THE US AND ISIS: IT’S COMPLICATED

APRIL 2ND, 2024

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Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.orgThe GuardianSalonThe GrayzoneJacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.

ALAN MACLEOD

While ISIS-K has claimed responsibility for the Moscow shooting, Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested that the United States might have been behind the attack.

Although he provided no evidence for his claim, it is true that ISIS and the United States government have a long and complicated relationship, with Washington using the group for its own geopolitical purposes and that former ISIS fighters are active in Ukraine, as MintPress News explores.

A BRUTAL ATTACK

On March 22, gunmen opened fire at the Crocus City Hall in Moscow, killing at least 143 people. Authorities apprehended four suspects who they claim were fleeing towards Ukraine. The attack was only one of a number planned. After receiving international tip-offs, Russian police foiled several other operations.

ISIS-K, the Islamic State’s Afghanistan and Pakistan division, immediately took responsibility for the shooting, with Western powers – especially the United States – treating the matter as an open and shut case. Vladimir Putin, however, felt differently, implying that Ukraine or even the United States might have been somehow involved. “We know who carried out the attack. But we are interested in knowing who ordered the attack,” he said, adding: “The question immediately arises: who benefits from this?”

Moscow has long accused Ukrainian intelligence services of recruiting ISIS fighters to join forces against their common enemy. Far-right paramilitary group Right Sektor is believed to have trained and absorbed a number of ex-ISIS soldiers from the Caucuses region, and Ukrainian militias have been seen sporting ISIS patches. However, there are no clear and official links between the Ukrainian government and ISIS, and the suspects – all Tajiks – have no publicly known connections to Ukraine.

This is not the first time that ISIS has targeted Russia. In 2015, the group took responsibility for the attack on Metrojet Flight 9268, which killed 224 people. It was also reportedly behind the January 2024 attacks on Iran that killed more than 100 people, commemorating the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian general responsible for crushing ISIS as a force in Iraq and Syria.

GIVING BIRTH TO A MONSTER

A host of U.S. adversaries have claimed that ISIS enjoys an extremely close working relationship with the U.S. government, sometimes acting as a virtual cat’s-paw of Washington. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, for instance, has accused the U.S. of ferrying ISIS fighters around the Middle East, from battle zone to battle zone. Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai stated that he considers ISIS to be a “tool” of the United States, saying:

I do not differentiate at all between ISIS and America.”

And just this week, the Syrian Foreign Ministry demanded:

the U.S. should end its illegitimate presence on Syrian territory, and end its open support and fund for Daesh [ISIS] and other terrorist organizations.”

It was in Syria that the goals of ISIS and the United States most closely aligned. In 2015, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (D.I.A.), lamented that ISIS arose out of a “willful decision” by the U.S. government. A declassified D.I.A. report says as much, noting that the “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria” were ISIS and Al-Qaeda. “There is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria,” the report noted excitedly, adding that “[T]his is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition [i.e., the U.S. and its allies] want.”

Throughout the 2010s, images of ISIS’ brutality consistently went viral and led to news bulletins around the world, providing the United States with a convenient enemy to justify keeping its troops in Iraq and Syria. And yet, throughout the decade, the U.S. and its allies were also using ISIS to weaken the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. As then-Vice President Joe Biden said, Turkey, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia were:

 [S]o determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tonnes of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad.”

This included ISIS, Biden said. He later apologized for his remarks after they went viral. Nevertheless, the U.S. also supported a wide range of radical groups against Assad. Operation Timber Sycamore was the most extensive and most expensive C.I.A. project in the agency’s history. Costing more than $1 billion, the agency attempted to raise, train, equip and pay for a standing army of rebels to overthrow the government.

It is now widely acknowledged that large numbers of those trained by the C.I.A. were radical extremists. As National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in an email published by WikiLeaks:

AQ [Al-Qaeda] is on our side in Syria.”

Clinton herself was well aware of the situation in Syria, noting that Qatar and Saudi Arabia were:

providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL [ISIS] and other radical Sunni groups in the region.”

While ISIS regularly attacked a wide range of enemies in the Middle East, it actually apologized to Israel in 2017 after its fighters mistakenly launched a mortar attack on the IDF in the occupied Golan Heights region of Syria.

That same year, the United States launched a significant attack on ISIS-K in Afghanistan, dropping the GBU-43/B MOAB bomb on a network of tunnels in Nangarhar Province. The bomb was the largest non-nuclear strike ever recorded and reportedly killed at least 96 ISIS operatives. Yet ISIS did not appear particularly interested in striking back at the U.S. Instead, it waited until the American departure from Afghanistan to launch a series of devastating attacks on the new Taliban government. This included a bombing at Kabul International Airport, killing more than 180 people, and the Kunduz Mosque Bombing two months later. The Taliban accused ISIS of carrying out a U.S.-ordered campaign of destabilization.

GLOBAL TERROR NETWORK

While the precise relationship between ISIS and the United States will surely never be known, what is clear is that, for decades, Washington has armed and trained terrorist groups around the world. In Libya, the U.S. joined forces with jihadist militias to topple the secular leader Muammar Gaddafi. Not only was Libya transformed from North Africa’s most prosperous country into a political and economic basket case, but the fighting unleashed a wave of destabilization across the entire region – something which continues to this day.

In Nicaragua, the U.S. sponsored far-right death squads in an attempt to overthrow the leftist Sandinistas. Those forces killed and tortured vast numbers of men, women and children; U.S.-trained groups are thought to have killed around 2% of the Nicaraguan population. The Reagan administration justified their intervention in Nicaragua by stating that the country represented a “mounting danger in Central America that threatens the security of the United States.” Oxfam retorted that the real “threat” Nicaragua posed was that it was a “good example” for other nations to follow.

Meanwhile, in Colombia, successive administrations helped to arm and train conservative paramilitary forces that prosecuted a brutal war against not only leftist guerilla forces but the civilian population as a whole. The extraordinary violence led to the internal displacement of more than 7.4 million Colombians.

Donald Trump once quipped that Barack Obama was “the founder of ISIS.” While this is not true, there is no doubt that the United States did indeed nurture the group, watching it expand into the force it is today. It has, at the very least, turned a blind eye to its operations and abetted it in its attack against their common enemies. In this sense, at least, with every ISIS attack, there is some blood on Washington’s hands.

Feature photo | A US-backed anti-government fighter mans a heavy machine gun next to a US soldier in al Tanf. Hammurabi’s Justice News | AP | Modification: MintPress News

Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.orgThe GuardianSalonThe GrayzoneJacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.

‘Not 1 more cent’: Americans are done with funding Ukraine’s paychecks

30 Sep 2023

Illustration of American President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posing in a political rally for the 2024 US presidential elections (illustrated by: Arwa Makki, Al Mayadeen English)

By Rachel Hamdoun & Hussein Assaf

Source: Al Mayadeen English + Agencies

This is not a drill. This is real-time. The US government is shutting down at midnight. The Democrats want to throw more dollars into defense funding, and the Republicans are putting their fist down. The Democrats’ “main squeeze”, Ukraine, has become the Republicans’ main problem. 

The world’s largest economy, for now, is in no shape to withstand unlimited spending like it did when Washington had near-complete dominance over the trajectory of global events, thus being able to forecast and exploit the outcomes of geopolitical conflicts.

Today, things have changed, for both the government and the American population.

In recent years, the “patriotic” sentiment among the American public witnessed a clear decline to a level unseen during all of their country’s previous wars – just take a look at recruitment numbers – for several reasons, but most importantly, US citizens, to a large extent, no longer believe that their government’s foreign wars are fundamentally related to protecting the country and its position as the world’s “number one exporter of democracy.”

Down the hill

This is not a drill. This is real-time. The US government is shutting down at midnight. The Democrats want to throw more dollars into defense funding and Ukraine aid, while the Republicans are putting their fist down. The Democrats’ “main squeeze,” Ukraine, has become the Republicans’ main problem.

Earlier this month, the US national debt surpassed $33 trillion for the first time in American history, and just in the first week following this milestone event, $100 billion was added to these numbers. These figures indicate that every man, woman, and child in the country is in over $100,000 debt, most of which they had no control over. The latest data show that debt continues to go up by over $14 billion per day.

Funding the government in a stopgap funding bill to last till November until a solution is agreed on is what’s keeping the government from functioning, literally, and that means government workers in parks, public services, and even airport traffic controllers and Border Patrol agents will be required to work without pay – or may stop working at all. 

The stopgap funding bill is proposed by the Democrats to include around $6 billion for Ukraine, but the obstacle in the road is that the Republicans, led by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, want to pass the bill without any funds to Ukraine.

As Senator Rand Paul said on Thursday over X: “To avoid a government shutdown, I will consent to an expedited vote on a clean CR without Ukraine aid on it. If leadership insists on funding another country’s government at the expense of our own government, all blame rests with their intransigence”. 

Love me, feed me, never leave me (for Ukraine instead)

As the United States nears to start its new fiscal year on October 1, Congress is yet to pass the $826 billion 2024 Defense Department spending budget.

In the likely case that a government shutdown takes place, some 171,000 service members stationed overseas, along with tens of thousands serving in the US, will not get paid during that period.

Meanwhile, according to CBS News, the US is currently supplying the paychecks for over 57,000 Ukrainians claiming to be servicemen, such as firefighters and medics.

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Thus, not only Biden’s administration is supplying billions worth of weapons for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to spend with no insight on how or where, but now they’re being the allowance-givers to Ukrainians when the average American is currently searching for a lifeline just to pay rent and buy food. 

“When you don’t have your full operating capacity to be able to help with the mission, to be able to conduct an exercise or training, of course, that gets to our national security and readiness.” Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh commented on the matter of not paying American soldiers and military personnel.

The shutdown deadline isn’t the only thing haunting not just the government, but the people – the next big thing is the upcoming round of elections for 2024 due to kick off in November. Americans have been suffering quite a deal of unemployment, which according to the Department of Labor has increased this week with 2,000 claims from last week, and high inflation wrapped nicely with high interest rates and credit debt issues. 

Biden’s election war

Today, given the US’ gradual decline as a unipolar world power, its internal systems is growing more vulnerable to out-of-control world events, as opposed to its post-WWII state where its ruling echelon had an upper hand to exert a one-way influence on foreign governments and impose their own political and economic ideologies.

Evidently, once perceived as a death sentence, sanctions on foreign countries do not have the same paralyzing effect anymore – ask Wahsington about the price cap on Russia’s oil exports – rather, nations subjected to US coercion measures are finding new regions and countries willing to prioritize their national interests over US dictates to engage with – although slowly, but steadily.

Biden’s approval ratings among the American people are already a walking disaster for the Democrats and for his chances of winning a second term. A poll last week by ABC News and The Washington Post shows that only 37% of Americans approve of his performance as president. 

Pair that with his son Hunter’s scandals and most notably his involvement with Ukrainian corruption (the more the merrier, right?), then he’s probably close to not even seeing the light of being re-elected. The White House sweetheart is not just spelling the end of his father’s career as president – let alone the reason he may get impeached – but may paving the very road that will lead to trouble in the lost city of American hegemony in foreign relations and policies.

Particularly so, that his scandal which involved being a board member for the Ukrainian energy company Burisma while his father was aiding in ‘anti-corruption’ efforts in Ukraine, obscured politics and business so much that the Republicans wish to see no more American loot go to it.

Furthermore, recent records revealed that Biden the father used his leverage as then VP to former President Barack Obama to facilitate these deals, even expanding them, and at times, directly using his authority to block attempts to hinder these deals, including direct intervention to sack a Ukrainian prosecutor looking into the work of Burisma.

‘Just the two of us’

The American military industrial complex found their honey pot in Ukraine. The revenue of weapons contractors such as Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, and Raytheon soared following the start of the war – fully funded by taxpayers’ money. In just one year, these companies recorded an average of around 30 percent in increased cash inflow, while American citizens struggled to battle record-high inflation rates and catastrophic unemployment rates.

“It’s certainly more than we’ve given any country before, even at the height of the Afghanistan war,” said Hanna Homestead, a policy analyst at the Center for International Policy, commenting on US funds to Ukriane – which recently exceeded a $100 billion.

For over a year now, Biden and his administration hawks countine to parade around with a war moto of “Whatever it takes” and “as long as it takes” in terms of cash and weapons supply to Kiev. Meanwhile, regular US citizens are finding it increasingly difficult to reach the end of the month debt-free.

Washington seems to have forgotten about American citizens. Why should they be working regular and overtime shifts, paying off student loan debts, and filling up their kitchen pantries halfway only for Ukrainian so-called servicemen to be paid instead with their money and their income tax? 

Apparently, the US government is unwilling to solve its own domestic problems, as more citizens are growing apprehensive, to put it mildly, with never-ending wars their country is involved in.

With no end in sight for the war in Ukraine, mainly due to Washington’s public opposition to a resolution to the conflict, there remains no due date for when the draining of the US economy will stop.

What exacerbates the situation is that these wars are no longer improving their standard of living or supporting their lifestyle as they did a few decades earlier.

The current reality is that engaging in wars overseas has become a burden in the US citizens’ daily lives, clearly reflected when paying their bills, purchasing groceries, dealing with IRS taxes, or watching retailers add an extra dollar “to support Ukraine.”

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Syrian sanctions relief: An ‘American trick’

March 14 2023

Photo Credit: The Cradle

The temporary lifting of Washington’s sanctions on earthquake-stricken and war-torn Syria is ‘misleading’ at best, and stands in the way of relief efforts.

By The Cradle’s Syria Correspondent

Four days after the devastating earthquake that struck southern Turkiye and northern Syria on 6 February, the US announced it would temporarily ease its Syrian sanctions in an effort to speed up aid deliveries to the country.

Specifically, the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued Syria General License (GL) 23, which allows a 180-day Syrian sanctions exemption for “all transactions related to earthquake relief efforts.” The EU followed suit later by also freezing some of its sanctions on Damascus.

But do these measures really represent a comprehensive freeze on sanctions against Syria? And are these partial suspensions proportional to the scale of the disaster that leveled the Syrian north?

A more detailed examination of these US “sanction exemptions” reveals that this humanitarian gesture was little more than a public relations stunt to placate growing Arab and Global South displeasure with Washington’s efforts to starve out Syria – sentiments that spiked quite notably after the earthquake.

The US sanctions suspension, for all practical purposes, is limited to the sending of emergency funds from “acceptable” sources. Washington, after all, still controls the process entirely – sanctions can be imposed on remittance senders at any time.

Furthermore, US sanction exemptions have not reduced the reluctance of foreign institutions and individuals to participate in Syria’s economy – even in sectors that are not explicitly targeted by the US and EU. The UN calls this unfortunate byproduct of western sanctions regimes “excessive compliance with sanctions,” because of the fear of running afoul of western financial regulators.

Suffocating sanctions

Damascus has been targeted by US sanctions since 1979 for siding with Tehran in the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988). With the outbreak of the war in Syria in 2011, US President Barack Obama expanded previously imposed sanctions under the Syria Accountability Act (2004) as part of a western effort to create political, economic, and military pressures on the Syrian government.

These new sanctions covered practically all sectors, imposing financial restrictions on individuals, entities, facilities, institutions, ministries, the medical sector, and state banks. They were pervasive and punished all Syrians: banning passenger flights, restricting oil exports (the US, through its Kurdish proxy, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), controls the oil fields in northeastern Syria), preventing the export or re-export of US goods to Syria, preventing the export of Syrian products overseas, freezing Syrian assets abroad, and severing diplomatic relations with Damascus.

This sanctions overload reached a climax with the ominous Caesar Act (2019) and Captagon Act (2022). The former granted Washington the power to impose sanctions against any individual or entity, regardless of their nationality, who engages with Syria in infrastructure and energy projects, provides financial, material, or technological support to the Syrian government, or provides the Syrian military forces with goods or services.

In 2022, the US Congress passed the Captagon Act, which targeted Syria’s pharmaceutical industry, one of the country’s most successful commercial sectors, which provides more than 90 percent of Syria’s medicine needs. This US domestic legislation grants itself the authority to monitor Syrian borders, and seeks to “legitimize” its military forces’ illegal presence in Syria.

License to chill

On 10 February, the administration of President Joe Biden issued Syria General License (GL) 23, which temporarily eases sanctions on Syria and allows for the additional flow of much needed humanitarian aid into the country. However, the statement issued alongside the decision indicates that this “exemption” has many limitations.

While removing sanctions entirely requires US congressional approval, suspending the ban on certain financial transactions with Syria for a short duration is the prerogative of the American president, and is often used as leverage to gain political concessions from US-sanctioned states.

An example of this is the 2015 nuclear negotiations with Tehran, when Obama issued licenses to freeze some US sanctions on Iran before his successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the agreement in 2018 and reactivated the sanctions.

press release issued by OFAC stated that GL 23 “provides the broad authorization necessary to support immediate disaster relief efforts in Syria.” It added that “U.S. and intermediary financial institutions should have what they need in GL23 to immediately process all earthquake relief transactions.”

The GL 23 “authorized all transactions related to earthquake relief efforts in Syria that would be otherwise prohibited by the Syrian Sanctions Regulations (SySR).” Importantly, it also states that “US financial institutions and US registered money transmitters may rely on the originator of a funds transfer with regard to compliance with this general license, provided that the financial institution does not know or have reason to know that the funds transfer is not in compliance with this general license.”

This language ensures that Washington retains the authority to investigate any transfers and punish money senders at any later date, on charges that the transfers are not related to relief efforts.

Another caveat, as per OFAC’s press release: “The Department of the Treasury will continue to monitor the situation in Syria and engage with key humanitarian and disaster assistance stakeholders, including NGOs, IOs, and key partners and allies.”

This essentially excludes dealings with Syrian government institutions, and prevents money transfers directly to state entities, including the Central Bank of Syria. Keep in mind that the distribution of all international humanitarian aid is directed via the Syrian government, as per the regulations and laws of the state.

