Turkey-NATO Crisis Sets The Scene For New European ‘EU Army’

Posted on November 30, 2015 by Reid Mukai

nato-1

By Patrick Henningsen

They say there are no coincidences in politics and foreign affairs.

Less than 72 hours after Turkey shot down a Russian fighter inside of Syrian airspace, moves are already afoot to increase the role of Europe in Syria.

Germany has now joined the party this week by revealing its intention to deploy ground troops in the fight against ISIS. Angela Merkel’s government announced its plan to send 100 Bundeswehr Special Forces into Northern Iraq to support of the Kurdish Peshmerga forces.

Britain is not far behind either, as David Cameron intensifies his lobbying efforts to get his country into the war in Syria.

Is this part of a defacto NATO action now, or NATO by fiat? If only it were that simple…

There is much more going on here than meets the eye. With Germany now entering the fray, this brings a total of at least FIVE major NATO member states who are either actively involved in the fight, or about to enter the combat theater. The most important point here is that each and every one of these countries is in the conflict in clear violation of international law. Neither has the backing of the UN Security Council, or has an invitation from the legal and internationally recognized (including by the UN) government in Damascus. In addition, none of these actors is acting under NATO Article 5, in other words, none has been attacked by another internationally recognized nation-state of entity (although it’s curious why the western governments have insisted on referring to a brutal terrorist group as a “State”, unless of course, they recognize it as such, which somehow gives them the color of law in Article 5).

For all intents and purposes, NATO is already in. Here are the FIVE major NATO members, all of whom appear to be operating under highly dubious mandates in and around Syria:

France

Following the Paris Attacks on Friday the 13th, and still without any real evidence presented to the public that ISIS itself was responsible for the Paris Attacks – almost immediately, France deployed the full-force of its military supposedly to hit ISIS targets in the alleged Islamic State “stronghold” of Raqqa, Syria. Coincidentally, even mainstream reports questioned what the objective of France’s airstrikes were (all target data was supplied by the US), with some claiming that the French move was purely for show and that they could not confirm any actual ISIS militants were killed. Note that France had already been caught announcing its move of the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle to Syria on Nov 5th – a full week before the Paris attacks. Of course, no mention of this in the media.

Aside from giving the state license to unleash a new level of domestic Police State at home, more importantly, the Paris Attacks gave France an immediate “official” entry into the Syria War. Undoubtedly, this was a huge game-changer.

United States

When the ‘Islamic State Caliphate’ crisis public relations campaign was officially launched by the US-UK Government-Media Complex in June 2014 (before that, there was scant if little mention of this branded terror organization by western politicians and media outlets), it took some time before the US announced its grand ‘Anti-ISIS Coalition’. Perhaps ISIS needed more time to get organized, and to release a series of shocking internet videos of which the western media fed off – – and which were mostly proven as fakes and digital forgeries. Something was not right about the ISIS Crisis by US media outlets who were so enthralled with the sensational propaganda videos that no one dared question the lack of authenticity of what was eventually exposed as fake ISIS beheading video productions (the CIA has previously admitted staging such videos) or the ISIS narrative itself. Oddly, the western media treated anything coming out of ISIS HQ as sacred and unimpeachable in media terms. It wasn’t until Iranian and Hezbollah ground forces entered the fight against ISIS that US President Barack Obama finally decided it was time to move in August 2014 by waging airstrikes in Northern Iraq. Over the next few months, the US began assembling its ‘Anti-ISIS (ISIL) Coalition’, although it was hard to spot anyone else in the ‘Coalition’ other than the US.

It should be noted that on the first day of US airstrikes inside Syria (Sept 23, 2014), it was pretty clear that the US had actually bombed a series of empty buildings in Raqqa, Syria (somehow ISIS was tipped off before hand, weeks in advance, in fact). Not a good start to the “big push”. At that point, our suspicions were confirmed – that the US had no intention of actually rooting out ISIS, and that secretly Washington was actually hoping that ISIS and other terrorist brigades on the ground could do what their previous proxy ground force, the Free Syria Army, could not do – which was to overthrow the government in Damascus, which Washington and its allies refer to (just in like Iraq in 2003) the ‘Assad regime’.

