P.C. Kesavan and M.S. Swaminathan, renowned agricultural scientist and geneticist and widely regarded as the father of the Green Revolution in India.

I recently spoke with prominent campaigner Aruna Rodrigues about developments surrounding the GM issue in India, particularly the views of Federoff. Rodrigues is lead petitioner in a case before India’s Supreme Court that is seeking a moratorium on GM crops and selective bans.

CT: What do you make of Nina Federoff’s recent comments advocating for GM in India?

AR: Nina Federoff is a long-time supporter of GMOs. The last time she offered advice to India (in her role as scientific advisor to Hilary Clinton) was when Bt brinjal (eggplant) was being pushed for commercialisation. She advised that Bt brinjal would be good for India!

CT: She is a high-profile scientist. Did government officials take her advice?

AR: Her advice was straightforwardly ignored by the then Minister of the Ministry of Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh. He instituted a unique four-month scientific enquiry and public hearings. His decision to reject the commercialisation of Bt brinjal was supported by advice he received from several renowned international scientists. Their collective appraisals demonstrated serious environmental and biosafety concerns, which included issues regarding the toxity of Bt proteins resulting from their mode of action on the human gut system.

CT: What were some of the other reasons they put forward for rejecting Bt brinjal?

AR: Genetic contamination was the outstanding concern. India is a centre of origin of brinjal with the greatest genetic diversity. Contamination was a certainty. In his summing-up of the unsustainability of Bt brinjal and of its implications if introduced, one of the experts involved, Professor Andow, said it posed several unique challenges because the likelihood of resistance evolving quickly is high. He added that without any management of resistance evolution, Bt brinjal is projected to fail in 4-12 years. Jairam Ramesh pronounced a moratorium on Bt brinjal in February 2010 founded on what he called “a cautious, precautionary principle-based approach.” 

CT: So, it is clear that, despite Federoff’s claims, there are valid reasons why GM has not been commercialised in India, aside from cotton that is. Can you say something about the health safety aspects of GM crops? Federoff says GM crops are safe for human and animal consumption. Is she correct?

AR: She is wrong. There are numerous studies that indicate the possibility of harm. All the major scientific bodies of the world, including the US National Academies, the World Health Organisation and the American Medical Association, agree that the potential for adverse effect is real and that these crops, both existing, but especially any new ones, need to be tested more thoroughly than they have been in the past (for example, for long-term toxicity for cancer). Meanwhile, agroecology that minimises the use of pesticides and uses no GMO has a proven safety and nutritional record and out-yields GMOs at a fraction of the cost.

CT: Federoff makes a blanket claim about safety. But each genetic modification poses unique risks and as a technology, according to molecular geneticist Michael Antoniou, GM is fundamentally scientifically flawed. So, it is impossible to say up front that they are all safe – or in fact that the ones on the market have been rigorously tested because they have not. But a food crop isn’t just eaten. There are effects on the environment too.

AR: Federoff fails to address all the ways GM crops can be unsafe. Existing GM crops do not have a history of safe use in the environment. Even a cursory examination of the US cropping system is enough to prove that the legacy of pesticidal GM crops has fuelled the epidemics of herbicide- resistant weeds and emerging insecticide resistant pests. This proves that you cannot rescue scientifically flawed ways to farm by introducing GM technologies that only exacerbate the most damaging farming practices.

CT: Federoff claims that we need GM if we are to mitigate the effects of climate change and produce sufficient food.

AR: This is rubbish. Agroecology has demonstrated far more effectiveness already than even the best hypothetical hopes of GM crops. But more to the point: it is the machine we call industrial agriculture that is a major cause of climate change. Giving that machine more fuel in the form of GM crops is not a solution but a dangerous distraction from what is needed to halt climate change.

CT: The paper by Kesavan and Swaminathan coincided with a mass march by farmers in Delhi at the end of November. Farmers in India have a list of grievances, with the effects of Bt cotton being a prominent one. Surely, given the devastation caused by Bt cotton (which these two authors say “has failed in India”), to introduce more GM crops at this time would cause further hardship for farmers. The paper by these two eminent scientists could be seen as a timely intervention.

AR: It is certainly courageous of Nina Federoff, given the failure of Bt cotton and her earlier unfortunate advice, to indulge in yet another round of misconceived guidance to the Indian government. I must also express disquiet and surprise that a bold charge has been levelled against that paper by Prof Vijay Raghavan (Scientific Advisor to the PM), which he says is “deeply flawed”. It is expected that any such statement is buttressed with sound data and science, especially when addressing scientists of the stature of Swaminathan and Kesavan. Therefore, without substantiation, a specific response to Raghavan is not possible.

However, it is relevant to the context to state that Bt cotton has failed and within a time-scale of less than 12 years. We need only look at the work of Dr. K Kranthi, ex Director of the Central Institute for Cotton Research, and Prof Gutierrez et al in the paper ‘Deconstructing Indian cotton: weather, yields, and suicides’.

CT: It was predicted that Bt brinjal would fail within 4-12 years. It seems that’s precisely what has happened to Bt cotton in India. So, the last thing India needs is another ill thought out GM experiment pushed through without proper independent assessments that consider health and environmental outcomes or the effects on farmers’ livelihoods and rural communities. But isn’t this what is on the horizon? You have for many years been highlighting flawed regulatory mechanisms in India where GM is concerned. I have been following the current case concerning herbicide-tolerant (HT) GM mustard. It is disturbing to say the least to read about deep-rooted conflicts of interest across the entire regulatory framework and what you describe as ‘regulatory delinquency’ as well as scientific malfeasance on such a massive scale.

AR: Collective regulatory misadventures with Bt cotton must indict the regulators for ‘connected’ farmer suicides in rain-fed Bt cotton cultivation. They must take responsibility. Despite this history of regulatory adventurism with hybrid Bt cotton and Bt brinjal, this has not deterred our regulators as they attempt to introduce HT GM mustard. It is sobering that documents in the public domain reveal clear cover-up, invalid and even fraudulent field trials, the results of which were nevertheless accepted by the regulators. Perhaps, the greatest regulatory mystery surrounds the fact that the regulators themselves admit that there is no claim made by the government that HT (GMO) hybrid mustard out-performs non-GMO hybrids. Therefore, there is no ‘need’ for this GM Mustard. ‘Need’ must be established as a prior regulatory step in risk assessment.