This US “sanctions relief” caveat elicited a high-pitched response from the Syrian Foreign Ministry, in which it described Washington’s offering as “misleading, and aims to give a false humanitarian impression.”

Last May, the US lifted sanctions on foreign investments in areas outside of Syrian government control. The Treasury Department issued an authorization that now allows for “activities” in 12 different economic sectors in parts of northeast and northwest Syria without fear of US sanctions. This move was aimed at stimulating economic growth in areas controlled by US-backed Kurdish militias and Turkish-backed militants.

Hindering relief efforts

Washington’s sanctions have had direct consequences on international relief efforts following the earthquake. The United Nations and relief organizations were delayed in providing urgent life-or-death assistance to Syria, which the UN blamed on road and infrastructure obstacles and a “lack of fuel” – an implicit reference to the western sanctions that have deprived the country of its critical oil wealth.

Syria’s entire health sector has suffered directly from US sanctions because of power outages and the inability to purchase vital medical equipment needed to treat patients. According to estimates by the World Health Organization (WHO), around 20 medical facilities were damaged by the earthquake and need rehabilitation, but US sanctions prevent the restoration of these facilities, either through a direct ban or because foreign medical companies fear sanctions repercussions for dealing with the Syrian Ministry of Health.

Sanctions have doubled the suffering of Syrian earthquake survivors in terms of securing urgent relief materials and rehabilitating their damaged housing units. As such, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for the lifting of sanctions that impede relief efforts.

“This is a moment in which everybody has to make very clear that no sanctions of any kind interfere with relief to the population of Syria in the present moment,” he said.

A Syrian relief source, who asked not to be named, informs The Cradle that the response of international organizations to the Syrian disaster still remains below standard due to poor funding and the difficulty of sending relief and medical materials because of the sanctions.

He explains that the impact of the US exemption license is almost negligible, as “the disaster will have a very long term impact. In normal circumstances, we need years of work, let alone the [additional burden of] sanctions.”

US ignores global calls to lift sanctions

In her preliminary report after a 12-day visit to Syria in November 2022, UN Special Rapporteur on Unilateral Coercive Measures and Human Rights Alina Dohan presented detailed information about the catastrophic effects of unilateral sanctions on Syrian citizens and the decline in their living standards.

Douhan called for the western sanctions imposed on Syria to be lifted immediately and stressed that they are illegal under international law.

The goal of US sanctions is to continue the wholesale destruction of a regional adversary that it wasn’t able to achieve during a decade-long, brutal war. Millions of Syrians were killed, injured, and displaced in a conflict funded and armed by external parties.

The February earthquakes just exacerbated the suffering that Syrians have endured for years, with official Syrian statistics claiming around half a million people affected, in addition to the damage of tens of thousands of housing units.

In a preliminary report, the World Bank estimates the direct damages of the earthquake in Syria at $5.1 billion. The destruction has affected four of Syria’s 14 governorates, which are home to approximately 10 million of the country’s population. These include Aleppo, Hama, and Latakia, which are under the control of the Syrian government, and Idlib, which is under the control of Al-Qaeda-affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Aleppo, with a population of 4.2 million people, was the most affected ($2.3 billion), followed by Idlib ($1.9 billion) and Latakia ($549 million).

Despite exemptions for humanitarian aid, the impact of US sanctions on Syria has been significant, hindering the ability of humanitarian organizations to operate effectively in the country. The negative impact of these sanctions undermines any claims by Washington to support the Syrian people, especially in light of the ongoing humanitarian crisis.

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

Banks Collapse Indicates Major Economic Crisis in USA and Europe: Expert Tells Al-Manar 

13 Mar 2023

Source: Newsweek

By Al Mayadeen English 

Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna confesses that “Syria is a prime example of America’s flawed foreign policy status quo, kept alive by warmongers on both the Right and Left.”

Syrian schoolchildren walk as US troops patrol near the Turkish border in Al-Hasakah, November 4, 2018. (Reuters)

In an opinion piece for Newsweek, Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna — who serves as the Representative for Florida’s Thirteenth Congressional District. Rep. — lashed out at the foundations of US foreign policy, calling for redirecting “US’s foreign policy away from a failed internationalist foreign policy consensus.”

This comes shortly after The Intercept highlighted in a new report that the Obama administration’s senate representative, a strong advocate in support of aggressively challenging Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, is now backing a push by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. to force the US to leave the country within 180 days.

The Republican’s introduction of the resolution, most notably with such a short timetable that would doom it to a lopsided defeat, sparked a flurry of lobbying to turn it into a bipartisan coalition, including progressive groups like Just Foreign Policy and Demand Progress, as well as conservative groups like FreedomWorks, Concerned Veterans for America, and Citizens for Renewing America.

Opposition to US meddling in Syria has been bipartisan since the beginning of the war. In 2013, Daily Kos and HuffPost produced whip counts before an Obama-called vote to authorize the use of force, urging progressives to vote no. Before Obama pulled the legislation from the floor, HuffPost counted 243 members of Congress who planned to vote no or lean toward no.

The Congresswoman openly backs Gaetz’s proposal, arguing that the policy of “keeping Americans overseas is necessary for stopping terrorist attacks is absurd.”

“Frankly I’m tired of hearing, if we don’t fight them there, they’ll come here,” she said.

Luna acknowledged that “Syria is a prime example of America’s flawed foreign policy status quo, kept alive by warmongers on both the Right and Left.”

She blamed former US President Barack Obama for what she described as a “naive campaign for regime change in the Middle East which fundamentally misunderstood the region at large and was a futile experiment.”

“Obama’s half-hearted slogan, “Assad must go,” raised false hopes among a certain section of Syrians that only extended the civil war. Worse, it resulted in a civil war which directly resulted in the rise of ISIS.”

The Congresswoman also asserted that distant countries pose no existential threat to the United States and can be adequately managed through long-distance capabilities and cautious alliance policies. 

She also criticized the US Congress urging its members to genuinely worry about “terrorists in America.”

“We need to focus on the two problems our foreign policy pundits have consistently ignored, misread, and downplayed: our nonexistent southern border and the influx of terrorists coming into our own country, and the rise of a peer rival in China”.

In her opinion piece, she also raised the following questions: “Why aren’t the billions of dollars spent in the Middle East being invested in guarding our own border? Why are American forces patrolling distant nations yet not our own, which is under threat? Why was the equipment left behind during our botched withdrawal from Afghanistan not sold or shipped to Taiwan?”

Luna further confessed that the US’ “nation-building” in the Middle East was not “a prudent policy.”

The Congresswoman explained that the US grabbed billions of dollars from taxpayers and diverted them to NGOs, the military, failed governance projects, and foreign assistance waste while leaving many places in shambles.

“All that has resulted from this failed mission is the Middle East emerging as a region of permanent protectorates, with zero upsides and no measurable benefit to the United States. In fact, it has only increased local hostility.”

She also warned that China has been benefiting while the US has been meddling in the affairs of countries in the Middle East, most notably Syria.

The Congresswoman stressed that “the era of utopian foreign policy ideas based on faulty theories is over,” although Gaetz’s resolution to withdraw soldiers from Syria did not pass. Luna further hailed that one in every four of our Congress members backed the proposal from both the Republicans and Democrats.

“Members of Congress don’t swear an oath to the people of Syria, Ukraine, or anywhere else. They swear an oath to the people of the United States,” she concluded.

Why does the US continue to station troops in Syria?

Since ISIS has been defeated in Syria and Iraq, many analysts argued that the reasons for the US to remain stationed in Syrian territory have been left unclear. 

The US frequently loots oil from Syrian gas fields and transports them to other occupation bases in Iraq via illegal crossings. Syrian news agency SANA reported last Saturday that US occupation troops have looted a new batch of oil from Syria’s Al-Jazeera fields. The convoy was on its way to US military bases in Iraq via the illegal Al-Mahmudiya crossing in Al-Yarubiya region.

According to civilian sources, the convoy comprises 23 vehicles and includes covered trucks and tanks filled with stolen oil. The sources further added that an additional convoy made up of 34 trucks exited the illegal Al-Walid crossing in Al-Yarubiya. 

The last time US troops plundered Syrian oil was on February 27. The oil was looted from the same Al-Jazeera fields and was transported to Iraq via illegal crossings. US troops claim to be occupying the area in order to rid the region of terrorists, yet the US has strategically implanted itself there for the purposes of stealing Syria’s oil, as well as destabilizing President Bashar Al-Assad’s government. 

In December of 2022, Syria’s Foreign Ministry said the US occupation forces and their affiliated military groups’ systematic lootings of Syrian oil, wheat, and other national resources have amounted to direct losses valued at $25.9 billion and indirect losses valued at over $86 billion.

It further estimated the total value of the Syrian oil sector losses to amount to $111.9 billion.

Read more: Russian-Syrian coordination: The US is looting Syrian oil

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US Foreign Policy Goes “Woke”?

Regime change in store for cultural conservatives?

MARCH 7, 2023

Source

By Philip Giraldi

It is generally observed that imperial powers like the United States frequently interfere in foreign governments in support of economic or hard political reasons. To be sure, Washington has refined the process so it can plausibly deny that it is interfering at all, that the change is spontaneous and comes from the people and institutions in the country that is being targeted for change. One recalls how handing out cookies in Maidan Square in Kiev served as an incentive wrapped around a publicity stunt to bring about regime change in Ukraine in 2014 when Senator John McCain and the State Department’s Victoria Nuland were featured performers in a $5 billion investment by the US government to topple the friendly-to-Russia regime of President Viktor Yanukovych. Of course, change for the sake of a short-term objective might not always be the best way to go and one might suggest that the success in bringing in a new government acceptable to Nuland has not really turned out that well for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people, nor for those Americans who understand that the Biden Administration’s pledge to arm Ukraine and stay in the fight against Russia “as long as it takes” just might not be very good for the United States either.

And the United States continues to be at it, meddling in what was once regarded as something like a war crime, though it now prefers to conceal what it is up to by preaching “democracy” and wrapping the message in “woke-ish progressivism” at every opportunity. An interesting recent trip by a senior government official that was not reported in the mainstream media suggests that the game is still afoot in Eastern Europe. The early February visitor was Samantha Power, currently head of USAID, and a familiar figure from the Barack Obama Administration, where she served as Ambassador to the United Nations and was a dedicated liberal interventionist involved in the Libya debacle as well as various other wars started by that estimable Nobel Peace Prize recipient after he had received his award. The Obama attack on Syria has been sustained until this day, with several American military bases continuing to function on Syrian territory, stealing the country’s oil and agricultural produce.

USAID was founded in 1961 and it was intended to serve as a vehicle for nurturing democratic government and associated civic institutions among nations that had little or no experience in popular government. That role has become less relevant as nation states have evolved and the organization itself has responded by becoming more assertive in its role, pushing policies that have coincided with US foreign policy objectives. This has led some host nations to close down USAID offices. Within the US government itself, participants in foreign policy formulation often observe that USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) now are largely in the business of doing what the CIA used to do, i.e. interfering in local politics by supporting opposition parties and other dissident or even terrorist groups. Both organizations were very active in Ukraine in 2014 and served as conduits for money transfers to the opposition parties and those who were hostile to Russia’s influence for “democracy building.”

Samantha Power, who is married to another Democratic Party affiliated power broker, lawyer Cass Sunstein, traveled to Hungary on her diplomatic passport but took pains to cover her travel as a routine bureaucratic visit to an overseas post. Hungary is undeniably a democracy, is a member of the European Union, and also of NATO, but Power reportedly did not clear the travel with the Hungarian government and apparently did not meet with any government officials, even as a courtesy. She tweeted that her visit was to reestablish USAID in the Hungarian capital, “Great to be here in Budapest with @USAmbHungary where @USAID just relaunched new, locally-driven initiatives to help independent media thrive and reach new audiences, take on corruption and increase civic engagement.”

By “independent media” Power clearly meant that the US will be directly supporting opposition press that is anti-government and which embraces the globalist-progressive view currently favored by the White House. A US Embassy press release on the visit revealed that Power was in town as part of a project to relaunch seven USAID programs throughout Eastern Europe. It did not elaborate on the “corruption” that Power intended to address, which, of course, would have been a direct insult to the local governments wherever she intended to visit, nor did the document reveal that many of the groups that will be supported are likely to be affiliated with “globalist” George Soros.

In Budapest, Samantha Power did indeed meet with opposition political figures and civil organizations and groups, with particular emphasis on the homosexual community including “Joined @divaDgiV, @andraslederer, and @viki radvanyi for lunch in Budapest where we spoke about their work to advocate for LGBTQI+ rights and dignity in Hungary and around the world @budapestpride” as described in one of her tweeted messages after arrival. Power was also accompanied throughout by the highly controversial US Ambassador David Pressman, who is openly homosexual, of course, married to a man, and who has been highly critical of the conservative Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government, which was reelected in 2022 by a landslide margin in a vote that was considered free and fair. Orban is disliked by Joe Biden’s Washington because he is conservative and a nationalist, not because he is incompetent or dishonest while Pressman was and is a perfect example of the Biden State Department sending a terrible fit as ambassador to an extremely conservative country just to make points with the gay community in the US. Pressman has persisted in telling Hungarians how to behave not only on foreign policy but also on sexual diversity and cultural issues and, for his efforts, was finally told to “shut up” by Hungary’s Foreign Minister.

To be sure, Hungary’s undeniably democratic government, which is politically and economically tied to Washington, does not support the United States-led strategy to prolong and even escalate the Russia-Ukraine war and will not contribute to arming Ukraine. It does not accept “globalist” open immigration that seeks to challenge the established national culture, and also opposes same-sex marriage on religious grounds. It does not allow LGBTQ material to be presented to minors in state schools, which it considers to be morally correct anti-pedophilia legislation. For that reason, the time was clearly right, in the “woke” view of the Biden Administration, for Samantha Power to show up with a little dose of regime change in her portfolio. Hungarian officials had already expressed their concern over what they consider extreme pressure coming from the United States, largely because Hungary is a conservative country that values its culture and political independence. The visit by Power sent a signal to the Hungarian government and people that the pressure will likely increase and that Washington will not hesitate to use its embassies and overseas military bases to actively support groups that promote views that are not generally embraced by the local populations.

The Samantha Power story is of interest, to be sure, because it demonstrates that since the United States is the self-appointed enforcer of the “rules based international order” nothing in the world is off limits. Far too many US politicians and media pundits think that other states are not really sovereign and have to submit to US dictates in everything, and if they dare to step out of line they can be punished. If a conservative Christian country or leader – by which one might include Hungary, Russia or Brazil – believes that homosexuality or even abortion on demand are morally objectionable the US now believes that it has a mandate to use federal government resources to change that perception including by actively engaging with a foreign nation and its government on its own soil. To put it bluntly, the United States must certainly be considered the world leader in compelling all nations to conform to the political and moral values that it insists be adhered to.

So if one wants to learn why US Foreign Policy is so inept in terms of actually serving the interests of the American people, look no farther than was has happened and continues to roil in Ukraine as well as the implications of the Samantha Power visit to Hungary. For Foreign Service Posts, providing support for the agendas of the collection of freak shows that make up the Democratic Party has become manifestly as or even more important than promoting genuine national interests overseas or assisting American businesses and travelers.

What is perhaps most interesting is the way the “woke” foreign policy is being largely concealed from the American public and is being run as some kind of stealth operation. One initiative run by USAID in Macedonia in 2016 under President Obama included a $300,000 grant for “suitable” Macedonian applicants to “fund” a program entitled “LGBTI Inclusion” to counter how “Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) persons continue to suffer discrimination and homophobic media content, both online and offline… Considerable efforts are still needed to raise awareness of and respect for diversity within society and to counter intolerance.” How many American taxpayers would be happy to learn that their hard-earned money has been going to support programs run in nonconsenting foreign democracies to make them more “woke?” Of course, no one in the Biden Administration is telling the public about it, nor is the story likely to appear in the mainstream media, so presumably no one will know!

U.S. Declares War on Turkish Tourism Economy

February 7, 2023

Source

Steven Sahiounie is a Syrian American award-winning journalist based in Syria. He is specialized on the Middle East. He has also appeared on TV and radio in Canada, Russia, Iran, Syria, China, Lebanon, and the United States.

By Steven Sahiounie

On February 3, the Turkish interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, blasted the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, Jeffry L. Flake, saying, “Take your dirty hands off of Turkey.”

The outrage was prompted after Washington and eight European countries issued travel warnings over possible terror attacks in Turkey. The U.S. and its western allies have attempted to connect a recent Quran burning in Sweden with travel danger inside Turkey. Muslim countries worldwide have denounced the burning as hate speech, not free speech, but this has no apparent connection to travel safety issues inside Turkey.

The U.S. travel warning is tantamount to a declaration of economic war on Turkey who is in an economic downturn of its tourism sector, which was 11 % of the GDP in 2019, representing $78.2 billion, and rose to $17.95 billion in the third quarter of 2022, of which 85.7 percent came from foreign visitors. In 2018, tourism directly accounted for 7.7% of total employment in Turkey.

“Every American ambassador wonders how they can hurt Turkey. This has been one of Turkey’s greatest misfortunes over the years. It gathers other ambassadors and tries to give them advice. They are doing the same thing in Europe, the American embassy is running Europe,” said Soylu.

Soylu has criticized the U.S. and blames Washington for the 2016 Turkish regime change attempt, and has accused the U.S. of ruling Europe. In foreign policies, the EU follows U.S. directives implicitly.

“I’m being very clear. I very well know how you would like to create strife in Turkey. Take your grinning face off from Turkey,” said Soylu.

Ankara warned its citizens abroad to be aware of possible anti-Islamic attacks in the U.S. and Europe following the burning of the Quran in Sweden. Turkey later summoned the nine ambassadors, including Flake, for talks over the warnings.