Great Britain

It’s no surprise that the British Tory government has been chomping at the bit to get into the Syrian War. In August 2013, they nearly got their mandate, but lost in a Parliamentary vote. Some Tory ministers had public temper tantrums. As it turns out, the pretext for their entire push for war, ‘WMDs’, aka chemical weapons (Sarin) allegedly deployed by Syrian government forces – was exposed as a false flag attack and the US-UK’s attempt to blame Syrian President Bashar al Assad was a media fiction (just in like Iraq in 2003), a chemical attack launched by the US-led Coalition’s ‘Moderate Rebels” in order to blame the government of Syria and trigger a western intervention. The plan was a complete failure, so bad in fact, it caused the US to back off their own war vote a month later in September 2013.

It seems that the Paris Attacks have also given David Cameron some wind in his war sails too, and yesterday we discovered that the French government is now lobbying for Britain’s Royal Air Force to join in the scrum, with London stating that it, “will soon be working side by side with their French counterparts” in taking military action in Syria. In order to help sell this new leg of the war, the French were provided the use of famed ‘liberal’ British newspaper The Guardian to openly lobby for British involvement by claiming it would “put additional and extreme pressure on the ISIS terror network”. The article goes on to describe the work Britain is already doing as part of the ‘Coalition’:

“The RAF has significant capabilities for precision airstrikes, aerial reconnaissance and air-to-air refuelling support,” he says. “On a daily basis, its Tornado aircrafts and unmanned drones are causing very severe damage to Isis in Iraq. The use of these capabilities over Syria would put additional and extreme pressure on the Isis terror network.”

So what’s Cameron’s rush to get deeper into the Syrian side of the conflict? It appears as if the Paris Attacks have given Cameron a new life-line on the Syria War vote, one he’s long been pursuing. The shock and horror of Paris will certainly help his case pass muster with public opinion in accepting his long-term agenda to deploy British military assets in Syria. One reason is to showcase British hardware to the world’s lucrative arms sales market, something Cameron is no stranger to after performing the role as sales closer for BAE Systems and other firms landing billion dollar contracts in the Gulf in recent years. Currently, Cameron is desperate to rescue those contracts which threaten to be scrapped over an ‘inconvenient’ human rights row between Westminster’s political left and the Kingdom over Saudi’s plan to behead and crucify a 17 old boy – the son of a Shia activist. Covering Saudi Arabia’s ghastly human rights record in favor of turning a few quid (tens of billions for 100 Typhoon jets and a prison contract) has always been an obsession of Westminster. Coupled with the Syria issue, this last row has prompted some of most amazing double speak and spin ever seen coming out of the Foreign Office, as evidenced by this humdinger about “The World’s Most Misunderstood Feudal Kingdom: Saudi Arabia”, seemingly straight out of the Office of Information Dispersal:

“One well-placed Whitehall source said: “It appears that the Saudis believe that they are being treated like a political football and had enough. It was only after the personal intervention of the Prime Minister that the situation has temporarily cooled but the Saudis want assurances.”

It gets worse, as Westminster is trying to sell the idea that somehow Saudi Arabia has ‘absolutely nothing to do’ with ISIS. Seriously…

“In the week that Andrew Parker, the head of MI5, warned that Britain is facing mass casualty attacks from Isil terrorists, Number 10 is desperate to ensure that it maintains good relations with Saudi Arabia, its most important ally in the Middle East. There were fears that the increased tensions between the two countries might result in the Saudis scaling down their vital intelligence-sharing arrangement with British intelligence, as well as jeopardising future lucrative arms deals with British firms such as BAE Systems.”

And we wonder why the public is mostly clueless as to what’s happening in Syria. They hardly stand a chance against such a relentless propaganda oracle.

Germany

This week, German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière and Justice Minister Heiko Maas, drafted a plan for military intervention and held a secret meeting on Thursday – to discuss exactly how this would be managed in terms of public relations, Bild newspaper reported. There are some historic considerations regarding Germany in this story, too. RT adds here:

“The cabinet is set to discuss the bill that may raise the question of a constitutional change on December 17. German Basic Law has strict limits on military involvement since the end of World War II, originally destined to prevent a revival of Nazi crimes.”

