President Bashar Al-Assad Victory Speech at Arab League Summit

 

 ARABI SOURI

President Bashar Al-Assad delivered yesterday a concise but brutally important speech at the Arab League summit in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, most political analysts described it as the Syrian and Assad’s victory speech after 12 years of futile concerted US-led, NATO combined participation, Arab-contributed efforts to overthrow the Syrian government, divide Syria, control West Asia, and isolate Russia, China, and Iran from the rest of the world.

The following is the full speech of President Assad at the Arab League summit with English subtitles followed by the full transcript of the English translation of the speech:

The video is also available on Rumble and BitChute,

Transcript

Your Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Your Majesties, Sovereigns and Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Where does one begin his speech when the dangers are no longer imminent, but realized? It begins with the hope that motivates achievement and action, and when ailments accumulate, the doctor can treat them individually, provided that he treats the underlying disease that causes them; therefore, we have to search for the major titles that threaten our future and produce our crises so we do not drown, and drown future generations in dealing with the results, not the causes.

Threats contain dangers and opportunities, and today we are facing the opportunity of the international situation change, which appears in a multipolar world as a result of the domination of the West devoid of principles, morals, friends and partners.

It is a historic opportunity to rearrange our affairs with the least amount of foreign interference, which requires repositioning us in this world that is being formed today in order for us to be an active part in it, investing in the positive atmosphere arising from the reconciliations that preceded the summit, leading to it today.

It is an opportunity to consolidate our culture in the face of the upcoming meltdown with modern liberalism that targets the innate affiliations of man and strips him of his morals and identity and to define our Arab identity with its civilizational dimension while it is falsely accused of ethnicity and chauvinism with the aim of making it in a state of conflict with the natural, national, ethnic and religious components, so it dies and our societies die with it in its struggle with itself and not with others.

The titles are too many for words, and summits are not enough (to handle), they do not begin with the crimes of the Zionist entity, rejected by the Arabs, against the resisting Palestinian people, and do not end with the danger of expansionist Ottoman thought grafted with a deviant fraternal (Muslim Brotherhood) flavor. They are not separated from the challenge of development as a top priority for our developing societies.

Here comes the role of the League of Arab States, being the natural platform for discussing and addressing various issues, provided that it develops its work system by reviewing the Charter and the rules of procedure and developing its mechanisms to keep pace with the times.

Joint Arab action needs common visions, strategies, and goals that we later turn into executive plans that need a unified policy, firm principles, and clear mechanisms and controls, then we will move from reaction to anticipation of events, and the (Arab) League will be a breathing outlet in the event of a siege, not an accomplice in it, a refuge from aggression not a platform for it.

As for the issues that concern us daily, from Libya to Syria, passing through Yemen and Sudan, and many other issues in different regions, we cannot treat diseases by treating symptoms, as all of these issues are the results of larger titles that have not been addressed previously.

As for talking about some of them, it needs to address the rifts that have arisen in the Arab arena over the past decade and to restore the League’s role as a healer of wounds, not as a deepener for them. The most important thing is to leave the internal issues to their people, as they are able to manage their affairs, and we only have to prevent external interference in their countries and help them exclusively upon request.

As for Syria, its past, present and future is Arabism, but it is an Arabism of belonging, not an Arabism of hugging, hugging is fleeting, but belonging is permanent. A person may move from one hugging to another for some reason, but it does not change his affiliation. As for the one who changes it, he is without affiliation in the first place, and whoever falls into the heart does not languish in the hugging, and Syria is the heart of Arabism and in its heart.

Ladies and Gentlemen, As we convene this summit in a turbulent world, hope rises in light of the Arab-Arab, regional and international rapprochement that culminated in this summit, which I hope will mark the beginning of a new phase of Arab action for solidarity among us, for peace in our region, for development and prosperity instead of war and destruction.

In keeping with the five minutes allotted for speaking, I would like to extend my deep thanks to the heads of delegations who have expressed their deep-rooted affection towards Syria and reciprocate them, I also thank the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques (Saudi King) for the great role he played and the intense efforts he made to promote reconciliation in our region and for the success of this summit, I wish him and His Highness the Crown Prince and the brotherly Saudi people continued progress and prosperity, and peace, mercy and blessings of God be upon you.

End of the transcript.

The Arab League had two important summits in the past 12 years, the first one was when the Qatari-led powerless US-dominated Arabs illegally expelled Syria from the League it was an establishing member 26 years before Qatar state came into existence, illegally because they failed to adhere to the League’s Charter to obtain a unanimous decision on expelling Syria; and the second was yesterday, May 19th, 2023, in which Syria restored the Arab League from the USA and its regional poodles.

During the past 12 years, the evil camp, the US-led camp of criminal regimes including the European Union countries, the Gulfies, and some Arab states, NATO other countries, especially Turkey, NATO proxy entities spearheaded by Israel have combined their efforts to overthrow the Syrian government, during this period, the evil camp prioritized killing Syrians and destroying the cradle of civilization over their own people’s wellbeing, health, infrastructure, and even basic needs.

Estimates of hundreds of billions of dollars / Euros, Riyals, and all other currencies were spent to destroy Syria, the least estimates arrive at half a trillion dollars, that’s 500 billion US dollars, a large portion of which was paid by the Gulfies with Saudi Arabia and Qatar alone spending 138 billion dollars between early 2011 and May 2017, former Qatari PM Hamad bin Jassim admitted that much on his own state official TV. The US taxpayers contributed the next large portion, and the European Union taxpayers contributed the rest.

Hundreds of thousands of terrorists were recruited from across the planet and were dumped into Syria from all its borders, the Syrian Arab Army alone managed to eliminate 125,000 of those between early March 2011 and September 2015 when the Russian air force joined the war against the world’s largest terrorist army and was effectively destroying their logistical supply routes and depots.


There’s still much to do to complete the victory, the expelling of the armies of NATO ‘defensive’ alliance, the Turkish and US armies, and their proxy terrorists, ISIS, al Qaeda, and the Kurdish SDF separatists being the top priority to restore Syria’s sovereignty. Then the battle to rebuild what the USA and its proxies destroyed.

The victory of Syria after all those years, all that wasted money and lives, all that mayhem and carnage, all that suffering, helped bring back the world’s balance from the hands of the few ruling the West. President Assad’s concise speech turned a page on 12 years of the main part of the final chapter of one of history’s most criminal empires, the USA and its Western cronies.

Arabic transcript of President Bashar Al Assad’s speech is on page 2

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Sudan: A borderless conflict

May 8, 2023

Source: Al Mayadeen English

From seven sides, neighboring nations closely monitor the spillover risk, mainly due to Sudan’s unique geostrategic significance.

By Rasha Reslan 

Sudan’s neighbors are watching closely, and they don’t like what they see.

Sudan’s neighbors’ worst nightmare is playing out, as over three weeks of fighting are burning the country of 49 million people. They are watching closely, and they don’t like what they see. Scenarios open up a wide range of possibilities amid fears that the escalating clashes will likely transcend Sudan’s borders and inflame conflicts within its neighbors’ territories. 

Geostrategic importance

The African country shares borders with seven nations — Egypt, South Sudan, Chad, the Central African Republic (CAR), Libya, Ethiopia, and Eritrea– which have already had their share of warfare, sedition, or political crises in the past few years.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres recently warned that a “catastrophic conflagration” of the conflict “could engulf the whole region and beyond” as expectations for a quick resolution dwindle with each breached cease-fire.

Meanwhile, European Commissioner for Crisis Management, Janez Lenarcic, said as quoted by the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag that there is a risk that the crisis in Sudan can spill over to other countries in the region.

He warned that there are very fragile countries among Sudan’s neighbors and that the repercussions of the clashes spreading would be catastrophic.

Earlier, Sudan’s ousted Prime Minister Abdullah Hamdok stated that the conflict in Sudan could turn into one of the world’s worst civil wars if it is not put to a stop early on.

Hamdok explained that the ongoing conflict is a “senseless war” between two armies, given that “there is nobody who is going to come out of this victorious. That is why it has to stop.”

Sudan has sunk into chaos since the clashes erupted on April 15 between the forces of rival generals General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan (Sudanese Armed Forces) and Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo (Rapid Support Forces – RSF), following weeks of heightened tensions over a power-sharing agreement.

More than 530 people have died in the violence, and tens of thousands of people have been scrambling to flee their homeland, as per the Sudanese Health Ministry. Some have managed to secure coveted seats on lifeboats and emergency airlifts across the Red Sea. But the majority are forced to find safety on their own.

Here’s why the fighting in Sudan sends shockwaves across the region

From seven sides, neighboring nations closely monitor the spillover risk, mainly due to Sudan’s unique geostrategic significance, its size, and its location at the confluence of the Indian Ocean, the Horn of Africa, North Africa, the Red Sea, and the Arab world. 

“What happens in Sudan will unquestionably impact neighboring countries.”

-Ayman Al Qassem Ahmad Abed Al-Aziz

 Expert in Arab Intellect Affairs

An Expert in Arab Intellect Affairs Ayman Al Qassem Ahmad Abed Al-Aziz told Al Mayadeen English that there are no natural borders separating Sudan from its neighbors, and there exists a remarkable ethnic, cultural, and linguistic overlap between the populations of western Sudan, Darfur, eastern Sudan, Eritrea, and Ethiopia.

Concurrently, Chad and South Sudan immediately emerge as being at risk of a potential spillover, and as the fighting escalates, it is more likely that the conflict will spill over to other neighboring countries and beyond, he further argued.

In the north, Egypt looks to Sudan as a safety net against political unrest and as a partner in local water disputes.

Egypt and Sudan rely on the Nile River, which originates in Ethiopia. the two water-stressed countries have always considered the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam a threat to their access to water, and any disagreements between Cairo and Khartoum could imperil efforts to strike a water-sharing arrangement with Addis Ababa.

Sudanese writer Mohamamd Al Mahjoub told Al Mayadeen English that Sudan’s frontiers with Egypt have a long history of stability. However, in recent years, with the “gold rush” looming, some troubles have come to pass, starting with illegal mining, contrabands, and human trafficking, among other issues.

The main activity between the two neighboring countries is commerce, underdeveloped but continuous, he added.

“With raw materials and vegetables as the main goods crossing from the Sudanese part to the Egyptian side, on the other hand, we have: consumer goods, household, medical supplies …etc entering Sudan from the Egyptian part,” he further stressed.

On Sudan’s opposite side, thousands of predominantly South Sudanese refugees have recently started pouring across the 1,200-mile border to go back to their home country amid the infighting.

South Sudan gained its independence in 2011 but slid two years later into a civil war that left nearly 400,000 dead.

Despite the signing of a peace agreement in 2018, sporadic bursts of violence continued between the government and opposition forces, in addition to conflicts between ethnic groups in the country, which caused heavy casualties among civilians.

South Sudan, one of the world’s poorest nations, is ill-prepared to take in foreigners or returning refugees from Sudan. According to Marie-Helene Verney, the country’s representative for the UN refugee agency, there are over 12 million people living in South Sudan, 2 million of whom are internally displaced, and 75% of them depend on humanitarian help. In other countries in the region, there are about 2.3 million South Sudanese refugees.

The recent surge in the number of Sudanese and South Sudanese returning from exile runs the potential to reignite violence and struggle over the few resources in the fledgling country. In 2011, primarily African and Christian or animist South Sudan declared its independence from the Arab and Muslim-majority Sudan, putting an end to decades of civil violence. But in 2013, a new civil war in South Sudan broke out, this time spurred by unresolved ethnic conflicts and quarreling political leaders.

A crisis that will cross borders

On Sudan’s western side, the UN predicted that over 100,000 people would flee Sudan to Chad, which already hosts more than half a million refugees, with aid agencies warning that larger flows of refugees are estimated to arrive. In the past few days, an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 people have fled Sudan’s Darfur region to seek refuge in neighboring Chad, as per the UN.

About 400,000 Sudanese refugees from earlier conflicts were already living in border camps in Chad.

Political instability in Chad may be further enflamed by the fighting in Sudan and the resulting power void. The Janjaweed, a conglomeration of Arab tribal militant groups active in Darfur and parts of Chad, and the RSF, have a bloody history in Chad.

Under Al-Bashir’s command, the Janjaweed intimidated Sudan’s Darfur area and carried out cross-border assaults on Sudanese refugees in Chad in the 2000s. N’Djamena accused Khartoum of aiding militants in Chad.

Chad also worries about being entangled in proxy and regional battles. The Central African Republic, a former French colony southwest of Sudan, has suffered for years from sectarian conflict, mismanagement, and uprisings. According to the United Nations, armed groups and militias effectively rule the nation, where 50% of the population lacks access to enough food and clean water. Price increases have already been a result of the turmoil.

Ethiopia, which borders Sudan to the southeast, is perturbed about how the violence would impact two of its top priorities: securing water rights for the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and resolving Ethiopian claims to a contentious border region where fighting has previously broken out.

Abed Al-Aziz warned that the flames in the wider Horn of Africa might add fuel to the ongoing fighting in Sudan, thus leading to a wider conflict.

Tens of thousands of Ethiopians from the Tigray region have also sought sanctuary in Sudan. Their two-year battle with the national government ended in a fragile peace agreement late last year, and it now threatens to erupt once more.

Shifts in the region’s balance of power could also disturb neighboring Eritrea’s weak alliances.

Many Eritreans escaping their government’s compulsory conscription fled to Sudan, which welcomed thousands of refugees and asylum seekers from its eastern neighbor. In Ethiopia’s recent conflict with Tigray militants, Eritrea backed Ethiopia. The two nations had just recently put an end to a protracted cold war.

For just a minute, let us put aside all the round negotiation tables, the collared delegations, their eloquent press conferences, the condemnation statements, and politicized UN resolutions.

Sudan, just like many other African countries, is already suffering from the grip of systemic poverty, and limited tangible opportunities, under the death grip of the IMF and other global hegemonic bodies.

The crisis today is not a noncontextual event, but rather the direct result of decades of direct Western intervention, colonialism, resource theft, and internal meddling.

One thing is crystal clear: Sudan’s future is intricately linked to its need to give less weight to its broader geopolitical landscape and instead focus on internal Sudanese dialogue. This will suit Sudan just fine. Other options will suit the West.

Sudan Turmoil

Clashes broke out after weeks of tension between the army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Though the two groups were once allies, tensions have been brewing since the proposed integration of the RSF into the military. As factions battle for control, where is Khartoum headed?

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In a US-China confrontation, West Asia will bow out

A significant increase in geopolitical and economic ties with China has offered West Asian states an alternative to the US, which has traditionally been the region’s security guarantor.

February 24 2023

Photo Credit: The Cradle
F.M. Shakil is a Pakistani writer covering political, environmental, and economic issues, and is a regular contributor at Akhbar Al-Aan in Dubai and Asia Times in Hong Kong. He writes extensively about China-Pakistan strategic relations, particularly Beijing’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

By F.M. Shakil

The prospect of a US-China war has entered the realm of reality. Increased provocations from US military and political officials regarding the status of Taiwan – which China considers to be part of its historic territory – have heightened the possibility of confrontation in recent years.

With only 13 out of 193 UN member states recognizing the government in Taipei as a separate entity, the global community’s reaction to a Washington-led assault over Taiwan’s status remains highly uncertain.

Today, the reaction of strategic West Asia to a hypothetical conflict between the two superpowers is up for grabs. However, given the region’s reluctance to take sides in the Russian-US stand off, it is likely to be equally hesitant to do so in the event of a US-China conflict.

In a memo released on 27 January, US General Mike Minihan, chief of the Air Mobility Command, wrote: “My instinct tells me we will fight in 2025.” General Minihan’s views align with Taiwanese Minister of National Defense Chiu Kuo-cheng’s statement in 2021 that China will be capable of launching a full-scale invasion of Taiwan by the same year.

In response to General Minihan’s remarks, Mike McCaul, chairman of the US House Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, told Fox News: “I hope he is mistaken but I believe he is correct.” Adding fuel to the fire, US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on 29 January, “The chances of conflict in the relationship with China over Taiwan are very high.”

A lot of hot air

Days after the US general issued a warning that Washington may engage in combat with Beijing in the next two years, tensions between the two countries were further exacerbated by the spoof-worthy Chinese spy balloon incident.

According to some senior Republicans and US military leaders, there is a growing concern that a full-scale conflict between the two superpowers is imminent, with the Asia-Pacific (AP) and South Asia (SA) regions likely to be the primary theaters of the conflict.

Jan Achakzai, a geopolitical analyst and former adviser to Pakistan’s Balochistan government, tells The Cradle that:

“The possibility of a war between the United States and China puts everyone on edge, especially the regions that are intricately linked with the US or China. Some nations will be compelled to choose between allying with the US in the case of war or keeping the status quo to lessen the possibility of hostilities.”

Russian involvement in West Asia

Despite nominal trade and geopolitical relations with Moscow, West Asian countries did not support Washington’s position in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. However, Russia’s veto power at the UN Security Council does have a positive impact on its relationship with regional states, particularly for its ability to prevent expansionist and anti-Arab policies by other permanent council members.

Security and trade remain the two primary pillars of the relationship between Moscow and West Asia, and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s image has played a significant role in shaping these ties.

The UAE serves as a major financial hub for Russia, and Moscow may attempt to leverage its influence in the region to urge the UAE to reconsider US-imposed banking restrictions, if it feels that its interests are being compromised.

In addition, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Lebanon, and Egypt are among the countries that purchase wheat from Russia, which further solidifies economic ties between Russia and the Arab world.

Moreover, since joining the expanded Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC+) in 2016, Russia and Saudi Arabia have worked closely to regulate oil output and price adjustments as part of OPEC+ agreements.

Putin’s public image has, in part, contributed to a surge in support for Russia in the kingdom. In 2018, when Riyadh faced international criticism over the Saudi-orchestrated murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the Russian president made headlines by high-fiving and grinning at the then-isolated Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) during the G20 summit in Argentina.

Likewise, his prominent role in thwarting the NATO proxy war in Syria – a geopolitical game changer that, arguably, ushered in global multipolarity – has gained Putin fans across a region that has long suffered from western imperialist designs.

Where will West Asia stand?

Although still a hypothetical scenario, it is worth considering how West Asia would respond to a direct US-China conflict. Many prominent geopolitical analysts have speculated that if West Asia, and particularly the traditionally pro-US Arab states of the Persian Gulf, did not toe the US line against Russia – a significantly smaller regional trading partner than China – its loyalties to Washington in a potential US-China confrontation could be further strained.

Compared to Russia, China has significantly larger investments throughout West Asia. In 2021, bilateral trade between Beijing and the region amounted to $330 billion, with approximately 50 percent of China’s energy supply coming from the energy-abundant Persian Gulf.

China has conducted over $200 billion in trade alone with Saudi Arabia and the UAE. From 2005 to 2021, Beijing invested $43.47 billion in Saudi Arabia, $36.16 billion in the UAE, $30.05 billion in Iraq, $11.75 billion in Kuwait, $7.8 billion in Qatar, $6.62 billion in Oman, and $1.4 billion in Bahrain.

In addition to its investments in trade and energy, China has also invested enormous sums of money in West Asian and North African infrastructure and high-tech development projects via its multi-trillion dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Beijing has entered into strategic cooperation agreements with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Algeria, Egypt, and Iran, and has enlisted a total of 21 Arab nations in its ambitious, decade-long effort to revive the historic Silk Road and export its goods to markets throughout Europe and Africa. Currently, infrastructure developed by Persian Gulf nations serves as a transit point for two-thirds of Chinese exports to these continents.

Egypt is a crucial hub for the BRI, with the Economic-Technological Development Area in Egypt’s Suez Canal Economic Zone, near Ain Sokhna, representing one of the major projects for which the two nations signed contracts totaling $18 billion in 2018.

Iraq, the third-largest oil supplier to China after Saudi Arabia and Russia, has also received $10.5 billion from Beijing for BRI-related energy projects, and just this week, agreed to replace its dollar trade with Beijing for the Chinese yuan.

In West Asia, the US plays second fiddle to Beijing

Chinese collaboration with West Asia and North Africa is not confined to trade and economy; Beijing also provides defense equipment to several Arab nations. Since 2019, China and Saudi Arabia have reportedly collaborated on the production of ballistic missiles, and China also sells Saudi Arabia its HQ-17AE air defense system.