CT: Nina Federoff says that what is preventing the widespread adoption of GM in India is political disagreement and activists. This is a well-worn tactic: try to cast valid criticisms of GM as ‘unscientific’ and politically motivated. But as you have outlined, there are valid reasons why the introduction of GM food crops is being prevented in India.

AR: It is proven in copious evidence in the Supreme Court in the last 13 years that our regulators are seriously conflicted: they promote GMOs openly, fund them (as with HT mustard and other public sector GMOs) and then regulate them. Truth is a massive casualty. This is not lightly stated. It would also be prudent to recognise that unsustainable HT and Bt crops (Bt maize in industrial systems in the West) and failed hybrid Bt cotton in India serve to put farmers on a pesticide treadmill as increasing levels of pest resistance becomes manifest. In fact, a new paper in the journal Pest Management Science based on research over a seven-year period shows progressive field-evolved resistance of pink bollworm to Bt cotton in India.

We also have a new paper by Prof Andrew Paul Gutierrez in which he concludes that extending implementation of the hybrid GM technology to other crops in India will only mirror the disastrous implementation of Bt cotton in the country, thereby tightening the economic noose on still more subsistence farmers for the sake of profits.

CT: Federoff and others are fond of making claims about what GM has or will achieve. GM crops have been on the market for over two decades. Do you see any validity in these types of claims?

AR: Most GMOs on the market now provide technological fixes to kill weeds or pests. They have no trait for yield. Together, they account for nearly 98% of all GMOs planted worldwide. 25 years of official US data on HT crops show they have led to intractable problems of super weeds, significant increases in herbicide use because of resistant weeds, higher farmer costs and no yield advantage. Claims made for GMOs with various traits, for example, drought or saline resistant or providing yield or nutritional enhancement, are futuristic. The few that have been tested for drought resistance and some other traits are according to prominent scientist Doug Gurian-Sherman out-performed by traditional breeding techniques hands-down.

Colin Todhunter is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Arun Rodrigues is lead petitioner in a case before India’s Supreme Court that is seeking a moratorium on GM crops and selective bans.

I. Introduction

Financial accountability for the government is a cornerstone of a functioning representative democracy. The ability for the people to know where taxpayer money goes to is crucial to having an informed opinion regarding the actions of your representatives and to react accordingly.

Unfortunately, as we’ve discussed in previous articles, the current state of government accounting is far from ideal–often bordering on useless to the public.

This is largely due to lax enforcement of existing laws such as the CFO Act, but also stems from the very real tension between completely transparent government financial disclosure and national security interests. (see The U.S. Statutes Creating Modern Constitutional Financial Management and Reporting Requirements and the Government’s Failure to Follow Them, available here). As of the last few months, this tension has taken the future of government financial disclosure to the public to new levels of opacity. The Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board (FASAB) has released Statement of Federal Financing Accounting Standards 56 (Standard 56); taking government accounting practices from laxly enforced reporting standards to a new benchmark entirely–expressly approved obfuscation of reporting and, in some cases, outright concealing financials.

This sounds fairly alarmist at first blush but, simply put, Standard 56 creates a set of situations where government entities may move numbers around to conceal where money is actually spent or even not report spending outright. Many of the concepts in Standard 56 are not new and have been discussed in FASAB reports for nearly a decade. However, these new changes make a substantial portion of government financial reporting so unreliable as to not be a useful tool to the public. (see FASAB Statement of Federal Financial Accounting Standards 56, available here).

In order to fully understand Standard 56, we will be taking a fairly deep dive on the new accounting standards it creates. From the history leading up to the new rules, to summarizing the exact changes of Standard 56. We’ve said that Standard 56 isn’t new, and this is true, it has hundreds and hundreds of pages of memorandums and the like which came before it outlining the exact parameters of these new reporting rules. For that reason, a complete summary of what a government entity must report will not be possible–or likely even useful–in an article of this length. That being said, we will explore the role of FASAB itself, the functional changes of Standard 56 and how it will impact the ability of the U.S. taxpayer to see how their money is spent.

II. History of the Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board (FASAB)

FASAB came about as a response to the requirements of the CFO Act. We previously wrote about the CFO Act in (The U.S. Statutes Creating Modern Constitutional Financial Management and Reporting Requirements and the Government’s Failure to Follow Them, available here). Under the act, the individual Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) of covered federal agencies are responsible for preparing financing statements for regular audit in order to ensure accuracy in accounting. The CFOs also were tasked by the Act with integrating accounting and budget information into a form consistent with those used to make budgets, put together a uniform financial management system for their agency, and–perhaps most importantly–make sure that the system they put together allowed for actual useful measurement of the financial performance of the CFO’s agency.

However, the CFO Act was light on the details, and after the Act passed in 1990, there was a need to determine the actual details of the accounting standards required. Therefore, the Treasury, OMB, and Comptroller General signed a Memorandum jointly establishing the FASAB to “consider and recommend the appropriate accounting standards for the federal government.” (History of FASAB, available here). Until 1999, FASAB simply gave recommendations to those three sponsoring entities. Then, in 1999, FASAB was approved to set final generally acceptable accounting practices (GAAP) for the federal government, with only a 90 day review period by the sponsoring entities. In 2002, the Treasury was removed as a sponsoring entity, leaving the OMB and GAO as the only entities able to object to FASAB set standards. (see id.)

III. FASAB and Standard 56

As mentioned above, since 1999, FASAB sets the final GAAP for the federal government. These practices are then used throughout the federal government to determine the content and structure of the financial reports the CFO Act requires federal government agencies, departments, and the like to prepare. While the GAAP are not themselves literally binding law, they do show what the federal government considers to be compliance with the law. As long as an agency follows GAAP, there will generally be a presumption that it is also complying with the federal financial accounting requirements. Therefore, unless the underlying legislation is amended by Congress, FASAB essentially determines the extent of the federal government’s financial transparency. (see id.) With the official adoption of Standard 56 as of October 4, 2018–completely unchanged from the pre-comment period version from July of this year–FASAB has determined that national security concerns essentially trump the need for financial transparency to the public. So how does Standard 56 do this?

A. What does Standard 56 Do?

In the absolute most simple terms, Standard 56 allows federal entities to shift amounts from line item to line item and sometimes even omit spending altogether when reporting their financials in order to avoid the potential of revealing classified information.¹ However, as with all laws, nearly every word in that sentence is a complicated concept to unpack. Who counts as a federal reporting entity? When and how can these entities conceal or remove financial information from their reports? What information can be removed? When does something count as confidential, and who makes that determination? All of these questions have enormous bodies of writing in FASAB memorandums addressing, and sometimes failing to address, their answers.