Soylu condemned the European consulate closures in Turkey as an attempt to meddle in campaigning for Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary elections, which are scheduled for May 14.

Soylu and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have suggested that the western states had issued the security warnings in order to pressure Turkey to tone down its criticism of the Quran burning and resolve the NATO dispute in which Erdogan has voiced opposition to Sweden joining the bloc.

After a right-wing Swedish Radical Christian burned the Quran in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm, Erdogan threatened that he would never consent to Swedish accession.

Sweden previously has refused to extradite the 120 terrorists Turkey has demanded, and the U.S. Senate has made it clear that if Turkey does not approve Swedish accession, arms sales to Turkey, specifically F-16s, will not be authorized.

Turkish elections

Turkish elections are scheduled for May 14, and will be the toughest reelection fight of Erdogan’s career, and he and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) may lose the election.

The six-party opposition coalition, composed of two larger and four smaller parties, has managed to present a unified front. The opposition to Erdogan support the restoration of Turkey’s parliamentary system and the curtailment of presidential powers.

Erdogan’s fear has grown so strong that he used the courts to ban a leading potential opposition candidate, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, from running for the CHP. However, polls suggest that Ankara’s mayor, Mansur Yavas, could beat Erdogan.

The state has more overtly targeted some political parties, especially the pro-Kurdish, People’s Democracy Party (HDP). This left-leaning party was not invited into the opposition coalition, but HDP supporters will vote against Erdogan.

Biden supports opposition to Erdogan

U.S. President Joe Biden hosted an emergency meeting on Nov. 16 in Bali, Indonesia, with NATO and EU leaders to discuss a response to a missile blast in Poland, but Turkey was not invited. The meeting was held during the Group of 20 summit, and Turkey was present, but Biden snubbed them from the emergency meeting.

Turkey has been a full-fledged member of North Atlantic Treaty Organization since 1952, commands its second-largest military and has protected the southern flank of the alliance for 70 years.

Erdogan was again snubbed by Biden in December 2021 at the U.S. hosted virtual ‘Summit for Democracy’. In a New York Times interview published in 2020, the then candidate Biden called Erdogan an “autocrat.”

“What I think we should be doing is taking a very different approach to him now, making it clear that we support opposition leadership,” Biden said.

“He has to pay a price,” Biden said, adding that Washington should embolden Turkish opposition leaders “to be able to take on and defeat Erdogan. Not by a coup, not by a coup, but by the electoral process.”

Turkey recognized a clear attack by Biden using election meddling as a tool.

“The days of ordering Turkey around are over. But if you still think you can try, be our guest. You will pay the price.” Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin tweeted.

The main opposition CHP party quickly distanced themselves from Biden’s remarks of election meddling, calling for “respect for the sovereignty of Turkey”.

Turkey’s six-party opposition will select its candidate to run against Erdogan on February 13, CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu said.

Obama and Erdogan

When President Obama conceived of his attack in Syria for regime change in 2011, using Radical Islamic terrorists as his foot soldiers, he called upon Erdogan to play a crucial role. Turkey hosted the CIA office which ran the Timber Sycamore program which trained and provided weapons for the Free Syrian Army. Erdogan also took in over 3 million Syria refugees fleeing the violence. Erdogan authorized his security forces to transport weapons to the terrorists in Syria.

Erdogan was a follower of the Muslim Brotherhood who provided the political ideology for the Free Syrian Army (FSA), who were terrorists attacking unarmed civilians, but were reported by the U.S. and western media as ‘rebels’.

However, the FSA disbanded due to lack of public support in Syria, and Al Qaeda stepped in the take its place, and finally ISIS emerged as the toughest terrorist group.

In 2017, President Trump cut off the CIA program in Turkey, and supporting of the Al Qaeda branch in Idlib, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham was left to Erdogan. The U.S.-NATO attack on Syria failed to produce regime change, but the country was partly destroyed in the process. Now, Erdogan proposes a reset in relations with Damascus, and is on track to establish business and diplomatic ties once more.

The U.S. State Department has issued warnings and threats to Erdogan if he follows through on his plan to have a neighborly relationship with Syria. Erdogan needs to make peace with Syria to return the 3.6 million Syrian refugees back home, and revive exports to Syria which will be a huge boost to the Turkish economy. If he accomplishes this soon, he has a good chance at winning reelection in May.

Kurds-PKK-YPG

A deadly terrorist bombing of a shopping district in Istanbul last November was carried out by a Syrian Kurd. The message was directed at Erdogan: don’t attack the YPG in north east Syria, or else. Those Kurds are supported by the U.S. military illegally occupying parts of Syria.

The U.S. partnered with the YPG to fight the ISIS, and both Erdogan and the opposition view that as a betrayal of a fellow NATO member, and U.S. ally. The YPG is directly linked with the PKK, an internationally designated terrorist organization and a threat to Turkey’s national security.

Erdogan has threatened a new military operation in Syria to disarm the YPG regardless of their U.S. partnership. The Syrian special enjoy under Trump, James Jeffrey, advised the Kurds to repair their relationship with Damascus, as the U.S. was not going to fight any war to defend them. The Kurd’s usefulness to the U.S. was over. Recently, the Turkish air force has been bombing them, with shells falling a few hundred feet from U.S. personnel stationed there.

Erdogan has asked Russian President Vladimir Putin for a green light to attack the Kurds in Syria, but was cautioned against it. However, the time might be ripe for a Turkish attack on the Kurds, which would disarm them and probably would lead to a withdrawal of the 200 American troops.

Turkey removed M4 outpost

On February 2, Turkish troops in Syria evacuated a military outpost near the M4 highway that connects the cities of Aleppo and Latakia. The former Al Qaeda branch in Syria, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), occupy Idlib, the last terrorist controlled area in Syria.

Turkey had been defending the HTS from attacks from Syrian Arab Army, and the Russian military. However, Erdogan has decided to drop his support of the armed opposition as he repairs his relationship with Syria.

On January 31, Ankara informed the HTS leadership of its plan to conduct patrols on the HTS-controlled portion of the M4 (Aleppo-Latakia) road, which “may be followed by joint patrols with Russia, and eventually with Syria.”

Intercept: Obama relates, CIA orchestrated Indonesia’s 1965 massacres

14 Jan 2023

Source: The Intercep

By Al Mayadeen English 

Declassified information reveals that the CIA has played a significant role in the Indonesia 1965 massacres and that former President Barack Obama has been influenced by the incident and has learned much from that experience.

Prisoners captured by the Indonesian Army during the Trisula Operation, Indonesia, 1965 (Museum Brawijaya).

“From our viewpoint, of course, an unsuccessful coup attempt by the PKI [Indonesian Communist Party] might be the most effective development to start a reversal of political trends in Indonesia,” explained Howard P. Jones, the American ambassador to Indonesia until April 1965 when discussing with the US State Department how to extract power from those refusing to put the Jakarta economy at the service of US multinationals.

On Wednesday, Indonesian President Joko Widodo voiced his regret regarding a dozen instances of “gross human rights violations” that took place during Indonesia’s modern history.

One of these instances, Widodo explained, was the US-backed massacre executed by the Indonesian military during the 1965 coups and the era that followed.

The 1965 bloodbath was targeted against the Indonesian Communist party. It is worth noting that, according to The Intercept report, Indonesia was, at the time, the world’s sixth-largest population, and the PKI was the third-biggest Communist Party on Earth, preceded only by China and the Soviet Union.

President Sukarno, who governed over Indonesia from World War II until the successful CIA-backed coup, was not himself a communist. However, he was for a strong liberated Indonesia, which led him to shepherd the Indonesian resistance in the face of Dutch colonization and later helped create the Non-Aligned Movement of countries that wished to stay out of both the Soviet and US blocs.

Based on that, Sukarno, according to The Intercept, “did not leap to put the Indonesian economy at the service of U.S. multinationals.”

The abovementioned were reason enough, the report noted, for the US to seek to overturn Sukarno’s rule. Sukarno himself was not a communist, nor did the PKI have any intention of inciting violence, rather the main goal was to have a strong independent nation, both politically and economically.

The CIA was involved

The Intercept’s report noted that at least 500,000 Indonesians were slaughtered during the coup, many with machetes or knives. Shortly after the coup succeeded, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which was crucial in assisting the massacre, referred to it as “one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century.”

Former US President Barack Obama described the Jakarta coup in his 1995 autobiography “Dreams From My Father,” using analogous terminology. Obama said the 1965 Indonesia coup was “one of the more brutal and swift campaigns of suppression in modern times.” A matter that will later prove to show that the US has continued to use The Jakarta Method to maintain and grow its influence.

The Jakarta Method is a book written by journalist Vincent Bevins, in which he showed how the 1965 Indonesia coup “was one of the most important turning points of the twentieth century, eliminating the largest communist party outside China and the Soviet Union and inspiring copycat terror programs in faraway countries like Brazil and Chile,” adding “But these events remain widely overlooked, precisely because the CIA’s secret interventions were so successful.”

On this note, The Intercept report noted that “the US goal, then, was to extract Sukarno from power in favor of someone ‘reliable’ (from the American perspective), while creating a pretext for the Indonesian military to destroy the PKI.”

According to the report, Howard said, to a meeting of State Department officials in 1965, “From our viewpoint, of course, an unsuccessful coup attempt by the PKI might be the most effective development to start a reversal of political trends in Indonesia.” Howard believed, at the time, that such a move give the Indonesian army a “clear-cut kind of challenge that would galvanize effective reaction.”

Significantly, as shown in the report there was a British Foreign Office official involved who added to Howard’s approach and explained that “there might therefore be much to be said for encouraging a premature PKI coup during Sukarno’s lifetime.”

The plan: Make things up

The Intercept reported that during that the above-discussed premature PKI coup was triggered through a pre-planned narrative where “a group of young military officers kidnapped six Indonesian generals, claiming that they planned to overthrow Sukarno.” Obviously, the kidnapped generals were later murdered.

The plan was not just to kill the generals but to ignite internal strife. As such Suharto, an Army general, stated together with his allies, according to Bevins’ book as cited by The Intercept, that “the dead generals were castrated and tortured by female PKI members in a ‘depraved, demonic ritual’.” 

This plan succeeded when Sukarno was driven out of leadership and Suharto took over. Later, however, it was revealed that none of this story was true. The six generals, Bevins noted, were all shot but one. 

Under Suharto’s rule, the killing began in an operation that was known to the Indonesian army Operasi Penumpasan [Operation Annihilation].

Discussed, Revealed, Declassified

The US was not only cognizant of what was going on, but was also a willing accomplice, supplying the Indonesian military with names of PKI members. 

One US official, as cited by the report, revealed, “They probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that’s not all bad,” adding “There’s a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment.”

James Reston, the New York Times columnist, has also written on the topic. He noted that US citizens must understand that “without the clandestine aid [Indonesia] has received indirectly from here [US],” the Indonesian massacre would have never happened.

Several recently declassified documents prove that the US was indeed not only complicit but rather also an innovator in the Jakarta Method.

For example, a recently declassified memorandum recounts a conversation between Second Secretary of the Embassy Robert Rich and Adnan Buyung Nasution, an assistant to the attorney general, where Nasution told Rich that they must “continue to crack down on the Communists in order to break the back of the PKI power,” and that “the Army had already executed many communists but this fact must be very closely held.”

In another memorandum, US Ambassador Green explained that he would request that the Johnson administration “explore [the] possibility of short-term one shot aid on covert, non-attributable basis” as a sign of “US support, precipitating an expansion of US covert support for the Army which would include money, communications equipment, and arms.”

‘Power’ in US perception

In Obama’s 1995 published autobiography, he spoke of his time in Indonesia, given that he and his mother lived there for some time with his Indonesian stepfather, an engineer named Lolo.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner wrote that his mother told him, given that at her job as an English teacher for Indonesians affiliated with US embassy in Jakarta, that several of her pupils, many of which were journalists and government officials, “explained how Sukarno had frayed badly the nerves of a U.S. government already obsessed with the march of communism through Indochina, what with his nationalist rhetoric and his politics of nonalignment — he was as bad as Lumumba or Nasser! — only worse, given Indonesia’s strategic importance.”

The autobiography even went further to note that even back then, there was word that the “CIA had played a part in the coup.”

His mother, he explained, was shocked at the idea. He explained in the book that “the notion that history could be swallowed up so completely, the same way the rich and loamy earth could soak up the rivers of blood that had once coursed through the streets; the way people could continue about their business beneath giant posters of the new president as if nothing had happened.”

Later, the boy whose mother was terrified by the notion of massacres being covered up and life returning to normal following thousands of deaths, became President of the country that played an integral role in this specific massacre.

In an unintentionally revealing paragraph, Obama wrote “Power…In America, it had generally remained hidden from view until you dug beneath the surface of things; until you visited an Indian reservation or spoke to a black person whose trust you had earned. But here power was undisguised, indiscriminate, naked, always fresh in the memory.”

Obama believed that masked aggression was more accepted than open aggression. In other words, systematic genocide is a more easily ignored problem than the shocking sight of blood, even if the crime is committed by the same people.

One thing remained clear, Obama’s stepfather taught him a lesson he never forgot and it was not one of ethics and morality but rather one of power, superiority, and the rule of the jungle. 

Lolo taught young Obama “Men take advantage of weakness in other men. They’re just like countries in that way. … Better to be strong. If you can’t be strong, be clever and make peace with someone who’s strong. But always better to be strong yourself. Always.”

Read more: Celebrating 70 years of British massacres!

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Carthage Must Be Destroyed!

December 16, 2022

Source

By David Sant

During its rise to world domination, the City of Rome had one major competitor, which was its equal in every way. That city was Carthage, located 370 miles away, on the South side of the Mediterranean Sea.

Carthage had been planting colonies around the Mediterranean and Atlantic for over a century before Rome was even founded. As Rome rose to power, these two Mediterranean cities fought two wars for control over the Island of Sicily, called the Punic Wars. Despite an admirable performance by Hannibal who managed to invade Italy twice and inflicted a terrible defeat on the Romans at Cannae, Carthage still ended up losing both wars.

At the close of the second Punic War in 201 BC, Carthage was conquered by Rome and placed under a special administrative status that disallowed it from fielding a navy or overseas military without permission from the Roman Senate.

Carthage was one of only three powers that ever managed to directly threaten Rome during the days of the Republic, the others being the Gauls who sacked Rome in 390 BC, and the Macedonian Greeks, who were defeated in 197 BC.

The Roman attitude and behavior toward Carthage then was very similar to the Anglo-American attitude toward Russia, today. The main “sin” of Carthage in the eyes of the Romans was that it was equal in power and influence to Rome. And for that sin, it had to be destroyed.

Cato the Elder was a Roman soldier, who later became a Senator and famous orator who gave many speeches in the Senate even after his retirement. Over a period of forty years, he routinely ended his speeches on any subject with the statement, “And furthermore, I consider that Carthage must be destroyed!”

Cato repeatedly made this demand, despite the fact that Carthage was now a Roman client state bound by a peace treaty.

For fifty years after losing the Second Punic War, Carthage submitted to the terms of the treaty. However, after the death of Cato the Elder in 149 BC, a certain faction in Rome deliberately allowed the King of Numidia to pillage and conquer Carthagenian territories, in violation of the treaty.

This placed Carthage in a position where they had to defend themselves from predations by a neighboring Roman client state. Their appeals to the Roman Senate were ignored. So, they took action to defend their interests against Numidia without permission.

When they did so, the Roman Senate immediately interpreted this as a violation of the 201 BC peace treaty, and authorized the invasion and destruction of Carthage. This was not unlike the “rules based international order” of Washington, DC, where we make the rules (for you) but we don’t have to follow them ourselves.

Despite having surrendered their weapons at the outset of the Roman campaign, the walls of Carthage were so well made that it took the Romans nearly three years of siege to break through.

Finally in 146 BC, Carthage fell for the last time to the Roman Army, and was deliberately razed to the ground and burned. The Romans slew all of its population, men, women, and children, except for 50,000 who were taken back to Italy as slaves. According to Polybius, the wife of the last general of Carthage threw herself and her own children into the burning temple of the city rather than surrender to Rome.

Moscow as the New Carthage

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 was not the result of losing a war. It was caused by the failed policies of a centralized economy, exacerbated by American manipulation of the oil markets, and a costly American-backed guerilla war in Afghanistan. The United States moved in with “shock therapy” economic advisors and took the opportunity to restructure a confused and gullible Russia, including writing a new constitution.

For Russia the collapse of the Soviet Union had many similarities to the loss of Carthage in the Second Punic War.

Despite making peace with their former adversary, and honoring their treaties, Russia found that she could never be accepted as a friend on equal terms by the Western world order. And this was for the very same reason that Carthage could never be tolerated by Rome. Russia was and is in every way an equal to the Anglo-American Empire.

Ever since Vladimir Putin became President of Russia, the chorus of the West has become louder and louder that Putin must go. While they cannot say it aloud yet, what they really mean is “Russia must be destroyed!”

If Russia had continued the policy of submission to Western control that was begun by Boris Yeltsin, we can be assured that Moscow would have eventually met the same fate as Carthage from the Anglo-American Empire.

However, the appointment of Vladimir Putin as President of Russia derailed their plans. Under his rule Russia has steadily reasserted her former leadership and strength against the machinations of the Anglo-American Empire.

False Flag Attacks as a Means to an End

While at first Mr. Putin made a genuine effort to be a “partner” with the West, by the year 2011 it was clear that the West would never accept Russia as a friend or an equal. The West had enjoyed two decades of bossing everyone else around and had learned to enjoy giving orders rather than negotiating. One might say that the West forgot the art of diplomacy.

After watching in horror the NATO-led destructions of Serbia, Libya, and Syria, the Kremlin began asserting itself with foreign policy problems that directly affected Russian security interests starting in 2013.

