Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats, on Saturday issued the following statement concerning Turkey’s shooting down of a Russian jet fighter on the Turkey-Syria border

It is imperative that American decision-makers admit to themselves and begin basing their decisions on the hard fact that Islamic terrorism poses the primary threat to our safety and the peace of the world.

Our president seems incapable of uttering the phrase Islamic terrorism, much less of overseeing a policy that will defeat this evil. His incoherence is ever more evident as events in Syria unfold.

Rep.Dana Rohrabacher

Not radical Islam, but the Russians have been portrayed to us as the villains in this chapter of history. Yet our government demonstrates a lack of will, incompetence, or both, in confronting the most monstrous of the radical Islamic marauders now spilling vast quantities of innocent blood in the Middle East — as well as in Africa and France.

When Russia courageously stepped into the breach we should have been applauding its willingness to confront ISIS. Instead, we continue to denigrate Russians as if they were still the Soviet Union and Putin, not Islamic terrorists, our most vicious enemy.

So now we see the travesty of a harsh condemnation of the Russians for introducing air strikes against terrorists who will murder Americans if they get the chance.

Yes, Russia does this to protect Syria’s authoritarian Assad regime, which has close ties to Moscow. So what?

Assad, like Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, is no threat to the United States or the Western world. If Assad is forced out of power he will eventually be replaced by an Islamic terrorist committed to raining down mayhem on Western countries.

Today we witness the spectacle of American decision- makers, in and out of the Obama administration, joining forces with a Turkish regime that grows more supportive of the radical Islamist movement. There is ample evidence of President Erdogan’s complicity in ISIS’s murderous rampage through Syria and Iraq.

Yet, we hold our public rebukes for the Russians, who are battling those terrorists. A Russian plane on an anti-terrorist mission did violate Turkish airspace, just as Turkish planes have strayed into Greek airspace hundreds of times over the last year. This overflight was no threat to Turkey. Still, it was shot down, as was a Russian helicopter on the way to rescue the downed Russian pilot.

Why do Americans feel compelled to kick Russia in the teeth? Russia’s military is attacking an enemy that would do us harm. Why ignore the hostile pro-terrorist maneuvering of Turkish strongman Erdogan?

President Obama is wrong. American politicians who try to sound tough at Russia’s expense in this case are not watching out for the long-term interests of the United States by undermining those fighting our primary enemy, Islamic terrorists.

Russia should be applauded. Instead, it is being castigated for doing what our government is unwilling to do to confront the terrorist offensive now butchering innocent human beings from Africa, to the Middle East, to the streets of Paris.

If being in NATO means protecting Erdogan in this situation, either he shouldn’t be in NATO or we shouldn’t.

The risk of Syria becoming a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia became real last week when Turkey and Syrian jihadists used U.S.-supplied weaponry to shoot down a Russian warplane and rescue helicopter, killing two Russians, a danger that ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern explores.

Belatedly, at a sidebar meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Paris climate summit on Monday, President Barack Obama reportedly expressed regret for last week’s killing of a Russian pilot who was shot down by a Turkish air-to-air missile fired by a U.S.-supplied F-16 and the subsequent death of a Russian marine on a search-and-rescue mission, apparently killed by a U.S.-made TOW missile.

But Obama administration officials continued to take the side of Turkey, a NATO “ally” which claims implausibly that it was simply defending its air space and that the Russian pilot of the SU-24 warplane had ignored repeated warnings. According to accounts based on Turkish data, the SU-24 may have strayed over a slice of Turkish territory for 17 seconds. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Facts Back Russia on Turkish Attack.”]

President Barack Obama meets with President Vladimir Putin of Russia on the sidelines of the G20 Summit at Regnum Carya Resort in Antalya, Turkey, Sunday, Nov. 15, 2015. National Security Advisior Susan E. Rice listens at left. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Immediately after the incident on Nov. 24, Obama offered a knee-jerk justification of Turkey’s provocative action which appears to have been a deliberate attack on a Russian warplane to deter continued bombing of Syrian jihadists, including the Islamic State and Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an Islamist, has supported various jihadists as his tip of the spear in his goal to overthrow the secular regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

In his first public comments about the Turkish attack, Obama gracelessly asserted Turkey’s right to defend its territory and air space although there was never any indication that the SU-24 – even if it had strayed momentarily into Turkish air space – had any hostile intentions against Turkey. Indeed, Turkey and the United States were well aware that the Russian planes were targeting the Islamic State, Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front and other jihadist rebels.

Putin even complained,

“We told our U.S. partners in advance where, when at what altitudes our pilots were going to operate. The U.S.-led coalition, which includes Turkey, was aware of the time and place where our planes would operate. And this is exactly where and when we were attacked. Why did we share this information with the Americans? Either they don’t control their allies, or they just pass this information left and right without realizing what the consequences of such actions might be. We will have to have a serious talk with our U.S. partners.”

Putin also suggested that the Turkish attack was in retaliation for Russia’s bombing of a truck convoy caring Islamic State oil to Turkey. On Monday, on the sidelines of the Paris summit, Putin said Russia has “received additional information confirming that that oil from the deposits controlled by Islamic State militants enters Turkish territory on industrial scale.”

Turkey’s Erdogan — also in Paris — denied buying oil from terrorists and vowed to resign “if it is proven that we have, in fact, done so.”

Was Obama Angry?

In private, Obama may have been outraged by Erdogan’s reckless actions – as some reports suggest – but, if so, Obama seems publicly more afraid of offending the neocons who dominate Official Washington’s opinion circles and who hold key positions in his own administration, than of provoking a possible nuclear confrontation with Russia.

On Nov. 24, even as Russian emotions were running high – reacting to the killing of one Russian pilot and the death of a second Russian marine killed after his helicopter was shot down apparently by a U.S.-supplied TOW missile fired by Syrian jihadists – Obama chose to act “tough” against Putin, both during a White House press conference with French President Francois Holland and later with pro-Turkish remarks from U.S. officials.

During the press conference after the Turkish shoot-down and the deliberate fire from Turkish-backed Syrian jihadists aiming at two Russian airmen as they parachuted to the ground, Obama chose to make disparaging remarks about the Russian president.

Obama boasted about the 65 nations in the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State compared to Putin’s small coalition of Russia and Iran (although Putin’s tiny coalition appears to be much more serious and effective than Obama’s bloated one, which includes countries such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar that have been implicated in supporting jihadist elements, including Al Qaeda and the Islamic State).

By delivering these anti-Russian insults at such a delicate time, Obama apparently was trusting that Putin would keep his cool and tamp down public emotions at home, even as Obama lacked the integrity and courage to stand up to neocon criticism from The Washington Post’s editorial page or from some of his hawkish subordinates.

The administration’s neocons who keep demanding an escalation of tensions with Russia include Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland. Then, there are the officials most identified with arms procurement, sales and use, such as Defense Secretary Ashton Carter.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford recently volunteered to Congress that U.S. forces “can impose a no-fly zone” for Syria (a dangerous play advocated by presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Sen. John McCain). Dunford is the same hawk who identified Russia as the “existential threat” to the U.S. and said it would be “reasonable” to send heavy weapons to Ukraine on Russia’s border.

Meanwhile, NATO commander Gen. Philip Breedlove keeps up his fly-by-the-pants information warfare campaign citing Russian “aggression,” “invasions” and plans to do still more evil things. One is tempted to dismiss him as a buffoon; but he is the NATO commander.

Lack of Control

It does not appear as though Obama has the same degree of control over foreign and defense policy that Putin enjoys in Moscow – or at least one hopes Putin can retain such control since some hard-line Russian nationalists are fuming that Putin has been too accommodating of his Western “partners.”

Perhaps the greatest danger from Obama’s acquiescence to the neocons’ new Cold War with Russia is that the neocon hopes for “regime change in Moscow” will be realized except that Putin will be replaced by some ultra-nationalist who would rather risk nuclear war than accept further humiliation of Mother Russia.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, the U.S. establishment is such that the generals, the arms manufacturers and weapons merchants, the Defense Department, and most of Congress have a very strong say in U.S. foreign policy – and Obama seems powerless to change it.

The model of governing in Washington is a far cry from Russia’s guiding principle ofedinonachaliye – by which one supreme authority is in clear control of decision-making on defense and foreign policy.

Even when Obama promises, he often fails to deliver. Think back to what Obama told then-President Dmitry Medvedev when they met in Seoul in March 2012, about addressing Russian concerns over European missile defense. In remarks picked up by camera crews, Obama asked for some “space” until after the U.S. election. Obama can be heard saying, “This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.”

Yet, even after winning reelection, Obama has remained cowed by the influential neocons – even as he has bucked some of their more aggressive demands, such as a massive U.S. bombing campaign against Assad’s military in summer 2013 and bomb-bomb-bombing Iran; instead, in 2014-15, Obama pushed for a negotiated agreement to constrain Iran’s nuclear program.

Ideally, Obama should be able to show some flexibility on Syria during his last year in office, but no one should hold their breath. Obama appears to have deep fears about crossing the neocons or Israel regarding what they want for the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

Besides the neocons’ close ties to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the neocons are intimately connected to the interests of the Military-Industrial Complex, which provides substantial funding for the major think tanks where many neocons hang their hats and churn out new arguments for more world conflict and thus more military spending.

Unlike Obama, Pope Francis addressed this fact-of-life head-on in his Sept. 24 address to members of the U.S. Congress – many if not most of whom also are lavished with proceeds from the arms trade and then appropriate still more funding for arms production and sales.

“Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering,” Francis asked them face-to-face. “Sadly, the answer, as we all know, is simply for money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood.”

An Old Epithet

From my days as a CIA analyst covering the Soviet Union, I’m reminded of the epithet favored by the Soviet party daily Pravda a few decades ago –“vallstreetskiye krovopitsiy” – or Wall St. bloodsuckers. Propaganda-ish as that term seemed, it turns out that Soviet media were not far off on that subject.

Indeed, the banks and corporations involved in arms manufacture and sales enjoy immense power – arguably, more than a president; unarguably more than Obama. The moneyed interests – including Congress – are calling the shots.

The old adage “money makes the world go round” is also apparent in Washington’s velvet-gloves treatment of the Saudis and is nowhere better illustrated than in the continued suppression of 28 pages of the 2002 Joint Congressional Inquiry on 9/11. Those pages deal with the Saudi role in financing and supporting some of the 9/11 hijackers, but both the Bush and Obama administrations have kept those pages hidden for 13 years.

One reason is that the Saudis are the primary recipients of the U.S. trade in weapons, for which they pay cash. American manufacturers are selling the Saudis arms worth $100 billion under the current five-year agreement. Oddly, acts of terrorism sweeten the pot. Three days after the attacks in Paris, Washington and Riyadh announced a deal for $1.3 billion more.

And yet, neither Obama, nor any of the candidates trying to replace him, nor Congress is willing to jeopardize the arms trade by insisting that Riyadh call an abrupt halt to its support for the jihadists fighting in Syria for fear this might incur the wrath of the deep-pocket Saudis.

Not even Germany – already inundated, so far this year, by a flood of 950,000 refugees, mostly from Syria – is willing to risk Saudi displeasure. Berlin prefers to pay off the Turks with billions of euros to stanch the flow of those seeking refuge in Europe.

And so, an unholy alliance of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states continues to fuel the war in Syria while Obama pretends that his giant coalition is really doing the job of taking on many of those same jihadists. But Obama’s coalition has been woefully incompetent and indeed compromised, bumbling along and letting the Islamic State seize more territory along with Al Qaeda and its affiliates and allies.

Russia’s entry into the war in September changed the equation because – unlike Obama’s grand coalition – Putin’s puny coalition with Iran actually was serious about beating back the jihadists and stabilizing Assad’s regime. Turkey’s shoot-down of the Russian warplane on Nov. 24 was a crude message from Erdogan that success in defeating the jihadists would not be tolerated.

As for the United States and Europe, myopia prevails. None seems concerned that the terrorists whom they support today will come back to bite them tomorrow. American officials, despite their rhetoric and despite 9/11, seem to consider the terrorist threat remote from U.S. shores – and, in any case, dwarfed in importance by the lucrative arm sales.

As for the Vienna talks on Syria, the speed with which they were arranged (with Iran taking part) raised expectations now dampened. Last week, for example, Secretary of State John Kerry bragged about how a meeting of “moderate” rebels is to convene “in the next few weeks” to come up with principles for negotiating with Syrian President Assad’s government. The convener? Saudi Arabia!

Obama knows what has to happen for this terrorist threat to be truly addressed. The Saudis and Turks have to be told, in no uncertain terms, to stop supporting the jihadists. But that would require extraordinary courage and huge political – perhaps even physical – risk. There is no sign that President Obama dares bite that bullet.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was a CIA analyst for 27 years, from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. From 1981 to 1985, he prepared the President’s Daily Brief, which he briefed one-on-one to President Ronald Reagan’s five most senior national security advisers.

Britain is a longstanding US imperial partner, involved in virtually all its wars of aggression – four post-9/11. It’s been covertly bombing Syrian targets jointly with US warplanes since last year, along with Israel, France, Canada and Australia – on the phoney pretext of combating ISIS.

Now it’s official after parliament voted 397 to 223 for war (a nearly two-thirds majority), following nearly a half-day debate – dozens of Labour and Lib Dem MPs joining with hawkish Tories.

Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn’s strong opposition didn’t help. In response to the vote, he twittered: “I have argued, and will continue to do so, that we should re-double our efforts to secure a diplomatic and political end to the conflict in Syria.”

“British service men and women will now be in harm’s way and the loss of innocent lives is sadly almost inevitable.”

Ironically, Corbyn’s shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn supported Prime Minister David Cameron.

Ignoring Cameron’s real objective, Benn said “(w)e must now confront this evil. It is now time for us to do our bit in Syria.”

Cameron knows full well Britain’s involvement is naked aggression on sovereign Syria, its infrastructure, other government targets, perhaps military ones to follow, and its entire population, suffering hugely since Obama illegally declared war in March 2011, using ISIS  as imperial foot soldiers, supplemented since last year by US air power and now growing numbers of special forces on the ground.

US, UK, French, Canadian, Israeli and Australian military operations (with Germany posed to join them) are llegal – conducted without Security Council authorization.

Cameron is now openly partnering with Obama’s aggression, along with other coalition partners – on the phony pretext of combating terrorism.

Hypocrisy and endless wars of aggression define Obama’s legacy. Since taking office in January 2009, he broke every major promise made, domestic and geopolitical – notably on US Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia policy, pledging hope, change, peace, democratic values, “a new era of openness,” and willingness to engage virtually all world heads of state diplomatically.

Instead he delivered confrontation with Moscow and Beijing.

The threat of another global war is greater than any time since the late 1930s – today’s super-weapons making ones used in that era look like toys.

Hours after Britain’s parliament approved war on Syria, four Cyprus-based Royal Air Force Tornadoes joined with US warplanes, launching lawless airstrikes, hitting no ISIS targets. Britain’s Defense Ministry withheld information on sites struck. 

Obama issued a statement, saying

“(w)e look forward to having British forces flying with the coalition over Syria, and will work to integrate them into our coalition air-tasking orders as quickly as possible.”

Britain’s Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond issued an ominous statement, saying “(a)irstrikes alone will not finish ISIL,” suggesting a Western ground campaign to come.

Russia’s effective intervention changed things dramatically for Syria, clashing with Washington’s imperial objectives. Could Syria become a flashpoint for US-Moscow confrontation?

President  Jacob Zuma [pictured left] is not a fool. He makes gaffes every  week and has no idea what constitutionality means.  But he is not a fool.

He might not read –  as has been alleged – but that does not mean he  does not know what levers have to be cranked to  ensure that he never gets inside a  court.

Since he became the president of the  ANC in 2007, he has overseen the most concerted  and successful assault on the country’s  independent institutions.

The judiciary is  today facing a major crisis of confidence because  of cases involving him at the Constitutional  Court.

The minute he won the ANC presidency  in Polokwane, the Scorpions – which had been  investigating him – were disbanded. It was quick,  cruel and ruthless.

Over the past few  months it has been the public protector’s turn. In  that time, we have witnessed concerted and  coordinated attacks from parliament, the executive  and various wings of the ANC on the office led by  possibly the most admired “public servant” in the  nation today – Thuli Madonsela.

This past  week we had the extraordinary sight of our  security cluster – which has over the past few  weeks made fools of themselves saying all kinds of  nonsense about Madonsela – turning on the populace  and declaring that publication of pictures of the  taxpayer-funded Nkandla monstrosity were illegal  and that the full might of the law would come down  on those who dared to do so. All this for one man:  Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma.

The man is not a  fool. He has managed to get Africa’s oldest  liberation movement to become a tool for his  protection.

Whatever he does – whether it  is his friends the Guptas landing their planes at  military key points with impunity or a hideous  compound being built for him for R208-million, the  man has got the party rushing to do his  bidding.

And so one has to ask: Which ANC  is this?

How can an organisation that  refused to have a personality cult built around  Nelson Mandela allow itself to become a mere tool  in the hands of Zuma? How can its leaders cast  aside the party’s historical mission – to  transform the lives of millions of poor black  people and build a united, non-racial, prosperous  and democratic country – to simply become gophers  for Zuma?

Yet that is what the party’s  86-member national executive committee has  become.

ANC MPs are now introducing  legislation that is aimed solely at protecting  this one man.

Across the land, provincial  party leaders hobble state machinery merely to  protect and keep this one compromised leader out  of jail and in power.

It is an incredible  sight.

Once proud leaders who served our  nation in exile, in the United Democratic Front  and in trade unions now scrape and bow before one  man.

The ANC no longer has leaders. It has  zombies who mindlessly follow this one leader and  do his bidding.

It is quite  extraordinary.

What has happened to the  culture of debate and contestation that once  permeated this movement?

What happened to  the pride that made this once great organisation  stand up and expel people who muddied its  name?

How can this lot walk in the shoes of  Albert Luthuli, AP Mda, Anton Lembede, Pixley  kaIsaka Seme?

So, as we look at the  extraordinary lengths that the current ANC  “leadership” has gone to defend an embarrassment  of a leader whose entire family seems to be  infused by a shocking culture of entitlement –  Zuma’s brother, Michael, last week admitted using  his name to swing tenders to his benefactors – we  have to ask: Where is the ANC?

The answer  is heartbreaking: The ANC is compromised; it is  lost.

It has lost its moral compass and its  leadership of society.

The man at its head  is a reflection of what the party is:  ill-disciplined, compromised and  unprincipled.

The desperation one sees  among the ANC’s leaders is a reflection of this.  When a man as widely admired as Cyril Ramaphosa  has no other argument to convince a voter to still  support the ANC than “the Boers will return”, then  you know that this is a movement that is both  intellectually and morally bankrupt. The emperor  and his lieutenants have no clothes.

And so  we will remember the reign of Zuma. We will  remember it not for its achievements but for the  cowardice, callowness and bankruptcy of the  leadership that he brought with him. We will  remember his lackeys for their bowing and scraping  and their destruction of the continent’s greatest  liberation movement.

What an ignominious  end for the party of  Mandela.

*     *     *

Note by Anthony Bellchambers: If  you want to make more people aware of how our  country is being undermined by one man’s personal  greed and, in the hope of stopping this runaway  train,  encourage  people to be part of  finding a solution, please forward the above  article to all your friends, family and  associates. Thank  you.

More than a decade ago an incredible $100 billion worth of African debt was written off. The fractured political landscape in Africa at the time was, and the instability and extreme poverty it caused, was thought to be a result of financial instability owing to insurmountable debt, and so the international community came together to remove the problem. Thirty five different countries globally benefitted from this debt write-off, including Ghana, Mozambique and Zambia.

The country that benefitted most from the decision was Mozambique, which saw its debt slashed drastically, from 86% of the country’s gross domestic product in 2005 when the decision was made to just 9% the following year.

[The write-off was not granted unconditionally. Countries had to obey the orders of the creditors and adopt macro-economic policies which contributed to increasing the debt, GR Ed]

However according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal, the country has since built its debt back up considerably, and that debt now stands at 61% of its GDP. Similar stories of debt written off only to be regained in less than a decade can also be found in both Ghana and Zambia, meaning that the benefits seen by these African countries (such as developing economies, falling numbers of people living in poverty, and acceptance into wider international communities) could be reversed once more. Following years of borrowing, the national burden in these countries now feels heavier than ever. The result of this is that national spending on health, poverty reduction and other important measures is down, as respective governments restrict their spending in order to continue paying their rising debt bills.

Issues Compounded By China’s Slowdown                                                  

The problems accompanying this new borrowing are being compounded by the slowdown of trade and involvement in the region from China, which is importing less oil and other commodities from Sub Saharan Africa than in previous years. This is not a problem that those African nations involved can control, as the Chinese slowdown is thought to be a result of separate problems the super power is experiencing within its own economy. Whilst the scale of economic growth in Africa is still higher than many other counties, when 2015 figures are compared like for like, the region is massively vulnerable to the falling prices of commodities, and with its debt already increased so highly, it simply cannot afford to lose trade at this time.

South Africa’s Personal Debt Crisis

The problem of insurmountable debt isn’t just affecting pan-African relations on a national level: on an individual level, debt numbers are on the wise across the continent. The debt burden amongst South Africans is being perceived as a ticking time bomb in the country, and is on the verge of becoming a true national crisis.

An incredible 78% of the disposable income of South Africans is swallowed up by paying personal loans and other individual debts: irresponsible lending is thought to be the cause of this, and in association with high levels of food inflation, more households than ever before in the country are over indebted and struggling to make their loan repayments in time.  Lending restrictions are being tightened in the country, and tighter rules have been enforced over the past 12 months, but to many this is being seen simply as too little too late. Impartial debt advice services can help those struggling with the burden of debt to manage their debt, but there is little governmental support for those individuals who are struggling. The huge amount of debt on the shoulders of individuals is leading to discontentment and instability amongst South African citizens which is, in turn, making the government feel uneasy.

Africa is a continent being overwhelmed by debt problems on a wide variety of different scales. Both for the governments struggling to provide support for its citizens because of a lack of publically available funds, and for the individuals who are spending such a huge percentage of their incomes of paying back their debt that they are left unable to feed their families, this problem is one that won’t go away, and one that can only be addressed with swift and drastic action.

Helen Gallant is a freelance writer.

A few days ago, Prime Minister David Cameron has appealed to Parliament Members to vote in favor of Royal Air Forces (RAF) airstrikes against Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria, in order to “keep the British people safe” from the threat of terrorism.  At the opening of a 10-hour Commons debate on December 2, the Prime Minister said the country had no other choice. In the report presented to the Parliament (see full text) he stated that: “I believe that the UK should now join Coalition airstrikes against ISIL in Syria” (p. 7) and pointed out that “On 20 November 2015, the UN Security Council unanimously called on Member States to use all necessary measures to prevent and suppress terrorist acts committed specifically by ISIL, and to deny them safe haven in Syria and Iraq” (p. 8). In page 15 of this same document, he also indicated just after quoting Resolution 2249 that “there is a clear basis for military action against ISIL in Syria”.

It must be reminded that on August 30, 2013, a similar vote took place in United Kingdom with a short negative result for the Executive concerning airstrikes in Syria (see note of BBC): the government motion was rejected at his time  by 285 vote against and 272 in favor. In BBC note above referred, it can be read that “On Friday French President Francois Hollande told the newspaper Le Monde that he would still be willing to take action without Britain’s involvement. He said he supported taking “firm” punitive action over an attack he said had caused “irreparable” harm to the Syrian people”.

The “urgency” to take a decision

During these last days, United Kingdom’s Executive seemed to be extremely “urged”, as reported by press (see for example the title of this note), and time seemed extremely short for more debate and for the examination of further details. As very well known, “urgency” is sometimes extremely useful, mainly when arguments presented are simple. In a recent article entitled, “Voting on Military Action in Syria“, it is written that Prime Minister seems quite clear on one very particular point: “In his address to Parliament, David Cameron insisted that the UN SC Resolution provides a legal basis for military action“. It must be reminded that the Resolution 2249 has been adopted on November 20, just one week after Paris attacks of November 13, supposing also an urgent work among diplomats in New York to reach a consensus on a text. From this perspective, France´s Executive was also expecting, with some urgency too, the decision to be taken in United Kingdom (see note), as it appears quite isolated in Europe Union concerning airstrikes in Syria, and its predicable consequences (Note 1).

It must be recalled that first official French airstrikes in Syria against ISIS positions took place last September 27 (see note of Le Monde of this very same day): just 24 hours after, France President took the floor at the United Nations General Assembly.  The daily newspaper Le Monde understood (as all of us) that the choice of September 27 was not due to mere coincidence or hazard: “C’est une opération qui tombe à point nommé. L’annonce des premières frappes aériennes françaises en Syrie, dimanche 27 septembre, ne doit rien au hasard » (see  note of Le Monde)

Even if United Kingdom´s Executive obtained this December 2, a positive vote on airstrikes in Syria (by a great majority of 397 votes in favor and 223 against) followed a few hours after by the first airstrikes of RAF in Syria (see note of France24), some of the arguments presented during the discussion deserve some comments, from the perspective of international law.

Which coalition are we talking about?

Concerning the sentence mentioned before in which Primer Minister said that “I believe that the UK should now join Coalition airstrikes against ISIL in Syria“, we must note that the expression “Coalition airstrikes against ISIL in Syria” seems to be a new one.

As known, a coalition has been set up in September 2014 by United States and its allies: State Department includes an official list with more than 60 Members of this Coalition called officially “The Global Coalition to Counter ISIL” : it must be noted that Panama appears as the only State from Latin America, whilst, concerning Africa, Morocco, Nigeria, Somalia and Tunisia are included in this official list. Prime Minister David Cameron seems to refer to another coalition, or at least, to a specific branch of “The Global Coalition to Counter ISIL“. In a recent report of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons entitled “The extension of offensive British military operations to Syria“, extremely useful information is provided in order to know which are the States involved in airstrikes in Syria (and in Iraq). At note 22, page 9, we read the following data:

“Airstrikes in Iraq: US, UK, Australia, Belgium (withdrawn), Canada (expected to withdraw), Denmark (withdrawn), France, Jordan, The Netherlands (9). Airstrikes in Syria: US, Australia, Bahrain, Canada (expected to withdraw), France, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, UAE (9). Total of 13 states overall”.

On Nov. 30, The Washington Times informed (see note) that some members of the coalition have stopped flights against ISIS positions:

“One Pentagon official directly involved in the counter-Islamic State fight told The Washington Times that the Saudis haven’t flown a mission against the group in nearly three months. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Bahrain is still involved, but confirmed that Jordan stopped flying sorties against the extremists in August and the UAE hasn’t flown one since March”.

Curiously, in its presentation at the “Sénat” in France, last November 25, French Minister of Foreign Affairs declares publicly (see compte-rendu analytique) that: “Une trentaine d’État sont engagés militairement dans la coalition“. The number 13 is a number of member States quite far from 30. But visually speaking (mainly if you are urged) the number 13 is very close to 31. Maybe (maybe not…) new glasses are needed somewhere at the Quai d´Orsay.

When Russia announced its first military operations in Syria last September 30, the reaction of the so called “Coalition” didn´t included the signature of 60 or 30 States, but only 7 States agreed on a short declaration made public last October 2 (see official text): France, Germany, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, United Kingdom and  United States.  The declaration stated:

« Nous, gouvernements de France, d’Allemagne, du Qatar, d’Arabie saoudite, de Turquie, du Royaume-Uni et des États-Unis d’ Amérique faisons la déclaration suivante à la suite des récentes offensives militaires de la Fédération de Russie en Syrie : Nous exprimons notre vive inquiétude devant le renforcement de l’engagement militaire russe en Syrie et, en particulier les frappes de l’armée de l’air russe sur Hama et Homs hier qui ont tué des civils et ne visaient pas Daech. Ces opérations militaires constituent une nouvelle escalade et ne feront qu’attiser l’extrémisme et la radicalisation. Nous demandons instamment à la Fédération de Russie de mettre immédiatement fin à ses attaques contre l’opposition et la population civile syriennes et de concentrer ses efforts sur le combat contre Daech ».

As briefly presented, “The Global Coalition to Counter ISIL” is quite different from “Coalition airstrikes against ISIL in Syria“; with respect to numbers referred by France´s head of diplomacy, they seem to be extremely far from reality if compared with the exact number of States involved in military operations in Syria and Iraq.

It must be recalled that France has been the first EU member to bomb ISIS positions in Iraq. During the last days of September 2014, Belgium, Denmark and United Kingdom acceded also to participate in these airstrikes in Iraq (see note of Temps Réels). As known, the main difference between Iraq and Syria is that the Iraqi authorities  gave their formal consent to United States and its allies to combat ISIS on their territory (see letter of September 20, 2014 in which It can be read that:

“we, in accordance with international law and the relevant bilateral and multilateral agreements, and with due regard for complete national sovereignty and the Constitution, have requested the United States of America to lead international efforts to strike ISIL sites and military strongholds, with our express consent. The aim of such strikes is to end the constant threat to Iraq,  protect Iraq’s citizens and, ultimately, arm Iraqi forces and enable them to regain control of Iraq’s borders”).

UNSC Resolution 2249: a confusing text from legal perspective

With respect to another argument presented by Prime Minister David Cameron, the content of the Resolution 2249 has been made public since November 13 (Note 2), and assertions made by Prime Minister require, in our view, some clarifications. As known, Security Council 2249 (see text) resolution does not provide any legal basis for airstrikes in Syria. A careful reading of the text shows that Resolution 2249 does not mention Article 42 of the UN Charter, which allows Security Council to authorize States to the use of force, or even Chapter VII generally; nor does use the verb “decide“, used when Security Council adopts a resolution on the use of force. An extremely interesting note published by Royal Institute on International Affairs and entitled “Assessing the Legal Basis for UK Military Action in Syria” is quite clear on this very particular point of Resolution 2249 adopted last November 20 in New York by an urged Security Council:

“In order to provide legal authority for the use of force against ISIS under international law, a Security Council resolution would need to constitute a decision, taken under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, that states could use all necessary measures in their action against ISIS. Although resolution 2249 determines that ISIS is a ‘global and unprecedented threat to international peace and security’ and refers to ‘all necessary measures’, the language used in the operative part of the resolution is merely hortatory (‘calls upon’) and does not refer to Chapter VII. For those who are looking for specific UN authorization for the use of force, this is not it”.

Recently, two distinguished international lawyers entitled their analysis of Resolution 2249 (see article): “The Constructive Ambiguity of the Security Council’s ISIS Resolution“. For the authors of this article, the legal basis on which military actions can be taken in Syria is totally absent of the text:

“Resolution 2249, on the other hand, is constructed in such a way that it can be used to provide political support for military action, without actually endorsing any particular legal theory on which such action can be based or providing legal authority from the Council itself. The creative ambiguity in this resolution lies not only in the fact that it does not legally endorse military action, while appearing to give Council support to action being taken, but also that it allows for continuing disagreement as to the legality of those actions”.

With respect to the vote that took place last December 2 and,  in particular to the arguments presented by Prime Minister concerning Resolution 2249, a distinguished professor of international law at Nottingham wrote in his article entitled “How the Ambiguity of Resolution 2249 Does Its Work” the following conclusion:

“Calling this particular resolution “clear and unambiguous” is, with respect, a real howler. But nonetheless we can see how the ambiguity of the resolution also did its magic in internal UK politics, and not just on the international plane – I very much doubt that without it the Prime Minister could have obtained the necessary majority for the air strikes, or even if he did that majority would have been slim indeed”.

A discrete French omission

It is possible that some colleagues that teach international law in France – extremely discrete since last month – will find the following lines politically incorrect, but it must be recalled that references to United Nations Charter in operative part of resolution 2249 are the result of … Russia insistence, and were not included in the original draft presented by France to the members of the Security Council. In this note entitled “Adoption of a Resolution on Counter Terrorism“, specifically concerning modifications to the original draft presented, we read that: “Russia insisted that a reference to the UN Charter be inserted and France agreed“. Despite public declarations made by France ´s delegates after the vote of Resolution 2249 (Note 3), this resolution does not justify the legality of France´s airstrikes in Syria. On this and others French contradictions, and on the very first “premiere” offered by France diplomacy at the United Nations (in order to avoid an explicit reference to the Charter in operative paragraphs of a draft resolution) we refer to our modest article published in French  and entitled “La Résolution 2249 n’autorise pas à bombarder en Syrie“.

In another recent article on the intervention of Russia in Syria from the legal perspective, entitled “Russia´s intervention in Syria“, France ´s official reasons given to intervene in Mali´s civil war at the request of national authorities are mentioned. The author concluded that:

“On the basis of the reasoning of the Court and the responses of states to the recent interventions in Mali by France and in Syria by Russia, it is argued here that there is no such rule that prohibits an intervention in a civil war if the invitation comes from the government. It is thus submitted that the Russian intervention in Syria is in accordance with international law”.

With respect to this quite confused  (and confusing) resolution 2249 adopted by Security Council one week after Paris attacks of November 13 (on which we can find many analysis written in English and we miss  analysis from our French colleagues),  another extremely interesting article has been entitled  “Permanent Imminence of Armed Attacks: Resolution 2249 (2015) and the Right to Self Defence Against Designated Terrorist Groups”). The tittle in itself shows the confusion created by Resolution 2249 when talking of a “Permanent Imminence”. In accordance to the author, a distinguished professor of Cambridge:

“This declaration represents a very important, albeit risky, application by the Council of its powers even when acting outside of Chapter VII of the Charter. It affects the application of the right to self-defence of states wishing to rely on their own right to self-defence, rather than a right derived from Iraq or from Syrian consent”.

In his conclusion, the author emphasizes the fact that:

“In reality, this reluctance has opened up a pandora’s box of potential claims to the use of force in Syria and possibly Iraq. This is because the resolution offers an authoritative interpretation of the facts in relation to international law and the Charter, in particular the right to self-defence”.

Conclusion:  a reference to Canada´s recent prudent withdraw

Very early, on April 9, 2015, Canada launched its first airstrikes in Syria (see BBC note) and became the 2ond member of NATO (after United States) to do so in Syria. Turkey launched its first airstrike in Syria on August 29, 2015, as member of the Coalition (see CNN note). On September 16, 2015, Australia initiated its airstrikes in Syria (see BBC note), followed by France on September 27.  Despite the support shown by Canada, observers indicated a few months after the first Canadian airstrikes that: “Three months after a contentious vote to expand Canada’s combat mission against Islamic State into Syria, Canadian fighter jets have attacked targets there just three times” (see note of Globe and Mail).

As known, Canadian new elected authorities announced their decision to suspend airstrikes in Syria as well as in Iraq (see note of The Guardian of October 21, 2015). In an article  published in 2015 on airstrikes launched by Canadian Air Force, entitled “Canada’s Military Operations against ISIS in Iraq and Syria and the Law of Armed Conflict” the author concludes that, with regard to airstrikes in Syria:

“However, there is a further legal hurdle for Canada to overcome. Unless Canada can attribute ISIS’ attacks in Iraq to Syria, then the question becomes whether Canada may lawfully target ISIS, as a nonstate actor in Syria’s sovereign territory, using the ‘unwilling or unable’ doctrine to prevent ISIS’ extraterritoriality attacks against Iraq. This justification moves significantly away from the Nicaragua, Congo and Israeli Wall cases’ requirement for attribution”.

The author ends his article with the following sentence: “There is no escaping the conclusion that Canada’s air strikes on Syria are on shaky, or at least shifting, legal ground“.

Despite “urgency “and Primer Minister David Cameron´s interpretation of Resolution 2249, from the legal perspective, these very same conclusions, in our modest view, are applicable to airstrikes in Syria realized by United States and its Arabic allies (Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates), as well as by Australia, Canada, France, Turkey and the operations of this kind of RAF launched a few hours after the vote that took at United Kingdom Parliament.

Notes:

1. Three days after the first airstrikes of France in Syria (that took place on September 27, 2015)  a French expert on counter terrorism and judge stressed in an interview in Paris Match (see references in this article of Le Monde) that: “« J’ai acquis la conviction que les hommes de Daech [Etat islamique] ont l’ambition et les moyens de nous atteindre beaucoup plus durement en organisant des actions d’ampleur, incomparables à celles menées jusqu’ici. Je le dis en tant que technicien : les jours les plus sombres sont devant nous. La vraie guerre que l’EI entend porter sur notre sol n’a pas encore commencé ».

2. At the end of this note, the full text of Resolution 2249 is reproduced.

3. In his declaration during Security Council session of November 20,  (see full text of his declaration), French Ambassador Delattre affirmed that: “Cette résolution encadre notre action dans le cadre du droit international et dans le respect de la Charte des Nations Unies qui est notre bien commun, qui est notre trésor commun. Il offre aussi une garantie de lutte efficace contre le terrorisme transnational ».

Nicolas Boeglin is Professor of International Law at the Law Faculty, University of Costa Rica (UCR)

Text of the Security Council Resolution 2249 (2015)

Adopted by the Security Council at its 7565th meeting, on 20 November 2015

The Security Council,

Reaffirming its resolutions 1267 (1999), 1368 (2001), 1373 (2001), 1618 (2005), 1624 (2005), 2083 (2012), 2129 (2013), 2133 (2014), 2161 (2014), 2170 (2014), 2178 (2014), 2195 (2014), 2199 (2015), 2214 (2015) and its relevant presidential statements,

Reaffirming the principles and purposes of the Charter of the United Nations, Reaffirming its respect for the sovereignty, territorial integrity, independence and unity of all States in accordance with purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter,

Reaffirming that terrorism in all forms and manifestations constitutes one of the most serious threats to international peace and security and that any acts of terrorism are criminal and unjustifiable regardless of their motivations, whenever and by whomsoever committed,

Determining that, by its violent extremist ideology, its terrorist acts, its continued gross systematic and widespread attacks directed against civilians, abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law, including those driven on religious or ethnic ground, its eradication of cultural heritage and trafficking of cultural property, but also its control over significant parts and natural resources across Iraq and Syria and its recruitment and training of forei gn terrorist fighters whose threat affects all regions and Member States, even those far from conflict zones, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as Da’esh), constitutes a global and unprecedented threat to international peace and security,

Recalling that the Al-Nusrah Front (ANF) and all other individuals, groups, undertakings and entities associated with Al-Qaida also constitute a threat to international peace and security,

Determined to combat by all means this unprecedented threat to international peace and security,

Noting the letters dated 25 June 2014 and 20 September 2014 from the Iraqi authorities which state that Da’esh has established a safe haven outside Iraq’s borders that is a direct threat to the security of the Iraqi people and territory,

Reaffirming that Member States must ensure that any measures taken to combat terrorism comply with all their obligations under international law, in particular international human rights, refugee and humanitarian law,

Reiterating that the situation will continue to deteriorate further in the absence of a political solution to the Syria conflict and emphasizing the need to implement the Geneva Communiqué of 30 June 2012 endorsed as Annex II of its resolution 2118 (2013), the Joint Statement on the outcome of the multilateral talks on Syria in Vienna of 30 October 2015 and the Statement of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) of 14 November 2015,

1. Unequivocally condemns in the strongest terms the horrifying terrorist attacks perpetrated by ISIL also known as Da’esh which took place on 26 June 2015 in Sousse, on 10 October 2015 in Ankara, on 31 October 2015 over Sinaï, on 12 November 2015 in Beirut and on 13 November 2015 in Paris, and all other attacks perpetrated by ISIL also known as Da’esh, including hostage -taking and killing, and notes it has the capability and intention to carry out further attacks and regards all such acts of terrorism as a threat to peace and security;

2. Expresses its deepest sympathy and condolences to the victims and their families and to the people and Governments of Tunisia, Turkey, Russian Federation, Lebanon and France, and to all Governments whose citizens were targeted in the above-mentioned attacks and all other victims of terrorism;

3. Condemns also in the strongest terms the continued gross, systematic and widespread abuses of human rights and violations of humanitarian law, as well as barbaric acts of destruction and looting of cultural heritage carried out by ISIL also known as Da’esh;

4. Reaffirms that those responsible for committing or otherwise responsible for terrorist acts, violations of international humanitarian law or violations or abuses of human rights must be held accountable;

5. Calls upon Member States that have the capacity to do so to take all necessary measures, in compliance with international law, in particular with the United Nations Charter, as well as international human rights, refugee and humanitarian law, on the territory under the control of ISIL also known as Da’esh, in Syria and Iraq, to redouble and coordinate their efforts to prevent and suppress terrorist acts committed specifically by ISIL also known as Da’esh as well as ANF, and all other individuals, groups, undertakings, and entities associated with Al Qaeda, and other terrorist groups, as designated by the United Nations Security Council, and as may further be agreed by the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) and endorsed by the UN Security Council, pursuant to the Statement of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) of 14 November, and to eradicate the safe haven they have established over significant parts of Iraq and Syria;

6. Urges Member States to intensify their efforts to stem the flow of foreign terrorist fighters to Iraq and Syria and to prevent and suppress the financing of terrorism, and urges all Member States to continue to fully implement the abovementioned resolutions;

7. Expresses its intention to swiftly update the 1267 committee sanctions list in order to better reflect the threat posed by ISIL also known as Da’esh;

8. Decides to remain seized of the matter.

Ayman al-Sanabani beamed as he entered his family’s home on his wedding day. He was greeting his new bride, Gamila, who was in a bedroom surrounded by friends. Ayman sat beside her for several minutes, receiving warm words of congratulations.

It would be the young couple’s first and only encounter as husband and wife.

The terrifying power of a bomb is how it can alter life so dramatically, so completely, so instantaneously. How it can crush concrete, rip apart flesh, and snuff out life. The moments before the pilot pulls the trigger and sends the missile screeching down choreograph the final dance with fate: another step forward into a room, a turn around a corner, a walk outside to get some air — trivial actions that determine everything afterward.

This power is a fact of life in Yemen now. It is brought forth by a coalition of Arab countries led by Saudi Arabia and supported by the United States. The airstrikes have been relentless since March, a period now of eight months. They are supposed to be targeting a local rebel group, but appear largely indiscriminate, regularly hitting civilian targets. Thousands of people have been killed. Human rights groups say some of these strikes amount to war crimes.

Twenty-six new graves outside the now-ruined home of the al-Sanabani family.
All together 43 people died when an airstrike tore through a wedding party on Oct. 7. 

Sharif Abdel Kouddous/GlobalPost

The al-Sanabani home sits on the crest of a small hill overlooking this village some 90 miles south of the capital, where low-slung houses are clustered near plots of yellowed farmland that are dotted by small trees. In the near horizon, reddish-brown mountains loom over the landscape. On any given day, it’s a beautiful place.

It was Oct. 7. Ayman and two of his brothers were all getting married in a joint ceremony. Hundreds of relatives and neighbors had come to take part. Their three-story house was brightly decorated. Colored lights draped down from the roof toward two large tents, which were erected to accommodate the vast numbers of guests. Children scampered outside, shooting fireworks into the night sky.

Fighter jets roared overhead but the guests paid little attention to the menacing sounds. Sanaban had never been targeted before. It was considered a safe place.

Shortly before 9:30 p.m., the three grooms — 22-year-old Abdel Rahman, 24-year-old Ayman, and 25-year-old Moayad — greeted their brides, who had just arrived in a large convoy from a nearby village.

Ayman left the bedroom where his new wife was sitting with her friends. He was climbing up to the second floor landing with his older brother when the missile struck. It was a direct hit, demolishing half the house in an instant. Gas tanks ignited, sending fire blazing through the rest of it. The air quickly filled with black smoke, dust, and screams. The women trapped indoors jumped out of windows to escape.