The simplest place to start with understanding Standard 56 is its scope. It applies to federal entities that issue unclassified general purpose federal financial reports (GPFFR), including where one entity is consolidated with another. This means it only applies to otherwise unclassified financial reports where there is a risk of revealing classified information; classified financial reports are their own can of worms. (see generally FASAB Statement of Federal Financial Accounting Standards 56, available here) Standard 56 also doesn’t remove the actual requirement to report, it just allows these entities to change their reports in ways that don’t reflect their actual spending. (see id.) However, for the purposes of government transparency, determining who is responsible for classifying information, and/or removing that information from unclassified reports, is quite opaque for the average interested citizen.

B. Reporting Entities Within the Scope of Standard 56

The actual reporting entities empowered by the standards of Standard 56 include organizations which are included in the government wide GPFFR. (see id.) This includes any entities that are (1) budgeted for by elected officials of the federal government, (2) owned by the federal government, or (3) controlled by the federal government with risk of loss or expectation of benefits.” (FASAB Statement of Federal Financial Accounting Standard 47, pg. 1, available here).

However, many different departments, bureaus, and agencies prepare their own GPFFRs as well. The various entities that both prepare their own GPFFR, and are within a larger reporting entity are called Component Reporting Entities. This includes executive departments, independent agencies, government corporations, legislative agencies, and federal courts. (id at 7). Their GPFFRs are then consolidated into the government wide GPFFR.

Under the Component Reporting Entities and included in their GPFFRs, are various other organizations, from smaller departments, to government contractors, which are split into two categories: disclosure entities and consolidation entities. (see id.)

Consolidation entities are entities like agencies and departments. A consolidation entity is generally (1) financed through taxes and other non-exchange revenues, (2) is governed by the Congress and/or the President, (3) imposes or may impose risks and rewards to the federal government., and (4) provides goods and services on a non-market basis. (see id. at 16). For instance, a department or corporation established by Congress to perform a government function is a classic example of a consolidation entity. Consolidated entities are reported by a larger entity as part and parcel of their financial reporting–as if they were one economic entity. We will discuss this type of entity later in great depth, as it constitutes one of the largest potential loopholes of Standard 56. (see id.)

Disclosure entities are financially independent organizations. These organizations still need to be included in the government wide GPFFR, but do not fully meet the four characteristics of consolidated entities above. They includes quasi-governmental entities, organizations in receiverships and conservatorships, and organizations owned or controlled through federal government intervention actions. (see id. at 16). A good example would be a government established non-profit that has a significant portion of their board appointed by the President, but are entirely funded by their own activities.

Additionally, there are “related parties,” which are organizations where at least one of the parties involved have the ability to exercise significant influence over the policy decisions of the other party. This significant influence does not need to amount to control, but can include things such a representation on a board of directors, participation in policy making procedures, shared managerial personnel, and things along those lines. The existence of significant influence is generally determined through a full analysis of the particulars of each situation. This classification is usually applied to organizations that do not even rise to the level of a disclosure entity, but nonetheless would be misleading to exclude. Some common examples of related parties are some government sponsored enterprises and organizations governed by representatives from each of the governments that created the organization, including the United States, wherein the federal government has agreed to ongoing or contingent financial support to accomplish shared objectives. Related entities generally do not include government contractors, government vendors, some non-profits, organizations created by treaty, or special interest groups–although they can in the right circumstances. (see id. at 7 and 31-33)

However, there are also certain entities that would probably be consolidation or disclosure entities, but are expressly excluded from the government wide GPFFR: the Federal Reserve System, and bailout entities. (see Financial Report of the United States Government 2016, pg. 227, available here). In particular, this includes entities like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. (see id.) If the government obtains rights in another entity which would give them the sort of control that normally makes a disclosure entity, but gains those rights when it “guarantee[s] or pay[s] debt for a privately owned entity whose failure could have an adverse impact on the nation’s economy, commerce, national security, etc. . .” those rights don’t count for determining a reporting entity. (id).

This means that in addition to consolidation and disclosure entities. the scope of Standard 56 stretches to any organization which it would be misleading to exclude but isn’t otherwise incorporated into their list of covered entities. Because of this, although there is not a exhaustive list of who’s financial reporting is impacted by Standard 56, if you can think of an entity related to the government it is a safe bet they count as a covered reporting entity. This can include publicly traded corporations with significant funding and/or control from the federal government.

C. Changes to Disclosure Standards Under Standard 56

For these covered entities, Standard 56 offers financial reporting exceptions in a few situations for national security purposes. These reporting exceptions are the meat of Standard 56, three rules substantially modifying the reporting requirements of the above discussed entities to varying degrees. (see FASAB Statement of Federal Financial Accounting Standards 56, pg. 6, available here).

In general, disclosure entities are required to provide their financial reporting in a manner which is clear, concise, meaningful, and transparent (see FASAB Statement of Federal Financial Accounting Standard 47, para 71-73,, available here). This is done through a single, integrated report of finances disclosing the relationship of the organization to the the government and related entities, the nature and magnitude of their activity and their financial balances, and a description of financial and non-financial risks, potential benefits and, if possible, the amount of the federal government’s exposure to gains and losses from the past or future operations of the disclosure entity or entities. (see id. At para 74) This generally includes how much control or influence over the entity is exercised, key terms in their contractual agreements, percentage ownership and voting rights, a summary of assets, liabilities, revenues, expenses, gains, and losses, key financial indicators, information on how their reports are stored and can be obtained, and quite a bit more. (see id.) Essentially what is required is a transparent summary of how money is spent to provide accountability to the public. Standard 56 creates three loopholes to this disclosure standard.

D. Modifications to Avoid Disclosure of Classified Information

The first new loophole allows disclosure entities to modify their financial reports to “prevent the disclosure of classified information in an unclassified GPFFR” so long as these modifications do not change the net results of operations and net position. (see FASAB Statement of Federal Financial Accounting Standards 56, pg. 6, available here).

This ultimately means that, when done to conceal confidential information, entities can–and are essentially required to under the terms of Standard 56–shift money from one line item to another so long as the totals stay consistent. The rule also allows entities to omit the line item entirely while retaining the amounts so as to maintain the same net results. This means that readers of these reports will never know if the amounts reported spent on specific projects or things is an accurate representation. (see id.) As you might expect given the rationale of this being a national security precaution, there will not be any narrative in these reports explaining or revealing where a modification has taken place. (see id.) If they can maintain net position in their reports, an entity can even omit a project entirely by folding it into another department or project within the same entity.