Considering how Turkey’s recent dangerous provocation ‘stunt’ was no accident, and how NATO members are beginning to back away from Turkey slightly (albeit temporarily, at least), the international focus is finally shifting towards Turkey’s obvious and direct role in facilitating and even supporting the rise of ISIS and al Nusra (al Qaeda in Syria), and many other Islamic militant fighting groups active in Syria.

Turkey

Turkey is guilty on potentially two international war crimes according to the Geneva Conventions – shooting down an aircraft in Syrian airspace (it’s becoming clearer from multiple reports that the Turkish F16 air-to-air missile may have fired in Turkish airspace, but the missile hit the Russian fighter in Syrian airspace, a clear war crime), and also the fact that Turkey is providing direct support to the same jihadi Turkmen insurgents who then shot and killed a Russian pilot while he was parachuting in the air, another war crime. In fact, one of the NATO-backed ‘moderate’ terrorists who boasted of killing the downed pilot is actually a Turkish citizen with links to both elected officials and a ultra-nationalist group, the Grey Wolves, based in Turkey.

This is only the beginning of Turkey’s problems. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been accused of harboring a Sultan Complex – hoping to lead Turkey’s restoration to its former seat at the head of the Islamic world, in an Ottoman Caliphate redux. Add to this fresh allegations of his son Bilal’s business links to ISIS, and we can see how this mafia state may have too many crimes to answer for when it’s all said and done. If Turkey becomes an international pariah for its increasingly obvious collusion with ISIS and the wider terrorist conclave gallivanting freely through Syria and Turkey – then there could be calls for NATO to dump the rogue state and bad actor in the Syrian conflict.

Consider the Hegelian Dialectic as in, problem, reaction, solution. Problem: Turkey has ‘gone rogue’. Reaction: Turkey must leave NATO. Solution: the formation of a new, well-funded European-based multilateral military organization.What would that look like? Perhaps something like this…

‘New Model Army’ For Europe

If a major NATO player like Turkey is dumped from NATO, then this means that western central planners no longer have a multilateral ‘beach head’ positioned at the historic crossroads of Europe, Middle East and Asia.

Back in March 2015, 21WIRE reported something which many may have missed at the time, but what we thought was significant. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker announced that the European Union (EU) now needs a new standing army, or an “EU Army” – supposedly to “defend its values” from the sudden existential threats. He was not referring to ISIS, but to Russia. Two months later, Junker called for it again while saying, “Such an army would also help us to form common foreign and security policies and allow Europe to take on responsibility in the world.” Clearly this is no fluke, and it’s been brewing under our noses for a few years now. Back in Dec 2013, during a “heated” summit debate, Speaker of the European Parliament Martin Schulz called for the creation of a EU Army. The Telegraph reported:

“If we wish to defend our values and interests, if we wish to maintain the security of our citizens, then a majority of MEPs consider that we need a headquarters for civil and military missions in Brussels and deployable troops.” Geoffrey Van Orden MEP, the Conservative spokesman on European defence, said that the prime minister had “turned the tide on an EU army”. “It’s been a long haul to get to this position,” he said.

On the surface, one might read that NATO would be unhappy with a call from Brussels for a new EU Army, but Jucker’s call was only an opening salvo in a larger transatlantic political shift taking place right now. To prove our point, we can show our readers that right on cue this week, we see mainstream media propaganda being ramped-up to make the public used to the idea of an EU Army. Holding the baton on this story is ‘liberal’ newspaper The Independent:

“The British public is broadly supportive of the creation of a standing army for the European Union, a new poll suggests. The YouGov survey found that 36 per cent actively supported a permanent multi-national force drawn from all the bloc’s nations, compared to only 29 per cent who opposed such a move.”

Anyone who has actually been paying attention to the declining state of the British military will know that it’s almost down to a level where it cannot possibly function autonomously. Soon, all that will remain are a few shiny set-pieces like the Trident nuclear submarine fleet, but more importantly – the key remaining component: a rapid reaction, special forces capability which will slot into the new EU Army matrix. Anything which is not fulfilling a role within the larger infrastructure will be scrapped.

Not convinced? Consider this little known fact, revealed in early 2011 in an investigation by the UK Column into David Cameron’s 50 year ‘Defence Pact’ with France – plan that was hatched behind closed doors through the front organization called the Franco British Council, a charity supposedly set up to foster good relations between Britain and France. This was one of many quiet moves engineered to nudge Britain’s military into an eventual EU Army.