Ayman was blown across the hallway and hurled down the stairwell. He pulled himself up amid the chaos and tried to help others evacuate.

He would eventually find out, one by one, that his 18-year-old wife, Gamila; his younger brother, Abdel Rahman; his younger sister, Iman; his father, Mohamed; and his mother, Faiza, were all killed. They were among his 16 family members who died that night, including aunts, uncles, nephews and nieces.

Ayman al-Sanabani stands outside the wreckage of his family’s home. 

Sharif Abdel Kouddous/GlobalPost

The toll was not confined to them. In all, at least 43 people were killed in the attack, including 16 children. Dozens more were wounded, many of them sliced open by flying shrapnel and debris, others severely burned.

Among those injured was 15-year-old Abdullah al-Sanabani, a child prodigy who in 2012 won an international competition and a free visit to NASA headquarters for inventing a solar-powered remote controlled car that could flip over and become a boat. He was evacuated for treatment and now lies in a hospital in Boston in critical condition. In addition to undergoing numerous skin grafts, his right arm was amputated above the elbow and the two toes on his left foot were removed.

Immediately after the strike, survivors fled the scene out of fear that a second missile would follow, a tactic known coldly as a “double tap.” After 30 minutes of quiet, they went back to start digging out the bodies. With no electricity, they used flashlights and headlamps to work in the darkness. It took until 6 a.m. the next day to pull all the corpses from the rubble. It took even longer to collect the shredded body parts, which they put into plastic bags. A piece of someone’s hand was only discovered three days later.

Many of the bodies were either too charred or disfigured for family members to identify, known only by what they were wearing, a distinctive ring or watch. Others were identified through a grim process of elimination, by calculating who was missing.

“What can I say? My life has been made into nothing,” Ayman says a month later, standing in the wreckage of his family home. His large green eyes appear permanently bloodshot. He speaks softly, with a mid-distance stare that never seems to focus on anything. Relatives and neighbors — some of them on crutches, others bandaged — whisper that he is not all there anymore, his mind still trying to fathom an unfathomable loss. “If I had burned like them it would have been better,” he says.

Down the hill from the wreckage is an open plot of land with 26 fresh graves lined in neat rows. The white and gold headstones label the dead as martyrs.

“Why did a wedding become a target?” asks Alaa Ali al-Sanabani, a relative of the victims who was at the house the night of the attack. “We are asking for an independent investigation from an international body.”

Saudi Arabia has denied responsibility. “We did not have any operations there at that time,” Brig. Gen. Ahmed al-Asiri, the spokesperson for the coalition, told GlobalPost, adding somewhat impossibly that the strike instead came from the local rebel group the Saudis are fighting.

There is little rebel presence in Sanaban — no military posts visible in the village, no traces of any ground clashes. Meanwhile, multiple survivors interviewed separately said they heard fighter jets overhead minutes before the attack. Aside from US drones operating sporadically in some parts of the country, the Saudi coalition is the only air power flying above Yemen.

“The Saudis act with impunity, so it doesn’t matter,” said Hisham al-Omeisy, a political analyst based in Sanaa. “It’s not a big deal that they hit a wedding. Since the beginning of the war they have denied pretty much everything.”

THE BACKGROUND

Houthi gunmen brandish their weapons on March 26 in Sanaa.

Getty Images

Saudi Arabia launched its war in Yemen on March 26 to drive back a rebel group known as the Houthis. The Houthis arose in the late 1980s as a religious and cultural revivalist movement of Zaidism, a heterodox Shiite sect found almost exclusively in northern Yemen. The Houthis became more politically active in 2003, vocally opposing President Ali Abdullah Saleh for his backing of the US invasion of Iraq.

Saleh was an ally of the United States and Saudi Arabia. He was also an authoritarian ruler known for extravagant corruption. A UN study estimated the leader amassed up to $60 billion during his 33 years in power. Saleh managed to navigate his way through Yemen’s complex web of tribal, regional and geopolitical divides. It was a feat so delicate and dangerous he famously described it as “dancing on the heads of snakes.”

The Yemeni leader successfully positioned himself as an ally of the United States in the ongoing “war on terror” by allowing US forces to operate inside Yemen, and their Predator drones to target Al Qaeda militants based in the country.

Saleh used his Special Operations Forces, trained and equipped by the United States, in his own battles with the northern Houthis, against whom he fought six brutal wars between 2004 and 2010.

 Members of the Yemeni-American community protest the visit to the US of embattled outgoing

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh on February 2, 2012 in New York.

Getty Images

While Saleh’s guile allowed him to remain in power, it did little to benefit the Yemeni people. They became some of the hungriest and most severely malnourished on the planet. So when Yemenis watched Egyptians and Tunisians take down their own corrupt leaders in the Arab Spring uprisings, they were quick to follow. The Houthis joined them. After securing promises of immunity for his crimes, Saleh finally agreed to step down in November 2011.

His vice president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, assumed office as interim president in a transition brokered by members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes Saudi Arabia. It was backed by the United States.

Sidelined in the agreement, the Houthis positioned themselves as an opposition group, gaining support beyond their northern base for their criticisms of the transition, which was flawed and riddled with corruption. Saleh loyalists, incredibly, began forming alliances of convenience with the Houthis.

Last year the well-armed Houthis swept down from the north and took over large parts of the country, including Sanaa. In January 2015, they effectively ousted Hadi and his cabinet members, who fled to Saudi Arabia on March 25.

The next day, Saudi Arabia put together a coalition and began its military campaign with support from the United States. The Saudis and the Americans hoped to restore the friendly Yemeni government they knew. Saudi Arabia also hoped to counter what it perceives as a growing regional threat posed by Iran. Saudi Arabia believes Iran is backing the Houthis, although the level of that support is disputed.

More than 5,700 people, including at least 2,577 civilians — 637 of them children — have been killed in the eight months Saudi Arabia has been bombing Yemen, according to the United Nations. The UN expects the actual toll to be even higher because many of the dead or injured never reach medical facilities and so go unrecorded.

The Houthis and their allies have been implicated in the deaths of hundreds of civilians, often by indiscriminate shelling and the planting of landmines. But the UN says the majority of civilian deaths have come from the coalition’s aerial bombing campaign, which has been relentless.

A joint report by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the UK-based charity Action on Armed Violence in September concluded that 60 percent of civilian deaths and injuries were caused by airstrikes. Meanwhile, a report by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights found that “almost two-thirds of reported civilian deaths had allegedly been caused by coalition airstrikes, which were also responsible for almost two-thirds of damaged or destroyed civilian public buildings,” the OHCHR spokesman, Rupert Colville, said in a news briefing in September.

Al-Asiri, the coalition spokesman, dismissed the UN’s claims. “I think this is not a very accurate report that they are publishing,” he said. “If we want to discuss this statement let’s first make sure that there are civilian casualties caused by airstrikes. Where is the evidence for that?”

In Yemen the evidence is everywhere.

THE CAPITAL

An airstrike destroyed the home of Hafzallah al-Ayani, a vegetable merchant, in the UNESCO world heritage site of the Old City of Sanaa. An estimated 130 houses surrounding the area were damaged. The entire al-Anyi family was killed as they sat down to dinner.

Rawan Shaif/GlobalPost

In Sanaa’s historic old city, which has been inhabited for more than 2,500 years, an airstrike smashed into the house of Hafzallah al-Ayani at about 11:30 p.m. on Sept. 19, burying him, his wife and their eight children beneath the rubble of their home. They were sitting together having dinner, the children aged between 4 years old and 17. Three neighbors sitting outside the house next door were also killed. The father of one of those victims, Mohamed Assaba, has kept three foot-long missile fragments as evidence. They are incredibly dense and heavy, with the terrifying jagged edges of bomb shrapnel.

All of the surrounding ancient buildings in the al-Felahi neighborhood have been badly damaged, and many of the residents have been forced to leave.

 The ancient quarter of the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, which is listed as a UNESCO world heritage site.

Rawan Shaif/GlobalPost

Saoud al-Alafi, 42, lived next door to the al-Ayani family, not more than 15 yards away. “If we had any Houthi leaders here at all I could maybe understand why they targeted it, but there are only civilians here,” al-Alafi said. “Their aim is to terrorize us.”

He describes what happened Sept. 19: An initial airstrike in the distance prompted him to step outside his front door to search the sky for clues. It was then that he heard the warplane overhead, followed by the deafening screech of a missile. He says he didn’t hear the blast, only that he was thrown to the ground. When he stood up the air was filled with dust and smoke. It took him and other residents until 8:30 a.m. the following morning to dig out the bodies. Two of the children still had food in their mouths.

“One of the first steps to solve a problem is to recognize there is a problem,” said Farea al-Muslimi, a Yemen analyst at the Carnegie Middle East Center. “If the Saudis don’t see that there have been hundreds and thousands of Yemenis killed in the last few months by airstrikes I think the problem is much, much worse than everyone thinks.”

Traveling through Yemen’s northern Houthi-controlled cities and towns offers a panorama of the vicious aerial assault. Homes, schools, mosques, retail stores, restaurants, marketplaces, government offices, gas stations, power plants, telecommunications facilities, factories, bridges, roads, and UNESCO World Heritage sites have all been hit.

Some of the airstrikes display a high degree of precision. On the road north toward Saada, all four bridges — none of them spanning more than 20 yards in length — were struck directly in the center, causing them to buckle and rendering them impassable. The lack of any visible missile craters nearby indicates they were hit with pinpoint accuracy in a single strike.

Asiri, the coalition spokesman, brushed off criticism that the coalition has targeted civilian infrastructure. “Please don’t be too naive, we are in a war,” he said. “We are talking about military operations, we are not talking about a soccer game.”

HAYDAN

 

A hospital guard sweeps away debris from an airstrike. The roof of the hospital had been painted with the logo of Doctors Without Borders so that jets conducting airstrikes would know this facility was being run by the international aid organization.

Rawan Shaif/GlobalPost

But even in war there are rules. Medical facilities, for example, are afforded a special protected status under international humanitarian law, and are supposed to be off-limits from attacks of any kind.

On the night of Oct. 26, doctors at the only hospital in Haydan had just finished another arduous day of work. Haydan is a village in the north, less than 20 miles east of the Saudi Arabian border. A man had been brought in that day with severe wounds to his head, shoulder and abdomen. Akram Ghoutheya, an assistant doctor who had been at the hospital for three years, worked frantically for one and a half hours with other members of the medical team to stabilize the patient before sending him to a better-equipped hospital in Saada City, the provincial capital, about 40 miles away.

Huddled in Yemen’s northern highlands, Haydan is stunningly picturesque. The mountainous terrain is decorated with terraced farming and is lush with verdant qat trees. Stone houses on hilltops overlook the valley below. The natural beauty, however, is now marred by the bombardments.

On the main market street, no building has been left untouched. The airstrikes have damaged every single store. Rooftops have collapsed, facades have been ripped off. Rubble lines the unpaved roads. The town’s school, electrical plant and water infrastructure were all bombed. Most of the residents have fled, leaving the streets desolate. Those who remain stay indoors after sunset. They say not a day goes by without one or two air raids. On some days, dozens of missiles rain down.

Located on the edge of town, residents considered the hospital Haydan’s only safe zone. The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) supported the hospital and regularly shared its GPS coordinates with the Saudi-led coalition. The roof of the facility was clearly identified with the MSF logo.

It was around 10:30 p.m. when Akram finally sat down for dinner with about a dozen other staff members in the hospital’s living quarters, located in the back of the building. Minutes later, a missile smashed into the emergency room, not more than 20 yards away.

Akram was hit on the head by flying glass and debris but was only lightly injured. Terrified, he helped evacuate the only two patients at the hospital — a father and his infant son — and fled out the back, taking cover in a plot of qat trees as the rest of the staff scattered in all directions.

Five minutes later a second strike hit. Several more followed. In total, between three and six missiles targeted the hospital, completely demolishing the emergency room, outpatient and inpatient departments, the lab and the maternity ward.

“It felt like Armegeddon. People were screaming like never before because they felt that now nowhere was safe,” Akram says. “This was the one place of sanctuary.”

Most of the facility now lies in ruins, reduced to chunks of rubble and twisted rebar. A pack of stray dogs has made it home. They pick their way through the shredded concrete, avoiding the flocks of crows that perch on bent metal gurneys.

“It was a shock to see Haydan targeted,” says Mike Seawright, the MSF emergency coordinator in Saada. “It’s not just MSF, when the health care structure is treated as part of the conflict, this is against international law. The premise of a hospital is sacrosanct.”

A family living next door to the MSF hospital that was destroyed in Haydan.
Their home was also bombed and is now in ruins. “We have nowhere else to go,” the mother said.

Rawan Shaif/GlobalPost

The Saudis have offered contradictory accounts of what happened. Immediately after the attack, coalition spokesman Asiri denied that the coalition was conducting airstrikes in the vicinity of the hospital at the time. Hours later, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the UN told VICE News that the hospital was hit by mistake because MSF had provided incorrect coordinates. The next day the ambassador reversed his account and denied the coalition was operating near the hospital. When asked by GlobalPost, Asiri would not comment, saying only that the incident was still being investigated.

International rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have said the attack may amount to a war crime.

While no one was killed in the bombing, the destruction of the hospital will no doubt have fatal consequences. As the only functioning medical facility for miles, it was a lifeline for the surrounding towns and villages and provided medical care for about 200,000 people. At times, the hospital would receive as many as 50 cases or more a day, according to doctors who worked there. The closest medical facility is now the Gomhouri hospital in Saada City, which is about 40 miles eastward on a road that winds slowly through the mountains.

“The effect of the hospital bombing will be huge on everyone in the area,” said Walid Abkar, a doctor who works at the hospital and was inside at the time of the attack. “People will die in large numbers, from wounds and from illness, especially children.”

Aside from war injuries, the hospital received patients suffering from a variety of ailments, including malnutrition, dehydration, malaria and pneumonia. “We don’t know what to do now,” Walid said. “We have nothing here, if we build another [hospital] they will just bomb it again. You need a safe space for treatment.”

The MSF hospital in Haydan is just one of dozens of similar facilities that have been hit. Nearly 70 health institutions have been damaged or destroyed during the conflict, according to the UN.

“The world has no safe places anymore,” Akram said. “No world body can stop this. Not the [UN] Security Council, nothing. Saudi Arabia has bought them all.”

US COMPLICITY

Yemeni men protest outside the UN office in Sanaa on Nov. 2, 2015.

Getty Images

It’s easy to see why Akram would think that.

In September, UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein released a report that detailed the heavy civilian toll in Yemen. He recommended establishing an independent international inquiry into human rights abuses and violations of international law in the conflict.

The Netherlands responded with a draft resolution that would have mandated a UN mission to document violations by all sides over the previous year. But in the face of stiff resistance from Saudi Arabia and its Gulf partners, and little support from Western governments — including the United States — the Dutch withdrew the proposal.

Instead, the UN Human Rights Council passed by consensus a new resolution drafted by Saudi Arabia that made no reference to any independent international inquiry. The text only calls for the UN to provide “technical assistance” for a national commission of inquiry set up by the Yemeni government of President Hadi, which is backed by Saudi Arabia and a party to the war.

“By failing to set up a serious UN inquiry on war-torn Yemen, the Human Rights Council squandered an important chance to deter further abuses,” Philippe Dam, the deputy director at Human Rights Watch in Geneva, said in a statement. “The US, UK, and France appear to have capitulated to Saudi Arabia with little or no fight, astoundingly allowing the very country responsible for serious violations in Yemen to write the resolution and protect itself from scrutiny.”

The United States has backed the Saudi-led coalition with arms sales as well as direct military support and coordination, raising questions about the level of American complicity in the airstrikes.

Since the escalation of the conflict in March, the United States has provided the coalition with vital intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and logistics information, according to US Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees all military operations in the Middle East.

Eight days after the bombing campaign began, the US began providing crucial aerial refueling to Saudi Arabia and its partners. As of Nov. 20, US tankers had flown 489 refueling sorties to top off the tanks of coalition warplanes 2,554 times, according to numbers provided to GlobalPost by the Defense Department.

Smoke billows after an air-strike by Saudi-led coalition on May 11, 2015 in Sanaa.

 Getty Images

The US military is also advising the coalition through what is known as the “Joint Combined Planning Cell,” which was authorized by US President Barack Obama, according to Capt. P. Bryant Davis, a CENTCOM media operations officer. The joint cell is based in Riyadh, where US military personnel regularly meet with senior Saudi military leadership.

In addition to logistical support and intelligence sharing, the joint cell provides “targeting assistance” to the Saudi coalition, though CENTCOM stressed that the “selection and final vetting of targets” is done by coalition members, not the United States.

“There’s actually a small number of US military personnel sitting in Riyadh in a military capacity helping to coordinate airstrikes. That’s a game changer,” says Belkis Wille, the Yemen researcher for Human Rights Watch. “It goes beyond the US just being a supporter of the coalition … they are actually a part of this armed conflict.”

When asked what steps the US military takes to prevent civilian casualties in Yemen, CENTCOM said the joint cell recommends that the Saudi military “investigate all incidents of civilian casualties allegedly caused by airstrikes and has asked that the coalition reveal the results of these investigations publicly.”

Since the beginning of the war, Human Rights Watch has documented more than two dozen airstrikes that the group said “appeared to be in violation of the laws of war.” The rights group said it has not been able to ascertain that Saudi Arabia or other coalition members are investigating a single airstrike.

Officials at CENTCOM declined to answer whether the US military in any way reviews the toll on civilians afflicted by coalition airstrikes.

Meanwhile, the US continues to send billions of dollars worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies.

 Yemenis clear the rubble of houses in the old city of Sanaa, a UNESCO-listed heritage site, on June 15, 2015, after an airstrike.
Getty Images

In November, the State Department approved a $1.29 billion deal to replenish Saudi Arabia’s air force arsenal, depleted by its bombing campaign in Yemen. The sale includes thousands of air-to-ground munitions such as laser-guided bombs, bunker buster bombs and “general purpose” bombs with guidance systems.

Saudi Arabia has been one of the US arms industry’s most avid customers. Between October 2010 and October 2014, the US signed off on more than $90 billion in weapons deals with the Saudi government, according to the Congressional Research Service. US arms manufacturers have also sold billions of dollars’ worth of material to the other Gulf states that are participating in the bombing of Yemen, including the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

The Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency said the latest acquisition will “enable Saudi Arabia to meet regional threats and safeguard the world’s largest oil reserves.”

Congress has 30 days to block the sale. In October, Democratic members of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee managed to delay a separate planned transfer of weapons, including thousands of precision-guided munitions, to Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, thirteen members of Congress sent a letter to Obama urging greater efforts to avoid civilian casualties in Yemen, “in order to protect innocent lives and reduce the potential for backlash against US interests.”

State Department officials told GlobalPost that when deciding whether or not to approve weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, it weighs both political and economic interests, as well as human rights considerations. “We have to take all these factors into account and clearly human rights is definitely a concern … we have asked the Saudi government to investigate all credible reports [of civilian casualties].”

Human rights advocates, however, say the United States should be conducting its own reviews.

“If an airstrike takes place, and there’s reason to believe that it was a US bomb that killed dozens of civilians, the US actually has an obligation to investigate that specific strike and we have so far not seen any announcement that the US is carrying out that type of investigative function in any airstrike,” said HRW’s Wille.

CLUSTER BOMBS

 Hasna Al-Hanash, 3, and her Father. Hasna was injured alongside her grandmother when unexploded cluster munitions fell all around them.
Rawan Shaif

The US and other countries have also sold internationally banned cluster munitions to Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners. And those cluster bombs are being used in Yemen.

Neither the United States, nor Saudi Arabia — nor any other member of the coalition bombing Yemen — is party to the 2008 international treaty banning cluster munitions. The treaty has been signed by more than 100 governments because of the devastating effects cluster bombs can have on civilian communities.

The village of al-Mifaa is essentially a group of mud brick houses nestled in farmland some 10 miles northwest of Saada City. It was there that Hasna Gomaa sat by her 3 year-old granddaughter, watching her play on a swing made of rubber piping and cloth. It was 11:30 a.m. on Oct. 27.

She heard a soft boom overhead, though it wasn’t nearly loud enough to be a missile strike. She paid it little mind. What she didn’t know was that dozens of cluster bombs were raining down toward her and her grandchild.

Cluster bombs contain dozens of submunitions that are released in mid-air and scatter indiscriminately over a wide area.

The bomblets fell all around Gomaa and her granddaughter. One hit the tree branches above them while several others exploded next to them. Three-year-old Hasna, named after her grandmother, was thrown off the swing as shrapnel flew into her leg. The elder Hasna was also hit, with shrapnel slicing through her right thigh and left ankle.

One of the tubes used to carry sub-munitions in cluster bombs, found in Saada.

 Rawan Shaif/GlobalPost

“So many fell on us,” the grandmother, who is in her 50s, later said. “If you saw it you would have wondered how we are still alive.”

They were both bleeding profusely. The girl’s father, Mohamed Ahsan, rushed outside and carried his daughter and mother into a nearby hole the family had dug to escape airstrikes. They wrapped little Hasna’s leg in a scarf to try to stem the bleeding. The family stayed crouched in the makeshift bomb shelter for several harrowing minutes, unsure if another attack would come. When Hasna fell unconscious they climbed out to rush her to a nearby hospital.

Three days later, Mohamed is holding little Hasna outside their house. Her left leg is wrapped in thick bandages and she cries out in pain when he shifts her in his arms. Her grandmother and namesake limps beside them. “If I had died it would have been OK, but not her,” she says.

Abdel Aziz al-Nahari was not as fortunate. The same cluster bombs sent shrapnel into his chest and abdomen and he began to bleed internally. He now lies on a cot in Saada’s Gomhouri hospital. The right side of his body is bandaged from armpit to thigh. He is too frail to talk. A tube protrudes from his chest, draining blood. He has undergone three operations and needs additional surgery to remove the shrapnel still stuck inside him.

Faisal al-Hanash saw the bombs exploding in the sky. He says metal pipes filled with bomblets that came out of two separate rockets were spinning as they fell through the air, spreading their deadly cargo over at least a square mile. He holds up one of the meter-long pipes as proof. “This is an illegal weapon, why are they using it on us?” he asks.

The cluster bombs landed all over the farmland where the family grows cucumbers, tomatoes and pomegranates. Many ripped holes through the thin plastic sheets that cover crops before exploding on the ground, destroying some of the plants. Damage from shrapnel like this is evident in several parts of the village.

A cluster munition believed to be made in Brazil lies half buried in a cucumber field in Sadaa, Yemen.

 Rawan Shaif/GlobalPost

Cluster bomblets have a high “dud” rate — meaning a high percentage of them fail to explode on impact and become de-facto mines.

Residents of the village of al-Haneya, which is close to al-Mifaa, say dozens of cluster bombs landed on their farmland days before on Oct. 21. They had no choice but to try to remove them if they wanted to farm their crops. Nineteen year-old Ahmed Gomaa was trying to push an unexploded bomblet away using a long stick when it exploded. He was hit with shrapnel in the forearm and leg and now walks with a crutch.

“I was afraid but I had to do it to be able to work,” he says, lying down in his family house. “People continued trying to remove them even after I was injured.” His father, Abdullah Gomaa, sits beside him.

“I am afraid to walk in the fields now,” his father says. “This is a crime, we can’t farm our land because of this.”

While human rights groups and the UN have repeatedly warned of atrocities in Yemen, the conflict shows no signs of relenting. The exiled president has lost credibility across the political spectrum and Saudi Arabia’s stated goal of returning his government to rule is unrealistic at best.

The coalition has forced the Houthis to retreat from some southern areas, including the port city of Aden. But fierce ground fighting is ongoing in cities like Taiz and elsewhere. Neither the Houthis nor the Saudis appear capable of securing a clear military victory over the whole country. In the mean time, groups like Al Qaeda and the nascent Islamic State are taking advantage of the power vacuum. Al Qaeda now controls Yemen’s fifth-largest city.

With no obvious exit strategy, the coalition continues its heavy bombing. Yemenis feel the international community has forsaken them. They say the world’s media has largely ignored them.

AQBAN

Hudeidah, the country’s fourth-largest city, and home to 400,000 people, is world-renowned for its fishing industry. But its fishermen are now the targets of airstrikes.

 Rawan Shaif/GlobalPost

One of the deadliest attacks by the Saudis in recent weeks received hardly any coverage in the foreign press. It took place not on Yemen’s mainland but at sea.

The small Red Sea island of Aqban, some 25 miles west of mainland Yemen’s coast, is shaped like a diving whale. Protected from the open sea by a coral reef, its crystal blue waters provide the ideal sanctuary for Yemeni fishermen to anchor and rest when heavy winds come in.

This is where Abdo al-Baghawi’s boat was headed on the morning of Oct. 22. Al-Baghawi is 52. He has a wiry frame and a bushy beard. He’s been fishing these waters for 30 years. It had been an unremarkable night’s work. The crew of a dozen or so men had set out on a zawraq — a traditional, wooden Yemeni boat — just before sunset the day before and fished all night, as is their routine.

On the boat with Abdo was his cousin’s son, Ali, whose hazel eyes and boyish looks made him appear far younger than his 39 years. Mohamed Suleiman, a compact 26-year old who lived in a neighboring village, was also with them. Other zawraqs were working not far away. Most of the men aboard were from a cluster of villages near Beit Faqih, about 40 miles southwest of the port city of Hudeidah. They had all fished alongside each other for many years.

After daybreak they hauled in their nets and set course for the island, where they would sleep through the morning and afternoon before fishing again the following night.

They reached Aqban at about 10 a.m. There were at least seven other zawraqs and a couple dozen smaller wooden skiffs accompanying them. The small flotilla dropped anchor in the calm waters a few hundred meters from shore. Abdo lay down to rest with the others. The fishermen were fast asleep when the first missile struck, violently yanking them out of their dreams and into a living nightmare.

The first airstrike hit the boat adjacent to Abdo’s at about 11:30 a.m., shattering the hull into small fragments of broken wood. “Like a deck of cards being thrown in the air,” is how Mohamed later described it.

Jolted awake, Abdo looked around in horror and confusion. There was nothing left of the boat next to him but the fishing net. Seventeen of the 20 men on board had been killed. He heard two men screaming but he couldn’t see any bodies in the water.

 

Mohamed Suleiman lies convalescing in a hut in his home village near Beit al-Faqih in Hudeidah province. His spine was partially broken when coalition warplanes targeted the fishing boat he was sleeping in on Oct. 22. At least 42 were killed in the attack.

 Rawan Shaif/GlobalPost

He didn’t know whether to jump in the sea or try to sail away. Amid the panic, a crewman shouted, “the next strike will be for us.” They all said the shehada — the Muslim affirmation of faith that is recited when one expects to die. Moments later the second missile slammed into them.

Abdo found himself under water. He didn’t know what was happening. His foot had been fractured but the pain didn’t register. He said another prayer and surfaced. The bow was all that remained of the zawraq. He swam toward the wreckage trying to find other survivors, screaming names but no one answered. Eight of the thirteen men on board were dead.

He decided to swim for Aqban. Then he saw Ali and a few others not far away also struggling to make it to the beach. With two boats destroyed, the fishermen on the remaining vessels were scrambling off of theirs, diving into the water in a panic before the next strike.

Mohamed was also blown into the water by the force of the blast. Something was wrong with his back and he couldn’t move properly. Struggling to stay afloat he grabbed onto a piece of wood and looked around. There were corpses floating next to him. One man was decapitated. Another man had his arm torn off. His spine partially broken, Mohamed clung helplessly to the floating debris until a skiff finally picked him up and took him to shore.

The men all collapsed on the beach. The pain from their injuries now made itself known. Some were burned and screaming in agony. Many of them couldn’t walk and were crawling on the sand. Ali, whose right knee was broken and left thigh split open, passed out.

The air assault did not stop. For the next hour and a half, missiles rained down every 10 minutes, destroying the remaining boats and pounding the island itself. After about five strikes, Abdo said he saw an Apache helicopter swoop in and strafe the shallow waters 30 meters from shore, killing at least one of his colleagues, Mohamed Abdullah Hadi.

At about 1 p.m. the assault finally ended. Other fishing boats eventually arrived to evacuate those left alive.

At least 42 fishermen died in the attack. The Ministry of Justice in Houthi-controlled Hudeidah listed their names in a report. The report, obtained by GlobalPost, documented the casualties from four of the boats. The International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed the toll. Many of the bodies were only found days later, floating off the islands. Photographs of their corpses show them grotesquely bloated and disfigured.

Survivors say many bodies are still missing. They believe the toll is well over 100. Tamim al-Shami, the Houthi spokesman for the Ministry of Health in Sanaa, said 140 fishermen were killed, but those figures could not be independently confirmed. The International Committee of the Red Cross says the likelihood of those presumed missing being found are “very slim.”

Ali al-Baghawi worked as a fisherman for 21 years. He was injured in an aerial attack at sea that killed dozens of his friends and colleagues. Though fishing was his livelihood he now says he will never return to the water.

 Rawan Shaif/GlobalPost

“Only God knows why they attacked us,” Ali says. “Can’t they see us with all this surveillance technology?” His arm is scarred by shrapnel and his right leg is wrapped from thigh to ankle, the bone held together by clamps attached to a protruding metal rod. A fisherman for 21 years, he now says he feels nauseous when he thinks of the sea and will never go back.

Saudi Arabia claimed the seven boats were smuggling weapons and military equipment. It released aerial footage showing the boats in the water and one of them being destroyed in a massive airstrike. “We are sure 100 percent that they were smuggling weapons from the big ships to small boats,” Asiri, the coalition’s spokesman, told GlobalPost.

Survivors interviewed separately say they never saw any weapons on Aqban and that there were no boats among them other than fishing vessels. They say the small skiffs routinely accompany zarwaqs when going out to fish. In Hudeiah’s harbor, scores of skiffs can be seen anchored near the larger boats.

“I never felt scared in Aqban, it was always safe,” Mohamed says. He lies convalescing on a mattress in a small hut in his home village. His back is wrapped in a brace and he is unable to move. “I never saw any weapons, it was just us fishermen.”

Two days before the attack, an Apache helicopter had passed overhead as the fishermen were out at sea, but Abdo thought nothing of it. Coalition warships had been patrolling the waters for months and they had never had any trouble before. “I wasn’t scared,” Abdo says. “I didn’t think they would hunt us the way we hunt the fish.”

Sharif Abdel Kouddous is a fellow at The Nation Institute. Additional reporting for this piece was provided by Amal al-Yarisi.

An active shooter situation is currently underway in the 1300 block of South Waterman Avenue in San Bernardino, California.

The shooting apparently took place at the Inland Regional Center, which is a facility that provides services for people who have developmental disabilities. The facility had just celebrated its Christmas party.

The ICF Holiday Party is in full swing! ☃ pic.twitter.com/AzOCbliVmb

— Inland RC (@InlandRegional) December 1, 2015

While details are scarce, what we have been told by authorities is that police are looking for 1-3 shooters and there are approximately 20 victims, with 12 being presumed dead.

Fox Los Angeles reports that the suspects are “white males” in “military gear” and armed with “rifles.”

Triage centers set up in 1300 block of Waterman. Watch live: https://t.co/2Cdl5xDph1pic.twitter.com/uHGTBHeQvJ

According to KTLA, police have warned people not to talk to the media. At one point during the KTLA live stream, the reporter attempted to interview a witness and multiple officers rushed up and pushed the reporters and the witnesses apart. Below is a screen grab from the live stream showing confrontation.

image: http://tftppull.freethoughtllc.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Capture3.jpg

After the shooting began, San Bernardino Police Department Lt. Richard Lawhead said that their SWAT team happened to be conducting training nearby. The team was suited, “ready to roll” and responded rapidly, Lawhead said.

Nearby police training was underway, response was fast b/c of that. https://t.co/2RirZrapiZ #SanBernardinoShooting pic.twitter.com/ANUautdtUA

— Good Day Atlanta (@GoodDayAtlanta) December 2, 2015

What makes this noteworthy is that this is not the first time that emergency drills for the exact scenario unfolding were taking place at virtually the same moment the actual terrorist attacks began.

Paris-area emergency personnel and ambulance crews were taking part in a simulated emergency exercise on the very same day the Paris terrorist attacks took place.

During the 9/11 attacks on the U.S., North American Aerospace Defense Command’s (NORAD) was in the midst of a training exercise called Vigilant Guardian, which “coincidentally” simulated planes being hijacked by terrorists.

The Free Thought Project has heard from a source on the ground, that the target inside the Inland Regional Center was a gathering of government officials. This was confirmed by KTLA and Marybeth Feild, president and CEO of the Inland Regional Center, told the Associated Press that “the incident is in the conference area” at the center rented by an outside group, which she couldn’t identify.

As of 4:15 EST on Wednesday, the reason behind these tragic shootings and the identity the shooters remains unknown. We will keep updating this article as we find new information.

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Update: (4:22 EST) The Loma Linda Level 1 trauma center in the area has only taken in 4 victims and expect 3 more, 2.5 hours after the shooting.

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Update: (5:42 EST) Fourteen people were killed and about 14 were hospitalized with injuries after up to three shooters opened fire with long guns inside the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino Wednesday, according to the city’s police chief.

“Up to three people had entered the building and opened fire on people inside the building,” Burguan said. “Information that I think is probably the most reliable at this point is that the suspects have fled, potentially in a dark-colored SUV.”

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Update: (8:00 EST) Obama calls for gun control in wake of shooting.

.@POTUS “We have a pattern now of mass shootings in this country that has no parallel anywhere else in the world.” https://t.co/x359c0M0ZX

— CNN (@CNN) December 3, 2015

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Update: (8:40 EST) Two suspects, 1 male, 1 female, dead at scene. Suspects had assault rifles, handguns. Read more at http://thefreethoughtproject.com/breaking-swat-team-drill-turns-real-mass-shooting-scenario-san-bernadino-ca/#eYWihZcgAWvSYa8h.99

Police chief on #SanBernardino shooting: Of the suspects that are dead at the scene, one is a male, one is a female https://t.co/dcZwleQNrY

— CNN (@CNN) December 3, 2015

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Update: (9:16 EST) Despite multiple online rumors of the shooter being an immigrant or refugee, a federal law enforcement source said they believe the lead shooter to be a U.S. Citizen.
Read more at http://thefreethoughtproject.com/breaking-swat-team-drill-turns-real-mass-shooting-scenario-san-bernadino-ca/#eYWihZcgAWvSYa8h.99

Calif shooting: Despite the potential international terrorism angle, authorities believe the lead gunman was a U.S. citizen.

— Rick Serrano (@RickSerranoLAT) December 3, 2015

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Update: (9:26 EST) Law enforcement officials have identified Syed Farook as one of the suspected shooters who attacked a center for the disabled in San Bernardino, California, according to NBC News.

Farook, who also went by his middle name, Raheel, was a business taxes representative for the California State Board of Equalization, according to his LinkedIn profile. He is a 2003 graduate La Sierra High School, and most recently studied finance at California State University Fullerton until 2013.

Records show Farook bought a two bedroom Corona home in March 2014. Farook’s social media profile shows he is married and has at least one young child. His wife did not return messages left on Wednesday, according to the Daily Beast.

On November 29, 1947, after Great Britain–the mandatory power in Palestine–had asked the United Nations to meet in a special session to discuss the “problem of Palestine,” the General Assembly passed Resolution 181 (II) to end the British mandate by August 1, 1948. The centerpiece of this historic resolution, however, was to partition Palestine and call for the establishment, after a transition period, of “Independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem.”

This United Nations decision unleashed a catastrophe whose reverberations Palestinians continue to experience until today. Three-quarters of a million Palestinian Arabs–who were the majority of the population of historic Palestine–fled for their lives after experiencing or learning of massacres by Zionist paramilitary organizations, or were expelled from their homes during the ensuing Arab-Israeli war of 1948. By the 1949 armistice, the original partition lines had shifted violently so that Israel’s footprint became much larger than envisioned by the proposed partition plan–it was accorded 55 percent by the plan, but seized an additional 23 percent of Palestinian territory.

At present, the drastically reduced Palestinian land continues to be occupied by the Israeli military and Jerusalem is occupied and divided with Israel controlling and limiting access to religious sites. Palestinians originally displaced during the Nakba (the Arabic word for Catastrophe–what the Palestinians call the 1948 war when they lost their homeland) are still prevented from exercising the right to return to their homes in what is now Israel. And contrary to the resolution (and to the Fourth Geneva Convention) Israel has expropriated additional vast tracts of Palestinian territory for its own use and especially for the building and transfer of its own Israeli citizens to illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land.

Thirty years after the UN partition plan, the General Assembly passed a new resolution proclaiming an annual observation, on November 29th, to mark the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. The particular date, the UN notes, “was chosen because of its meaning and significance to the Palestinian people… Of the two States to be created under this resolution, only one, Israel, has so far come into being.”

UN Resolutions and subsequent General Assembly mandates enshrine the annual International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. The United Nations describes the day as providing “an opportunity for the international community to focus its attention on the fact that the question of Palestine remained unresolved and that the Palestinian people are yet to attain their inalienable rights as defined by the General Assembly, namely, the right to self-determination without external interference, the right to national independence and sovereignty, and the right to return to their homes and property from which they had been displaced.”

The fact is that this historic dislocation has resulted in a massive diaspora for the Palestinian people living in the Palestinian territories, Israel, Arab countries, and beyond. The total population of Palestinians numbered about 11.8 million as of the end of 2013, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. This figure comprises 4.5 million in Palestine, 1.4 million in Israel, 5.2 million in Arab countries, and approximately 665,000 in other countries throughout the world.

Despite numerous declarations and resolutions by the United Nations concerning Israel and Palestine, the status of the Palestinian people remains unresolved, precarious, and unjust. They have not attained their rights to “self-determination without external interference, the right to national independence and sovereignty, and the right to return to their homes and property from which they had been displaced.” In fact, about half of the world’s Palestinian population continues to live as refugees and in exile. Those who are citizens of Israel are treated as second class citizens, while those in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem live under various levels of repressive military occupation and witness, daily, the continued expansion of illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.

Although UN member states have tried since the late forties to propose and gain support for resolutions that push for Palestinian human and national rights, their efforts have largely been derailed, particularly in the form of vetoes by powerful members such as the United States. At the same time, it is also important to remember that many UN agencies, especially UNRWA (the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees), have played a crucial role in providing assistance to the refugees since 1950; UNRWA continues to serve as a lifeline to Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan.

A wave of ongoing violence has included heinous attacks, stabbings, shootings and vehicular attacks causing immense suffering among Israeli and Palestinian families alike – but mostly on the Palestinian side. Illegal settlement activities and settler-related violence have continued, along with punitive demolitions of Palestinian- owned homes and structure.

136 countries recognize the State of Palestine and its flag flies at the United Nations next to those of all Member States. However, these advances are not felt by children in Gaza or by the residents of Nablus, Hebron and East Jerusalem …What they feel instead is a lack of hope that their lives will change for the better and that they will be citizens of a State able to ensure their freedom and well-being through peace with their neighbours.

The Palestinian leader Dr. Mustapha Barghouti has argued that International solidarity day “confirms the continuity of the Palestinian uprising”. International solidarity day has seen hundreds of demonstrations and activities in solidarity with Palestine take place across the world. This highlights the international solidarity with the Palestinian people alongside the tremendous growth of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign.

International solidarity day yesterday was observed in the occupied Palestinian territories, where demonstrations swept the region. This confirms the continuity of the Palestinian uprising.

These were non-violent popular demonstrations, however, as usual; they were countered with Israel violence. The uprising is enhancing solidarity with Palestine all over the world.

Nelson Mandela, the late leader of South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle, described the issue of Palestine as, “the greatest moral issue of our time.” The level of solidarity, on an international scale, reflects his message.  On the other hand, Israeli oppression has now taken the lives of 103 Palestinians and injured 12000 since October. This oppression, which is now isolating and ghettoizing communities in the West bank and Jerusalem, is additional proof of the aggressive and racist policy of the Israeli occupation state. It will only lead to greater isolation of Israel in the international community.

On the side of hope, it must be noted that Palestine is currently witness to a wave of genuine solidarity initiatives. . In this month alone, the European Commission adopted new guidelines for labeling products and goods produced in the illegal settlements in Occupied Palestine (This move is a modest first step, and such labeling should develop into a total boycott of all settlements and settlers); the American Anthropological Association became the largest U.S. academic organization to approve a boycott of Israeli institutions and to affirm the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement; and the British Labour Party’s National Executive Committee voted to boycott private security company G4S for its direct involvement with Israeli prisons. Hanan Ashrawi describes these actions as ones that “send an important message of hope and encouragement to our people – the popular non-violent struggle for Palestinian inalienable rights in the face of the belligerent occupier is possible, and our continued steadfastness and commitment to freedom will not end in vain”.

Israeli oppression has now taken the lives of 103 Palestinians and injured 12000 since October.

This oppression, which is now isolating and ghettoizing communities in the West bank and Jerusalem, is additional proof of the aggressive and racist policy of the Israeli occupation state. It will only lead to greater isolation of Israel in the international community.

The International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People honors all those who have struggled for Palestinian independence and all the Palestinians who have lived and died in wars, under occupation, as refugees, and in exile. A dedicated and concerted global effort will, hopefully, isolate Israel and come up with punitive measures that will compel it to surrender its asymmetric power and draw up lines of action which see the dawn of a just and lasting settlement.

It was reminiscent of the eve of the Iraq War vote in 2003, when Tony Blair managed to scare enough Labour members into backing an illegal war in the Middle East. A near replay of that scenario happened tonight in the UK Parliament.

Before the ink was even dry on the vote, the bait-and-switch tactics were already underway, with Tory Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond telling the public that Britain’s ‘Anti-ISIL’ bombing operation ‘could take years.’ During a segment from BBC Newsnight Hammond was asked if the bombing would last as long as four years, to which he replied, “I hope it won’t be four years, but I caution that it isn’t going to be months.”

Despite having no legal basis under international law, and no real case being made by British Prime Minister David Cameron, the vote passed 397 to 223 in favour of bombing Syria, effective at midnight.

Today’s decision gives warfare a green light, at least in terms of the UK’s new pro-war political coalition of convenience.  It will almost certainly lead to additional calls for additional US and UK “boots on the ground” in both Syria and Iraq.

Leading the Labour Party rebellion was pro-war Labour MP, Hilary Benn (image, above), who appears to have seized on an opportunity to undermine Labour’s populist leader Jeremy Corbyn – perhaps in order for Benn to then challenge the leadership position himself in the near future? Time will tell, however it’s now common knowledge that Benn’s betrayal was done with Tories in Downing Street quietly cheering him on behind the scenes – in the hopes that the new split might rid Cameron of one of the last remaining prominent anti-war , pro-civil liberty and anti-austerity voices left in government.

If Benn used something as important as a war vote in order to grab power within his party, then the backlash will not be kind at all, especially if the Syria Project rapidly goes south, as many in the know predict it will.

The 66 Labour MPs who voted for airstrikes – Full list

According to the Press Assocation 66 Labour MPs voted for the government motion approving airstrikes.