The Obama Administration was very busy from 2011 to 2013 planning the overthrow of the Assad Regime in Syria. Two major hacks of intelligence related companies shed some unexpected light on what was going on behind the scenes. These were the Stratfor hack in 2011, and the hack of a British private security company (ie. mercenaries), that shall not be named, in January of 2013.

I must note that the private security company (PSC for short) admitted that they were hacked, but claimed that two of the most damning emails released within the gigabytes of leaked files were “fabricated.”

The “fabricated” email as reported by the Oriental Review, purportedly from the business development officer to the company founder reads as follows:

Phil

We’ve got a new offer. It’s about Syria again. Qataris propose an attractive deal and swear that the idea is approved by Washington.

We’ll have to deliver a CW to Homs, a Soviet origin g-shell from Libya similar to those that Assad should have. They want us to deploy our Ukrainian personnel that should speak Russian and make a video record.

Frankly, I don’t think it’s a good idea but the sums proposed are enormous. Your opinion?

Kind regards

David

The original story and its context can be found at The Oriental Review: https://orientalreview.org/2013/01/31/britamgate-staging-false-flag-attacks-in-syria/

Despite the file dump including personnel files containing copies of 58 real Ukrainian passports of employees of said PSC, the “fact checkers” at the time examined the email headers and noted that the email in question had a very similar time stamp, of three minutes before midnight, to another email in the release that was sent on a different date, also at three minutes before midnight. While this could be explained by a mail server or laptop setting which sent mail every day at the same time, it was accepted as proof of skullduggery and the entire affair was quickly dismissed and mostly forgotten.

Said PSC then sued The Daily Mail for libel for reporting the “obviously fake” email above as authentic, and was awarded damages and a partial retraction in January of 2022.

The supposedly fabricated email above happened to fall between several other breaches which revealed US and British intelligence were planning to release a video showing Russian-speaking soldiers as the operators of Syria’s chemical weapons depots.

I consider the aforementioned “hoax” to be one of the most amazing coincidences of the past two decades.

The PSC hack was shortly followed by claims of the Khan al-Assal chemical attack near Aleppo only three months later, and another at Ghouta five months after that, both of which were blamed by the West on the Assad Regime in the ramp up for an American invasion of Syria.

It is simply amazing that some unknown hacker managed to fabricate an email discussing the details of an event that hadn’t even happened yet. But the truth is often stranger than fiction.

Of course I know that the PSC referred to above couldn’t have had anything to do with either of the real chemical attacks which followed, because after their demonstrated incompetence of allowing all of their operations in the Middle East to be breached and published on the Internet, I seriously doubt they would be trusted to handle such an offer, had it been real.

The “fabricated” email shows us a picture of what was certainly going on in Syria as US and British intelligence farmed out projects to mercenary groups like Blackwater and other “private security companies.”

However, the invasion party was halted in its tracks in September of 2013, when Mr. Putin completely neutralized the Anglo-American casus belli against Syria by offering to help Syria destroy their chemical weapons stockpiles.

This was successfully completed and verified by the OPCW as being completed in late June of 2014. Thus Syria’s chemical stockpiles were completely removed before the American false flag plan could be convincingly executed. In poker this is known as calling the bluff.

Anyone who actually believed the Western propaganda about chemical weapons might have expected that President Vladimir Putin would be given some kind of international award for bringing Syria into the Chemical Weapons Convention and averting yet another major war in the Middle East.

However, rather than being pleased at the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons, the Atlanticists were furious. This was the first major chess move by Mr. Putin that completely derailed the plans of the Atlanticists on the world stage. They shifted gears to the Euromaidan Revolution in Ukraine, beginning in November 2013.

However, the chemical weapons saga in Syria was only getting started. The Assad Regime continued to be accused of chemical weapons attacks in 2015, 2016, 2017, and even up until 2022. Syria has suffered from multiple attempted chemical weapons attacks since 2012, culminating in a major one in Idlib on April 4, 2017. The Idlib attack was used by President Trump to justify a cruise missile strike on Syria, two days later, before any facts could be ascertained about the event. Since 2017, Russia has warned repeatedly that the White Helmets group were planning false flag chemical attacks to be blamed on the Assad Regime. This activity has continued all the way up to the present year.

The most important lesson to be learned from the chemical weapons saga in Syria is that the Atlanticist intelligence agencies have such complete control over global mainstream media outlets that they do not fear exposure of their false flag attack plans. And furthermore, if you want to anticipate their plans, all you have to do is listen to what they say.

On August 20, 2012, a few months before any of the false flag chemical attacks in Syria, President Obama made the following comments:

We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.

Obama started warning Syria that using or even moving chemical weapons was a red line, shortly before the American false flag attempts began.

Thus, we can see that the US regime will telegraph their plans by first naming a casus belli, and then secretly working to create the false appearance of violation of the casus belli by the intended victim.

Even when the plans are exposed in advance, they will still be carried out. The MSM will pretend that there was no prior warning, and fact checkers will claim the prior warning was part of the deception by the country that was in reality falsely accused.

Russia Must Be Destroyed!

This brings us to the likely culmination of the Western war against Russia. In Septemer of 2022, Biden officials suddenly started clucking about how Russia must not use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. This refrain was repeated to the media multiple times by officials including the PresidentSecretary of State, and National Security Advisor, as well as several retired military officers.

Anyone with an ounce of sense can see that using nuclear weapons in Ukraine would go against every interest Russia has there, as well as breaking all the rules of Russian nuclear doctrine. The majority of Russian citizens have relatives in Ukraine, which would make such an action political suicide. Russia has never threatened to use such weapons in Ukraine. So, why would the USA give such warnings?

The ridiculous American warnings against nuclear weapons in Ukraine show the wise observer exactly what the US State Department is planning to do. They obviously intend to deploy a nuclear weapon or dirty bomb through their proxies in order to blame Russia for it.

We have already seen this beginning to play out. The Kremlin warned several major countries in October of 2022 that Ukraine was planning to detonate a dirty bomb to be blamed on Russia. US Defense Secretary Austin immediately spun the story to say Russia is fabricating that accusation to justify their own intent to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Then the topic seemed to die down for a spell.

It is unfortunately naive to think Mr. Shoigu’s warnings averted anything. In the past, exposing the planned chemical false flag did not prevent its eventual execution. We know from the Russian MOD that a radiological or nuclear false flag event has definitely been planned for Ukraine.

Since Russia announced this, it is possible that the Atlanticists may have upgraded the plot to use an actual tactical nuclear weapon, because Ukraine supposedly doesn’t have those, and it would be harder for Russia to deny. It will probably be saved for a moment where it looks like Russia is about to win a major victory in Ukraine.

In the larger context, Britain’s MI6 has run a series of false flag poisonings blamed on Russia, starting with Litvinenko in 2006, followed by the Skripal poisoning, and most recently the Nalvany poisoning. The purpose of these theatrical false flag campaigns has always been to reduce Russia’s influence in the international community, and attempt to isolate Russia as a “rogue regime.”

And going back to the “fabricated” email of the PSC quoted above, we see that the requirement to get video of Russian-speakers deploying a chemical weapon against innocent Syrian civilians fit right in with the British narrative that, “Russia poisons people, because Russia is a venomous serpent!”

The downing of MH-17 would also count as the same class of false flag incident, but with a somewhat more tactical purpose of trying to create enough international hysteria to turn the victory of the Donbass militia into a major defeat for Russia internationally through sanctions.

The downing of MH-17 succeeded in energizing Europe to apply the first round of sanctions against Russia. And even more so, it generated enough hysteria that Russia no longer is given the chance to defend her actions, to cross examine witnesses, or bring her own witnesses with regard to accusations against her. Russia and her citizens are now routinely accused of atrocities by the West and summarily punished by confiscation of property with no recourse in the international bodies that were created to adjudicate such disputes.

As the Ukraine War has stopped trending on Twitter, freezing Europeans are ready to take up pitchforks against their masters, and Russia’s presumed Winter offensive seems very likely to inflict some major losses on Ukraine and the NATO backers, the Atlanticist spin masters badly need a bigger shock to jolt the UN and EU into doing their bidding.

As in the case of MH-17, the Satanists running the Empire of Lies need a large sacrifice of human lives to generate enough shock and outrage to achieve their next big foreign policy coup.

The reader should recognize the same playbook as the warnings for Syria not to use chemical weapons in 2012, followed by years of false flag attempts.

After hearing the US warnings against Russia using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, we should not have been surprised to learn from the Russian MOD that the Zelensky regime was planning to deploy a dirty bomb to be blamed on Russia as a tactical nuclear weapon. The American forewarnings, followed by exposure of such a plot, express the same pattern seen in Syria playing out again.

I expect that some version of this nuclear plot will eventually be carried out with the backing of Atlanticist intelligence agencies.

To What End?

Russia’s position as a permanent member of the UN Security Council with veto power has been a thorn in the paw of the Atlanticist beast since the Cold War.

Russia’s willingness to use her military to defend allies in Syria, Ukraine, and Armenia presents an uncontrollable risk factor for Anglo-American hegemony. They cannot tolerate it.

Russia has used her veto on the Security Council multiple times to block American warmongering. If Russia cannot be destroyed literally, then at minimum, they must destroy Russia’s reputation to the point of revoking their seat on the Security Council.

If the Atlanticists cannot risk directly attacking Moscow itself, then they can achieve the next best thing by creating a provocation to justify kicking Russia off the United Nations Security Council.

The Atlanticist Axis is desperate to remove Russian leadership and influence on the rest of the world, because Russia keeps blocking their imperial plans, whether in Syria, Ukraine, Asia, Latin America, or Africa.

The purpose of such an overt false flag attack as a nuclear detonation, real or fake, would be to generate sufficient international horror and emotion to remove Russia from the UN Security Council, or expel her from the UN entirely. They will require a 9-11 level event to achieve that.

Rest assured that when the bomb is finally detonated, the paperwork to expel Russia will be presented to the UN General Assembly before the ashes have hit the ground.

It doesn’t make sense to view such an event as an attempt to stave off Russian advances in the Ukraine. A nuclear bomb might be tactical but its purpose is strategic – to excommunicate Russia from the UN and all other international bodies of which it is a member.

The long term campaign by the USA and UK intelligence services to frame Russia for provocations using weapons of mass destruction follows the dark parallel of Rome’s treatment of Carthage.

Cato and his faction demanded the destruction of Carthage, not because Carthage was involved in any current plots against Rome, but because Carthage was a near equal to Rome in wealth, in culture, and in potential military power. Carthage was a potential adversary that could block Rome’s path to Empire.

Cato made these speeches for decades prior to his death, and ended every one of them with the demand that Carthage must be destroyed. At first it was probably considered a joke. But eventually through repetition he succeeded in priming the minds of the Roman Senate to carry out his desire.

Rome could brook no competition, and therefore did not recognize Carthage as an equal. The existence of Carthage, to the Roman mind, required its destruction. And this is exactly how the think tanks in DC and London view Russia today. “Russia must be destroyed!”

Just as Rome used the peace treaty with Carthage to prevent Carthage from defending herself, while encouraging Numidia to go to war against Carthage, both Angela Merkel and Petro Poroshenko have now admitted that the Minsk Agreements were only used to buy time for Kiev to prepare for war against Russia.

Cato the Elder died at the old age of 85 years in 149 BC. Within a year of his death, the Roman Senate used their client kingdom, Numidia, to create the false pretext to go to war against Carthage. After an extended siege they burned the city to the ground and ensured that it was not rebuilt for generations.

The deliberate destruction of Carthage by Rome was completely irrational. They destroyed what would have been billions of 2020 Dollars worth of property. They destroyed a civilization that wasn’t even at war with them. The Roman Empire became poorer by the destruction of Carthage, not richer. The irrational destruction of Carthage was entirely driven by hatred and jealousy, both of which are irrational.

If Russia ever capitulates to the Atlanticist Axis she will meet the same fate. “Russia must be destroyed,” is the mantra that has been woven through all of the actions, plots, and strategies of the Atlanticists ever since Putin became President of Russia. We should have no doubt that Washington is willing to use nuclear weapons to achieve that objective, whether outright or by farce.

In the nearterm, we should expect the farce – a false flag nuclear attack on Ukraine. If Russia achieves a major breakthrough in Ukraine in the coming year, the nuclear false flag will probably be triggered, followed by hysterical condemnation and demands that Russia be immediately expelled from the United Nations.

The question to which I have no answer is, how can Russia defeat such a strategy?

The End of Mutually Assured Destruction

The doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction is based on the assumption that two rational actors who understand that a certain action will destroy them both will avoid that action at all costs. This was the lynchpin of foreign policy during the Cold War.

The problem is that most humans are only rational some of the time. And some small percentage of us may reach a state of complete irrationality most of the time.

Furthermore, humans have a strange tendency on rare occasions to go mad together in crowds, not unlike lemmings who follow each other over the cliff into the sea. Nazi Germany in the 1930s comes to mind.

While Russia has recently been trying to protect herself from the acidic influence of Western imposed sodomy, the West has fully embraced it. And that, not merely as one of many valid options, but as a totalitarian state religion that children must be indoctrinated into. This is what Mr. Putin meant when he said that the West has become Satanic.

Sodomy is not merely an individual choice. It is a suicidal choice both for the individual and for human society. Consistent sodomites have no offspring, so they must recruit the offspring of normal people in order to grow in numbers. But in the end, a civilization that embraces sodomy as the preferred lifestyle will completely collapse morally, economically, and numerically.

The West has come under the spell of a death cult, currently led by the World Economic Forum. Their irrational desire to deindustrialize and depopulate the world in the name of environmentalism and technocracy can only be described as insanity. Ultimately both sodomy and Malthusian environmentalism are rejections of our Creator, and the mandate to be fruitful, multiply, and exercise dominion over the Earth and its living creatures. It is a rejection of the mission of transforming the Earth from wilderness and wasteland into a garden.

But he who sins against me wrongs his own soul; All those who hate me love death. (Proverbs 8:36)

Such leaders cannot be counted on to act rationally under the MAD regime, because they may view a nuclear war as a shortcut to achieve their goals of deindustrialization and depopulation. Of course, they have their bunkers in Switzerland and irrationally believe they will survive the conflagration to become the new elite of a greener world controlled by technocrats.

The Heaven’s Gate cult members also believed that by committing mass suicide they would ascend into a higher and better state. As far as anyone knows, they were completely wrong. But that did not stop them from carrying out mass suicide.

Jesus said that you don’t pour new wine into an old wineskin. The reason is that the leather of a wineskin stretches under the pressure of fermentation. An old wineskin has lost its elasticity, and cannot contain the power of a second batch of fermenting wine. It will burst.

It appears to me that Mutual Assured Destruction is an old wineskin of the twentieth century that may not be able to contain the fermenting minds of the annihilationist “young leaders” whose hearts were trained by the World Economic Forum.

In the past year we have already seen the West demonstrate it has reached a state of chronic criminal insanity.

First, they blew up the Nord Stream Pipeline which will cause the deindustrialisation of Western Europe.

That is criminally insane!

Then, Ukraine, under western supervision and using western weapons, has spent the past six months shelling the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Station in an effort to cause a nuclear accident.

That is criminally insane!

Now, the Russian MOD already has said they have evidence that the NATO-backed Ukrainians are planning a false flag radiological or nuclear weapon detonation on their own soil!!!

That is criminally suicidally insane!

We have reached a point in world history where the West appears to be planning a nuclear false flag attack in Ukraine to be blamed on Russia in order to justify the next big change, whatever that is. And Russia stands in their way. The leaders of the West have gone certifiably mad. And this means that MAD is no longer a shield against nuclear war.

Any remaining sane powers in this world need to immediately take that into account, and start preparing and planning to survive and win a nuclear war against a diabolically insane and suicidal adversary who may not see a total nuclear war as a bad thing.

If Carthage waits for Rome to make their next move, trusting in the good faith of the parties to make rational decisions under international law, then it is quite likely that once more, Carthage shall be destroyed.

Kyrie eleison on us all!

W. Bush’s Iraq/Ukraine slip – same truth as Kerry’s ‘implode’/‘sanctions’ Iran slip in 2013

May 25, 2022

by Ramin Mazaheri and cross-posted with PressTV

The clip of George W. Bush’s attempt to condemn Russia’s military operation in Ukraine but instead referring to his own autocratic warmongering in Iraq exploded across the internet.

I saw the clip and, perhaps like many, watched it several times in succession. I even found myself returning to it several more times. There is so much to be said about it, and it says so much. It perfectly sums up where we were 20 years ago, the state of the world today, the political gullibility of many, decades if not centuries of US history, counterposes the absolutely different last century of Russian history, the ability of Western politicians to so easily wave away their failures no matter how atrocious, and – well, like I wrote, it says so much.

Much, much later I was finally reminded of a similar incident in February 2013 involving then-US Secretary of State John Kerry and Iran.

Kerry was in Paris on his first overseas trip as Barack Obama’s new foreign minister, having replaced Hillary Clinton. Add in Bill Clinton and this paragraph contains the Democratic Party’s power brokers since 1992.

I was covering the visit for PressTV, and it was only after a careful reviewing of his answers about Iran that I realised that Kerry had made a shocking Freudian slip. He was responding to a question about the importance of dialogue between nations:

“Richard Nixon, at a time when we had no relationship with China, that they were great dangers, had the courage to send Henry Kissinger and made a decision which opened up China and (which is now) a member of the P5, and now works with us in concert to try to implode put the sanctions in place to deal with Iran.”

The thing is, whoever paid for Kerry’s failed 2004 presidential campaign against W. Bush still got their money’s worth – he is truly a professional: in a lightning flash he rushed out “put the sanctions in place” to cover his initial admission of “implode”. It was so fast I honestly didn’t even catch it the first time I watched.