For any remaining doubters that an EU Army is not only in the cards, but is in its final stages of planning between Germany, France and Britain and others, note how just two months ago, Angela Merkel was seen openly ‘horse trading’ with David Cameron – asking him to drop his (public) opposition to an EU Army… in exchange for Germany supporting Britain’s “renegotiation” of EU membership, presumably on issues of welfare spending and immigration. The Telegraph states:

“The German chancellor will ask Britain to stand aside as she promotes an ambitious blueprint to integrate continental Europe’s armed forces.”

“While there is no expectation or obligation for Britain to take part in steeper integration, the creation of an EU army could marginalise Britain within Nato and result in the United States downgrading the special relationship with Britain in favour of Paris and Berlin, experts warn.”

“The Telegraph has seen an unpublished position paper drawn up by Europe and Defence policy committees of Mrs Merkel’s party, the CDU, that sets out a detailed 10-point plan for military co-operation in Europe. It is understood to closely reflect her thinking, and calls for a permanent EU military HQ, combined weapons procurement and a shared military doctrine.”

“The paper says it is “urgent” to integrate armed forces “in the face of multifaceted crises”.

In other words, it’s more or less a done deal.

So regarding Syria, Turkey, Russia and NATO, as the elite adage goes, “Never let a good crisis go to waste”. There are 5 main points to consider right now:

1. Eurozone Crisis. The Greek economic meltdown, followed by Spain, Portugal, Cyprus and Ireland’s economic struggles means that the European Union’s Eurozone economic integrity is under threat – and by extension, so is their physical shape should any member state eventually want to leave the European Super State. US-led economic sanctions against Russia over the downing of MH17 in 2014 (a likely false flag event of which the US accused Russia of being ‘responsible’.)

2. EU Crisis. Add to this the recent ‘Migrant Crisis’, and you have a public perception that European borders are under threat, too. In addition, Great Britain has seen a loud clamor to “leave the EU”, led recently by the ruling Tory Party, even though David Cameron has remained a committed Europhile his entire career. Many people viewed the Tory ‘Exit’ Campaign as mere play acting to win-over some available UKIP nationalist votes in the last general election. Ditto with Spain, who was recently blackmailed by Brussels over the prospect of a newly independent Catalonia. No surprise that Spain is set to play a key role in a new EU Army.

3. Migrant Crisis. The current ‘Migrant Crisis’ provides a perfect pretext to call for a new centralized, ‘federal’ EU Border Control Agency. This is a perfect fit with the EU Army. Funny how the entire Migrant Crisis has been unmasked as one of the most engineered and stage-managed crisis events in recent history. A perfect example of how a crisis is used to strengthen an EU Federal State framework. Then comes the killer: in October, Brussels offers Turkey its first step towards ‘normalization with Europe’, or soft membership into the EU. Brussels offered cash and visas to Turkey if it would ‘promise’ to help stop the flow of migrants into the EU. The terms of this latest deal were almost unbelievable. With most of the new ISIS recruits now coming from Turkey, this new plan will give legal access into Europe for many Syria and Turkey-based ISIS and al Nusra Front terrorists. So Turkey could be out of NATO, but into the EU? Wow.

4. Terrorism Crisis. The Paris Attacks were important in order to join together the Syrian Conflict, the Migrant Crisis and the War on Terror (rebranded now to the ‘War on Radicalization’). From this one event grew a raft of emergency policies, decrees and military actions. For the security state – it was a grand slam. The Paris Attacks also triggered calls for a new EU ‘FBI’ agency to “help combat terror”. Add to this, other calls for an EU ‘CIA’ too. That’s right, all the trappings of a Federal Super State. Still, no one bothered to question the premise of the grand slam, in this case, a planted, fake Syrian passport which magically appeared at the scene of the alleged ISIS suicide bomb attack in Paris on Nov 13th. Forensically speaking, there is no actual proof that ISIS carried out the Paris Attacks. Still, everyone it seems, is assuming it’s ISIS and that it’s connected to Syria. Again, more power flowing to an EU Federal State framework.