While it could obviously be worse for transparency purposes, the alternative would be that the amounts would just be omitted entirely. That brings us to the next two changes to accounting standards created by Standard 56.

E. Reporting on Consolidation Entities

We briefly discussed consolidation entities above as one of the larger loopholes to reporting within Standard 56. This is because the second change to reporting requirements of Standard 56 allows the reporting entity which the consolidation entity is consolidated with to modify reports to avoid disclosure of confidential information even if that modification changes net results of operations or net position. The reporting entity can move the financials of the consolidation entity or even choose not to include it in its report; full stop. (see FASAB Statement of Federal Financial Accounting Standards 56, pg. 6-7, available here).

The concept of consolidation entities being incorporated into the reports of a larger reporting entity is far from new. FASAB has memorandums detailing the rules regarding consolidation from as far back as 2012. (see FASAB Federal Reporting Entity Memorandom, November 29, 2012, available here). By itself, it is not a particularly problematic issue. Under FASAB rules, consolidation in financial reporting is appropriate for those organizations financed by the taxpayer, governed by elected or appointed officials, imposing risks and rewards on the taxpayer, and providing goods and services on a non-market basis. However, consolidation is not appropriate for organizations operating with a high degree of autonomy. (see id. At 7).

In general, where an organization is controlled by the federal government and stands to make or lose money, but doesn’t have enough independence for a disclosure entity, it is included somewhere as a consolidation entity. (see FASAB Statement of Federal Financial Accounting Standard 47, pg 14-15,, available here). As you’ve seen, the determination of what sort of entity something is hinges a great deal on the level of autonomy of the entity–the greater the control the government has the more likely something will be classified as a consolidation entity. This control doesn’t mean the government has to actively manage on the day-to-day, but does require that an examination of–among other things–whether the government can do things like appoint a majority of board members, dissolve the organization, authorize or deny action within the organization on some or all issues, or direct the policies or use of assets within the organization, and/or direct investment decisions. Consolidation entities are only assigned to one component entity and, in general, where that sort of control exists for a consolidated entity the public would rely on the larger reporting entity for information on the consolidation entity’s financials. (see id.). Under the second accounting standard change within Standard 56, the public can’t even count on these financials being reported in the first place. (see FASAB Statement of Federal Financial Accounting Standards 56, pg. 6-7).

F. Interpretations Modifying Reporting Standards in the Future

The final change to accounting standards within Standard 56 doesn’t do much at the moment, but has the greatest potential to undermine financial transparency in the future. It allows FASAB to issue Interpretations of Standard 56 in the future which would allow other modifications to financial reports for the purpose of avoiding disclosure of classified information. FASAB can, and likely will, release these Interpretations over time. These Interpretations can allow modifications to reporting without regard for maintaining an entity’s net results or net position in their reporting. Those interpretations may even be classified themselves (Appendix A, A16), resulting in a portion of the federal government’s accountability standards being concealed from the public. (see FASAB Statement of Federal Financial Accounting Standards 56, pg. 6-7).

Looked at in the most optimistic light, this will allow FASAB to ensure that Standard 56 isn’t abused and issue rulings of when disclosure is necessary in situations not yet considered. Looked at in a less optimistic light, this means that the ability of the government to obfuscate financial records will continue to grow in the coming months and years, without public oversight, as Interpretations add to or clarify these existing loopholes.

IV. Administrative History of Statement 56

Statement 56, and its reporting exceptions, have been in the works within FASAB for months. When an issue is identified, FASAB performs preliminary deliberations, prepares the initial documents, and then releases a review version to the public for comment and public hearings. After the comment period, FASAB enters further deliberations to consider the comments, and make revisions. Then, the Board approves the proposed statement by a two-thirds majority vote, and submits it to the principles (the OMB and the GAO) for review. If neither principle objects to the proposal after 90 days, it is published by FASAB and is added to the GAAP for federal entities. (Definition: FASAB (Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board), available here).

For Standard 56, the exposure draft was published on July 12, 2018, with comments due by August 13, 2018. 17 comments were submitted by various departments, agencies, and accounting firms (see FASAB Classified Activities, available here). The final Statement 56 was published on October 4, 2018, with little if any change from the exposure draft. However, the comments on Statement 56 are themselves interesting and somewhat enlightening.

A. Commentary On Required Disclaimers

FASAB proposed two possible alternatives for disclosure/disclaimer requirements under Standard 56. Either reporting entities could be given a choice in whether or not to consistently disclose that certain presentations may have been modified, or all reporting entities must disclose the possibility that certain presentations may have been modified, regardless of actual modification. (see FASAB Exposure Draft Interpretation of Federal Financial Accounting Standards 56: Classified Activities, available here).

The SEC gave a fairly entertaining comment on Standard 56. After answering “No Comment” to literally every preceding question, the SEC gave it’s thoughts on FASAB’s proposal for how component entities should disclose that they have modified their reports. The SEC, the nation’s foremost agency in the fight against financial fraud, doesn’t think that every component entity should have to disclose that modifications may have occurred, and especially the SEC shouldn’t have to. The reasoning the SEC gave for this position was that they “believe that this would be misleading and likely to cause confusion for financial statement readers, by implying that SEC is involved in classified activities. It’s likely that SEC, as well as other agencies, would receive numerous inquiries from the public and from the media by including such an unexpected disclaimer in its financial statements.” In other words, they’re worried it would look strange to the public if they disclosed that they had modified their financial reporting, despite no such modification. The public may think it odd that component entities such as the SEC would make such a, in their own words, “unexpected disclaimer.” (FASAB Exposure Draft: Classified Activities SEC Comment, available here).

Veterans Affairs and the Association of Government Accountants had a similar stance, and while they commented on other aspects of Standard 56 as well, they joined the SEC in criticizing a mandatory disclaimer, and suggested disclaimers would only be appropriate when GPFFRs were actually modified (see FASAB Classified Activities, available here).

Several other commenting parties had a different take on the required disclaimers. For instance, the Department of Defense’s Office of The Chief Financial Officer and the Department of the Interior, wanted agencies to have the option to give a disclaimer or not, irregardless of whether or not they made changes to classified information under the new standard (id). The Department of Energy’s Office of The Chief Financial Officer even felt it would be appropriate to have no disclaimers whatsoever, even if GPFFRs were materially modified (id).