Nobody else caught it, but PressTV and I ran a report on it, titled US Foreign Minister Kerry talks of trying ‘to implode’ Iran in another overseas gaffeIt’s right here at the 0:40 mark of our report.

“Try to implode” Iran – that’s truly always been the goal of the US. That’s what sanctions have always been about. It was great to finally hear the top US diplomat openly admit it, if only by accident.

Watch the clip – it feels just as vindicating as it was seeing George W. Bush admit, “The decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq. I mean of the Ukraine. Iraq, too. Anyway.”

But the vindication in both is not a righteous one – at least for me – but a tragic one, filled with a nostalgic, deeply sad sense of what could have been but was not allowed to be.

If Twitter existed in 2013 I didn’t know about it, but our report didn’t go viral.

February 2013 was so long ago that an interim agreement for the JCPOA on Iran’s nuclear energy program hadn’t even been signed yet, much less the final agreement. In 2022 Iranians are still – still – waiting for the JCPOA to start and for efforts “to implode” to stop. (Of course, it’s not really “implosion” when the combustion is provided from the outside.) If I could guess the real feelings of Western politicians regarding this deadly delay I think they would likely use Bush’s phrase, “Anyway.”

This week saw the first visit to Iran by a UN human rights expert in 17 years, a stunning delay.

“During our visit, we were able to identify (the) devastating humanitarian impact of sanctions,” said Alena Douhan, the UN special rapporteur focused on the impact of unilateral US sanctions.

I suppose this has to qualify as progress. Probably not to the families of those who died because of the sanctions.

I’m sure that in a few more years we’ll get a viral clip of Obama making a gaffe about the deadly impact of sanctions on Iran and laughing, “Anyway”.

In 20 years I’m absolutely certain French President Emmanuel Macron will make a slip regarding his brutal weekly repression of the Yellow Vests and he’ll just laugh it off and add, “Anyway”.

Ukraine could be roasted in nuclear fire before the 2014 Minsk Agreements were respected by the West, and as the geiger counters are still going haywire 20 years later politicians across the entire West will laugh it off and say, “Anyway”.

The signed JCPOA has still proven to be less valuable than the ink which was used to sign it – the West is simply not “agreement-capable”. The idea that belligerence belonged to W. Bush – but not Obama or Biden – is egregiously nonfactual. If you find that too biased a conclusion then feel free to give your own analysis: just a bit more lobbying in Congress is needed, it’s all Donald Trump’s fault (remember 20 years ago when everything was supposed to be all W. Bush’s fault?), please wait for the new administration in Washington to get settled, Biden really does mean well, etc.

Western-led institutions are discrediting themselves as fast as the internet can now publish proofs of their failures. The UN was told to wait years before allowing an unbiased effort which examined the effort to implode put the sanctions in place on Iran. Gulf War II was based on a total lie. The European Union is not breaking with the foreign policy of Washington, as Tehran has long hoped, but is gleefully gutting their own 99% for years to join a war drive against Moscow.

What the W. Bush clip shows most of all is: how bankrupt the words and policies of Western politicians truly are, and because they reflect the needs of their elite and not of their people. The problem should not be placed in their culture, but in their aristocratic Liberalist structures. That is not only what allows them to make such heinous crimes and to escape domestic accountability, but which propels them even to make such belligerent efforts in the first place.

Tehran fails to realise that the EU is a completely Liberalist – and thus oligarchical – structure. It was rammed through undemocratically from start to finish, with national referendums first being ignored and then totally bypassed – I know, I know: “Anyway”. My point is that the EU is not going to break with the US over Iran while also going along with the US on Russia.

The US and EU are obviously working in perfect tandem, and especially since the Lisbon Treaty of 2009 finally, firmly installed the power of the undemocratic pan-European project. I go back to what I wrote in that February 2013 report on Kerry’s visit: “Since rejoining NATO in 2010 France has marched in lockstep with the US, regardless of international perception.” It’s not that things don’t ever change, it’s that they have only gotten worse in Europe since 2009.

It’s not Tehran’s fault – the failure to pursue diplomacy logically implies a choice to pursue war, and that would be wrong and shameful. Like choosing not to implement the JCPOA. Or the Minsk Agreements. Or choosing to go to war in Iraq. Or choosing to go to war with Russia.

Anyway.


Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. His new book is ‘France’s Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West’s Best Values’. He is also the author of ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’ as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’, which is also available in simplified and traditional Chinese.

The World’s Future Hangs In The Balance: Erdogan Will Decide

15 MAY 2022

The World

On the one side, the U.S.-and-allied side, stands Davos, the Bilderbergers, the Trilateralists, and the rest of the “Washington Consensus,” the view of the U.S.-and-allied side, that America should control the world; and, on the other side stands the United Nations side, the view that neutral and internationally democratically based and neutrally applied international laws should instead control the world, without favoring America’s, or any other country’s, billionaires.

By Eric Zuesse

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s next book (soon to be published) will be AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change. It’s about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.

Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan will decide the future of the world; and, on Friday the 13th day of May in 2022, he gave his first indication of what that decision will be — that it will be for a global future of hope for international freedom and democracy, and against a global future of ever-increasing concentration of wealth and power into fewer and fewer hands. In this, his first statement on the subject, he spoke actually in favor of the world’s public, against the world’s aristocrats (or ‘oligarchs’, as The West’s billionaires refer to billionaires who are not in the richer Western countries).

This key decision, upon which the world’s future now depends, will be between a continuing erosion of the significance of international law (which laws come from the U.N. and its agencies) and a proportionate increase in what the U.S. Government calls “the rules-based international order,” in which America’s Government increasingly controls (and even sets) those “rules” that will replace international laws; versus a future in which what erodes will instead be the U.S. Government’s international power to control the world in its own (billionaires’) favor, and, so a future that correspondingly benefits the global public (the very people who suffer from the aristocracies’ — especially America’s aristocracy’s — increasing control over the entire world). On the one side, the U.S.-and-allied side, stands Davos, the Bilderbergers, the Trilateralists, and the rest of the “Washington Consensus,” the view of the U.S.-and-allied side, that America should control the world; and, on the other side stands the United Nations side, the view that neutral and internationally democratically based and neutrally applied international laws should instead control the world, without favoring America’s, or any other country’s, billionaires. 

Here is how the Nobel-Peace-Prize-winning U.S. President Barack Obama, in a speech that he delivered to America’s future generals, at West Point Military Academy, on 28 May 2014, stated the U.S. Government’s position on this matter, which is the key issue concerning international relations, and the global future: 

The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come. … Russia’s aggression toward former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe, while China’s economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us, and governments seek a greater say in global forums. … It will be your generation’s task to respond to this new world.

He was telling his military that America’s economic competition, against the BRICS nations, is a key matter for America’s military, and not only for America’s international corporations; he was saying that U.S. taxpayers fund America’s military at least partially in order to impose the wills and extend the wealth of the stockholders in America’s corporations abroad; and he was saying that the countries against which America is in economic competition are “dispensable,” but that America “is and remains the one indispensable nation.” So, ONLY America is “indispensable”; all OTHER nations are not, in that view. Not even America’s ‘allies’ — such as Germany, France, Japan, etc. — are. All of them are “dispensable. This, supposedly, also (and most especially) authorizes America’s weapons and troops to fight against countries whose “governments seek a greater say in global forums.” In other words, Obama was saying: Stop the growing economies from growing faster than America’s. 

There is a word for the American Government’s supremacist ideology: it is called “neoconservatism.” The general phrase that describes it is “imperialist fascism.” (Neoconservatism is purely America’s imperialist fascism.) Imperialist fascism (of ANY sort) is exactly what America’s President FDR had invented and intended the U.N. to terminate permanently by creating the United Nations to be an international democracy of nations outlawing any and all imperialisms, but FDR’s immediate successor, Truman, instead chose to continue imperialist fascism, but this time for America itself to become the all-encompassing global power. (He was the original neoconservative.) America quickly became the imperialist-fascist power; and, it has remained so even after the Soviet Union ended in 1991 — in fact, that event super-charged America’s fascist imperialism. And Obama super-super-charged it, by his February 2014 coup that grabbed Ukraine on Russia’s border, as a launching-pad from which Russia will ultimately be attacked.

Like another neoconservative, though of the opposite political Party, John Bolton, famously said: if the U.N. headquarters building “lost ten stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” America’s Presidents and Congresses are bipartisanly neoconservative, almost 100% in favor of ceaseless increases in the control that America’s Government has over the world. They are happy that the U.N. has become little more than a talking-forum.

That brings us to the present.

On 13 May 2022, Reuters headlined “Erdogan says Turkey not supportive of Finland, Sweden joining NATO”, and reported that

President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday it was not possible for NATO-member Turkey to support plans by Sweden and Finland to join the pact, saying the Nordic countries were “home to many terrorist organisations”.

Finland’s plan to apply for NATO membership, announced Thursday, and the expectation that Sweden will follow, would bring about the expansion of the Western military alliance that Russian President Vladimir Putin aimed to prevent by launching the Ukraine invasion.

“We are following the developments regarding Sweden and Finland, but we don’t hold positive views,” Erdogan told reporters in Istanbul.

Irrespective of how he might define “terrorist organizations,” what he really was saying there is that Turkey, as a member of America’s NATO military alliance against Russia, will veto the proposed addition to NATO (i.e., to its Article 5, which obligates every NATO member-nation to attack and join in conquering any nation that attacks ANY nation that is a member of America’s NATO military alliance) of Finland, which has the second-nearest border to Moscow (only a 7-minute missile-flying-time away), which is second ONLY to Ukraine (which is just a 5-minute missile-flying-time away from Moscow), as being the Russia-bordering nation that would pose the biggest danger to Russia if added to NATO. 

By Erdogan’s siding with Putin, not Biden, on this, the most crucial decision in international relations in our time, Erdogan would be standing firmly WITH the nations that the super-imperialist fascist Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama derisively referred to as being not merely “dispensable” but also as being the “rising middle classes [who] compete with us, and governments [who] seek a greater say in global forums” — Erdogan was siding there AGAINST the mono-polar U.S. global empire, and FOR the multi-polar global community of independent nations under international law (NOT “the rules-based international order” in which America’s Government increasingly controls, and even sets, those “rules” that would replace international law). 

NATO’s Article 10 states that:

The Parties may, by unanimous agreement, invite any other European State in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area to accede to this Treaty. Any State so invited may become a Party to the Treaty by depositing its instrument of accession with the Government of the United States of America. The Government of the United States of America will inform each of the Parties of the deposit of each such instrument of accession.

Turkey, according to Erdogan on May 13th, will veto not only Finland but also Sweden.

NATO’s Article 5 states that:

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.

If the United States Government succeeds in its (ever since 25 July 1945) ceaseless drive ultimately to replace the U.N. by itself (America) as being the ultimate source of “the international order,” then ONLY America’s billionaires will possess real seats at the international tables where the fates of nations and of their respective publics are being determined. Perhaps Erdogan is finally throwing in his lot with Russia, China, Iran, and the other nations that are standing opposed to imperialistic fascism, and in favor of the international democracy of nations that FDR had hoped would follow in World War II’s immediate wake (but which Truman made neutered and devoid of any real power). No other NATO-member-nation’s leader has, thus far, been so bold as to have announced that his nation will vote in NATO against Finland’s bid to join NATO.

Erdogan’s rationale for his statement, and the extent of his commitment to it, weren’t made entirely clear in that statement, but, in any case, his statement on the matter, at that time, was strong enough to cause America’s international propaganda-agency, RFE/RL, to headline “Turkey’s Erdogan Says He Opposes NATO Membership for Sweden, Finland”, and to allege that “Ankara risks a backlash from its NATO partners over its opposition to Sweden’s and Finland’s membership.” Certainly, there would be a “backlash” from Biden, who, after all, heads the only ‘indispensable’ country.

However, on May 14th, Reuters headlined “Exclusive: Turkey ‘not closing door’ to Sweden, Finland NATO entry, Erdogan advisor says”, and revealed that this matter was merely a negotiating ploy by Erdogan, to get the Kurdish separatist organization, PKK, which is called “terrorist” by Turkey, outlawed in Europe too. Erdogan has no principled position regarding the U.S. Government’s taking over the entire world, but instead is using the issue of Finland and Sweden being allowed into NATO as a lever to force those two countries, and all of the EU, to outlaw the PKK. This internal Turkish matter, not the world’s future, is what motivates him; and he is using the NATO-expansion question in order to force other countries to assist Turkey’s Government to crush the PKK, against which Turkey has been fighting for decades.  

The American Spring by American Spies: Fake News II

29 Mar 2022

Source: Al Mayadeen Net

With some reading, eventually, you will see how they utilize big tech algorithms, fake news, and US spies who are good at lying even to their own citizens. 

The American Spring by American Spies: Fake News II

It’s amazing how fast the news cycles are in the USA. It seems as though telling the journalistic truth these days has become akin to the days of the prophets. How ironic it is that the great USA whose thumbprint is power is filled with people who are clueless and unaware of their inner spies… I described this strangeness in my first article. And for credibility sake and journalistic standards, I hold myself to the high standards of always telling the truth. If you practice this, it means that eventually the patterns, cycles, and people emerge from the unknown war machine with names, faces, and religions across the spectrums but all have one common goal: Money and Power.

Writing about the Democrats’ fake Russian Reset, I highlighted how Michael Sussman was exposed by the Americans in a government-authorized investigation. The Durham Report, which is currently in process, proved that Hillary Clinton paid for tech information while accusing Trump of espionage.

Durham’s filing says university researchers mined internet data to establish “an inference” and a “narrative” tying Trump to Russia and that they “were seeking to please certain ‘VIPs’.” Durham identified these VIPs as individuals at Sussmann’s law firm called Perkins Coie, where Sussman was a partner. The Clinton campaign was on that VIP list. Durham’s filing alleged that Trump’s residences and the White House were spied on by a tech executive aligned with the Democratic Party…”

What this implies is that, according to the West itself, there is a wide range of political schemes happening even to the American people, and those schemes look like the Arab Spring. How big a claim but only through a steady dose of truth-filled journalism can one begin to see. As a lawyer and independent journalist, with some reading and following these articles, eventually, you will see how they utilize big tech algorithms, fake news, and American spies who are good at lying even to their citizens. 

WHY IT MATTERS TO US

It matters to us because a masterful strategic identity game is played in American politics, and like a torch in an Olympic game being handed over to a teammate, these American decision-makers hand over revolutions and wars. It is important to know about the American Spring and to understand their hostile powers, their military, and their intelligence capabilities, as well as what their latest scandal affords in the chess game of politics. Did Biden forfeit a massive war machine or did he hand it to the Taliban? These consistently destructive failures have devastating consequences and what we see with US mass media, now including social media, is in direct collusion with who they claim is a terrorist. 

It means the media is flagrantly and sinister in their deflection. But In order to understand, one has to first understand this is a network of closely linked individuals who share a common goal: personal power at the expense of the whole.

In an American Spring, one would see nothing less than the complete destruction of American culture and influence. This has long happened since the days of Obama whose shady Presidency succumbed to a future promising president Hillary Clinton or President Donald J. Trump. Trump won in 2020 as a result of this decaying American influence. It sounds shocking and unbelievable, but essentially Hillary, Obama, and their allies have been positioning themselves to be the Lenin and Stalin of our time. They adopted the principles of their former enemies and have years of contradictions to prove it. How do principles change with such flexibility? They don’t. News cycles change, not values. 

This American Spring is two-fold: the subversion of American culture and its replacement with socialist values, and soon we will be seeing a weaponization of Takfirists Islamic groups again to create instability, division, and ultimately regime changes. 

The Americans are either too unaware of the dirty politics or their media are too proud to admit this. You heard the name Sussman from my writing and later confirmed by the Durham Report. However, Durham is a Special Counsel assigned to investigate the truth about the Russian Democrat-led disinformation campaign which means he is an exception and the US intelligence is no longer credible. Who are they and how do they sleep at night?

To prove my point that the intelligence apparatus of the US has failed, I digress with a NY Post article that calls a list of 51 names of intelligence officers and media pundits spies who lie: 51 ‘intelligence’ experts refuse to apologize for discrediting true Hunter Biden story. These experts chose to cover for Hunter Biden, who lost a computer which has been dubbed as the laptop from hell in which he sold “introductions to his father for 10 million dollars.” The same current news cycle and its major components are happening as we speak but in multiple areas of criminal political activity. 

Let’s look at how this intelligence scandal of the 51 is no different from what we see around the world where the US invokes regime changes and how it relates to us specifically.

Front and Center Left, John Brennan 

Remember that US officials are rotated and cycled through various government institutions distancing them from suspicion or conflicts of interest. Brennan​ in 2010 stated, “And during a 25-year career in government, I was privileged to serve in positions across the Middle East — as a political officer with the State Department and as a CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia, I saw how our Saudi partners fulfilled their duty as custodians of the two holy mosques of Mecca and Medina. I marveled at the majesty of the Hajj and the devotion of those who fulfilled their duty as Muslims by making that privilege — that pilgrimage.” 

This tells us two things we need to know. As he claimed:

1) Brennan admits to being a ‘political officer’ with the State Dept while simultaneously the Jeddah Station chief. The second thing here to note is 

2) Brennan has an affection and admitted pro-Islamic bias. As a political officer for the Dept of State, Brennan would be granted authority to issue visas from his CIA station.

In the West, Brennan has always been questionable by his opponents even so far as rumors claiming that Brennan converted to Islam​. It’s similar to Lawrence of Arabia, but without the charm.

As a journalist, I know what it means for a laptop to be discredited by 51 lying spies and then proven to be true, which calls the spies’ integrity into question.

The American Spring continues under the strange leadership of Biden after a very long history of race-baiting and war-mongering. The laptop being denied isn’t the main story, rather it is what is on the laptop which is the true story, and here again, we see the same characters.

The same John Brennan who was located in Pakistan with Brezinsky, Obama’s university professor, and Carter’s CIA director, who would become a main face in the Arab Spring, is now again here before us. 