Chinese Wing Loong drones have been purchased by the UAE, and Iraq has placed an order for CH-4B drones. Jordan purchased CH-4Bs in 2016, while Algeria acquired CH-5s – the next generation of the CH-4B type – to expand its aviation capabilities in 2022. In addition, Saudi Advanced Communications and Electronics Systems Co. and China Electronics Technology Group are partnering to build a drone factory for local UAV production.

While US President Joe Biden’s administration’s relationship with Riyadh has been strained due to disagreements over human rights and energy policy, China is making significant strides in strengthening its ties with the country.

As Beijing draws closer to Saudi Arabia, the message to Washington from Riyadh is unambiguous: “The people in the Middle East [West Asia] are tired of other countries’ interference because they always come with troubles.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping received a royal welcome in Riyadh last December, marking a seismic shift in Sino-Arab relations and boosting China’s image throughout the Arab world. In contrast, US President Joe Biden’s visit to Jeddah in the summer of 2022 received a lukewarm reception. This may suggest that a recalibration of West Asian geopolitical alliances may be on the horizon.

Despite these trends, analyst Achakzai tells The Cradle that West Asia will behave similarly to the way it did during the Russian-Ukrainian conflict – even given China’s increasing business and military presence in the region. and the US’s declining control over the oil-rich Arab monarchies.

“Depending on the current situation, the motives of the various states in the region may change and divide into two distinct groups: those who would support the US and those who would support a neutral position.”

China values economy over war

In the Asia-Pacific region, the US and its allies are engaged in a contentious relationship with China regarding maritime boundaries, international trade, human rights, and strategic security issues. Despite signing numerous security pacts with regional players, China appears to prioritize building and strengthening economic ties over military cooperation with Asian-Pacific states.

Due to a history of hostile confrontations and divergent geopolitical objectives, both the US and China seek to increase their military presence in the region. In response to China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, the US has expanded its military footprint by signing commercial and defense agreements with the Asia-Pacific region.

The two nations have also been at odds over the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which many viewed as an effort to contain China’s economic and strategic influence in its own backyard. Additionally, tensions have escalated between Beijing and its neighbors, particularly over territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas.

These efforts have been emboldened by the 5-member Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), which is an informal strategic dialogue between the US, India, Japan, and Australia that seeks “to promote a free, open, and prosperous Indo-Pacific region.” According to Achakzai:

“Countries that have extensive defense agreements with the US, such as Japan, South Korea, and Australia, are most likely to help America. These nations, which have long benefited from their close connections to the US, must now contend with Chinese territorial ambitions in the region and the South China Sea. The nations having an informal security partnership with the US, such as the Philippines, are likely to back the United States in a confrontation.”

The analyst explained that Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia are expected to remain neutral during the conflict due to their strong business and investment ties with China.

“Other countries in the Asia-Pacific region may feel obligated to support the US if China initiates the conflict. This may apply to countries like Indonesia and Vietnam, which have recently been under Chinese pressure and may need to choose a side to protect their own security,” he noted.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

A Planet of Apes

February 21, 2023

Source

by Tarik in the Vinyard

It’s like spending your nights at the casino and wondering why you’re always mostly broke. It must be the dealer, the deck of cards, the table, the slot machine, that black widow in red lingering in the corner, or the moonlight and stars, but never your own greed and hedonistic thrill in a game that is mathematically staked against you.

___________________

I once read, long time ago, a book called “Les Anatomies Fantastiques” by Gerome Paul. The fellow was writing about how individuals behave (act, think and feel) according to a built up mental psycho-emotive and moral representation of the world (a mix of cultural, educational, personal character and historic factors, etc…) that strives to be in harmony with their subjective experience of reality; and how groups, people, nations, and in our globalized environment, entire regions and possibly the world itself, also in turn develop such structures that will mutually affect each level of consciousness in a complex knot of feedback loops. Under normal circumstances, in reasonably “healthy” individuals and societies, these “anatomies” are fairly moral and rational reflections of the surrounding world and can adapt with minimal disturbances to gradual changes in the environment. But when the switch is more brutal or the lenses are too distorting (unhealthy individuals and societies), so is the discrepancy between behavior and reality. Anyways, I thought it made a very interesting read, and helped me connect many important dots in my own fantasmagorical construct of the world. And what a world that is! And yes, it is a hint to understanding what comes next.

___________________

And so it is that, to most, it must alternately be the Americans, the West or Anglo-Zionists, or else the bankers, speculators, the capitalists and Onepercenters, and if not, then surely the Socialists, the Neoliberals, the Dems, the Reps, the WEF and Davos oracles, even China and Russia if you went through truly extensive neural dry cleaning, or that all time favorite… the Jews of course. And no doubt, some of these formations, as much as they do exist outside our minds, have displayed much evil behavior and were certainly instrumental vectors to the present status quo. But it is also my contention that, as much as they do exist outside our minds, they’re granted way more credit and power than they actually deserve. Particularly, somehow, for some reason, I always found unsettling, like a lame excuse, the notion that one percent can impose its will over the remaining ninety nine. There must be fowl play, some prestidigitation trick of sort. I tried once imposing my evil will over my little brother; I cannot imagine attempting to do so on 99 little brothers. Even blackmail could only get me so far; for consistent results, I could only “charm” him.

Thus, I come to suspect an awful lot of us “Ninetininers” have let ourselves seduced by something(s); for otherwise how could possibly the “Few” indulge in so much excess and abuse for so long, with what must only be described as the sometimes tacit and implicit, and at other times the roaring and explicit approval of the “Many”?

2011, while France is leveling out Libya and orchestrating a bloody coup in Ivory-Coast, its good people are conducting massive demonstrations in the streets against a 1 year postponement of retirement age (bare in mind they already had the earliest retirement age on the planet), and in favor of Gay marriage. All four initiatives were successful. Gaddafi was properly done with, Gbagbo was ousted, retirement age was left unchanged, and homosexuals could happily marry. It all happened simultaneously. Now don’t get me wrong, I also have a lazy streak, and would frown at the news of an extra mandatory year of work before I get that lousy retirement check that once upon a long loooonnnng time looked quite appetizing, and I don’t give a loot about what gays do with their lives as long as they don’t mingle tongs under my nose (and I’m very inclusive in this regard, it bothers me as much with heteros). Neither am I singling out France, I’m sure I could find similar examples with virtually any other country; it’s just that this particular one is so juicy, in that it vividly illustrates what I consider our most socially disruptive idiosyncratic dichotomy.

Justice versus Equality… no, on closer inspection: Justice versus Greed is more truthful a description. But because 99% aspire to the 1%, greed can easily hide under the more respectable mantle of equality. Justice however is harder to fool with. After all, under its purview you get strictly what you deserve, no more, no less, irrespective of where you now stand on the socioeconomic ladder. Since an awful lot of us 99ners are lurking with big wide open round eyes at a chance to pounce a step or two closer to the “numero unos”, and since 100% of us all have no idea what we justly deserve (alright, some of us know all too well); it appears we have all somehow agreed to play it safe, and do with Justice what we did with Gaddafi: throw it overboard while looking the other way. Hence we turned our social contract into an unending and intractable negotiation on the “terms of Equality” in substitute to those of Justice, taking great care to never notice it is a physical and logical impossible proposition. And you don’t have to take my word for it; just spend a moment to ponder the issue rather than parrot an opinion, I’m sure it’ll quickly be apparent, axiomatic really. The only place where Equality makes sense is in the realm of Justice, but as said, that dude was long lost to the high seas.

Of course I’m not talking of the masses that live in a state of constant economic urgency and dine on Maggi soup on a lucky day. I’m describing the no less consequential middle class, those that can actually save a bank note or two, afford a mortgage, holidays in the tropics, have the time and means to learn and think instead of “socialitizing”. I’m looking at the activist, the do-gooder, the politician, intellectual and the legions of subsidized enablers and false prophets promoting always costly solutions to self made problems, or worse: problems they never bothered to understand, but instead blindly follow pamphlet instructions to bankrupt us all into saving the world or their own solvency. And the business owner whose sole concern is the extra cent in his quarterly income statement; the genius “buy and hold” investor in a CB induced perpetual bull market, while never asking what those digits piling in their accounts actually are, and many, many more alike… Yes, you and me, blissful in our comfortable, lazy ignorance of the true nature of that which we pursue.

I say “lazy” because lets face it, we all know if only intuitively, that money is at the center of it all. And yet, how much time have we ever devoted to understanding it, instead of acquiring, manipulating and controlling it, each according to his own reach, purpose and vanity? Which is a pity, because it’s really no rocket science (I can assure you right here and now, if you can successfully and profitably run a lemonade stand, then you have the necessary functional two neurons to understand all things money and the economy) and because the knowledge of which, other than spiritual enlightenment (and maybe a gun, depending on what neighbors share your space) is the master key to our individual and national sovereignty, prosperity; and incidentally, to our most pressing global issues. Well… pity it is, if we have any such concerns.

Indeed, few subjects are more poorly understood, disformed and tortured, other than God, and maybe the variance of genders, to fit our increasingly dysfunctional (and increasingly fanatical) fantastical mental anatomies. A dysfunction, might one add, in direct relation to the exponential growth in currency floods. The more we issue, the more the world and its understanding turn lalala. And no, this is not a coincidence.

I can now sense the confused uneasiness, the mental restlessness, the silent question mark. What has “understanding money” to do with Justice and an upside down world?

As with all stories we must start at the beginning. And at the beginning stands Barter.

There is this common deceitful misconception in the modern mind, that views money as a technological advancement akin to the mastery of fire, the wheel or the printing press (wink,wink); therefore subject to control and perpetual improvement; and thus best left to the specialists. Not so. The first use of money was more like a behavioral adjustment, a change in common habit. Presumably, a bit like switching from a “butsniff” greeting, to a handshake as we started covering our parts. It had simply become more convenient. One wouldn’t think of classifying the “handshake” as a technological achievement. Neither should money.

As it stands, money, the real thing (gold, silver and copper) was nothing more than bartering finding its common denominators in an increasingly complex environment. But it still remained fundamentally barter. One physical product in exchange for an equivalent good or service in terms of work cost (Energy X Time). An objectively and measurably “just” trade in its principle. Supply and demand may fluctuate the exchange rates, but over time they cancel out, and act as incentives to produce or not; thus regulating economic activity, induce price stability within a narrow band, and spread wide goods and money. Note that money production hence, is intimately linked to general economic activity and obeys strictly the law of supply and demand, as any other product would. In a moral world, under a just rule of law, that is exactly how things would go, with only the occasional natural catastrophe to disturb an otherwise idyllic measured economic progression.

But we live on a planet of apes, and when us primates interact, we quite naturally indulge in all sorts and manners of monkey business. Which is to say, in sapiens speak: we steal, lie, deceive, trick, blackmail, threat, and coerce, or any hereto combination; but above all we are a highly cronyistic, opportunistic, gluttonous creature that can hardly meet a shortcut we wouldn’t flirt with.

Quran: II-275.

« …they say, “Trade is no different than interest.” But Allah has permitted trading and forbidden interest… »

Quran: XI-85.

“O my people! Give full measure and weigh with justice. Do not defraud people of their wealth, nor go about spreading corruption in the land.”

And so it also came quite naturally that some of us started charging interest, taking undue advantage of one another setbacks or difficulties; and in turn, or simultaneously, cheating with scales and content, which both became a source of conflicts and wars even before we adopted money. But at this early stage of our economic evolution, disputes were largely confined to the parties directly involved. Then, as precious metals asserted themselves, we saw the appearance of mints to solve the standard weight and metallic content abuses through the creation of stamped coins. Obviously those coins became in great demand. As all the gold destined to monetary use now went through them, they accumulated huge reserves that gave them huge financial power. Still naturally they started lending these funds (directly or indirectly) at interest to accumulate even huger reserves for even huger financial power, hahahaha….

My apologies for the outburst.

The thing with interest rates is that, in the aggregate, it creates additional demand for money over and above existing supplies in circulation already tagged to current overall trades and investments. The only way for the economy at large to pay for this additional charge (interest) is either for someone else to lose revenue, or savers to willfully cover the expense (but then why would they charge Interests in the first place?), or else the amount must be defrauded or coerced from someone, somewhere, somehow. There’s really no other ways around it. Needless to say, the preferred resolution, by far is fraud in its infinite variety of forms, that target all: consumers, legitimate producers and, ironically, savers (loan originators) themselves, as we shall soon find out.

So the more interest bearing debt, the more fraud and disruptions in the economy. No matter what interest rates: 1%, 10%, 20%… the higher the starting rate, the quicker and more abrupt the disruption; the lower the starting rate, the more pervasive and long lasting. And no matter what the debt is used for; private, commercial, government, industrial, wars, you name it, the economic end game is immutable: widespread bankruptcies and loan defaults. But before we get there, the mint (no matter whether privately held, or the property of temples or the state) will have invariably postponed or covered the growing losses by gradually altering, you guessed it, the contents of its coins. The ultimate fraud.

Thus, we’re right back at pitiful cheats on weight and content. Except that now, instead of only the perpetrator and its victim being affected, the entire economy gets swindled. For sure Interest is not a requirement for currency debasement; for that you only need simian hubris and greed. But it certainly guaranties its outcome, and most often leads the way. Besides, even when debasement is first carried in an Interest free jurisdiction, as in historic Islamic societies, it always paves the way for opportunistic predatory interest bearing loans from outside actors, that now prolong and aggravate the economic disruption. The two, debasement and Interest, are intimately linked, in the manner of “egg and hen”. The one clucks (loudly) for the other.

This, I would refer to as the systemic or structural cause of severe economic disruptions and corruption in the social moral fabric. However this structural relationship is further reinforced by a more subtle and insidious psychological influence implied with interest rates.

Imagine an Interest free world. In that environment loans are only made to family and friends, for a common interest in helping or protecting an individual or entity, to increase one’s credit with Allah or pay out karma, or even out of pure compassion (yes, the rich can also be compassionate). Even if there is an element of predation when collateral is involved, the net result on the general economy in case of non payment is that of any regular trade, and the loss’ responsibility lies squarely with the debtors poor calculations and decision to contract a loan instead of outright selling the collateral. Because yes dear, sometimes life deals us an awful hand or we make regrettable choices, sometimes businesses go south or become unviable, sometimes assets must be sold and down scaling is the order of the day, with no fault to anyone. Still, overall an interest free economy encourages, strengthens and protects (or at the very least does not impede); good relations within the family and with friends, solidarity and trust among the various economic players, piousness and the general elevation of the human soul, as the early years of Islam have well illustrated. No, it would still not be a perfect world, but definitely a much kinder one. Now even if disagreeing with the latter assessment, an undeniable fact remains: loans would be a far less efficient direct predatory source of profit.

By introducing interest rates, the motivation to lend is dramatically altered from mainly an act of solidarity and common interest, to a pursuit of seemingly “guaranteed” profits if done “right”. It also mathematically reduces the probability of repayment in direct proportion to the interest rate. A disastrous combination.

From the lender’s perspective, the increased risk must be compensated with better collateral. This is achieved by valuing the latter at its absolute lowest range if not at an outright steal. In any case the discount on the collateral’s valuation will always be superior than the interest amount. So we witness the emergence of a structural conflict of interests between creditors and debtors, where it is now often in the former’s best interest to see the loan go sour and cash the higher profit on the collateral’s sales. But even when there’s no ill intent in granting the loan, it allows lenders a virtually risk free (therefore irresistible, therefore conductive to malinvesment) return at the expense of debtors, as long as the economy is functioning and not overwhelmed by the cumulative effect of frauds and malinvestments this lopsided incentive creates.

But therein lies the rub: precisely as fraud and malinvestment spread, distress demand for loans multiply, insuring a growing supply of new debtors to milk in a vicious self reinforcing cycle. Then, a second parallel cycle develops, just as destructive. As debt permeates ever more the ever more dysfunctional economy, the ratio of insolvency mounts till a breaking point. Mass bankruptcy abruptly deflates asset prices (collateral), which suddenly reminds the creditors there is never such things as risk free returns. But before we get there, the mint (no matter whether privately held, or the property of temples or the state) will have invariably postponed or covered the growing losses by gradually altering the contents of its coins. The ultimate fraud.

The point being: Interest rates transform loans from an instrument for social cohesion and economic resiliency, to that of social division, and economic mayhem.

Finally, what us laymen need to be made aware of, are the wealth distribution, government policies and geopolitical ramification that interest rates impose, and more specifically the link with the debasement of the currency.

Not all creditors are created equal. A few are more conservative, prudent, and understand the long game. Most are more or less reckless, opportunistic, impatient. As the debt crisis inevitably unfolds, aggressive lending institutions (what ever shape they may have taken through space and time) will be first to fall as their assets (loan books) and value of collateral gets decimated. The prudent lenders would have scaled down its exposure as the crisis approached and can now redeploy its capital to scoop anything of value for pennies. As those credit cycles repeat, wealth gets concentrated in the hands of a few wise monkeys, thereby creating a quasi financial monopoly. And we cannot really blame them orangutans for playing it right. The fault lies with the greedy, predatory behavior of their chimpanzee colleagues, a legislation that does not condemn the practice of interest charges and the irredeemable foolishness of the general public. Without all three ingredients in the soup, they could never have ended in a controlling position. Actually I’d go so far to say: in such a pot, by only virtue of their prudent behavior, as a group (orangutans), they are guaranteed the outcome whether they seek it or not. Us baboons and macaques may not have much sway over the actions of orangutans and chimpanzees, but we most definitely could stop acting like buffoons. Or is it really genetic?

Government – King Lewis – the Gorilla in the room – is, presumably, a natural monopoly. There’s a simple equation that governs its relationship to its macaques and baboons constituency. Widespread wealth in the population, equals disciplined programs, equitable legislation and careful policies. Concentrated wealth, equals sloppy programs, partisan legislation and reckless policies. To which one may add a few variables, here and there, to mitigate or delay the results, but that’s the basic logical frame. That is so because the state’s base income is its tax receipts. When wealth is widely distributed ( an unmistakable sign of a healthy economy), the base of the State’s income source is wide and at its highest output, and liability/loyalty to the majority is strong. After the deleterious effects that interest rates cause on the economy, government income craters. As tax rate increases make only matters worse and it is absolutely out of question that the state should shrink at a time when law and order is most needed, eventually bonds must be issued to cover the budget, which effectively hands over the state to the big lenders, the same way a poor peasant is brought to debt indenture by a bad crop; while the financially weakened crowd clamors for help, and crime, misery and depravity blossom.

There’s no way government debt can be serviced honorably under such circumstances. Which leaves only dubious means. Juvenile states would be tempted to outright renege on the debt or even start confiscating assets. But this is shortsighted. Money would then simply migrate to more welcoming shores or vanish underground, leaving the economy in even worse shape, leading to the collapse of the ruling regime.

More sophisticated ones would first surreptitiously alter the metal content of coins since they usually control the mint. Then as the lenders and economy catch up to the trick, increase interest rates and prices in reaction, still further aggravating the whole situation, our gorilla will attempt to lurk outside his jurisdiction. Instead of just repressing the desperate population, he would lump the deplorables into cheap makeshift armies do be sent on suicidal holly crusades, or spread the words of god to the uncivilized (or whatever convenient tale to the time and place) with free rein on looting in compensation. As these get decimated on their morbid way to some promised land, they never the less sow chaos and economic disruption in their wake, which weakens the regions they traverse. By then a debt financed elite army for conquest is raised to collect the loot and repay the loan with interest and then some. The feeling is exhilarating. Some have said it’s better than sex. So…do you see?

When successful (nothing is ever certain in this world), we may very well witness the birth pangs of a gestating empire. In which case the following template comes into play (if I dare quote myself):

“As an empire expands, the required military growth is self funded by the spoils. But all expansionary dynamics are subject to the law of diminishing return. With each new territory, a growing portion of the armed forces gets tagged to maintain “peace”, and less is available for conquest, while spoils get relatively smaller and increasingly inadequate. Once the expansion reaches its limits, the burden of military cost falls squarely on the economy through higher taxes. With tax induced economic strains, dissent and disorder spreads resulting in still higher expenses (military and otherwise), that then must be met through monetization, which begets inflation, which begets dissent and disorder; and the vicious circle is now locked.”