They were:

Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East), Ian Austin (Dudley North), Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West), Kevin Barron (Rother Valley), Margaret Beckett (Derby South), Hilary Benn (Leeds Central), Luciana Berger (Liverpool Wavertree), Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South & Cleveland East), Ben Bradshaw (Exeter), Chris Bryant (Rhondda), Alan Campbell (Tynemouth), Jenny Chapman (Darlington), Vernon Coaker (Gedling), Ann Coffey (Stockport), Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract & Castleford), Neil Coyle (Bermondsey & Old Southwark), Mary Creagh (Wakefield), Stella Creasy (Walthamstow), Simon Danczuk (Rochdale), Wayne David (Caerphilly), Gloria De Piero (Ashfield), Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South & Penarth), Jim Dowd (Lewisham West & Penge), Michael Dugher (Barnsley East), Angela Eagle (Wallasey), Maria Eagle (Garston & Halewood), Louise Ellman (Liverpool Riverside), Frank Field (Birkenhead), Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar & Limehouse), Colleen Fletcher (Coventry North East), Caroline Flint (Don Valley), Harriet Harman (Camberwell & Peckham), Margaret Hodge (Barking), George Howarth (Knowsley), Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central), Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central), Alan Johnson (Hull West & Hessle), Graham Jones (Hyndburn), Helen Jones (Warrington North), Kevan Jones (Durham North), Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South), Liz Kendall (Leicester West), Dr Peter Kyle (Hove), Chris Leslie (Nottingham East), Holly Lynch (Halifax), Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham & Morden), Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East), Conor McGinn (St Helens North), Alison McGovern (Wirral South), Bridget Phillipson (Houghton & Sunderland South), Jamie Reed (Copeland), Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East), Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West), Joan Ryan (Enfield North), Lucy Powell (Manchester Central), Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North), Angela Smith (Penistone & Stocksbridge), John Spellar (Warley), Gisela Stuart (Birmingham Edgbaston), Gareth Thomas (Harrow West), Anna Turley (Redcar), Chuka Umunna (Streatham), Keith Vaz (Leicester East), Tom Watson (West Bromwich East), Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) and John Woodcock (Barrow & Furness).

Ironically, Hilary Benn MP is the son of Labour’s legendary anti-war activist and leader, Tony Benn, who recently passed away at the age of 89. Undoubtedly, Hilary Benn’s shrewd move to undercut his own party could leave a long sour taste in the mouths of his father’s faithful following. He will be regarded by many as a son who completely betrayed his father’s legacy as a brave voice for justice and nonintervention.

Indeed, Benn’s famous 23-year-old speech about Britain’s wars in the Middle East is still relevant today. Watch:

Let the bombing begin, but Westminster’s hawks should be warned that today’s Parliamentary decision could come back to haunt them – should they end up on the wrong side of history regarding Syria.

There’s a bigger agenda at play. Readers should know that this is all part of a step by step process in establishing a new EU Army.

Why hasn’t the U.S. bombed the oil wells that ISIS controls into oblivion by now?  Would you believe that it is because the Obama administration “didn’t want to do environmental damage”? 

Former Deputy Director of the CIA Michael Morell has publicly admitted that we have purposely avoided damaging the main source of income for ISIS, and his explanation for why we were doing this is utterly bizarre.  But at this point what could the Obama administration say that would actually make sense?  Everyone now knows that ISIS has been making hundreds of millions of dollars selling oil in Turkey, and that this has been done with the full knowledge and complicity of the Obama White House.  This is potentially the biggest scandal of the entire Obama presidency, and yet so far the Republicans have not jumped on it.

If you or I even gave five bucks to ISIS, we would be arrested and hauled off to Guantanamo Bay.  And yet Barack Obama is allowing ISIS to funnel massive quantities of oil through our NATO ally Turkey, and he is not doing anything to stop this from happening.  It is a betrayal of the American people that is so vast that it is hard to put into words.

By now, virtually everyone on the entire planet knows exactly what is going on.  For example, Iraq’s former National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie shared the following on his Facebook page on Saturday…

“First and foremost, the Turks help the militants sell stolen Iraqi and Syrian oil for $20 a barrel, which is half the market price.”

Until Russia started bombing the living daylights out of them, an endless parade of trucks carrying ISIS oil would go back and forth over the Turkish border completely unmolested.  Following the downing of a Russian SU-24 bomber by Turkey in an area where many of these trucks travel, Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to publicly air this dirty laundry.  Just check out what he told reporters following a meeting with French President Francois Hollande last week…

Commercial-scale oil smuggling from Islamic State controlled territory into Turkey must be stopped, Putin said after meeting Hollande in Moscow.

“Vehicles, carrying oil, lined up in a chain going beyond the horizon,” said Putin, reminding the press that the scale of the issue was discussed at the G20 summit in Antalya earlier this month, where the Russian leader demonstrated reconnaissance footage taken by Russian pilots.

The views resemble a “living oil pipe” stretched from ISIS and rebel controlled areas of Syria into Turkey, the Russian President stressed. “Day and night they are going to Turkey. Trucks always go there loaded, and back from there – empty.”

“We are talking about a commercial-scale supply of oil from the occupied Syrian territories seized by terrorists. It is from these areas [that oil comes from], and not with any others. And we can see it from the air, where these vehicles are going,” Putin said.

If the Russians could see all of this, the U.S. military could see it too.  In fact, we have far better surveillance capabilities than the Russians do.

So why didn’t Obama put an end to this?

Well, as I mentioned above, former Deputy Director of the CIA Michael Morell told PBS that the Obama administration didn’t want “to create environmental damage”, and he insists that the oil wells are “infrastructure that’s going to be necessary to support the people when ISIS isn’t there anymore”.  The following comes from the Daily Caller…

Appearing on PBS’s “Charlie Rose” on Tuesday, Rose pointed out that before the terrorist attacks in Paris, the U.S. had not bombed ISIS-controlled oil tankers.

Morell explained, “Prior to Paris, there seemed to be a judgment that … look, we don’t want to destroy these oil tankers because that’s infrastructure that’s going to be necessary to support the people when ISIS isn’t there anymore, and it’s going to create environmental damage. And we didn’t go after oil wells — actually hitting oil wells that ISIS controls because we didn’t want to do environmental damage and we didn’t want to destroy that infrastructure, right.”

In case you think that this is some sort of a joke, you can watch video of Morell making these comments on PBS below…

After the horrific terror attacks in Paris, the Obama administration finally was shamed into bombing a few of these oil trucks.  But 45 minutes before the U.S. military bombed them, they dropped leaflets telling the truck drivers to “get out of your trucks now and run away from them”.

What kind of “war on terror” are we running?

Why in the world would we want to warn the terrorists to get away from their trucks?

Meanwhile, things between Russia and Turkey continue to get even more tense.  The Russians have slapped severe economic sanctions on the Turks, they have shut down all channels of communication with Turkey’s military, and they are bombing every Turkish vehicle that they can find inside Syria.  The following comes from a report that was put out by Debka…

In the last two days, Putin has been found saying one thing and doing another: Although he declared that Russia would not go to war with Turkey for “stabbing it in the back”, debkafile’s military and intelligence sources report that since Wednesday night, Nov. 25, Russian heavy bombers and warplanes have been hitting every Turkish vehicle moving or stationary inside Syria.

They bombed the Bab al-Hawa border crossing, located on the Turkey-Syria frontier, as well trailers and tractors parked in an area belonging to the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation, on the Syrian side of the border.

As I wrote about the other day, it has been documented that our NATO ally Turkey has been “training ISIS militants, funneling weapons to them, buying their oil, and tending to their wounded in Turkish hospitals”.  Now, heavy bombing by the Russians threatens to cut off those links…

In addition to punishing the Turkish leader, Russia’s massive military operations in Syria aim to degrade the rebel groups fighting the Assad regime. Heavy bombing sorties this week on the Syrian-Turkish border are cutting off tens of thousands of rebels from their only source of fresh supplies of weapons, ammo, food and fighters, leaving them without a line of retreat and nowhere to send their wounded.

At this point, Russia and Turkey are very close to a state of war.

But as a member of NATO, the United States is obligated to help protect Turkey if a full-blown shooting war does break out.

We are closer to World War III than we have been in decades, and yet most Americans are still completely and totally oblivious to what is taking place.

Hopefully cooler heads will prevail, because things over in the Middle East threaten to spiral completely and totally out of control.

41 people were killed and another 200 wounded in two suicide bombings that took place in Beirut on Nov. 12. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks, which targeted Burj al-Barajneh, a Shi’i neighborhood and Hezbollah stronghold.

130 people were killed when ISIS carried out a series of attacks in Paris on Nov. 13. The attacks have prompted France to increase its military operations in Syria and led to fears that similar attacks could be carried out in other Western cities.

60-70 percent of inmates in French prisons are Muslims, despite the fact that Muslims represent roughly 7 percent of the country’s population. Post-Paris, this jarring statistic has raised questions about France’s ability to integrate immigrant populations.

$3.2 billion in aid will be given to Turkey by the European Union, in exchange for Ankara agreeing to help stem the tide of refugees entering Europe. The agreement was reached on Nov. 29.

30,000 refugees will still be accepted by France over the next two years, despite the horrific Paris attacks. “Some have wanted to link the influx of refugees to Friday’s acts of terror,” French President François Hollande said in a speech to his country’s mayors. “The truth is that this link exists because the people of Syria and Iraq have fled because they are martyred by the same people who attack us today,” he added.

31 U.S. governors have sought to block President Barack Obama from placing Syrian refugees in their states. The anti-refugee sentiment is a response to the Nov. 13 ISIS attacks on Paris.

The 28 countries of the European Union ruled on Nov. 11 that all goods exported from Israeli settlements must be labeled “made in settlements” rather than “made in Israel.” The move sparked harsh reaction from Israel, although less than 1 percent of the country’s $13 billion in annual exports to the EU come from illegally occupied territories.

4 decades after its founding, Israel’s northern Islamic Movement was outlawed by the country’s right-wing government on Nov. 17. The ban prohibits the group’s activities and mandates that all of its institutions be closed. The Islamic Movement, which provides social services and works to protect the al-Aqsa mosque, is favorably viewed by a majority of Israel’s Palestinian citizens.

6 weeks community service was the sentence given to an Israeli policeman who brutally beat American teenager Tariq Abu Khdeir in Jerusalem in the summer of 2014. It is not unusual for Jewish Israelis to receive lenient sentences—if they are sentenced at all—for violent acts committed against Palestinians.

30 years after his imprisonment, convicted spy for Israel Jonathan Pollard, 61, was released from a North Carolina prison on Nov. 20. Pollard’s release was praised by Israeli officials, but most American Jews and intelligence officials were bitterly opposed to his early release.

60 minutes: the length of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s controversial appearance at the Center for American Progress on Nov. 10. The liberal think tank, which has close ties to presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and the White House, was criticized by many on the left for its decision to host the right-wing Israeli prime minister.

88 percent of members of the American Anthropological Association attending the group’s Nov. 20 annual conference voted in favor of a resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions. The resolution is subject to a final vote of the association’s 10,000 members in April.

30 percent of eligible voters participated in the second round of Egypt’s parliamentary elections, which were held Nov. 22 and 23. The regime-backed “For the Love of Egypt” list won all 60 seats allocated to lists, while runoff elections will be held to determine the winners of seats allocated to individuals.

36-year-old Egyptian investigative journalist and human rights advocate Hossam Bahgat was arrested by Egyptian officials in early November on charges of publishing false news. Highly respected internationally, Bahgat was released after several days, but was required to sign a document stating that he “will abide by legal and security procedures when publishing material pertaining to the Armed Forces.”

1 Russian warplane was shot down by Turkey on Nov. 24, leading to increased tensions between the two nations. Turkey claims the jet was violating its airspace, while Russia maintains the aircraft never entered Turkish airspace but was shot down over Syria.

941 civilians were killed in Iraq in November, according to Iraq Body Count.

$1.29 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabia was approved by the State Department in mid-November. The Kingdom will receive so-called “smart bombs” that reportedly will be used in Yemen and Syria.

AET is a non-profit foundation that publishes the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (www.wrmea.org) and maintains Middle East Books and More (middleeastbooks.com).

“The European Union’s position is absolutely clear: Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory are ‘illegal under international law, constitute an obstacle to peace and threaten to make a two­ state solution impossible’ yet this report shows how European policy helps sustain the settlements. it reveals that the EU imports approximately fifteen times more from the illegal settlements than from the Palestinians themselves.”

Settlements are Israeli communities established on territory occupied by Israel since the 1967 Arab ­Israeli war. Settlements are supported by an infrastructure including special roads, checkpoints, and the separation barrier dividing them from the surrounding Palestinian population.

Settlements violate international law and UN Security Council resolutions and yet, throughout the 45 years of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territory, every Israeli government has promoted continued settlement expansion.

Notes:

http://www.haaretz.com/resources/misc/TradingAwayPeace.pdf

http://www.haaretz.com/israel­news/ngos­urge­european-states­to­cut­trade­with­israeli­settlements­1.473081

Russia Insider reports that the ambush on the Russian U-24 bomber was guided by the US Airforce. In an interview with the Russian news agency Regnum, a Russian military expert said that “A US Air Force Boeing E-3 Sentry AWACS plane took off on 24 November from the Preveza airbase in Greece. A second E-3A of the Saudi Arabian air force took off from the Riyadh airbase. Both planes were executing a common task—determining the precise location of Russian aircraft. It is they that picked the “victim.”

The American E-3A was supposed to determine the activity of the Su-24M2’s onboard targeting radar, to determine if it was in search mode or if it had already locked on to a target and was processing launch-data. It is known that the AWACS can direct the activity of aircraft in battle, conveying information to their avionics and flight computers.

The expert went on explaining the technical details of how the US and Saudi AF planes guided the Turkish F-16s to a sure missile launch in ‘target illumination’ mode, meaning that the radar was turned off as soon as the missile locket into its target.

This elevates the US-NATO war crime on Russia to an even higher level. The leaders involved in this heinous aggression should clearly be subjected to a Nuremberg style tribunal with all its dire consequences. Instead, hypocrite Obama in a side meeting of the Paris COP21 conference laments the event to President Putin, while still supporting Turkey in their right of self-defense.

What self-defense? – At the G20 summit in Antalya, Turkey, a week before the SU-24 downing, all conference members allegedly unanimously agreed to join forces in their fight against ISIS / Daesh. Therefore, even if the Russian bomber would have overflown Turkish territory – which according to Russian military monitors it did not – it would not have threatened Turkey at all, as they were, Russia and Turkey along with the other G20 attendees, on the same wave length: object eradicating terror in Syria.

Or were they really? – Or was this apparent commitment just another lie, as everything coming from the west is a lie, a deceit? – No agreement, no commitment is honored, no law is obeyed – the west under the leadership (sic) of Zionist-Washington has become a bunch of criminal rogue states.

And, let it be clear, this killing machine will not stop until it has achieved full spectrum dominance, total world hegemony. No diplomatic effort, no number of innocent deaths will deter the monster’s course for global control – unless the tyrant falls from within, as did the Roman Empire (that would mean that the media-fooled American public would wake up), or its fraudulent dollar-based monetary system will be dismantled by a monetary alternative from the rapidly emerging Eastern economies, like China, whose currency, the yuan, has just been accepted by the IMF as an official world reserve currency.

Since 2001 between 10 and 12 million people have lost their lives through wars and conflicts instigated by the US or their proxies, like the Gulf State vassals, the western bought and armed Islamic Jihadists, and, of course, the European NATO puppets. Other millions have lost their livelihood and become refugees now flooding Europe, in a well-timed and targeted fashion, also directed by President Erdogan, following the US dictate of European destabilization. A destabilized Europe can easier be controlled (http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-flood-of-refugees-into-europe-the-new-slave-trade/5487345).

Europeans, a people subjugated to serfhood by neoliberal regimes, lackeys of Washington, will soon be the only and coerced ‘ally’ the United State of America has left on this globe. All the other Washington claimed allies are an alliance of fear, which will dissipate as soon as the empire’s fall is on the horizon. They are tied by fear, rather than allied, to a terrorist empire.

By now Recep Erdogan may realize that his obedience to the White House and his greed for cheap stolen ISIS petrol, led him to an unforgivable crime, a shot not only in his own foot, but most likely in his head. He may politically not survive. His generals have already threatened with a putsch.

As Mr. Putin said on Monday at the Paris COP21, “At the moment we have received additional information confirming that that oil from the deposits controlled by Islamic State militants enters Turkish territory on an industrial scale. We have every reason to believe thatthe decision to down our plane was guided by a desire to ensure security of this oil’s delivery routes to ports where they are shipped in tankers.”

It couldn’t be clearer. For Turkey, or her leader (sic), shooting down the SU-24 was a triple whammy: Showing full obedience to the Washington-NATO masters, demonstrating support to the ISIS who feed Turkey’s economy with stolen oil, and fighting for the 70 km wide free zone along the Turkish-Syrian border to keep the supply channels to the terror-jihadists open – and for maintaining the ‘rolling pipeline’ into Turkish ports from where the petrol, worth billions of dollars – will be loaded onto international tankers – whitewashed so to speak; pretty much what Swiss bankers are doing with stolen money from dictators around the world.

While Erdogan is pleading for a head-to-head meeting with President Putin in Paris, Russia has already announced a regime of economic sanctions against Turkey. They may affect up to 44 billion dollars’ worth of trade between the two countries, including some 110 Turkish construction companies operating in Russia, as well as about 86,000 Turkish citizens living in Russia. Specifically, Russian charter flights to Turkey as well as all tourism to Turkey have stopped immediately, at a great loss to the Turkish economy which in 2014 benefitted from 3.2 million Russian tourists. Other sanctions include banning Turkish companies from doing business in Russia and Russian companies from hiring Turks; and re-introducing visas for Turkish visitors to Russia with enforced border controls.

The potential loss to Russia is mostly in natural gas exports to Europe. As a result of the US-NATO instigated Ukraine conflict, the so-called South Stream pipeline came to a halt, as the US ordered its NATO allies, especially Bulgaria, to stop construction of the pipeline. It was then replaced by the Turkish Stream, when Recep Erdogan and Vladimir Putin were still friends in December 2014 (http://www.globalresearch.ca/impacts-of-turkeys-aggression-the-turkish-stream-is-dead-disruption-of-gas-pipeline-routes-to-the-eu-russias-economy-in-crisis/5491756). This project may now also be in jeopardy which would be a serious blow to Russia’s economy, counting on gas exports to Europe. On the other hand, Europe depends on Russian gas which cannot be replaced quickly by US-imposed fracking or deliveries from the US. Therefore, the Turkish Stream may not be as dead as it looks right now.

Another little talked-about project is to bring Iranian gas to Europe – via Syria, a viable alternative, and a major reason for the US wanting to control Syria through internal chaos leading to regime change. A pipeline from Iran through Syria and Lebanon to supply Europe with Iranian gas would be competition worth trillions of dollars for hydrocarbons from the Gulf States, exploited by US petrol giants. Hence, since 2007 Washington planned a civil war in Syria which was activated in 2011 with the help of CIA, NATO and Saudi Arabia, training, funding and arming Jihadist terrorists. This conflict that has become center piece of the Middle-East theatre of war, now further enhanced by the US-Saudi-Turkey sponsored, financed and trained Islamic caliphate, ISIS / Daesh.

An Iran-Syria pipeline would not only mean a loss for US petro-giants, but more importantly it would drastically reduce demand for the US dollar, as Iranian gas would not be traded in the US currency but in moneys chosen between the trading partners. The loss of demand for the US dollar would further erode its status as world reserve currency – one more nail in the coffin of the dollars world hegemony.

About at the same time of Washington’s planning the destabilization of Syria, the odd but ultra-dangerous tandem, Washington-Israel, fabricated the lie that Iran was developing nuclear weapons. Although this was denied by the 15 most prominent US intelligence agencies, the same way they denied Saddam Hussein’s arsenal of WMDs (weapons of mass destructions), the myth prevailed. The Zionist-Anglo-Saxon dominated propaganda-lie machine convinced the world that Iran was indeed a nuclear threat to the region – never mentioning of course the only real nuclear threat, Israel, with a cache of 200-300 nuclear warheads. The Iran ‘threat’ that never was, ended for now with the so-called Nuclear Deal reached on 14 July 2014 in Vienna, after years of negotiations by the P5 + 1 (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States; plus Germany).

This closes the circle of western greed for energy and power – and war, the epitome of capitalist fascism. Within that US-NATO fabricated MENA (Middle-East and North Africa) chaos, Turkey saw a window of opportunity to revive the old Ottoman Empire. By shooting down the Russian SU-24 Erdogan may just have self-defeated the nascent kingdom.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, CounterPunch, TeleSur, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author ofThe World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance

During a brief state visit to Zimbabwe, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited “Wild Is Life,” a wildlife sanctuary that houses orphaned, rescued or specially protected animals on December 2.

Considering Xi’s tight schedule, such a non-political activity indicates that China has paid a great deal of attention to the protection of African wildlife and is determined to enhance Sino-African cooperation without sacrificing the latter’s ecological richness and long-term interests.

Threatened by greedy poachers, the vast African continent is no longer a safe haven for wildlife such as rhinoceroses, elephants and vultures.

To remedy the situation, wildlife protection will be a key topic on the agenda of the upcoming Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in Johannesburg, South Africa, where talks will address the protection of wildlife habitats and curbing the illegal wildlife trade.

Chinese President Xi Jinping visited a wildlife sanctuary in Harare on December 2, 2015, before wrapping up a state visit to Zimbabwe.

China has been trying to do its part to protect African wildlife. During President Xi’s US visit this September, he and his US counterpart Barack Obama promised to enact a ban on the ivory trade in both countries, drawing worldwide attention to the protection of African wildlife.

Both sides also pledged to cooperate in training, technical exchanges, information sharing and public education related to law enforcement and combating wildlife trafficking, a move the Los Angeles Times described as “heartening.”

“This is nothing short of huge in the effort to save African elephants from being poached and killed into extinction,” the US newspaper said.

At the 24th World Economic Forum on Africa in last May, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang promised to base Sino-African cooperation on environmental protection, pledged to crack down on rosewood and ivory smuggling and urged Chinese enterprises operating in Africa to protect the local environment and fulfill their social responsibilities.

Li promised that China will provide $10 million in aid to African countries for wildlife protection and biological diversity.

China has also assisted Kenya, Botswana and other African countries’ local wildlife and habitat protection projects by donating supplies including patrol vehicles, tents, GPS equipment and telescopes.

As global warming poses a threat to the protection of African wildlife, China’s commitment to environmental protection seems more important than ever. To help African countries cope with climate challenges, China has set up a 20-billion-yuan fund for South-South climate cooperation.

China’s assistance in African countries’ wildlife protection efforts will also boost the growth of the continent, which boasts an abundance of tourism resources.

The western press laments the near impossibility of defeating an organization that didn’t even exist a couple of short years ago. Brand ISIS, the unconquerable, may actually become a truism if the people of the western nations continue to listen to the lies and propaganda of their own governments.

You’ve been told a lot of things about the war in Syria, and clearly most of it is finely crafted war propaganda, which seeks to obscure the forest by showing you an endless series of trees. The trees are gunshots, explosions, and dead bodies. The forest is elusive, vast, covers several continents, and we are only ever given small samples of the terrain. The section of the forest that receives some of the latest scrutiny is not necessarily the crucial part of the story. Beneath the entire forest lies an aquifer, a vast ocean of water that feeds the trees invisibly, silently, yet persistently. Without this water supply there would be no forest to speak of.

But here is where the metaphor breaks. Unlike an underground reservoir, which is impossible to eradicate, the money and weapons transfers to fundamentalist militants can be stopped. The problem is that western so-called “leaders” have done absolutely nothing to stop them. In fact they rarely mention these sources of terrorist arms, training and funding at all, in public anyway. When acknowledged these become theater, hand wringing, vague excuses rather than concrete action. At other times intelligence services themselves willingly hand over sophisticated weapons to terrorists, such as TOW anti-tank missiles and surface to air “MANPADS” capable of bringing down commercial airliners. The nations most responsible for creating the extremist armies on the ground—Turkey and the Persian Gulf tyrannies—are close allies and even “friends” to US and European political masters.

Establishing the Grand Fraud

So what is really going on? Well, war of course. This is what modern war looks like. In particular this latest proxy war targets the multi-cultural, yet authoritarian regime of Syria’s Bashar Al Assad. NATO dislikes Assad because he is an ally of Iran, Russia and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Oil and gas pipeline routes also factor in. Western powers and Gulf States that don’t like Assad have, like a pack of wild jackals, been ripping at Syria since 2011. The primary supporter of ISIS and the Al Nusrah Front is Turkey, which by any objective measure should be considered a state sponsor of international terrorism and isolated immediately.

Sometimes we are even provided short glimpses of the reality, by our own so-called leaders. Vice President of the United States Joe Biden said: “[Erdogan…the Saudis, the Emiratis, etc.]…poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad, except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra, and al Qaeda, and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.”

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said: “Still, donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.”

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey said: “I know major Arab allies who fund them [ISIS].”

Former Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said: “It’s unbelievable and unacceptable that more than 60 nations comprising this coalition that have the most modern aircraft and weapons at their disposal have been conducting their campaign in Iraq for 14 months and IS still remains in the country.”

Former Defense Intelligence Agency head Michael Flynn said: “I think it was a decision, a willful decision.”

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) said: “The Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [Al Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria…The West, the Gulf Countries, and Turkey support the opposition.”

Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan said: “The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the [Olympic] games are controlled by us, and they will not move in the Syrian territory’s direction without coordinating with us.”

The U.S. State Department said, “Riyadh has taken only limited action to disrupt fundraising for the UN 1267-listed Taliban and LeT-groups that are also aligned with al-Qa’ida and focused on undermining stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan…Al-Qa’ida and other groups continue to exploit Kuwait both as a source of funds and as a key transit point…UAE’s role as a growing global financial center, coupled with weak regulatory oversight, makes it vulnerable to abuse by terrorist financiers and facilitation networks…[Qatar has] been hesitant to act against known terrorists out of concern for appearing to be aligned with the U.S. and provoking reprisals.”

No concrete steps are taken against these state supporters of terrorism. Far from it, they are intimate partners with the United States and form a coalition of the willing to use proxy terrorists to destroy Syria. ISIS has been a main component of this effort for years. It was not until they attacked targets in Europe (Paris), that Western leaders finally decided that they needed to appear to do things differently.

What this coalition does and what it clearly does not do are the telltale signs for understanding these current events. These will require more scrutiny.

The US has manufactured terrorist armies before, notably in Afghanistan, beginning in 1979. And when their Mujahadeen brigades defeated the Soviets, in the late 1980s, many champagne bottles were popped over at the Langley CIA headquarters. Such a wonderful victory for them, Zbigniew Brzezinski was quite proud of his handiwork. Coincidentally, Brzezinski emerged recently to shriek at the Russians, “to convey to Moscow the demand that it cease and desist from military actions that directly affect American assets.” Those “assets” have been the subject of much obfuscation and deceit over these past four years, despite seas of bloodshed. In Syria today, just who is an “American asset,” and who is not?

The most jaw-dropping and damning revelation of the entire Syria fiasco to date is hosted right on the whitehouse.gov website. It’s received zero mention by the “free” US corporate press, and here it is: “President Obama spoke by phone today from California with Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey, at the Prime Minister’s request, about developments in Syria and Egypt. The President and Prime Minister discussed the danger of foreign extremists in Syria and agreed on the importance of supporting a unified and inclusive Syrian opposition. The President and Prime Minister expressed concern about the situation in Egypt and a shared commitment to supporting a democratic and inclusive way forward. The two leaders agreed to have their teams continue to coordinate closely to promote our shared interests. The President gave his best wishes to the Prime Minister and the Turkish people on the beginning of their Ramazan holiday.”

That is exhibit A for the treason trial. I’m quite shocked that I’ve been nearly alone in referencing this outrageously criminal admission concerning US policy in Turkey and Syria. You now have been informed of whom the White House considers an “asset.” The Russians know it too, all too well.

Exhibit B for the prosecution would likely be Barack Obama’s tinkering with the Arms Export Control Act, reported on September 15th of 2013: “The president, citing his authority under the Arms Export Control Act, announced today that he would waive the prohibitions in sections 40 and 40A…The prohibitions contained in this section apply with respect to a country if the Secretary of State determines that the government of that country has repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism.”

This action can only be described as Orwellian hypocrisy, as the weapons Obama ships to Syrian insurgents meet the stated criteria. The United States is clearly supporting “international terrorism,” with glee. US arms and ammunition have gone to Jihadists all over Syria and Iraq through many pathways. They have murdered many civilians there, and they continue to do so daily. Further, attacking the government of Syria by arming a proxy army is the “Supreme International Crime,” a Crime Against the Peace, a blatant breach of the UN Charter, but it’s happening.

The entire world knows that Syria’s radical terrorists are supported by outside states, and yet no sanctions are ever proposed by our “democratic” leaders against those states. When Russia did things in Ukraine that Washington disapproved of immediate trade sanctions attacked its economy and certain named individuals. No such actions are even entertained against Turkish, Saudi, Qatari, Kuwaiti, Jordanian or other supporters of the ISIS terror state. This is clearly because the US, and Barack Obama specifically, consider these terrorists “American assets.” It is the Brzezinski plan for regime change, and it has always been the Brzezinski plan.

They know exactly what they’re doing. Obama’s own Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) told them in 2012 that their actions would lead to an Islamic Caliphate. “ISI could also declare an Islamic State through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria, which will create a grave danger in regards to unifying Iraq and the protection of its territory.”

It’s not ignorance, and it’s not a mistake. It has been the deliberate policy of the United States and its partners to tolerate―and to even support―a terror Caliphate in Syria and Iraq.

Redirections, Red Lines & Rat Lines

The most important investigative article of the post 9/11 era is arguably Seymour Hersh’s March 2007 expose in The New Yorker: “The Redirection.” Just what was being redirected?

Short answer: everything. The so-called “war on terror” flipped 180 degrees as the US partnered with Sunni extremists to redirect the fight and target Shi’ite Muslims: specifically Assad’s Syria, Maliki’s Shi’ite Iraqi regime, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the big one: Iran. “[The Saudi] message to us was ‘We’ve created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at―Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran.”

As Americans went back to sleep, the American empire partnered up with the sponsors of the 9/11 attacks: Saudis and their Wahabbi friends, who can always be counted on to supply money and fanatical fighters. The formula that brought down the Soviets in the 1980s was to be “New American Century” Plan A.

“This is all part of the campaign of provocative steps to increase the pressure on Iran. The idea is that at some point the Iranians will respond and then the Administration will have an open door to strike at them,” Seymour Hersh writes in “The Redirection.”

By the time Syria exploded into chaos in 2011, Obama was in charge, and the strategy had steadily evolved. So had the clampdown on dissenting voices. Seymour Hersh was exiled to the London Review of Books, where his damning revelations would not be broadcast to the American public. In “The Red Line and the Rat Line” Hersh helped expose what was going on in Syria: “A highly classified annex to the report, not made public, described a secret agreement reached in early 2012 between the Obama and Erdogan administrations. It pertained to the rat line. By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria.”

In 2011 Obama destroyed Libya by acting as “Al Qaeda’s Air Force” in violation of the Constitution and the UN Charter. He then set his dogs to work moving weapons and fighters from Libya across to the next target on the hit list: Syria.

By June 20, of 2013: “[Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)]…stated that al-Nusra maintained a sarin production cell: its programme, the paper said, was ‘the most advanced sarin plot since al-Qaida’s’ pre-9/11 effort.” (Hersh)

Meaning that the White House was lying throughout that period as to the Syrian rebels’ chemical weapons capabilities. When a staged sarin attack killed numerous civilians in Ghoutta, on August 21 of 2013, Obama was quick to jump at the chance for military action and a new war. That was the “red line” cassus belli that his own administration had floated the previous year. But the actual perpetrators turned out to be Al Nusrah Front working with chemical suppliers in Turkey, aided by Turkish intelligence.

That the Jihadis were the Ghoutta chemical attack perpetrators was confirmed in a Turkish indictment as well as by rebel fighters on the ground near Damascus.

The actions of the White House over this issue betray its hypocrisy, yet again. When Assad was the perpetrator, all the military might of the NATO bloc was to come down on Syria to punish it for its “red line” use of chemical weapons. When the actual perpetrators are Al Nusrah terrorists, working closely with Erdogan’s Turkey, as well as Pentagon and CIA trainees, and ISIS too, there is only a deafening silence. Inaction reveals much when it comes to this Syrian charade. The sarin issue was kicked from history, and the actual deaths of those 500 or so children and civilians remain as meaningless to those in Washington as do any other deaths in their ongoing Middle East blood frenzy.

As for the Benghazi-Gate fiasco, and the death of the US ambassador, the obvious reason for the White House cover-up was disclosed in Seymour Hersh’s piece: “The [Benghazi] consulate’s only mission was to provide cover for the moving of arms,’ the former intelligence official, who has read the annex, said. ‘It had no real political role.’”

Clearly the illegal foreign support to the insurgency in Syria is the reason ISIS exists. It did not spring from nowhere. It did not magically take over parts of two countries overnight. The fact that it is a genocidal, fanatical monstrosity is one of those distasteful qualities that western leaders tend to distance themselves from, but not enough to actually eradicate the quite useful proxy group.

The Fake “War” on ISIS

As we bob from fraud to fraud in this age of manufactured terror and covert everything, we must remain significantly more vigilant than our predecessors in order to comprehend the schizophrenic nature of US foreign policy today.

As for ISIS we bomb them occasionally but an excuse lingers that bombing is not sufficient. We are told that we will need to take over Syria, with large infantry armies that is if the Jihadists can’t do it successfully on their own. Unfortunately, for people like Zbigniew Brzezinski, John McCain, Bandar bin Sultan, and Barack Obama, the Russians saw the writing on the wall and stepped in to bomb back the terrorist militias. With a legitimate invitation from the government of Syria the Russian air campaign has been quite successful so far.

Back in September of 2014 the NY Times claimed that Barack Obama’s Administration was “Struggling to Starve ISIS of Oil Revenue.” Over a year later Obama had still not bombed the long lines of tanker trucks illegally selling the black market oil to the neighboring countries: that coalition again, with Turkey being the main recipient. Neither did the Times even bother mentioning the obvious US option of bombing the tanker trucks, oil wells and refineries under ISIS control.

Echoing what Nuri al-Maliki had said, Vladimir Putin wielded the big monkey wrench at this last G20 summit, on November 15th: “Channels of finance for terrorist activity must be cut off…This financing, as we found out, comes from 40 countries, including some in the G20.”

Gloves off, Russian President Putin had already accused Washington of backing terrorism across the Middle East. Not stopping there, Putin literally handed Obama Russian satellite photos of 1,000 ISIS oil tanker trucks stretching for “dozens of kilometers.”

The very next day, November 16, “U.S. Warplanes Strike ISIS Oil Trucks in Syria.” For some reason only 116 trucks out of the “1,000” were hit by the US mission. Then the effort mysteriously stopped as soon as the headlines had gone to print. With the policy firmly established in the media, the reality on the ground became irrelevant again.

Russia took up the slack on the 18th destroying “500 fuel tank trucks” controlled by ISIS and used to fund their insurgency. As Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov phrased it: “[T]he analysis of those [US-led] airstrikes during over a year lead to conclusion that they were hitting selectively, I would say, sparingly and on most occasions didn’t touch those IS units, which were capable of seriously challenging the Syrian army.”

In addition to avoiding the illegal oil trade occurring right beneath USAF fighter/bombers for over a year, there is also the matter of approximately 60 ISIS training camps. No training camps have been bombed to date, despite continually churning out “1,000” radical Islamic fighters per month. We can make some educated guesses as to why that is.

Foreign intelligence and special forces (British and Qatari), and potentially US personnel, have operated inside Syria since at least February of 2012. The CIA admits to spending $1Bn per year training Syrian insurgents and boasts that it has “trained and equipped nearly 10,000 fighters sent into Syria over the past several years.” If US personnel aren’t actually inside the territory of Syria, their pets surely are.

We know that ISIS, Al Nusrah, al Sham and Free Syrian Army (FSA) are all allies and work closely together. The FSA Colonel Abdel Jabbar al Olkaidi has plainly told us so. Olkaidi was the direct link to US Ambassador Robert Ford, and so there is no longer any plausible deniability on the subject. There is no legitimacy left for US claims of a “moderate” opposition that somehow exists separate from the genocidal terror armies of head-chopping extremists.

Conclusion

I would be remiss if I ignored mentioning the oil and gas supplies of the Middle East. The routes into Europe are hotly contested. With the Ukrainian gas pipelines coming from Russia, western leaders want alternatives in order to weaken the bear. Other proposed energy routes to the south include Syrian territory, that same territory ISIS now claims as its “Caliphate.”

It also needs to be mentioned that German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere has admitted: 760 German citizens have joined ISIS and 200 of them have returned home to Germany. Earlier this year it was reported that 100,000 fake Turkish passports had gone to ISIS fighters.

Turkey remains the headquarters and logistical center of ISIS. The west, NATO, and their Gulf tyranny partners, have opened Pandora’s Box. It still hangs wide open.

Syria airstrikes: Cameron accuses Corbyn of being ‘terrorist sympathiser‘

David Cameron has appealed to Conservative MPs to give him an overall parliamentary majority in favour of military action in Syria by warning them against voting alongside “Jeremy Corbyn and a bunch of terrorist sympathisers”.

…

“You should not be walking through the lobbies with Jeremy Corbyn and a bunch of terrorist sympathisers,” the prime minister reportedly told the committee.

To get rid of the “terrorist sympathizers” who do not want to bomb Syria the pig-fucker will have to incarcerate half of the British people.

Surely terrorist sympathizer should not be allowed to run around freely and to influence the children. These could end up no longer believing what the government and the media are telling them. They would becomeradicals:

A leaflet drawn up by an inner-city child safeguarding board warns that “appearing angry about government policies, especially foreign policies” is a sign “specific to radicalisation”.

Parents and carers have also been advised by the safeguarding children board in the London Borough of Camden that “showing a mistrust of mainstream media reports and a belief in conspiracy theories” could be a sign that children are being groomed by extremists.

The “war on terror” is turning into a war on the local opposition of the ruling classes. Those who oppose its polices are labeled 2terrorists” and those who doubts its word are “radicalized extremists”. How far is it from such verbal insults to actually concentration camps?

—

Who initiated this sudden rush within major NATO governments to get parliamentary blank checks for waging a long war on Syria? Not only in the UK but also in France and Germany?

The German government turned on a dime from “no military intervention in Syria ever” to “lets wage a war of terror on Syria” without any backing from the UN or international law. (The German government’s legal argument for war is so flimsy that the constitutional court will probably stop it.) Who initiated this? A simple, medium size terror attack in Paris by some Belgians and French can not be the sole reason for this stampede.

Did Obama call and demanded support for his plans? What are these?

I smell that a trap is being laid, likely via a treacherous Turkey, to somehow threaten Russia with, or involve it in, a wider war. This would include military attacks in east-Ukraine or Crimea as well as in Syria. Obama demanded European backing in case the issue gets of of hands. No other reason I have found explains the current panic. The terrorists the “west” supports in Syria are in trouble. The real terrorist sympathizers need to rush to their help. It is a start of all-out war on Syria and its Russian protectors.

But Russia is cool headed and is preparing to make its position in Syria even stronger. There will soon be at least 100 Russian military planes in Syria, some say up to 150 in total, plus dozens of ground attack helicopters including the very modern KA-52 (vid). New airfields for Russian fighter jets are being prepared in Shayrat (map), south-east of Homs. 10 fighter jets and 15 attack helicopters are already stationed there. Another airport will be in Tiyas (map), some 30 km west of Palmyra. This one will be used to cover east Syria and the Syrian army’s movement against the Islamic State in Raqqa. A fourth airport for jets, likely near Hama, is planned and several smaller airfields are to be used for more helicopters. Some 1,000 additional Russian personal will include special forces to designate targets and to provide support for Syrian troops.

The Syrian army was provide with new electronic snooping systems to be able to listen to its enemies communication. To protect against U.S. made anti-tank missiles (TOWs), which the CIA handed to the Jihadists, Syrian tanks are upgraded with the Shtora anti-missile systems. Brand new artillery has also arrived.

The “moderate rebels” of Jabhat al Nusra and Ahrar al Sham which Turkey and others support currentlyget squeezed (map) in their corridor from the Turkish border down to Aleppo. The Islamic State is pressing from the east against the corridor while Kurdish YPG fighters, with Russian air support(!), are attacking from the west and the Syrian army is pushing from the south. The moves on the government and YPG side and the IS side are not coordinated but a race to conquer as much as possible of the area before the other party reaches it. Two month ago the Kurdish leader had hinted at this plan to close the uncontrolled gap at the Turkish border.

This is the area Turkey wanted to occupy as a “safe zone” for the terrorists it supports. It also needs the corridor to smuggle oil from the Islamic State to Turkey. Should Turkey, backed by the U.S. and NATO, have funny ideas and try to invade Syria to secure that safe zone, it will have to take on very well armed and serious opponents. From there to World War III is only a small step.

I prefer to be called a terrorist sympathizer over supporting any move into that direction.

President Bashar al-Assad said that terrorists are coming from more than 100 countries around the world to Syria, they want to make Syria a hub for terrorism.

In an interview with the Czech TV, President al-Assad asserted that one cannot fight terrorism while directly supporting the terrorists with armaments and forming alliances with most zealous supporters of terrorism in the world; which is the Saudi Kingdom

The President made it clear that you should do everything to protect your country. You cannot protect your country if you do not protect society and the principles and the values in that society, asserting that a country is not a land and borders, it is people and a way of thinking.

Following is the full text of the interview:

Question 1: Thank you. Let me start by a personal question. You are a doctor. In 2011 you said, and I quote you, that you have chosen eye surgery because it is almost never an emergency and there is very little blood. It was March 2011, the very time when the Syrian war broke out, the bloodiest conflict in the world, one big emergency. How do you take that?

President Assad: If you want to make a relation between this job or any surgery job and what is going on in Syria, it depends on the intention. You always have blood in surgery but you have blood to save the life of the patient not to kill him. While the blood that we have in Syria is to kill the Syrians by terrorists; and our job as the government is to save their lives through destroying the terrorists. This is the only link and I hope I understand you question well.

Reporter: Yes, yes I mean …

President Assad: So our job is to save life. If you have blood, it is to defend your country. You use your army to defend your country.

Question 2: But 250,000 people, it is unimaginable in any country.

President Assad: This is the result when you have a lot of terrorists supported by regional powers and by the West. It is not only terrorists coming from within Syria, terrorists coming from more than 100 countries around the world. They wanted to make Syria a hub for terrorism and that is the situation. If we did not defend our country, that number would be many folds.

Question 3: You mentioned terrorism. It seems that in recent days, there have been huge developments in the Syrian crisis. What do you think was the most important date in the Syrian crisis: September 30^th and the Russian intervention or November 13^th and the Paris terrorist attacks?

President Assad: Now definitely the Russian participation, or what was announced as a front against terrorism, is the most important one. This is the practical thing against terrorism, while in Paris what happened on the political level is just to assuage the feelings of the French, like saying the French are going to attack ISIS in a very different way. What does that mean? Was not France serious before the attack on Paris? So, they are going to only assuage the feelings of the French, nothing serious, while the Russians are very serious in fighting terrorism and there is cooperation between them and the Syrian army.

Question 4: So you think that the increase in attacks by the western coalition or the coalition under the U.S. leadership is not helping?

President Assad: According to the facts, since the beginning of that coalition, if you want to talk about facts not opinions, ISIS has expanded, and their recruits from around the world have increased. While since the participation of the Russians in the same so-called fight against terrorism, ISIS has been shrinking and Al Nusra of course and other terrorist groups. So, this is reality. The facts are telling.