History is in fact repeating itself because, despite their promises to avoid history’s mistakes, they continue to commit them. 

Front and Center Right, James Clapper 

Remember that US officials are rotated and cycled through various government institutions distancing them from suspicion or conflicts of interest. The New York Post is asking Clapper to renounce the accusation that was undergirded by fake news and American Spies as they call them. 

President Bill Clinton created a task force to study the Khobar Towers bombing and assess all threats. The Assessment Task Force was led by General Downing, and a retired Air Force Lieutenant named General James Clapper served as the head of the intelligence assessment team. The task force was not asked to do a criminal investigation but only to report instances of malfeasance to the chain of command. 

Downing reported​ that the chain of command “did not provide adequate guidance and support to the commander” who “was ill-served by the intelligence arrangement within his command…” 

Not ironically, from 1999 to 2000, he was the Chief of Staff to then-CIA Director George Tenet. 

Could the whole Russian Hoax have been to protect these people from being exposed for all their ‘malfeasance’ through their appointed careers? With Trump promising to end endless wars, this could be the only path forward. All Biden had to do was win what Hillary lost: Power & Control. Yet, as Obama warned his Democratic accomplices, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to F*** things up.” 

If it’s an American Spring, Trump would now have to be seen as heroic as the Left made Zelenski, no different than how the Egyptians see Sisi.

This American Spring very well may be interrupted if the Americans realize they do have spies amongst them and Biden’s seat of power squeaks with rust as it is upheld by them. 

The Past

To understand the Middle East today, we must know some history. The intelligence scene is very much the fuel behind these conflicts, so consider another person of question. Louis Freeh

George H.W. Bush appointed him a judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of New York in 91. Two years later, he answered a call from President Bill Clinton, and he became the fifth director of the FBI in 93.

Freeh was the FBI Director during the Khobar Towers, the Unabomber, the Centennial Olympic bombing, Ruby Ridge, and Waco investigations. The Oklahoma City bombing happened under his watch.

He served from September 1993 to June 25, 2001, and was succeeded by Robert Mueller who reappears from the past to investigate Trump with the wasteful 3-year sham investigation which led to minimal prosecution compared to what was promised: Espionage. 

As it relates to the Russian Hoax, Freeh is connected to the Russian-owned money laundering firm ‘Prevazon’. Prevazon hired Louis Freeh to help settle a major money-laundering case with the US government for roughly $5.9 million. 

Prevazon is also represented by Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who met with top Trump campaign officials in June 2016 at Trump Tower to lobby for repealing the 2012 Magnitsky Act. This would be the meeting that was planned and orchestrated against Trump. 

Louis Freeh wasn’t used by the Democrats to ensnare Trump but is an intelligence officer with a past that Trump threatened to expose and end. 

With official charges and Trump being acquitted over and over, the loser is the American people because although no charges were brought, this infamous Trump Tower meeting “with Russians” solidified the fake narrative of unproven espionage. Did Freeh have anything to be concerned about? 

Leading us to another worthy note: Natalia Veselnitskaya was indicted for her connection to Kremlin- tied Prevazon, and American mainstream media still has no interest in correcting their false lies regarding the fake and obviously orchestrated Trump Tower meeting. Join me next week as we explore how these men have impacted the Middle East and our lives. And since the Western Media cannot expose it, I invite you to journey as we get to know who the American Spies are and how they have meticulously organized in a stealthy manner what will soon be known in the history books as the American Spring.

The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.

Related

Patrick Lancaster: In and Out of Mariupol, March 23rd

Mariupol people are now doing burials of family members and neighbors in their yards

March 23, 2022

By Jim W. Dean, Managing Editor

 Shelling Intensified In Mariupol (GRAPHIC 18+) (Special Report)

First published March 23, 2022

[ Editor’s Note: At VT we thought Lancaster had gone to ground, as it is open hunting season on journalists who are showing what is going on in Donbas. A wise man gets in and gets out, with no predictable itinerary.

Lancaster’s style has been to go in after an area has been cleared to get the interviews with the civilians who endured it, but you will notice that he does not interview soldiers, as most don’t want their faces on YouTube.

When he is being driven in, there is a stream of people leaving, using anything they can to get away from Mariupol, in cars if they are lucky, then bicycles, then pushing a baby carriage or anything they can bring a few personal belongs in, and then those walking with nothing.

These people, along with the dead and the dying and all those who are going to die, on both sides, are all victims of the US-EU-NATO coup by you know who. Biden made a big goof in bringing up the war crimes issue, as he and Obama could easily find themselves on the list.

Eric Zuesse, nailed this key part of the Ukraine story in his June 04, 2018 article for Modern Diplomacy. Here is just one excerpt:

Eric Zuesse

If America’s successful February 2014 overthrow and replacement of Ukraine’s democratically elected neutralist Government doesn’t soon produce a world-ending nuclear war (World War III), then there will be historical accounts of that overthrow, and the accounts are already increasingly trending and consolidating toward a historical consensus that it was a coup — that it was imposed by “somebody from the new coalition” — i.e., that the termination of the then-existing democratic (though like all its predecessors, corrupt) Ukrainian Government, wasn’t authentically a ‘revolution’ such as the U.S. Government has contended, and certainly wasn’t at all democratic, but was instead a coup (and a very bloody one, at that), and totally illegal (though backed by The West).

That was quite a wordy one sentence explanation, but all are welcome on the ramparts fighting back against the endless stream of grifters we constantly face, with megalomaniac world leaders and corrupt to the bone fake public institutions.

Mariupol people are doing burials of family members and neighbors in their yards now. Strangers get a similar treatment, usually in the yard of an abandoned place, with a marker for when they are all dug up and probably brought to a fitting place of rest so they are not totally anonymous, and a ‘never forget’ monument for them.

The lesson for all of us here, which of course VT readers understand, is that the war against the criminals in Kiev has to be won not only to save innocent Ukrainians on both sides but also won against their grifter enablers so they are stained with their sins forever, which will make their victims a bit happier… Jim W. Dean ]

Jim W. Dean, Managing Editor

Jim W. Dean is Managing Editor of Veterans Today involved in operations, development, and writing, plus an active schedule of TV and radio interviews.

Read Full Complete Bio >>>
Jim W. Dean Archives 2009-2014

What’s causing the inflation crisis? Economist Michael Hudson explains

January 05, 2022

Benjamin Norton from Moderate Rebels interviews Dr. Michael Hudson.  The interview is more wide-ranging than the title suggests but, with razor-sharp intellect, Dr. Hudson breaks open the reason for today’s inflationary cycles.  Dr. Hudson again looks at the roots of de-dollarization, the new financial system, China’s purported slow-down, and common prosperity policy being implemented now.

Rania Khalek interviews Prof. Seyed Mohammad Marandi on JPCOA

TUESDAY 21 DEC 21

RANIA KHALEK 

This video describes the status of the negotiations on the JPCOA but is broader than that.  It also demonstrates how the USA negotiates.

  • 0:00 Intro
  • 1:20 What has been achieved, why hasn’t there been a restoration of the nuclear deal yet?
  • 9:02 US and Europe want to keep sanctions in place
  • 16:36 Who is being constructive vs obstructing the talks?
  • 20:25 Why should Iran even resume talks?
  • 29:10 Does Iran see a difference between Trump and Biden?
  • 32:29 Iranian liberals as extensions of the West
  • 35:53 Is war between Iran and the US inevitable?
  • 43:53 Consequences of the US Assassination of Qassem Suleimani
  • 58:57 The Gulf States reevaluate their relationship with Iran
  • 1:06:24 Iranian domestic politics under Raisi

Why the U.S. Will Reject Russia’s Proposed Peace-Settlement

December 19, 2021

By Eric ZUESSE

On December 17th, Russia presented America with a proposed peace-settlement that would empower the U.N. to be not only nominally but in reality the one-and-only body that can create international laws. The proposed treaty would obliterate America’s effort to replace the U.N. by America’s never-defined ‘rules-based international order’, which was first proposed by the neoliberal-neoconservative Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in 2008 and never ever defined by anyone because it implicitly would replace international laws (from the U.N.) by the edicts of the U.S. Government, which nobody (outside the U.S. regime’s vassal-nations such as Australia) will accept. So: Rudd’s ‘rules-based international order’ is really just an attempt to impose the U.S. empire to replace the U.N., and that won’t be able to be done without a Third World War in which the U.S. and its allies go to war against the rest of the world and win, which is impossible because there would be only losers: any WW III would end all life on this planet, or at least all human life, because of nuclear winter if for no other reason. (Yes, it’s possible for BOTH sides to lose a war.) It’s just an American-empire pipe-dream for individuals (such as Rudd, and Bush, and Obama, and Trump, and Biden, and all American ‘allies’ or vassal-nations) who insist that, as the neoconservative Obama told the U.S. military on 28 May 2014:

The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come. … Russia’s aggression toward former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe, while China’s economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us, and governments seek a greater say in global forums. … It will be your generation’s task to respond to this new world.

In short: all other nations are “dispensable,” and all rising and competing less-wealthy nations are enemies to whom “your generation’s task” is “to respond” (militarily) to that economic competition, from such ‘enemies’.

That would be the spirit in which the proposed “rules-based international order” would be imposed upon the world. And, now, Russia is finally demanding that America stand down from America’s demand to replace the U.N. by its own international dictatorship (no Security Counsel; no General Assembly). Russia, finally, is telling America that ONLY the U.N. is, and will be, the source of international laws; America won’t.

Russia is demanding that, just as the originator of the U.N., FDR, had been intending ever since 11 August 1941 (see pages 5&6), which was even before America entered WW II, and until his death on 12 April 1945, when he became replaced by the neoconservative (i.e., seeking an all-encompassing global U.S. empire) President Harry S. Truman, all empires need to be ended now and replaced by a U.N. that is, at last, fully empowered to make and to judge and to impose international laws so that all geostrategically important weaponry will be placed under the U.N.’s control, as FDR had intended. Russia is now (in effect) demanding that this finally be done. Russia is demanding that all empires, including America’s, must be REPLACED by a U.N. that will be re-formed in the image that FDR had been advocating, ever since 11 August 1941. That is what Russia is demanding now: the end of the “neoconservatism” that Truman had started on 25 July 1945, when Truman decided (based largely upon the advice of General Eisenhower, whom Truman practically worshipped) that either the Soviet Union would take over the world, or else America would, and when both he and Ike chose for America to take over the world, and then all subsequent U.S. Presidents have been following through with that neoconservative plan — the Truman-Eisenhower plan, for a world controlled by America’s billionaires (the people who now control the U.S. Government).

So, since what followed after FDR has been Truman’s America, instead of FDR’s America, this America will say no to that.

Russia also presented, on the same day, a proposed “AGREEMENT ON MEASURES TO ENSURE THE SECURITY OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION AND MEMBER STATES OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY ORGANIZATION”, which would start as being an “agreement,” but would be intended ultimately to produce a set of treaties between Russia and each of the NATO nations.

The great teacher on international national-security law, Alexander Mercouris, headlined on December 18th, “Russia Demands US Strategic Retreat, Demands US Agree Draft Treaties Ending/Reversing NATO Expansion, Revive INF, ABM Treaties, Respect UN, End US Exceptionalism, Regime Change Wars”, and explained there in a one-hour video, in very clear terms, what Putin is proposing in each of these two documents, and what the significance of those proposals are, though those proposals will be the start of either serious negotiations for a fundamental change in the current world-system, or else WW III. This will be a major turning-point in history, either way.

U.S.-and-allied arms-manufacturers will no doubt be terrified that their decades-long gravy trains are finally being seriously challenged, and the billionaires who are riding those trains will be doing everything they possibly can to continue the current direction of those trains, ever-closer toward WW III (and ever-bigger arms-sales).

theduran.com

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov’s interview with Izvestia, December 13, 2021

December 13, 2021

Russian media is discussing this interview actively today.

https://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/4992391

Question: Mr Ryabkov, is there any predictability in relations with the United States today?

Sergey Ryabkov: There is one-sided negative predictability, in fact. As for any prospects for improvement, everything is completely unpredictable. This is a sad conclusion based on the results of the long journey that we have travelled with the current US administration, with Donald Trump, and with Barack Obama. These problems did not emerge yesterday. They have to do with the US tendency, by and large, to deny Russia the role of a major independent player in international relations while trying to impose its own approaches to a whole range of issues, including how we should live in our own country.

All of the above certainly limits our prospects for straightening out relations – at least at the present stage, I would not risk giving any optimistic forecasts. We can definitely say there is predictability in that we will have to continue to deal with just this kind of America and this kind of American policy. And we are ready for this.

Question: Does this mean we cannot expect any transformation of the US approach to relations with Russia?

Sergey Ryabkov: We cannot see any progress, with the exception of the launch of several structured dialogues in areas that are certainly important as pivotal aspects of international security – I am referring to strategic stability and ICT security. Even so, we have just created channels for dialogue, and it would be premature to say that we are going to reach some global, significant, breakthrough decisions in the process. We are working towards this; we are striving for this, calling on the Americans to take a responsible approach to international security. We hope that our calls and signals will be heard. At the same time, we will not try and add issues that are not related to strategic stability, ICT security to the mix – such as our bilateral difficulties regarding visas and the activity of foreign missions. These are important questions as well, but we must not allow one to become dependent on the other. We will work where opportunities arise, where the Americans at least try to heed common sense and listen to our approaches.

Question: Can you tell us about progress on the New START Treaty?

Sergey Ryabkov: New START has been extended for five years. However, the first of these five years will expire on February 5, 2022. We have launched a dialogue on strategic stability, which will hopefully lead to the signing of a document or several documents that would be a good replacement for New START, which expires in four years.

We are working quite well within the framework of New START, holding meetings of the Bilateral Consultative Commission. The practice of mutual inspection visits will resume as the sanitary situation improves. Meanwhile, we are exchanging information in full measure and issuing notifications in accordance with the treaty. In short, work is proceeding well.

As for the other areas, there have been some wrinkles, which we are working to remove.

Question: How would you explain the growth in tension over Ukraine?

Sergey Ryabkov: It is primarily Washington’s geopolitical project, an attempt to expand its sphere of influence by getting new instruments for strengthening its positions, which Washington hopes will eventually allow it to dominate this region. It is also a way of creating problems for us by endangering our security. We have openly pointed out that there are red lines which we will not allow anyone to cross, and we also have certain requirements, which have been formulated exceedingly clearly. I believe everyone is aware of the signal President Vladimir Putin issued that Moscow needs maximally reliable legal guarantees of security. The President has instructed the Foreign Ministry to thoroughly address this matter. We are doing this. In particular, we are preparing definitive proposals and ideas, which we will submit for consideration by the Americans, and possibly their allies.

Question: Is it possible to mark red lines jointly with the United States?

Sergey Ryabkov: I believe that this is inherently impossible. There is such a wide gap in our approaches to international affairs and priorities in the so-called Euro-Atlantic that common red lines are unthinkable. There is only one red line we have marked jointly, which is very good. I am referring to the unacceptability of a nuclear war. By adopting the relevant statement issued by our leaders last June, Russia and the United States pointed out that they are aware of their joint responsibility. There will be no winners in a nuclear war, which must never be waged. This has been emphasised most definitely. I believe that this is a major positive factor during the current alarming period in international relations.

As for geopolitical red lines, no, we are rivals and opponents in this sense, and we will not suggest that the Americans do anything like this. We will demand that they do not cross our red lines, which we mark based on our national interests.

Question: Russia has mentioned the unacceptability of NATO’s eastward expansion. The bloc has replied that it has an open-door policy, and that any country complying with its membership principles can join it. What is Moscow’s attitude to this?

Sergey Ryabkov: This is really one of the biggest problems in the Euro-Atlantic region. NATO’s unrestrained expansion over the past decades has shown that Western advances, promises and commitments are of little value unless they are legally formalised. Soviet and later Russian leaders were told by responsible officials that NATO would not expand eastwards. We see that the situation is diametrically opposite.

NATO says that every country is free to decide how to guarantee its security, up to and including by joining military-political alliances. I would like to point out that the freedom to join alliances cannot be absolute. It is as it is in human societies, your freedom ends where the freedom of others begins. There must be clear boundaries and mutual obligations and responsibilities. This is why the phrase about the freedom to join alliances is always balanced by the phrase that this must not be done at the expense of the security of other states. This is the underlying principle of the OSCE, for example.

Regrettably, NATO’s expansion has long come into a dramatic conflict with this principle. We will continue to tell our opponents, both NATO states and the non-members, which would like to join the alliance, that it is impossible to do both things simultaneously. Therefore, there should be no further expansion of NATO. The attempt to present the matter by saying that Russia has no right of veto here is a futile attempt. We will continue to say that if our opponents act contrary to this truth, they will not strengthen their security but will instead face grave consequences.

Question: How does the alliance explain the need to move eastwards?

Sergey Ryabkov: There are no arguments. Moreover, they are trying to deny the validity of the very question of NATO’s eastward expansion. They are rejecting the opportunity to discuss this issue ostensibly as a matter of principle. But this is a mistake that could weaken their own security.

Question: Joseph Biden announced his readiness to discuss with Russia its concern over NATO’s expansion. When and in what format might consultations on this issue take place?

Sergey Ryabkov: We see the US readiness to continue discussing this issue, and this is a good sign. We have well-established channels – our dialogue with the United States is conducted in various areas. For one thing, there are the consultations on strategic stability, which I mentioned. Two working groups are involved in this.

One of them will be dealing with actions that exert a strategic effect. Understandably, security guarantees and non-crossing of red lines is exactly what we are talking about now. These are actions with a strategic effect.

We have channels of political dialogue with the United States as well. There are also formats of cooperation and discussion of these issues with NATO countries – albeit, not with all of them but with some, they are active, and we will probably use these formats eventually, as well.