Lets dig deeper. To the Lenders, every war induced economic crisis, which ever party wins, is a golden opportunity to further their financial tentacles on the general economy through interest baring loans. The only difference is that they fatten much faster and greatly increase their geographic reach riding the back of a rising empire. Economically it appears as a jolly boom in production and trade around the center; and rape, pillaging, maiming, murdering, slavery towards the outer rim, with no end in sight as long as the empire expands. As Great Generals bring light and civilization to the barbarians, Exceptional Statesmen preside over exceptional economies through their exceptional policies. Fat children giggle in the courtyards, mothers are plump, fathers stand erect proudly wearing their protruding bellies, life is beautiful, almost heavenly if only we mustn’t die. Then, spoiled little brats grow into entitled psychopaths of gargantuan appetite just as the empire reaches its limits. Yes dear reader, that is most of you and me. Ok, maybe not you, but definitely the other guy sitting beside you.

On the way up, government debt is made whole by the spoils of war, which provides the lenders with fresh ammunition to financially grab the riches of the newly conquered and ravaged territories. Effectively these spoils carry the same function as debasement of the currency in the economy. Importantly, crucially, I cannot stress it enough, it does not correspond to a natural supply and demand driven increase in money supply, and thus will display the same characteristics as any fraudulent forced fed currency injection, which is devaluation of the latter and contagious malinvestments. Meanwhile, the severe pent up demand triggers a broad economic boom which brings out money, that previously went hiding during the invasion phase and from the four corners of the realm and beyond, further exacerbating the good times. The state’s coffers are now flush with exploding tax receipts. Bigger and better equipped armies are raised, palaces, pyramids, colosseums and pantheons are erected, while roads and ports spread across the lands to funnel resources and gold towards the center. While History will attribute these golden ages to the prowess of some Great Leader, Great scholar, Great technology, Great ideology or whatever other coincidental greatness in store, the more humbling truth is that it is fueled by a constant stream of freshly stolen wealth to pay for the ever expanding interest load on the economy. Now what do you think must happen when there’s nothing left to loot?

Yes, the usual: loans default, bankruptcies rise, fiscal deficit craters, debasement (inflation/hyperinflation) returns with a vengeance, repression, crime, misery, depravity. The blame game intensifies; it’s “anyone’s” or “no one’s” fault, but never is it “everyone’s”. And then, eventually, general rebellion; and in the total chaos, somewhere in a dim lit corner of the scenery, like the manager of some macabre casino, an orangutan watches in glee at the utter stupidity, richer and more powerful than ever, ready to scoop for pennies, not businesses, but entire industries and nations. A few more of these empire cycles and pretty soon he’s sitting on top of the world.

And how could you blame that otherwise harmless, placid, flaccid creature nested in the upper shades of the canopy? It never put a gun to your head; that’s gorilla and baboon behavior. Slip under its skin for a moment: you got this load of money in your right pockets. Then, on the one side there’s this endless procession of avid, solicitors, day in, day out, ready to pawn their mothers and kids, offering the moon plus interests because they’re so bright and it’s such a sure thing and they’re so deserving, and they crave so much to shine if only once. They will even assure you of the precise day and time they will repay you, yet wouldn’t know if they’ll still breath by next sunrise. On the other side, an equally endless and avid procession eagerly willing to fill your left pocket with their savings, responsibilities and guilt for the promise of an easy, risk free extra penny tomorrow. With such display of venal and cowardly covetousness, how can our otherwise harmless placid flaccid orangutan not grow increasingly cynic and, I guess, a bit nauseated. Now filled with contempt and disgust, how could he not be tempted by the devil’s offer? And as his clout grows and grows and grows, turn a little nuts himself? Pity the rich indeed, for you know not how lucky with your petty struggles. More than most any of us, he is relentlessly confronted with the basest and worst in human instincts, up to and including among his own, his family and closest friends, with no respite. Maybe now we can better appreciate the parable of the camel and needle. In the Quran man does not get rich because of his actions and skills, nor because he deserves it, but because God has decided. The battle is ours, but victory is His. There is no other reason. It is among the hardest tests He may bestow upon man. But few would know, since few were chosen. And interest rates makes it all the harder to pass the exam. Indeed it is the devil’s most enticing offer. It speaks to both deferred and immediate greed, dependent on which side of the deal; and virtually every monkey of every specie will fall for it willingly given the right circumstances. And there’s a right circumstance at every corner to satisfy all tastes and moods. Once widespread, it always leads to a paroxysm of social and political abominations and economic cataclysm.

Is this some sort of apology or eulogy to the rich and powerful? Certainly not. It is only to point out they are the faithful reflection of our collective unspeakable aspirations. Specifically, the size of their wealth and power is in direct proportion to our lust for… well, about most any and everything. They are a testament to the filth in our souls, they are the stench that reminds us we’re long past due some serious cleansing. A Hindu Yogi/Sage/Philosopher once wrote something to the effect of: “human monsters such as Hitler and others, were souls that self-sacrificed so the Divine may implement its plan”. Yeah, I also found the statement a bit fishy at first. I’m not sure what he really meant, but then again, in some counter intuitive way, he might have been onto something. Could it be that the rich and powerful are the in fine recipients, the alchemical precipitation of the spiritual miasma we exude. Then maybe we should thank them for absolving us from what would otherwise have been our own guilt, had God granted us our wishes. Could their depravity be, them succumbing to our unrelenting shameless supplicant assaults? Then maybe we should, after all, apologize for making it so much harder for them to stand upright to the Lord. It does take two to tango, you know?

Perhaps now we may better grasp the driving force behind the past two, three thousand years of human history, that locks us in a perpetual repetition of identical patterns and a persistent trend in wealth concentration. It is not that we are incapable of learning; it is just our collective incapacity to resist our inner compulsions. It is basic human psychology display in an interest rate environment, whose size is a pervasive expression of our frustrated insatiable appetite, that then leads to desperate real needs. It’s not some mysterious phenomenon that plagues humanity and only a PHD in economics can explain, nor some inherent inadequacy of gold money that can only be resolved through fiat currencies; which are the ultimate act of delusional rebellion against the natural limits that gold imposes on our unhinged desires.

And it is certainly not the result of some dark cabal conspiring for world dominion since the dawn of time. These are merely the usual scoundrels and parasites scattered along history, that thrive on the general interest rate status quo; meaningless and with no real power except the money we diligently deposit in our savings accounts, pension funds, social security and health insurance programs that feed the beast. Their latest version’s avowed goal, other than world domination, is population reduction and control, Yet even at the height of their power, with atomic bombs and COVID viruses, contraception, junk food and Coca Cola, and the entire pharmaceutical industry in their hands, the world still grew from 2-3 billion lucky souls to 8 billion sorry ones. It is as farcical as the wars on drugs, poverty, terror, climate change and viruses combined. And these are Titans we fear, demi gods that hold our destinies? Seriously?

This current breed will vanish with the currencies that brought them.

In truth our power is immense. We are the ones holding their faith in our hands at every moment, or rather in our senseless bank, brokerage, insurance accounts. The only useful account is a current account to get rid of those currencies as fast as they come. We don’t, because we want in on the Ponzi game. We made that choice the day we agreed to their pension and insurance schemes. And we perpetuate that choice every time we add to our saving accounts. Guaranteed income, zero responsibilities, how to resist?

As usual, there’s so much more to say and I may be totally wrong. Unfortunately the Saker is shutting down the site and I’m running out of time. Please read all that I’ve wrote as the excited exclamations of a child discovering in aw and fondly sharing his findings in the surrounding world. So in parting I’d like to leave you with one last tale:

One day, a long time now, God brought up the issue with the Hebrews, and told them to renounce interest rates. Because He whispered only to their ears and they were the Chosen Ones, they naturally assumed it only concerned their own dealings, but, they thought, there could be no harm in perpetuating the practice with the goyim, since surely God wanted them rich and to inherit the earth… or something like that.

Of course it was silly, God didn’t whisper and He meant it for all loans. Otherwise He’d have added: “but it’s okay to screw the rest of the planet”. But he didn’t.

Still, the net result, intended or not, was that they could rip all the benefits (interest income) with none of the cons (bankruptcies) because their businesses were spared the extra financing cost, which granted greater resiliency and much competitive advantage, especially in trade financing. Thus, as a group, by virtue of the reduced cost of business and the interest rate’s wealth concentrating function in the economy, they siphoned immense wealth from their foreign business relationship. It all proceeded sort of mathematically from a choice that did not necessarily require elaborate conspiracies for world dominion, but only the all to common, human greed, moral hypocrisy and tribal instinct.

As their trade financing activities required them to open offices in all corners of every empire to facilitate settlements between buyers and sellers of different regions, they acquired a unique bird’s eye view which they quickly learned to put to profit. Their coreligionists followed suit, taking advantage of the available preferential loans to open shop in faraway lands, lower margins, and gain market share. Soon the competition must lower quality to make up for the reduced margins and lose more market, then close shop, or take on debt at interest and then close shop. Then as the economic distress induced debt cycle falls flat on its face, people cannot help but notice that some have been spared more than others. They can smell something fishy has been going on, but couldn’t quite put their finger on it. Still they want to rip flesh.

Anyways, little wonder some of them are now among the top orangutans in the world and turned a little paranoiac and crazed. So stop whining. We’d have done the exact same, had we been the chosen ones to first receive God’s tip. Besides all we needed do, was take the queue and denounce, ourselves, those filthy interest rates to instantly restore the balance. The good news: it’s not that they’re so incredibly bright and wicked, nope, their intelligence and malice are perfectly average, it’s just that we’re so hopelessly stupid. I mean… 3000 years that game has been going on, for God’s sake!

The Syrian Earthquake Has United the Arab World

Steven Sahiounie

Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360°

Close to 9 million people in Syria have been affected by the 7.8 magnitude earthquake, 65 seconds in duration on February 6, that Turkish President Erdogan has compared with the power released by atomic bombs. The hardest hit areas are Latakia, Aleppo, and Idlib.

The UN estimates that more than 4.2 million people have been affected in Aleppo province with 400,000 homeless, and 5,000 buildings declared unlivable. Aleppo has more than 1,600 dead and 10,000 injured.

The province of Idlib is a total population estimated at 3 million, but because there is no government or authority there, we can only guess how many have been affected.

UAE Aid plane landing in Aleppo International Airport

The UN says 5.5 million Syrians are without a home after the earthquake, with more than 7,400 buildings having been destroyed completely, or partially in Syria.

In Latakia, there are 820 dead, 142,000 homeless, and over 2,000 injured, with 102 buildings completely collapsed, and others condemned.

A total of 58 trucks have crossed from Turkey to north-west Syria through the Bab al Hawa crossing point over the past five days, carrying aid such as food, tents, and medicines. Those trucks are solely supplying Idlib, under the occupation of the armed group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Eleven trucks have gone through the newly opened border crossing of Bab al Salam today, carrying non-food items such as blankets, and mattresses.

Iraqi AAid plan landing in Damascus international Airport

Location matters in this quake

The map will show that Aleppo, Syria is just south of Gaziantep, Turkey which was the epicenter. Aleppo was heavily damaged in the earthquake, adding more misery to a city that was under the occupation of Al Qaeda terrorists in the eastern section until being liberated in December 2016.

Looking at a map, you see that Latakia is a 2 ½ hour drive west of Aleppo on the M4 highway. It seems like a long distance, but the power of the 7.8 magnitude brought the epicenter and Latakia together because they share the same fault line, which Aleppo does not.

Tunisian Aid plane landing in Aleppo International Airport

UN: no roadblocks to aid, no politics

Rula Amin, UN Refugee Agency Senior Communications Advisor, urged cooperation among nations to help Turkey and Syria. She said there should be no roadblocks to assistance for people in need. Referring to the UN and western aid coming almost exclusively to Idlib, and by-passing those in need in Latakia and Aleppo, she urged all to put politics aside, and focus on getting aid to those in need regardless of whether they are in the US-EU supported area in Idlib, or whether they live in Aleppo and Latakia under the Syrian administration from Damascus. Amin is no stranger to Syria. In March 2011, Amin was one of the very first international journalists in Deraa, covering what she had claimed was a ‘popular uprising’, and even interviewed the cleric who was the key player of the Obama-designed US-NATO attack on Syria for ‘regime change

.’ She did not go as far as to demand the lifting of all US-EU sanctions on Syria to send aid, but her meaning was clear. The sanctions prevent aid from arriving in Damascus. On February 9 the US Department of the Treasury issued General License 23, which allows for a humanitarian waiver of supplies to government-controlled areas in Syria, but must be received by an NGO and not the Syrian government. The 180-day waiver is far too short, as the need is enormous, and will people will need years to grapple with the damages.  Rebuilding homes and businesses may take a decade or more. Also, most governments abroad would be sending official aid to Syria through a government-to-government mechanism, and using an NGO is a tedious stipulation designed to discourage aid from being sent.


Who gave to Damascus?

On Tuesday, a plane landed from Saudi Arabia at the Aleppo International Airport, carrying 35 tons of humanitarian aid.  Aid to Damascus also arrived from: ChinaRussia, AlgeriaIraqIranUAE, BangladeshLibyaBelarusJordanCuba, Venezuela, Tunisia, Armenia, Turkmenistan, Cyprus, Hungary, India, and Sudan.

Jordanian Aid plane landing in Damascus international Airport

Italy sent two planeloads of aid to Beirut, Lebanon to be transported to Syria by land. This demonstrates the extreme fear that western allies of the US have of the sanctions. By sending the aid to Lebanon, which is not sanctioned, Italy feels more comfortable that the US Treasury will not issue massive penalties against them.

Who refused aid to Damascus?

The US, the EU, and all US allies such as Canada have sent nothing to Syria for the earthquake-ravaged zones of Latakia and Aleppo.  According to America, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the allies of the US, there is no place called Syria.  There is only a small, rural agricultural province called Idlib.  Syria is 10,000 years old, and Damascus and Aleppo both tie as the undisputed oldest inhabited cities on earth.  But the great minds in Washington, DC. only acknowledge the tiny area called Idlib.  The terrorist-controlled Idlib is suffering, and has innocent unarmed civilians in need of help; however, Latakia, and Aleppo are far bigger and have sustained more deaths, injuries, and structural damages than Idlib. The US and the west have used politics to judge who gets helped, and who is forgotten. The Syrian people will never forget this. The US and EU sanctions have made life unbearable in Syria before the earthquake of the century, and now when politics should be set aside for humanitarian needs, the US doggedly holds on to their dogmatic ideology to make sure the Syrian people know the full disdain of the American government. The Foreign Minister of the United Arab Emirates visited Damascus and met with President Assad after the quake, in an act of defiance of US-dictated policy.

Algerian aid plane in Aleppo International Airport

Where is Government controlled Syria?

The US-NATO attack on Syria beginning in March 2011 has resulted in three separate administrations in Syria.  The biggest territory, about 75%, is the central government in Damascus. Aleppo and Latakia are the two hardest hit by the earthquake which is under the Damascus administration.

The second administration is the province of Idlib, which is an olive-growing region between Latakia and Aleppo. There is no government there.  The 3 million persons there live under the occupation of an armed terrorist group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formerly called Jibhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda. The terrorists embedded themselves there in 2012, and until now are safe from attack because the US, EU, and UN all lobby for their protection, and aid. The US supports the Al Qaeda terrorists because they represent the US interests in Syria to be decided upon in a final political settlement in Syria under the auspices of the UN.

The third administration is the Kurdish self-proclaimed region of the northeast, where the US military is occupying the Syrian oil wells, and allowing the Kurds to sell the stolen oil in Iraq to cover their expenses. This area was not affected by the earthquake. This administration exists separate from Damascus only because of the US military illegal occupation

Where is Idlib?

Many of the residents of Idlib most affected by the earthquake have had to sleep outside among the olive groves, in freezing temperatures. The UN acknowledged the international response to Idlib has been a failure.

Raed al-Saleh, head of the White Helmets, an award-winning video troupe headquartered in Washington, DC. has denounced the UN as incompetent in their response to the needs in Idlib. The White Helmets work solely in Idlib and have international donors. Al-Saleh was angry after UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Syrian President Assad had agreed to allow UN aid deliveries to the area through two border crossings from Turkey for three months. The White Helmets and the terrorists do not recognize the Syrian government.  Damascus had tried to send aid to Idlib, but the terrorists turned it back saying, “We don’t want help from the enemy.”  Previously the UN trucks of aid to Idlib were also stalled after the terrorists demanded a $1,000 fee for each of the 10 trucks.

Why are the borders controlled?

The Syrian government has controlled the border crossings of Syria for security reasons. Serena Shim, an American journalist from Detroit, witnessed and reported seeing a UN food truck carrying Al Qaeda terrorists, and their weapons, from Turkey into Syria near Idlib. She was murdered in Turkey just days after publishing her report.

The terrorists in Idlib are contained in a small area and have weapons including missiles which have frequently been directed at Latakia, and Kessab, a small Christian Armenia village just north of Latakia. The Syrian government wants to keep the weapons from flowing into Idlib while allowing UN, and other humanitarian aid to flow into the 3 million civilians who are held there as human shields.


Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist

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Western sanctions will mean that more Syrians die after the earthquakes

February 11, 2023

The economic stranglehold and selective approach to aid will lead to more death and displacement

The economic stranglehold and selective approach to aid will lead to more death and displacement

Feb 10, 2023, RT.com

-by Eva K Bartlett

Following the devastating earthquakes that rocked Türkiye, Syria and their neighboring countries on February 6, leaving more than 20,000 dead, Damascus is struggling to deal with this unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe as it remains under brutal Western sanctions that have brought the country to its knees. 

The West’s war on Syria that began in early 2011 failed to topple its elected president, but the subsequent years of increasingly cruel sanctions – all in the name of ‘helping the Syrian people’ – have succeeded in rendering life miserable and near impossible, with most unable to afford to properly feed their families, much less heat their homes.  

Now, in a time of crisis, the Syrian people cannot even receive donations or emergency support from abroad. One supporter set up a GoFundMe campaign, only to have it taken down due to the sanctions. Type the word “Ukraine” into the search field on PayPal or GoFundMe and you’ll see countless appeals for sending money to Ukraine. But for Syrians, Western platforms like these are off-limits, and have been for years.

Adding to the destruction left by war

On February 6, southern Türkiye and northern Syria were hit by a 7.8-magnitude earthquake, followed by dozens of aftershocks and then another earthquake. While the neighboring countries of Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Iraq and others were affected, the worst of the damage was in Türkiye and Syria.

As of February 9, the official death toll in Syria was 1,347, with more than 2,300 injured. Nearly 300,000 Syrians have been displaced due to the earthquakes. The scenes initially coming out of Türkiye and Syria were heartbreaking and catastrophic, with buildings collapsing in front of people, and piles of rubble with the dead and the maimed trapped below.

In Syria, the earthquakes added to already extensive damage from the war. Aleppo, the country’s second-largest city, was tragically prone to building collapses because of the terrorist occupation that had lasted until 2016. The militants had frequently tunneled under buildings, in many cases in order to lay explosives and destroy them, as they did with the Chamber of Industry in April 2014. With the Syrian population already struggling to just survive prior to the earthquakes, now Aleppo and the coastal regions of Syria affected by the earthquakes face even more death, injury and displacement.

Sanctions were already killing Syrians

Even without the earthquakes, Syrians struggled to get medication, hospitals struggled to get or maintain critical machinery and equipment, and the population as a whole suffocated as the country’s economy steadily worsened, all by design.

Western leaders are adamant that the only ones to blame for the Syrians’ suffering before the earthquake were President Bashar Assad and his government (or “regime,” as Washington calls any undesirable foreign government it hasn’t yet toppled), whose “dictatorship” caused the people to rise up and start a civil war (actually a US-led proxy war against Syria to overthrow said government). The sanctions, ostensibly aimed at the “regime,” are, by this logic, intended to helpand protect the general population. In reality, they are strangling Syrian civilians.

Here’s what life is like for many Syrians now, according to British journalist Vanessa Beeley: “The US and its proxy Kurdish separatist forces are occupying Syrian resources in the northeast which includes their oil, which means of course that the bulk of Syria is reliant upon Iranian oil to keep any kind of electricity running. At the moment, we have basically about two or three hours of electricity per day. There is no heating in the majority of homes across Syria.”