Question 5: Is not that because, militarily speaking, simply the Russian air force could work with the forces of the Syrian army?

President Assad:  Because there is cooperation, that is what I said. You cannot kill terrorists or destroy terrorism from the air, you cannot, it is almost impossible, the Americans have been trying this in Afghanistan for how long? More than 12 or 13 years. Did they achieve anything? Nothing. Terrorism is still strong in Afghanistan. So you cannot. You need cooperation from within that country, any power. The major power in Syria is the Syrian army and of course the government.

Question 6: The French president is trying to get together broader coalition against terrorism. Are you skeptical about his effort?

President Assad: Definitely, if they wanted to learn from what had happened recently in Paris, why did not they learn from Charlie Hebdo? The same principle and the same concept. We said at that time that this is only the tip of the iceberg. What is under the water is much bigger. They did not learn. This is first. Second, you cannot fight terrorism while you are supporting the terrorists directly with armaments and having alliance with most zealous supporters of terrorism in the world; which is the Saudi Kingdom. You cannot. This is contradiction. You cannot be the police and the thief at the same time. You have to choose either way to stand.

Question 7: But I did not hear about any western supplies to the Islamic State?

President Assad: You have them very clearly on the internet. French and other of course different parties but the French example existed. How could a country like France sell such weapons to a destination that it does not know, or that they do not know where they will go? That is impossible. They know through the Saudi Kingdom and Qatar and maybe from other countries, definitely.

Question 8: There was an incident on the Turkish borders, the downing of a Russian bomber. Do you think this incident will influence the outcome of this French president’s efforts to create a broader coalition? Do you think it will even complicate the peace talks in Syria?

President Assad: I do not think so, but I think it has shown the relentlessness of Erdogan who let us say lost his nerves just because the Russian intervention has changed the balance on the ground. So, the failure of Erdogan in Syria, the failure of his terrorist groups means his political demise, so he wanted to do anything in order to put obstacles in front of any success. So, he did it, but I do not think it will change any balance. The war against terrorism is continuing. The Russian supportive participation is going to be stronger, it is strong anyway, and I think there is no way back on that regard, whether he does it again, this way or another way.

Question 9: The U.S. president says that he does not want to repeat the same mistake; to make a ground invasion without actually knowing who will fill in the vacuum. Most of the presidential candidates in recent elections are saying that they want to do much more than just bombing. What do you think is the more realistic approach that will lead to defeating the Islamic State?

President Assad: Actually, if I want to talk about terrorism in general not only about ISIS. We have to work on more than one axis and find a multi-aspect solution. Part of it is related to ideology and part of it is related to economy, to the political stances and political cooperation; and the last thing is security cooperation and fighting directly. Because of the situation that we are in now, there is no way but to fight them directly. But this is not enough. If you want to fight and defeat them you have to cut and suffocate their supplies, armaments, money and recruits that are coming mainly through Turkey, and with the support of the Saudis and Qataris, this is the first step you take while you are attacking them on the ground. The problem now is that we are fighting the terrorists but they have unlimited supplies, unwarranted supplies from different countries, mainly regional countries, with the support or overlooking of the West, some of the western countries to be precise.

Question 10: You said that your priority is to fight and defeat terrorists before the political solution. What do you mean by defeating terrorism? That there will not be no armed opposition groups left in Syria?

Defeating terrorism is removing obstacles from the way of any political process

President Assad: You cannot talk about opposition in the political sense while they are holding arms. You know, in your country when you talk about opposition, it is only political movement. Second, if it is political, it should have grass roots. So, when we talk about rebels or militants who are holding guns and any other armaments to attack people, to attack the Syrian people or to attack the Syrian army and to destroy any public or private properties and so on, this is terrorism. There is no other definition. So, we do not accept the term of militant opposition or military opposition or moderate opposition having armaments. This is not opposition, this is terrorism. Opposition for us is a political movement outside or inside Syria. That does not matter. Of course, the other aspect of the opposition is to be patriotic not an opposition that was formed in France, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the USA or the UK. It should be Syrian formed in Syria. And we have Syrian opposition. We have real Syrian opposition.

How big or how strong, this is not an issue. So, defeating terrorism is removing obstacles from the way of any political process. Now, if you agree upon any steps or procedures with any opposition in the world, the Syrian opposition I mean, what can you achieve? Can you make real elections? Can you bring stability of the opposition? The terrorists have their own world, they have their own goals. They have their own agenda and ideology. It is completely different from the political part. So if you start with the political process, you have to start it, I did not say we do not start it. I said if you want to make concrete steps, it should be after we start defeating terrorism. I did not say after we defeat it, because the defeat is a long process.

Question 11: I see a major problem over here. In Vienna, there have been talks about moderate opposition, even including the armed groups. You are saying no talks with anybody who hold weapons?

President Assad: No, the political process has two aspects: one of them is to deal with the political opposition, the other aspect is to deal with those groups. We in Syria call that reconciliation process, when they give up arms and go back to their normal life, the government offers them amnesty.

Reporter: On your terms?

President Assad: No, it is amnesty if you go back to your normal life, amnesty is full amnesty, you are not charged with any conviction, you are free to live your normal life, peaceful life, do not fight and do not hold machineguns, do not terrorize people. This reconciliation has succeeded in Syria. Actually, it has achieved more than any political process. So we do not say we do not deal with those terrorists because if they change their position of course you have to deal with them, but when you talk about the ISIS and Al Nusra and Al Qaeda offshoots, they are not ready to give up their arms, they are not ready to make negotiations with the government anyway. They do not accept and of course we do not accept, their ideology is against the government and against the whole country. They do not recognize borders; they do not recognize the others who are not like them. So, it is difficult and impossible to do any reconciliation with them; but I’m talking about the other groups who terrorize for money, or maybe for fear, for any other reason, we succeeded in making negotiations with them.

Question 12: So in Vienna talks actually we are mentioning the talks between the government and the opposition groups within maybe one month maybe by the end of the year?

President Assad: Since the beginning of this crisis we said we are ready to make negotiation with anyone, so whether these groups we know that are related to the French not to the Syrians and so on we deal with them as opposition that represents that country, because the Syrians know the reality. So we are not against any kind of cooperation or dialogue or negotiations, dialogue is the most precise one, but at the end, if you make an agreement with those opposition that do not have grass roots in Syria, what will you achieve? That is a simple question. We can make negotiations for months, then at the end who is going to implement if they have no influence on the terrorists, do not have grass roots and do not influence the Syrians? What is the meaning of that meeting? In principle we do not say no, we say yes, but in reality we cannot tell people that this is the hope that we have and this is how we will solve the problem.

Question 13:  How do you describe this conflict? Is it like government against freedom fighters? Is it Shiite against Sunnis? Is it Arab against Persia? Is it clash of superpowers? Is it like a fight between a secular state and religious fanatics? What is it?

President Assad:  It has every factor that you mentioned but not all of them are real. I mean that if you want to talk about the real feeling of the Syrians, for example, if you take the sectarian factor that you mentioned, it is not true, because if you go now anywhere in Syria, in the areas under the control of the Syrian government, you will see all the ethnic and sectarian colors of the Syrian society. So, that is not true; otherwise people will not live with each other, so this is not the case, but the sectarian hatred has been aggravated because of the Saudis and Qataris; and you always have those fanatics that listen to that kind of rhetoric; but it is not reality. Actually, it is government against rebels who have been supported by different regional and international powers that have nearly the same agenda, maybe different incentive but the same agenda. They want to change the government, to topple the government and the state in Syria and change the president and that government and the whole political system without going back to the Syrian people.

This is the real fight, so when you talk about rebels, they do not have any agenda; and we had negotiations with them. They do not have any political requirement or request, they only like money, they are like mercenary. Most of them wanted to fulfill the agenda of other sides. So, this is the real fight. In appearance, Russia supported the government because they support the international law and the stability in the region, their stability and the stability of the whole region and world. The US always looks for the hegemony over the world because Syria is independent and they do not accept a country that says no to them. But in reality, it is the government with the support of the majority of the Syrian people against those mercenaries supported by those countries.

Question 14: On more personal level, there have been really interesting evolution of you public perception, especially in the West, from being the hope for your country to be one of the world’s chief villains, now becoming again a part of the equation existing in Syria. How did you live through all this evolution?

President Assad: Who’s evolution?

Reporter: Evolution from being the hope for your country to be the …

President Assad:  You mean before the crisis?

Reporter: Yes, I mean that now everybody is counting on you again for the future of Syria.

President Assad: If you are talking about the relation with the West. In 2005, I was the killer, in 2008, I was peacemaker, then in 2011, I became the butcher. Now there is some positive change, of course shy kind of change not an explicit one.

Question 15: How did you take it personally, how did you live through that?

President Assad: Personally, it has no influence for one reason, because nobody is taking western official seriously anymore for many reasons. First of all, they do not have credibility. Secondly, they do not have vision; they are so shallow. Third, they are not independent. They follow what the Americans order. So they are not serious; they do not exist on the path now, most of the Europeans. We look at the master, and the master is the USA. So, personally it has no influence. For me, especially when you are in a state of war, what to care about is what the Syrian people want and the way the Syrian people look at you. This is very important for me. I do not care about the others. So, if we talk about the fluctuation of this behavior, the European behavior, towards Syria or towards me personally, this is up and down but I have not changed. I stayed the same one since I became president in 2000. So, you have to ask them why they are fluctuating, not me.

Question 16: So, the message to the West is there was no discriminate killing of the civilians in the beginning of the Syrian war, there was no massive torturing of opponents of the regime?

President Assad: Let us presume that this is correct, according to their propaganda, how could you have public support and stay in your position for five years when you have the strongest country in the world against you, while you have the richest countries in the world against you, and your population that you are killing against you? How can you stand here? That is unrealistic. You should have support. How could you have the support of your people while you are killing them? Can you explain, no. So, that is not true, if you want to talk about the causalities, any war is a bad war, there is no good war, even if it is for a good cause, it is bad war; and you have to avoid it. But when you cannot, war is about killing; armament is about killing. You always have causalities and you always have innocents in any war throughout history, while to have the intention, how do you kill them when you want their support.

Question 17: What do you feel when you see the pictures of hundreds of thousands of your fellow Syrians fleeing to Europe?

President Assad: The feeling is very sad, especially if you think that every person of those Syrians who left Syria has a sad story behind him. It reflects the hardship of Syria during the crisis. From let us say rational way of looking at this situation, it is a lost, everyone of those is a human resource that left Syria, so this will undermine the society in your country definitely, but in the end we have to deal with the reasons. The question that I think every European should ask is why did they leave? For many reasons: the first one is the terrorists that have been attacking them everywhere, either directly or through attacking the basic requirements of living in our country; infrastructure, their way of life, different basic needs and so on, the second one is the European embargo, the European embargo played into the hands of terrorists directly and what was supposed to be with the Syrians became against the Syrians because every embargo is against the population of any country. Many people left Syria because they cannot live here anymore, because they do not have the basic needs of living, so they had to leave to Europe or to Turkey or any other country.

Reporter: They say that you failed them as their leader.

President Assad: I didn’t fail them, I did not destroy their infrastructure, I did not give the arms to terrorists to kill and to destroy. The question is: who did that? The Europeans and the Saudis and the Qataris.

Question 18: What should Europe do now? Like should Europeans fear those people or help them?

President Assad: That depends. First of all, big or large part of them are not Syrians. About the Syrians it is a mixture, the majority let us say are good Syrians, the patriotic, the natural people, but of course you have infiltration of terrorists among them. That is true, how much and how many? We cannot tell, it is difficult to tell, and this is reality, and I think that you have some evidence on the internet, photos, videos that prove that some persons who have been killing people here and beheading sometimes left to Europe as peaceful citizens.

Reporter: But Generally speaking, help or fear?

In our crisis, Europe is exporting extremism to us

President Assad: That depends on how Europe should deal with them, because you are talking not only about terrorism, you are talking about culture, even before the crisis, before this flood of refugees going to your country, the problem in Europe is how to integrate those cultures in your society? And I think Europe has failed, whether it is related to Europe from one aspect to the way they deal with the situation or because the Wahhabi institutions spend their money on screwing the interpretation of the Muslims, I am talking about the Muslims in Europe, and created more problems and extremism in your countries. Actually this region used to export sometimes some extremism to Europe. In our crisis, Europe is exporting extremism to us. So, it depends on how you are going to deal with it and I do not think it is going to be easy to make integration.

Question 19: How do you see yourself in this conflict, you said your enemies are terrorists, fanatics, foreign agents. What is the most precious thing you are trying to protect?

President Assad: In our country?

Reporter: Yes

Secularism in Syria is to have freedom of religions, sects and ethnicities

President Assad: Secularism, because Syria is a melting pot. Of course secularism in Syria is different from the way some in the West, especially in France maybe, understand it to be against religion. Actually, secularism in Syria is to have freedom of religions, sects and ethnicities. Without this, you will not have the Syria that has been known for centuries. So, this is the most important thing that we can try to protect. The second thing is moderation, because of this variety of different factors in this society for centuries, you have moderation. Without moderation you cannot have this melting pot, what the terrorists are working on now is to create a new generation that knows nothing about moderation. They are going to be only killers, extremists, fanatics who do not accept the others, in a few years time this is going to be real danger, how can we deal with the new generation? It is not someone who is twenty or above, it is maybe twenty and below. This is the real challenge that we are going to face.

Question 20: Is there anything that you would not do to protect those values you mentioned?

You should do everything to protect your country

President Assad: No, you should do everything to protect your country. You cannot protect your country if you do not protect society and the principles and the values in that society. A country is not a land and borders, it is people and a way of thinking.

Question 21: If you had the chance to change one decision that you made in the past five years, what would that be?

President Assad: Many people that we trusted we should not have trusted. That is the biggest problem, within Syria and outside Syria, like Erdogan for example in the past. Many Syrians during the conflict we discovered that they were fanatics, that they have extreme ideology like Muslim Brotherhood and some of them belonged to Al Qaeda, and now they are holding guns and fighting. At the very beginning we thought they were working for their country, that is the main issue, while if we talk about strategy, it was based on two pillars: the first one is dialogue, and the second one is fighting terrorism, these two pillars will not change, we will never change that.

Question 22: Even maybe the balance between those two pillars?

President Assad:  You cannot talk about the balance because you have reality that changes every day. So, dialogue should continue to the maximum, and fighting terrorism should continue to the maximum, there should be correlation between them, with each other not against each other, so you do not need this balance, you need to go to the maximum with both, in parallel.

Question 23: Let us come for a minute to Czech’s relations. The Czech Republic has been one of the very few countries which kept its ambassador in Syria for the whole conflict, how important was that for you?

President Assad: For many reason important, first of all, before the crisis, the relation with the Czech Republic was not warm, actually we had many differences, most of the relations with most of the European countries were much better than the relations with your country. Actually, what happened during the crisis when most of the European countries adopted  the western propaganda against what is happening in Syria, your country kept its balance regarding this relation. That does not mean that you support the Syrian government or support the Syrian president. This means you are playing the natural role that any country should play in keeping the relation even with the adversaries. How can you play a role, how can you know what is going on if you do not have relations? This is one aspect. The second aspect is that the Czech Republic is a small country and is part of the EU and it was under severe pressure from many countries in the West, including the United States, to change its position, which sometimes can be only symbolic by keeping only the embassy open. This could be symbolic in some cases. In spite of that, the Czech Republic wanted to be independent.

That is what we are missing in the world now. Most of the countries are not independent; most officials are not independent, especially in the West. So, the other aspect, a small country like the Czech Republic could be independent and that will bring respect, and has brought respect within Syria to the position of your country, whether we agree with their position or not. But at the end we, respect them. So, there is respect, there is a kind of statesman behavior, let us say, regarding your political positions and your officials, which is something that is very important for us. Now, the third aspect, because of the credibility of your positions, because many European governments recognize now and understand that you were right about what is going on in Syria, about keeping this open channel with the Syrian government, I think now they need your help in order to help them go back to the right track, especially regarding the political aspect. So, it has many aspects, this balanced position regarding the situation in Syria.

Question 24: One more aspect, President Zeman actually mentioned the possibility of signing a Syrian peace accord in Prague. Do you support this idea?

President Assad:  Of course, any effort supporting the solution of the crisis in Syria, especially from a credible government, we will be very happy to cooperate with, definitely.

Question 25: But the symbolic meaning, I mean like the Geneva talks, there are talks in Vienna, would signing Prague would be realistic?

President Assad: Yes, of course it would be realistic. If you ask the Syrian people, they would say that I cannot have a peace conference in France for example because France supports terrorism and supports the war. They do not support peace. So, for example, if you mentioned Prague, there would be general acceptance of this idea because of the balanced position of your country.

Question 26: After all, what happened in Syria in those past few years, everybody has seen those horrible pictures. Do you have restless nights, do you have bad dreams?

President Assad: You live with this sadness everyday. You live with, how to say, the suffering of the people on a daily basis. Every hour you have this bad news, so it is becoming the atmosphere that you live in. But at the same time, the feeling of the Syrian people that one of the challenges of what is happening not only to fight, not only of political stands, but to live your daily life, and the most important example of that are the families of the martyrs in our country. You visit them, you look at them, they have strong will, and they try to live as much a normal life as they can, so you cannot put yourself in that bubble of sadness. You have to carry on your life and to bring hope to the people, and you should be optimistic that you can solve the problem and bring back Syria to its normality.

Question 27: Is there a space for doubts? For a man in your position?

President Assad: Doubts in what?

Reporter:  Doubts about your deeds, about the steps that you made?

President Assad: In the past you mean or?

Reporter: Yes, I mean like if you ask yourself …

President Assad: Of course, you have to revise yourself every day, and if you look at the details, you always have details that you think about, you always say it could be or could have been done in a better way because you do not have maybe full wrong or full right, so what is the percentage? It is something subjective, you change your mind about everything everyday. That depends on the situation, especially when you do not have one separated factor, all the factors are related, so the balance between the different actions that you take is not easy. You keep revising and you keep changing, but I think the only real evaluation and objective evaluation will be after the end of the crisis, because in the middle of the war it is difficult to reach conclusion about everything. So, I think later, after the crisis, we can say exactly where we were wrong. We definitely make mistakes like other humans.

Question 28: Where do you see Syria in ten years?

President Assad: In ten years, the only option that we have is to defeat terrorism. There is no way. Second, to keep the secular society and its different colors. Third, to have reforms in Syria: what the Syrian people want about their political system, and their future, so I think as I said the most important thing is secularism, second more integrated than before the crisis, although it was integrated, but you always have flows in societies. So, that is how I see it and I hope to achieve prosperity.

Question 29: Where do you see yourself in ten years? Can you imagine life outside the presidential office, maybe outside Syria?

President Assad: For me, to be frank, I never cared about the position, and I do not care about it today or in the future. I never thought about it, even before I became president, I never thought about the position. It is about what the Syrian people want. Now in the middle of the war, I am not going to say I am leaving for any reason, unless the Syrian people want me to leave. If there is a war, you have to do your job in order to protect your country; otherwise you are a traitor. That is not accepted for me or for the Syrians. When there is elections, the Syrian people will decide if they want me I will be happy to represent them. If they do not want me I will be happy to leave it, I do not have any problem.

Question 30: For five years, there have been discussions for you leaving the office. Sometimes it seems that it is not a question of if but when. But after five years, yet you are still here. What do you have that leaders of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya did not have?

President Assad: Public support. Whenever you do not have public support, you cannot succeed, you will fail. If you want to talk about those presidents that you mentioned, they did not have public support. And at the same time, they had western support at the very beginning, but when the West noted that there is no public support, they changed their positions and they told them you have to leave, while in Syria the only thing that kept me in this position is public support, nothing else.

Question 31: So, maybe the place in history is the ultimate survivor?

President Assad: Not survivor, I was very honest with the Syrians from the very beginning. I am a very honest person. Second, it is very important for people to know that they are fighting for their country and you are fighting with them, you do not have your own war, they do not fight for me to be president, to be in this position. I do not fight for myself to be in that position. That is something they know very well about me; otherwise if it is my war, if it is to keep my position no one will fight it, you would not have those people fighting and losing their lives for this.

Question 32: The last question, the most difficult one, when will there be peace in Syria?

President Assad: When those countries that I had mentioned: France, the UK, the US, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and some others stop supporting those terrorists, the next day the situation will be better and in a few months, you will have full peace in Syria, definitely.

Question 33: Any time frame?

President Assad: I told you in a few months. If they stopped, if they do not stop that, about what the obstacles they are going to put. But in spite of these obstacles, we are going to win, but as to when, this is going to be difficult to answer.

Question 34: Are you optimistic about that?

President Assad: Of course, definitely; otherwise, we would not fight. If we hadn’t got hope we would not have fought all that war as Syrians.

Reporter: Many Thanks Mr. President.

President Assad: Thank you for coming. I enjoyed it very much.

Homs was the third largest city in Syria (both size and population) before March 2011, but as the country drifted into a violent conflict, this provincial capital became the battleground for some of the bloodiest battles plaguing the civilian population.

In 2013, satellite images were released of Homs, showing the once thriving Syrian city in complete rubble – the images depicted a city that resembled Dresden and Tokyo after the Allied bombing campaign in 1944 and 1945.

Following the Syrian Arab Army’s large counter-offensive in the spring of 2013, resulting in the capture of the Al-Qusayr border-crossing into Lebanon – Homs came back to life amid the rubble and destruction.

Suddenly, Homs became the model of reconstruction and reconciliation as thousands of displaced civilians left Lebanon, Tartous, Latakia, and Damascus to move back to the provincial.

When the Islamist rebels agreed to leave the Old City of Homs, the provincial capital became one district away from liberation and recovery; however, that one district proved to be a thorn in the Syrian Arab Army’s side.

The Al-Wa’er District of Homs has long been a rebel stronghold; it was one of the first sites captured by the newly formed Free Syrian Army (FSA) in 2011.

The Islamist rebels inside the Al-Wa’er District have survived several air raids, mortar shells, rockets, and et al.; and yet, they remained unwilling to surrender to the Syrian Security Forces.

This changed on December 1, 2015, when the Free Syrian Army’s central command met with the Governor of Homs – Talal Al-Barazi – to discuss a possible ceasefire and evacuation for the remaining rebels inside of Al-Wa’er.

It took only a few hours for the Free Syrian Army’s Central Command to agree to a permanent ceasefire and evacuation of their remaining fighters – all that was left to do is develop a contingency for the withdrawal.

The planned evacuation will take place in two phases: 1^st phase is to allow humanitarian aid to any remaining civilians living inside the district; 2^nd phase is the transportation of the 600 rebel fighters from Al-Wa’er to the Idlib Governorate.

The whole plan is supposed to last as long as two months, with the end goal being the Syrian Government in full control of Homs City.

For the people of Homs; this final ceasefire means the end of hostilities and the beginning of the long mending process.

A blockade on indispensable fuel and other essentials imported from India now enters a third month. The crisis reached a new low last week when Indian troops reportedly crossed illegally into Nepal and shot at least four people.

Nepal’s diplomatic overtures towards India have proved ineffective in overcoming the standoff at their shared border. Indian authorities continue to insist that Nepal revise its constitution to accommodate Madhesi demands. This population claims the new constitution marginalizes them and insist on a more prominent place in the constitution.

The two neighbors have peacefully resolved differences (usually to India’s advantage) in the past. One leading voice in Nepal, publisher Kunda Dixit argues that Nepal has no choice but to concede. No choice, arguably because Nepal has unwisely grown over-dependent on the South Asian giant for necessary commodities like fuel. Small wonder the interruption of fuel supplies has brought life for the four million inhabitants of the capital and residents of other cities to a standstill. Schools and businesses are closing; there is a critical shortage of medicines and tourists are cancelling visits at the height of the trekking season.

A steadily flow of aid and political patronage from India had become the norm in Nepal. Every political party and leader, monarch or prime minister, bears some responsibility for this dependence and for Nepal’s lopsided relation with India. Nepal never made a serious attempt, even after the Maoist revolutionary success (The People’s War) in 2006, to develop a self-sustainable economic model or seek an alternative to Indian dominance beyond another kind of dependence, namely western charity (including Australian, New Zealand and Japanese). Nepal’s NGO industry never challenges the traditional model; rather it reinforces Nepal’s consumer economy and lack of self confidence. This is furthered by a new reliance on remittances (used to purchase yet more imported goods) from the hundreds of thousands of unskilled men, former farmers, who flock to Malaysia and the Arab Gulf states seeking work.

During the past decade, China, Nepal’s equally giant and wealthy neighbor, has increased its presence in Nepal. One finds more Chinese products in the market every year; Chinese-made carpets have displaced Nepal’s once thriving carpet industry established by refugee Tibetans. Increasing numbers of Chinese tourists join Europeans on Himalayan trails while other Chinese visitors invest in businesses in the capital. (“Chinatown” is a new quarter in Kathmandu’s city center.)

The Tibetan Buddhist presence is thriving in Kathmandu Valley, but today that influence is being directed from India, not Tibet, with substantial financial support coming from Europe. The mountain peoples of Nepal such as the Sherpa and Mustangi who once had significant exchange with Tibet, are now south-oriented, their communication with Tibet having almost disappeared over the 60 years since China established its rule there.

The Chinese government hasn’t ignored Nepal. It was a major presence after last spring’s earthquake and might have been stronger had the tremors themselves not interrupted northern access routes. Because those roads cut through the highest passes in the world Chinese assistance and influence is limited in normal times.

No one views China as an alternative to India, although in today’s fuel crisis Nepal is negotiating emergency shipments of gas and petrol from China to Kathmandu. What is needed is not a temporary solution however. Nepalese people and their leadership have taken the easiest economic route, charity and big brother support–a flawed strategy that now manifests itself in this unprecedented crisis. Long term options are available, but is there the leadership to pursue them?

Imprisoned Al Qaeda Fighters Freed by U.S. Allies to Rejoin Fight Against Assad

By Eric Zuesse, December 02 2015

Some of the world’s top Al Qaeda operatives were freed from a Lebanese prison on Tuesday December 1st, to rejoin the U.S.-led war against Syria’s Bashar al-Assad.

Video: Redeployment of Ukraine Forces against Donbass, Obama’s “Incremental Islamic State Strategy”

“We have received additional information confirming that the oil controlled by Islamic State militants (ISIS) enters Turkish territory on an industrial scale. We have every reason to believe that the decision to down our plane was guided by a desire to ensure the security of this oil’s delivery routes to ports where they are shipped in tankers.” –Russian President Vladimir Putin, Paris, 11-30-15

On Monday, the remains of Lieutenant Colonel Oleg Peshkov were flown to Moscow where he was met by the Russian Minister of Defense, the Head of the Russian Airforce, family members and a full military drill team. Peshkov will be buried with honors and receive the Russian Federation’s highest award, the Medal of Valor, for his service in fighting US-backed terrorist groups in Syria. Peshkov’s Su-24 was ambushed last Tuesday by a Turkish F-16 when he allegedly drifted into Turkish airspace for 17 seconds.

The surprise attack, which was not preceded by any warning, forced the pilot to eject after which he was he was shot and killed while descending in his parachute. The anti-regime militant who claims to have killed Peshkov, is a Turkish ultra-nationalist named, Alparslan Celik, who is a leader in The Grey Wolves, a terrorist organization that has “carried out scores of political murders since 1970s.” Celik’s group of “moderate” jihadis is one of many disparate militias that are supported by both the US and Turkey in their effort to topple Syrian President Bashar al Assad and splinter the country into smaller parts.

The downing of the Su-24 has not triggered the knee-jerk reaction from Moscow that many had expected. Instead, it has focused Putin’s attention on his ultimate goal of defeating terrorism in Syria and maintaining the sovereign integrity of the state. Putin has boosted Russia’s military presence to 69 Sukhoi fighter jets, 160 bombers, as well as submarines and warships located in the Mediterranean Sea. He has also deployed the S-400 anti-aircraft defense system to Latakia and ordered the Moskva guided missile cruiser to remain within firing distance off the coast of Syria. The downing of the Russian warplane has only intensified Putin’s determination to seal the northern border, defeat the terrorists and win the war in Syria. This is clearly not the reaction Washington was hoping for.

In candid remarks to the Russian media, Putin implicated the US in the downing of the Su-24 stating that the US military was briefed on the warplane’s flight path and then immediately passed along that information to Turkey. Here’s what he said:

“We told our US partners in advance where, when at what altitudes our pilots were going to operate. The US-led coalition, which includes Turkey, was aware of the time and place where our planes would operate. And this is exactly where and when we were attacked. Why did we share this information with the Americans? Either they don’t control their allies, or they just pass this information left and right without realizing what the consequences of such actions might be. We will have to have a serious talk with our US partners.”

Putin’s damning remarks have not appeared in any of the western media. The censorship of this information is similar to the blackout of comments Putin made just two weeks earlier at the G-20 summit where he announced that “40 countries” are financing ISIS including members of the G-20. Here’s an except of Putin’s bombshell announcement:

“I provided examples based on our data on the financing of different Islamic State units by private individuals. This money, as we have established, comes from 40 countries and, there are some of the G20 members among them,” Putin told the journalists.

“I’ve shown our colleagues photos taken from space and from aircraft which clearly demonstrate the scale of the illegal trade in oil and petroleum products. The motorcade of refueling vehicles stretched for dozens of kilometers, so that from a height of 4,000 to 5,000 meters they stretch beyond the horizon,” Putin added, comparing the convoy to gas and oil pipeline systems.” (Putin: ISIS financed from 40 countries, including G20 members, RT)

Don’t look for this story in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post. You won’t find it. It’s not in the interest of the major media to publish information that suggests that Washington and its allies are providing material support for terrorist organizations.

It’s clear that Russia’s bombardment of jihadi groups operating near the Turkish-Syrian border has Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan worried. Erdogan has long hoped that the area would be turned into a Safe Zone where Sunni militants– committed to removing Assad from power– could receive weapons and other support from their sponsors while coming and going as they pleased. The Russian-led coalition’s attempt to retake the area and seal the border to stop the flow of terrorists from Turkey, is probably what precipitated the attack on the Russian warplane. It was a desperate attempt to wave-off the Russian offensive and reverse the course of the war which has turned decisively in Assad’s favor. As for the militant groups that are operating in this area, analyst Pepe Escobar sums it up like this in a recent post at Sputnik News:

“The Su-24s were actually after Chechens and Uzbeks — plus a few Uyghurs — smuggled in with fake Turkish passports (Chinese intel is also on it), all of these operating in tandem with a nasty bunch of Turkish Islamo-fascists. Most of these goons transit back and forth between the CIA-weaponized Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Jabhat al-Nusra. These were the goons who machine-gunned the Russian pilots as they parachuted down after the hit on the Su-24….

Turkey, for all practical purposes, has been a handy, sprawling Salafi-jihadi Infrastructure and Logistics Center; it offers everything from porous borders enabling countless jihadi return tickets from Syria to Europe, facilitated by corrupt police, to a convenient crossroads for all kinds of smuggling and a hefty money laundering ops.” (Sultan Erdogan’s War on…Russia, Pepe Escobar, Sputnik)

Escobar sums up Ankara’s role in Syria as succinctly as anyone. Erdogan has been ISIS best friend, of that, there is little doubt. The problem that Turkey faces now is that the Russian-led coalition is rapidly destroying the infrastructure that provides funding for ISIS, (oil refineries, fields and transport) while gradually retaking territory that was formally-controlled by the many anti-regime or al Qaida-linked groups in the north, west and central parts of the country. In the last few days alone, Russia and Co. have concluded the encirclement of Syria’s biggest city, Aleppo, vaporized a convoy of over 500 oil trucks in the vicinity of Raqqa, and intensified their bombing in the Turkmen Mountains, the Kurdish Mountains, and the Prophet Jonah Mountains. The coalition has moved as far north as Azaz along the Turkish border and recaptured the strategic Aleppo-Raqqa highway which completely cuts off ISIS supply-route from the east in Raqqa. All of the recent progress comes in the wake of the retaking of the strategic Kuweris Airbase which was the tipping point in the 4 and a half year-long conflict. Now the Russian coalition has focused on closing the border, a move that will sever vital supply-lines to pro-Turkish militias operating in Syria and force the terrorists to either flee or surrender. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov emphasized this point last week saying, “We are convinced that by blocking the border we will in many respects solve the tasks to eradicate terrorism on Syrian soil.”

Keep in mind, that Erdogan is not the only one with designs on the so-called “Afrin-Jarabulus corridor” east of the Euphrates. Powerful politicians in the US, including John McCain, Lindsay Graham, Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton and others, have all alluded to this area as the most suitable location for a no-fly zone. And, despite the fact that Obama refuses to send US ground forces to fight in Syria, he has continued to fuel the conflict in other less conspicuous ways. Just last Wednesday, under the cover of the Thanksgiving holiday when the media was preoccupied with other matters, Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2016 which provides another $800 million in aid to armed extremists in Syria and Ukraine. The NDAA, which effectively prevents the closing down of US concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo), reflects Obama’s determination to continue Washington’s vicious policy in Syria which has resulted in the deaths of more than 250,000 and the displacement of 11 million more.

This helps to explain why the Russian offensive has set alarms off in Washington; it’s because the US plan to establish a permanent staging ground for terrorists in N Syria is quickly going up in smoke.

Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, Toni Cartalucci explains exactly what’s at stake for the warring parties in a brilliant piece at Global Research titled “‘Humanitarian Supplies” for the Islamic State (ISIS): NATO’s Terror Convoys Halted at Syrian Border”. Here’s an excerpt:

“Russia’s increased activity along the Syrian-Turkish border signifies the closing phases of the Syrian conflict. With Syrian and Kurdish forces holding the border east of the Euphrates, the Afrin-Jarabulus corridor is the only remaining conduit for supplies bound for terrorists in Syria to pass…..When this corridor is closed and supplies cut off, ISIS, Nusra, and all associated NATO-backed factions will atrophy and die as the Syrian military restores order across the country…

With that support being cut off and the prospect of these militants being eradicated, the true sponsors behind this conflict are moving more directly and overtly to salvage their failed conspiracy against the Syrian state. What we see emerging is what was suspected and even obvious all along – a proxy war started by, and fought for Western hegemonic ambitions in the region, intentionally feeding the forces of extremism, not fighting them.” (Humanitarian Supplies for the Islamic State (ISIS): NATO’s Terror Convoys Halted at Syrian Border, Global Research)

Seen in this light, Obama’s recent request for Turkey to deploy “30,000 (troops) to seal the border on the Turkish side”, (See: Wall Street Journal) should be viewed with extreme skepticism. Clearly, Washington has not relented in its “Assad must go” policy at all, in fact, Obama reiterated that mantra less than a week ago. That means the Obama crew may be hoping that Turkish ground forces can succeed where his jihadi proxies failed, that is, that the 30,000 troops will be used to clear and hold a 60×20-mile stretch of Syrian territory that can be used as the proposed safe zone. All Turkey would need is a pretext to invade and a little bit of air cover from the USAF. It wouldn’t be the first time a false flag was used to start a war.

The bottom line is this: Putin had better move quickly before Washington and Ankara get their ducks in a row and begin to mobilize. The time to seize the border is now.

Some of the world’s top Al Qaeda operatives were freed from a Lebanese prison on Tuesday December 1st, to rejoin the U.S.-led war against Syria’s Bashar al-Assad.

America’s anti-Assad ally, Qatar, the chief financiers of the Muslim Brotherhood, negotiated with the neutralist Lebanese government, to swap the 26 imprisoned Al Qaeda jihadists for 16 Lebanese soldiers who had been captured by Al Qaeda in Lebanon.

Lebanese and Syrian Al Qaeda are called Al Nusra. Al Nusra had captured these soldiers in Lebanon this past summer.

Lebanon will get its 16 soldiers back, and Al Qaeda (Al Nusra) will get its 26 fighters back, including the former wife of ISIS’s founder, Sheikh Ibrahim Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. London’s Daily Mail  headlined about her on 21 February 2015, “Scheming Bride of ISIS they all idolise: Mesmerising tale of wife of terror chief who inspires girls to join bloody ranks.” So, she’s free again, to rejoin the U.S.-led forces.

Another freed Al Qaeda operative is Sheikh Mustafa al-Hujairi, who on 20 March 2014 was described by the newspaper Al-Akhbar (translated by an online website) as “the leader of an armed group that provides logistical support to al-Qaida linked networks Jabhat al-Nusra, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).” This report said he had 200 men under his command.

In both of those cases, the freed fighter was associated with more than one terrorist group (ISIS — or as Obama calls it “ISIL” — Al Nusra, Abdullah Azzam Brigades); but, regardless of what they are called, they are jihadists; and, so, any categorization of the anti-Assad groups other than as fundamentalist Sunnis who are active jihadists waging war to take down Assad would be deceptive, because there are no Shiites who are fighting to take down the secular, non-religious, government that is run by the Shiite Assad. All of the ‘rebel’ groups are only Sunni terrorists; none of them are “moderates.” Whereas some of them get more money from Qatari royals, and others of them get more money from Saudi royals, they all are jihadists, and all are Sunnis.

The soldiers who are fighting on Assad’s side are both Shiites and Sunnis, as well as some who are other religions or no religion. For example, the American propaganda-organ, USA Today, headlined on 1 August 2013, “Sunnis fill rebel ranks, but also prop up Assad regime,” and the subhead was “Many Sunnis are backing the dictatorship to preserve their livelihoods, or believe the uprising is doomed or ruthless.” (The U.S. government isn’t being called a ‘regime’; and isn’t being referred to as a ‘dictatorship.’) The idea there was to portray the enemies of the American government’s proxy invasion of Syria as being bad (’to preserve their livelihoods’), not good, and the friends of America’s proxy invasion (via ‘moderate groups’, etc.) as being good not bad (not, for example, similar to the terrorists on 9/11 and at Charlie Hebdo, etc.). It’s straight out of George Orwell’s 1984, but this is now real.

Qatar is part of the U.S.-Saudi-Qatari-Turkish war to overthrow Syria’s Russia-allied leader, Bashar al-Assad. The royal owners of Qatar, the Thani family, want to build through Syria a gas-pipeline to get Qatar’s gas into Europe to supplant Russia’s gas there. Russia’s ally Assad stands in the way of that. Also, the Russian government is in reality, and not only in principle, opposed to jihadists and a fusion of church and state. So, Russia has both ideological and economic reasons to be standing firm in support of Assad. The Saud family, who own Saudi Arabia, have indicated that Israel is their friend and Palestinians are their enemy because Israel too wants the Shiite Assad and Shiite-run Iran to fall.

So, if purely economic motives dominate on one side or the other, it’s probably on the U.S.-Saudi-Qatari-Turkish side where greed is the main motivation. This is the reason why America’s side refers to Assad as a “dictator,” but doesn’t refer to its own allies as being “dictators” or “regimes” — not even the Sauds. However, the purest dictatorship that’s involved in this conflict is Saudi Arabia (whose royalty are the chief financial backers of Al Qaeda). Next would be Qatar. Both of them are far less democratic than is Syria. And perhaps Russia is more of a democracy than the U.S. is. Any ‘press’ which merely assumes  otherwise is pure propaganda, because no assumption  should be made about international comparisons. U.S. President Barack Obama continually says that the U.S. is superior to all other nations. He repeatedly refers to it as “the one indispensable nation.” Insulting every other nation in that way sounds like what only the leader of a dictatorship would even want  to do.

On 14 January 2012, the chief financial angel of the Muslim Brotherhood, Qatar’s Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, told US television channel CBS “some troops should go to stop the killing” that Assad was doing against his Muslim Brotherhood jihadists who were trying to take over Syria. The BBC noted that, “Qatar was the first Arab country to join the Nato-led operation in Libya, which led to the downfall of Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi.” The American aristocracy wanted it, and the Arabic aristocracies also did. No democracy did. Only aristocratic regimes did. And they did it. In the name of ‘democracy.’ And yet, many people still fall for such ‘democracy.’

America and its allies have enjoyed a lot of success around the world. For example, there are millions of refugees from their wars who are now flooding into Europe. Muslim (and other) masses suffer, but aristocrats in many countries want it. Europe’s leaders support America, and are its allies in NATO etc., but whether they represent the interests of the public who elected them is problematic. For some reason, European publics don’t seem to understand things any better than the American public does. Perhaps democracy has been lost in Europe, too.

Democracy requires a free press. Free enough, for example, for it to publish, to mainstream audiences, articles like the present one. This article is therefore being submitted to virtually all news-media in the U.S. and many in Europe.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

Séralini, the scientist known for his research linking GM feed with cancerous tumor growth in rats, has been through hell and back with his research on GMOs, but now it seems things are looking a little better for him. The Parisian High Court has indicted Marc Fellous, former chairman of France’s Biomolecular Engineering Commission (BEC), for “forgery” and “the use of forgery,” in a libel trial that he lost to Prof Gilles-Eric Séralini.

This bogus commission, BEC, has authorized numerous GM crops for human consumption, essentially lying to the masses, and trying to hide scientific results suggesting that genetically modified food is carcinogenic and health-damaging in a number of ways.

The details of the case have not yet been publicly released, but a source close to the case told GMWatch that Fellous had used or copied the signature of a scientist without his agreement to argue that Séralini and his co-researchers were wrong in their reassessment of Monsanto studies.

Two court cases have now been won by Séralini’s team. [1]

The latest trial demonstrated that the original author of the fraud accusation, prior to Marianne magazine, was the American lobbyist Henry I. Miller in Forbes magazine. Interestingly, Miller also tried to discredit scientists who linked tobacco use with cancer and heart disease in the name of that industry. It seems the biotech industry could purchase his skills for a similar price.

The long-term toxicity study by Séralini’s team was republished after the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology retracted it under

Notes:

[1] GMWatch

The COP21 Summit opened yesterday in Paris in a siege atmosphere due to the state of emergency decreed by the French government after the November 13 terror attacks in Paris. Thousands of army troops, police and paramilitary riot police roamed the streets, with many major roads closed off and control points set up in many places.

Over 120,000 soldiers and policemen were deployed inside France, including 6,300 in Paris alone, after police used their emergency powers to brutally crush an anti-COP21 summit protest on Sunday. The final tally was 341 arrests and 317 people held overnight.

Under these draconian conditions, the French government received the 195 delegations, including 145 heads of state arriving at Paris’ two main airports, Charles De Gaulle and Orly. Multiple highways serving those airports and large stretches of the Paris ring road were blocked to all traffic other than official vehicles bringing delegates to major Paris hotels.

Initially, authorities announced that public transport in the Paris area would be free Sunday and Monday. Subsequently, however, the media and official sources warned that taking public transport would be dangerous and that workers should instead take a vacation day Monday.

The few ecological proposals advanced at the COP21 summit were largely overshadowed by the security clampdown in Paris and the escalating risk of war between the major powers attending the conference. Under conditions where these powers are on the verge of outright military conflict in Syria and beyond, they are unsurprisingly proving incapable of coming together to address the complex ecological problems that the conference was supposed to address.

The COP21 summit is producing very few concrete proposals. Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, stated:

“The energy transition is designing a new world poor in carbon and rich in creativity. There is a new world dynamic here, however we do not have enough commitments to limit global warming to 2 degrees centigrade. Great promises are not sufficient, we need to find a binding agreement that is strong and durable.”