Finally, the OSCE Forum for Security is operating as a pan-European venue in Vienna. After all, the venue of our dialogue doesn’t matter as much. What matters is the gist of our discussion.

For the time being, we do not quite understand how serious our opponents are. Therefore, we still need to conduct some probing surveys to find this out.

I would like to express the hope that this process will lead to a dramatic improvement in the entire strategic stability situation. We are talking about global security, including Russia’s. NATO and the US have now focused on the allegedly threatening concentration of our troops and hardware along the border with Ukraine.  But permit me, in the first place, they are talking about our actions on our own territory. Is there a limit to geopolitical audacity, not to say, the impudence of those who are trying to dictate to us regarding what we can and cannot do within our own borders?

There is a second, no less important point: they are concentrating on specific developments in certain areas whereas we lay emphasis on the need to ensure security on a broad scale for decades to come. They are using a microscope whereas we are looking forward through binoculars in an effort to prevent unfavourable developments in the future.

Question: Do you know the date for talks on visa issues with the United States? What objectives is the Russian Federation pursuing in its consultations with Washington on this? Is there a chance to make any progress in this area by the end of this year or the beginning of the next?

Sergey Ryabkov: I sympathise with those who are having difficulties with US visas, and I would like to emphasise that the current situation in this area reflects the reluctance of the US to take obvious and very simple decisions. That is, to send the personnel necessary within the quota to Russia, a quota that has been in place for a long time and which has not been filled – neither in Moscow at the Embassy’s Consular Department, nor at the Consulates General in Yekaterinburg or Vladivostok – so they can restore regular service for Russian citizens. Instead, they maintain their absurd accusations to the effect that we are allegedly putting obstacles in the way of this. We haven’t done this; we just cannot unilaterally issue visas to Americans while our personnel cannot enter the United States because visa issuance to diplomatic personnel and holders of service passports has, in fact, been frozen.

It is a vicious cycle. We continue to suggested to the Americans a mutual resetting to restart normal operations at foreign missions. Instead they have ever more requests and ultimatums. The most questionable among them was the request that our diplomatic mission staff who have been in the United States for over three years need to leave. Why, on earth, three and not five years? We are forced to mirror their actions.

Unless the situation in this area changes, US staff here will have to leave here after the same time period. This may simply result in our foreign missions becoming unable to operate any more.

As for meetings, we expect the Americans to regard our proposals seriously – we have made a lot of them. As soon as they respond, we will be ready to arrange the consultations within the shortest notice possible: by the end of this year, by the end of December. So far the United States has yet to give a proper response. We call on them again to resolve this issue and this intolerable situation. It hurts not only our compatriots but also US citizens themselves, who also cannot get timely consular services.

Question: After the last Russian-US video summit we heard that contacts will continue in a different format. Are there any timeframes or understanding as to when such a meeting can take place?

Sergey Ryabkov: So far, no. However, the main thing is that we achieved an understanding about the need to maintain contact whether it is in a video format, by telephone or, of course, a face-to-face meeting. Still, it is too early to talk about specifics. Let’s first move at least toward implementing what the leaders talked about on December 7. Once again: the Foreign Ministry is working on this very closely, in accordance with our instructions.

Breaking: US-sponsored ISIS Terrorists Massacre 60 People in Diyala, Iraq

 ARABI SOURI 

Iraq: US-sponsored ISIS Terrorists Massacre 60 People in Diyala Province

ISIS terrorists stormed a town in the Miqdadiyah region of Diyala province and slaughtered dozens of people in it, initial report speak of 60 civilians slaughtered.

News coming out from the Al Hawasha village said ISIS terrorists have set up ambushes and targeted the villagers of the Shia sect killing dozens, many are still being unaccounted for, the Al Housha village is in the Miqdadiyah region of the province of Diyala northeast of Baghdad.

ISIS commits a sectarian massacre against the Shia in the Al Huwasha village of Miqdadiya, the terrorists set an ambush and targeted civilians, now there are a number of unaccounted martyrs and injured.’

Iraq is in political, economic, sectarian, and social turmoil ever since the United States decided to topple one more country with a national army that doesn’t recognize Israel and coincidently is rich with oil and gold reserves, the country after 18 years of direct invasion suffered and continue to suffer over 1.5 million of its people killed and double of those maimed, and triple of those displaced, and more than 70% of the population impoverished.

The rise of terrorist organizations like ISIS and previously Al Qaeda in the Rafiden (Iraq) mostly from tribes with connections to the Al Saud and the NATO-version of Islam they follow called Wahhabism has only come as an alternative to the ‘US boots on the ground’ after the Iraqi resistance was inflicting a heavy toll on the invaders and looters of their country.

Obama’s role in creating ISIS – Interview with the founder of ‘Jihad’ in Egypt and former friend of chief of Al Qaeda Zawahiri – July 2014

Iraq has concluded very controversial parliamentary elections earlier this month which despite the long preparations and settings developed saw hundreds of proven violations in the ballot boxes as confirmed by the special higher commission for elections which itself is accused of failing all its promises in conducting transparent elections. Protesters took to the streets from the majority of parties and independent candidates with calls to annul the results of the whole election. The USA and its Saudi allies are trying to shore up parties that want to dissolve the Iraqi PMU forces who defeated ISIS in Iraq, no coincidences in politics.

ISIS terrorist organization continues to prove it works for the Pentagon in every single crime it committed since it emerged after the USA and its British partners invaded Iraq in March 2003 based on lies of the country’s possession of weapons of mass destruction proven a completely fabricated information by the USA itself.

From Afghanistan to Iraq to Syria to Libya and the rest of Africa, wherever these ISIS terrorists spring up from nowhere obvious unmistakable NATO interests arise in the targeted countries and the creator and sponsors of ISIS come to ‘fight terrorism’ in those targeted countries. The terrorists commit their massacres against everybody and focus mainly on Muslims who do not follow Wahhabi Islam which is only followed in Saudi Arabia and the ‘democratic empire of the gas station Qatar’ in the Arabian Peninsula.

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The ‘Great Reset’ in Microcosm: ‘Data Driven Defeat’ in Afghanistan

August 30, 2021

Alastair Crooke

There is little mystery as to why the Taliban took over Kabul so quicklyAlastair Crooke writes.

Nation-building in Afghanistan arrived in 2001. Western interventions into the old Eastern bloc in the 1980s and early 1990s had been spectacularly effective in destroying the old social and institutional order; but equally spectacular in failing to replace imploded societies with fresh institutions.  The threat from ‘failed states’ became the new mantra, and Afghanistan – in the wake of the destruction wrought post-9/11 – therefore necessitated external intervention.  Weak and failed states were the spawning ground for terrorism and its threat to the ‘global order’, it was said. It was in Afghanistan that a new liberal world vision was to be stood-up.

At another level, the war in Afghanistan became another sort of crucible. In very real terms, Afghanistan turned into a testbed for every single innovation in technocratic project management – with each innovation heralded as precursor to our wider future. Funds poured in: Buildings were thrown up, and an army of globalised technocrats arrived to oversee the process.  Big data, AI and the utilization of ever expanding sets of technical and statistical metrics, were to topple old ‘stodgy’ ideas.  Military sociology in the form of Human Terrain Teams and other innovative creations, were unleashed to bring order to chaos. Here, the full force of the entire NGO world, the brightest minds of that international government-in-waiting, were given a playground with nearly infinite resources at their disposal.

This was to be a showcase for technical managerialism. It presumed that a properly technical, and scientific way of understanding war and nation-building would be able to mobilize reason and progress to accomplish what everyone else could not, and so create a post-modern society, out of a complex tribal one, with its own storied history.

The ‘new’ arrived, as it were, in a succession of NGO boxes marked ‘pop-up modernity’.  The 18th century British statesman Edmund Burke, of course, had already warned in Reflections on the Revolution in France, as he witnessed the Jacobins tearing down their old order: “that it is with infinite caution” that anyone should pull down or replace structures that have served society well over the ages.  But this managerial technocracy had little time for old ‘stodgy’ ideas.

But, what last week’s fall of the western instituted regime so clearly revealed is that today’s managerial class, consumed by the notion of technocracy as the only means of effecting functional rule birthed instead, something thoroughly rotten – “data-driven defeat”, as one U.S. Afghan veteran described it – so rotten, that it collapsed in a matter of days. On the extended blunders of the “system” in Afghanistan, he writes:

“A retired Navy SEAL who served in the White House under both Bush and Obama reflected,[that]  “collectively the system is incapable of taking a step back to question basic assumptions.” That “system” is best understood, not simply as a military or foreign policy body, but as a euphemism for the habits and institutions of an American ruling class that has exhibited an almost limitless collective capacity for deflecting the costs of failure.

“This class in general, and the people in charge of the war in Afghanistan in particular, believed in informational and management solutions to existential problems. They elevated data points and sta­tistical indices to avoid choosing prudent goals and organizing the proper strategies to achieve them. They believed in their own provi­dential destiny and that of people like them to rule, regardless of their failures”.

Whatever was not corrupt before America arrived, became corrupt in the maelstrom of that $2 Trillion of American money showered on the project. American soldiers, arms manufacturers, globalised technocrats, governance experts, aid workers, peacekeepers, counter-insurgency theorists and lawyers – all made their fortunes.

The flaw was that Afghanistan as a liberal progressive vision was a hoax in the first place: Afghanistan was invaded, and occupied, because of its geography. It was the ideal platform from which to perturb Central Asia, and thus unsettle Russia and China.

No one was truly committed because there was really no longer any Afghanistan to commit to. Whomsoever could steal from the Americans did so. The Ghani regime collapsed in a matter of days, because it was ‘never there’ to begin with: A Potemkin Village, whose role lay in perpetuating a fiction, or rather the myth of America’s Grand Vision of itself as the shaper and guardian of ‘our’ global future.

The true gravity for America and Europe of the present psychological ‘moment’ is not only that nation-building, as a project intended to stand up liberal values been revealed as having ‘achieved nothing’, but Afghanistan débacle has underlined the limitations to technical managerialism in way that is impossible to miss.

The gravity of America’s present psychological ‘moment’ – the implosion of Kabul – was well articulated when Robert Kagan argued earlier, that the ‘global values’ project (however tenuous its basis in reality) nonetheless has become essential to preserving ‘democracy’ at home:  For, he suggests, an America that retreats from global hegemony, would no longer possess the domestic group solidarity to preserve America as ‘idea’, at home, either.

What Kagan is saying here is important – It may constitute the true cost of the Afghanistan débacle. Every élite class advances various claims about its own legitimacy, without which a stable political order is impossible. Legitimating myths can take many forms and may change over time, but once they become exhausted, or lose their credibility – when people no longer believe in the narrative, or the claims which underpin that political ‘idea’ – then it is ‘game over’.

Swedish intellectual, Malcolm Kyeyune writes that we may be “witnessing the catastrophic end of this metaphysical power of legitimacy that has shielded the managerial ruling class for decades”:

“Anyone even briefly familiar with the historical record knows just how much of a Pandora’s box such a loss of legitimacy represents. The signs visibly have been multiplying over many years. When Michael Gove said, “I think the people in this country have had enough of experts” in a debate about the merits of Brexit, he probably traced the contours of something much bigger than anyone really knew at the time. Back then, the acute phase of the delegitimization of the managerial class was only just beginning. Now, with Afghanistan, it is impossible to miss”.

There is therefore, little mystery as to why the Taliban took over Kabul so quickly. Not only did the project per se lack legitimacy for Afghans, but that aura of claimed expertise, of technological inevitability that has protected the élite managerial class, has been exposed by the sheer dysfunctionality on display, as the West frantically flees Kabul. And it is precisely how it has ended that has really drawn back the curtain, and shown the world the rot festering beneath.

When the legitimating claim is used up, and people no longer believe in the concepts or claims that underpin a particular system or claim to rule, the extinction of that particular élite, Kyeyune writes, becomes a foregone conclusion.

Terrorists Increase Bombings in Syria; Is False Flag Looming?

MIRI WOOD 

Archive of terrorists described as medics by the NATO liars.

Terrorists armed and supported by NATO countries, who refused reconciliation with the government, and rejected getting on those air conditioned green bus to join other al Qaeda savages in the temporary haven provided by NATO invader Erdogan, have increased deadly attacks against Daraa al Balad.

The NATO supremacist junta ruling the UN was wailing its tears for the savages, on Wednesday, one day after the first batch of the beasts with two legs, along with their concubines and unfortunate biological footprints, had been shipped out. The second parcel of human garbage was sent on its way, on Thursday — with some reports claiming they were en route to somewhere in Europe.

Daraa Balad green buses to evict ISIS and Al Qaeda terrorists to northern Syria

On Saturday, terrorists who went into hiding with their NATO weapons — weapons do not fall like manna from the heavens — and used ground to ground mortars to blow up a civilian home, murdering two children, and injuring their older siblings, and mother. Lest it still not be clear after more than one decade of heinous atrocities, the NATO rabid dogs of war would still have us believe that the savage terrorists are altruistic human beings, yearning to be free — likely from pre-NATO Spring affordable food, housing, schooling, and full employment — and will stop at no lie to continue the barbaric, war criminal lies.

Reuters lied , defended terrorists against murderous crimes.

NATO stenographer Reuters, recently notorious for fraudulent fact checks, lied about Saturday’s terrorists bombings.

On Sunday, the NATO sponsored terrorists bombed the building of the Internal Security Forces, murdering one policemen and injuring two others in Daraa al Balad.

Our NATO double standards of murderous hypocrisy and other war crimes are increasing, along with attacks by terrorists in Syria. NATO stenographer-media will wax poetic about hushed reverence among grieving families under gray skies as caskets with dead US soldiers are returned from a Taliban terror attack in Kabul, and ignore Syrian Arab Army soldiers coming under terrorists’ bombings, and lying about murdered civilians.

Demented Joe checks his watch at the somber occasion of Americian troops killed by terrorists coming home in caskets.
Somber Joe Biden checks the time as US troops return home in caskets.

We provide the photo of President Biden and the watch, not to point out a singular bit of rudeness, but to bring attention to his increasingly coming under attack, even by those ignoring his obvious dementia (despite his meds, his massive herding noted at the inauguration and at the G7 meeting, his likely getting plenty of sleep, his recent onset of some extrapyridimal side effects — caused by neuroleptics noted in his gait). That much of the bipartisan country is perturbed by him suggests it may be time for another false flag, to divert attention to a 10 minute hate.

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In September 2016, uninidicted war criminal Barack Obama accidentally slaughtered 83 Syrian Arab Army soldiers in al Thardeh, near the Deir Ezzor Airport. These soldiers were about to wipe out the hiding place of a small army of ISIS terrorists, who were accidentally rescued by this little faux pas of the 44th president.

slaughter in Deir Ezzor by terrorists in suits.
Mass funeral for 83 Syrian Arab Army solders accidentally murdered by Obama terrorists.

Syria News mentions this seeming ancient history as preface to the response of then US ambassador to the UN, also unindicted war criminal, and NATO supporter of terrorists in Syria, Samantha Power.

Power was enraged that the Russian ambassador had disturbed her by calling an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council. At her presser, she not only voiced her annoyance, she not only ignored the fact that the US led coalition bombing the SAR was a war crime, but she also let the proverbial cat out of the bag, albeit via the geopolitical version of Freudian projection — that is, blaming another country for the nefarious actions one’s own country has previously perpetrated, and is amenable to perpetrating again (e.g., the Gulf of Tonkin ‘incident.’)

She explained that when there is a problem, the puppeteers of the terrorists create a diversion; her admission in 2016 hold true, today.

US Americans are increasingly faced with home evictions, endure unaffordable healthcare, are terrorized by COVID and its ever-increasing variants, are watching food costs skyrocket. Do they really care about fraudulent monthly meetings on the ridiculous chemical Syria files?

Or, while they complain about Afghanistan being ‘abandoned’ to terrorists, are they in need of a need false flag by terrorists against the people of Syria, so they may enjoy a short-lived dopamine rush to divert attention from their very real problems?

— Miri Wood

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Congress Supremacists Remind White House of Regime Change Doctrine in Syria

https://syrianews.cc/congress-supremacists-remind-white-house-of-regime-change-doctrine-in-syria/embed/#?secret=IUyo9nAaJC

9 Women and Children Injured Trying to Put Out a Fire in Al-Hol Camp

https://syrianews.cc/9-women-and-children-injured-trying-to-put-out-a-fire-in-al-hol-camp/embed/#?secret=b3UxLExcy3

NATO Turkish Army Drone Bombs NATO Kurdish SDF Vehicle in Hasakah

https://syrianews.cc/nato-turkish-army-drone-bombs-nato-kurdish-sdf-vehicle-in-hasakah/embed/#?secret=ap5sz1a5vD

The Geneva Summit: Nothingburger or Watershed?

THE SAKER • JUNE 17, 2021 

The long awaited summit between Presidents Putin and Biden has finally taken place, but was it a success? Will it change anything? The answer to this question very much depends on one’s expectations. Let’s take a closer look beginning with the context.