As Beeley notes, earthquake-displaced Syrians – unless they receive emergency aid – face freezing and wet conditions, “without any alternative shelter, without any electricity, without any heating.” And thanks to the sanctions, desperately needed humanitarian aid and fundraising is difficult. International cargo planes can’t land in Syria, and crowdfunding services and even credit cards are unavailable. The virtue-signaling Western nations – the main cause of suffering in Syria since 2011 – have not only persisted in keeping the sanctions in place; most of them haven’t offered any meaningful help since the earthquake, just hollow words.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry blamed the sanctions for amplifying the miserable situation, and likewise pointed out that the US’ illegal presence in Syria and theft of Syrian resources was also exacerbating the economic situation.

“Frequent [US] military strikes and harsh economic sanctions have caused huge civilian casualties and taken away the means to subsistence of the Syrians. As we speak, the US troops continue to occupy Syria’s principal oil-producing regions. They have plundered more than 80% of Syria’s oil production and smuggled and burned Syria’s grain stock. All this has made Syria’s humanitarian crisis even worse.” 

A friend in need is a neighbor on the sanctions list

All of the above has left Syrians to rely mostly on the country’s friends for help. Incidentally, many of those nations and groups are among the most vilified by the West.

Following the earthquake, Russia’s Ministry of Defense dispatched “over 300 personnel, and 60 military and special vehicles” for rescue and aid efforts in Syria. The Russian Emergencies Ministry sent more than 100 rescue workers to Türkiye and Syria, including an airmobile hospital with 40 medics.

Iran sent a plane with 45 tons of medical, food and sanitary aid to Syria, and has pledged to send more.

Even battered Libya, itself largely destroyed by another Western regime-change project, sent a plane with 40 tons of medical and humanitarian aid, as well as an ambulance, to Aleppo International Airport.

Hezbollah, the Lebanese resistance movement, sent convoys of humanitarian aid to Syria. Lebanon’s army said it would send members of its Engineering Regiment to Syria, to contribute to the search and rescue operations.

Not everyone who offered their help to Syria are on Western sanctions list, of course. Algeria sent 115 tons of aid of food and medical supplies, tents and blankets, as well as 86 specialized civil protection personnel. The United Arab Emirates will apparently send $50 million to Syria for relief efforts, and Indian, Emirati and Jordanian planes carrying humanitarian and medical aid for Syrian victims arrived in the capital on Wednesday. Even New Zealand pledged to contribute NZ$500,000 “for the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) to meet humanitarian needs.”

“Criminal @nytimes admits that West sanctions are preventing aid supply to #Syria, then changes to blame #Syria for #US inhumanity.”
[source: https://t.me/VanessaBeeley/12565 ]

Meanwhile, Western corporate media stuck to the narrative of blaming the Assad government, with a New York Times article on the issue apparently saying initially that Western sanctions had hampered relief efforts to Syria – before quickly changing the line to say the government “tightly controls what aid it allows into opposition-held areas.” This is in-keeping with the old trope that the Syrian government denies aid to civilians in areas occupied by terrorists, which in most Western media are dubbed “rebels” and “opposition fighters.” This is something I and other journalists on the ground have repeatedly debunked, visiting liberated areas and hearing time and again that locals had been starving because terrorists had been hoarding humanitarian aid, denying it to civilians or selling it at massively inflated prices.

Western aid is not for everyone

On Thursday, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned about a looming “secondary disaster” in Syria, pointing to “major disruptions” to basic life supplies, but failing to highlight the role of Western sanctions or the terrorist presence in northwestern Syria as the underlying causes. Reports on UN aid reaching northern Syria via Türkiye also downplayed the presence of Al-Qaeda terrorists in the areas mentioned, as well as Türkiye’s years-long support for Syrian anti-government forces. Such reports likewise neglected to mention the need for emergency relief in government-controlled areas of Syria, and the government’s efforts to bring that relief in.

Some 12 years into the West’s proxy war on Syria, the continued denial of the very basics of emergency humanitarian relief to Syrians outside “rebel-controlled” areas, shows how little the West’s claim to care for Syrians really matter. The lack of concern by the UN, WHO, and affiliated aid agencies for the Syrians of Aleppo, among other government-controlled areas, is not at all surprising, given these bodies over the years systematically downplayed terrorism against Syrian civilians.

As the humanitarian disaster continues, it is also worth remembering that, over the decades, Syria has taken in refugees from numerous countries. Yet, in spite of the current emergency situation and the very dire need to lift the West’s sanctions, it is unlikely the “benevolent” West will change its crippling anti-Syria policies to allow Syrians to merely survive.

RELATED LINKS:

UN official challenges punitive unilateral sanctions suffocating Syrians

Western leaders, screw your ‘Sanctions Target the Regime’ blather: Sanctions KILL PEOPLE

US sanctions are part of a multi-front war on Syria, and its long-suffering civilians are the main target

The Next Stage in Western Escalation

January 27, 2023

Source

by Batiushka

Introduction: The Story So Far

So far the US has carried out regime changes and created military conflicts in countries friendly to or important to Russia: Iraq, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq (again), Georgia, Syria, Libya. All this was to make Russia lose important interests or deploy its own forces. It has also staged PR events such as Litvinenko, Pussy Riot, MH17, Skripals, Navalny, Bucha, the destruction of Nordstream – in order to try and blame Russia and make it into a pariah state.

In particular, in 2014 in the Ukraine it carried out a $5 billion coup with the murder of and terror against Russian-speakers. It then installed a puppet government, promoted Nazism through racist indoctrination, besmirched the historic legacy through rewriting history and toppling memorials, terrorised and banned all opposition, set up US military biolabs, supplied and trained an army, made military threats against Russia, threatened the Crimea, and promised that the Ukraine could soon join the US-puppet NATO and install nuclear weapons.

A Message from Boris: Deaths and Sackings

When Boris Johnson turned up in Kiev a few days ago, you knew events would follow. He is after all the office boy for Biden. So last week came the resignation of Zelensky’s spinmaster, Alexey Arestovich, for telling the truth about the Ukrainian military – that it had killed civilians by destroying an apartment block in Dnepro in a military accident and could not win the war. The next day the interior minister Monastyrsky, a longtime aide of Zelensky, and his first deputy died in a helicopter crash in Kiev a week ago (‘caused by flying low in fog’). Strange, since the neo-Nazi militias operate through his ministry.

Then there was the murder of Denis Kireev, who was an important participant in the March peace talks with Russia. It is rumoured that he was too keen on peace – which the US and the UK are totally opposed to. He had to go, so the CIA/SBU (same thing) did the job. Next came a major purge on 24 January following corruption claims, involved a deputy prosecutor general, the deputy head of the president’s office, the deputy defence minister and five regional governors.

Interestingly, Poroshenko, last seen in a luxury hotel in London, living off his now very active cremation business in the Ukraine, promised peace with Russia in one week. Once in power he did not bring peace and lost the next election. He was replaced by Zelensky, who also promised a peace settlement with Russia in the Donbass, but instead prepared war and even sought nuclear weapons. The Ukrainian people are promised peace, but are not given it. Zelensky’s support base is small and there is a majority that wants peace. Is Zelensky the next to be purged?

Escalation: Germany Declares War on Russia Again

Germany is going to send Leopard tanks to the Kiev regime. For the third time since 1914 Germany is now, on paper at least, at war with Russia. The Russians have a choice: they can intervene in the Ukraine from the north-west (Belarus) and the south-west (the sea) and cut off the whole of the Ukraine from all its arms supplies, including several dozen German, American, British and other tanks – and it will take months for the promised tanks to arrive across the Polish border. Or else Russia can bomb anything that comes across the Polish border. It has already warned that anything coming across that border into the Ukraine will be destroyed. Thus, in any case, a barrier will be created. Western Europe must be cut off, for it has become the source of the evil, providing weapons to Neo-Nazis.

Otherwise, the Poles and their reservists too may intervene (in their Leopard tanks? Remember Tiger tanks?) to take over the west of the Ukraine. Is Russia really going to allow the division of the Ukraine into the Russian East and the Polish-led Western West, in other words, its Koreanisation or Vietnamisation? (And we know how those divisions ended). Otherwise, the Anti-Russia of the Ukraine will remain forever. Western Europe must be cut off. What began as a small operation to liberate the two Russian provinces of the Donbass, is now, as a result of Western (= US-led) escalation, an operation to liberate the whole of the Ukraine. Only total Russian victory can work. Only establishing a Russian-led Kiev Protectorate, like the situation in Belarus, can work. All those who disagree with that and have not yet fled for the West had better leave now.

Interestingly, we know that the Russian Black Sea Fleet with its landing craft left port last week. On 25 January Dmitry Medvedev wrote publicly that the Ukraine would have no need of submarines, as it would soon become landlocked. The day before, the President of Belarus, Lukashenko, rejected the offer of a Non-Aggression Pact from the Ukraine (= the US on behalf of Poland). Meanwhile, the somewhat senile Biden has blurted out that the US will support the Ukraine ‘for as long as it exists’. This is not what he used to say. Then it was ‘support to victory’. The only problem here is that the US never admits failure, it never admits that it backed the wrong horse at huge expense to the US taxpayer. How will it get out of this one?

The War

In the Ukraine the NATO war has killed and maimed hundreds of thousands in just the last eleven months is continuing with hundreds more victims today, the same as yesterday, and the same as tomorrow. The doomsaying pessimists with their conspiracy theories of nuclear Armageddon foretell that this war will continue for years, ‘perhaps even a decade’. Others, the optimists, are thinking that the Kiev regime may collapse within weeks, or in three or four months at most, or there will be a coup in Kiev with Kiev forces either surrendering en masse or else turning around and marching on their murderous US puppet-commanders in Kiev. It does sound like wishful thinking. With yet more NATO weaponry and tanks to be destroyed, I think it will all take longer. Not years, as those happy souls, the doomsaying pessimists with their conspiracy theories of nuclear Armageddon foretell, but another 15 months. But I really hope that I am wrong and that the wishful thinkers are right and that it will all be over very soon.

As the Saker in his penetrating analysis has pointed out, if the US cannot prevent a Ukronazi/NATO defeat, it can at least make the war as costly as possible for Russia. Find another attacker. Poland will do. Promise them the five provinces in the far west of the Ukraine, Volyn, Rivne, Lviv, Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk, and the Poles will do anything you tell them to. After all, there are Poles, and most of them seem to be part of its current incredibly stupid government, who still have a messianic complex, who still dream of glory, of ‘saving Europe from the barbarian Russian hordes’, of a ‘Poland stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea’, and of becoming the most powerful country in Europe, dwarfing those nasty Germans ‘who are going to give us back trillions’. Well, there have always been fantasists. Hitler was one of them. And the American Empire has always known how to manipulate them for its own ends, whether in Argentina, Iran, Iraq, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Venezuela, the Baltics, the Ukraine or Poland.

The fact is that the American Empire knows that it cannot defeat Russia in a straightforward war, so it has always used proxies. In 2008, it took the absurd step of using Georgia. This was far too small, far too weak and irrationally nationalistic. As a Georgian told me quite seriously just a few years ago: ‘God only speaks Georgian and does not understand any other language’. I was surprised to learn that God has such limited linguistic abilities, however, there are plenty of Ukrainians who believe much the same today, not to mention Poles.

And both the Ukraine and Poland are a lot bigger than Georgia. Hence the American choice. Once they are both defeated, the US will be turning to Germany – as they almost did in Churchill’s Operation Unthinkable plan to attack the Red Army on 1 July 1945, using British, American, Polish and German forces to destroy Russia (1). Or why not use Sweden, Turkey, Japan? Why not China? Why not just overthrow Putin with the ‘masses’ of Russians who do not like him? Such today are also the fantasies of ‘the crazies in the basement’ at the Pentagon. No wonder they get on with the Polish government. And don’t forget the biggest crazy in the US basement was Polish: Zbigniew Brzezinski.

For Russians, 2022 was simply a repeat of 1812 and 1941. The Third Great Patriotic War. The West doing its barbaric thing, as usual. The fact is that, though some historians deny it, history does repeat itself, simply because human pride, arrogance and hubris repeat themselves. German tanks with their black crosses trying to destroy Russia on the Ukrainian steppes? We Russians shrug our shoulders. We have seen it all before. The Anti-Russia of the Ukraine will simply never happen. Zelensky is on drugs and so is the Ukraine, addicted to Western transfusions of blood, money, mercenaries and arms.

Afterword: Another Future

Famously, or rather infamously, the British Establishment figure who was the first NATO Secretary General boasted that the aim of NATO was ‘to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down’ (2). As for us, we wish to see a renewal of Kennedy’s ‘Alliance for Progress’, a World Alliance of Sovereign Nations, a global version of the Gaullist spirit (though not the precise words) of ‘l’Europe des Patries’ (Europe of the Nations’). We wish to see a for now geriatric Europe reattached to its historic destiny with Russia and so with Eurasia, where it is all happening. Therefore, our aim is: ‘To keep Russia in, the Americans out and the Germans up’.

Some write that Russia can only win the war in the Ukraine as long as it can help the US to save face after its defeat and then the collapse of NATO and the EU. Remember Saigon? Remember Bush and his ‘Mission Accomplished’? (The world laughed at his farce, but plenty in the US were convinced by it). Remember Kabul? The US just left them and pretended to be in denial about them. Like the British at Dunkirk in 1940, who left their French allies in the lurch, they just ran away back to their island, declaring victory, though leaving lots of their equipment behind them. The Americans can also run away, saying: ‘Forget it. They are not worthy of us’.

Self-isolation would be such a good thing. Go back to the big island of Northern America. If you want, build Trump’s long-promised wall across the south to keep those nasty Latinos out. Lick your wounds and at last start trying to deal with the massive internal problems that you already have: great poverty, racial division, mass shootings, debt, social injustices, lack of healthcare, unemployment, exploitation, an education system that deliberately makes people stupid, drugs, crime and so mass imprisonment. Leave the Europeans to sort themselves out. No more Americans are going to die for or pay for those lazy Europeans. Just don’t tell the American people that this would make those same lazy Europeans only too happy. The only problem is that the US never admits failure, it never admits that it backed the wrong horse at huge expense to the US taxpayer. How will it get out of this one?

27 January 2023

Notes:

1. https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/articles/operation-unthinkable-churchill-s-plans-to-invade-the-soviet-union/#:~:text=The%20plan%20called%20for%20a,his%20domination%20of%20East%20Europe

2. https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/declassified_137930.htm

EU politicians summoned to The Hague over illegal pushback of refugees

December 1, 2022

Source: Agencies

By Al Mayadeen English 

EU politicians are accused of conspiring with Libyan coastguards to push refugees back to Libya only to be placed in detention camps.

NGO rescuers at sea (via Twitter @CaoimheButterly)

German NGO European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) filed a formal complaint to The Hague accusing several high-ranking EU and Members of State officials of “atrocious crimes committed against migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers,” an ECCHR executive summary of a Communication to the International Criminal Court reads.

The charges specifically involve EU politicians conspiring with Libyan coastguards by intercepting refugees and preventing them from reaching Europe by sea and forcing them to return to Libya only to be placed in detention camps.

According to the summary, the illegal pushbacks took place between 2018 and 2021 but initially began in February 2017 when the Italian government struck a deal with Libya to intercept refugees at sea.

Among the suspects include EU’s former foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, the Italian Interior Minister at the time of the deal, Marco Minniti, as well as some co-conspirators, namely Matteo Salvini, the far-right leader who served as Interior Minister in 2018-2019 and his then chief of staff, and Matteo Piantedosi, who is now Interior Minister.

Former and current prime ministers of Malta are also included in the complaint, namely Malta’s current Prime Minister, Robert Abela, and his predecessor, Joseph Muscat.

The former executive director of European border agency Frontex Fabrice Leggeri is also listed.

Read more: UK coastguard failed to prevent migrant drowning disaster: Independent

According to The Guardian, Minniti said he had no idea about the complaint, adding that he will “evaluate it, like the other interior ministers from 2017 until today.”

“At the time, the agreement was signed by the Italian prime minister, [Paolo] Gentiloni, and his counterpart, [Fayez] al-Sarraj. So, from all the records, it appears that I am not the signatory,” he added.

The deal was successful at reducing 81% of migration in Italy’s southern shores during the first half of 2018 compared with the first half of 2017.

It was renewed in 2020 and again earlier in November for one year.

The renewal cost Italy a total of €13m.

“The Communication details 12 exemplary incidents of the interception of migrants and refugees at sea and their return to and detention in Libya between 2018 and 2021. The incidents present a particularly clear and detailed picture of the cooperation between European Union agencies (particularly the European Commission, EUNAVFOR MED, and Frontex) and Member States (including Italy and Malta) with Libyan actors, on both the policy and operational levels, with regard to the interception of migrants and refugees at sea for the purpose of their return to and detention in Libya,” the ECCHR summary reads. 

Christopher Hein, a professor of law and immigration policies at Luiss University in Rome, claimed that the “deal is totally in line with the policy of the EU.” 

“It is a bilateral agreement, but it is supported and co-financed by the EU,” Hein said, adding that “tens of thousands” of people had been intercepted and brought back to Libya since 2017, with 35,000 intercepted so far this year.

Read more: EU: New migrant plan approved after France-Italy spat

For years, Brussels has been struggling to agree on and implement a new policy for sharing responsibility for migrants and asylum seekers, but the row has brought the issue to the fore.

Italy’s new government under the far-right leader, Georgia Meloni, refused to allow earlier this month a Norwegian-flagged NGO ship with 234 migrants on board rescued from the Mediterranean to dock.

The Ocean Viking eventually arrived in France, where authorities reacted angrily to Rome’s stance, canceling an earlier agreement to accept 3,500 asylum seekers stranded in Italy.

The row jeopardized the EU’s stopgap interim solution, prompting Paris to convene an extraordinary meeting of interior ministers from the 27 member states on Friday.  “The Ocean Viking crisis was a bit of improvisation,” Schinas admitted, defending the new plan from his commission to better coordinate rescues and migrant and refugee arrivals.

“We have twenty specific actions, we have an important political agreement, everyone is committed to working so as not to reproduce this kind of situation.”

French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin stated that France has no reason to accept migrants relocated from Italy if Rome “does not accept the law of the sea.”

In addition, Darmanin’s Italian opposite number Matteo Piantedosi played down the Ocean Viking incident, saying the meeting was “not dealing with individual cases or operational management.” He stated that he had shaken hands with the French Minister and that there was a “convergence of positions” that would allow the ministers to resume discussions at their meeting on December 8.

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11 years on… UK gets what it was always after; Libya’s oil

29 Nov 2022

Source: Agencies

By Al Mayadeen English 

British oil giants BP and Shell are returning to the oil-rich north African country just over a decade after the UK took part in destabilizing the nation with the 2011 military intervention.

An oil and gas platform off the coast of Libya (Getty Images)

Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) agreed last month for BP to begin drilling for and producing natural gas in a major project off the north African country’s coast.

The UK corporation, whose board of directors includes former MI6 chief Sir John Sawers, controls exploration areas in Libya nearly three times the size of Wales.

For a long time, British officials have sought to profit from oil in Libya, which contains 48 billion barrels of reserves – the largest oil resources in Africa, accounting for 3% of the world total.

BP is one of the few international oil and gas companies with exploration and production permits in Libya. Muammar Gaddafi nationalized its assets in Libya shortly after seizing power in a 1969 coup that called into question the entire British position in the country and region.

Following years of tensions between the two countries, Prime Minister Tony Blair met Gaddafi in 2004 and struck the so-called “Deal in the Desert,” which included a $900 million exploration and production agreement between BP and Libya’s NOC.

Read next: UN calls for Libya ceasefire after deadly clashes

BP re-entered the country in 2007, but its operations were halted by the 2011 NATO-backed aggression on the country, resulting in ousting Gaddafi and later killing him.

BP operations resumed after the signing of a memorandum of understanding in 2018 between the NOC and Eni, the Italian oil major, to resume exploration, with Eni as the oil field operator. BP CEO Bob Dudley hailed the agreement as an important step “toward returning to our work in Libya.”