In fact, no binding agreement on limiting global warming will emerge from the conference, and the main dynamic at the conference is the rising conflict between the member states. Even if the conference were to produce a concrete proposal, however, there will be no mechanism to ensure compliance by the major powers with the proposal. Last month, US Secretary of State John Kerry bluntly declared in an interview with the Financial Times that the Paris summit would not produce any enforceable agreement between the major powers.

There is “definitively not going to be a treaty” coming out of the COP21 conference, Kerry said, adding that there was “not going to be legally binding [greenhouse gas] reduction targets like Kyoto,” referring to the 1997 Kyoto protocol.

From the beginning, therefore, whatever ecological measures were formally agreed at the Paris conference would have little real significance.

This first day of the summit was dominated not by the speeches on reducing pollution and climate change but by off-stage, private one-on-one discussions between the major powers trying to manage the enormous international tensions erupting over Syria. Turkey’s shooting down of the Russian bomber—a reckless move subsequently defended by Washington—has brought the danger of war between the imperialist-led NATO alliance and Russia to the breaking point.

The Turkish Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, refused again on Monday to present Turkey’s excuses for the incident. Davutoglu also asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to reconsider the economic sanctions Moscow had just adopted against his country, saying “they run contrary to both our interests”.

US President Obama and Putin held bilateral talks on Monday during the COP21 conference. Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov claimed that “Obama expressed regret in connection with the incident involving the Russian jet downed by the Turkish Air Force in Syria.”

Putin has warned that the attack will have “serious consequences” for Russian-Turkish relations and has already expelled 37 Turkish businessmen from Russia.

He described the attack as a “stab in Russia’s back” delivered by terrorists’ accomplices. He has shown satellite photos of fleets of trucks taking ISIS oil to Turkey to be sold on the international market. Putin signed a decree Monday evening taking effect immediately says that charter flights from Russia to Turkey are banned, that tour firms would be told not to sell any holidays there, that unspecified Turkish imports would be outlawed, and Turkish firms and nationals are to have their economic activities halted or curbed.

“The circumstances are unprecedented. The gauntlet thrown down to Russia is unprecedented. So naturally the reaction is in line with this threat,” said Peskov, hours before the decree was published.

Putin has suggested that US officials, to whom the Russians have been giving their flight data in order to avoid incidents during their missions, transmitted these details to Turkey as a NATO ally, allowing them to shoot down the Russian jet. “The American side, which leads the Coalition that Turkey is part of, knew where and when our warplanes operated [at the time of the incident]. And that’s exactly where the attack took place,” Putin emphasized.

This is leading to a Russian escalation in the war in Syria. Moscow has announced plans for Russian SU-34 fighters to carry air-to-air missiles as well as bombs on their missions, and for the deployment of Russia’s most advanced S-400 air defense system in Syria.

Plans for Russian oil and gas pipelines going through Turkey, with contracts worth billions of dollars, will likely be reassessed.

At the same time, Russia has raised again the $3 billion in gas debts owed by the US-backed Ukrainian regime.

Peskov said, “Syria was discussed in detail, too, and both presidents spoke in favor of moves towards the start of political settlement,” he said. “They also spoke about Ukraine and pointed out the importance of an earliest possible implementation of the Minsk accords.”

In reality, according to Reuters, Obama told Putin again that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must leave power as part of a political transition in Syria. The US position is opposed to that of the Russian government, which has insisted that the ousting of Assad cannot be a precondition for the beginning of negotiations to end the Syria war.

On Saturday, Russia unveiled a raft of economic sanctions against Turkey in retaliation for Ankara’s brazen move to shoot down an Su-24 warplane near the Syrian border. Charter flights to Turkey are now banned, Turkish imports will be curbed, visa-free travel is no more, Russian tourism companies are forbidden from selling travel packages that include a stay in Turkey, and Turkish firms will face restrictions on their economic activity. 

“It’s not just Turkey that has economic interests, Russia too has economic interests in relation to Turkey,” Turkish PM Ahmet Davutoglu said on Saturday, adding that he hoped Putin would act in a “cool-headed” manner.

Russia does indeed have economic interests in Turkey. Ankara paid Gazprom some $10 billion last year and Turkey accounts for nearly a third of the company’s nat gas exports:

But this is most assuredly a two way street. As we noted on Saturday, Turkey is heavily dependent on Russia for energy and souring relations will put a non-trivial dent in Ankara’s tourism revenues:

As we discussed on Wednesday, the idea that Turkey can easily replace Russian gas may be a pipe dream (no pun intended) despite Erdogan’s grandstanding. Here’s how we explained the situation facing Ankara:

  What analysts (and Erdogan) seem to be discounting here is that ties between Russia and Iran have strengthened materially over the past six months and Russia’s intervention in Syria will not be forgotten in Tehran. Throw in the fact that Russia and Iran are already in talks on a number of energy projects and it seems reasonable to suspect that if Iran believes Turkey is becoming too much of an impediment to the campaign in Syria, Tehran may just decide to drive a harder bargain when it comes to gas supplies. In short: if you’re Turkey, you don’t really want to put yourself in a position where your fallback plan in the event you anger your biggest energy supplier is to try and negotiate for more trade with that supplier’s closest geopolitical ally, especially when you are actively seeking to subvert both of their goals in a strategically important country. As WSJ put it on Wednesday, “diverting the energy trade wouldn’t be easy.”

No, it most certainly would not “be easy”, and the big question going forward is this: is it realistic to believe, given what’s going on in Syria, that Iran will be willing to make it any easier? 

Ultimately, it’s diffiult to say who has the stronger hand. Russia and Turkey – despite an otherwise tenuous relationship set against a history of confrontation (see The Czar vs. the Sultan from Foreign Policy) – have developed a lucrative trade partnership that neither side is particularly keen on scrapping. That said, the stakes are high and now that Moscow has hit back with sanctions, the ball is in Ankara’s court.

Despite bombastic rhetoric from Erdogan (whose tone has softened at bit over the last 48 or so hours), Turkey cannot shoot down another Russian warplane. If they do, they risk an outright military confrontation with Russia. So unless Erdogan intends to plunge NATO into an armed conflict with the Russians, he’ll need to find other ways to retailiate and refusing to buy from Gazprom probably isn’t the the first, best option from a practical point of view.

What Turkey could do, however, is close the the Bosphorus Strait which would effectively cut Russia’s supply line to Latakia.

Here’s Sputnik:

  Tensions between Russia and Turkey over the downing of a Russian Su-24 bomber in Syria may challenge freedom of navigation through the Bosphorus Strait, a major pathway for Russian ships. However, a Turkish unilateral ban on the passage of Russian ships is unlikely since it would violate international law.

In recent months, Russia’s heavy military equipment has been delivered to Syria mostly by sea, with the shortest route coming through the Bosphorus Strait and the Dardanelles.  A sharp rise in tensions between Moscow and Ankara may challenge the delivery of Russian weapons and troops through the straits. If passage is prohibited for Russia there is still the way through the Gibraltar (which takes 13-14 days rather than four days through the Bosphorus) or by air.

In peacetime, Turkey is obligated to allow naval warships safe passage regardless of what flag they fly. As Sputnik goes on to note however, “in times of war, the passage of warships shall be left entirely to the discretion of the Turkish government.” Although one Russian lawyer who spoke to RBK claims the Turks have no legal ground to block passage, it’s not difficult to imagine a scenario whereby Erdogan decides to push the issue. Indeed, if Ankara can disrupt Moscow’s supply route to its forces in Syria, well then all the better for the FSA and all of the other proxy armies battling to hold onto territory near Aleppo in the face of the Russian and Iranian assault. Of course such a move would raise serious questions regarding Turkey’s adherence to the 1936 Montreux Convention and would only serve to inflame tensions between Moscow and Ankara. We’ll be watching closely in the days and weeks ahead for evidence that Erdogan is impeding the progress of Russian vessels through the strait and in the meantime we’d remind you that Bilal Erodgan, the President’s son and patron saint of Islamic State’s multi-hundred million dollar oil enterprise, has a bird’s eye view of the drama (from Today’s Zaman, earlier this year):

 President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an’s son Bilal Erdo?an has moved his shipping company’s office to a newly built four-story building with a Bosporus view in ?stanbul’s Beylerbeyi neighborhood.

The Sözcü daily reported on Sunday that Bilal Erdo?an, a co-partner of a shipping company, has moved his office from Üsküdar to Beylerbeyi. According to the claims in the report, Bilal Erdo?an purchased three plots of land on Yal?boyu Street in Beylerbeyi and constructed a four-storey company office on it. The cost of the building is estimated to be TL 340 million. The new office has a view of the Bosporus. It also has a parking lot and a courtyard.

David Cameron’s plans to launch airstrikes in Syria are already facing a rebellion of around 20% of his party membership, but now the powerful Foreign Affairs Select Committee has voted against the proposed airstrikes.

The Foreign Affairs Select Committee is chaired by Conservative MP Crispin Blunt, and has a majority of Conservative members – yet this evening, the powerful committee has defied the government and expressed their opposition to the planned strikes. A Conservative member of the committee, John Baron MP, has written a piece for The Guardian outlining the reasons for the no vote.

The piece, entitled ‘I’ll defy my party leader, and vote against Syria airstrikes’ argues Mr Cameron has failed to learn the lessons of previously failed interventions in the Middle East, and is doomed to repeat them if he proceeds with the airstrikes. The MP writes:

“Though the government has precipitated another rush into military action, it has not yet constructed a realistic long-term strategy to destroy Daesh/Isis. On a recent visit to Middle Eastern capitals with the foreign affairs select committee, the officials we met were concerned we risk making the same mistakes as we made in our previous military interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan (post-2006) and Libya.”

And as for Cameron’s claim that 70,000 moderate Syrian ground troops are ready to take care of the ‘boots on the ground’ element of the war? John Baron MP confirms that on recent visits, his committee were informed there were precious few ‘moderates’ in Syria, and even the most moderate groups are unaligned and often fighting each other too. The result of placing our hopes on this fractured and incoherent opposition would, argues Baron, be to repeat the mistakes of the past:

“The government has forgotten the lessons of Libya, where the anti-Gaddafi forces splintered into a thousand militias the moment the common enemy was defeated. A fresh civil war has been a result. Syria would be similar, but on a grand scale.”

In short, the sum total of Britain’s planned intervention in Syria, would be to kick start yet another phase of civil war. This would just as likely strengthen ISIS/Daesh, as weaken them – killing yet more civilians in the process.

This last minute call to common sense by the Conservative-led committee should act as a sobering force on Labour and Conservative MPs alike as they head to the debate and vote on Wednesday. The reckless meddling of the Bush/Blair coalition helped create the crisis in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. Let us hope wiser heads prevail this time around.

Yesterday, barely two weeks since the November 13 terror attacks killed 130 and led to the closure of large sections of Paris around République Square, violence again erupted in the streets of the city. With 120,000 soldiers and police forces deployed across France, and fully 6,300 police and paramilitary riot police mobilized in downtown Paris alone, République Square was again blocked off by a massive police cordon.

The target of this deployment, held under the state of emergency imposed after the November 13 attacks by the Socialist Party (PS) government of President François Hollande, was not, however, a group of fighters loyal to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Rather, it was a domestic social protest mounted by ecological groups against the COP-21 ecological summit opening today in Paris.

The state of emergency bans all forms of public protest for three months, and police seized upon this standing ban to stage a brutal crackdown on a crowd of several thousand people. République Square, which had seen vigils for the victims of the November 13 attacks and official appeals for national unity, was filled with tear gas as police shot rubber bullets at peaceful protesters.

Citing acts of violence by a group of 80 masked protesters, police then proceeded to arrest 289 protesters, detaining 174.

Even before the protests, police had used their emergency powers to place two dozen ecological activists under house arrest without trial. This was part of a broader crackdown across France since November 13 that has seen over 100 unidentified people put under house arrest.

The crackdown on protests goes hand in hand with the broader terrorizing of the public by the state. Anyone who goes into the streets is soon confronted with men wearing body armor and carrying assault rifles.

Business groups have already called for employers to use the state of emergency to monitor the workplaces and denounce “radicalized” workers to police.

The World Socialist Web Site has repeatedly warned that the police-state measures implemented internationally under the rubric of the “war on terror” since 2001 were the expression of a fundamental breakdown of democracy. Anyone who thought that these were empty words should examine what has happened in France since the November 13 terrorist attacks.

One must call things by their right names: what is being established in France is a police state dictatorship. Due to the activities of a handful of people who carried out the November 13 attacks, social protest has effectively been banned; police have received arbitrary powers to carry out searches and seizures and the state has given itself enormous powers to detain individuals and dissolve organizations. The PS aims to make this state of affairs permanent, moreover, by passage of a constitutional amendment.

The multi-party organization of the bourgeois political establishment and the maintenance, at least for the present, of the formal routines of elections are no obstacle to the conversion of France into a police state. As the virtually unanimous votes in favor of the state of emergency and of stepped-up bombing of Syria in the French National Assembly show, these policies enjoy the support of all the institutions of the state and all the political parties, including nominally “left” organizations.

Nor has any criticism of the accelerating drift towards authoritarian rule in France emerged from the ruling establishments internationally. Rather, as Washington directs the spying of the National Security Agency at the American people, and Berlin and Tokyo dust off their plans to re-militarize their foreign policy in the face of public opposition, all the major imperialist powers are watching events in France and preparing their own versions of these measures.

This political crisis is uncovering the absence of any constituency for bourgeois democracy in the capitalist class. The driving force behind the PS’ assault on democratic rights is not the terrorist attacks of Islamist opposition forces in Syria, who in any case serve the imperialist powers’ agenda of regime change against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Rather, it is the extreme social polarization between a super-rich financial aristocracy and broad masses of increasingly exploited and impoverished working people. Austerity policies pursued over seven years of the most devastating global capitalist crisis since the 1930s have thrown tens of millions of people into unemployment and shredded basic social programs across Europe.

Only a month before the Paris attacks, the French bourgeoisie was stunned and horrified when Air France workers confronted executives and union bureaucrats planning mass layoffs and tore the shirts of two Air France executives—an act that received broad support among workers across France and Europe.

Broad popular opposition to austerity and to imperialist war can find no expression in the political establishment, which views the sentiments of the vast majority of the population with hostility and fear. Under these conditions, the social basis for bourgeois democracy is collapsing. The political dynamics of this process were described eight decades ago, at the time of the rise of European fascism, by the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky:

“By analogy with electrical engineering, democracy might be defined as a system of safety switches and circuit breakers for protection against currents overloaded by the national or social struggle. No period of human history has been—even remotely—so overcharged with antagonisms as ours. The overloading of lines occurs more and more frequently at different points in the European power grid. Under the impact of class and international contradictions that are too highly charged, the safety switches of democracy either burn out or explode. That is essentially what the short circuiting of dictatorship represents,” Trotsky wrote.

Today, as during the great struggles of the 20th century, class tensions are building up that are overloading the circuit breakers of bourgeois democracy.

A powerful constituency remains for democracy and democratic rights: the working class. The fact that accumulating class tensions lead to such drastic attacks on democratic rights is, however, a stark indication of the revolutionary character of the situation and the urgent necessity of an anti-capitalist struggle based on a revolutionary, socialist perspective.

Russia’s Defense Ministry published images and a map it says reveal a chain of oil smuggling to Turkey from Islamic State – from extraction to refining facilities. 

At least three ISIS oil supply routes were located, all leading to Turkey.

The Ukrainian armed forces over the past week have redeployed to the contact line with Donbass 277 battle tanks and heavy artillery pieces, spokesman for the DPR Defense Ministry Eduard Basurin reported on Monday. Ukrainian military hardware is located at the separation line the areas of the cities of Gorlovka, Mariupol and Donetsk. Also, 147 infantry fighting vehicles and armoured personnel carriers, 26 vehicles with ammunition and more than 660 troops are there.

Republicans John McCain and Lindsey Graham criticised President Barack Obama’s incremental Islamic State strategy, which relies on airstrikes and modest support to local ground forces in Iraq and Syria, and said the need for greater U.S. involvement was underlined by this month’s Paris attacks. McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, recently proposed intervention in Syria by a European and Arab ground force backed by 10,000 U.S. military advisers and trainers. Whether Syria wants thousands of US soldiers to operate within its borders is of course entirely irrelevant for him.

Mowaffak al-Rubaie, a leader of the State of Law Coalition party in the Iraqi parliament and former national security adviser, says his request from the United States to target ISIS trucks that carry the Iraqi and Syrian oil for sale out of the countries has failed to bear any result as Washington considers them “civilian targets.” “I have personally contacted US representatives asking them to target ISIL trucks transporting Iraqi and Syrian oil to Turkey only to be told that those were civilian targets so they could not attack them,” said Rubaie. According to him, the militant group had made over $800 million dollars in black market oil sales in Turkey over the last eight months.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has announced its readiness to commit ground troops to the fight against ‘terrorist groups’ operating in Syria, the Emirati State Minister for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash stated on Monday. We remember, in the UAE’s first official reaction to Russia’s ongoing aerial campaign against in Syria, Gargash said Moscow was targeting “a common enemy” by striking ISIS and al-Qaeda-affiliated militants.

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On Tuesday and Wednesday, NATO foreign ministers are meeting in Brussels on the pretext of “work(ing) on further measures to assure Turkey’s security,” and related issues, based on a nonexistent Russian threat.

It sounds like a bad joke, except issues at stake are deadly serious, Russia-bashing featured in all NATO meetings, Erdogan’s well-planned act of aggression complicit with Washington called self-defense, Secretary-General Stoltenberg saying:

NATO has “standing defense plans for (member country) Turkey (including) augmented…air defenses, (part of its) long-term commitment to an ally” – despite no nation threatening its security.

Washington “deployed aircraft to support Turkey’s air defenses” – Britain to follow suit along with Germany and Denmark. “(W)e have decided to address the need to support Turkey before the incident last week.”

Were NATO officials briefed about plans to down a Russian aircraft before the incident? All the fuss about Turkey reflects the latest way of bashing Russia.

Are plans to defend Turkish airspace code language for more anti-Russian provocations?

Turkey already has one of the world’s strongest militaries, waging terror war against regional Kurds, entering Syrian and Iraqi airspace lawlessly, killing its fighters battling ISIS, Erdogan lying about combating terrorism.

Aiding its military with US and other NATO member countries’ firepower increases the chance of direct confrontation with Russia. Is this what Washington intends, Erdogan recklessly going along, possibly getting embroiled with something way over his head, gravely risking Turkey’s security by playing America’s dirty game?

Stoltenberg called enhanced Russian eastern Mediterranean and Baltic Sea region military capability a matter of “concern” – ignoring NATO’s hostile buildup and provocative military exercises near its borders, Russia responding responsibly to a confrontational US-led threat.

Stoltenberg claims NATO must focus on new ways of deterring a (nonexistent) Russian threat.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. 

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

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

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

Governments should stop thinking about refugee camps as temporary places, says Kilian Kleinschmidt, one of the world’s leading authorities on humanitarian aid (+ interview).

“These are the cities of tomorrow,” said Kleinschmidt of Europe’s rapidly expanding refugee camps. “The average stay today in a camp is 17 years. That’s a generation.”

“In the Middle East, we were building camps: storage facilities for people. But the refugees were building a city,” he told Dezeen.

 Kilian Kleinschmidt

Kleinschmidt said a lack of willingness to recognise that camps had become a permanent fixture around the world and a failure to provide proper infrastructure was leading to unnecessarily poor conditions and leaving residents vulnerable to “crooks”.

“I think we have reached the dead end almost where the humanitarian agencies cannot cope with the crisis,” he said. “We’re doing humanitarian aid as we did 70 years ago after the second world war. Nothing has changed.”

Kleinschmidt, 53, worked for 25 years for the United Nations and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in various camps and operations worldwide. He was most recently stationed in Zaatari in Jordan, the world’s second largest refugee camp – before leaving to start his own aid consultancy, Switxboard.

A number of designers have responded to the refugee crisis by creating various types of shelter, like this one by Suricatta Systems

He believes that migrants coming into Europe could help repopulate parts of Spain and Italy that have been abandoned as people gravitate increasingly towards major cities.

“Many places in Europe are totally deserted because the people have moved to other places,” he said. “You could put in a new population, set up opportunities to develop and trade and work. You could see them as special development zones which are actually used as a trigger for an otherwise impoverished neglected area.”

Refugees could also stimulate the economy in Germany, which has 600,000 job vacancies and requires tens of thousands of new apartments to house workers, he said.

“Germany is very interesting, because it is actually seeing this as the beginning of a big economic boost,” he explained. “Building 300,000 affordable apartments a year: the building industry is dreaming of this!”

“It creates tons of jobs, even for those who are coming in now. Germany will come out of this crisis.”

Italian designer Enzo Mari recently granted a Berlin-based organisation permission to reproduce his Autoprogettazione furniture to provide work for refugees

Kleinschmidt told Dezeen that aid organisations and governments needed to accept that new technologies like 3D printing could enable refugees and migrants to become more self-sufficient.

“With a Fab Lab people could produce anything they need – a house, a car, a bicycle, generating their own energy, whatever,” he said.

His own attempts to set up a Zaatari Fab Lab – a workshop providing access to digital fabrication tools – have been met with opposition.

“That whole concept that you can connect a poor person with something that belongs to the 21st century is very alien to even most aid agencies,” he said. “Intelligence services and so on from government think ‘my god, these are just refugees, so why should they be able to do 3D-printing? Why should they be working on robotics?’ The idea is that if you’re poor, it’s all only about survival.”

“We have to get away from the concept that, because you have that status – migrant, refugee, martian, alien, whatever – you’re not allowed to be like everybody else.”

Read the edited transcript from our interview with Kilian Kleinschmidt: 

Talia Radford: Why did you leave the UN?

Kilian Kleinschmidt: I left the the UN to be as disruptive as possible, as provocative as possible, because within the UN of course there is certain discipline. I mean I was always the rebel.

Talia Radford: What is there to rebel about?

Kilian Kleinschmidt: I think we have reached the dead end almost where the humanitarian agencies cannot cope with the crisis. We’re doing humanitarian aid as we did 70 years ago after the second world war. Nothing has changed.

In the Middle East, we were building camps: storage facilities for people. But the refugees were building a city.

These are the cities of tomorrow. The average stay today in a camp is 17 years. That’s a generation. Let’s look at these places as cities.

Talia Radford: Why aren’t refugee camps flourishing into existing cities?

Kilian Kleinschmidt: It’s down to the stupidity of the aid organisations, who prefer to waste money and work in a non-sustainable way rather than investing in making them sustainable.

Talia Radford: Why are people coming to Europe?

Kilian Kleinschmidt: Everybody who is coming here right now is an economic migrant. They are not refugees. They were refugees in Jordan, but they are coming to Europe to study, to work, to have a perspective for their families. In the pure definition, it’s a migration issue.

Right now everybody is going to Germany because in Germany they have 600,000 job vacancies. So of course there is an attraction, and there is space. Once the space is filled, nobody will go there anymore. They will go somewhere else.

Talia Radford: How do refugees – or economic migrants – know where to go? Via the media?

Kilian Kleinschmidt: No, it’s all done through Whatsapp!

Kilian Kleinschmidt: Every Syrian refugee in the Zaatari camp has been watching Google self-driving cars moving around, so [they] don’t believe the information only belongs to the rich people anymore.

We did studies in the Zaatari camp on communication. Everybody had a cellphone and 60 per cent had a smartphone. The first thing people were doing when they came across the border was calling back home to Syria and saying “hey we made it”. So the big, big thing was to distribute Jordanian sim cards.

Once we had gotten over the riots over water and lots of other things that politicised the camp, the next big issue was internet connectivity.

Talia Radford: What are the infrastructure requirements of a mass influx of refugees?

Kilian Kleinschmidt: The first is the logistics of accommodation: that’s the survival bit. Everyone is struggling with this now, in reception centres, camps – every country in the world is dealing with this. Eighty-five to 90 per cent of any people on the move will be melting into the population so the real issue is how you deal with a sudden higher demand for accommodation.

Germany says that they suddenly need 300 to 400,000 affordable housing units more per year. It’s about dealing with the structural issues, dealing with the increased population, and absorbing them into existing infrastructure.

Talia Radford: How do you see the refugee situation in Europe now?

Kilian Kleinschmidt: The discussion in Germany is quite interesting, because they currently have 600,000 jobs to fill, but they are all in places where there is no housing. It’s all in urban centres where they have forgotten to build apartments.

Half of east Germany is empty. Half of southern Italy is empty. Spain is empty. Many places in Europe are totally deserted.

You could redevelop some of these empty cities into free-trade zones where you would put in a new population and actually set up opportunities to develop and trade and work. You could see them as special development zones, which are actually used as a trigger for an otherwise impoverished, neglected area.

Germany is very interesting, because it is actually seeing this as the beginning of a big economic boost. Building 300,000 apartments a year: the building industry is dreaming of this! It creates tons of jobs, even for those who are coming in now. Germany will come out of this crisis.

Talia Radford: What other technologies have you dealt with in relation to refugees and migration?

Kilian Kleinschmidt: Energy is the big one. Things are finally moving because of the energy storage, which we suddenly have with the Tesla batteries for instance. Decentralised production of energy is the way forward. Thirty per cent of the world’s population does not have regular access to energy. We could see a mega, mega revolution. With little investment we can set up a solar-power plant that not only provides power to the entire camp, but can also be sold to the surrounding settlements.

And water. In the Kibera slum in Nairobi, Danish groundwater pump supplier Grundfos partnered with a water company and you now have a smart-water terminal in the slum, where with smart cards you can buy clean drinking water.

You buy your water from a safe location for a fraction of what the crooks of the water business in Nairobi would sell the water for. So suddenly it becomes affordable, it becomes safe, and you can manage the quantities yourself.

No poor person has a bank account any more in Kenya. Everybody has an M-Pesa account on their mobile phone. All transactions are done with their mobile phone. They don’t need banks. They pay their staff now with your mobile phone. You charge their M-Pesa account.

Talia Radford: Are any of these services being set up at refugee camps?

Kilian Kleinschmidt: At Zaatari, the UNHCR never planned to provide electricity for the households. So people took it themselves from the power lines running through the camp. Electricity means safety, it means social life, it means business. Big business! People were charging €30 per connection and more.

With a $3 million investment in pre-paid meters, you could have ensured every household would get a certain subsidised quantity of energy. The UNHCR didn’t think it would have $3 million to invest in the equipment, and so it is spending a million dollars a month of taxpayers’ money on an unmanaged electricity bill.

Talia Radford: You helped set up a Fab Lab in Zaatari. Tell us a bit more about that.

Kilian Kleinschmidt: It’s not there yet, because it’s very problematic to convince people that this is the right way for refugees to be “empowered” – to do something that actually belongs to the rich and beautiful and very connected people.

That whole concept that you can connect a poor person with something that belongs to the 21st century is very alien to even most aid agencies. Intelligence services and so on from government think “my god, these are just refugees, so why should they be able to do 3D-printing? Why should they be working on robotics?” The idea is that if you’re poor, it’s all only about survival.

I mean what’s the difference between someone in Philly and somebody in a refugee city? We have to get away from the concept that, because you have that status – migrant, refugee, martian, alien, whatever – you’re not allowed to be like everybody else.

With a Fab Lab people could produce anything they need, a house, a car, a bicycle, generating their own energy, whatever. I mean a Fab Lab is there to do anything. We call it Beyond Survival.

Talia Radford: What do you mean by Beyond Survival?

Kilian Kleinschmidt: Beyond Survival deals with the psyche of people, to recognise that they need to regain everything they have lost, and this is not material, this is about their dignity.

I mean the Syrians, for their wellbeing, they need a fountain and a birdcage and a plant and they need to sit next to the fountain to drink tea. That’s their expression of home. So everybody at Zaatari was building fountains.

Talia Radford: They built fountains in the camp?

Kilian Kleinschmidt: Yes. You had all sorts of models of fountains. Fountains even built in the middle of tents. Huge fountains built with little pebbles and stuff. They were investing all the little they had into having a water pump with water coming out.

There were even fountains with in-built televisions, light shows, you name it! The owner of my favourite restaurant had installed a pink fountain with pink-coloured water coming out.

Next to this you needed a birdcage, a plant, a shisha, but also paintings and decorations, which of course created a market within the camp, but more importantly a sign of settling and a sense of identity.

Because when you arrive at a camp you have basically been stripped naked and lost everything that has to do with your identity. And in a camp you are treated the same as everyone else, you are supposed to eat the same, drink the same, you get the same clothes. That’s the humanitarian standard.

But we need to understand that somebody might just want to build a jacuzzi in their home, and will find the means to get it!

The funniest story was when this guy developed a cement swimming pool in his yard in a camp! He filled it with water and would charge children for using it. UNICEF shut it down eventually because it was not safe.

All the pieces are falling into place now. Europe’s New Model Army is quickly taking shape.

Late last week 21WIRE reported on Germany’s recent announcement to send 100 Bundeswehr Special Forces into Northern Iraq to fight against ISIS alongside Kurdish Peshmerga militias.

Yesterday, Germany’s Chief of Staff, Volker Wieker upped the ante, telling the Bild Newspaperthat at least 1,200 military personnel will now be required for Berlin’s new deployment plans – combining German infantry, air force and navy vessels which they believe will make an impact in the battle against ISIS, not only in Northern Iraq, but now for Syria too.

Plans also include German supplying Kurdish fighters with thousands of German weapons and German training for those arms.

According to Wieker, Germany will deploy their Air Force detachment to either in Turkey or Jordan.

This latest military move by Chancellor Angela Merkel comes as part of Germany’s support for France after the highly dubious Paris Attacks which saw an alleged (not yet proven) “ISIS Attack” take place on November 13th.

Still, not a word from Germany about its NATO allied Turkey’s role in facilitating and supplying valuable oil revenue and trafficking weapons to ISIS.

The Bundestag will begin ‘discussions’ (not debates) on a military deployment set to be rubber stamped before Christmas. At a Paris new conference this week, Merkel told French President Francois Hollande:

“When the French president asks me to think about what more we can do, then it is our duty to reflect on this and we will also react very quickly here.”

Germany is also expanding its military footprint to include the African continent too. Berlin has already announced its plans to send an additional 650 soldiers to Mali, in an effort we’re told, “to aid France in its peace-keeping operation there “.

FAMILIAR GRAY UNIFORMS: Bundeswehr Special Forces on display during German military parade.

On its own, this latest news may look like just another western nation wanting to join-in on a NATO-coordinated, internationally illegal and undeclared (see Nuremberg Principles) US-NATO-led gang-bang in Syria. Considering the context of political maneuvers happening now in Brussels, the allies ‘Rush to Syria’ leads us to a much bigger, more profound development that’s already underway.

Paris and the Turkey-Russia shoot-down NATO crisis have provided the perfect storm for the final pieces to be laid into place for a new European joint-military political imperative. Undoubtedly, Germany, Britain and France’s rush to get their military assets positioned in the Middle East is a key part of Brussel’s nudging process to make any talk of a new EU Army seem like a fait accompli. Also, consider NATO’s ongoing involvement in destabilzing eastern Ukraine and Crimea, where NeoNazi paramilitary units are now active and fighting alongside new Chechen Islamist recruits as part of NATO’s new asymmetric war and stated policy to ‘contain’ Russia. This new US-European multi-front war is far beyond anything witnessed during half a century of Cold War geopolitics.

The EU Army is being finalized as we speak. 21WIRE’s foreign affairs editor Patrick Henningsenrevealed plans for a new European Union, ‘EU Army’, ideally to replace NATO as the dominant military force in Europe. Henningsen explains:

“Anyone who has actually been paying attention to the declining state of the British military will know that it’s almost down to a level where it cannot possibly function autonomously. Soon, all that will remain are a few shiny set-pieces like the Trident nuclear submarine fleet, but more importantly – the key remaining component: a rapid reaction, special forces capability which will slot into the new EU Army matrix. Anything which is not fulfilling a role within the larger infrastructure will be scrapped.”

It turns out that Germany and Great Britain is playing the central role in coordinating the political campaign to fast-track this historic and worrying new development. While UK voters are distracted with the promise of an ‘IN or OUT’ EU referendum, many have completely missed David Cameron and Angela Merkel busy behind the scenes getting the new EU Army project ready.

In September, Merkel agreed on a deal with Cameron to drop his (faux public) opposition to an EU Army in exchange for Germany supporting Britain’s EU “renegotiation”. The Telegraph confirmed the meeting:

This looks like the glue that Germany and Brussels needed to keep the European Federal Super State bound together for the next century. Clearly, once it’s signed, any countries hoping to bolt from the Union can kiss those aspirations of independence goodbye, indefinitely (in the new Europe, where ‘security’ trumps all, including sovereignty).

Do not think for a second that it will end with an EU Army. In addition, plans are already underway for a ‘European Border Control Agency’ with federal policing powers, a ‘European Coast Guard Force’, a ‘European Central Intelligence Agency’, and a ‘European Federal Bureau of Investigation’ (official titles to be announced). These new federal additions will easily double the current operating budget of the EU.

Europe’s New Model Army is here, and happening right under everyone’s nose.

We were told long ago that the “war on terror” would make the world a safer place. But after 14 years of permanent warfare, terrorist attacks around the world have escalated by a staggering 6,500%.

If its objective was to end terrorism, the “war on terror” has abjectly failed. Since it was launched in 2001, terror attacks – and the number of people killed by them – have sky-rocketed:

The above image comes from the Global Terrorism Index 2015, published by the Institute for Economics and Peace. The same index notes that 78% of all deaths from terrorism last year took place in just five countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Pakistan and Syria.

1. Iraq

Iraq takes first place in the index, with a shocking 9,929 terrorist fatalities in 2014 – the highest ever recorded in any country. The chart below (based on figures from the index) clearly shows the surge in terrorist attacks in Iraq starting soon after the 2003 invasion:
2. Afghanistan

In second place is Afghanistan, which became the first target of the “war on terror” when Operation Enduring Freedom was launched a few weeks after 9/11. One of the aims of the operation was to stop Afghanistan from becoming a terrorist haven. Instead, the 14-year intervention has overseen an increase in terrorist incidents of more than 5,000%, from 30 in 2002 to 1591 in 2014:

3. Nigeria

With a year-on-year increase of more than 300% in terrorist fatalities, Nigeria comes third in the index. Together, Boko Haram and ISIL were responsible for just over half of all claimed global terrorism fatalities in 2014:

4. Pakistan

Pakistan has seen an increase in terror attacks of more than 4,000% since 2002. Mehdi Hasan notes that, in the 14 years before 9/11, there was just one suicide attack on Pakistani soil – in the 14 years since, there have been 486 suicide bombings, killing more than 6,000 people.

5. Syria

Syria’s civil war began in 2011, which is made clearly visible by the graph. What is not yet clear is whether – and how – the year of coalition air strikes will affect the numbers of terrorist incidents.

The war on terror creates more war – and more terror

Of the five countries experiencing the most terrorism last year, “only Nigeria did not experience either US air strikes or a military occupation in that year,” notes journalist Paul Gottinger in his analysis of global terrorism data.

In some cases, such as Iraq, it is widely acknowledged that Western intervention led to a surge in terrorism;British intelligence and US government reports have admitted as much (even Tony Blair came close to letting it slip), and al-Qaeda strategist Abu Musab Al-Suri has celebrated the results:

The war in Iraq almost single-handedly rescued the entire Jihadi movement.

Decades of failed Western interventions have caused extraordinary suffering to the people of Iraq, perhaps killing as many as 2.9 million people. As Mehdi Hasan points out in the New Statesman: “If bombing ‘worked’, Iraq would have morphed into a Scandinavia-style utopia long ago.” Instead, the country is in chaos – breaking records for terrorist activity while ever more foreign fighters flood into the country day-by-day.

In other cases, like Syria, the connection is less clear. What is accepted, even by American intelligence agencies is that, after the deaths of hundreds of civilians and thousands of fighters from coalition bombs, Daesh (Isis) is certainly no weaker now than it was a year ago; in fact, its fighter ranks may have swelled from 20,000-31,500 to at least 80,000 in the past year.

The Global Terrorism Index has done a statistical analysis and found two factors to be most closely associated with terrorism:

These are the levels of political violence committed by the state, and the level of armed conflict within a country. The report finds that […] 88% of all terrorist attacks between 1989 and 2014 occurred in countries that were experiencing or involved in violent conflicts.

If there’s one thing the “war on terror” has excelled at, it is creating more war – and if there is a second, it is creating more terror.

On Thursday, David Cameron set out his ‘moral case’ for launching British airstrikes in Syria, claiming they will “make us safer”. But it is abundantly clear that the war on terror has not made us safer. If defeating terrorism is the aim, then we need to start fighting for creation, not destruction.

Featured image via The US Army/Flickr. 

First chart via the Global Terrorism Index 2015, the Institute for Economics and Peace.

Subsequent charts by the author, based on data from the Global Terrorism Index 2015.

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA), jointly with the National Defense Forces (NDF) captured the strategic hilltops of Koum Aqre in the Daraa province. Dozens of Al-Nusra terrorists were killed during heavy clashes on Koum Aqre located near the strategic towns of Kufer Shamis and Al-Shaykh Maskin. Controlling hilltops the Syrian forces are threatening to open a new front against the terrorists in Syria’s western areas.

About 100 Al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham terrorists were trying to infiltrate into al-Zabadani via the tunnels they had dug from the town of al-Mazaya, but they were pushed back by the Hezbollah fighters located in the sector. According to the pro-government sources, the terrorists retreated. About 30 militants were killed. Al-Zabadani is located 50 kilometers Northwest of Damascus and 12 kilometers Northeast of Lebanon’s Masnaa border crossing. Its location allows the Syrian government to hold control of the border between Syria and Lebanon in the sector.

In the Hama province, the Syrian Al-Qaeda faction “Jund Al-Aqsa” has launched a powerful assault in direction of the ‘Alawi village of Ma’an controlled by the NDF. The terrorists started its advance attacking the villages of Tal Bazzam and Ma’an. Also, clashes were observed at Souran, Al-Tayna, and Al-Buwayda. We remember, the Syrian government lost control of the strategic town of Morek in this area last month.

On November 30, for the first time Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber aircraft went on a mission carrying not only aerial bombs OFAB-500 and guided aerial bombs KAB-500, but with with short and medium range air-to-air missiles. The missiles are equipped with homing devices and are capable of hitting aerial targets at a distance of 60 kilometers. Russia has started to equip its jets with air-to-air missiles to defend them from some F-16s violating the Syrian airspace.

During the Paris climate talks, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russian authorities have additional evidence that the Russian Su-24 bomber was shot down by the Turkish Air Force to protect oil deliveries of the ISIS terrorist group and that oil from ISIS-controlled fields is being exported to Turkey on an industrial scale.

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The recent shooting down of a Russian military plane by Turkish air force jets has brought a great deal of media focus on the role of Turkey in the Syrian conflict. Knowledgeable observers of the four year-long civil war have been aware of Turkey’s role from the outset as a conduit for the infiltration of Syrian territory by Islamist militants who have had training camps provided for by the Turkish Army High Command.

However, a wider spectrum of the global audience to the Syrian tragedy has become more acquainted with the allegation of Turkish logistical support for and financial relations with the so-called Islamic State. The reason for the Turkish taking down of a warplane which posed no threat to its security can only be based on the premise that Turkey is worried about the success of Russian airstrikes and the gains made by the Syrian Arab Army in reclaiming territories lost to insurgent Islamist militias and sought to punish the Russians for their role in this inconvenient turn of events. Further, the conduct of the Turkish government in the immediate aftermath of the incident by calling for a meeting of members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, appears to have been an attempt to draw the military alliance headed by the United States into direct opposition to the Russian Federation.

When Russian president Vladimir Putin condemned the Turkish action as a “stab in the back by the accomplices of terrorists” he was not only enlightening the world about that nation’s role in the creation and sustenance of the Islamic State, he was also giving insight into the modus operandi of those operating at the helm of the Turkish state; one that has fashioned Turkey into an untrustworthy operator in international affairs – both  as a partner within a military alliance and as an ostensibly friendly neighbouring state.

The deep irony is that the government led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan is one which predicated its regional outlook on a much vaunted ‘Zero Problems with Neighbours’ stance. Far from this, his foreign policy demarches; seemingly a recurring series of conspiracies, attempts at entrapment, blackmail and betrayals have set Syria ablaze with death, destruction and displacement. The unruly hand of Erdogan has at specific junctures risked escalating the crisis into a full blown regional war along sectarian lines, and even more direly threatened to edge the conflict towards a confrontation between the nuclear armed powers of NATO and Russia.

The background to Turkish involvement in the Syrian crisis is one which has its roots in an historical rivalry between both nations and is nurtured by a confluence of geo-political objectives of the present leadership in Turkey with those of the nations with whom it is formally allied; that is, the United States and NATO, as well as its informal alliance with the conservative Arab monarchies that comprise the Gulf Co-operation Council. This extends to an arguably symbiotic relationship that Turkey has with the state of Israel.

Antagonisms between Turkey and Syria go back to the aftermath of the First World War when following the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, both modern Turkish and Syrian states were created. Right from the outset, mutual animosities festered over the twin issues of territorial and water rights.

Despite the secular framework undergirding both states, this rivalry was maintained during the era of the Cold War with the Turks becoming full-fledged members of NATO while the Syrians maintained a close relationship with the former Soviet Union.

The relationship was not helped by Turkish cooperation with Israel, a state to which Syria remained resolutely opposed. A low point was reached in 1998 when both nations came to the verge of all out war over Syrian support for guerrillas of the PKK, the Kurdish separatist organisation.

However by the late 2000s a rapprochement between both countries had developed to the extent that Syrian President Bashar al Assad described Turkey as “Syria’s best friend.” Erdogan for his part referred to the Syrians as “brothers.”

Those sentiments, given the present circumstances, have long been buried.

Under Erdogan’s leadership, Turkey has developed a foreign policy that aims to project Turkish influence within the Middle East and beyond. Regardless of the accuracies or inaccuracies attendant to descriptions of it as ‘neo-Ottoman’ in nature, it is clear that it is characterised by its assertiveness. Turkey’s initiatives consistently display a bold and ruthless approach whether the Turkish state is functioning as an intermediary, a facilitator or as a provocateur.

For instance, it was at Erdogan’s insistence in 2008 that the Syrians reluctantly began tentative talks with Israel. A few years later, Turkey served as the conduit through which Jihadis, fresh from NATO’s successful expedition in overthrowing the government of Muammar Gaddafi, were transported to Syria to wage the present insurrection against Assad’s government.

The Turks cherish the idea of serving as the “ultimate energy bridge between east and west”, hence the proposition made to Assad prior to the conflict that he accede to a plan by Saudi Arabia and Qatar to build a natural gas pipeline from the Gulf to Turkey which would supply Europe with natural gas. The offer was made by Erdogan to counteract a plan to deliver Iranian gas to the same destination through a pipeline which would extend through Iraq and Syria. Assad rejected this offer.

It sits on what is reputed to be one of the world’s largest water reserves and in 2014 did not hesitate to cut off the water supply to the River Euphrates by effecting a gradual reduction in the pumping of the river. This led to a drastic fall in the water levels of the man-made Lake Assad.

More recently, Erdogan is using the plight of refugees from the war he has helped create in Syria as a bargaining chip to “re-energize” talks on Ankara joining the European Union as well as to ease visa restrictions for Turks visiting the bloc.

Seeking the fracture of the Syrian state is a clear geo-political objective of Erdogan, and Turkey’s involvement in this endeavour fits neatly in with other nations with similar aspirations.