B. Federal Commentary on Standard 56 Generally

Various government agencies commented on the “meat” of Standard 56, and most were in favor² of FASABs proposals in general. For instance, Housing and Urban Development had fairly positive comments across the board, and deferred greatly to the need to classify information. The organization agreed with all of FASABs methodology and conclusions, and stated the new standards would strike a correct balance between protecting classified information and a commitment to open government.

However, oddly enough, the Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General was particularly concerned with the proposed Statement. They wrote “[t]his proposed guidance is a major shift in Federal accounting guidance and, in our view, the potential impact is so expansive that it represents another comprehensive basis of accounting.” (FASAB Exposure Draft: Classified Activities, Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General Comment, available here). They suggested already existing methods like redaction are sufficient to protect classified information, and stated the FASAB “should clarify whether this proposed standard, or subsequent Interpretations, could permit entities to record misstated amounts in the financial statements to mislead readers with the stated purpose of protecting classified information. We believe that no accounting guidance should allow this type of accounting entry” (id).

Additionally, while not quite as critical as the Inspector General, the Treasury expressed concerns about the modification of net results of operations and net position.

C. Concerns From Accounting Firms

The accounting firm Kearney & Company had a more critical take on the proposed standard as well. They worried that “[t]he FASAB’s proposed approach could result in material omissions in GPFFR. . . If GPFFR can be modified so material activity is no longer accurately presented to the reader of financial statements, its usefulness to public users is limited and subject to misinterpretation.” (FASAB Exposure Draft: Classified Activities, Kearney & Company Comment, available here)

The accounting firm KPMG was more concerned with clarity consistency, stating that because of potential classified interpretations, only some people with clearance will be able to understand the complete set of GAAP. Because of this, “[i]t is not clear how management of each federal entity will be able to assert that their GPFFR have been prepared in accordance with GAAP when management does not have access to all of GAAP.” (FASAB Exposure Draft: Classified Activities, KPMG Comment, available here)

V. The Results of Statement 56 For the Public

There is a legitimate existing tension between the need to protect confidential government information and the public’s interest in financial transparency and accountability. Standard 56 isn’t without possible justification. That being said, the concerns of both the accounting world and many within the federal government itself are extremely valid.

Statement 56 undercuts the reliability of government accounting standards and financial statements to such a degree as to render an already questionably valuable reporting tool virtually useless to the public. The possibility of false or omitted information renders the reports largely unreliable as to actual amounts, as does the fact that even an accurate report is rendered questionable by the very existence of modifications are not necessarily exposed. Classifying portions of the federal GAAP mystifies the process even further, and the fuzzy definitions of reporting entities leaves the potential for this to touch not only direct government entities, but government contractors other private (but federally entangled) entities. The general disclosure of the government–requiring all reporting entities to report the potential of modifications whether or not they actually exist in their report while simultaneously forbidding the actual disclosure of the actual existence of any modifications–is essentially a worst case in terms of transparency for the public.

VI. About Us

This article was written and edited by Michele Ferri and Jonathan Lurie of The Law Offices of Lurie and Ferri for use by the Solari Report. Michele Ferri and Jonathan Lurie and both practicing attorneys out of California. The Law Offices of Lurie and Ferri focus on working with start-up businesses as well as on intellectual property and business law issues. They can be found at http://www.lflawoffices.com/ or contacted at [email protected].

Our thanks to the Solari Report for having sent us this important article for posting on Global Research.

Sources

• FASAB
  • http://files.fasab.gov/pdffiles/handbook_sffas_56.pdf
  • http://www.fasab.gov/documents-for-comment/
  • About: http://www.fasab.gov/mission-objectives/
  • History: http://www.fasab.gov/the-history-of-fasab/
  • General info: https://searchcompliance.techtarget.com/definition/FASAB-Federal-Accounting-Standards-Advisory-Board
  • Reporting Entities
    • http://www.fasab.gov/concepts-federal-entity/
    • http://files.fasab.gov/pdffiles/handbook_sffas_47.pdf

Notes:

^{1 The extent of what qualifies as classified or confidential information is determined by Executive Order 13526 (the most recent standard set back in 2009), changes over time, and could fill a book by itself. (https://www.archives.gov/isoo/policy-documents/cnsi-eo.html).}

^{2 The Departments of Veterans Affairs, Housing and Urban Development, Energy, and The Interior, all had agreement with the proposed standard more or less across the board, with a few exceptions for disagreements about the disclaimers.}

Shutdowns occur when Congress fails to pass a measure funding government operations or the president refuses to sign appropriations legislation.

When this happens, non-essential federal personnel are furloughed until the issue is resolved. Under Trump, it happened three times – from January 20 – 22, 2018, on February 9, and again post-midnight December 21.

With Dems controlling the House in January, further shutdowns over the next two years may happen. On Friday, Trump blamed Dems for what both sides of the aisle share blame, DLT most of all.

This time it’s over his fortress America demand along the US southern border with Mexico – wanting over $5 billion wasted on a wall, unable to stem the tide of immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers from coming to America, no matter its length or height if fully built.

Walls don’t work. A previous article explained they’ll be breached, tunneled under, or gone around by water or air to reach America.

The only partially possible way to keep out unwanted aliens is by walling-in the entire country and putting an impenetrable roof over it. Even that won’t likely work. Trump’s scheme is hugely ill-conceived – solely for political reasons, nothing else.

Responsible legislators should overwhelmingly reject his scheme. If money poured down a black hole of waste, fraud, and abuse for walls, militarism, endless wars, and corporate handouts were used for vital homeland needs, especially healthcare, education, and other essentials, America would be safe and fit to live in.

Trump wants lots more than a border wall. He wants nationals from the wrong countries and religions banned from entering America.

He wants the nation more militarized.

He wants over a trillion dollars to upgrade America’s nuclear arsenal – instead of ordering vital denuclearization to save humanity from possible armageddon that may happen as long as these weapons exist, along with long-range ballistic missile delivery systems able to strike anywhere globally with pinpoint accuracy.

His belligerent agenda supported by the vast majority in Washington is polar opposite what just societies cherish. Partially shutting down federal operations is symptomatic of governance thumbing its nose to the citizenry.

Occurring during the holiday season makes Trump, other Republicans, and Dems a collective scrooge – a pox on them all.

The shutdown affects about one-fourth of federal operations. Congressional funding for 75% of the government was already approved.