The $8 billion BP-ENI project includes two exploration areas, one onshore in the Ghadames basin and one offshore in the Sirte basin, totaling approximately 54,000 km2. The Sirte basin concession alone encompasses an area larger than Belgium.

The UK’s other oil major, Shell, is also “preparing to return as a major player” in Libya, according to its statement in a confidential document. After putting its Libyan operations on hold in 2012, the corporation is now planning to explore new oil and gas fields in several blocks.

Oil bribery

In September of last year, a third British company, Petrofac, which provides engineering services to oil operations, was awarded a $100 million contract to help develop the Erawin oil field in Libya’s deep southwest.

Petrofac was at the time under investigation for bribery by the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO). One of its executives, global head of sales David Lufkin, had already pleaded guilty in 2019 to 11 counts of bribery. 

The SFO convicted and fined Petrofac on seven counts of bribery between 2011 and 2017 in the month following the award of the Libya contract.

The company pleaded guilty to using agents to bribe officials to the tune of £32 million in order to win oil contracts in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

“A key feature of the case,” the SFO noted, “was the complex and deliberately opaque methods used by these senior executives to pay agents across borders, disguising payments through sub-contractors, creating fake contracts for fictitious services and, in some cases, passing bribes through more than one agent and one country, to disguise their actions.”

It works with BP in several countries around the world, including Iraq, Azerbaijan, and Oman, and in the North Sea.

Backed by UK government

All three British firms re-entering Libya have close ties to the British government. During some of the years when Petrofac paid bribes, the company was led by Ayman Asfari, who donated nearly £800,000 to the Conservative Party between 2009 and 2017.

David Cameron appointed Asfari, who is now a non-executive director of Petrofac, as one of his business ambassadors in 2014.

In May 2019, when Petrofac was under investigation by the SFO, UKEF provided £700m in project insurance for the design and operation of an oil refinery at Duqm in Oman, a project in which Petrofac was named as the sole UK exporter.

Read next: Libya’s largest oilfield resumes operations after 2 months of shutdown

Petrofac was one of five companies that sponsored the official reopening of the British Embassy in Tripoli in June of this year.

Ambassador Caroline Hurndall told the audience, “I am especially proud that British businesses are collaborating with Libyan companies and having a meaningful impact upon Libya’s economic development. Many of those businesses are represented here tonight.”

BP and Shell are close to Whitehall, with a long history of personnel revolving between the corporation and former senior civil servants.

Control of oil

Despite all that has befallen the north African nation, Libya was the UK’s third largest source of oil last year, after Norway and the US, supplying 7.8% of all British oil imports. Oil provides over 90% of Libya’s revenue, which makes it the country’s lifeline. 

However, the country’s NATO-backed aggression has provoked a battle for control over the oil industry which has been described as being in “disarray”, with “little clarity on who really is in control of the nation’s most valuable resource.”

UK ministers have long sought access to Libya’s oil in the international rivalry over access to the key resource. Documents obtained by the oil-focused NGO Platform in 2009 revealed that Labour ministers and senior civil servants met with Shell at least 11 times and possibly as many as 26 times in less than four years to discuss the company’s oil interests in Libya.

Read next: Libya Announces the End of Division in Oil Sector

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Algeria Declaration: Palestine is our central cause

2 Nov 2022 19:06

Source: Al Mayadeen Net

By Al Mayadeen English 

The concluding statement of the Arab Summit emphasizes supporting OPEC+’s decision to cut oil production by two million barrels a day.

The Arab Summit demanded lifting the unjust blockade on Gaza.

The Arab League Summit issued, on its second day in the Palace of Conferences in Algiers, the Algeria Declaration document.

The heads of the Arab states stressed “the centrality of the Palestinian cause and full support for the rights of the Palestinian people, including the right to freedom and self-determination and the right to return, in addition to making the compensation payments for the Palestinian refugees, in accordance with the United Nations General Assembly Resolution No. 194 of 1948.”

The Summit demanded lifting the Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip and condemning the Israeli occupation’s brutality and barbaric practices against Palestinians, including assassinations and arbitrary arrests.” The Summit also called for the release of all prisoners and detainees, especially children, women, the sick, and the elderly.

The statement emphasized the necessity of “endorsing the pursuit of the Palestinian state to obtain full membership at the United Nations and urging the countries that have not yet recognized the state of Palestine to do so, coupled with the necessity of supporting the legal Palestinian efforts and attempts to hold the Israeli occupation accountable for its war crimes.”

Moreover, the statement confirmed that the Summit supports the policy of OPEC+, which includes oil-producing countries from inside and outside the OPEC organization, in the global energy market.

Algeria confirmed that it “appreciates the balanced policy of the OPEC+ alliance in order to ensure the stability of the global energy markets and sustainability of investments in this sensitive sector as part of an economic approach that ensures protecting the interests of producing and consuming countries alike.”

On October 5, OPEC+ announced reducing oil by two million barrels a day in order to support the markets facing the risk of a decrease in demand for crude oil due to the economic crisis.

The attending states also rejected “all forms of foreign intervention in the Arab countries’ internal affairs” and expressed their insistence on the principle of finding Arab solutions to Arab problems by strengthening the role of the Arab League in preventing crises and solving them through peaceful means and working to strengthen inter-Arab relations.

The attending Arab countries expressed “full solidarity with the Libyan people and support for the efforts aimed at ending the Libyan crisis through a Libyan-Libyan solution that preserves the unity and sovereignty of Libya and safeguards its security and that of the neighboring countries.”

The statement concluded, “All the states should assume a collective leading role to contribute to the efforts made in order to reach a political solution for the Syrian crisis and address all the political, security, humanitarian, and economic repercussions, through what ensures the unity and sovereignty of Syria and realizes the ambitions of its people.”

Algerian FM Ramtane Lamamra: The success of the Algerian summit is the success of all Arabs

Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra considered on Wednesday that the success of the Algerian summit is the success of all Arabs who knew how to come together and agree after the Corona pandemic and realized the importance of unity and the sensitivity of the regional and global situation.

Lamamra said that “the attendance was significant, positive, and constructive, and everyone was eager to apply whatever can contribute to the Arab unity.”

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The real US agenda in Africa is hegemony

September 21, 2022

by Pepe Escobar, first published at The Cradle and posted with the author’s permission

Forget development. Washington’s primary interest in Africa today is keeping the Chinese and Russians out.

In a rational environment, the 77th session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) would discuss alleviating the trials and tribulations of the Global South, especially Africa.

That won’t be the case. Like a deer caught in the geopolitical headlights, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued platitudes about a gloomy “winter of global discontent,” even as the proverbial imperial doomsayers criticized the UN’s “crisis of faith” and blasted the “unprovoked war” started by Russia.

Of course the slow-motion genocide of Donbass russophone residents for eight years would never be recognized as a provocation.

Guterres spoke of Afghanistan, “where the economy is in ruins and human rights are being trampled” – but he did not dare to offer context. In Libya, “divisions continue to jeopardize the country” – once again, no context. Not to mention Iraq, where “ongoing tensions threaten ongoing stability.”

Africa has 54 nations as UN members. Any truly representative UNGA meeting should place Africa’s problems at the forefront. Once again, that’s not the case. So it is left to African leaders to offer that much-needed context outside of the UN building in New York.

As the only African member of the G20, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa recently urged the US not to “punish” the whole continent by forcing nations to demonize or sanction Russia. Washington’s introduction of legislation dubbed the Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act, he says, “will harm Africa and marginalize the continent.”

South Africa is a BRICS member – a concept that is anathema in the Beltway – and embraces a policy of non-alignment among world powers. An emerging 21st century version of the 1960s Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is strengthening across the Global South – and especially Africa – much to the revulsion of the US and its minions.

Back at the UNGA, Guterres invoked the global fertilizer crisis – again, with no context. Russian diplomacy has repeatedly stressed that Moscow is ready to export 30 million tons of grain and over 20 million tons of fertilizer by the end of 2022. What is left unsaid in the west, is that only the importation of fertilizers to the EU is “allowed,” while transit to Africa is not.

Guterres said he was trying to persuade EU leaders to lift sanctions on Russian fertilizer exports, which directly affect cargo payments and shipping insurance. Russia’s Uralchem, for instance, even offered to supply fertilizers to Africa for free.

Yet from the point of view of the US and its EU vassals, the only thing that matters is to counter Russia and China in Africa. Senegal’s President Macky Sall has remarked how this policy is leaving “a bitter taste.”

‘We forbid you to build your pipeline’

It gets worse. The largely ineffectual EU Parliament now wants to stop the construction of the 1,445 km-long East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) from Uganda to Tanzania, invoking hazy human rights violations, environmental threats, and “advising” member countries to simply drop out of the project.

Uganda is counting on more than 6 billion barrels of oil to sustain an employment boom and finally move the nation to middle-income status. It was up to Ugandan Parliament Deputy Speaker Thomas Tayebwa to offer much-needed context:

“It is imprudent to say that Uganda’s oil projects will exacerbate climate change, yet it is a fact that the EU block with only 10 percent of the world’s population is responsible for 25 percent of global emissions, and Africa with 20 percent of the world’s population is responsible for 3 percent of emissions. The EU and other western countries are historically responsible for climate change. Who then should stop or slow down the development of natural resources? Certainly not Africa or Uganda.”

The EU Parliament, moreover, is a staunch puppet of the biofuel lobby. It has refused to amend a law that would have stopped the use of food crops for fuel production, actually contributing to what the UN Food Program has described as “a global emergency of unprecedented magnitude.” No less than 350 million people are on the brink of starvation across Africa.

Instead, the G7’s notion of “helping” Africa is crystallized in the US-led Build Back Better World (B3W) – Washington’s anaemic attempt to counter Beijing’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – which focuses on “climate, health and health security, digital technology, and gender equity and equality,” according to the White House. Practical issues of infrastructure and sustainable development, which are at the heart of China’s plan, are simply ignored by the B3W.

Initially, a few “promising” projects were identified by a traveling US delegation in Senegal and Ghana. Senegalese diplomatic sources have since confirmed that these projects have nothing whatsoever to do with building infrastructure.

B3W, predictably, fizzled out. After all, the US-led project was little more than a public relations gimmick to undermine the Chinese, with negligible effect on narrowing the $40-plus trillion worth of infrastructure needed to be built across the Global South by 2035.

Have YALI, will travel

Imperial initiatives in Africa – apart from the US military’s Africa Command (AFRICOM), which amounts to raw militarization of the continent – brings us to the curious case of YALI (Young African Leaders Initiative), widely touted in the Washington-New York axis as “the most innovative” policy of the Obama years.

Launched in 2010, YALI was framed as “empowering the new generation of Africa leadership” – a euphemism for educating (or brainwashing) them the American way. The mechanism is simple: investing in and bringing hundreds of young African potential leaders to US universities for a short, six-week “training” on “business, civil leadership, entrepreneurship, and public management.” Then, four days in Washington to meet “leaders in the administration,” and a photo op with Obama.

The project was coordinated by US embassies in Africa, and targeted young men and women from sub-Saharan Africa’s 49 nations – including those under US sanctions, like Sudan, Eritrea, and Zimbabwe – proficient in English, with a “commitment” to return to Africa. Roughly 80 percent during the initial years had never been to the US, and more than 50 percent grew up outside of big cities.

Then, in a speech in 2013 in South Africa, Obama announced the establishment of the Washington Fellowship, later renamed the Mandela-Washington Fellowship (MWF).

That’s still ongoing. In 2022, MWF should be granted to 700 “outstanding young leaders from sub-Saharan Africa,” who follow “Leadership Institutes” at nearly 40 US universities, before their short stint in Washington. After which, they are ready for “long-term engagement between the United States and Africa.”

And all that for literally peanuts, as MWF was enthusiastically billed by the Democrat establishment as cost-efficient: $24,000 per fellow, paid by participant US universities as well as Coca-Cola, IBM, MasterCard Foundation, Microsoft, Intel, McKinsey, GE, and Procter & Gamble.

And that didn’t stop with MWF. USAID went a step further, and invested over $38 million – plus $10 million from the MasterCard Foundation – to set up four Regional Leadership Centers (RLCs) in South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, and Senegal. These were training, long distance and in-class, at least 3,500 ‘future leaders’ a year.

It’s no wonder the Brookings Institution was drooling over so much “cost-efficiency” when it comes to investing “in Africa’s future” and for the US to “stay competitive” in Africa. YALI certainly looks prettier than AFRICOM.

A few success stories though don’t seem to rival the steady stream of African footballers making a splash in Europe – and then reinvesting most of their profits back home. The Trump years did see a reduction of YALI’s funding – from $19 million in 2017 to roughly $5 million.

So many leaders to ‘train’

Predictably, the Joe Biden White House YALI-ed all over again with a vengeance. Take this US press attache in Nigeria neatly outlining the current emphasis on “media and information literacy,” badly needed to tackle the “spreading of disinformation” including “in the months leading up to the national presidential election.”

So the US, under YALI, “trained 1,000 young Nigerians to recognize the signs of online and media misinformation and disinformation.” And now the follow-up is “Train the Trainer” workshops, “teaching 40 journalists, content creators, and activists (half of whom will be women) from Yobe, Borno, Adamawa, Zamfara, and Katsina how to identify, investigate, and report misinformation.” Facebook, being ordered by the FBI to censor “inconvenient,” potentially election-altering facts, is not part of the curriculum.

YALI is the soft, Instagrammed face of AFRICOM. The US has participated in the overthrow of several African governments over the past two decades, with troops trained under secrecy-obsessed AFRICOM. There has been no serious Pentagon audit on the weaponizing of AFRICOM’s local “partners.” For all we know – as in Syria and Libya – the US military could be arming even more terrorists.

And predictably, it’s all bipartisan. Rabid neo-con and former Trump national security adviser John Bolton, in December 2018, at the Heritage Foundation, made it crystal clear: the US in Africa has nothing to do with supporting democracy and sustainable development. It’s all about countering Russia and China.

When it learned that Beijing was considering building a naval base in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, the Biden White House sent power envoys to the capital Malabo to convince the government to cease and desist. To no avail.

In contrast, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was received like a superstar in his recent extensive tour of Africa, where it’s widely perceived that global food prices and the fertilizer drama are a direct consequence of western sanctions on Russia. Uganda leader Yoweri Museveni went straight to the point when he said, “How can we be against somebody who has never harmed us?”

On 13-15 December, the White House plans a major US-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington to discuss mostly food security and climate change – alongside the perennial lectures on democracy and human rights. Most leaders won’t be exactly impressed with this new showing of “the United States’ enduring commitment to Africa.” Well, there’s always YALI. So many young leaders to indoctrinate, so little time.

Goodbye, Trafalgar Square: Celebrating Freedom in Europe

August 16, 2022

Source

A Look Forward to 2035 by Batiushka

England

Following the 2034 collapse of Britain and the popular overthrow of its millennial Establishment after nearly two decades of political turmoil, England moves ahead. Last week international arrest warrants were issued by the new People’s Government for the detention of the elderly war criminals Blair (Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq), Cameron (Libya, Syria and the Yemen) and Johnson (the Ukraine), who are all believed to be in hiding, cowering from justice somewhere in Florida, where they are now being hunted down.

As regards internal changes to the English Capital, just today the following changes have been announced by the People’s Government in London, the Capital of England, part of its programme of ‘Re-Englanding England’, also known as ‘Debritainisation’.

England Square

Today, exactly two hundred years after ‘Trafalgar Square’ in London was given the name of an Arabic-named Cape in Spain, the Square is to be renamed ‘England Square’. The statue of Nelson on its column is to be replaced by a statue of the effective founder of England, King Alfred the Great, known as ‘England’s Darling’, ‘The Truthteller’ and ‘The Lawgiver’. It will then be known as ‘Alfred’s Column’. A spokesman for the People’s Government said that it in no way wished to denigrate Nelson, whose tactical genius and personal bravery are undoubted, but Demilitarisation is an inherent part of Debritainisation. The statue will be removed to the English Museum, formerly called ‘The British Museum’. This has plenty of empty space, since so many of its artefacts, looted from around the world by British imperialists mainly since the eighteenth-century, have been returned to their countries of origin.

At the same time the four lions around the base of Alfred’s Column will also be sent to the English Museum as part of the policy of Demilitarisation, that is, as part of the policy of the removal of aggressive symbols of imperialist militarism. They will be replaced by four female figures, personifying Motherhood, Peace, Justice and Freedom. The four plinths for statues on England Square, at present occupied by three statues (the fourth plinth is empty) of the German King George IV and the imperialist militarists, Napier and Havelock, are also to be sent to the English Museum. They will be replaced by statues of literary and social geniuses of English history, known as ‘The Four Williams’: William Langland (1332-1386), William Shakespeare (1564-1616), William Blake (1757-1827) and William Cobbett (1763-1835).

As readers may know, Langland wrote a visionary English-language poem and allegory called ‘Piers Plowman’, in which he denounced the corruption of the medieval Catholic Church and praised the simple faith of the people. As for Shakespeare, he was the most brilliant poet of the English language and a very perceptive psychologist, who described in detail the good and bad in human nature and their motivations. Blake was the visionary poet and artist who opposed the appalling exploitation of his age and wrote the new English National Anthem, ‘Jerusalem’, in which he denounced the ‘dark, satanic mills’ of the so-called ‘Industrial Revolution’, that is, of the mass exploitation of industrial workers. Cobbett was a politician who struggled for social justice and wrote against the collectivisation, or privatisation, that is, just plain theft, of the common land in England, euphemistically called the ‘Enclosures’. He constantly campaigned against corruption and poverty and in favour of rural prosperity and freedom.

As for the busts of the three imperialist Admirals, Jellicoe, Beatty and Cunningham, in England Square, they are also to be sent to the English Museum and be replaced by busts of three well-known poets: a soldier (Wilfred Owen), a merchant sailor (John Masefield) and an airman, John Gillespie Magee (author of ‘High Flight’). They are in memory of the sacrifices of ordinary men, ‘the lions led by donkeys’, in the imperialist wars of the British past. The statue of Charles I on the south side of England Square, usurped and then beheaded by a clique of grasping merchants, will be retained. However, the statues in front of the National Gallery, of the Scottish King James II and of the slave-owning colonist George Washington, will be sent to the English Museum and be replaced by statues of the two Patronal Saints of England, St George and St Edmund.

The Square of the Peoples

Meanwhile, there will also be changes to the statues outside ‘Parliament’, renamed ‘The House of the People’ since the abolition of the House of Lords, to that in the Guildhall, and to the twelve statues in Parliament Square, now renamed ‘The Square of the Peoples’. Outside the House of the People, the statue of Cromwell is to be replaced by a statue of an Irish peasant, at least 200,000 (10% of the population) of whom the brutal thug Cromwell had massacred. In the Guildhall the statue of Thatcher is to be replaced by the statue of a Yorkshire coal-miner. Both old statues are to be taken to the English Museum to protect them from vandalism.

In The Square of the Peoples, nine of the present twelve statues are also to be removed. These are, in anti-clockwise order: the statue of Churchill, replaced by that of an English child orphaned by bombing in the Second World War; that of David Lloyd George by an injured World War One Welsh soldier; that of the South African Prime Minister Smuts by a Boer woman from a British concentration camp during the Boer War; that of the British Imperialist Prime Minister Palmerston by that of a Russian peasant-soldier from the British invasion of Russia (the so-called ‘Crimean War’); that of the British Imperialist Prime Minister Smith-Stanley (the Earl of Derby) by that of a Chinese woman suffering in the so-called, British-caused ‘Opium War’ (Genocide of China); that of the British Imperialist Prime Minister Disraeli by that of a Bulgarian peasant-woman, oppressed by the Ottomans whom Disraeli immorally supported; that of the British Imperialist Prime Minister Peel by that of a starving Irishwoman from the Irish Potato Famine; that of the British Imperialist Prime Minister Canning by that of a Scottish crofter, removed by force from his land which was stolen from him in the so-called ‘Highland Clearances’; that of Lincoln by that of a Tasmanian Aborigene, representing the treatment of North, Central and South American Natives, Australian Aborigenes, genocided Tasmanians and Maori, all as a result of British ‘colonisation’ (land-theft). The statues of Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and Millicent Fawcett will remain as symbols of the striving for freedom of Africans, Indians and of women, who were freed from Victorian oppression and the deprivation of rights.