Context of the summit

Just about the only thing which both US and Russian observers agree on is that the state of the Russian-US relations is about as bad as can be (in my personal opinion, it is even much worse than during the Cuban Missile Crisis or any other time in the Cold War). As I have mentioned many times, I believe that the AngloZionist Empire and Russia have been at war at least since 2013. Remember Obama with his “Russian economy in “in tatters”? That was the outcome Obama promised the people of the USA (Quick factcheck: the company Deloitte recently polled the CEOs of major Russian corporations and only 4% of them felt “pessimistic” about their financial perspectives as “negative”, 40% replied “same as before” and 56% replied “optimistic”). Of course, this was was not a conventional war, it was about 80% informational, 15% economic and only 5% kinetic. This, however, does not change the fact that this war was an existential war for both sides, one in which only one side could prevail while the other would, if not quite disappear, then at least totally lose its superpower status. This is a civilizational war, which pitted western and Russian civilizational (cultural, social and even religious) models against each other roughly along the following lines:

The US/Anglo-Zionist worldview: we are the “city upon a hill”, the beacon of light and hope for mankind. Our “manifest destiny” is to “expand the area of freedom” worldwide. We have the best armed forces in history, the strongest economy, the best everything. We are the “leaders of the free world” whose “responsibility” is to lead the world. This is not imperialism, this is the “duty” and “responsibility” placed upon us by history. Our values are universal values and must be universally accepted by all. Those refusing to join our model are authoritarian “rogue states”. Russia must accept that because she lost the Cold War and that western values have prevailed. Those who refuse to accept this are “revanchists” who want to overturn the outcome of the Cold War and rebuild the Soviet Union. The US had to expand NATO to the East to protect Europe from “Russian aggression”. Now “America” is back and, with our allies and friends, we will create a “rules based” international order which we will benevolently enforce to the immense gratitude of all of mankind.

Russian worldview:

Russia rejects any form of imperialism, for herself and for others. Russia wants a multilateral world order, based on international law and the full sovereignty of nations. Each nation should have the right to pursue its own cultural, economic, spiritual and civilizational model without being threatened, sanctioned, bombed, subverted or invaded. Russia rejects the so-called “western values” (turbocapitalism, imperialism, wokeness, multiculturalism, militant atheism, critical race theory, gender fluidity, etc.). The US is welcome to fly homo-flags on its embassies, but it has no business telling others how to live. In fact, the US has to accept two closely related realities: first, the US does not have the means to impose its ideology on the rest of the planet and, second, the rest of the planet sees the total hypocrisy of a country claiming to stand for values which itself gets to violate as much as it wants. Any comparisons are immediately dismissed with the words “but this is completely different!!!”.

Again, Russia agrees that the US is welcome to live in a post-truth, post-reality, delusion if it wants, but she also believes, and says so, that the West has no right to try to impose its pretend-values on others, especially when it constantly violates them all when convenient.

The core issue

The core belief underlying these very different worldview is extremely simple: the US sees itself as exceptional and, therefore, endowed with special rights and sees Russia as a much inferior interlocutor which needs to accept the US hegemony upon the world. In sharp contrast, Russia denies the USA any special status and demands that the US leaders accept Russia as an equal interlocutor before any meaningful dialog or cooperation could even be discussed.

I think that it would be fair to say that roughly between 2013 and 2020 both countries exerted immense efforts in a kind of a massive arms wrestling match to show that it, and not the other guy, would prevail.

For a very short while, Trump tried to get some kind of dialog going, but he was quickly and completely neutered by the Neocons and the messianic imperialists in his own camp (I think of Pompeo for example) and his efforts, however sincere, yielded absolutely nothing: Trump was not able to put an end to the war started by Obama.

Then came Biden and, at first, things looked hopeless. Seeing the massive failure of the first US-China meeting in Alaska, one could have been excused to expect a similar, or even worse, outcome from any meetings between Biden and Putin. Many (on both sides) believed that such a meeting was pointless at best since the US had painted itself into a zero-sum corner in which anything short of an exchange of insults would be seen by the US media (and the public opinion it shapes) as a “defeat”, “surrender” and possibly even “treason” by Biden. That is definitely the message conveyed by much of the US media, including Fox.

 


I want to express my total disgust with US Republicans who, for four years, were literally hounded by the US media for Trump’s alleged “caving in” to Putin or even for being a “Manchurian candidate” put in power by “Putin”. Now the Republicans are using the exact same language accusing Biden of “weakness” and for “caving in” to Putin. Truly, the Dems and the GOP are like Coke and Pepsi: different labels, same product. Worse, both the Dems and the GOP place their petty interests above the well-being of the United States and its people. I consider both parties traitors to the US and its people.


What actually happened

In spite of all the nay-sayers (on both sides!), Putin and Biden did meet. True, the meeting did not yield any spectacular results, but it would be wrong to conclude that nothing of importance happened.

First, the tone of the Biden administration towards Russia and Putin did change, remarkably so, especially after Biden’s infamous “uhu, he is a killer”. Some sanctions were lifted, the US basically gave up on trying to prevent North Stream 2 (NS2) from being completed, and a number of small steps were achieved, including:

  • An agreement to discuss cybersecurity on an expert level (something the Russians had been demanding for years, but which the USA rejected out of hand).
  • joint declaration strategic stability (more about that below)
  • An agreement to discuss outstanding issues on an expert level
  • A return of both US and Russian ambassadors to their former positions
  • A discussion on a possible prisoner swap
  • A discussion on possible future arms control agreements

Also of interest are the points which were mentioned in passing, mostly by the US side, but which were clearly not focused on. These include:

  • The Ukraine and Belarus
  • Human Rights (aka “Navalyi” & Co.)
  • Russian alleged interference in western elections
  • Russian alleged covert operations against the US
  • The alleged Russian threat to the EU or in the Arctic
  • Russian ties to China and Iran

That is the official picture. But let’s be a little more wise about this: the US and Russian delegations (about 400 people each) included some very high ranking officials, including the Russian Chief of General Staff. Neither side would have bothered with such a massive undertaking only for the purpose of exchanging threats, ultimatums or insults. And such summits are never organized unless the parties have at least a reasonable prospect of some kind of understanding (this is why the return of the ambassadors was announced before the summit!).

So what really happened here?

To answer that question, we first need to look at what did not happen.

First, it is quite clear that the language/tone of the Biden administration has dramatically changed. This was immediately noticed by the (mentally infantile) US media which attacked Biden in his press conference for not putting enough pressure on Putin. Oh sure, Biden did pay lip service to the usual russophobic nonsense the US media seems to be forever stuck on, but it is quite clear what the US legacy ziomedia did not get what it wanted: they wanted Biden to “unite the West behind the USA” and then “tell” Putin to “behave” and admit something – anything – about the Russian “wrongdoings”. Putin gave them absolutely and exactly nothing. If anything, we could say that he held up a mirror to Uncle Shmuel and that Uncle Shmuel had nothing to say to that.

Second, and for the first time in a very long while, the US did not engage in any threats or ultimatums. If anything, it was quite amazing to see Biden getting angry at an imbecile journo from CNN (I think) who asked Biden why he expected Putin to “change his behavior” when the latter admitted no wrongs. Later Biden apologized, but he was clearly frustrated with the level of imbecility of the US press media.

 


The US media truly showed its true face during both press conferences. With Putin, they asked stupid, leading questions, based on their own delusional assumptions, and Putin easily swatted down these questions by pointing out at undeniable and well-known facts. The Biden press conference was, as usual, completely sanitized with a prepared list of reporters and questions, and with no Russian journalists allowed (pluralism, free media or free speech anybody?!). The infantilized US public did not think much about this, but in the rest of the world – in Zone B if you wish – people immediately noticed the startling difference between the two leaders and between the two press conferences. It will be awfully hard for the US to speak of “freedom of speech” when its President cannot be trusted to talk to his counterpart alone (Bliken never left his side, just like Dick Cheney did for Bush Jr. or Don Regan did for Reagan in his latter years) and cannot take unscripted questions from the (supposedly) “free” media. The US media clearly wanted Biden to go to Geneva, and tell Putin “now you submit or else…” and only the completely ignorant and infantilized US public could actually take that nonsense seriously. When that did not happen, they turned on Biden and accused him of weakness for “making no threats”!


Third, and crucially, by NOT discussing silly issues but by focusing on the real, important, topics underlying the US-Russian relations, Biden de-facto admitted two things:

  1. The US policy towards Russia since 2013 has failed and
  2. Russia is an equal partner to the USA who cannot be bullied, threatened or attacked

So much for “talking to the Russians from a position of force” which ALL the western leaders mantrically promised us. In sharp contrast, the Kremlin did not have to make any threats: the recent military exercises, which truly freaked out NATO and the EU, made any posturing by Russia quite unnecessary.

I am not so naive as to believe that any of this is set in stone.

First, we know that US politicians typically meet with their Russian counterparts and say “A” only to later come back home, cave in to the war lobby, and then declare “non-A”. Trump did that, as did Kerry and many others. US diplomats are mostly ignorant political appointees and/or warmongering Neocons who simply are not intellectually equipped to deal with their Russian counterparts (James Baker was probably the last truly sophisticated US Secretary of State). Second, we all understand that Biden is really “Biden” (the man himself is just a front, real decisions are taken by the collective “Biden”), which means that while he and even Bliken can agree on something, but that by no means implies that they will stand by what they agreed on. Finally, is is objectively really hard to undo that which was done: eight years of self-defeating delusions about itself and the rest of the world have done immense damage to the United States and it would take something pretty close to a miracle to now reverse a course which at least two US administrations have so foolishly insisted on pursuing.

Yet, what Biden did and said was quite clearly very deliberate and prepared. This is not the case of a senile President losing his focus and just spewing (defeatist) nonsense. Therefore, we must conclude that there are also those in the current US (real) power configuration who decided that Biden must follow a new, different, course or, at the very least, change rhetoric. I don’t know who/what this segment of the US power configuration is, but I submit that something has happened which forced at least a part of the US ruling class to decide that Obama’s war on Russia had failed and that a different approach was needed. At least that is the optimistic view.

The pessimistic view would suggest that, just like a boxer who has thrown so many punches that he now needs to catch his breath, the leaders of the Empire just needed a short time break, to “catch their breath”, before resuming the endless cycle of petty attacks, threats and accusations against Russia.

Time will show which group is right. My money is on the pessimists (as usual).

What we can say now is this: the period 2013-2021 saw a huge decline in US power abroad and the explosion of an equally huge internal political and social crises which are still catastrophically hurting the United States (Obama and Trump were truly the weakest and worst Presidents in US history). In sharp contrast, the same 2013-2021 years saw a huge rise in Russian military, political, economic and social power. Denying this reality forever is simply not an option for the USA (even if the US media never reports about this). It appears that the Biden Administration decided to keep up the same infantile language as its predecessors for internal consumption, but decided that a change of attitude on the international front was urgently needed, if only in order to avoid taking on both Russia and China (and, possibly, Iran) at the same time. History also shows that even just talking to Russia from a presumed “position of strength” was useless at best and suicidal at worst. The history of western imperialism in China offers a more ambiguous image, but the current revival of Chinese power under Xi also suggests that the Chinese won’t cave in to their former colonial masters.

What about China?

If China was mentioned at all, it is not official. The Kremlin had already indicated in numerous statements that trying to turn China and Russia against each other was not a realistic option, so on the Russian side there were no expectations of anything changing on that issue. Besides, while China has a lot to offer Russia, the USA has literally absolutely nothing Russia would want or need. The same goes for Iran, albeit at a lesser degree. There are those in the US ruling class who believe that China is a much more dangerous enemy for the AngloZionist Empire than Russia and it is possible that these are the interests which pushed Biden into a more realistic stance. The truth is that anybody who knows anything about the Sino-Russian relationship (which the Chinese now officially call the “strategic comprehensive partnership of coordination for the new era”) understands that these two countries vitally need each other. Did the US diplomats really hope that they could sway Russia to the US side? Probably not. So, at most, what they needed was a short time break or, at least, some kind of temporary stabilization of the “Russian front”.

What about the Europeans?

The Europeans are stuck in some kind of political no man’s land: some want a confrontation at all cost (3B+PU), especially since the EU stopped funding them, while others are clearly fed-up (Germany, France, Italy, etc.) with the current situation. They all realize that something has just changed, but they appear unsure as to what, why and how. And how shall the EU now treat Biden? First, while hating Trump was seen as “politically correct” by the EU ruling classes, hating Biden is quite unthinkable. Second, while Biden did “consult” with the G7 and NATO, these “consultations” yielded no meaningful result. Unlike the summit with Putin, these “preparatory summits” were just nice PR, a feel-good, “rah-rah, we are all united” kind of symbolic event. Think of it as an imperial king visiting his colonies: fun but not very important. But meeting the leader of a “gas station masquerading as a country” required the presence of 400 or so top US officials and months of preparations. Finally, the fact that “Biden” had to yield to Germany on NS2 shows that the grip of Uncle Shmuel on Germany is weakening, “another writing on the wall” which “Biden” apparently read.

So who won?

At this point I don’t think that we can say that anybody won. In fact, the existential war opposing the AngloZionist Empire to Russia is not over. At most, this will be a temporary ceasefire allowing Uncle Shmuel to catch his breath. But I think that we can also fairly conclude that Obama’s war on Russia has failed and that the Biden Administration is more in touch with reality than Obama ever was. How long this new realism will last is anybody’s guess. I don’t think we should put much stock in the idea that now a new era of peace or collaboration has begun. But maybe, just maybe, the USA will stop playing what I call a “game of nuclear chicken” with a superpower which is at least a full decade ahead in military (and civilian!) nuclear technology and delivery vehicles and a superpower which is now working as a binomial with another nuclear superpower, China.

Conclusion: the US-Russian Joint Statement on Strategic Stability

This is the full text of the US-Russian Joint Statement on Strategic Stability I mentioned above: (emphasis added)

We, President of the United States of America Joseph R. Biden and President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, note the United States and Russia have demonstrated that, even in periods of tension, they are able to make progress on our shared goals of ensuring predictability in the strategic sphere, reducing the risk of armed conflicts and the threat of nuclear war. The recent extension of the New START Treaty exemplifies our commitment to nuclear arms control. Today, we reaffirm the principle that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. Consistent with these goals, the United States and Russia will embark together on an integrated bilateral Strategic Stability Dialogue in the near future that will be deliberate and robust. Through this Dialogue, we seek to lay the groundwork for future arms control and risk reduction measures.

The language here is very important: it is the repudiation of a major US delusion which began with Ronald Regan’s “Star Wars” and which was shared by each following President: the notion that the US can win a nuclear war against Russia by technologically or economically defeating Russia. The website “Defense One” (which is hardly a “Russian disinformation outlet”) had this to say about this decades long illusion:

Biden can correct the mistakes of the past. The future of missile defense will be thoroughly studied as part of a broader nuclear posture/deterrence review that will be started in the few weeks. Mindful that less expensive offensive weapons can always be developed to overwhelm, sabotage, or destroy any conceivable defensive system, his administration can return to diplomacy, seek verifiable mutual reductions, prevent the development of new threats, and address rising concerns such as the weaponization of space and cyber threats. That would allow the transfer of funds from the weapons that don’t work to programs that will rebuild and add to America’s security.

If this is really what is happening (and we need to wait before coming to any hasty conclusions!) then this is good news. Good news for Russia which has nothing to gain from any “reloaded Cold War” with the West, good news for the Europeans which need to recover at least a modicum of agency, good news for the USA, which is bled dry and is quickly becoming a underdeveloped third world country, and good news for the entire planet which would be devastated by any nuclear war between any combination of superpowers. If this is really what happened.

For the time being, the “crazies in the basement” are still every bit as crazy as before (see here and here for a few good examples). So are the woke-freaks (see here and here). So is the homo-lobby (see here and here). They all hate Russia and Putin with a passion, and they ain’t going away anytime soon. Besides, it is not like “Biden” will do anything other than give them all a standing ovation, full support and millions of dollars to their cause: these “minorities” (more accurately: this coalition of minorities) are the ideological foundation for Biden’s entire presidency, they brought him to power and he cannot renounce them.

How long brainwashed doubleplusgoodthinking sheep will continue to “take a knee” against “systemic racism” is anybody’s guess, however.

On the external front, the US cannot give up its messianic ideology and claims of exceptionalism. This would be truly unthinkable for the vast majority of US Americans. This does not change the fact that, as I have written many times, the AngloZionist Empire and the current US political system are neither sustainable, nor reformable. Besides, empires are almost impossible to reform. That is why they usually end up collapsing. And when they do, they often try to lash out at those they blame for their own failures. This is exactly what has been going on since 2013 and this will not and, in fact, cannot change until the final – and inevitable – collapse.

There will be no friendship or even partnership between the USA and Russia for as long as the USA will continue to serve as the latest host for the parasitic AngloZionist Empire. Аs the spokesman for Putin, Peskov, just declared “So far, there are no reasons to exclude the United States from the list of unfriendly countries“.

Finally, did Putin “win”?

I would answer both yes and no. Yes, he did win in the sense that his strategy of dealing with an Empire on the warpath against Russia has been proven extremely effective. All the nay-sayers (liberal or neo-Marxists) have been accusing Putin of caving in to pretty much everything everywhere, yet it is the USA which had to eat crow, drop all its preconditions and ask for a summit. None of the many propaganda attacks against Russia (MH17, Skipal, chem weapons, Belarus, the Karabakh war, Navalnyi, doping, sports and flags, the seizure of Russian diplomatic offices, the kidnapping of Russian citizens, economic and political sanctions, threats, sabre-rattling at the borders, etc. etc. etc.) have worked or even yielded any meaningful results. In that sense, yes, Putin did win. But that existential war is not over, not for the US, not for Russia and neither it is over for China, Iran and any other country wanting true sovereignty.

In that sense, what happened in Geneva is not the beginning of the end (primarily because that beginning of the end has already long taken place, even if it was never reported in Zone A), but it is definitely a chance to change some dynamics on the international scene. The infinite arrogance of the likes of Trump and Pompeo has been replaced by a much more cautious and realistic approach, at least in superpower relations. But Putin/Russia will only have truly won once the US accepts the reality that the Empire is dead and that the USA, like all ex-empires, must now become a “normal” country (like all former empires had to). Sounds easy, but this is almost infinitely hard when imperialism is what you were born, raised, educated and conditioned to live with and when you sincerely believe that your brand of imperialism is somehow benevolent, even altruistic. Russia/Putin will only have truly won once the last empire in history finally gives way to a civilized international world order. Until then, the struggle of Russia – and all the other members of the resistance against the Empire – will continue.