The United States for one unveiled its ‘Greater Middle East Project’ during the administration of George Bush which proposed an overhaul of the political map of the Middle East of a kind not envisaged since the region was carved up between France and Britain, the victors of World War One.

It was a plan which was a logical expression of the Wolfowitz Doctrine which called for the untrammelled use of American military might in shaping the post-Cold War geo-political landscape.

Such thinking had been put to paper by a policy document prepared by the now defunct Project for the New American Century, a neoconservative think tank which called on the United States to “challenge” regimes which were hostile to its “interests and values”. Among those on the list was the Syrian state.

Syria was on the list of seven countries to be taken out over a five year period according Wesley Clarke, the retired US army general who had served as supreme commander of NATO.

The balkanisation of the Middle East has always factored in the foreign policy objectives of the state of Israel. The policy plan devised by Oded Yinon in the early 1980s emphasized the vulnerability of multi-faith and multi-tribal Arab nations created by European imperial powers with Syria been assessed as “fundamentally no different from Lebanon except in the strong military regime which rules it.”

The thinking behind A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, a policy document prepared in 1996 for Benjamin Netanyahu during his first tenure as Israeli prime minister was to work in concert with its allies Turkey and Jordan to “contain, destabilize and roll-back” those states posing threats to all three. The strategy as with the PNAC document specifically mentions the “weakening, controlling and even rolling back” of Syria.

While the rejection of Turkey’s natural gas pipeline proposal may likely have played a decisive factor in turning Erdogan against Assad’s Syria, the insurrection was begun under the cover of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’. Recruitment and financing of Sunni Islamist insurgents came from the Sunni powers of the Gulf Co-operation Council.

Arms supplies such as a “major airlift” of “3,000 tons of weapons” from Zagreb as reported by London’s Daily Telegraph in March of 2013, found its way to Syrian rebels through Turkey.

The sectarian nature of the conflict is evident and the imposition of a Sunni-led replacement to Assad’s government is a goal shared by Erdogan. Erdogan leads what is termed the ‘soft Islamist’ Justice and Development Party which has nonetheless sought to modify the secular creed of state established by Kemal Ataturk. Erdogan’s sectarian motives are implicit in all his political manoeuvrings Assad ruefully noted during an interview he granted to a Turkish newspaper journalist in 2012.

It was for long an open secret that the Erdogan government was complicit in the rise of Islamic State. The formidable Turkish army which has dutifully kept a lid on any military threats emanating from the de facto Kurdish state in northern Iraq did nothing to help crush the militias of the Islamic State when they emerged as a force following the infamous blitzkrieg in Iraq back in 2014.

And even allowing for the plausible excuse of wanting to avoid the potential complications associated with intervening in another country, Turkey deliberately failed to close its porous borders to Islamist volunteers.

Last year, Sky News Arabia reported the discovery of official exit stamps administered by Turkish border control on passports seized by Kurdish fighters indicating that foreign militants seeking to join Islamic State had entered Syria with the full knowledge of the Iurkish authorities.

This open border policy so far as the insurgents were concerned extended to trading in illegal oil garnered by the Islamic State from oil wells it seized in Northern Syria. It is a lucrative trade in which members of Erdogan’s own family including his son Bilal, are intimately involved.

The bombing of these trade routes and crossing points during raids conducted by the Russian Air Force along with the more general turning of the tide gains by the Syrian Arab Army against insurgents doubtlessly influenced the decision to stage the dangerously provocative act of shooting down a Russian warplane.

The Sukhoi Su-24M tactical bomber aircraft by the reckoning of the Turkish government had traversed its borders for a period of time amounting at most to 17 seconds. The Russians denied that their plane entered Turkish airspace or that its crew had been given 10 warnings in five minutes.

Whatever the truth of this matter, Erdogan’s rank hypocrisy was clearly on display when he claimed that his country’s F-16 fighter jets “shot down the Russian plane in line with Turkey’s rules of engagement”.

Back in June of 2012 he had furiously denounced the decision of the Syrian decision to down a Turkish F-3 Phantom fighter jet for violating Syrian territory. “A short-term border violation can never be a pretext for an attack”, adding, “Even if the plane was in their airspace for a few seconds, that is no reason to attack. It was clear that this plane was not an aggressive plane. Still it was shot down.”

When a Russian warplane had admittedly temporarily violated Turkish airspace which the Russians attributed to the Russian pilot’s evasive action after a Turkish jet had ‘locked on’ to his plane, the Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had spoke the following the words:

We’ll warn any country that violates our borders in a friendly way. Russia is our friend and neighbour. There is no tension between Turkey and Russia in this sense. The issue of Syria is not a Turkish-Russian crisis.

The downing of the Russian fighter plane appears to have been the latest in a number of incidents which the Turkish government have cynically sought to manipulate as a means of drawing the United States more directly into the conflict; this through the mechanism of invoking Article Five of the North Atlantic Treaty which states that an attack on one Ally shall be considered an attack on all allies.

The willingness and even desperation of the Turks to involve the United States as an active participant mean that some observers do not rule out the Turks staging a ‘false flag’ attack, i.e. facilitating or directly participating in an act of war or a war crime and then blaming it on another party in order to discredit them and, if necessary, to justify a military response.

It is claimed by some that Islamist rebels based in Turkey had access to serin gas prior to the Ghouta Chemical attack which opponents of the Assad government sought to blame on his forces. President Obama, reluctant to approve direct involvement by the United States, had earlier announced that the use by the Assad government of chemical weapons would constitute the crossing of a red line.

Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer Award winning investigative writer, claimed to have seen a classified US Defense Intelligence Agency document which referred to “chemical facilitators” based in Turkey and Saudi Arabia “were attempting to obtain sarin precursors in bulk, tens of kilograms, likely for the anticipated large scale production effort in Syria.”

In March of 2014, a tape recording was released of a conversation said to have been between Hakan Fidan, the Head of Turkish Intelligence, Davutoglu, then the foreign minister and other high-ranking officials discussing the possibility of launching an attack on the tomb of Suleyman Shah, the grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Empire which is located in Syria.

Davutoglu is heard to say that “the prime minister”, meaning Erdogan, said that “in current conjecture, this attack (on the tomb) must be seen as an opportunity for us”.

To this Fidan replies, “I’ll send four men from Syria, if that’s what it takes. I’ll make up a cause of war by ordering a missile attack on Turkey; we can also prepare an attack on Suleyman Shah Tomb if necessary.”

The response from Turkey’s foreign ministry said that the tape had been “partially manipulated” and was a “wretched attack” on national security.

Such deceptions are not unknown in Turkish history. It is a nation rich with high level intrigue and manufactured violence. The Istanbul Pogrom of 1956 or Septemvriana, which saw the slaughter and displacement of ethnic Greeks, was orchestrated by the government of Adnan Menderes.

This involved getting a Turkish usher at the consulate in Thessaloniki to plant a bomb that would damage the building acknowledged as the birth home of the revered Attaturk. Although the man was arrested and made a confession, the Turkish press remained silent about this and announced that the consulate had been bombed by Greeks.

The rise of Erdogan and his ‘soft-Islamism’ which has implemented economic policies that have succeeded in increasing the level of the nation’s prosperity ostensibly offered a break with the murky past.

For decades, Turkey endured successive military regimes which were brought to power and sustained by the use of NATO’s secret army unit known as ‘Counter Guerilla’ as well as associations with fascist groups such as the ‘Grey Wolves’. It was during this period that the Derin devlet, literally meaning ‘deep state’ became an entrenched feature of its governance.

But while Erdogan’s rule has introduced reforms and seen the purge of many in the military, it has failed to do away with the negative hallmarks of the corrupt state including the country’s reputation as the conduit for the supply and distribution into Europe of Afghan originated heroin.

His handling of foreign affairs have left much to be desired even when taking into account the amorality frequent in the conduct of the relations between nations. His defiance of international law, conventions and opinion has included the creation of a buffer area with Syria resulting in the advancing of Turkish borders by eight kilometres.

Meanwhile, there is no word from his government condemning the apparent war crime committed by Turkman guerrillas in either killing a defenceless pilot parachuting to earth or lynching him on his landing.

He has attacked Kurdish militias when have taken the fight to Islamic State and even his declarations about carrying out a military operation against the Islamic State in the “near future” are treated with disbelief and merely create the suspicion that he will use any purported operation as cover to wage war against the Kurds.

Such duplicity and such hypocrisy are, of course, not the sole preserve of Erdogan. The Western powers at the helm of which is the United States insist that they are fighting a war on terror, but arm terrorists in a conflict which was planned and organised well in advance of the cover provided by the so-called Arab Spring.

The creation of the entity now termed Islamic State by covert manipulation of United States intelligence agencies is admitted by retired US General Wesley Clarke as well as by the recently retired director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. General Michael Flynn.

The still frequent recourse to the term ‘moderate’ rebels by US President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron is baffling in the extreme given the evidence from a welter of disparate sources which confirm that the overwhelming majority of those Syrians who have taken up arms against Assad are guided by a Sunni Islamist ideology, the same ideology that fuels the foreign jihadists who have descended on Syria, many of them routed through Turkey.

It is an ideology to which Erdogan, who rejects the term ‘moderate’ or ‘soft’ Islamism as insulting Western constructs, subscribes. For all his protestations, this view may tend to offer confirmation that he is sympathetic to the tenets espoused by the Islamic State.

But it is of course conduct that speaks louder than words. His failure to close the borders with Syria, the provision of training camps, the existence of trade routes and supply lines along with evidence of constant communications between militants and Turkish officials speak of an active and sustained collaboration with the Islamist militants who seek to overthrow the secular government of Bashar al Assad.

The pages of an objectively written history will not likely be kind to Recep Erdogan’s role in fomenting and prolonging the unmitigated catastrophe that is Syrian Civil War.

Adeyinka Makinde is a London-based Law Lecturer with an interest in geo-politics.

When an ordinary declarative sentence attains the stature of an aphorism, it acquires a whole set of linguistic and logical relations different from that of ordinary sentences. For instance, if someone says, “Global warming is caused by the increasing frequency of sunspots,” several common questions can be asked appropriately: Who said it? Is s/he an expert or a layman? When was it said? Was it said at a meeting of scientists or in a casual conversion? Was it said seriously or in jest? What evidence was offered to support the declaration? Is that evidence true? Does the declaration follow from the evidence logically? If not, why?

When it comes to aphorisms, however, none of these questions is appropriate. Consider, for example, “the early bird gets the worm.” No one cares who said it, when it was said, or where it was said. No one ever offers any evidence to support it. As a matter of fact, it might even be literally false. No one has ever tried to find out; no one even knows how to try to find out because the sentence is not about the real things denoted by its words. The sentence is not about birds or worms. So where would anyone look for evidence? The aphorism is about initiative, perseverance, promptness, or something else that is nowhere stated. Yet, like the gong of a well forged bell, it merely “rings true.” It has the ring of truth.

Such sentences are special, of course. They can even be quibbled with. Do those who go to bed and rise early really get healthy, wealthy, and wise? Probably not. The literal sentence is about going to bed and rising; the aphorism is not! Readers know that to be true even if they do not know what the aphorism is exactly about. That ambiguity is a feature of aphorisms.

But this essay is not about aphorisms; it’s about one aphorism. And it quite often isn’t even recognized as one. Look at it. It is attributed to the French novelist Honoré de Balzac: Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.

Although not often thought of as an aphorism, this claim has all the attributes of aphorisms described above. And it has the ring of truth. But the ring of truth alone is not probative, is it? Evidence is required.

The aphorism quite obviously is not about a specific crime or fortune. It doesn’t say that every rich person robbed a bank or museum or cache of jewels. It says that every rich person must have been involved in some immoral activity in some way. But that would not be possible if the rich were acting separately. Yet they are not assumed to be part of a conspiracy either. So how could they all have been part of some great crime? Well think about it. Only by all believing in a similar ideology and engaging in similar activities which is exactly what proponents of ideologies do. Therein lies the crime, and their fortunes are its booty.

Any ideology when accepted uncritically and acted upon is a great crime.

Numerous such ideologies exist. Religious sects are founded on them and none is supported by any evidence. Could there be a greater crime than a religious war? Political viewpoints are ideologies. No proof exists that establishes that democracy, for instance, is the best form of government. No proof exists that establishes that science will ultimately solve mankind’s problems either. These are all ideologies, pure beliefs impossible of being justified by evidence. And no proof has ever been proffered to support the ideology known as free market capitalism which consists of numerous commercial practices that most people would consider unethical, immoral, and wrong if considered in any other context.

In America’s mammonological crookonomy, no law exists that prohibits attempts by vendors to cheat consumers. Cheating is entirely legal. So is lying. The legal doctrine that justifies these is Puffery, and lying about the efficacy of the stuff being marketed is common. Such “snake oil” (products that don’t work or don’t work as advertised) is perhaps the most commonly marketed item available. Oddly enough, the “oil” doesn’t even come from snakes. (Although it has been suggested that vendors are serpents.) So vendors can and do sell items that do not work at all or do not work as advertised.

No matter. The buyer is responsible for what s/he buys, so much so that if a buyer buys an item that does not work and pays for it with a check that does not work, s/he has committed a crime, can be arrested, and even jailed. That, in America, is called equal protection. Why does what applies to the goose (the vendor) not apply equally to the gander (the consumer)? Why can the vendor legally cheat the consumer but the consumer not legally cheat the vendor? Because in spite of what Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, all men are not created equal or are ever treated equally. And that’s morally wrong! Why then is it allowed? Because immorality is the rock upon which America was settled. Lying, cheating, and stealing comprise the American “way of life,” comprise America’s true Plymouth Rock.

All societies use law to protect and promote what is approved of and to proscribe what is not. If an understanding of a society is wanted, identify what it allows and prohibits and ignore what it says. Actions, after all, always have spoken louder than words. Acting out a lie is also difficult. Try it! So if you want to understand America, forget about those lofty words in the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble of the Constitution, and the Gettysburg Address and watch what it not only has always allowed to be done but what it continue to allow people to do. Make lists of how words mismatch deeds. Make lists of what Americans are allowed to do and compare those things to the things that are prohibited.

For instance, not only are vendors like Wal-Mart allowed to sell what doesn’t work or what doesn’t work as advertised, they can pass on losses they experience from shoplifting to their honest, paying customers. The vendors are allowed to adjust prices upward to compensate for the losses. Why aren’t shareholders responsible for those losses? When a fee is charged to a customer that s/he gets nothing tangible in return for, s/he is being robbed. Robbery is a crime in most circumstances but not to an American commercial vendor. Then it’s just a way of recouping a loss. The pockets of these honest customers are being picked just as surely as the pockets of those victims of pickpockets in crowds. In America all companies are allowed to do this, but ordinary pickpockets, when caught, go to jail? That’s what “Honesty pays,” means in America.

Bankers engaged in consumer lending do something similar. The consumer gets nothing tangible for the monthly fee s/he pays to a bank for having made a purchase using consumer credit. The banker claims the fee is rent for the use of his money. But how can someone be charged a fee for the use of something he never sees, hears, smells, tastes, or feels? The banker’s money never comes to the consumer; it goes directly to the vendor. The consumer doesn’t use the banker’s money, the vendor does. But the consumer is obligated to repay it. Isn’t that strange? People, you are being robbed.

Contrast this situation with putting money in a bank. When you do that, the bank gets the use of it. How much does the bank pay for the use of your money? Not nearly as much as you are charged for the “use” of its. Why? Aren’t you being cheated?

Capitalists like to claim that minimum wages must be kept low to enable companies to hire inexperienced labor. A more plausible explanation is to boost consumer borrowing. People without cash can’t buy except by using credit. If they were paid adequately, cash

circumstances but not to an American commercial vendor. Then it’s just a way of recouping a loss. The pockets of these honest customers are being picked just as surely as the pockets of those victims of pickpockets in crowds. In America all companies are allowed to do this, but ordinary pickpockets, when caught, go to jail? That’s what “Honesty pays,” means in America.

Bankers engaged in consumer lending do something similar. The consumer gets nothing tangible for the monthly fee s/he pays to a bank for having made a purchase using consumer credit. The banker claims the fee is rent for the use of his money. But how can someone be charged a fee for the use of something he never sees, hears, smells, tastes, or feels? The banker’s money never comes to the consumer; it goes directly to the vendor. The consumer doesn’t use the banker’s money, the vendor does. But the consumer is obligated to repay it. Isn’t that strange? People, you are being robbed.

Contrast this situation with putting money in a bank. When you do that, the bank gets the use of it. How much does the bank pay for the use of your money? Not nearly as much as you are charged for the “use” of its. Why? Aren’t you being cheated?

Capitalists like to claim that minimum wages must be kept low to enable companies to hire inexperienced labor. A more plausible explanation is to boost consumer borrowing. People without cash can’t buy except by using credit. If they were paid adequately, cash transactions would replace some buying on credit and bankers would loose their “fees.” Can’t have that, can we? Better to legalize commercial theft and keep wages low.

Credit-card fraud is another enormous crime in America. Yet surveillance cameras watch over almost every part of most department stores but none are to be found at checkout stations where people engaging in the fraudulent practice could be photographed and identified? Why? For decades, devices that record both photographs and finger prints have been used in places where driver’s licenses are obtained. Why not at checkout stations? How many people who were being photographed and fingerprinted would be reckless enough to use someone else’s credit card? Stopping this kind of crime would be easy but no one in America wants to do it? Why not? Isn’t it time someone asked? But the answer is known. Stopping financial fraud would outlaw cheating, but without cheating, free market capitalism doesn’t work.

Scammers use the United States Postal Service to try to relieve the elderly and the gullible from their money all the time. These scammers work overtly, and the postal service employs an army of postal inspectors. Yet one never reads of a scammer’s being arrested. Why? Because, in America cheating people is not illegal. All of America’s commercial activity consists of attempts to cheat buyers.

And then there are Ponzi schemers who operate entirely in the open, advertising and holding “investment seminars.” Yet no one in the SEC or FBI has any idea of who they are until a person who thought s/he was dealing with an honest broker complains about his/her money being stolen. Only then does the law get involved, but by then the money is

gone—a situation reminiscent of the one in which tenth grade school children can find a dealer in illegal drugs but the local policeman cannot. Isn’t it time someone asked why?

Perhaps we know the answer. Eliminating cheating would destroy the crookonomy, and the crookonomy is America’s way of life.

When President Coolidge said in 1925 that “the chief business of the American people is business,” he spoke of producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering. Enhancing the quality of the human condition was not on his mind. Neither was plain old honesty or virtue.

The bedrock of American morality, however, lies on Mount Sinai in Egypt where Yahweh lightening struck the Commandments into Sinai’s stone for Moses. But those commandments forbid lying, stealing, replacing the holy with commerce on the Sabbath, and coveting anything that is your neighbor’s. Yet all are not only allowed in the American crookonomy, they are encouraged and rewarded.

 Many Americans say their religion is in some manner a form of Judeo-Christian ideology but when considered not from what they say but from what they do, the religion of America is clearly seen to be a form of Mammonism. The recognition of this fact is what has led the ayatollahs of Iran to refer to America as The Great Satan and Pope Francis to call capitalism the Devil’s Dung.

This recognition also leads to interesting scenarios. Consider just one: Little Blossom Yokum, the daughter of Abner and Daisy Mae Yokum of Dogpatch, Alabama, enrolls in Liberty University and majors in marketing. She learns of the puffery, the lying, cheating, and stealing practiced in the American crookonomy and says, “but that’s wrong.” Then the voice of Mathew Staver, who serves as dean of the Liberty University School of Law, can be heard in the mind’s ear saying, “Yes, Blossom, it is but that’s America. We at Liberty University are here to liberate you from all the Biblical teachings you have heard in Bible school. When you graduate from this university, you will be free to be as immoral as you like just as long as it promotes commerce. In America, law has replaced morality and the law says that doing wrong is right. That’s the American way; enjoy it.”

But Blossom is confused. Her family in Dogpatch would be horrified. To them, the Bible is the law. So she mumbles, “but it’s wrong, it’s wrong no matter what the law says.”

Some jurists, especially Roy Moore, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, and even some legislators continually propose displaying the Commandments on state property, knowing full well that the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that to be unconstitutional. Nevertheless, they persist, which can only be understood as just another attempt at puffery, just another lie. These people never propose that the Commandments be obeyed because obeying them is practically illegal in America. So is honesty in general.

The United States can be likened to an Oscar Meyer advertisement of yesteryear; it spells America b-o-l-o-g-n-a!

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon admitted Israeli support for ISIS and other takfiri terrorists,  calling them Syrian rebels – failing to explain they’re  imported from scores of countries… There are no so-called “moderates” among them.

Since Obama waged war on Syria in March 2011, Israel bombed government targets multiple times.  It continues supplying terrorist elements with weapons, munitions and other support. 

Over 1,000 of their wounded fighters were treated in Israeli hospitals, helping them recover to resume waging terror on Syria.

Ya’alon claiming Israeli policy excludes “getting involved in the Syrian war” is a lie.

Israel’s long-range goal is unchallenged regional hegemony, independent governments eliminated in Syria, Iran and Lebanon, area nations balkanized into mini-states for easier control, undeclared Israeli borders expanded to incorporate territory of neighboring states.

On November 24, The Voltaire Network said journalist Sharri Markson got firsthand accounts from wounded jihadist terrorists receiving treatment at Israel’s Ziv Medical Centre, “specialising in war traumology…government-run and linked to the Israeli Defence Forces.”

Their recovery is aided to help them “continue the jihad in Syria.” Israeli security forces detained and interrogated her in a “heavy-handed” way for exposing what they want kept secret.

In September 2014, a photo of Netanyahu and Ya’alon visiting terrorists receiving care in an Israeli hospital went viral online – Netanyahu seen shaking a terrorist’s hand.

According to the al-Araby al-Jadeed newspaper, “Israel has in one way or another become the main marketer of ISIS oil. Without them, most ISIS-produced oil would have remained going between Iraq, Syria and Turkey. Even the three companies would not receive the oil if they did not have a buyer in Israel.”

In October, Iraqi security forces captured an Israeli colonel, Yuri Oulen Shahak, working directly with ISIS terrorists. He explained Netanyahu’s criminality during interrogation, one more example of Zionist evil.

He directly “participated in the ISIL group’s terrorist operations,” according to Iraqi authorities.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. 

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

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

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

A billboard in Damascus shows President Assad and the late Sheikh al Bouti, who was Syria’s senior Quranic scholar. The Sheikh was murdered in a mosque with 40 others by Jabhat al Nusra, in May 2013. In typical fashion they threatened to kill him, killed him, celebrated and then blamed the Syrian Government.

War propaganda often demands the abandoning of ordinary reason and principle, and the Dirty War on Syria demonstrates this in abundance. A steady stream of atrocity stories – ‘barrel bombs’, chemical weapons, ‘industrial scale’ killings, dead babies – permeate the western news on Syria. These stories all have two things in common: they paint the Syrian President and the Syrian Army as monsters slaughtering civilians, including children; yet, when tracked back, all the stories come from utterly partisan sources. We are being deceived.

Normal ethical notions of avoiding conflicts of interest, searching for independent evidence and disqualifying self-serving claims from belligerent parties have been ignored in much of the western debate. This toxic atmosphere invites further fabrications, repeated to credulous audiences, even when the lies used to justify previous invasions (e.g. of Iraq in 2003) and dirty wars (e.g. in Libya, 2011) are still relatively fresh in our minds. As in previous wars, the aim is to demonise the enemy, by use of repeated atrocity claims, and so mobilise popular support behind the war (Knightley 2001).

Yet in circumstances of war adherence to some key principles is necessary when reading contentious evidence; at least if we wish to understand the truth of the matter. A belligerent party always has a vital interest in discrediting and delegitimising its opponent. For that reason, we must always view belligerent party ‘evidence’ against an opponent with grave suspicion. It is not that a warring party is incapable of understanding its opponent, rather what they say will always be conditioned by their special interest. We must assume bias. If there is no way to check the origin of that evidence, and if it is partisan and ‘self-serving’, it should be rejected as forensically worthless. This exclusion of ‘self-serving’ evidence follows broad principles applied in civil and criminal law. Such evidence only has value when it goes against the interest of the warring party, as with admissions, or when it says something about the mentality of the party putting it forward.

These principles apply whether speaking of the nature of wartime violence, or of legitimacy matters such as public opinion and political allegiance. So, for example, when Islamist armed groups and their associates claim that their mortal enemy the Syrian Arab Army is slaughtering civilians (e.g. AP 2015), that claim by itself is next to meaningless. We expect armed opponents to attack each other, with words as well as weapons. False stories of Government atrocities were in play from the beginning of the conflict. The head of a monastery in Homs, Mother Agnes-Mariam, denounced ‘false flag’ crimes by ‘Free Syrian Army’ groups back in 2011, where the images of murder victims were recycled in media setups by sectarian Islamists (SANA 2011). Similarly, US journalist Nir Rosen wrote of ‘dead opposition fighters … described as innocent civilians killed by security forces’ (Rosen 2012). What is the lesson here? Beware of partisan atrocity stories. They might at best serve as a flag, an accusation which might set in train a search for independent evidence; but they are more often a distraction from present reality.

For the same reason, when the Qatari monarchy (which has invested billions of dollars in the armed attacks on Syria) presents an anonymous, paid witness ‘Caesar’, with photos of numerous dead and tortured bodies, blaming the Syrian Army for ‘industrial scale killing’ (O’Toole 2014; Jalabi 2015), it should be plain that this ‘evidence’ is partisan and unreliable (Smith-Spark 2014; MMM 2014). The fact that this story was presented by a belligerent party just before a Geneva peace conference should give further cause for suspicion. But without genuinely independent evidence to corroborate the witness we have no way of verifying in which year, circumstance or even which country the photos were taken. Those who finance and arm the sectarian groups have slaughtered hundreds of thousands in recent years, in the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. There is no shortage of photos of dead bodies. The fact that western media sources run these accusations, using lawyers (also paid by Qatar) to provide ‘bootstrap’ support (Cartalucci 2014; Murphy 2014), merely shows their limited understanding of independent evidence.

Similar principles apply to claims over legitimacy. Assertions by US Government officials, openly and illegally pursuing ‘regime change’ in Syria, that President Assad has ‘lost all legitimacy’ (e.g. Hilary Clinton in Al Jazeera 2011) should be seen as simply self-serving, partisan propaganda. In the case of Washington’s claims about the August 2013 chemical weapons attack in East Ghouta, the US Government and some of its embedded agencies attempted to use telemetry and some other circumstantial evidence to implicate the Syrian Army (Gladstone and Chivers 2013; HRW 2013). However, after those claims were destroyed by a range of independent evidence (Lloyd and Postol 2014; Hersh 2014; Anderson 2015), Washington and its media periphery simply kept repeating the same discredited accusations. In the climate of war, very few in the western media were bold enough to say that ‘the emperor has no clothes’.

We might pay a little more attention when evidence from belligerent parties goes against their own interest. For example, in 2012 western media interviewed three Free Syrian Army (FSA) commanders in Aleppo. They all admitted they were hated by the local people and that the Syrian President had the loyalty of most. One said President Assad had about ‘70 percent’ support (Bayoumy 2013) in that mainly Sunni Muslim city. A second said the local people, ‘all of them, are loyal to the criminal Bashar, they inform on us’ (Abouzeid 2012). A third said they are ‘all informers … they hate us. They blame us for the destruction’ (Abdul-Ahad 2012). Although this is simply anecdotal evidence, because it runs against the interests of its sources it has greater significance than self-serving claims. Similarly, while NATO heads of government were claiming President Assad had ‘lost all legitimacy’, an internal NATO report estimated that 70% of Syrians supported the President, 20% were neutral and 10% supported the ‘rebels’ (World Tribune 2013; BIN 2013). While there is no public detail of the method behind this estimate, it has some significance in that it also runs against self-interest. It also roughly matches the outcome of the June 2014 Presidential elections, where Bashar al Assad gained 65% support from all eligible voters, that is, 88.7% of the vote from a 73.4% participation rate (Idea International 2015).

Perhaps the most common, systematic error of the western media, reporting on the Syrian crisis, has been the extraordinary reliance on a single person, a man based in Britain who calls himself the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). Many of the stories about Syrian body counts, ‘regime’ atrocities and huge collateral damage come from this man. Yet Rami Abdul Rahman has always flown the flag of the Muslim Brotherhood led ‘Free Syrian Army’ on his website (SOHR 2015). He claims to collect information from a network of associates in and around Syria. It is logical to assume these would also be mostly anti-Government people. Media channels which choose to rely on such an openly partisan source undermine their own credibility. Perhaps they don’t care? The fact that western governments, in this conflict, generally support the Muslim Brotherhood line on Syria may make them less concerned. Western media regularly presents the SOHR stories, often with impressive-sounding casualty numbers, as though they were fact (e.g. AP 2015; Pollard 2015). A ‘regime’ denial may be added at paragraph 7 or 8, to give the impression of balanced journalism. Abdul Rahman’s occasional criticism of rival Salafist groups (such as DAESH-ISIL) perhaps adds a semblance of credibility. In any case, the unthinking adoption of these partisan reports has been important in keeping alive the western myth that the Syrian Army does little more than target and kill civilians.

Much the same problem can be seen in the 2014-2015 campaign over ‘barrel bombs’, where it has been said that a particular type of Syrian Air Force bomb, which includes fuel and shrapnel, has been responsible for massive civilian casualties. Robert Parry (2015) makes the point that any sort of improvised bomb ‘dropped from helicopters’ would most likely be far less indiscriminate than most missile attacks, not to speak of the depleted uranium, napalm, white phosphorous and cluster munitions regularly used by Washington. However the point here is not to do with the technology, it is simply a new way to generate horror and backing for the war, by claiming that the Syrian Army only ever kills civilians. The supposedly ‘indiscriminate’ nature of this ‘new’ weapon is merely suggested by repetition of the slogan.

The great majority of sites of these alleged ‘barrel bomb’ attacks, over 2014-2015, have been places occupied for years by sectarian Islamist gangs: north-eastern Aleppo, Douma in north-eastern Damascus and Raqqa in the eastern desert. The US-based group Human Rights Watch (tightly linked to the US foreign policy body, the Council on Foreign Relations) published a map showing the sites of literally hundreds of these barrel bomb attacks in ‘opposition held’ north-east Aleppo (HRW 2014). The ‘opposition’ in these areas has been the official al Qaeda franchise in Syria, Jabhat al Nusra, allied with the Saudi-backed Islamic Front (a merger of former Free Syrian Army groups Harakat Ahrar as-Sham, Suqur as-Sham, Liwa at-Tawhid, Jaysh al-Islam, Jabhat al-Kurdiyya, Liwa al-Haqq and Ahrar as-Sham), then later the ‘Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’ (ISIL), the Turkistan Islamic Party and the Army of Conquest. Virtually all these groups are terrorist organisations responsible for multiple atrocities in Syria. It is hardly surprising, then, that the Syrian Army regularly bombs them. Contrary to the myth of the ‘moderate rebel’, the terrorist groups most often work together. For example, a top US-backed leader of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), Abdel Jabbar el-Okaidi, was quite open about the fact that he worked closely with ISIL-Daesh (see Eretz Zen 2014). The FSA has worked closely with the other main al Qaeda group, Jabhat al Nusra, from the beginning.

The source of the ‘civilian’ death claims comes almost exclusively from the Islamist groups themselves, or ‘activists’ embedded with them. Those claims are then magnified by the western media and by some human rights NGOs which are effectively ‘embedded’ with western governments’ foreign policies. Casualty numbers are typically provided by the British-based ‘Syrian Observatory on Human Rights’ (SOHR 2015), the British-based Syrian Network for Human Rights (SN4HR 2015), or the Istanbul-based Violation Documentation Center in Syria (VDC 2015; Masi 2015). All these centres are allied to the Islamist gangs, but usually maintain some public distance from ISIL. The VDC has listed some ISIL causalities in Syria as ‘martyrs’ for the revolution (see Sterling 2015b). However my main point is that they are all partisan voices, sectarian Islamists committed to overthrow of the secular state and highly motivated to vilify and lie about the Syrian Army.

Commander in Chief of the propaganda war, US President Obama, leads the way, claiming his Syrian counterpart ‘drops barrel bombs to massacre innocent children’ (Obama in Mosendz 2015). As there has never been any evidence that President Assad had any such intent, Parry (2015) is right to call this statement ‘crude and deceptive propaganda’. The White House is backed up by ‘embedded watchdog’ Human Rights Watch, whose boss Kenneth Roth obsessively repeats the words ‘barrel bombs’, and has even been exposed posting photos of devastated Gaza and Kobane, falsely claiming that both showed Aleppo after ‘Assad’s barrel bombing’ (MOA 2015; Interventions Watch 2015). In fact those photos showed the results of Israeli, US and ISIL bombing. The recycling of war dead photos seems to have become routine. Yet the foundation of western war propaganda is the consistent reliance on partisan sources. The ‘barrel bomb’ campaign is clearly designed to delegitimise the Syrian Government and the Syrian Army, and also perhaps to deter or slow the attacks on Islamist groups. However the Syrian Army does not apologise to anyone for bombing terrorist held areas, and they have always made well-publicised efforts to evacuate civilians before doing so.

Most civilians in the areas said to have been ‘barrel bombed’ left a very long time ago. In January 2015 Reuters (2015a) showed video of some of the last large evacuations of Douma (north-east Damascus) by the Syrian Army. Several months later the same agency decried a massacre of ‘civilians’ in Douma, using the ‘activists’ of the SOHR as their source (Reuters 2015b). Repetition of these fake claims by the armed groups and their associated ‘activists’ led to headlines like: ‘The Syrian Regime’s Barrel Bombs Kill More Civilians than ISIS and Al Qaeda Combined’ (Masi 2015). Such stories suggest the need for deeper war on Syria. The photos of dead and injured women and children in the ghost towns inhabited by the armed groups are simply borrowed from other contexts. Amnesty International (USA) largely adopted the barrel bomb story, along with the invented ‘civilian’ casualty numbers. Yet Amnesty shares that same weakness in method: relying on partisan sources like the VDC, the SN4HR and the SOHR. Amnesty’s pro-western bias has led it into repeating NATO-contrived falsehoods in other conflicts, such as in Kuwait and Libya (see Sterling 2015b).

None of this is to say that the Syrian Army has not killed civilians, particularly those embedded with the terrorist groups. However many Syrians, whose families have been directly affected by the terrorist attacks, question why the Government has not carpet-bombed areas like Douma, north-east Aleppo and parts of Raqqa. They say the only civilians remaining there are those that support the throat-cutting gangs. The US certainly did not hesitate to carpet bomb the Iraqi resistance in Fallujah (Iraq), back in 2004 (Democracy Now (2005). Yet in Syria, as one former member of the Government militia said, things have been different:

‘Islamists [do] hide behind civilians. But if we really killed everyone who supported the enemy, the Douma district would have been destroyed long ago – simply levelled with tanks in a single day, like some [Syrian] hotheads have been [demanding] for a long time already. But Assad doesn’t want that … our task is to reunite the country. Therefore, before each mission, we were told that we should not shoot at civilians under any circumstances. If a civilian dies, there is always an investigation and, if necessary, a court-martial’ (Mizah 2015).

Such concerns are simply ignored in the self-obsessed and reckless western debate.

Great care is also needed with the claims of outsiders who run opinion polls in Syria. For example, although the British-based ORB International is not a government agency, it is financed within a hostile state and engages with debates of concern to the belligerent parties. Case in point: its mid-2014 poll suggested that ‘Three in Five Syrians Support International Military Involvement’ (ORB 2014: Table 1). This proposal is an issue that only really preoccupies western governments and the figure is implausible. First of all, those Syrians who support the government (by most accounts a strong majority of the population) have always opposed foreign intervention. Second, most of the Syrian Opposition also opposes foreign intervention. The most comprehensive Syrian opposition document, the Damascus Declaration (2005), opposed both armed attacks on the government and foreign intervention. Only the Muslim Brotherhood, some exile figures and some of the Kurdish groups later split from this position. The suggestion that, after three years of war and tremendous suffering, which has already involved high levels of NATO and Gulf Monarchy intervention, 60% of Syrians want more of that sort of foreign intervention just does not sit with the known facts. It does fit with an unrepresentative poll which elevates the voices of those backing the armed groups. We need to look at the way ORB collects information.

Their methods are opaque. The British group carries out polls in Syria by employing small numbers of Syrians with whom they communicate by phone and internet. These local agents are then trained to select and interview small groups of people across Syria. ORB provides little information on how they select their agents or on how those people, in turn, select their interviewees. They simply assert that their poll was representative. The mid-2014 poll claimed to have that found that 4% of Syrians said the [Saudi Arabia-backed Islamist group] ISIS/Daesh ‘best represented the interests and aspirations of the Syrian people’ (ORB 2014). ISIL was, by then, the most prominent armed anti-Government group. That result (4% support) could be plausible, and not inconsistent with other information. But its reliability is undermined by the implausibly high level of support for foreign military intervention. A further anomaly is that the ORB poll of July 2015 showed ISIL to be viewed positively by 21% of Syrians (ORB 2015: Table 3). Although this was not exactly the same question, the difference between these figures (4% and 21%) is huge and hardly explicable by anything that had occurred between 2014 and 2015. No-one else has suggested that the fanatics of ISIL-Daesh are anything close to that popular. The 35% ‘net positive view’ of the terrorist group Jabhat al Nusra (ORB 2015), notorious for its suicide truck bombings and beheadings is also implausible. Indeed, how could one third of any society view ‘positively’ foreign-led terrorist groups, best known for their atrocities? Something is very wrong here.

The most reasonable explanation is that serious bias affects the ‘representativeness’ of selection for the ORB surveys. ORB was previously criticised by an academic paper for its opaque and ‘incomplete disclosure’ of method and ‘important irregularities’ in their estimates of deaths from the war in Iraq (Spagat and Dougherty 2010). That unreliability is also present in their Syrian data. Despite what seems like highly inflated support for the al Qaeda groups, the 2015 poll still shows President Assad as the most positively viewed force in the country, although at only 47% (ORB 2015: Table 3), a figure much lower than that of any other poll (Syrian or non-Syrian) during the crisis. Interestingly, the ORB 2015 poll says 82% of Syrians believe ISIL was created by the US (ORB 2015: Table 20). However given the other anomalies of the survey it is not possible to place any reliance on this figure. It seems plain that the ORB polls, through their mostly undisclosed selection processes, have given an enhanced voice to certain groups of anti-government people. That is perhaps not surprising, for a British company, and it may help reinforce popular discussion in western countries. However it does not help foreign understandings of Syria.

While it is important to recognise the sources of bias, the repetition of anti-Syrian stories based on partisan sources cannot be a matter of simple bias. We know from independent evidence that earlier claims of massacres were fabricated by the sectarian groups, then backed by Washington. This has been documented with respect to mass killings at Houla, Aqrab, Daraya, and East Ghouta (see Chapters Eight and Nine). After these exposures, there were no apologies or admissions either from the White House or the western media channels which ran the initial stories. This pattern means that other false allegations are likely. While genuine students of the crisis must revert to principled study of claims and counter-claims, we should also recognise there is an industrial scale propaganda machine, likely to maintain production into the foreseeable future.