Europe

The new English People’s Government, elected by over 85% of the electorate according to the new proportional democracy, is keen to depose the old tyrants and celebrate the victims of tyranny. It has come to our knowledge that parallel events are about to occur not only in newly-reunited Ireland and newly-independent Scotland and Wales, but also in the newly-freed countries of the former EU. This follows last month’s sacking of the EU headquarters in the Berlaymont building in Brussels. Everywhere in Western Europe the flags of freedom are beginning to flutter defiantly.

In Paris the Arc de Triomphe in Paris is to be renamed ‘L’Arc du Peuple’ (‘The People’s Arch’) and Napoleon’s bloody battles are to be removed from it. Rome, Brussels, Vienna, Berlin, Madrid, Lisbon – all are reviewing names of streets, statues and monuments. As for the English Government, it has already joined the new Confederation of Free European Nations (CFEN), a loose structure which will meet in various European Capitals. It was originally suggested by the paternal Russian government and has been formed to replace the old centralised EU and its unelected bureaucrats and tyrants.

15 August 2035

Breaking News:

It has just been announced that Antony Blair has been captured by the Free American Police after being found hiding in a hole in the ground near a farmhouse outside Miami. Blair was shown in a photograph with a full beard and hair longer than in his familiar appearance. He was described by police officials as being in good health despite his 82 years. The details of his double trial, which is to take place in Belgrade and then in Baghdad, have not yet been determined. The local police call their prisoner ‘Vic’, which stands for ‘Very Important Criminal’. Officials said that Blair whined to them after his arrest: ‘I am innocent, I did not do anything, I was only following orders from the White House’.

Why is Amnesty apologising for telling the truth about Ukrainian war crimes?

16 August 2022

JONATHAN COOK

Allowing only one side to be criticised for its crimes – reinforcing the loaded western political narrative of good guys versus bad guys – is likely to fuel war rather than resolve it

Middle East Eye – 16 August 2022

Should a human rights organisation apologise for publishing important evidence of war crimes and human rights abuses?

If it does apologise, what does that suggest about its commitment to dispassionately uncovering the truth about the actions of both parties to war? And equally, what message does it send to those who claim to be “distressed” by the publication of such evidence?

Those are questions Amnesty International should have pondered far more carefully than it obviously did before issuing an apology last week over its latest report on the war in Ukraine.

In that report, Amnesty accused Ukrainian forces of committing war crimes by stationing troops and artillery in or near schools, hospitals and residential buildings, thereby using civilians effectively as human shields. Such practices by Ukrainian soldiers were identified in 19 different towns and villages.

These incidents did not just theoretically endanger civilians. There is evidence, according to Amnesty, that return fire by Russian troops on these Ukrainian positions led to non-combatants being killed.

The Israeli army regularly accuses Palestinian factions like Hamas of hiding among civilians in Gaza, while obscuring its own, long-documented practice of using Palestinians as human shields.

But whatever the truth of Israel’s claims, unlike the tiny and massively overcrowded Gaza, which offers few or no hiding places outside of built-up areas for Palestinian fighters to resist Israeli aggression, Amnesty concluded of the situation in Ukraine: “Viable alternatives were available that would not endanger civilians – such as military bases or densely wooded areas nearby, or other structures further away from residential areas.”

In other words, it was a choice made by the Ukrainian army to put its own civilians in harm’s way.

Mounting pressure

Notably, this is the first time a major western human rights organisation has publicly scrutinised the behaviour of Ukraine’s soldiers. Until now, these watchdog bodies have focused exclusively on reports of crimes committed by Russian forces – a position entirely in line with the priorities of their own governments. By its own admission, Amnesty has published dozens of reports condemning Russia.

The pushback against the latest report was relentless, coming even from Amnesty’s own Ukrainian team. Oksana Pokalchuk, its head, quit, explaining that her team “did everything they could to prevent this material from being published”.

Under mounting pressure, Amnesty made a statement last week in which it said it “deeply regrets the distress and anger” caused by its report, while at the same time stating: “We fully stand by our findings.”

The idea that only one side has been committing war crimes in Ukraine was always implausible. In wars, all sides commit crimes. It is in the nature of wars.

Faulty lines of communication mean orders are misunderstood or only partially relayed to those on the front lines. Inevitably, soldiers prioritise their own lives over those of the enemy, including civilians. Terrorising the other side – through human rights violations – can be an effective way to avoid combat, by sending a warning to enemy soldiers to desert their posts and civilians to flee. Sadists and psychopaths, meanwhile, find themselves with plenty of opportunities to exploit during the fighting.

But conversely, parties to wars invariably struggle to acknowledge their own abuses. They prefer simple-minded, self-serving narratives of good and evil: our soldiers are heroes, morally spotless, while their soldiers are barbarians, indifferent to the value of human life.

Western governments and establishment media outlets have readily peddled this foolish line in Ukraine, too, even though neither Europe nor the United States are supposed to be directly involved in the war. They have reflexively amplified Ukrainian claims of Russian war crimes, even when the evidence is lacking or the picture murky, and they have resolutely ignored any evidence of Ukrainian crimes, such as evidence that Russian prisoners of war have been executed or that Ukraine has been using petal cluster bombs in civilian areas.

More self-censorship

In such circumstances, only the human rights community is in a position to provide a more faithful picture of how events are unfolding, and hold to account both sides for their crimes. But until Amnesty stepped out of line, western human rights groups had moved in lockstep with western governments, the same governments that appear to want endless war in Ukraine, to “weaken Russia”, rather than a quick resolution.

Even the author of Amnesty’s new report, Donatella Rovera, has conceded: “I think the level of self-censorship on this issue [Ukrainian war crimes] has been pretty extraordinary.”

Amnesty should not be apologising for providing a rare window on such crimes. It should be emphasising the importance of monitoring both sides for serious breaches of international law. And for very good reason.

Amnesty’s apology sends a message to those partisans trying to shut down scrutiny of Ukrainian crimes of just how easy it is to put the human rights community on the defensive. Efforts to deter reporting of a similar nature in the future will intensify.

Ukraine’s foreign affairs minister, Dmytro Kuleba, was among those who lost no time vilifying Amnesty by characterising its report as “Russian disinformation”.

Amnesty’s apology suggests such pressure campaigns have an effect and will lead to increased self-censorship – in a situation where the evidence already indicates that there is a great deal of self-censorship, as Rovera pointed out.

The apology betrays the civilians who have been, and will be, used as human shields – putting them in lethal danger – over the coming months and potentially years of fighting. It means Ukrainian forces will feel even less pressure to rein in behaviour that amounts to a war crime. 

Amnesty would never apologise to Russian partisans offended by a report on Russian war crimes. Its current apology indicates to the victims of Ukrainian human rights abuses that they are less worthy than the victims of Russian abuses.

Flooding the battlefield

Turning a blind eye to Ukrainian crimes also lifts the pressure on western governments. They have been recklessly channelling arms worth many billions of dollars to Ukraine, even though they have little idea where most end up. (In a further worrying sign of self-censorship in the west, CBS recently postponed the broadcast of an investigation suggesting as little as a third of western weapons reach their intended destination in Ukraine.)

That is all the more dangerous because, even before Russia’s invasion in late February, Ukrainian forces – including the neo-Nazi elements now glossed over in western narratives – were engaged in a vicious civil war with ethnic Russian communities in Ukraine’s east. That region, the Donbas, is where Moscow has been focusing its military advances.

Human rights violations by Ukrainians against other Ukrainians were regularly committed during the eight-year civil war, as western monitors documented at the time. Such crimes are almost certainly continuing under cover of the war against Russia, but with the aid now of western arms shipments.

Ignoring abuses by Ukrainian forces gives them a free hand to commit crimes not only against Russian soldiers but also against the large number of Ukrainians who are not seen as loyal to Kyiv.

A failure to closely scrutinise how and where western artillery is being used is almost certain to result in more, not less, of the kind of Ukrainian crimes Amnesty has just highlighted.

Western governments, and publics, need to be confronted with the likely consequences of flooding the battlefield with weapons before they prefer such a policy over pursuing diplomatic solutions.

Ultimately, allowing one side only to be criticised for its crimes – reinforcing the simple-minded narrative of good guys versus bad guys – is likely to fuel the war rather than resolve it.

War-mongering

Amnesty’s conduct over this latest report is not exceptional. It is part of a pattern of behaviour by a western human rights community vulnerable to political and financial pressures that detract from its ostensible mission. 

As the near-exclusive focus on Russian crimes in Ukraine illustrates, international humanitarian law is all too often interpreted through the prism of western political priorities.

There has long been a revolving door between the staff of prominent human rights groups and the US government. And pressure from elite donors – who are invested in these dominant narratives – doubtless plays a part, too.

Anyone departing from the narrow political consensus imposed by western political and media elites is defamed as spreading Russian “disinformation”, or for being apologists for dictators like Syria’s Bashar al-Assad or Libya’s late ruler Muammar Gaddafi. Criticisms of Israel, meanwhile, are demonised as proof of antisemitism. 

Certainly, Russian, Syrian and Libyan leaders have committed war crimes. But the focus on their crimes is all too often an excuse to avoid addressing western war crimes, and thereby enable agendas that advance the interests of the West’s war industries.

I experienced this first hand during the month-long conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in the summer of 2006. Israel accused Hezbollah of using its own population as “human shields” – framed by the Norwegian politician and United Nations official Jan Egeland as “cowardly blending” – an allegation lapped up by the western media.

Whatever the truth of that claim, it presented a very one-sided picture of what took place during that summer’s fighting. Though no one was allowed to mention it at the time because of Israel’s strict military censorship laws, it was common knowledge among Israel’s minority of Palestinian citizens that many of their own communities in northern Israel were being used as locations for Israeli tanks and artillery to fire into Lebanon.

The Israeli army had forcibly recruited these third-class citizens as human shields, just as the Ukrainian army is now accused by Amnesty of doing to civilians.

I saw for myself a number of the locations where Israel had installed batteries in or next to the minority’s communities. There were later Israeli court cases that confirmed this widespread practice; Palestinian politicians in Israel raised the matter in the Israeli parliament; and a local human rights group later issued a report documenting examples of these war crimes.

But these revelations never gained any traction with either the western media or human rights groups. Western publics were left with an entirely false impression: that Hezbollah alone had endangered its own civilians, even though Israel had undoubtedly done the same or worse.

The reality could not be acknowledged because it conflicted with western political priorities that treat Israel as a valued ally with a moral army and Hezbollah as a depraved, bloodthirsty terrorist organisation.

Saints and sinners

Human rights groups reporting on the 2006 Lebanon war actively echoed these self-serving western narratives that unfairly differentiated between Hezbollah and Israel, as I highlighted at the time.

I found myself in a very public row with Human Rights Watch over comments made by one of its researchers to the New York Times claiming that Hezbollah had intentionally targeted Israeli civilians whereas Israel had avoided targeting Lebanese civilians.

First, it completely failed to fit the known facts of the war. Israel’s strikes on Lebanon had caused a disproportionately large number of civilian deaths, despite the use of precision weapons. Hezbollah, using far more primitive rockets, meanwhile, had killed mostly soldiers, not civilians. 

But more problematic still, HRW had ascribed intentions to each side – good and bad – when it could not possibly know what those intentions were. As I wrote at the time of its researcher’s comments:

Was he or another HRW researcher sitting in one of the military bunkers in northern Israel when army planners pressed the button to unleash the missiles from their spy drones? Was he sitting alongside the air force pilots as they circled over Lebanon dropping their US-made bombs or tens of thousands of ‘cluster munitions’, tiny land mines that are now sprinkled over a vast area of south Lebanon? Did he have intimate conversations with the Israeli chiefs of staff about their war strategy? Of course not. He has no more idea than you or I what Israel’s military planners and its politicians decided was necessary to achieve their war goals.

HRW’s comments made sense only in a political context: that the group faced enormous pressure from US politicians and funders to focus on Hezbollah’s crimes. It also faced a damaging vilification campaign led by Israel lobbyists who wished to shield Israel from scrutiny. They accused the group’s senior staff of antisemitism and spreading a blood libel.

It looked very much like HRW caved into that pressure, just as Amnesty is now effectively doing in apologising for upsetting Ukrainian partisans and those emotionally invested in the one-sided narrative they hear constantly from their politicians and media.

Neither Amnesty nor Human Rights Watch responded to a request for comment. 

The reality is that western publics need more, not less, scrutiny of the crimes committed in wars, if only to tear the facade off narratives designed to paint a picture of saints and sinners – narratives that dehumanise official enemies and fuel more war.

The minimum needed to achieve that is an independent, fearless, vigorous human rights community, not an apologetic one. 

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The west’s Plan B: Secure the realm

Having failed in preserving the unipolar order, the west will resort to Plan B – reviving a bipolar world based on the ‘civilized’ west and the ‘barbarian’ rest.

June 27 2022

Photo Credit: The Cradle

By Fadi Lama

Plan A: Global Hegemony

By the late 1990s, it was clear that a China-led Asia would be the dominant economic, technological and military power of the 21st century.

The late Polish-American diplomat and political scientist Zbigniew Brzezinski spelled out in 1997 that the way to control Asian growth, and China’s in particular, was to control global energy reserves.

The attacks on 11 September 2001 provided the “catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor” to set military intervention plans in motion. As noted by US General Wesley Clark, “in addition to Afghanistan, we’re going to take out 7 countries in 5 years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.”

Energy reserves of these countries – in addition to those already controlled by the west – would result in western control over 60 percent of global gas reserves and 70 percent of global oil reserves.

However, the west’s direct military intervention wars failed, and subsequent proxy wars using assorted Al Qaeda-affiliated Islamists failed as well.

Rise of the ‘RIC’

In the two decades since Brzezinski laid out his strategy and the west immersed itself in failed wars, the Eurasian sovereignist core of Russia, Iran, and China (RIC) were heavily focused on national development in all arenas, including the economic, technological and military fields, and physical and social infrastructure development.

By 2018, it was clear that plans for western control of global energy reserves had failed and that the RIC had overtaken the west in many, if not most, of the aforementioned sectors.

As a result, the RIC were able to project power, protecting sovereign nations from western interventionism in West AsiaCentral AsiaSouth America and Africa. In Iran’s case this also involved a direct military response against US forces, following the assassination of the late General Qassem Soleimani. Making matters worse, the gap between the west and the RIC is widening, with little chance for the former to catch up.

The impossibility of sustaining western global hegemony had become evident amid continuous erosion of western power and global influence, which coincide with a commensurate expansion of RIC global influence, both of which necessitated an alternative strategy: a Plan B, as it were.

Plan B: Securing the realm

In view of the irreversible widening of this gap, and the growing global influence of the RIC, the only feasible strategy for the west would be to ‘terminate the competition’ by splitting the world into two regions, one in which the west has ironclad control, where western “rules” reign, and is divorced from the RIC-influenced region.

The current geostrategy of the west is the imposition of an Iron Curtain with the inclusion of as many resource rich nations as possible. Only by realizing the west’s actual geostrategic objective is it possible to understand the reason behind its apparently self-defeating actions, specifically:

  • Imposition of draconian sanctions on Russia that hurt the west far more than Russia.
  • Increasing tensions with China and Iran whilst engaged in a proxy war with Russia.

While the world is fixated on the conflict in Ukraine, the geostrategic objective of the west is being steadily advanced.

Sanctions: the catalyst of crises and coercion

The widely accepted explanation is that the west imposed draconian sanctions with the expectation that it would turn the ruble into “rubble,” create a run on banks, crash the Russian economy, weaken President Vladimir Putin’s grip on power, and pave the way for a more amenable president to replace him.

None of these expectations materialized. On the contrary, the ruble strengthened against the dollar and the euro, and the Russian economy is faring better than most western economies, which are witnessing record inflation and recessionary indicators. To add insult to injury, Putin’s popularity has soared while those of his western counterparts are hitting record lows.

The west’s after-the-fact explanation that sanctions, and their repercussions, were not well thought out, do not hold water.

Often overlooked though, has been the devastating impact of these sanctions on the Global South. US economist Michael Hudson argues that the Ukraine war is merely a catalyst to impose sanctions that would result in global food and energy crises – allowing the US to coerce the Global South to be “with us or against us.”

Indeed the impact of these crises are compounded by the earlier detrimental impact of Covid lockdowns. Food, energy and economic crises are further exasperated by the US Federal Reserve raising interest rates which directly impact the debt servicing ability of Global South countries, placing them on the edge of bankruptcy and at the mercy of the western-controlled World Bank and International Monetary Fund — the instruments for effectively locking these nations within the western realm.

Thus, despite the very negative impact of sanctions on western countries, these nevertheless fit perfectly with the strategic objective of locking in as many Global South countries within the western sphere of influence.

Tensions with China and Iran:

Driving a wedge between Eurasian powers has been an axiom of western geostrategy, as expressed eloquently by Brzezinski: “The three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are:

  • to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals,
  • to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and
  • to keep the barbarians from coming together.”

In this regard, raising tensions with Beijing and Tehran, while the west is involved in a proxy war with Russia, appears contradictory.

However it starts to make more rational sense when contextualizing the strategy as one aiming to establish an “Iron Curtain” that separates the world into two: one is the western Realm, and the other is Brzezinski’s ‘Barbaria,’ at the core of which are the RIC.

Two worlds

The western realm will continue on its path of neoliberalism. Yet due to significantly smaller populations and resources under its control, it will be significantly impoverished compared to present, necessitating imposition of police states for which Covid-19 lockdowns provide a glimpse into the socio-political future of these states.

Global South countries under the western realm will continue down a path of increased poverty, requiring management by dictatorial governments. Political turbulence is expected as a result of deteriorating socioeconomic conditions.

‘Barbaria,’ as reflected in the very diverse political and economic models of the RIC, will have a variety of development models, reflecting the civilizational diversity within this realm and the mutually beneficial cooperation which currently exists between the RICs, and between the RIC and others.

What about the Global South?

Facing the perfect storm of food, energy, inflation and debt servicing crises, many Global South countries will be in a very weak position and may be readily coerced into joining the western realm. This will be facilitated by the fact that their economic, and consequently, political elites, have their interests aligned with the western financial construct – and will thus wholeheartedly embrace joining the west.

The inability of west to provide effective solutions to these crises, coupled with their colonial past, will make joining Barbaria more attractive. This can be further influenced by the RIC providing support during this crisis period.

Russia has already offered to assist in the provision of food to Afghanistan and African countries, while Iran notably provided gasoline to Venezuela during its fuel crisis. Meanwhile, China has a successful track record of infrastructure development in Global South countries and is spearheading the world’s most ambitious connectivity project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

As Russian economist and Minister of Integration for the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) Sergey Glazyev already hinted when describing the emerging alternative global financial network: “Countries of the Global South can be full participants of the new system regardless of their accumulated debts in dollars, euro, pound, and yen. Even if they were to default on their obligations in those currencies, this would have no bearing on their credit rating in the new financial system.”

How many Global South nations can the western realm realistically expect to hold onto when Barbaria offers a clean slate, with zero debt?

Where does this leave West Asia?

The Axis of Resistance will be further aligned with Barbaria; however, political elites in Iraq and Lebanon favor the western realm. Thus, a politically turbulent period is expected in such countries. Due to the inability of west to offer economic solutions, coupled with the clout of local Resistance parties in these countries, the end game for Iraq and Lebanon is ultimately to join Barbaria, along with the de-facto government of Yemen.

Oil sheikhdoms of the Gulf are creations of the west and therefore belong in the western realm. However due to events of the past two decades, this may not necessarily be where they all line up.  The west’s debacles in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen have convinced the sheikhdoms that the west has lost its military edge, and is no longer able to offer long term protection.

Furthermore, unlike the west, Barbaria has a track record of not directly meddling in the internal affairs of nations, a factor of significance for the sheikhdoms. Recent diplomatic tensions with the west have been evidenced by Saudi and UAE leaders rejecting the oil production demands of the US administration – an unprecedented development. If offered convincing protection by Barbaria, oil sheikhdoms may decide to join it.