4. NATO Crisis. The reality is that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is a Cold War relic that’s way outside the bounds of its original mandate, and has no real practical application in the 21st century. NATO used to have some air of moral mandate around the world but that’s fading quickly. By encircling Russia with missile batteries, signing-up Russia’s neighbors, NATO has become more of an offensive entity, rather than a defensive one. The real dirt on NATO’s hands comes with its dark partnership with NeoNazi factions to help achieve its military objectives in the Ukraine. We also learned this week how NATO has opened up a new proxy war front in Crimea, as western-backed NeoNazis carried out terrorist attacks against Crimean infrastructure, and perhaps the most disturbing report we’ve seen here – what looks like CIA support of Islamic Chechen militants brought into east Ukraine.

There’s another fundamental problem with NATO: funding. The US supplies NATO with approximately 75% of its funding which guarantees that NATO is always under Washington’s control, but the US needs to have real stakeholders in order to have a real ‘alliance’. Few have paid attention to NATO’s ongoing weakening of its military assets, mostly due to a lack of spending by the majority of its member states. Every NATO member state is expected to spend at least 2% of its annual GDP on defense spending. That’s not happening anymore, and there is absolutely nothing the Brussels HQ can do about it outside of the US giving money away to those in financial need. Weapons Welfare? That’s not happening either.

NATO’s days are numbered. All the tea leaves point to its schedule for decommissioning. All NATO needs is a good crisis to hasten that inevitability. Maybe Turkey has delivered the pretext Brussels needs. This does not necessarily mean that NATO would be winded-down, but that it would give way to another military structure – like an EU Army.

You’d expect Washington to be averse to a NATO downgrade, down to a second tier international organization. After all, the US has used NATO as a multilateral trojan horse of sorts – an alternative flag it could fly in order to bypass any due process or Constitutional restrictions in waging war around the globe. In other words, Washington has used NATO to cheat its own laws, and expand its geopolitical hegemony, and to drag along its European partners where possible to help make it look like a ‘team effort’, and a unilateral action. The truth is, regarding international affairs, the US has long-since replaced its NATO widget with the “Coalition” widget, and will wage war as and when. At home, it has replaced the near redundant Constitutional Declaration of War with the more fluid and flexible ‘Authorization of Military Force‘ (AUMF), and the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) – which essentially means that, on paper at least (through color of law, and not actual law), that the US is always under emergency war footing.

There is visible US-EU split, one which became evident during the planning of Washington’s coup d’etat in the Ukraine in 2013-2014, when the US Sate Department’s assistant secretary for European affairs, Victoria Nuland was caught on tape telling her colleague Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt to, “F*ck the EU!”, as they argued over which US-backed puppet leader would be installed in Kiev.

What Washington really wants (and needs) now is a big Coalition partner, preferable one which is not directly governed by a local representative democracy, but governed by a remote, mostly unelected bureaucratic system. In this context, a new European multinational force would be the perfect ‘Coalition’ partner for Washington.

This is where this complex confluence of events is taking us – from Brussels, Paris, Syria, Ukraine, and Russia, all roads lead to an EU Army.

The Suspicious Downing of Russia’s Metrojet Airbus A321-200. “The ISIS is a Creation of the CIA”

Posted on November 10, 2015 by Reid Mukai

By Larry Chin

Source: Global Research

The explosion and crash of Russian Metrojet Airbus A321-200 over Egypt’s Sinai peninsula raises ominous new questions. There are going to be numerous theories bandied about in the course of another long international “investigation”, accompanied with endless political spin from all sides.

We hear numerous variations that boil down to two basic theories: catastrophic mechanical failure or bomb.

Many officials have already ruled out a missile strike because there was no evidence of a missile launch nor an engine burn. US satellites detected heat around the plane before the explosion, but the cause of the heat is unknown. In an Associated Press account, US aviation analyst Paul Beaver stated, “It doesn’t tell us if it was a bomb, or if someone had a fight in the airplane with a gun—there is a whole raft of things that could happen in this regard.” Adding to the mystery, Beaver also noted that in the event of a fuel tank or engine explosion, “engines are designed so that if something malfunctions or breaks off, it is contained within the engine”. The plane broke up at high altitude.

Most recently, British officials have more strongly suggested that a bomb was the cause. And now, US intelligence officials are coming forward to embrace the idea of a bomb.

Looking past the political smoke, one scenario deserves scrutiny.