References:

Al Jazeera (2011) ‘Clinton says Assad has ‘lost legitimacy’, 12 July, online: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2011/07/201171204030379613.html

Anderson, Tim (2015a) ‘The Houla Massacre Revisited: ‘Official Truth’ in the Dirty War on Syria’, Global Research, 24 March, online: http://www.globalresearch.ca/houla-revisited-official-truth-in-the-dirty-war-on-syria/5438441

Anderson, Tim (2015b) ‘Chemical Fabrications: East Ghouta and Syria’s Missing Children’, Global Research, 12 April, online: http://www.globalresearch.ca/chemical-fabrications-east-ghouta-and-syrias-missing-children/5442334

AP (2015) ‘Syrian army barrel-bomb attacks kill at least 70 in Aleppo, activists say’, The Guardian, Associated Press, 31 May, online: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/30/syrian-army-air-strikes-aleppo-islamic-state

Cartalucci, Tony (2014) ‘US Feigns “Horror” Over Cooked-Up Report on Syrian War They Engineered’, Land Destroyer Report, January, online: http://landdestroyer.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/us-feigns-horror-over-cooked-up-report.html

Damascus Declaration (2005) ‘The Damascus Declaration for Democratic National Change’, English version in Joshua Landis blog ‘Syria Comment’, 1 November, online: http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/L/Joshua.M.Landis-1/syriablog/2005/11/damascus-declaration-in-english.htm

Democracy Now (2005) ‘Pentagon Reverses Position and Admits U.S. Troops Used White Phosphorus Against Iraqis in Fallujah’, 17 November, online: http://www.democracynow.org/2005/11/17/pentagon_reverses_position_and_admits_u

Eretz Zen (2014) ‘US Key Man in Syria Worked Closely with ISIL and Jabhat al-Nusra’, Youtube, 17 August, online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piN_MNSis1E

Gladstone, Rick and C.J Chivers (2013) ‘Forensic Details in U.N. Report Point to Assad’s Use of Gas’, New York Times, 16 September, online: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/17/world/europe/syria-united-nations.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1387381766-55AjTxhuELAeFSCuukA7Og

Hersh, Seymour (2014) ‘The Red Line and the Rat Line’, London Review of Books, 17 April, online: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line

HRW (2013) ‘Attacks on Ghouta: Analysis of Alleged Use of Chemical Weapons in Syria’, Human Rights Watch, Washington, 10 September, online: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2013/09/10/attacks-ghouta

HRW (2014) ‘Syrian Government Bombardment of Opposition-held Districts in Aleppo’, Human Rights Watch, 30 July, online: https://www.hrw.org/video-photos/image/2014/07/30/syrian-government-bombardment-opposition-held-districts-aleppo

Idea International (2015) ‘Voter turnout data for Syrian Arab Republic’, online: http://www.idea.int/vt/countryview.cfm?id=210#pres

Interventions Watch (2015) ‘CEO of Human Rights Watch misattributes video of Gaza destruction’, 9 May, online: https://interventionswatch.wordpress.com/2015/05/09/ceo-of-human-rights-watch-misattributes-video-of-gaza-destruction/

Jalabi, Raya (2015) ‘Images of Syrian torture on display at UN: ‘It is imperative we do not look away’, The Guardian, 12 March, online: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/11/images-syrian-torture-shock-new-yorkers-united-nations

Knightley, Phillip (2001) ‘The disinformation campaign’, The Guardian, 4 October, online: http://www.theguardian.com/education/2001/oct/04/socialsciences.highereducation

Lloyd, Richard and Theodore A. Postol (2014) ‘Possible Implications of Faulty US Technical Intelligence in the Damascus Nerve Agent Attack of August 21, 2013’, MIT, January 14, Washington DC, online: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1006045-possible-implications-of-bad-intelligence.html#storylink=relast

Masi, Alessandria (2015) ‘The Syrian Regime’s Barrel Bombs Kill More Civilians than ISIS and Al Qaeda Combined’, IBTimes, 18 August, online: http://www.ibtimes.com/syrian-regimes-barrel-bombs-kill-more-civilians-isis-al-qaeda-combined-2057392

Mint Press (2015) ‘US Propaganda War in Syria: Report Ties White Helmets to Foreign Intervention’, 11 September, online: http://www.mintpressnews.com/us-propaganda-war-in-syria-report-ties-white-helmets-to-foreign-intervention/209435/

Mizah, Michel (2015) ‘A Russian-Syrian volunteer talks about his experience in the “Shabiha” pro-Assad paramilitary’, interviewed by Arthur Avakov, Live Leak, 15 September, online: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=992_1442362752

MOA (2015) ‘Human Rights Watch Again Accuses Syria Of “Barrel Bomb” Damage Done By Others’, Moon of Alabama, 9 May, online: http://www.moonofalabama.org/2015/05/human-rights-watch-again-accuses-syria-of-barrel-bomb-damage-done-by-others.html

Mosendz, Poll (2015) ‘The Full Transcript of President Obama’s Speech at the United Nations General Assembly’, Newsweek, 28 September, online: http://www.newsweek.com/read-full-transcript-president-obamas-speech-united-nations-general-assembly-377504

MMM (2014) ‘Fail Caesar: Exposing the Anti-Syria Photo Propaganda’, Monitor on massacre marketing’, 8 November, online: http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/fail-caesar-exposing-anti-syria-photo.html

Murphy, Dan (2014) ‘Syria ‘smoking gun’ report warrants a careful read’, Christian Science Monitor, 21 January, online: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Security-Watch/Backchannels/2014/0121/Syria-smoking-gun-report-warrants-a-careful-read

ORB (2014) ‘Three in Five Syrians Support International Military Involvement’, ORB International, July, online: http://www.opinion.co.uk/article.php?s=three-in-five-syrians-support-international-military-involvement

ORB (2015) ‘ORB/IIACSS poll in Syria and Iraq gives rare insight into public opinion’, ORB International, July, online: http://www.opinion.co.uk/article.php?s=orbiiacss-poll-in-iraq-and-syria-gives-rare-insight-into-public-opinion

O’Toole, Gavin (2014) ‘Syria regime’s ‘industrial scale killing’, Al Jazeera, 22 January, online; http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/01/syria-regime-industrial-scale-killing-2014122102439158738.html

Parry, Robert (2015) ‘Obama’s ludicrous ‘barrel bomb’ theme’, Consortium News, 30 September, online: https://consortiumnews.com/2015/09/30/obamas-ludicrous-barrel-bomb-theme/

Pollard, Ruth (2015) ‘Assad regime’s barrel bomb attacks caused many civilian deaths in Syria: UN Envoy’, Sydney Morning Herald, 23 July, [the headline suggests the UN envoy is the source of the ‘barrel bomb’ kills civilians story, in fact the SOHR is the source] online: http://www.smh.com.au/world/assad-regimes-barrel-bomb-attacks-caused-many-civilian-deaths-in-syria-un-envoy-20150722-giihvw.html

Reuters (2015) ‘Over 1,000 Syrian civilians evacuated from near Damascus’, Youtube, 17 January, online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-DstETWlTY

Reuters (2015b) ‘Air strikes near Damascus kill at least 80 people: activists’, 16 August, online: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/16/us-mideast-crisis-syria-idUSKCN0QL0E320150816

Rosen, Nir (2012) ‘Q&A: Nir Rosen on Syria’s armed opposition’, Al Jazeera, 13 Feb, online: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/02/201221315020166516.html

SANA (2011) ‘Mother Agnes Merriam al-Saleeb: Nameless Gunmen Possessing Advanced Firearms Terrorize Citizens and Security in Syria’, Syrian Free Press Network, 19 November, online: http://syrianfreepress.wordpress.com/2011/11/19/mother-agnes-merriam-al-saleeb-nameless-gunmen-possessing-advanced-firearms-terrorize-citizens-and-security-in-syria/

Smith-Spark, Laura (2014) ‘Syria: Photos charging mass torture by regime ‘fake’’, CNN, 23 January, online: http://edition.cnn.com/2014/01/22/world/meast/syria-torture-photos/

SN4HR (2015) Syrian Network for Human Rights, online: http://sn4hr.org/

Sterling, Rick (2015a) ‘Humanitarians for war on Syria’, Counter Punch, 31 March, online: http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/31/humanitarians-for-war-on-syria/

Sterling, Rick (2015b) ‘Eight Problems with Amnesty’s Report on Aleppo Syria’, Dissident Voice, 14 May, online: http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/05/eight-problems-with-amnestys-report-on-aleppo-syria/

SOHR (2015) ‘Syrian Observatory for Human Rights’, online: http://www.syriahr.com/en/

Spagat, Michael and Josh Dougherty (2010) ‘Conflict Deaths in Iraq: A Methodological Critique of the ORB Survey Estimate’, Survey Research Methods, Vol 4 No 1, 3-15

VDC (2015) ‘Violation Documentation Center in Syria’, online: https://www.vdc-sy.info/index.php/en/

 The above text is part of a forthcoming book entitled “The Dirty War on Syria”, Global Research, 2016 (forthcoming)

Dr Tim Anderson is a Senior Lecturer in Political Economy at the University of Sydney. He researches and writes on development, rights and self-determination in Latin America, the Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. He has published many dozens of chapters and articles in a range of academic books and journals. His last book was Land and Livelihoods in Papua New Guinea (Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, 2015).

 “Cameron’s approach is bomb first, talk later.” – Jeremy Corbyn, British Labour leader, The Guardian, Dec 2, 2015

The floundering political establishment in Britain has been engaged in near vicious debates about whether an ineffectual contribution to the Coalition force air campaign against the Islamic State in Syria should be made. French brothers and sisters have been in the firing line, suggested Prime Minister David Cameron.  Action should be taken aid the bloodied tricolore.

The government motion to be voted upon later today has been published, and reveals a mentality of extended conflict, with a good deal of fodder being cast to the howling dogs of war.

ISIL is deemed “a direct threat to the United Kingdom”; support is given to UN Security Council Resolution 2249 that the organisation constituted an “unprecedented threat to international peace and security” that required “all necessary measures” to be taken to prevent terrorist acts on its part and to “eradicate the safe haven they have established over significant parts of Iraq and Syria”.  The motion duly stresses support for the Cameron’s government “in taking military action, specifically airstrikes, exclusively against ISIL in Syria”.[1]

The hawkish sentiment is being more fuelled by the day.  Opponents of an expanded air operation are being hounded and blackmailed.   Even the morning program on BBC Radio Four attempted this morning, in rather shoddy fashion, to make the false distinction between morality and effect.  (Good gracious, morning deontology versus utilitarian bombing arguments!) Part of the problems with perceived humanitarian interventions or military engagements to repel a supposedly international threat lie precisely in their false presumptions: a bombing campaign can itself be moral, and have suitable effect on the ground.

The only actual effect is bloodshed against an enemy that knows no frontlines, and has drawn enormous support from the consequences of fateful decisions in the Middle East. In the case of Islamic State, a double narrative is being constantly circulated: the fundamentalist threat is metastasising like political cancer on the one hand; on the other, it is being wound back precisely because the air campaign, notably from such countries such as Russia, has intensified. Truly aggressive chemotherapy indeed and other powers feel left out.

Much of the Commons role in this is theatre without consequence.  Three or more sorties against Islamic State targets, acknowledge many British voices, will hardly push the issue.  “Bombing Raqqa,” suggests Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, “won’t solve the problem.”  And the refusal on the part of Cameron and the Bush administration to contemplate Assad in any negotiated settlement is self-inflicted handicap.  It is a policy problem insulated in a laboratory of failings.

The one loud voice against expanding the campaign against Syria has been Corbyn. The prime minister has essentially stopped short of calling him a traitor, preferring the term “terrorist sympathiser” as a rallying call that he hopes will carry the motion across the line.  “You should not be walking through the lobbies with Jeremy Corbyn and a bunch of terrorist sympathisers,” claimed Cameron before a meeting of the 1922 committee.

This is all rather smelly stuff, given the fact that Cameron has his own terrorist brigades whom he would prefer to supply. The only problem is that such fictitiously moderate elements tend to vanish when considerations on the ground are taken into account. Out of the ether, come al-Nusra, ISIS and a kaleidoscopic array of Islamic brigades.

Corbyn’s mouth in this debate is regarded as dirty – the trash-talker of peace where peace has been, if not banished, then certainly placed on the longest of sabbaticals.  Given that the hawks from all sides are running the debate, his opinions ring as realistic assertions about the inevitable.  If you want to bomb, show us prospects of actual success in curbing the threat.  On that score, not to mention a range of logistical issues, Cameron comes up short.

As the Labour leader penned in the hope of swaying parliamentarians, “On planning, strategy, ground troops, diplomacy, the terrorist threat, refugees and civilian casualties, it’s become increasingly clear the prime minister’s proposal simply doesn’t stack up.”[2]

The House of Commons foreign affairs select committee has also been critical of the PM’s bombing fetish.  They have deemed it shallow, artificially segmented from the broader issues of the civil war itself.  “We asked the Foreign Secretary,” went one of the questions from the committee, “whether ISIL could be defeated without a resolution to the civil war.  He told us it could.”

Committee members, however, noted how their “witnesses complained about a lack of joined-up strategy to tackle closely interlinked crises.”[3]  Sir Simon Mayall, being one such expert witness, suggested that any issue of extended air strikes should also be “linked to a much firmer strategic set of policy assumptions,” one set upon “political, diplomatic, humanitarian as well as military” considerations.

Corbyn’s attempt to keep his own irritable shadow cabinet has forced his hand.  Rather than retaining a united force against bombing Syria, Corbyn had to consider a free vote on the subject.  The Liberal Democrats, ever the party of shallow compromise, may well throw their lot in as well.

There are enough members of parliament who want an expanded war. They may well get their wishes, despite the rather damning words from the foreign affairs select committee.  “In the absence of [a clear international strategy that has a realistic chance of defeating ISIL and of ending the civil war in Syria] taking action to meet the desire to do something is still incoherent.”

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

Notes

The mainstream press says that the NSA has “ended” its bulk phone records collection program.

Does that mean we can all relax … and forget about mass surveillance?

We asked the highest-level NSA whistleblower in history – William Binney – the high-level NSA executive who created the agency’s mass surveillance program for digital information, 36-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a “legend” within the agency, who served as the senior technical director within the agency, and managed thousands of NSA employees

WASHINGTON’S BLOG: The mainstream U.S. news is saying that the NSA’s metadata collection program is over.

Can we all relax and enjoy a beer now? Or is the NSA still spying on Americans?

WILLIAM BINNEY: The only thing that ended was the general warrants issued by the FISC [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] for companies to give all their call records to NSA for processing.

Now, the data is held by the companies so NSA has to make a distributed query much like google does to its data centers.

Plus that does not take into account all the content and metadata collected from the Upstream programs (Fairview/Stormbrew/Blarney/Oakstar) and the second party collection programs under “Windstop.”

This includes most of the metadata on US to US communications and the content with it.

Plus in a video, Hayden gave away the fact the “LoveINT” [background here and here] was not done with the metadata program it was “not in the metadata.”

Other than metadata, there is the data itself which means content of e-mails and phone calls.

I would also note, of the 80-100 fiber optic tap points on the AT&T lines in the Fairview program, most are distributed across the US according to the population distribution.

Now if they were only after foreign communications, the tap points would only be along the coasts where the transoceanic cables surface. Which clearly indicates that the targets of most of the Fairview program are AMERICANS – THAT’S US. I should also say that I have almost all of the specific locations of these tap points in the US and around the world all from sites on the web.

See this for background on Binney’s point about Fairview, as well as this graphic:

What does Binney mean that the NSA is recording content?

Binney – as well as high-level NSA whistleblowers Thomas Drake and Russell Tice – have all previously told Washington’s Blog that NSA has long recorded the content,  and not just the metadata, of Americans’ phone calls. And see this.  (The NSA is also converting our spoken words into text.)

Bottom line: No, the government hasn’t stopped mass surveillance on the American people.

In Switzerland on Friday, a federal tribunal handed down a five-year sentence against whistleblower Hervé Falciani (pictured left), whom some have dubbed the “Edward Snowden of banking.”

After Falciani, then an IT expert at HSBC’s Swiss bank, hacked into the bank’s customer files in late 2007 he triggered a major scandal, exposing stunning corruption within an industry built in the shadows. How the offshore banking industry shelters money and hides secrets has enormous implications across the globe: Experts conservatively estimate that $7.6 trillion is held in overseas tax havens, costing government treasuries at least $200 billion a year. As the information leaked by Falciani confirmed, Swiss banks have long been a cash-hoarding haven for those involved in illicit activities like drug running, political corruption and money laundering.

Hired in 2001 to create a client management database, Falciani soon came to realize that the way information was managed by the organization fostered tax evasion. After he proposed a new system, which was rejected by his superiors, Falciani spent the next two years collecting evidence on some 30,000 accounts holding almost $120 billion in assets. His attempt to make the information available to Swiss judicial authorities resulted in his arrest in Switzerland. After his release on bail, Falciani fled to France, where his HSBC data trove ended up in the hands of authorities who subsequently indicted HSBC for illegal direct marketing to French nationals, money laundering and facilitating tax fraud. French authorities, including Christine Lagarde, now managing director of the International Monetary Fund, then shared the data with other countries, including the United States.

The cache of files lifts the lid on a stunning litany of wrongdoing: HSBC routinely allowed clients to withdraw large amounts of cash, often in foreign currencies of little use in Switzerland; they aggressively marketed schemes likely to enable wealthy clients to avoid European taxes; colluded with some clients to conceal undeclared “black” accounts from domestic tax authorities; and provided accounts to international criminals, corrupt businessmen and others who posed a high risk.

A French parliamentary report found that of 2,325 French taxpayers with accounts at HSBC in Switzerland, only three had their affairs in order. The files reveal how HSBC in Switzerland eagerly marketed tax avoidance strategies to its wealthy clients. “The bank proactively contacted clients in 2005 to suggest ways to avoid a new tax levied on the Swiss savings accounts of EU citizens, a measure brought in through a treaty between Switzerland and the EU to tackle secret offshore accounts,” The Guardian reports. “Hollywood stars, shopkeepers, royalty and clothing merchants feature in the files along with the heirs to some of Europe’s biggest fortunes,” the newspaper said.

The documents show that HSBC’s Swiss subsidiary provided banking services to relatives of dictators, people implicated in African corruption scandals and arms industry figures.

“The offshore industry is a major threat for our democratic institutions and our basic social contract,” French economist Thomas Piketty, author of “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” told the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. “Financial opacity is one of the key drivers of rising global inequality. It allows a large fraction of top income and top wealth groups to pay negligible tax rates, while the rest of us pay large taxes in order to finance the public goods and services (education, health, infrastructures) that are indispensable for the development process.”

After returning to France, Falciani fled to Spain in 2012 on the advice of the U.S. government. Upon arrival, he was arrested in Barcelona under a Swiss international warrant. As a holder of both Italian and French nationality, Falciani cannot be extradited to Switzerland by either of those countries and is therefore unlikely to serve the sentence he received in absentia. Since the leaks became public, he has been called to assist the Argentine federal taxation agency against money laundering, and in February it was announced that he will collaborate with the Spanish party Podemos to draft measures against tax evasion for the party’s political program.

HSBC was fined more than $40 million by Geneva authorities this year after investigators concluded that “organizational deficiencies” had allowed money laundering to take place at its Swiss subsidiary. French magistrates are currently conducting a criminal investigation into the bank, alleging “complicity in aggravated money laundering and financial fraud,” and HSBC has been ordered to post bail of about $105 million.

“I’m not a white knight, but there is something beautiful and exhilarating about establishing the truth. It carries you through the bad times,” Falciani said in a 2014 interview with French newspaper Le Monde. “I don’t have to worry about a retirement that I won’t have. I don’t have the risk of tomorrow. I can concern myself with something more: we are useful.”

For bringing to light corruption at the heart of the notoriously secretive Swiss banking system, Hervé Falciani is our Truthdigger of the Week.

There are probably a lot of lessons we can learn from the conflict in Syria. 

We might, for instance, pause and reflect on the morality of subjecting millions of people to untold pain and suffering in pursuit of geopolitical expediency. Or we could make a serious effort to reevaluate a foreign policy that too often centers around bringing about regime change in far away lands without considering the ramifications and potential for blowback. 

Of course that kind of deep self-reflection will never happen in Washington, but fortunately, there’s a far simpler lesson that requires very little in the way of high level thinking to understand. Here it is: arming and funding Islamic militants you just met is always a bad idea. 

In the worst case scenario you lose control of them only to watch in horror as the Frankenstein you created escapes from the lab, rumbles out of the castle, and proceeds to terrorize and murder all the villagers. In the best case scenario, they do what you thought they were going to do (in this case fight Assad’s army) but they occasionally go off the rails and blow up a Russian search and rescue helicopter after executing one of Moscow’s pilots. 

In Syria, the FSA falls into the “best case scenario” category but as we’ve been at pains to explain, arming them now makes even less sense than it did initially because, i) you risk starting a world war as they are using US-supplied weapons to fire on Iranian soldiers and Russian equipment, and, on a practical level, ii) they’re using US-supplied weapons to kill the same Iran-backed Shiite militiamen who are fighting with the Iraqi regulars just across the border. 

Consider the following excerpts from various media outlets:

Shi’ite Muslim militiamen and Iraqi army forces launched a counter-offensive against Islamic State insurgents near Ramadi on Saturday, a militia spokesman said, aiming to reverse potentially devastating gains by the jihadi militants. – Reuters, May 23

U.S. airstrikes targeting ISIS around Ramadi are proving “not very effective,” according to the head of the Iran-backed militias surrounding the conquered Iraqi city. “We expect more from the Americans,” Hadi al-Ameri told NBC News. “There are no real airstrikes against ISIS headquarters.” – NBC, June 23

Iraqi forces and the Shiite militias fighting alongside them announced Friday that they had retaken the oil refinery at Baiji from Islamic State militants, in some of the first significant progress against the extremist group after months of stalled efforts. – New York Times, October 16

Iraq’s official military doesn’t appear to be in any position to take on ISIS. Shiite militia groups have proved much more effective at fighting ISIS than Iraq’s official military, and it’s the Shiites who are taking the lead in the Iraqi government’s new campaign to retake Anbar. – Slate, May 26, 2015

You get the idea.

Make no mistake, there are some very serious questions about these militias’ human rights record, but the point is that when it comes to fighting Sunni extremists, there’s no one better to have on your side than fearsome Shiite militiamen even if some of those militiamen were responsible for killing hundreds of US soldiers with copper-tipped IEDs during the Iraq occupation.

As we documented extensively in “Who Really Controls Iraq? Inside Iran’s Powerful Proxy Armies,” Tehran controls these fighters and thanks to their effectiveness on the battlefield, the militias effectively control the US-armed Iraqi regulars. As Reuters noted in October, “the Fifth Iraqi Army Division now reports to the militias’ chain of command, not to the military’s, according to several U.S. and coalition military officials. The division rarely communicates with the Defence Ministry’s joint operation command, from which Abadi and senior Iraqi officers monitor the war, the officials said.”

Here’s a bit more color from the same investigative piece that should give you an idea of what’s going on in Iraq:

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, a Shi’ite, came to office just over a year ago backed by both the United States and Iran. He promised to rebuild the fragmented country he inherited from his predecessor, Nuri al-Maliki, who was widely accused of fueling sectarian divisions. Since then, though, even more power has shifted from the government to the militia leaders.

Those leaders are friendly with Abadi. But the most influential describe themselves as loyal not only to Iraq but also to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Three big militias – Amiri’s Badr Organisation, Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Kataib Hezbollah – use the Iranian Shi’ite cleric’s image on either their posters or websites. Badr officials describe their relationship with Iran as good for Iraq’s national interests.

Iraq, for all intents and purposes, is now an Iranian colony both politically and militarily.

In the wake of the US invasion in 2003, Tehran was concerned that the Cheney Bush administration would move to invade Iran next. This, along with a desire to aid the Americans in fighting The Taliban in Afghanistan (who Iran now covertly supports in an effort to usurp ISIS influence), led the IRGC to forge a quasi-friendly relationship with The Pentagon. And then George Bush put Iran in his infamous “Axis of Evil.” From that point forward the Quds encouraged Iraq’s Shiite militias to target American troops, which goes a long way towards explaining why the US accuses Iran of being the world’s number one state sponsor of terror (of course that’s absurd, but hey, we didn’t say it, Washington did).

Fast forward to 2015 and the US has essentially comes to terms with the fact that Iran’s proxies are going to fight ISIS alongside the Iraqi regulars. It’s only annoying for Washington when those proxies say things like this: “the United States lacks the decisiveness and the readiness to supply weapons needed to eliminate militancy in the region.” But while it’s fine to taunt the US regarding Washington’s highly suspicious lack of commitment to the fight against ISIS in Iraq, Iran is not keen on seeing a sizeable US troop presence on its border (again) which is why it should come as no surprise to you that on the heels of Ash Carter’s announcement earlier today that the US is set to send SpecOps to Iraq, Kataib Hezbollah immediately threatened to attack them. Here’s Retuers:

“We will chase and fight any American force deployed in Iraq,” said Jafaar Hussaini, a spokesman for one of the Shi’ite armed groups, Kata’ib Hezbollah. “Any such American force will become a primary target for our group. We fought them before and we are ready to resume fighting.”

Badr Organisation and Asaib Ahl al-Haq (mentioned above) weren’t far behind:

“All Iraqis look to (the Americans) as occupiers who are not trustworthy,” said Muen al-Kadhimi, a senior aide to the leader of the Badr Organisation.

“The militias, grouped with volunteer fighters under a government-run umbrella, are seen as a bulwark in Iraq’s battle against Islamic State,” Reuters adds.

Predictably, PM Abadi was out just hours later reiterating (he already said this once back in October) that Iraq does “not need foreign ground combat forces on Iraqi land.”

Obviously, these pronouncements might as well have been issued directly from Tehran because that’s unquestionably who’s pulling the strings here, but this does set up an interesting scenario. Washington probably wasn’t looking for permission in the first place despite Carter’s lip service to Baghdad on Tuesday. The US will likely embed the Spec Ops with the Peshmerga via the KRG in Erbil.

The question then, is this: if the Iraqi regulars are now loyal to the Shiite militias and if Iran is pulling the strings in Baghdad, what will the relationship be between a US/Peshmerga effort to fight ISIS and an Iran/Iraqi effort? Furthermore, what happens if Russia begins bombing ISIS targets in Iraq?

Time will tell, but the big picture takeaway here is this: this war doesn’t end in Syria.

*  *  *

Bonus: Visuals of Iraqi Shiite fighters

The Russian Defense Ministry is giving a major media briefing to outline measures to combat international terrorism.

The military operation in Syria is expected to dominate the event.

Russia doesn’t expect Turkish President Erdogan to resign in the face of the new evidence, even though he had promised to do so.

His resignation is not Russia’s goal and is a matter for the Turkish people.

GR Editor’s Note

“There is so much debate over how the U.S. and other nations will stop ISIS but can these leaders be trusted? 

In a CBS Report, Ben Swann exposes secret DOD documents that prove the U.S. wanted ISIS to emerge in Syria.”

What is also acknowledged by these secret  Pentagon documents is that the so-called ISIS caliphate was in fact a US project from the very outset. It was named a “Salafist Principality” (aka Caliphate), which in essence is a play of words. Salafism and Wahhabism are overlapping ideologies.

What is implied by this Pentagon statement is that the unspoken objective from the very outset was to destroy a secular government and replace it by an Islamic State.

The Islamic State based in Northern Syria continues to be supported by the US and its allies, it has special forces within its ranks, which are in permanent liaison with US-NATO.

The counterterrorism air campaign launched in August-September 2014 is not targeting the Islamic State, quite the opposite. It is targeting the civilian infrastructure of a sovereign country which constitutes an act of aggression in derogation of international law.

The objective is still regime change with a view to instating an Islamic State modelled on Saudi Arabia, Qatar, et al.

People in America cannot say We did not know.

This CBS report did not emanate from the independent media.

Washington’s support of a terrorist Salafist organization is in the public domain. Supporting terrorism is a criminal act.

It’s State sponsored terrorism under the disguise of Obama’s self-proclaimed “war on terrorism”. “Can these leaders be trusted”.

Global Research has developed an archive of more than 1000 articles on Syria, which document beyond doubt Washington’s support of terrorist entities linked to al Qaeda inside Syria.

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, December 2, 2015

In response to Russia’s accusation that Turkey is buying oil from ISIS, the Turkish president said that – if that is proven to be true – he’ll resign.

It turns out that Turkey is buying oil from ISIS.

The Guardian reported this summer:

US special forces raided the compound of an Islamic State leader in eastern Syria in May, they made sure not to tell the neighbours.

The target of that raid, the first of its kind since US jets returned to the skies over Iraq last August, was an Isis official responsible for oil smuggling, named Abu Sayyaf. He was almost unheard of outside the upper echelons of the terror group, but he was well known to Turkey. From mid-2013, the Tunisian fighter had been responsible for smuggling oil from Syria’s eastern fields, which the group had by then commandeered. Black market oil quickly became the main driver of Isis revenues – and Turkish buyers were its main clients.

As a result, the oil trade between the jihadis and the Turks was held up as evidence of an alliance between the two.

***

In the wake of the raid that killed Abu Sayyaf, suspicions of an undeclared alliance have hardened. One senior western official familiar with the intelligence gathered at the slain leader’s compound said that direct dealings between Turkish officials and ranking Isis members was now “undeniable”.

ABC news Australia points out today:

In June 2014, a member of Turkey’s parliamentary opposition, Ali Edibogluan, claimed that IS had smuggled $800 million worth of oil into Turkey from Syria and Iraq, according to the Al Monitor website.

He cited oil fields at Rumaila in northern Syria and others near Mosul in Iraq, saying that IS had laid pipes allowing it to “transfer the oil to Turkey and parlay it into cash”.

“Turkey’s cooperation with thousands of men of such a mentality is extremely dangerous,” he said, according to the Al Monitor report.

Similar pipes exist also at [the Turkish border regions of] Kilis, Urfa and Gaziantep … they take the oil from the refineries at zero cost.

Using primitive means, they refine the oil in areas close to the Turkish border and then sell it via Turkey.

Now, a former Iraqi member of parliament has backed up those claims.

“In the last eight months [IS] has managed to sell what is $800 million worth of oil in the black market of Turkey. This is Iraqi oil and Syrian oil, and these are carried by trucks from Iraq, from Syria, through the borders to Turkey and sold … [at] less than 50 per cent of the international oil price,” Mowaffak al Rubaie said in an interview with the Russian channel RT.

It has always been sold in the region of $21-22 for the barrel.

Now this either gets consumed inside, the crude is refined on Turkish territory by the Turkish refineries, and sold in the Turkish market. Or it goes to Jihan and then in the pipelines from Jihan to the Mediterranean and sold to the international market.

Money and dollars generated by selling Iraqi and Syrian oil on the Turkish black market is like the oxygen supply to [IS] and its operation.

Once you cut the oxygen then [IS] will suffocate.

The former Iraqi MP said there was “no shadow of a doubt” that the Turkish government knew about the smuggling operations.

“The merchants, the businessmen [are buying oil] in the black market in Turkey under the noses, under the auspices if you like, of the Turkish intelligence agency and the Turkish security apparatus” ….

A statistical analysis performed by  George Kiourktsoglou, Visiting Lecturer, University of Greenwich, London and Dr. Alec D. Coutroubis, Principal Lecturer, University of Greenwich, London, determinedthat:

It seems that whenever the Islamic State is fighting in the vicinity of an area hosting oil assets, the 13 exports from [the Turkish state-owned oil refinery at] Ceyhan promptly spike. This may be attributed to an extra boost given to crude oil smuggling with the aim of immediately generating additional funds, badly needed for the supply of ammunition and military equipment.

Kurdish Daily News reported in March:

Sadik Al Hiseni, the head of the security committee in the city of Diyala in Iraq, says they have arrested several Turkish tankers trying to take ISIS oil out of the province of Salahuddin.

Buzzfeed noted last year:

Other sources involved in smuggling Syrian oil into Turkey said that it continued elsewhere along the border on a far greater scale. This testimony — from smugglers and businessmen who have done it themselves — provides a rare look behind the curtain of the trade that has helped make ISIS the world’s richest extremists. “Before, now, and in the future, ISIS is smuggling oil into Turkey,” said one of the businessmen involved, who spoke on the condition that he not be named. “And the border guards close their eyes.”

Aerial footage taken by Russia allegedly show giant convoys of trucks going from ISIS-controlled oil territory in Syria to Turkey:

4-Star General Wesley Clark – who served as the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO – said last week:

Someone’s buying that oil that ISIS is selling, it’s going through somewhere, it looks to me like it’s probably going through Turkey ….

Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights notes:

• On September 13, 2014, The New York Times reported on the Obama administration’s efforts to pressure Turkey to crack down on ISIS extensive sales network for oil. James Phillips, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, argues that Turkey has not fully cracked down on ISIS’s sales network because it benefits from a lower price for oil, and that there might even be Turks and government officials who benefit from the trade.

• Fehim Taştekin wrote in Radikal on September 13, 2014 about illegal pipelines transporting oil from Syria to nearby border towns in Turkey. The oil is sold for as little as 1.25 liras per liter. Taştekin indicated that many of these illegal pipelines were dismantled after operating for 3 years, once his article was published.

• According to Diken and OdaTV, David Cohen, a Justice Department official, says that there are Turkish individuals acting as middlemen to help sell ISIS’s oil through Turkey.

• On October 14, 2014, a German Parliamentarian from the Green Party accused Turkey of allowing the transportation of arms to ISIS over its territory, as well as the sale of oil.

And Zero Hedge has rounded up a variety of circumstantial evidence indicating that the Turkish leaders are intentionally smuggling ISIS oil into Turkey and then out to the Mediterranean, using the same supply routes used to smuggle “illegal” Kurdish oil.

Will the Turkish president keep his word and resign?

Like all westerners, I watched in horror at the terror that was unleashed across Paris. But my horror quickly turned to frustration when, immediately in the aftermath, western leaders took advantage of the situation to reinforce a false narrative, and to justify the very policies that have brought us to such a crisis.

Within hours of the attacks, United States President, Barack Obama proclaimed: “This is an attack on all of humanity and the universal values that we share.” Comments like this are intended to portray those in the West as innocent victims of people determined to destroy honourable values. In truth, western nations have been the perpetrators of state-sponsored terror that has been destroying country after country, and the lives of millions of people.

In 1999, I travelled to Baghdad and witnessed firsthand the anguish, death and squalor brought on by the 1991 Gulf War and years of crushing sanctions that killed more than 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of five. Walking the streets of Baghdad, seeing malnourished children begging in the streets, and visiting hospitals with no medicine and water contaminated with raw sewage, I was overwhelmed by the cruelty deliberately inflicted upon innocent people. For the first time in my life I understood the rage, the helplessness and hopelessness that fuels terrorism. Iraq would endure four more years of sanctions and a second disastrous war. Yet, in my 1999 diary I prophetically wrote:

What kind of future relationship will we have with an entire generation of Iraqis who have suffered such brutality at our hand? Iraq is not a nation of terrorists but through our actions, we have planted the seeds of extremism and hatred that could make it such in the future. Terrorism is not about unfounded hatred of freedom and democracy or religious extremism, it is about repression and exploitation of the powerless by the powerful. It is about pain and anguish on a scale rarely, if ever, seen by most of us.

The Gulf War occurred in 1991, and according to the UN Finnish Envoy Martti Ahtissari, who was sent in to assess the war damage, one of the wealthiest countries in the Middle East, with a strong, well-educated middle-class, sustained near apocalyptic damage and was bombed back into a pre-industrial state. The water treatment system was deliberately targeted at the outset of the war in violation of the Convention on Genocide (Article 2-C), and sanctions were used to ensure that chlorine could not be imported and the system could not be repaired.

The Iraqi people had not chosen Saddam Hussein as their leader and they had no democratic mechanisms to remove him so that sanctions could be lifted; yet even the youngest among them were being punished with their lives. Those of us who tried to sound the alarm about the genocide that was taking place, were largely ignored. Two United Nations Humanitarian Aid Coordinators, appointed to oversee the sanctions program responsible for so much death and suffering, Dennis Halliday and Hans von Sponek, resigned in protest, yet western policy pressed on.

What western media coverage existed, usually diverted attention away from the real issues and instead played games over the number of actual dead in Iraq, or deflected blame to Saddam Hussein despite the fact that the country had an excellent health-care system and a relatively low child mortality rate prior to the war and sanctions.

We must learn that we cannot brutalize people like this and then expect them to engage with us as global partners. It simply doesn’t work that way. It is time for western leaders to admit that their policies are bankrupt and have been for decades.

Tragically, it is ordinary people on both sides who suffer and pay the price. The refugees fleeing war, violence and terror in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere, are victims of the same policies that are now bringing terror and insecurity to our own shores.

Our governments do not want us to understand that wittingly or unwittingly (the jury is still out on what role they have really played) they created the conditions for the rise of ISIS, and they did so through exactly the same disastrous policies that they now claim are the only way to destroy it.

It’s time to call their bluff.

Image: Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

My column, “Capitalism At Work,” about Greek women being forced into prostitution by banksters and the IMF produced a number of responses from women, who report that austerity is having the same effect all over Europe. 

This is from a letter from Portugal:

“Your article ‘Capitalism At Work’ shows absolutely what’s happened here in Portugal. It is  common for young women to sell their body to pay the University fees and for food.

 “About the submarines, we had also that experience. The person responsible for this purchasing was Dr. Paulo Portas, who, despite that ‘affair’, was nominated Vice Prime Minister until recently. Now they are Socialists at the Government but believe me, they are so corrupt, even more than the previous right-wing government. In fact all left parties are, even the PCP. They are interested only in self benefit and they give some crumbs to the people. We are a banana republic governed by bastards.  We deserve this situation as long as we tolerate it.”

 The European socialist parties, which over decades of struggle humanized European capitalism and European society,  are no more.  Europeans are experiencing a modern version of the Enclosures of the past when they were uprooted from the land in which they had use rights in order that land could become private property and be financialized with debt instruments.

This time Europeans are being dispossessed of the social welfare systems that made life under capitalism liveable.  Simultaneously, the most heavily indebted countries are being looted.  The living standards of the populations are being squeezed to death in order to pay off the fraudulent debts incurred by corrupt governments.

Look around Europe.  Where do the people have a leader?  Jeremy Corbyn is the only remaining socialist or semi-socialist who heads a traditional party, and the British Labour Party is not firmly behind him.

France has Marine Le Pen, who heads the National Front.  This party is labeled right-wing, because it is nationalist and believes that France belongs to the French.

But it represents the French people better than does the Socialist Party of Hollande, Washington’s puppet.

In Greece the left-wing party that swept to power over the austerity issue quickly became an accomplish of the banksters and sold out the Greek people.

With the world economy turning down and Europe additionally burdened with millions of refugees from Washington’s endless wars, the vaunted living standards of Western civilization are on the way out.

“(w)e are not that dishonest as to buy oil from terrorists. If it is proven that we have, in fact, done so, I will leave office. If there is any evidence, let them present it, we’ll consider (it).” (Turkey’s President R. Erdogan)

In Paris at the climate conference, President Vladimir Putin minced no words, saying: “(w)e have recently received additional reports that confirm that [stolen] oil from ISIL-controlled territories is delivered to the territory of Turkey on an industrial scale.”  (emphasis added)

“We have all grounds to suspect that the decision to down our plane was motivated by the intention to secure these routes of delivering oil to ports where it is loaded on tankers. Defending Turkmen is just a pretext” – terrorists allied with Ankara.

Washington knows what’s ongoing, doing nothing to stop it, permitting its ISIS foot soldiers to have a key revenue source. Sergey Lavrov acknowledged it, saying:

“Let us operate with facts. There have been many reports that god knows who is living off the oil wells illegally seized by the Islamic State.”

“When our aviation started flying in the Syrian airspace at the request of [Syrian president] Bashar al-Assad, we saw the whole picture of that illegal business from above.”

“Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke about that on several occasions, including yesterday’s news conference and the G20 summit in Antalya where he had shown space and aerial images – very eloquent and very convincing – to his colleagues.”

“The US-led coalition started flying over Iraq and Syria, without the Syrian government’s consent by the way, more than a year before the [legal] Russian military operation.”

“I am convinced that they saw all that but did not do anything for some unknown reason.” Putin, Lavrov and other Russian officials know why. They diplomatically stop short of explaining, including about Washington’s involvement.

“Russian warplanes started bombing that criminal industry when they began operati(ng) in that area,” Lavrov added.

“(I)f the United States is so much concerned (about) who is benefitting from” stolen oil sales, why is it doing nothing to stop them.

Erdogan was caught red-handed, including by former Turkish officials. Courageous Ankara-based journalists exposed his weapons smuggling to ISIS terrorists.

Turkey’s leader lied, saying:

“(w)e are not that dishonest as to buy oil from terrorists. If it is proven that we have, in fact, done so, I will leave office. If there is any evidence, let them present it, we’ll consider (it).”

He failed to comply with Russia’s request to act against terrorists “emerging on Turkish territory,” infiltrating into parts of Russia, including the northern Caucasus, Putin explained.

“(W)e have traced some located on the territory of the Turkish Republic and living in regions guarded by special security services and police that have used the visa-free regime to return to our territory, where we continue to fight them.”

Putin urges world unity against the scourge of terrorism – impossible “while (some nations, notably America, Turkey and rogue allies) use several terrorist organizations to reach their immediate goals.”

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. 

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

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

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

GR Editor’s Note

The closing of the Bosphorus Straits by Turkey would constitute an Act of War directed against the Russian Federation

A recent report by Sputnik states that in this regard:

In times of war, the passage of warships shall be left entirely to the discretion of the Turkish government, according to the document.

From a legal perspective, Turkey has no legal grounds to create obstacles for Russian vessels carrying cargo, including military cargo, Russian lawyer Vladimir Morkovkin told RBK. Turkey can ban non-friendly vessels from navigating through the Straits only if at war, the expert explained.

After World War II, Ankara made several efforts to gradually strengthen its control over the Straits. In 1982, Turkey tried to unilaterally expand the regime of the Istanbul port over the entire area of the Straits. The decision was harshly criticized by neighboring countries, and Turkey stepped back.

http://sputniknews.com/politics/20151126/1030827768/turkey-russia-bosporus-strait.html#ixzz3t61VcKve

We are at very dangerous crossroads. Russia’s maritime access to the Mediterranean is largely controlled by NATO countries and their allies (i.e. 1. Bosphorus and Dardanelles; 2. Suez canal, 3. Strait of Gibraltar)

GR Editor, Michel Chossudovsky, December 1, 2015)

*     *     *

Turkey has begun a de facto blockade of Russian naval vessels,  preventing transit through the Dardanelles and the Strait of Bosporus, between the Black Sea and Mediterranean.   

According to the AIS tracking system for the movement of maritime vessels, only Turkish vessels are moving along the Bosphorus, and in the Dardanelles there is no movement of any shipping at all.

At the same time, both from the Black Sea, and from the Mediterranean Sea, there is a small cluster of ships under the Russian flag, just sitting and waiting. The image below shows the situation with the ships using the GPS transponder onboard each vessel:

In addition, shipping inside the Black Sea from Novorossiisk and Sevastopol in the direction of the Bosphorus, no Russian vessels are moving. This indirectly confirms the a CNN statement that Turkey may have blocked the movement of Russian ships on the Dardanelles and the Strait of Bosporus.

There is a Treaty specifically covering the use of these waterways by nations of the world.  That Treaty is the Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Straits.

It is a 1936 agreement that gives Turkey control over the Bosporus Straits and the Dardanelles and regulates the transit of naval warships. The Convention gives Turkey full control over the Straits and guarantees the free passage of civilian vessels in peacetime. It restricts the passage of naval ships not belonging to Black Sea states. The terms of the convention have been the source of controversy over the years, most notably concerning the Soviet Union‘s military access to the Mediterranean Sea.

Signed on 20 July 1936 at the Montreux Palace in Switzerland, it permitted Turkey to remilitarise the Straits. It went into effect on 9 November 1936 and was registered in League of Nations Treaty Series on 11 December 1936. It is still in force today, with some amendments.

The Convention consists of 29 Articles, four annexes and one protocol. Articles 2–7 consider the passage of merchant ships. Articles 8–22 consider the passage of war vessels. The key principle of freedom of passage and navigation is stated in articles 1 and 2. Article 1 provides that “The High Contracting Parties recognize and affirm the principle of freedom of passage and navigation by sea in the Straits”. Article 2 states that “In time of peace, merchant vessels shall enjoy complete freedom of passage and navigation in the Straits, by day and by night, under any flag with any kind of cargo.”

The International Straits Commission was abolished, authorizing the full resumption of Turkish military control over the Straits and the refortification of the Dardanelles. Turkey was authorized to close the Straits to all foreign warships in wartime or when it was threatened by aggression; additionally, it was authorized to refuse transit from merchant ships belonging to countries at war with Turkey.

Turkey has now invoked its power, but has not publicly stated whether they are blocking Russian Naval Vessels because Turkey is “threatened with aggression” or whether Turkey considers itself to be “at war.”  Last week, Turkey shot down a Russian military jet over Syria and this has caused a major rift between the two nations.

This latest development of blockading Russian naval vessels is a massive and terrifyingly dangerous development.  Blockading Russia and preventing its Black Sea fleet from traveling to the rest of the world, or back to its home port,  is something that will not sit well with the Russians.

Earlier today, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the deployment of 150,000 Russian troops and equipment into Syria, but then ALSO ordered the deployment of 7,000 additional Russian Troops, tanks, rocket launchers and artillery, to the Russian Border of Turkey at Armenia, with orders to be “fully combat ready.”

It is important to note two things:

1) Turkey is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as is the United States and most of Europe, AND;

2) Turkey took the first shot at Russia when they intentionally shot down a Russian jet last week.

It is important to remember these facts because, as a NATO member, Turkey can invoke Article 5 of the NATO Treaty which requires all NATO members to come to its defense if Turkey is “attacked.”  So if Russia decides to fight back against Turkey downing its military jet, the Turks might call NATO and claim they’ve been “attacked” thereby calling-up NATO forces to go to war against Russia.

It bears remembering, however, that Turkey shot first.  Turkey was the nation which “attacked.”

Before NATO and the world get dragged into a war between Russia and Turkey, the citizens of the world must be ready to remind our leaders that Turkey Shot First.

Why did the Turks shoot?  Because Turkey has been allowing the terrorist group ISIS to sell the oil it has stolen from countries it is conquering.  The oil is transported from the wells in countries where ISIS has seized power, is taken by truck to Turkey, and is then sold at cheap prices on the black market.

This black market selling results in over 1 Million dollars per DAY flowing into ISIS to keep it equipped and supplied for its ongoing terrorist activities.  Only a fool would think that all this is going on through Turkey, without some Turkish officials having their hands out for money from the illegal oil sales.  Put simply, Turkey appears to be in business with ISIS and Russia is harming that by attacking ISIS in Syria.

So Turkey shot down one of the Russian planes that was attacking ISIS.  Russia is quite furious; with the Russian President stating the shoot down was “a stab in the back of Russia” and was carried out by “accomplices to terrorism.”

It would be shocking if NATO were to defend Turkey under such circumstances because by its actions, Turkey is providing material support to the terrorist group ISIS.  For NATO to defend that would make all of us accomplices to terrorism.