End of an Era

Retrenchment of the west marks the end of a long era of western expansionism and oppression. Some date this era back six centuries to the start of European colonization in the fifteenth century. Others date it even further back to the Great Schism and the subsequent Crusades.

The latter are supported by a statement attributed to British Field Marshal Edmund Allenby on entering Jerusalem in 1917:  “only now have the crusades ended,” and the fact that church bells chimed worldwide in celebration of the occupation of Jerusalem.

During this era, hundreds of millions all over the globe were massacred, civilizations were wiped out, billions suffered and still suffer. To state that we are living in epochal times is a gross understatement.

Naturally the end of such an era cannot happen peacefully; the wars of the past 30 years are witness to this.

The regression of western initiated wars from direct military intervention (Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq) to wars by proxy (Syria, Iraq, Ukraine) augurs well, as it reflects the realization by the west that it is no match militarily to the RIC. Had there been any lingering doubts, the war in Ukraine has put them to rest. Thus it can be concluded that the worst is over.

Internal instability in some Global South countries will exist in the near future; a consequence of the struggle between diverging interests of populations and neoliberal ruling elites. Decline and impoverishment of the west vs. the rise of RIC will favour the resolving these struggles in favour of the peoples and alignment with RIC.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

The Third Patriotic War

May 07, 2022

Source

A St George’s Day Contribution by Batiushka

Introduction: War

I am not a technical-military man, but I have very strong military connections and a keen interest in military history, both Russian and Western, and also in geopolitics, having lectured on it. I lived in Soviet Russia in the 1970s, experienced its weaknesses, its strengths and also its hollowness, understanding that it would eventually fall, for even then nobody believed in Communism any more. All continued by inertia. Collapse was inevitable. I also know contemporary Russia, the Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltics and Moldova very well. In fact, I was in Kiev only last October, being shown the SBU/CIA Secret Police building in the centre and being told to hush my voice as we walked past. No-one wanted to visit the torture-chambers in the basement.

The special operation to free the Russian Donbass from Fascist oppression which began on 24 February 2022 meant a war between the Russian Federation and the Kiev regime, which under Western pressure would refuse to back down. This would inevitably mean a war between Russia and NATO, even if the actual battleground would still be limited to the Ukraine. I firmly believe that the Russian government knew all this and foresaw the consequences, that the West would intervene with all the economic, political, military and technological might of the US/NATO military complex. This knowledge was why the Donbass had had to wait for liberation for eight long and grim years. Russia had had to get ready for the inevitable very carefully.

The Preparation

Let us recall how Soviet Russia fell through treason, ending up dissolving itself on 25 December 1991. In October 1993, 4,000 US Marines (I know one of them) were flown to a base outside Moscow. This was just in case the popular rising against ‘democracy’ and the drunkard Western puppet and traitor Yeltsin went Russia’s way and against the neocons and their privatisers’ ‘shock therapy’. The repression of the October bid for freedom left 5,000 Russian dead. The US support had been there, though it did not have to be used, as there were enough Russian traitors to do the dirty deed themselves.

Russian weakness and internal treachery was why the Russian government betrayed Serbia in the 1990s and Libya in 2011 – it was far too weak to stand up to the West. After the Crimea democratically returned to Russia after 60 years (1954-2014) with the internationally-observed referendum in 2014, the West still applied illegal sanctions to Russia. Then Moscow knew that any action to free the Ukraine from the Western junta in Kiev would have to be prepared very carefully, for the sanctions would only be multiplied. What preparations had to be made?

Firstly, there was the diplomatic and trade front. Allies had to be brought onside, in Eurasia with China, Iran, India, Turkey (Russia rescuing Erdogan from the US assassination attempt at the last moment in July 2016), Hungary, then, from Venezuela to Brazil, Latin America and then, from Egypt to South Africa, Africa. As regards the Western world, especially the EU, there was a chance to present the Russian point of view through RT, as at that time Western censorship was not yet total.

Secondly, there was the modernisation of the Russian Armed Forces to be undertaken, with new, non-nuclear weapons, hypersonic missiles, drones, electronic technology, some of which would be tested out in Syria.

Thirdly, there was the policy of import substitution to be implemented in order to make Russia independent in case of further illegal Western sanctions.

Why Did It Start on 24 February 2022?

There were four triggers which sparked off the special operation on 24 February.

Firstly, the Zelensky regime wanted the Ukraine to become a NATO member. The weak post-Communist Russian Federation had already made that mistake many times, allowing Eastern Europe, notably the Baltics, Poland and Romania, to join that aggressive protection racket. In that way the post-War buffer states of Eastern Europe, providing a demilitarised zone for Russia, ended. After all, if you have been invaded from the West very regularly for 800 years, leaving 27 million of your citizens dead in the most recent invasion, would you not also want a demilitarised buffer zone to protect you? Post-War offensive NATO was the only reason why the defensive Warsaw Pact had to be set up.

Secondly, with missiles on American bases in Poland and Romania and NATO troops smugly parading at the Estonian border with Russia, the Ukraine then threatened to obtain nuclear arms. Did Zelensky, reading his American script as a true actor, really expect Russia not to react to this?

Thirdly, the US, not without the help of its local pronconsul, the cocaine-addled Hunter Biden, had set up some thirty biolabs in the Ukraine. Their target? To find genetically-concocted viruses to infect Russians. Would Russia not defend itself?

Fourthly, though possibly this may not have been discovered by Russia until a day or two after the special operation began, though possibly they knew perfectly well beforehand, the NATO-manipulated, instructed and armed Kiev Army had a plan to invade the Russian Donbass and genocide its people. Had they succeeded, it is doubtful they would have stopped at the Russian border. Truss, the supremely stupid British Foreign Secretary, let slip that NATO already had Russian Rostov and Voronezh in its sights.

After eight years of attempts to negotiate, which Russia used to buy time to prepare for the War in case of Western idiocy, it was only because there was no alternative that it sent in some troops in an initially limited military operation.

A Fight for Survival

This is now a war of attrition. Russia has to destroy all Western/NATO arms and troops that get into the Ukraine from Poland or elsewhere as soon as possible, quicker than they can be sent. And this must go on until the West caves in, because so much Western war material will have been destroyed at huge financial loss to itself.

Russia is also relying on the self-imposed economic problems that the West faces. The West, and not just the EU, is already suffering economically. There could easily be popular uprisings as a result of inflation and the incredible cost of energy. This will hit very hard next autumn and winter. And the embargos on Russian grain and fertilisers have not hit yet. Wait till food costs go up by 100% in Western countries, instead of just going up by 10% as now: then you will have rioting in the streets and looting of supermarkets. As for the Ukrainian currency, it is worthless, propped up by the IMF run by the US, which in 2014 stole the $15 billion of Ukrainian gold reserves in expectation. Otherwise, the Ukraine would long ago have defaulted.

The stakes are huge for all. China stands behind Russia because Russia is like a shield for it. If Russia falls, then China is next and it knows that, which is why it supports Russia. The White Peril will next head towards China, making the British-imposed mass suicide of the so-called ‘Opium Wars’ look like a picnic. There will be no taking back of Taiwan in the near future, instead there will be Harvard economists and merchant bankers taking power and grasping billions in Beijing, as in Russia after 1991. And then, amid civil wars, millions and millions of Chinese will take the path of suicide, exactly as happened in 1990s Russia. Make no mistake, this is a battle for survival of the world’s seven billion against the one billion.

This is why today Russia remains firm, with 80% of the population behind President Putin, unlike in the Western world where it is rare to find a leader who has more than 30% of support. Why? It is simple: President Putin loves his country, he is a patriot: Western leaders are not patriots, they are venal mercenaries, no more so than the US puppet governments in Eastern Europe. The only Russians against President Putin are the traitors, recruited by the CIA, and there are still quite a few in Moscow and elsewhere, but we will not here name names.

True, many of the fifth column of traitors in Moscow have already left or are leaving, Tel Aviv being a popular destination for them. For Russia this is not some localised conflict on its borders, as it still appears to most Western people, lulled into delusions by their Goebbels propaganda ministries (‘media’). For Russia this is just as much a fight for survival as World War Two. This is the Third Great Patriotic War. Let me explain.

For those who do not know, the 1812 invasion of Russia by Napoleon and his multinational barbarian hordes is known as the First Patriotic War. The 1941 invasion by Hitler and his multinational barbarian hordes is known as the Second Patriotic War. It is our view that just as the 1941-1945 defensive War was called the Second Patriotic War, the 2022- ? defensive War will be known as the Third Patriotic War. Warsaw and Bucharest, Berlin and Paris, pay attention.

When Did It All Begin?

When did it all begin? Actually, it was not on 24 February 2022. Some, grudgingly, will admit that it was the US-run regime change of 2014 with its $5 billion price-tag for the hapless US taxpayer. Grudgingly, some might admit that it goes back even further to November 1989, the Fall of the Wall. Some might suggest two generations before that, in September 1939, when Stalin took the poison-chalice of the western Ukraine, Galicia, from Poland and had to fight a CIA-supplied war there against Fascist partisans until 1958.

Some might suggest exactly 100 years ago in 1922, when the brain-syphilitic Lenin transferred from Russia the southern and eastern half of the present Ukraine to the Ukraine, as he wanted the pro-Communist industrial proletariat of the south and east to counterbalance the real Ukrainian agricultural north and west. But we could also go back to 1914, the invasion of the Russian Empire by Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey. This is exactly 100 years before the 2014 US-orchestrated colour-revolution in Kiev, with its Lithuanian snipers on the roof of the American Embassy in Kiev murdering Ukrainian policemen and then the US blaming ‘repression’ on the democratically-elected pro-Russian government.

Conclusion: A Fight to the End

Russia must win this War against NATO. However, the last thing Russia wants is a nuclear war, however much some fools in the West talk that up. And however tempting as targets the 1,000 or so US bases around the world may be, Russia certainly does not want the war to spread outside the current Ukrainian territory. If Russia does not win, the Russian Federation will be humiliated and dismantled and become just another group of colonies for Western asset-strippers and slavers. Then the British dream for its 1917 coup d’etat, turned into a nightmare because the stupid dream permitted Bolshevism to come to power, will become real.

After that, China will fall next and then the rest of the still free, if for the moment impoverished and exploited, world will fall just like dominos into neo-colonial Western hands. And that will be the end of the world under a US Global Dictatorship, euphemistically known as ‘the Unipolar World’. We are not ready for that. We prefer to fight. As President Putin has said, a world without Russia is not one we wish to live in. As we have said before, this is our ONLY chance to work towards a Union of Sovereign (NOT Soviet) Social (NOT Socialist) Republics and an Alliance of countries which favour Prosperity and Justice, not Poverty and Injustice.

Russian Orthodox St George’s Day 2022

Hegemon USA’s History of War Crimes

April 7, 2022

Russia’s Sputnik News reported examples of US war crimes post-WW II.

My own examples follow below. First Sputnik’s:

The July 1950 No Gun Ri massacre occurred one month after Truman’s war of aggression on nonbelligerent, nonthreatening North Korea.

Covered up for nearly half a century, what happened took the lives of around 300 men, women and children.

From December 1968 – May 1969, US forces indiscriminately massacred thousands of North Vietnamese civilians in so-called “free-fire zones” during Operation Speedy Express — to cause maximum numbers of casualties.

In February 1991 near end of Operation Desert Storm in Iraq, civilians and fleeing combatants were massacred along the so-called Highway of Death.

In May 1999 near Korisa, Kosovo, US terror-bombing massacred civilian refugees — ones who unsuccessfully sought shelter out of harm’s way.

In the second battle of Fallujah in November 2004 — during the Second Persian Gulf War — US and UK forces terror-bombed Iraqis with banned weapons, including white phosphorous, incendiary bombs, and radiological weapons.

Thousands were massacred in cold blood, largely civilians.

In October 2015, US forces terror-bombed a Kunduz, Afghanistan hospital on the phony pretext of targeting Taliban fighters.

Dozens were killed, dozens more injured.

During the siege of Mosul, Iraq in 2017, an estimated 40,000 Iraqi civilians were massacred on the phony pretext of combating US created and supported ISIS jihadists. 

Similar mass slaughter occurred in the same year against Raqqa, Syria civilians.

US genocides began by mass-exterminating countless millions of Native America to expand the nation from sea-to-shinning sea — by stealing their land, livelihoods and lives.

In his book titled, “A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present,” Ward Churchill explained that the nation’s indigenous population was reduced to at most 3% of its original numbers before it all began — by butchery and other forms of brutality.

During the infamous Middle Passage transatlantic slave trade — the African holocaust — millions perished en route in extreme discomfort.

Around 100 million human beings arriving in America were sold like cattle.

Describing the centuries-long horror, historian Howard Zinn said the following:

US slavery was “the most cruel form in history.”

It reflected a “frenzy for limitless profit that comes from capitalistic agriculture; the reduction of the slave to less than human status by the use of racial hatred, with that relentless clarity based on color, where white was master, black was slave.”

Post-WW II US genocides occurred against North Koreans, Southeast Asians, Central and Latin Americans, Africans, other Asians, Yugoslavs, Afghans, Yemenis, Iraqis, Libyans, Syrians and others.

With no end of it in prospect, unparalleled genocide has been ongoing by kill shots throughout the West and elsewhere since December 2020 — the human toll unknown because of coverup and denial.

If continues longterm, billions may perish out of sight and mind — unwanted people that US/Western dark forces want exterminated to more greatly empower and enrich the privileged few at their expense.

During America’s dirty 1898 – 1902 Spanish-American War against Spain to cede control of the Philippines, hundreds of thousands of Filipinos were brutally slaughtered.

US cutthroat killer general Jacob Smith ordered his troops to:

“Kill and burn.”

“This is no time to take prisoners.”

“The more you kill and burn, the better.” 

“Kill all above the age of ten.”

Then “turn (the country into) a howling wilderness.”

Few people anywhere suffered longer, more horrifically with anguish than Haitians for over 500 years and still counting.

They endured genocidal oppression, slavery, despotism, colonization, reparations, embargoes, sanctions, deep poverty, starvation, untreated diseases, unrepayable debt, and natural calamities unprotected.

Along with strategic bombing to destroy an adversary’s economic and military might, US terror bombings targeted civilians to break their morale, cause panic, weaken an invented enemy’s will to fight, along with inflicting mass casualties and punishment.

Geneva and other international laws prohibit it. 

The Laws of War: Laws and Customs of War on Land (1907 Hague IV Convention’s Article 25 states:

“The attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or building which are undefended is prohibited.”

Fourth Geneva protects civilians in time of war.

It prohibits violence of any kind against them and requires treatment for the sick and wounded. 

The 1945 Nuremberg Principles forbid “crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity.” 

These include “inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war,” including indiscriminate killing and “wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.”

In virtually all US wars of aggression against invented enemies, the above and similar war crimes occur with disturbing regularity.

During the firebombing of Dresden, Germany in February 1945 — when what Russia calls its Great Patriotic War was virtually won — the US and UK gratuitously incinerated around 100,000 city residents.

The morally indefensible high crime was repeated against Tokyo the same month in similar fashion after virtual surrender by imperial Japan was rejected by Franklin Roosevelt. surrendered and accepted defeat.

In August 1945, Harry Truman gratuitously destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki by nuclear immolation.

When WW II was virtually over, hundreds of thousands were killed.

To this day, future generations were scarred with birth defects and other serious health issues. 

During the post-WW II period, countless millions more were massacred during US imperial wars — accountability for the highest of high crimes never forthcoming.

Genocidal wars were waged against nonbelligerent North Korea, North Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and worldwide against unwanted people.

US use of chemical, biological, radiological and other banned weapons is well-documented throughout US history.

From smallpox infected blankets against Native Americans to chlorine gas during the US Civil War to today’s chemical, biological, radiological and other banned weapons, anything goes has been official US policy throughout its history.

Deadly dioxin-containing Agent Orange and nerve gas were used by US forces in Southeast Asia.

So were other terror weapons in all US wars of aggression.

It’s not a pretty picture. 

The self-styled indispensable state’s history is pockmarked with virtually every type crime imaginable at home and worldwide.

They’ve gone on by endless wars of choice against Native Americans to the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli to the present day at home and abroad worldwide — with no end of them in prospect.

Sitrep UNGA: Russia suspended from 47 member Human Rights Council in Geneva

April 07, 2022

The US-proposed resolution received 93 votes, with 24 countries opposed and 58 abstaining.

The only other country ever to be expelled from the UN Human Rights Council was Libya, in 2011, as NATO bombed the North African country to help militants overthrow the government of Muammar Gaddafi.

From Korea to Libya: On the Future of Ukraine and NATO’s Neverending Wars

April 6, 2022

Ukraine needs peace and security, not perpetual war that is designed to serve the strategic interests of certain countries or military alliances.

By Ramzy BAROUD

Much has been said and written about media bias and double standards in the West’s response to the Russia-Ukraine war, when compared with other wars and military conflicts across the world, especially in the Middle East and the Global South. Less obvious is how such hypocrisy is a reflection of a much larger phenomenon which governs the West’s relationship to war and conflict zones.

Like every NATO-led war since the inception of the alliance in 1949, these wars resulted in widespread devastation and tragic death tolls.

On March 19, Iraq commemorated the 19th anniversary of the US invasion which killed, according to modest estimates, over a million Iraqis. The consequences of that war were equally devastating as it destabilized the entire Middle East region, leading to various civil and proxy wars. The Arab world is reeling under that horrific experience to this day.

Also, on March 19, the eleventh anniversary of the NATO war on Libya was commemorated and followed, five days later, by the 23rd anniversary of the NATO war on Yugoslavia. Like every NATO-led war since the inception of the alliance in 1949, these wars resulted in widespread devastation and tragic death tolls.

None of these wars, starting with the NATO intervention in the Korean Peninsula in 1950, have stabilized any of the warring regions. Iraq is still as vulnerable to terrorism and outside military interventions and, in many ways, remains an occupied country. Libya is divided among various warring camps, and a return to civil war remains a real possibility.

Yet, enthusiasm for war remains high, as if over seventy years of failed military interventions have not taught us any meaningful lessons. Daily, news headlines tell us that the US, the UK, Canada, Germany, Spain or some other western power have decided to ship a new kind of ‘lethal weapons‘ to Ukraine. Billions of dollars have already been allocated by Western countries to contribute to the war in Ukraine.

In contrast, very little has been done to offer platforms for diplomatic, non-violent solutions. A handful of countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia have offered mediation or insisted on a diplomatic solution to the war, arguing, as China’s foreign ministry reiterated on March 18, that “all sides need to jointly support Russia and Ukraine in having dialogue and negotiation that will produce results and lead to peace.”

Though the violation of the sovereignty of any country is illegal under international law, and is a stark violation of the United Nations Charter, this does not mean that the only solution to violence is counter-violence. This cannot be truer in the case of Russia and Ukraine, as a state of civil war has existed in Eastern Ukraine for eight years, harvesting thousands of lives and depriving whole communities from any sense of peace or security. NATO’s weapons cannot possibly address the root causes of this communal struggle. On the contrary, they can only fuel it further.

If more weapons were the answer, the conflict would have been resolved years ago. According to the BBC, the US has already allocated $2.7bn to Ukraine over the last eight years, long before the current war. This massive arsenal included “anti-tank and anti-armor weapons … US-made sniper (rifles), ammunition and accessories.”

The speed with which additional military aid has poured into Ukraine following the Russian military operations on February 24 is unprecedented in modern history. This raises not only political or legal questions, but moral questions as well – the eagerness to fund war and the lack of enthusiasm to help countries rebuild.

After 21 years of US war and invasion of Afghanistan, resulting in a humanitarian and refugee crisis, Kabul is now largely left on its own. Last September, the UN refugee agency warned that “a major humanitarian crisis is looming in Afghanistan”, yet nothing has been done to address this ‘looming’ crisis, which has greatly worsened since then.

The amassing of NATO weapons in Ukraine, as was the case of Libya, will likely backfire. In Libya, NATO’s weapons fueled the country’s decade long civil war.

Afghani refugees are rarely welcomed in Europe. The same is true for refugees coming from Iraq, Syria, Libya, Mali and other conflicts that directly or indirectly involved NATO. This hypocrisy is accentuated when we consider international initiatives that aim to support war refugees, or rebuild the economies of war-torn nations.