Yet nine of 15 federal agencies began furloughing employees, hundreds of thousands of workers affected. Over 400,000 essential workers remain on the job.

They include FBI, CIA, NSA, and other intelligence community operatives, personnel involved in special counsel Mueller’s probe, air-traffic controllers, prison guards, weather service forecasters, food-safety inspectors, Forest Service firefighters, border patrol and TSA employees, the postal service, some national parks, federal courts – along with the Education, Health and Human Services, War Department and military forces, the Energy Department, as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institutes of Health.

Federal agencies affected by shutdown include the Treasury, State, Justice, Homeland Security, Commerce, Labor, Interior, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Agriculture Departments.

The IRS will largely shut down, a small percentage of its staff kept on the job.

Shutdown can end if Republicans and Dems agree on some kind of appropriations compromise, pass a continuing resolution to fund government at its current level, or a combination of the two for a stated period, providing more time for final resolution before Congress adjourns sine die.

Otherwise, things could be more uncertain under the new Congress in January – Republicans controlling the Senate, Dems with majority House control, a prescription for more intense wrangling than during Trump’s first two years in office.

As long as he insists on full funding for his border wall Dems reject, shutdown could extend through the holidays, potentially well into the new year.

The longest previous shutdown lasted 21 days in 1996. This one could be resolved quickly or drag on for weeks without compromise – the way most all disagreements are resolved.

*

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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.

Viktor Orbán of Hungary is not to be hectored to.  Arching with fury at the EU’s September motion to sanction Hungary for bad behaviour under the Article 7 process, he was resolved to ratchet things up.  The motion, while getting 448 votes concerned about judicial independence, corruption, freedom of expression, academic freedom, the rights and migrants, amongst others did have 197 opponents. (48 abstained.) Spot, as it were, the east-west European divide. 

There was a time when Hungary was known as the “merriest barracks in the socialist camp” dominated by more tempered form of “goulash communism”.  The merriment, not to mention any gastronomic softness, has long soured, substituted by a more patriotic, state-centred sludge.  Protesters are now being given the treatment that would not have been unseemly in the times of the Cold War.

A week-and-a-half of protests against the overtime law passed by the Fidesz majority yielded the police forces fifty arrests.  Orbán’s ruling party could not see what the fuss was all about.  The law in question increases the number of overtime hours employees can be made to work from 250 to 400, a calculation to be made after three years.  Pity for those workers, given the exodus of Hungarian employees to western Europe.

Opposition members of Parliament keen to get more coverage from the state media on the protests have also been frogmarched out of the broadcaster’s headquarters.  In future, they can expect even less in the way of discussion, given the decree of December 5 exempting the Central European Press and Media Foundation from regulatory oversight.  That particular conglomerate is the result of a merger of some 480 pro-government media outlets.

All strong men need hearty, well-rounded enemies, and the Viktator’s latest efforts also feature a final decision on the subject of the Central European University.  The university’s presence in Budapest offers Orbán a target of lightning rod value, given its link to the wily financier George Soros and US-accredited courses run at the university that has his backing.

In April 2017, a bill was passed imposing a requirement on foreign-funded universities to have a home country campus, and in the capital.  But negotiations between the CEU and the government stuttered and stalled, prompting a move to Vienna effective from September 2019.  “CEU has been forced out,” lamented the university’s president and rector Michael Ignatieff.  “This is unprecedented.  A US institution has been driven out of a country that is a NATO ally.  A European institution has been ousted from a member state of the EU.”

The CEU-Orbán tussle illustrates the convoluted nature of central European politics and its association with US and European political forces.  Fine for Ignatieff to complain about NATO and EU ties being ignored, but the Hungarian leader is a creature of confusing plumage happy to make the necessary, if costly sacrifices.

The confusion was given added succour with the remark made by Hungarian State Secretary Zoltán Kovács that, “The Soros university is leaving but staying.  It’s common knowledge that a significant number of its courses will still be held in Budapest.”  The CEU’s warnings were “nothing more than a Soros-style political bluff, which does not merit the attention of the government.”

While he speaks of a common heritage to be defended against the door banging barbarians from the east, Orbán is also very much the self-proclaimed leader of its protection, something that gives him bullyboy status in such matters as immigration.

Eyeing the Trump administration across the pond on how it would respond to the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, the Hungarian government followed suit and demonstrated cold indifference when the final draft was approved by all UN member states in July 2018.  (In so doing, it also kept company with Israel, Austria, Poland, and Australia, all similarly reluctant to subscribe to its spirit.)

It says much that the GCM could cause such agitation, notwithstanding its non-binding nature.  Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó went so far as to insist that, in exiting the adoption process related to the GCM, “the Global Compact is not binding with relation to Hungary.”  Migration, he suggested, should not be organised but stopped.  “Assistance must be taken to where the trouble is, and people in need must be given support to enable them to remain as close as possible to their homes, and return home at the earliest opportunity.”

It is convenient, more than anything, to assume that the Hungary that emerged from the Cold War thaw was somehow more liberal, hopeful for a caring state of mind open to consultation and deliberation.  Authoritarianism was in retreat; the democrats could finally come out.  More on all fours with reality, it always retained an authoritarian default position, one that makes an Orbán figure less incongruous than imagined.

The first post-communist government was more than accommodating to communists; subsequent political arrangements fed a more nationalist orientation.  Orbán sold himself as the appropriate central force to deal with the lingering ailments of socialism while also curing the problems arising from the post-1989 transition.  Now, he is proving what a certain type of European can do to that oft-misguided notion of “shared values”.  Shared, yes, but by whom?

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

On an Air France flight from Paris to Latin America, the plane is full, mostly with working class Latinos, going home for Christmas to spend a few festive days with their families and friends. They have worked hard to save their money for the trip. The plane is old and decrepit. Has no properly working entertainment system – and that on a trajectory of over 12 hours without interruption.

Who cares. Management knows that the humble passengers won’t complain. Anyway, they are under-people. Let’s reserve the better and newer planes for classier people. They pay better, are better clients. Isn’t that the thinking behind such decisions? – Of course, it is. It’s the greed-driven maximizing profit scheme to the detriment of the population. It’s not just AF, it’s everywhere, everywhere you look and are touched by a corporate giant.

We the people, are not even sheeple anymore; we are silenced. We are not asked, not consulted, whether we agree to be photographed and face-read at every corner. It’s just the way it is. Its intimidation by control – by over-control, and by cattle treatment. In this, the French and the US TSA (Transportation Security Administration) are not far apart.