The Islamic State (IS) has taken responsibility for the incident. In a manifesto, the IS claimed to have brought down the Russian plane in retaliation for Russian military intervention in Syria.

Egyptian officials immediately derided the claim as propaganda that damages the image of Egypt. But at the same time, the authenticity of the IS propaganda has not been debunked. The nature of the propaganda was in keeping with previous manifestos; CIA standard procedure. There is “insufficient evidence” to support the claim, but there never is sufficient evidence. By design.

Given the amply documented fact that the IS (ISIS, ISIL, etc.) is a creation of US intelligence, and function as assets and military-intelligence fronts of the CIA and Washington—financed, recruited and trained by the US and its allies— why shouldn’t the claims of responsibility be taken at face value?

In an era in which false flag atrocities and deception have constituted US foreign policy, it is in no way inconceivable that forces aligned with Washington committed yet another act of terrorism, another act of war, to send a message of warning and/or provocation to Moscow.

This is by no means the first time that the downing of a plane has been exploited for political purpose, aimed at Russia. The false flag shootdown of MH-17 and the cover-up and propaganda that followed offers a ghastly example. The history of American covert operations is rife with atrocities involving planes.

The CIA is opportunistic, flexible, and selective with its work. In this conveniently-timed case, Washington can deny terrorism, warn about terrorism, poo-pooh the jihadist rhetoric (sourced to their own propaganda machine), and express sympathy, all at the same time that a brutal political message is sent to Moscow.

This scenario is not merely “conspiracy theory” when viewed against current big picture realities, and the fact that a superpower war is underway. As chronicled by Michel Chossudovsky:

While the media narrative acknowledges that Russia has endorsed the counter-terrorism campaign, in practice Russia is (indirectly) fighting the US-NATO coalition by supporting the Syrian government against the terrorists, who happen to be the foot soldiers of the Western military alliance, with Western mercenaries and military advisers within their ranks. In practice, what Russia is doing is fighting terrorists who are supported by the US.

The forbidden truth is that by providing military aid to both Syria and Iraq, Russia is (indirectly) confronting America.

Moscow will be supporting both countries in their proxy war against the ISIL which is supported by the US and its allies.

Russia is now directly involved in the counter-terrorism campaign in coordination with the Syrian and Iraqi governments.

In fact, as written in Tru Publica, the war in Syria is not about the Islamic State.

In fact,

“the countries involved in this war are now from all four hemispheres of the planet who are now represented and engaged in a conflict that will definitely be a fight to the very end.”

We can even go beyond this measured view. From Ukraine to Syria, to hot spots across the Middle East and North Africa, we are witnessing an increasingly open war between Washington and Russia, no different than the Cold War (Vietnam, etc.) but with stakes even higher, engulfing far more of the planet. Add to this the increasing tensions between the United States and China, and the map of the global conflict is literally worldwide. What cannot be argued is that the war between the superpowers is intensifying, perhaps past the brink.

The downing of a Russian passenger plane and the death of hundreds of Russians would mean nothing to the war criminals with grand aspirations of conquest for the geography and resources of the most resource-rich chunks of the Earth.

Russia has openly and resolutely waged effective military counter-terrorism operations against the terror fronts of the US and NATO—all jihadist terrorist armies, including ISIS, ISIL, Al-Qaeda, and Al-Nusra, which are all US and CIA fronts. What Moscow has done is call Washington’s bluff and upping the ante.

Put simplistically, Moscow said:

“If you (US-NATO) truly wish to combat terrorism throughout the region, then we will ‘help you’, by actually doing it.”

These operations were followed by agonized and flummoxed whines from Washington, as more and more of the Anglo-American empire’s terror assets have been hampered from their massive attempt to topple the Assad regime. The Vienna-Geneva Peace Talks are a charade that buys time for Washington to counter the Russian actions.

Moscow, acting as the actual “good guys”, have “ruined everything”; ripped the “false good guy” mask off of Washington’s massive criminal operation. This embarrassment to the empire had to be met with a desperate reply.

Was Metrojet Airbus A321-200 part of this response? The message from the Islamic State (aka the CIA) clearly was.

The message was received: Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitri Peskov quickly rejected any connection between the crash and the Russian military operation in Syria, while Putin himself has vowed that nothing will succeed in scaring them off.