Compare the lack of enthusiasm in supporting war-torn nations with the West’s unparalleled euphoria in providing weapons to Ukraine. Sadly, it will not be long before the millions of Ukrainian refugees who have left their country in recent weeks become a burden on Europe, thus subjected to the same kind of mainstream criticism and far-right attacks.

While it is true that the West’s attitude towards Ukraine is different from its attitude towards victims of western interventions, one has to be careful before supposing that the ‘privileged’ Ukrainains will ultimately be better off than the victims of war throughout the Middle East. As the war drags on, Ukraine will continue to suffer, either the direct impact of the war or the collective trauma that will surely follow. The amassing of NATO weapons in Ukraine, as was the case of Libya, will likely backfire. In Libya, NATO’s weapons fueled the country’s decade long civil war.

Ukraine needs peace and security, not perpetual war that is designed to serve the strategic interests of certain countries or military alliances. Though military invasions must be wholly rejected, whether in Iraq or Ukraine, turning Ukraine into another convenient zone of perpetual geopolitical struggle between NATO and Russia is not the answer.

commondreams.org

The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation.

Tags:

InterventionismIraqNATOUkraineWar

Testing the waters: Could Turkey’s Russian relations sink over Ukraine?

Neither friend nor foe, Turkey and Russia have backed opposing sides in several regional conflicts, yet managed to avoid direct confrontation. Now the Ukraine crisis poses a serious challenge.

March 22 2022

Caught between NATO and Russia over Ukraine, Turkey is forced to walk a thin line to avoid confrontation with either side.Photo Credit: The Cradle

By Yeghia Tashjian

The war in Ukraine has become the latest test for Turkey’s regional ambitions in confronting those of Russia, in what has clearly become a “cooperative rivalry.” This is where both sides, despite their opposite views on various regional conflicts ranging from Libya to Syria to the South Caucasus, have worked to manage these conflicts without directly challenging one another.

The current crisis has raised Turkey’s concerns of being in the firing line of Russia’s hegemonic ambitions. It is important to note that Turkey and Russia are not allies, but bitter ‘frenemies.’ Despite having robust commercial, energy, diplomatic and military ties, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned back in 2016 that NATO has to act and increase its presence in the Black Sea.

Over the past two decades, Russia has consolidated its presence in the Black Sea region by directly controlling Georgia’s Abkhazia and South Ossetia in 2008, and annexing Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014. The Black Sea Fleet is responsible for bringing supplies to Russian forces in Syria, mostly based in the port of Tartus and Khmeimim airbase, as well as for patrolling the eastern Mediterranean. Russia’s 2015 Maritime Doctrine clearly prioritizes the Black Sea as a pillar of its power projection.

Turkey’s waning power in the Black Sea

Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea tipped the balance of military power in the Black Sea in favor of Moscow. Not only has Russia significantly increased its Exclusive Economic Zone and its Black Sea coastline, it has also cancelled existing agreements with Ukraine, which limited the latter’s Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol.

Additionally, Russia has stationed new military ships and submarines and installed a dense network of advanced weapons systems across the Crimean peninsula. From Ankara’s perspective, Turkey feels surrounded by Russian military presence from the north (Crimea), east (Armenia), and south (Syria).

In response, Erdogan initiated the construction of the Istanbul Canal to put additional pressure on Russia using the 1936 Montreux Convention whereby Turkey can close the Black Sea Straits to all warships in times of war.

Indeed, following NATO’s intensified pressure, Ankara has started exercising its right under Article 19 of the Convention, and has warned all coastal and non-coastal states that it will not allow warships through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles. The convention also limits the period of stay for warships belonging to non-Black Sea states in the Black Sea.

However, this action also exposed Turkey’s limitations by raising the questions: How will Turkey react if Russian naval warships seek passage through the Straits? Will Turkey prevent them? The answer is clear.

As a Black Sea state, Russia has the privileged right to transit the Turkish Straits to return its warships to their bases. The treaty states that during armed conflict, belligerent warships “shall not” pass through the Straits unless the ships belong to a state that borders the Black Sea and are returning to their home ports.

Once Turkey determined that Russia was “at war,” it had no choice under the treaty but to stop Russian warships from passing through the Straits. The only exception for passage is for Russian warships from other areas returning to their bases in the Black Sea.

For example, a Russian fleet registered in the Black Sea but currently located in the Mediterranean Sea is allowed to pass through the Turkish Straits and return to its base. The condition also applies to Russian fleets currently in the Black Sea that belong to a base in the Mediterranean or Baltic Sea. Russia is free to take them out of the Black Sea. This option provides Russia with enough space to maneuver its naval power and downplay Article 19 of the Montreux Convention.

Turkey is aware that blocking access of Russian warships through its Straits will be viewed in Moscow as a “declaration of war.” This is the last thing Erdogan wants, knowing full well that the economic and political consequences will be harsher than those Turkey tasted after it downed the Russian jet over Syria in 2015.

Turkey’s balancing act between Russia and Ukraine

While Turkey will not directly provoke Russia, it has increased its military cooperation with Ukraine. This includes the supply of Bayraktar TB2 drones to the Kiev government. The Russians, for their part, have shown their preparedness for Turkish drones. Despite the fact that the Bayraktar TB2 drones are still operating and useful to the Ukrainian side, the Russian Ministry of Defense almost daily announces that its forces are downing many drones, including TB2.

This military relationship has also involved Ukraine supplying Turkey with military engines intended to boost Turkey’s growing arms industry; in particular, the Bayraktar’s successor drone and T292 heavy attack helicopters that are currently under production.

For Russia, this poses a threat, as in the future it may shift the military balance of power towards Turkey and Ukraine in the Black Sea. It is for this reason that Russian forces destroyed most of the Ukrainian heavy military infrastructure (including its naval and air force) and arms industry.

As such, Erdogan will aim to continue cooperation with Russia in the region; but he is equally likely to step up engagement with NATO to improve his global standing and reduce international criticism of his domestic conduct. Erdogan knows that standing against Russia and directly confronting Moscow is very risky as – excluding the ongoing war in Ukraine – he would start a war on three fronts in the region: in Libya, Syria, and Nagorno-Karabakh.

In order to extract itself from the ongoing difficulty of placating both sides, in recent days Turkey has engaged in proactive diplomacy and mediation between Kiev and Moscow. Ankara announced that the two adversaries have made progress on their negotiations to halt the war and are “close to an agreement.” However, Ukraine’s president responded by saying that any consequential agreement with Russia would be put to a referendum. This signaled that there is no agreement in sight and Ankara’s mediating efforts are fruitless.

Turkey will not gamble with Ukraine against Russia

Dr Maxim Suchkov, a Moscow-based expert in the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) expresses concern that Turkey may view the crisis as an opportunity to re-establish itself in the Black Sea and strengthen its relations with the west. Ankara enjoys good ties with both Moscow and Kiev and seeks to balance itself, supplying arms to Ukraine, on the one hand, but also refraining from sanctioning Russia.

Suchkov argues that Turkey may indeed be useful to the Russian endgame here, but “Moscow should also be careful since President Erdogan is known for his penchant to fish in muddy waters.” Hence, even if the outcome of the conflict does not favor Erdogan’s interests, Turkey may try to wrest something out of this crisis.

For this reason, President Erdogan cannot antagonize Russia and risk full-scale war as, domestically, the implications of this battle will be heavy on the Turkish government. Already, on 22 February, six Turkish opposition parties, not including the Kurdish HDP, called on a unified platform for the revival of the parliamentary system in the country with the aim of establishing an alliance to topple Erdogan in the coming parliamentary and presidential elections in June 2023.

According to recent public surveys, the opposition coalition is polling ahead, and indeed may oust Erdogan, given the financial chaos Turkey is experiencing. The current crisis will worsen the economic and political situation of Turkey.

One sector that is especially vulnerable is tourism, as between four to seven million Russian tourists and around two million Ukrainian tourists visit Turkey each year. Moreover, western sanctions on Russia will make money transactions difficult between both countries.

Crucially, Turkey imports almost 50 percent of its gas from Russia, and with the increase in global gas prices, Turks find themselves in a difficult quandary. For these reasons, Ankara is unlikely to undertake any risky gambles and will continue to strike a balanced posture in the crisis.

Turkey still has an important role to play

Turkey has general elections scheduled for June 2023, hence any change in the leadership in Turkey would affect the current track of Russian-Turkish relations. In a post-Erdogan Turkey, Ankara is likely to move closer to the western camp due to the pro-western (pro-US) leanings of the Turkish military, entrepreneurs, technocrats, diplomats, and civil servants – regardless of their liberal or nationalistic personal views.

This could form a long-term challenge for Russia-Turkey relations, given the successful “cooperative rivalry” both sides managed to arrange in Libya, Syria, and Nagorno-Karabakh. It is worth mentioning that on 2 March, Meral Akşener, leader of the Turkish opposition İYİ Party, raised the alarm on whether there were any guarantees that Turkey’s eastern provinces would be safe from a similar kind of Russian aggression. She also called Russia a “security threat” for Turkey. This is another indication that the Turkish opposition is not on the same wavelength as Erdogan’s multi-vector foreign policy.

Moscow has never viewed Ankara as an equal partner, but as a junior partner that could help configure a regional order which benefits Russian interests and decreases western influence. However, if Russia becomes stuck in a Ukrainian quagmire, it may need Ankara to arrange a temporary settlement.

Will the Syrian and Nagorno-Karabakh scenario be repeated – in which both sides sidelined western influence and Russia accepted a Turkish role in the region? If Ukraine is divided into two zones, would Russia accept a Turkish ‘peacekeeping force’ in the western part of Ukraine? Would the Americans give Turkey the green light to enter such a game? What would Ankara gain in return? Is such a military adventure within Turkey’s capabilities?

According to Dr Mitat Çelikpala, Professor of International Relations and the Dean of Faculty of Economics, Administrative and Social Sciences at Kadir Has University, such a scenario is beyond Turkey’s financial and military capacities – and Turkey cannot act unilaterally. Hence, for now, Turkey must continue its role of mediation between both sides to avoid any spillover effect near its borders.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

Beyond the EastMed pipe dream: Can Turkey become Europe’s gas hub?

The Ukraine crisis presents a unique opportunity for Turkey to realize its long-term vision of transforming itself into a global gas transit hub. But will the US, Russia, Iran, and the EU allow it?

March 10 2022

By Daoud Baalbaki

As the Russia-Ukraine crisis intensifies and western sanctions pile up against Moscow, Europe is once more grappling with its foreign gas dependency – 50 percent of which has traditionally been supplied by the Russian Federation.

Will the Ukraine conflict position Turkey as the world’s gas transit hub, or will Ankara have to choose sides and settle for less?Photo Credit: The Cradle

While sanctions on Russian energy supplies have been considered, the potential inflationary backlash and mass shortages Europeans could face make this a dangerous gambit.

The endgame in Ukraine will likely see some seismic shifts in global energy and financial networks. One of these will take place in the Eastern Mediterranean, where in recent years, competing states have jockeyed for primacy in constructing gas pipelines to Europe.

At the moment, in the East Med contest, all eyes are on energy-poor Turkey, which has for decades tried and failed to establish itself as the energy hub connecting Asia to Europe. Recent developments, however, suggest that this situation could very well change.

Russia and Turkey

Eurasian energy giants like Russia and Iran – facing their own geopolitical standoffs with NATO, of which Turkey is a member – have their own preferential oil and gas routes mapped out, and are unlikely to place all their bets on a Turkish hub. That also appears to be the position of Ankara’s western allies, at least under the leadership of Turkey’s longtime President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Until Ukraine reared its head, the Eastern Mediterranean gas issue was the one around which alliances and policies in West Asia were rapidly shifting. In the last months, remarkable developments have taken place around Turkey’s role in this critical theater, opening the way for Ankara to assume a leadership role.

Despite the Russian-Turkish geopolitical competition across multiple regions, the two Eurasian nations have managed to cooperate across a range of areas, and significantly so in the energy sector.

For instance, despite mounting tensions between the two states along the Turkish-Syrian border and their support of opposing sides in the Syria conflict, Moscow and Ankara were able to find common ground in replacing the SouthStream pipeline with TurkStream in 2020 (which passes through Turkey before entering Bulgaria). In doing so, Russia assisted Turkey in achieving its longstanding ambition to be a transit point for gas pipelines entering Europe.

EastMed Gas Forum

At the same time, Turkey was feeling isolated from its US ally in the region, who excluded it from joining the East Mediterranean Gas Forum, or the EastMed Gas Forum (EMGF), and planned to deliver gas directly to Europe, bypassing Turkey altogether.

The EMGF, is an international organization formed by Israel, Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, Italy,  Jordan, and Palestine and is headquartered in Cairo. Established as an international body on 16 January 2020, the forum is the region’s first declared alliance in the gas sector. It is also the first case of Israel being invited to join Arab countries organizationally, with the participation of EU member states.

The alliance also received backing by the US, which along with France, joined the Forum as a member and permanent observer respectively. In December 2020, the UAE was granted observer status at the EMGF, although its membership was vetoed by Palestine last year.

With an estimated cost of $7 billion, and scheduled to be completed by 2025, the Eastern Mediterranean Pipeline Project is expected to run for some 1,900km, starting from Israel’s Levantine Basin, transiting through Cyprus to Europe, and projected to transport at least 11 billion cubic meters of gas per year.

However, the project has been hampered, if not altogether derailed, by the withdrawal of US support earlier this year due to reservations about the project’s financial feasibility.

The US instead voiced its support for the planned EuroAfrica interconnector from Egypt to Crete and the Greek mainland, and the EuroAsia interconnector, linking Israeli, Cypriot and European electricity grids.

Turkey’s opposition to the EastMed pipeline

Washington’s withdrawal was welcomed by Turkey which had perceived the alliance as a means to bypass Turkish interests in the eastern Mediterranean and isolate the country in the vital gas sector.

At the time, Ankara had reacted strongly against what its foreign ministry termed the “axis of malice,” and claimed that the maritime demarcation agreements signed by the Republic of Cyprus (ROC) with other countries were invalid. Turkey claims that Cypriot maritime activities to the west of the island may overlap with Turkey’s continental shelf. Since Turkey does not recognize the ROC, these agreements, it contends, do not represent the Turkish Cypriot population of the island.

After the collision between a Turkish and Greek warship in the disputed zone in August 2020, Turkish Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hami Aksoy said in a statement that, no matter what, Turkey will “resolutely continue to protect both her and Turkish Cypriots’ rights in the Eastern Mediterranean stemming from international law,” adding that “no alliance of malice will manage to prevent this.”

In response to the planned pipeline – which gained official status following an intergovernmental agreement signed between Israel, Greece and the ROC – Ankara hurried to sign its own deal with Libya’s then-interim Government of National Accord (GNA) based in Tripoli. Turkey and its Qatari ally supported the GNA while the UAE, Saudi Arabia, France, and Russia backed the Tobruk-based rival forces led by Khalifa Haftar.

This agreement demarcated its own version of the continental shelf zone boundaries between the two countries within the Eastern Mediterranean. Erdogan used the Ankara-Tripoli deal to draw a hard red line for his competition: “Other international actors cannot conduct exploration activities in the areas marked in the [Turkish-Libyan] memorandum. Greek Cypriots, Egypt, Greece, and Israel cannot establish a natural gas transmission line without Turkey’s consent.”

Although the Libya-Turkey maritime deal may have served its purpose in disrupting the EastMed pipeline project, it may already be in jeopardy following recent internal political developments in Libya, where the Tobruk-based House of Representatives has sworn in new Prime Minister Fathi Bashagha, replacing incumbent and embattled Turkish-ally Abdul Hamdi Dbeibeh who has refused to hand over power, except to a government elected by the people.

Turkey as a European gas hub

Natural gas is key to shaping Turkey’s role as a decisive regional power as it sits on the crossroads between natural gas suppliers in Russia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and West Asia on one hand, and the European Union, as a huge natural gas consumer, on the other. This strategic location has motivated Turkey’s ambition to become a natural gas hub, or at least the main transit country, and to promote its position on the geopolitical map.

Until the end of the last decade, Turkey did not export large enough gas quantities to fulfill its ambition of becoming a natural gas transit country. In 2007, Turkey began exporting natural gas to Greece through the Turkey-Greece Natural Gas Interconnector via Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz field. While the exported quantities have remained only between 1 percent and 2 percent of the imported gas, this figure is expected to change by the beginning of the new decade.

Established in 2018, Azerbaijan’s Shah Denis 2 gas field added 16 bcm (billion cubic meters) of natural gas yearly, with 6 bcm earmarked for Turkey via a direct pipeline, and 10 bcm destined for European consumers via the Trans Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) that runs through Turkish territory, connecting with the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP).

TAP started delivering Azerbaijani natural gas to European markets on December 31, 2020, and in September 2021 the company announced a transport milestone of 5 bcm.

The TurkStream pipeline

Another step for Turkey on the road to becoming a transit country was in January 2020, when Turkey announced the launch of the TurkStream project with Russia. As previously mentioned, TurkStream replaced the SouthStream project, which was originally intended to supply Russian gas to southern Europe via underwater Black Sea pipelines.

Following a military clash between Russia and Turkey on the Syrian border, the two sides agreed in 2016 to build the TurkStream pipeline, and interestingly, signed the agreement just one month before the Syrian government launched its successful campaign to liberate the city of Aleppo. The TurkStream project will consist of two parallel pipelines with a total capacity of 31.5 bcm per year (15.75 bcm each).

One of the pipelines is intended to fulfill Turkey’s domestic gas demand and also, incidentally, to replace the Trans-Balkan pipeline which runs from Ukraine to Turkey. This way, Russian gas would bypass Ukraine, which may prove critical in light of the current conflict there.

The other pipeline is intended to feed southeastern and central European markets via Bulgaria, Serbia, and Hungary. Russia’s majority state-owned Gazprom began gas deliveries to some markets via TurkStream in January 2020, using partially completed and existing infrastructure.

The second phase of the project TurkStream 2 (the European part) comprises new and existing infrastructure. Pipeline construction in Bulgaria and Serbia, totaling about 550 miles in length, is largely complete, while several compressor stations and a segment connecting TurkStream to Hungarian infrastructure have not yet been completed.

However, this part of the project is now under threat of US sanctions because it would deepen Europe’s reliance on Russian natural gas, and reduce Ukraine’s role as a transit state.

Will Turkey join the ‘Axis of Malice’?

Turkey’s goal now is to prevent the direct passage of large gas quantities to Europe through the Mediterranean corridor which can weaken Ankara’s position as the southern hub for European gas.

In 2013, Turkey began talks with Israel to build a pipeline from Israeli fields to Turkey, only to then watch Israel prioritize the EastMed pipeline and its alliance with Egypt, Cyprus, and Greece in the EMGC.

Following the US withdrawal from the project, Erdogan actively re-emphasized that Turkey is the only viable route for Israeli gas sales to Europe: “This cannot happen without Turkey.”

Well in advance of Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s visit to Ankara this week, Erdogan openly stated that Turkey “could use Israeli natural gas in our country, and beyond that, we could also work together to carry it to Europe,” according to Daily Sabah.

Amid the thawing of ties between Israel and Turkey, and with Herzog’s historic visit to Ankara this week, Turkey’s role as a transit point for Israeli gas has become a focal point of interest. Yesterday, Israeli sources confirmed that Erdogan did in fact propose a Israel-Turkey-Europe project during their meeting.

This development is taking place in parallel with several diplomatic shifts elsewhere in West Asia that could even trigger regional realignments. Ankara launched talks with Cairo in May, while renewed dialogue with the United Arab Emirates culminated in a reconciliation visit by Abu Dhabi’s crown prince in November. Erdogan is also expected to visit Saudi Arabia in the coming weeks.

These changes are, in part, a result of President Biden’s policy shifts in the region. Washington is trying to end rifts between its allies in order to obstruct Turkish-Russian rapprochement by sacrificing the EastMed pipeline, so to speak.

It now remains to be seen whether Ankara will join the so-called “malice alliance,” and dump its Russian TurkStream 2 project under US pressure. Equally possible is that Erdogan will seek to avoid that hard choice, try to juggle both sides, and shoot for a pre-election miracle by recasting Turkey as a global gas hub.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

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