For airport security, you are pushed through what I call a “naked-machine” – Though they tell you that it’s not true, that nobody sees anything other than potential drugs or weapons hidden in human crevices – well if they see crevices, they must see you naked. Behind the scene hidden away in some dark room are the machine operators, they see every human passing through it naked, balls, vagina, breasts and all. Imagine, the absurdly obscene, pathological imagination of those operators – and those who command them!

A machine, a robot of sort, disposes over you. If you don’t conform, you are just left behind, or harassed no end – you may literally lose your plane or connection. Cases of the US TSA abound – some of them are violent and are brought before a court – but in most cases to no avail. The ‘system’ is always right. And mind you the system, is a private system, its not even state owned, its outsourcing and privatization “Über Alles”. But no protests à la Yellow Vests. We are conveniently silenced. It’s Macron “Über Alles” – sounds like déjà vu? – Well, yes. It is. – Neofascism is undeniable.

Yes, that’s the way the ordeal begins. Actually, it begins earlier – at the check in, for example. AF weigh your luggage by the kilo – and, while some agents are a bit more lenient than others, if you are unlucky it hits you having a kilo in excess. Either you somehow dispose of it or reshuffle it to hand luggage – which also has a limitation of weight, you are charged the fee for an extra luggage. What to do? – You are at the airport. They have a captive “market”, because this money-profit centered “market” system has the power over you. You are at the airport, you have to fly, you charge this horrendous extra fee to your credit card, or else you are left behind; no scruples. That’s Macron 101. No concessions. And the French employees are well trained, lest they may lose their bad paid, but nevertheless vital jobs. You want to survive – bend over. No solidarity, no empathy, just hardball. Le Roi Macron says so. And you better obey —- or else — but the ‘or else’ has now suddenly gotten a yellow face – the Yellow Vests. We can just hope that they will propel the finance-mafia dictator into his overdue abyss.

Next, boarding the plane – an elderly passenger visibly with a hurting leg, kindly asked the flight assistant, alias the “cattle guard”, whether he could go through with the privileged ‘frequent flyers’, those who have given the company enough money to justify an extra discriminatory favor. She refuses. He insists, she refuses – until a man behind tells her, for human’s sake, please let him through. She hesitantly nods, then lets him go through.

What does all that have to do with Macron? – Everything. The sort of de-humanized civil behavior is what he instills in people, in corporations. Greed first, everything else, like solidarity, is not even second, it’s of no value. The young who want so desperately cling to their slave-paid jobs, have to obey, or else, they may lose their employment. But now it’s gone too far. Enough is enough. The Yellow Vests represent every industry, every citizen, every abject Macron law; they want to reverse the wheel, à la French Revolution. Enough is enough. Enough privileges for the rich and powerful. Even on the planes.

In ‘economy’, where the cattle is herded, those who saved hard to afford a trip to see their families, rows are getting narrower and narrower. Over time your legs get cramped; an increased risk of thromboses that can be deadly, especially when it happens on 10,000 meters altitude – far from an airport, above the sea. This, of course is quite different for those on first, business or economy plus class, they have more space, sit comfortably, and their entertainment system works fine even on an old decrepit plane. Proper maintenance for the rich and beautiful, neglect for the “less beautiful” populace.

When I complain about the inoperable entertainment system (ES), the chief of cabin arrives. He promises to see what he can do. After a while he returns with a tablet-screen full of my previous AF flights. I’m a good customer. So, he discretely offers me to be placed on an economy-plus seat, where the ES works. He whispers, you are a good customer, so we will do something for you. Amazing in an overcrowded plane he finds an unoccupied seat. I go and look at it – and as soon as they – the flight attendants for the better people – see me, they say, “Sir, the bathrooms are in the rear”. When I tell them that the cabin chief offered me a seat in their section, their tone changes: “Sir, can we offer you a glass of Champaign?” – I’m disgusted, but politely decline, deciding to stay with my kind of ‘cattle’. I prefer reading and writing – like this little essay – among my same-sakes. And am happy about it.

The cabin chief was admittedly nice. He fulfilled his duty, keeping a relatively ‘good customer’ happy, I have to admit. I’m fodder for the ‘maximizing profit’ doctrine. Yet, due to his friendly smile and body language, I give him the benefit of the doubt. Hopefully, not all those who have to make a living off the neoliberal Macron and greed driven money machine, have lost their innermost identity. That’s the cloud’s silver lining. That’s the remaining hope to build on. Hope is the last glow that dies.

Food service, used to be decent with AF. No longer. They don’t have you pay for it yet, but it is almost inedible. – But then, I think of the millions of Yemenis who thanks to the western and Macron-supported killing machine are suffering and dying from famine. So, I eat my portion happily. As a parenthesis, according to the UN, about 85,000 children below age 5 perished through the satanical Saudi-US-UK-French led war of horror. Most of the children died from famine and cholera induced diseases. I was thinking of those big eyed- and skeleton-like bodies, too weak to stand, let alone walk, destroyed for life from famine.

What does that have to do with Macron? – Everything, of course. Macron’s Airforce helped the crime regime of the Saudis bombing Yemen, a poor but proud people, to bits and pieces; to kill possibly hundreds of thousands – nobody counts – mainly children and women. Macron, siding with the elite – he surely has no reason whatsoever to bomb Yemen – helped the ‘allies’ of crime, destroy an entire nation. He of course is not alone, but accompanied by the best and the brightest of the western allies, even Germany – which, according to their non-aggression treaty (remnant of the WWII Armistice arrangement) – is not allowed to participate in any conflict hostility emanating from her territory – except, of course, if the Master of the treaty orders it.

The Yellow Vests want Macron out. Macron has become the enemy of the people. Literally. He is probably proud of it, because that’s testimony enough that he works for the rich and powerful, that he accomplishes the tasks he has been slanted and put in office for, with less the 25% of eligible votes. He lied, promising change, but change that benefitted the people. Change to the detriment of the people is what he implemented. The result is an equation of dynamics, the right has not thought of. Well, thanks god for these dynamics; they brought about the storming of the Bastille in 1789, and a transformation of much of the world. Though, granted, not all that came out of the French Revolution has persevered. The rich and powerful have an unlimited and insatiable stock of wealth to draw upon. Never mind that it’s stolen wealth – as long as they dispose of it and are able to defend it with brute military and police power, they command.