Il missile Aim-120 Amraam lanciato dall’F-16 turco (ambedue made in Usa) non era diretto solo al caccia russo impegnato in Siria contro l’Isis, ma a un obiettivo ben più importante: il Turkish Stream, il progettato gasdotto che porterebbe il gas russo in Turchia e, da qui, in Grecia e altri paesi della Ue. Il Turkish Stream è la risposta di Mosca al siluramento, da parte di Washington, del South Stream, il gasdotto che, aggirando l’Ucraina, avrebbe portato il gas russo fino a Tarvisio (Udine) e da qui nella Ue, con grandi benefici per l’Italia anche in termini di occupazione. Il progetto, varato dalla russa Gazprom e dall’italiana Eni e poi allargato alla tedesca Wintershall e alla francese Edf, era già in fase avanzata di realizzazione (la Saipem dell’Eni aveva già un contratto da 2 miliardi di euro per la costruzione del gasdotto attraverso il Mar Nero) quando, dopo aver provocato la crisi ucraina, Washington lanciava quella che il New York Times definiva «una strategia aggressiva mirante a ridurre le forniture russe di gas all’Europa». Sotto pressione Usa, la Bulgaria bloccava nel dicembre 2014 i lavori del South Stream affossando il progetto. Contemporaneamente però, nonostante Mosca e Ankara fossero in campi opposti riguardo a Siria e Isis, la Gazprom firmava un accordo preliminare con la compagnia turca Botas per la realizzazione di un duplice gasdotto Russia-Turchia attraverso il Mar Nero. Il 19 giugno Mosca e Atene firmavano un accordo preliminare sull’estensione del Turkish Stream (con una spesa di 2 miliardi di dollari a carico della Russia) fino alla Grecia, per farne la porta d’ingresso del nuovo gasdotto nell’Unione europea.

Il 22 luglio Obama telefonava a Erdogan, chiedendo che la Turchia si ritirasse dal progetto. Il 16 novembre Mosca e Ankara annunciavano, invece, prossimi colloqui governativi per varare il Turkish Stream, con una portata superiore a quella del maggiore gasdotto attraverso l’Ucraina. Otto giorni dopo, l’abbattimento del caccia russo provocava il blocco, se non la cancellazione, del progetto. Sicuramente a Washington hanno brindato al nuovo successo. La Turchia, che importa dalla Russia il 55% del gas e il 30% del petrolio, viene invece danneggiata dalle sanzioni russe e rischia di perdere il grosso business del Turkish Stream. Chi allora in Turchia aveva interesse ad abbattere volutamente il caccia russo, sapendo quali sarebbero state le conseguenze? La frase di Erdogan «Vorremmo che non fosse successo, ma è successo, spero che una cosa del genere non accada più» implica uno scenario più complesso di quello ufficiale. In Turchia ci sono importanti comandi, basi e radar Nato sotto comando Usa: l’ordine di abbattere il caccia russo è stato dato all’interno di tale quadro. Qual è a questo punto la situazione nella «guerra dei gasdotti»? Usa e Nato controllano il territorio ucraino da cui passano i gasdotti Russia-Ue, ma la Russia può fare oggi meno affidamento su di essi (la quantità di gas che trasportano è calata dal 90% al 40% dell’export russo di gas verso l’Europa) grazie a due corridoi alternativi. Il Nord Stream che, a nord dell’Ucraina, porta il gas russo in Germania: la Gazprom ora lo vuole raddoppiare ma il progetto è avversato nella Ue dalla Polonia e altri governi dell’Est (legati più a Washington che a Bruxelles). Il Blue Stream, gestito alla pari da Gazprom ed Eni, che a sud passa dalla Turchia ed è per questo a rischio. La Ue potrebbe importare molto gas a basso prezzo dall’Iran, con un gasdotto già progettato attraverso Iraq e Siria, ma il progetto è bloccato (non a caso) dalla guerra scatenata in questi paesi dalla strategia Usa/Nato.

Manlio Dinucci

This article was first published in February 2015

The recent 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz was a reminder of the great crime of fascism, whose Nazi iconography is embedded in our consciousness. Fascism is preserved as history, as flickering footage of goose-stepping blackshirts, their criminality terrible and clear. Yet in the same liberal societies, whose war-making elites urge us never to forget, the accelerating danger of a modern kind of fascism is suppressed; for it is their fascism.

“To initiate a war of aggression…,” said the Nuremberg Tribunal judges in 1946, “is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

Had the Nazis not invaded Europe, Auschwitz and the Holocaust would not have happened.  Had the United States and its satellites not initiated their war of aggression in Iraq in 2003, almost a million people would be alive today; and Islamic State, or ISIS, would not have us in thrall to its savagery.  They are the progeny of modern fascism, weaned by the bombs, bloodbaths and lies that are the surreal theatre known as news.

Like the fascism of the 1930s and 1940s, big lies are delivered with the precision of a metronome: thanks to an omnipresent, repetitive media and its virulent censorship by omission. Take the catastrophe in Libya.

In 2011, Nato launched 9,700 “strike sorties” against Libya, of which more than a third were aimed at civilian targets. Uranium warheads were used; the cities of Misurata and Sirte were carpet-bombed. The Red Cross identified mass graves, and Unicef reported that “most [of the children killed] were under the age of ten”.

The public sodomising of the Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi with a “rebel” bayonet was greeted by the then US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, with the words: “We came, we saw, he died.”  His murder, like the destruction of his country, was justified with a familiar big lie; he was planning “genocide” against his own people. “We knew … that if we waited one more day,” said President Obama, “Benghazi, a city the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.”

This was the fabrication of Islamist militias facing defeat by Libyan government forces. They told Reuters there would be “a real bloodbath, a massacre like we saw in Rwanda”. Reported on March 14, 2011, the lie provided the first spark for Nato’s inferno, described by David Cameron as a “humanitarian intervention”.

Secretly supplied and trained by Britain’s SAS, many of the “rebels” would become ISIS, whose latest video offering shows the beheading of 21 Coptic Christian workers seized in Sirte, the city destroyed on their behalf by Nato bombers.

For Obama, Cameron and Hollande, Gaddafi’s true crime was Libya’s economic independence and his declared intention to stop selling Africa’s greatest oil reserves in US dollars. The petrodollar is a pillar of American imperial power. Gaddafi audaciously planned to underwrite a common African currency backed by gold, establish an all-Africa bank and promote economic union among poor countries with prized resources. Whether or not this would happen, the very notion was intolerable to the US as it prepared to “enter” Africa and bribe African governments with military “partnerships”.

Following Nato’s attack under cover of a Security Council resolution, Obama, wrote Garikai Chengu, “confiscated $30 billion from Libya’s Central Bank, which Gaddafi had earmarked for the establishment of an African Central Bank and the African gold backed dinar currency”.

The “humanitarian war” against Libya drew on a model close to western liberal hearts, especially in the media. In 1999, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair sent Nato to bomb Serbia, because, they lied, the Serbs were committing “genocide” against ethnic Albanians in the secessionist province of Kosovo. David Scheffer, US ambassador-at-large for war crimes [sic], claimed that as many as “225,000 ethnic Albanian men aged between 14 and 59” might have been murdered. Both Clinton and Blair evoked the Holocaust and “the spirit of the Second World War”. The West’s heroic allies were the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), whose criminal record was set aside. The British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, told them to call him any time on his mobile phone.

With the Nato bombing over, and much of Serbia’s infrastructure in ruins, along with schools, hospitals, monasteries and the national TV station, international forensic teams descended upon Kosovo to exhume evidence of the “holocaust”. The FBI failed to find a single mass grave and went home. The Spanish forensic team did the same, its leader angrily denouncing “a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machines”. A year later, a United Nations tribunal on Yugoslavia announced the final count of the dead in Kosovo: 2,788. This included combatants on both sides and Serbs and Roma murdered by the KLA. There was no genocide. The “holocaust” was a lie. The Nato attack had been fraudulent.

Behind the lie, there was serious purpose. Yugoslavia was a uniquely independent, multi-ethnic federation that had stood as a political and economic bridge in the Cold War. Most of its utilities and major manufacturing was publicly owned. This was not acceptable to the expanding European Community, especially newly united Germany, which had begun a drive east to capture its “natural market” in the Yugoslav provinces of Croatia and Slovenia. By the time the Europeans met at Maastricht in 1991 to lay their plans for the disastrous eurozone, a secret deal had been struck; Germany would recognise Croatia. Yugoslavia was doomed.

In Washington, the US saw that the struggling Yugoslav economy was denied World Bank loans.  Nato, then an almost defunct Cold War relic, was reinvented as imperial enforcer. At a 1999 Kosovo “peace” conference in Rambouillet, in France, the Serbs were subjected to the enforcer’s duplicitous tactics. The Rambouillet accord included a secret Annex B, which the US delegation inserted on the last day. This demanded the military occupation of the whole of Yugoslavia — a country with bitter memories of the Nazi occupation — and the implementation of a “free-market economy” and the privatisation of all government assets. No sovereign state could sign this. Punishment followed swiftly; Nato bombs fell on a defenceless country. It was the precursor to the catastrophes in Afghanistan and Iraq, Syria and Libya, and Ukraine.

Since 1945, more than a third of the membership of the United Nations – 69 countries – have suffered some or all of the following at the hands of America’s modern fascism. They have been invaded, their governments overthrown, their popular movements suppressed, their elections subverted, their people bombed and their economies stripped of all protection, their societies subjected to a crippling siege known as “sanctions”. The British historian Mark Curtis estimates the death toll in the millions. In every case, a big lie was deployed.

“Tonight, for the first time since 9/11, our combat mission in Afghanistan is over.” These were opening words of Obama’s 2015 State of the Union address. In fact, some 10,000 troops and 20,000 military contractors (mercenaries) remain in Afghanistan on indefinite assignment.  “The longest war in American history is coming to a responsible conclusion,” said Obama. In fact, more civilians were killed in Afghanistan in 2014 than in any year since the UN took records.  The majority have been killed — civilians and soldiers — during Obama’s time as president.

The tragedy of Afghanistan rivals the epic crime in Indochina.  In his lauded and much quoted book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the godfather of US policies from Afghanistan to the present day, writes that if America is to control Eurasia and dominate the world, it cannot sustain a popular democracy, because “the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion . . . Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilisation.”  He is right. As WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden have revealed, a surveillance and police state is usurping democracy. In 1976, Brzezinski, then President Carter’s National Security Advisor, demonstrated his point by dealing a death blow to Afghanistan’s first and only democracy. Who knows this vital history?

In the 1960s, a popular revolution swept Afghanistan, the poorest country on earth, eventually overthrowing the vestiges of the aristocratic regime in 1978. The People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) formed a government and declared a reform programme that included the abolition of feudalism, freedom for all religions, equal rights for women and social justice for the ethnic minorities. More than 13,000 political prisoners were freed and police files publicly burned.

The new government introduced free medical care for the poorest; peonage was abolished, a mass literacy programme was launched. For women, the gains were unheard of. By the late 1980s, half the university students were women, and women made up almost half of Afghanistan’s doctors, a third of civil servants and the majority of teachers. “Every girl,” recalled Saira Noorani, a female surgeon,

“could go to high school and university. We could go where we wanted and wear what we liked. We used to go to cafes and the cinema to see the latest Indian film on a Friday and listen to the latest music. It all started to go wrong when the mujaheddin started winning. They used to kill teachers and burn schools. We were terrified. It was funny and sad to think these were the people the West supported.”

The PDPA government was backed by the Soviet Union, even though, as former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance later admitted, “there was no evidence of any Soviet complicity [in the revolution]”. Alarmed by the growing confidence of liberation movements throughout the world, Brzezinski decided that if Afghanistan was to succeed under the PDPA, its independence and progress would offer the “threat of a promising example”.

On July 3, 1979, the White House secretly authorised $500 million in arms and logistics to support tribal “fundamentalist” groups known as the mujaheddin. The aim was the overthrow of Afghanistan’s first secular, reformist government. In August 1979, the US embassy in Kabul reported that “the United States’ larger interests … would be served by the demise of [the PDPA government], despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan.” The italics are mine.

The mujaheddin were the forebears of al-Qaeda and Islamic State. They included Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who received tens of millions of dollars in cash from the CIA. Hekmatyar’s specialty was trafficking in opium and throwing acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil. Invited to London, he was lauded by Prime Minister Thatcher as a “freedom fighter”.

Such fanatics might have remained in their tribal world had Brzezinski not launched an international movement to promote Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia and so undermine secular political liberation and “destabilise” the Soviet Union, creating, as he wrote in his autobiography, “a few stirred up Muslims”.  His grand plan coincided with the ambitions of  the Pakistani dictator, General Zia ul-Haq, to dominate the region. In 1986, the CIA and Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI, began to recruit people from around the world to join the Afghan jihad. The Saudi multi-millionaire Osama bin Laden was one of them. Operatives who would eventually join the Taliban and al-Qaeda, were recruited at an Islamic college in Brooklyn, New York, and given paramilitary training at a CIA camp in Virginia. This was called “Operation Cyclone”. Its success was celebrated in 1996 when the last PDPA president of Afghanistan, Mohammed Najibullah — who had gone before the UN General Assembly to plead for help — was hanged from a streetlight by the Taliban.

The “blowback” of Operation Cyclone and its “few stirred up Muslims” was September 11, 2001. Operation Cyclone became the “war on terror”, in which countless men, women and children would lose their lives across the Muslim world, from Afghanistan to Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and Syria. The enforcer’s message was and remains: “You are with us or against us.”

The common thread in fascism, past and present, is mass murder. The American invasion of Vietnam had its “free fire zones”, “body counts” and “collatoral damage”. In the province of Quang Ngai, where I reported from, many thousands of civilians (“gooks”) were murdered by the US; yet only one massacre, at My Lai, is remembered. In Laos and Cambodia, the greatest aerial bombardment in history produced an epoch of terror marked today by the spectacle of joined-up bomb craters which, from the air, resemble monstrous necklaces. The bombing gave Cambodia its own ISIS, led by Pol Pot.

Today, the world’s greatest single campaign of terror entails the execution of entire families, guests at weddings, mourners at funerals. These are Obama’s victims. According to the New York Times, Obama makes his selection from a CIA “kill list” presented to him every Tuesday in the White House Situation Room. He then decides, without a shred of legal justification, who will live and who will die. His execution weapon is the Hellfire missile carried by a pilotless aircraft known as a drone; these roast their victims and festoon the area with their remains.  Each “hit” is registered on a faraway console screen as a “bugsplat”.

“For goose-steppers,” wrote the historian Norman Pollock, “substitute the seemingly more innocuous militarisation of the total culture. And for the bombastic leader, we have the reformer manque, blithely at work, planning and executing assassination, smiling all the while.”

Uniting fascism old and new is the cult of superiority. “I believe in American exceptionalism with every fibre of my being,” said Obama, evoking declarations of national fetishism from the 1930s. As the historian Alfred W. McCoy has pointed out, it was the Hitler devotee, Carl Schmitt, who said, “The sovereign is he who decides the exception.” This sums up Americanism, the world’s dominant ideology. That it remains unrecognised as a predatory ideology is the achievement of an equally unrecognised brainwashing.  Insidious, undeclared, presented wittily as enlightenment on the march, its conceit insinuates western culture. I grew up on a cinematic diet of American glory, almost all of it a distortion. I had no idea that it was the Red Army that had destroyed most of the Nazi war machine, at a cost of as many as 13 million soldiers. By contrast, US losses, including in the Pacific, were 400,000. Hollywood reversed this.

The difference now is that cinema audiences are invited to wring their hands at the “tragedy” of American psychopaths having to kill people in distant places — just as the President himself kills them. The embodiment of Hollywood’s violence, the actor and director Clint Eastwood, was nominated for an Oscar this year for his movie, American Sniper, which is about a licensed murderer and nutcase. The New York Times described it as a “patriotic, pro-family picture which broke all attendance records in its opening days”.

There are no heroic movies about America’s embrace of fascism. During the Second World War, America (and Britain) went to war against Greeks who had fought heroically against Nazism and were resisting the rise of Greek fascism. In 1967, the CIA helped bring to power a fascist military junta in Athens — as it did in Brazil and most of Latin America. Germans and east Europeans who had colluded with Nazi aggression and crimes against humanity were given safe haven in the US; many were pampered and their talents rewarded. Wernher von Braun was the “father” of both the Nazi V-2 terror bomb and the US space programme.

In the 1990s, as former Soviet republics, eastern Europe and the Balkans became military outposts of Nato, the heirs to a Nazi movement in Ukraine were given their opportunity. Responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews, Poles and Russians during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Ukrainian fascism was rehabilitated and its “new wave” hailed by the enforcer as “nationalists”.

This reached its apogee in 2014 when the Obama administration splashed out $5 billion on a coup against the elected government.  The shock troops were neo-Nazis known as the Right Sector and Svoboda. Their leaders include  Oleh Tyahnybok, who has called for a purge of the “Moscow-Jewish mafia” and “other scum”, including gays, feminists and those on the political left.

These fascists are now integrated into the Kiev coup government. The first deputy speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, Andriy Parubiy, a leader of the governing party, is co-founder of Svoboda. On February 14, Parubiy announced he was flying to Washington get “the USA to give us highly precise modern weaponry”. If he succeeds, it will be seen as an act of war by Russia.

No western leader has spoken up about the revival of fascism in the heart of Europe — with the exception of Vladimir Putin, whose people lost 22 million to a Nazi invasion that came through the borderland of Ukraine. At the recent Munich Security Conference, Obama’s Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, ranted abuse about European leaders for opposing the US arming of the Kiev regime. She referred to the German Defence Minister as “the minister for defeatism”. It was Nuland who masterminded the coup in Kiev . The wife of Robert D. Kagan, a leading “neo-con” luminary and co-founder of the extreme right wing Project for a New American Century, she was foreign policy advisor to Dick Cheney.  

Nuland’s coup did not go to plan. Nato was prevented from seizing Russia’s historic, legitimate, warm-water naval base in Crimea. The mostly Russian population of Crimea — illegally annexed to Ukraine by Nikita Krushchev in 1954 — voted overwhelmingly to return to Russia, as they had done in the 1990s.  The referendum was voluntary, popular and internationally observed. There was no invasion.

At the same time, the Kiev regime turned on the ethnic Russian population in the east with the ferocity of ethnic cleaning. Deploying neo-Nazi militias in the manner of the Waffen-SS, they bombed and laid to siege cities and towns. They used mass starvation as a weapon, cutting off electricity, freezing bank accounts, stopping social security and pensions. More than a million refugees fled across the border into Russia. In the western media, they became unpeople escaping “the violence” caused by the “Russian invasion”. The Nato commander, General Breedlove — whose name and actions might have been inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove — announced that 40,000 Russian troops were “massing”. In the age of forensic satellite evidence, he offered none.

These Russian-speaking and bilingual people of Ukraine – a third of the population – have long sought a federation that reflects the country’s ethnic diversity and is both autonomous and independent of Moscow. Most are not “separatists” but citizens who want to live securely in their homeland and oppose the power grab in Kiev. Their revolt and establishment of autonomous “states” are a reaction to Kiev’s attacks on them. Little of this has been explained to western audiences.

On May 2, 2014, in Odessa, 41 ethnic Russians were burned alive in the trade union headquarters with police standing by.  The Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh hailed the massacre as “another bright day in our national history”. In the American and British media, this was reported as a “murky tragedy” resulting from “clashes” between “nationalists” (neo-Nazis) and “separatists” (people collecting signatures for a referendum on a federal Ukraine).

The New York Times buried the story, having dismissed as Russian propaganda warnings about the fascist and anti-Semitic policies of Washington’s new clients. The Wall Street Journal damned the victims – “Deadly Ukraine Fire Likely Sparked by Rebels, Government Says”. Obama congratulated the junta for its “restraint”.

If Putin can be provoked into coming to their aid, his pre-ordained “pariah” role in the West will justify the lie that Russia is invading Ukraine. On January 29, Ukraine’s top military commander, General Viktor Muzhemko, almost inadvertently dismissed the very basis for US and EU sanctions on Russia when he told a news conference emphatically: “The Ukrainian army is not fighting with the regular units of the Russian Army”.  There were “individual citizens” who were members of “illegal armed groups”, but there was no Russian invasion.  This was not news. Vadym Prystaiko, Kiev’s Deputy Foreign Minister, has called for “full scale war” with nuclear-armed Russia.

On February 21, US Senator James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, introduced a bill that would authorise American arms for the Kiev regime.  In his Senate presentation, Inhofe used photographs he claimed were of Russian troops crossing into Ukraine, which have long been exposed as fakes. It was reminiscent of Ronald Reagan’s fake pictures of a Soviet installation in Nicaragua, and Colin Powell’s fake evidence to the UN of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The intensity of the smear campaign against Russia and the portrayal of its president as a pantomime villain is unlike anything I have known as a reporter. Robert Parry, one of America’s most distinguished investigative journalists, who revealed the Iran-Contra scandal, wrote recently,

“No European government, since Adolf Hitler’s Germany, has seen fit to dispatch Nazi storm troopers to wage war on a domestic population, but the Kiev regime has and has done so knowingly. Yet across the West’s media/political spectrum, there has been a studious effort to cover up this reality even to the point of ignoring facts that have been well established ….If you wonder how the world could stumble into world war three – much as it did into world war one a century ago – all you need to do is look at the madness over Ukraine that has proved impervious to facts or reason.”

In 1946, the Nuremberg Tribunal prosecutor said of the German media:

“The use made by Nazi conspirators of psychological warfare is well known. Before each major aggression, with some few exceptions based on expediency, they initiated a press campaign calculated to weaken their victims and to prepare the German people psychologically for the attack …. In the propaganda system of the Hitler State it was the daily press and the radio that were the most important weapons.”

In the Guardian on February 2, Timothy Garton-Ash called, in effect, for a world war. “Putin must be stopped,” said the headline. “And sometimes only guns can stop guns.” He conceded that the threat of war might “nourish a Russian paranoia of encirclement”; but that was fine. He name-checked the military equipment needed for the job and advised his readers that “America has the best kit”.

In 2003, Garton-Ash, an Oxford professor, repeated the propaganda that led to the slaughter in Iraq. Saddam Hussein, he wrote, “has, as [Colin] Powell documented, stockpiled large quantities of horrifying chemical and biological weapons, and is hiding what remains of them. He is still trying to get nuclear ones.” He lauded Blair as a “Gladstonian, Christian liberal interventionist”.  In 2006, he wrote, “Now we face the next big test of the West after Iraq: Iran.”

The outbursts — or as Garton-Ash prefers, his “tortured liberal ambivalence” — are not untypical of those in the transatlantic liberal elite who have struck a Faustian deal. The war criminal Blair is their lost leader. The Guardian, in which Garton-Ash’s piece appeared, published a full-page advertisement for an American Stealth bomber. On a menacing image of the Lockheed Martin monster were the words: “The F-35. GREAT For Britain”. This American “kit” will cost British taxpayers £1.3 billion, its F-model predecessors having slaughtered across the world.  In tune with its advertiser, a Guardian editorial has demanded an increase in military spending.

Once again, there is serious purpose. The rulers of the world want Ukraine not only as a missile base; they want its economy. Kiev’s new Finance Minister, Nataliwe Jaresko, is a former senior US State Department official in charge of US overseas “investment”. She was hurriedly given Ukrainian citizenship.

They want Ukraine for its abundant gas; Vice President Joe Biden’s son is on the board of Ukraine’s biggest oil, gas and fracking company. The manufacturers of GM seeds, companies such as the infamous Monsanto, want Ukraine’s rich farming soil.

Above all, they want Ukraine’s mighty neighbour, Russia. They want to Balkanise or dismember Russia and exploit the greatest source of natural gas on earth. As the Arctic ice melts, they want control of the Arctic Ocean and its energy riches, and Russia’s long Arctic land border. Their man in Moscow used to be Boris Yeltsin, a drunk, who handed his country’s economy to the West. His successor, Putin, has re-established Russia as a sovereign nation; that is his crime.

The responsibility of the rest of us is clear. It is to identify and expose the reckless lies of warmongers and never to collude with them. It is to re-awaken the great popular movements that brought a fragile civilisation to modern imperial states. Most important, it is to prevent the conquest of ourselves: our minds, our humanity, our self respect. If we remain silent, victory over us is assured, and a holocaust beckons.

The United States and its NATO allies offered a ritual of NATO unity after Turkish officials presented their case that the shoot-down of a Russian jet occurred after two planes had penetrated Turkish airspace.

The Turkish representative reportedly played a recording of a series warning the Turkish F16 pilots had issued to the Russian jets without a Russian response, and US and other NATO member states endorsed Turkey’s right to defend its airspace.

US Defense Department spokesman Colonel Steve Warren supported the Turkish claim that 10 warnings had been issued over a period of five minutes. The Obama administration apparently expressed less concern about whether Russian planes had actually crossed into Turkish airspace. Col Warren admitted that US officials have still yet to establish where the Russian aircraft was located when a Turkish missile hit the plane.

Although the Obama administration is not about to admit it, the data already available supports the Russian assertion that the Turkish shoot-down was, as Russian President Vladimir Putin asserted, an “ambush” that had been carefully prepared in advance.

The central Turkish claim that its F-16 pilots had warned the two Russian aircraft 10 times during a period of five minutes actually is the primary clue that Turkey was not telling the truth about the shoot-down.

The Russian Su-24 “Fencer” jet fighter, which is comparable to the US F111, is capable of a speed of 960 miles per hour at high altitude, but at low altitude its cruising speed is around 870 mph, or about 13 miles per minute. The navigator of the second plane confirmed after his rescue that the Su-24s were flying at cruising speed during the flight.

Close analysis of both the Turkish and Russian images of the radar path of the Russian jets indicates that the earliest point at which either of the Russian planes was on a path that might have been interpreted as taking it into Turkish airspace was roughly 16 miles from the Turkish border – meaning that it was only a minute and 20 seconds away from the border.

Furthermore according to both versions of the flight path, five minutes before the shoot-down the Russian planes would have been flying eastward – away from the Turkish border.

If the Turkish pilots actually began warning the Russian jets five minutes before the shoot-down, therefore, they were doing so long before the planes were even headed in the general direction of the small projection of the Turkish border in Northern Latakia province.

In order to carry out the strike, in fact, the Turkish pilots would have had to be in the air already and prepared to strike as soon as they knew the Russian aircraft were airborne.

The evidence from the Turkish authorities themselves thus leaves little room for doubt that the decision to shoot down the Russian jet was made before the Russian jets even began their flight.

The motive for the strike was directly related to the Turkish role in supporting the anti-Assad forces in the vicinity of the border. In fact the Erdogan government made no effort to hide its aim in the days before the strike. In a meeting with the Russian ambassador on 20 November, the foreign minister accused the Russians of “intensive bombing” of “civilian Turkmen villages” and said there might be “serious consequences” unless the Russians ended their operations immediately.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was even more explicit, declaring that Turkish security forces “have been instructed to retaliate against any development that would threaten Turkey’s border security”. Davutoglu further said: “If there is an attack that would lead to an intense influx of refugees to Turkey, required measures would be taken both inside Syria and Turkey.”

The Turkish threat to retaliate – not against Russian penetration of its airspace but in response to very broadly defined circumstances on the border – came amid the latest in a series of battles between the Syrian government and religious fighters. The area where the plane was shot down is populated by the Turkmen minority. They have been far less important than foreign fighters and other forces who have carried out a series of offensives in the area since mid-2013 aimed at threatening President Assad’s main Alawite redoubt on the coast in Latakia province.

Charles Lister, the British specialist who was visiting Latakia province frequently in 2013, noted in an August 2013 interview, “Latakia, right up to the very northern tip [i.e. in the Turkmen Mountain area], has been a stronghold for foreign fighter-based groups for almost a year now.” He also observed that, after Islamic State (IS) had emerged in the north, al-Nusra Front and its allies in the area had “reached out” to ISIL and that one of the groups fighting in Latakia had “become a front group” for ISIL.

In March 2014 the religious rebels launched a major offensive with heavy Turkish logistical support to capture the Armenian town of Kessab on the Mediterranean coast of Latakia very close to the Turkish border. An Istanbul newspaper, Bagcilar, quoted a member of the Turkish parliament’s foreign affairs committee as reporting testimony from villagers living near the border that thousands of fighters had streamed across five different border points in cars with Syrian plates to participate in the offensive.

During that offensive, moreover, a Syrian jet responding to the offensive against Kessab was shot down by the Turkish air force in a remarkable parallel to the downing of the Russian jet. Turkey claimed that the jet had violated its airspace but made no pretence about having given any prior warning. The purpose of trying to deter Syria from using its airpower in defence of the town was obvious.

Now the battle in Latakia province has shifted to the Bayirbucak area, where the Syrian air force and ground forces have been trying to cut the supply lines between villages controlled by Nusra Front and its allies and the Turkish border for several months. The key village in the Nusra Front area of control is Salma, which has been in jihadist hands ever since 2012. The intervention of the Russian Air Force in the battle has given a new advantage to the Syrian army.

The Turkish shoot-down was thus in essence an effort to dissuade the Russians from continuing their operations in the area against al-Nusra Front and its allies, using not one but two distinct pretexts: on one hand a very dubious charge of a Russian border penetration for NATO allies, and on the other, a charge of bombing Turkmen civilians for the Turkish domestic audience.

The Obama administration’s reluctance to address the specific issue of where the plane was shot down indicates that it is well aware of that fact. But the administration is far too committed to its policy of working with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to force regime change to reveal the truth about the incident.

Obama’s response to the shoot-down blandly blamed the problem on the Russian military being in part of Syria. “They are operating very close to a Turkish border,” he declared, and if the Russians would only focus solely on Daesh, “some of these conflicts or potentials for mistakes or escalation are less likely to occur.”

Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and winner of the 2012 Gellhorn Prize for journalism. He is the author of the newly published Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Photo: Turkey shot down a Russian military jet near the Turkish/Syrian border (AA)

Russia Wakes Up About Western-Financed NGOs Operating Against Russia

It took the Russians too long to defend themselves from Washington’s Fifth Column NGOs, but finally they understood that these US-financed operatives were a dagger at Russia’s heart.

Russian prosecutors have banned them.

No one will give me credit for this, so I will claim it for myself. I wrote many columns about the Russian government’s insouciant toleration of Washington’s Fifth Columns operating against them. And some of these Fifth Columns are still present in the Russian media and in the neoliberal central bank.

One day, perhaps, the Russian government will come to its full senses.

For the past few weeks the world has been and still is focussing all attention on Syria, the NATO-Turkey downing of a Russian SU-24 fighter jet, the bombing of a Russian airliner over Sinai (224 dead), the alleged ISIS-Daesh Paris massacre (132), the Islamic terror attack on the Bamako (Mali) Radisson Blu hotel (27) – plus the endless fear mongering of more terror in Brussels, Berlin, Rome, Paris, Copenhagen — you name it. The mainstream media is in over-drive. And the neoliberal European (non)-Union uses the shock doctrine to cut civil rights and install police states with ‘temporary’ Martial laws – mind you, they are basically asked for by the populace – for their protection, they are made believe.

Absorbed by their own fate and fear, Europeans have hardly eyes to see beyond their Continent, their sphere of self-interest. The neoliberal coup d’état in Argentina happened almost unnoticed. Never mind that it is just about bringing some 42.5 million people (2015 pop. estimate) under Washington’s rule.

Argentina’s general election 2015 ended on Sunday 22 November in a run-off – the first in Argentina’s history – between Daniel Scioli, the incumbent Governor of Buenos Aires Province, a Kirchnerite from the ruling Front for Victory Party (FPV – Frente para la Victoria), and Mauricio Macri, a neoliberal multi-billionaire and Mayor of Buenos Aires from the right-wing Cambiemos party. Against all odds, Macri won with 51.4% against Scioli’s 48.6% – a margin of 2.8%. A margin small enough no to raise many questions of fraud.

And here are the odds: Two days before the 25 October ballot The Guardian polls predicted an 8.5% lead for Scioli (38.41%) vs. Macri (30.07%). Nevertheless, the 25 October real election results reduced Scioli’s lead to a mere 2.4% (36.8% vs. 34.4%).

At the end of July, three months before the first election run, Scioli was leading with a 13.6% margin (38.8% vs. 25.2%). The outcome of the 9 August Primaries left Scioli still with a more than 12 point lead (36.8% vs 24.7%).

There is definitely something fishy with a deterioration of a candidate’s lead so crass as to convert an almost 14 point lead into a 3 point loss in 4 months, a 17% percent difference. This is not a typical pattern of error for pollsters, nor an indication for a public opinion change, a public that has benefitted from their government to the extent Argentinians did within the last 15 years, since the economic collapse in 2001: An average annual growth of between 6% and 8%, a highly distributive economic development, helping reducing poverty from 65% in 2002 to less than 10% in early 2015 and with a massive increase in countrywide free education and health services, including in rural areas; not to mention the elimination of foreign debt.

A simple question of logic: Would a people of which 80% to 90% have massively benefitted from the ruling government policies vote with more than 50% against the continuation of such policies – and instead for a neoliberal politician, who promised to turn the clock back? Hardly. Unless they have been subjected to a massive media brainwashing and slander campaign, vote buying and other democracy-destroying measures, through foreign induced destabilization.

We know about the NED (National Endowment for Democracy) and other US based think tanks (sic), receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from the State Department to train and fund “NGOs” throughout the world, to infiltrate in counties’ internal affairs, where Washington wants to achieve soft regime change, as opposed to hard-core regime change – which involves the US military, proxy-armies, mercenaries and – of course – the ever present NATO. – So far the election fraud worked in Argentina without bloodshed.

Such destabilization movements, soft and less soft, abound around the globe during the last 20 years, coinciding with the ever stronger onset of the all controlling globalized neoliberal doctrine. Suffice it to mention the invented Arab Spring , the Color Revolutions of Central Asia and the former Soviet Republics. If propaganda alone doesn’t do the trick, the Washington imposed changes are being helped with false flags, inducing armed conflicts and ‘civil wars’. Recent cases in point are the Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, to name just a few.

Argentina’s Constitution does not allow for more than two consecutive presidential terms. Before the mid-term elections in 2013, the ruling FPV hoped for a two third majority to be able to amend the Constitution allowing unlimited re-elections. Due to strong resistance from the opposition parties, the FPV did not win the necessary supermajority.

The president is elected with a modified two-stage system, whereby a candidate wins when he / she receives at least 45% in the first run, or 40% with a margin of at least 10% to the runner-up. A run-off election, like the one on 22 November 2015, has never happened before in Argentina’s history.

With a lead of more almost 14 points by Scioli over Macri, the right-wing Cambiemos candidate, it was absolutely necessary for the Macri camp to reduce the lead difference by the first round of balloting to less than 10% to provoke a run-off, allowing more time to manipulate voter opinion and committing more election fraud. Despite the polls indicating an 8.5% lead for Scioli two days before the 25 October first election run, the actual election count resulted in Scioli winning with only 2.4%. Again, this is an unusual margin of error that should have attracted the attention of the election organizers and supervisors.

In 2011 Wikileaks revealed that Mauricio Macri asked the US Embassy in Buenos Aires to launch a strong anti-Kirchner campaign, slandering her and her political alliances, thereby massively discrediting Cristina Kirchner’s Presidency. It did not work for Macri in 2011, as Cristina Kirchner was re-elected. But the Washington-driven anti-Kirchner and anti-FPV campaign expanded massively until this past election. And it paid off.

The international investigative journalist, Estela Calloni, who followed the elections closely, concluded that there was not only massive manipulation with lies and defamation by an important media elite, but a brutal campaign against the Kirchner legacy – ‘putting the future of Argentina at risk.’ She went on saying that ‘our societies are being hammered by information coming from the United States and that they are worse than disinformation.’ She warned that Argentina should stay alert not to lose any of the progressive achievements made in the past 15 years.

Who is Mauricio Macri? – He was born in 1959 into a family of owners of the country’s most important industrial and economic groups. In 1975, the Macri family possessed 7 enterprises; at the end of the military dictatorship the Macri fleet of companies had grown to 46. The Macri family benefitted greatly from business relations with the totalitarian military government of Videla. In connivance with US banks, they built up false debt which later had to be assumed by the Argentine government.

Nevertheless, the new President-elect in one of his recent observations has insisted that the Kirchner Government reopen negotiations with the IMF and pay the infamous vulture funds in full.

As Mayor of the City of Buenos Aires, Macri leaves behind a highly questionable legacy; mismanagement of public funds, huge budget overruns and never ending public works. He has also allegedly diverted public funds into his political campaigns and accepted contributions from prostitution rings.

Mr. Macri is known as an extreme conservative, right-wing politician following neoliberal policies, who will most likely turn the wheel of progress of the Kirchner Administration back by seeking reduction of public expenditures to the detriment of labor, privatization of public services and ending fiscal policies aiming at redistribution of wealth.

As to Mr. Macri’s views on human rights, it can best be described by his observation in 2014, “Conmigo se termina el curro de los derechos humanos” – “with me the chants of ‘human rights’ will end;” – meaning that protests against his government will be repressed.

South America had proudly achieved over the past 20 years a degree of independence from its Washington masters, no other western region has reached – least the vassal states of Europe. With this neoliberal, largely unnoticed coup d’état in Argentina, the Subcontinent of South America, is, indeed, gradually turning into what President Obama calls his ‘backyard’. In the Center-North are Peru and Colombia, neoliberal strongholds of the US; and now the Southern Cone is gone.

All the while the Great Dictator and its paid foreign minions are diligently working at discrediting the Governments of Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela, and of Dilma Rousseff, President of Brazil; the former with infiltrated and local mercenaries spreading unrest and violence; the latter with defamation of corruption linked to the oil giant Petrobras, all manufactured via henchmen and associated banks in Florida and New York. Corruption is always an easy accusation – difficult to prove, yet very effective with the common people – in discrediting their government. An accusation coming from the most corrupt, criminal rogue state of this globe – the United States of America.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, CounterPunch, TeleSur, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance

Long term solutions to the crisis lies in building healthcare and educational infrastructures

Regional and international health officials are emphasizing that the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) crisis is not over with the appearance of three new cases in Liberia, one of the hardest hit West African states during 2014-2015, when over 11,000 people died from one of the most virulent forms of Viral Hemorrhagic Fevers (VHF).

Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone were the most severely impacted states in the EVD outbreak which came to the broad knowledge of the international community during the early months of 2014. All three states have experienced internal conflict and unrest over the last three decades.

Nathan Gboetoe, who was 15-years-old, was taken by his father to the John F. Kennedy Medical Center in the Liberian capital of Monrovia on November 18. He was bleeding from his mouth but did not have a fever.

He was taken to the trauma ward and tested for EVD. Two days later the results returned as positive.

However, the delay in diagnosis and medical treatment led to Gboetoe’s death on November 20 shattering the notion that the country had finally eradicated the dreaded epidemic. Many are now asking: how could such a situation take place in light of the experiences of 2014-2015, when the largest outbreak of EVD had a profound impact on Liberia, a country with strong historic ties to the United States?

A recent article posted on the Foreign Policy website written by Claire MacDougall stated that “Gbotoe should have been fully checked by a triage at the entrance at the hospital where health workers screen for patients who may have Ebola and need to be isolated. The doctors and nurses who handled his case didn’t wear the correct equipment for treating possible Ebola cases that protects against the highly infectious virus.” (Nov. 26)

Nonetheless, others have disputed this claim of possible negligence with one being Dr. Francis Kateh, the chief medical officer and acting director of the Incidence Management System that monitors Ebola cases. Dr. Kateh emphatically denied there had been a violation of protocol.

“No one would walk around with full [personal protective equipment] in this climate,” he told Foreign Policy in a phone interview. Kateh contends that after the lag in the response, the mechanism for addressing an outbreak began.

All of the nine healthcare workers who interacted with Gbotoe have since been quarantined.

Approximately 150 people who came into contact with Gbotoe were identified, including patients and medical personnel, Kateh reported.

Guinea Discharges Last Known Case

In neighboring Guinea, which is a former French colony, the healthcare resources available to people are reported to be more limited than in Liberia. The first cases of EVD were identified there during late 2013.

On November 28, a one-month-old baby girl, who was Guinea’s last reported EVD case, left the hospital. The medical staff was delighted after experiencing one the most challenging periods in the modern history of the country which gained its independence in defiance of French imperialism in 1958.

It will take another six weeks absent of any new cases for the state to be considered “Ebola free.” The baby, named Nubia — perhaps the first infant to survive after being born to an infected mother, represented the hope of finally eradicating the outbreak inside the country.

Laurence Sailly, who directs the humanitarian Medecins Sans Frontieres'(MSF) emergency team in Guinea, told Reuters news agency that “this is a very happy day for us. It was very moving for us and the family to be able to touch her without gloves.” (Nov. 28)

Sailly believes that Nubia was able to overcome the disease due to experimental drugs as well intensive treatment provided by twenty healthcare workers. Nubia received Mapp Biopharmaceutical’s Ebola drug ZMapp in addition to an experimental anti-viral medication called GS-5734, which is being developed by the U.S. bio-pharmaceutical firm Gilead Sciences.

During the course of treatment, Nubia was connected to a monitoring system allowing physicians and nurses to track the infant’s breathing and heart rate making sure that procedures were utilized to prevent further infections. Periodically the medical staff had to enter the treatment area to change diapers and perform bottle-feeding. Sailly said that Nubia “is a symbol of what we are capable of doing at this stage of the epidemic.”

Worse Outbreak in Nearly 40 Year History

The 2014-2015 epidemic was the largest outbreak of EVD since it was first observed in 1976 in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The recent case in Liberia underscores the importance of robust surveillance measures to ensure the rapid detection of any reintroduction or re-emergence of the disease in unaffected areas.

Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone have each put surveillance systems in place to enable health workers and members of the public to report any cases of EVD and deaths from the illness.

Several other states in the West Africa region have not been impacted by the EVD outbreak or swiftly eradicated a limited number of cases which appeared in their countries. In Nigeria, Senegal and Mali, a small outbreak was immediately contained resulting in only few deaths.

The World Health Organization (WHO), an United Nations affiliated agency, came under severe criticism during 2014 for not taking decisive action during the first several weeks and months of the outbreak, has said that Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone are not capable on their own to handle continuing cases.

“The response to Ebola – the national leadership, community engagement, so many people working so hard for such a long period of time with such dedication – if that can be translated into efforts beyond Ebola, then actually all there countries have a bright future ahead of them,” Peter Graaff, the UN Regional Inter-Agency Coordinator on Ebola, told the UN News Center. (Nov. 27)

This may be true in the short term but Africa cannot continue to rely on outside institutions and states to adequately monitor, prevent and treat EVD and a host of other infectious ailments. Internal structures must be developed and enhanced to bring about a healthy and productive life for the majority of citizens and residents.

In reaching this objective stronger emphasis must be placed on developing national and regional healthcare systems along with advanced educational and communication networks to eradicate the underlying causes for the outbreaks. The role of Cuba in providing assistance during the peak of the EVD outbreak provides an example of how underdeveloped post-colonial states can reverse the legacy of imperialist exploitation and alienation.

Cuba after the 1959 Revolution had to break with capitalist relations of production and move towards self-sufficiency. As a result of its relatively rapid development as a socialist state, Cuba is a beacon for international solidarity particularly towards the African continent.

Assistance provided by Cuba to Africa is viewed as a continuation of a decades-long process of reconnection with its ancestral and cultural roots as well as working towards a world where the value of human beings supersede the drive for profits and political domination. Cuba’s contribution to the international response to the largest EVD outbreak was even recognized by the U.S. through its corporate media.

African Union member-states have praised the response of the Cuban government to the EVD outbreak of 2014-2015. AU Commission Chair Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, visited Cuba recently to express gratitude and to discuss ongoing collaborative projects between the continent and the revolutionary Caribbean island-nation.