And so, the merry-go-round continues. Air France will play the game; they have to. They are bound into the system, along with French corporatism. The name of the game is intimidation. “Inconvenient”, not-playing-by-the-rules staff are being dismissed. Of the face reading / passport machines, only one out of three is operable, causing long queues. Out of about 20 customs boots, only two are occupied by an agent. Macron saves at the cost of stressed passengers, who have to spend precious time in long lines, risking literally missing their connection planes.

But the Big shots don’t care. The populace’s time is worth peanuts – its like slave time. In any case – you have to go through ‘the system’ – if not, you remain stranded.

Good riddens Mr. Macron, very good riddens – to never appear again on the horizon. – Vivent les “gilets verts”!

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21^st Century; TeleSUR; The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance. 

Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Pakistan is the virtual fulcrum around which much of the geopolitical, geostrategic and geo-economic future of the Afghanistan Pakistan Region, (APR), the South-Central Asian Region (SCAR) and largely the Greater Middle East Region (GMER) is now evolving. No power including the US, China or Russia can realistically hope to secure its national interests in these regions without the active and willing support of Pakistan. It now holds the key to peace (by the defeat of terrorism), interconnectivity (massive infrastructure creation across its territories) and economic development and interdependence (trade corridors, special industrial and economic zones) within and between these regions. Its centrality and absolute inevitability in most matters of import in these regions is now unquestionable.

The APR is currently under a massive, two-pronged diplomatic onslaught by the US and China. The US, the global military behemoth, wants to pacify Afghanistan prior to either leaving it or continuing its occupation in more peaceful environments, whereas China, the marauding economic powerhouse, wants to incorporate it into its economic juggernaut that is magnificently sweeping across Euro-Asia.

The moves by both the powers are simultaneous, aggressive and essentially conflicting in nature. If these moves could somehow be made to complement one another it would not only pacify the APR but also bless it with an enormous epoch-making economic bonanza. However, the conflicting nature of US and Chinese national interests precludes any such prospects, at the moment. Both powers have found the incorporation of Pakistan in their respective efforts inescapable.

Can Pakistan possibly help bridge this chasm between them? Or must it secure its interests by managing them simultaneously albeit independent of one another?

President Trump has made his move in Afghanistan. Swallowing his pride, he has requested PM Imran Khan to urge the TTA/HN

(The Taliban and the Haqqani Network)v onto the negotiating table. Pakistan has responded positively. Resultantly, the first two rounds between the US and the TTA/HN were held in Qatar while the next two were held in the UAE. The representatives of the National Unity Government (NUG) however remained on the side lines. Pakistan, the KSA and the UAE were in attendance. The US wanted the TTA/HN to announce a six – month ceasefire, join the NUG that is to be installed in the future and become a willing and proactive part of the political system of Afghanistan. The TTA/HN, on the other hand, demanded the release of all their prisoners, removal of the ban on the movement of their leaders and the announcement of a deadline for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Afghanistan. The TTA/HN showed an inclination towards a ceasefire, provided Pakistan, KSA and the UAE became the guarantors and a future caretaker government in Kabul was headed by their nominee.

Although the demands of the US and the preconditions laid down by the TTA/HN appear mutually exclusive yet the parleys have produced an early thaw in the icy relations. President Trump has indicated the withdrawal of 7000 US troops from Afghanistan, while the NUG has released nine members of the TTA/HN including Anas Haqqani, Sirajuddin Haqqani’s younger brother. These confidence building measures will lessen the friction and augur well for future negotiations.

President Trump’s compulsion to egressing from Afghanistan needs to be analysed.

One, why does he really want to neutralise the TTA/HN at this point in time?

Two, does he want to get rid of the Afghan albatross around his neck before his re-election bid?

Three, or does he want to declare victory and egress from Afghanistan before the 2020 elections to claim a foreign policy success – the way the OBL drama helped President Obama?

Four, or is it that he just wants Pakistan to pacify and neutralise the TTA/HN by engaging them in unending and fruitless peace talks so that the US can perpetuate its occupation in relative peace? The latter point gains importance because the US stands to lose much more in geopolitical, geo-economic and geostrategic terms by egressing from Afghanistan than it gains by doing so!

On the other hand, China continues to pursue its CPEC – BRI Combine relentlessly. It has now adopted a trilateral approach to the APR by incorporating Afghanistan into the CPEC (China Pakistan Economic Corridor). To that end China needs to foster friendly, cooperative and mutually beneficial relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Terrorism in the APR has to be comprehensively defeated through their coordinated efforts and interconnectivity and economic interdependence enhanced. A Peshawar-Kabul motorway, a railway link from Chaman to Kandahar to Herat and onto Mashhad, Iran, potentially linking up Pakistan-Afghanistan (CPEC) with the Baayannur China – Alamty, Kazakhstan – Tashkent & Samarkand, Uzbekistan – Bayramali, Turkmenistan – Mashhad & Tehran/Chahbahar(?), Iran railway link may be on the cards. This would be interconnectivity at the SCAR-GMER level with enormous connotations for economic interdependency and development. Therefore, parleys between Afghanistan, China and Pakistan (Regional Economic Cooperation Conference in Afghanistan-RECCA) were held recently where it was resolved to fight terrorism together, create further infrastructure for Pak-Afghan connectivity and beyond. China clearly wants Pakistan and Afghanistan to become peaceful, mutually supporting and fully proactive participants in the manifestation and furtherance of its CPEC-BRI Combine.

As the inevitable lynchpin in the region Pakistan is in a very advantageous position. It has engaged the US and China through a sublime two-pronged diplomatic manoeuvre too, as they implement major policy decisions in its neighbourhood. The US needs Pakistan to facilitate its egress, (if required), and/or continuous engagement with the APR and surroundings. China needs Pakistan for its critical link to the Persian Gulf/Arabian Sea/Indian Ocean Region, GMER, Africa, Europe and beyond in furtherance of its CPEC-BRI Combine. However, both US and Chinese efforts are proceeding on parallel streams with no prospects of their ever converging. Pakistan, therefore, must secure its interests by dealing with both separately, albeit simultaneously, without one adversely affecting the other!

The APR is at the cusp of peace, tranquillity, massive foreign direct investments in infrastructure and economy, meaningful interconnectivity, development and genuine progress. The onus is on President Ashraf Ghani and PM Imran Khan now to exploit these opportunities to the abiding benefit of their and other peoples of the region at large.

Imran Malik is a retired Brigadier of the Pakistan Army and the frequent contributor to Global Research.