Why Russia is Serious About Fighting Terrorism and the US Isn’t

Posted on October 27, 2015 by Reid Mukai

By Maram Susli

Source: New Eastern Outlook

Russia in the few days it has been of fighting terrorism in Syria has achieved far more than the US coalition. According to the New York Times, Russia’s fighter jets are conducting nearly as many strikes in a typical day as the American-led coalition has been carrying out each month this year, a number which includes strikes conducted in Iraq – not just Syria.

Whilst the US has been bombing ISIS for over a year, ISIS has only grown and gained more ground in Syria. A few months ago ISIS took over the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria, a UNESCO world heritage-listed site.

In spite of the fact that the US government acknowledged ISIS cannot be defeated without ground troops, they have refused to work with the Syrian military, the only force on the ground commanded by the only UN-recognized government in the country, and the only force capable and willing to fight ISIS.

On the other hand Russia is coordinating with the Syrian military on the ground, assisting Syrian troops in gaining ground against terrorism. The discrepancy shows a lack of honesty on the part of the US when it comes to its real agenda in Syria vs its proclaimed goal of fighting terrorism. The US is capable of more, the US military is the most powerful and technologically advanced force in the world. It is logical to conclude that they are willfully throwing the fight against terrorism in Syria and the reasons for that should be examined.

ISIS Serves US Geopolitical Interests, Threatens Russia’s

It has become clear that the US’s main objectives in Syria is not their expressed goal of ‘fighting ISIS’, but regime change, isolating Russian influence, the Balkanization and the creation of failed states. US presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton herself stated that ‘removing Assad is the top priority”.

The US sees the Syrian state as one of the last spheres of Russian influence beyond the borders of the former Soviet Union, and a threat to its Israeli ally in the region. The presence of ISIS and other terrorists groups serves these interests. The US has a history of using terrorism to topple governments friendly to Russia. Al Qaeda itself was borne of the US objective to topple the Soviet friendly government of Afghanistan. The dismemberment of Russian-friendly Serbia and the creation of Kosovo was done via the same means.

More recently ISIS was a direct result of the US’s intervention in Iraq, and have only arrived in Libya and Syria in the wake of overt US-backed regime change efforts there. Although Libya and Iraq did not have relations with Russia as strong as Syria’s, Russia was still their main weapons supplier. It is therefore not surprising that since Russia entered the war in Syria, Saudi clerics and the Muslim Brotherhood – both US state assets – declared ‘jihad’ on Russia.

The former Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) Chief Michael Flynn said in an interview that he believed the US had made a willful decision to allow ISIS to grow in Syria. A 2012 declassified DIA report, wrote if the US and its allies continued to destabilize Syria by arming extremist insurgents “there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria… and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime.”

The CIA had trained thousand of ‘rebels’, not to fight ISIS, but admittedly to fight the Assad government and Syrian military – showing once again that the real objective behind the US’ involvement is regime change. Media across the West has even admited this, including the Washington Post which would report:

…the CIA has since 2013 trained some 10,000 rebels to fight Assad’s forces. Those groups have made significant progress against strongholds of the Alawites, Assad’s sect.

Russia Has More to Gain by Truly Fighting Terrorism

On the other hand Russia has clear geopolitical interests behind defending the Syrian state against terrorism. Syria has been an ally of Russia for decades, and it hosts Russia’s only Mediterranean naval base. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov stated that Russia is entering Syria to prevent ‘another Libyan scenario,’ or in other words – to prevent it from turning into a failed state as the US had done to Libya.

Furthermore Russian interests in fighting terrorism are tied directly to Russia’s own national security. Russia has had problems in the past with terrorism within their own borders and in particular, Chechnya. Chechen fighters who have joined ISIS in Syria, have now threatened to take the fight to Moscow. Jabhat Al Nusra, Syria’s Al Qaeda faction, have also called for terror attacks in Russia. In an interview with 60 minutes, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin stated that it is better to fight terrorists in Syria than wait until they return to Russia.

Terrorism poses far greater risks to Russia’s national security than it does to the US. Not only is their proximity closer, but terrorists in Russia have the potential to cleave off part of the state and overrun entire Russian towns. This is not the case for the US, whose only risk to national security would be civilian deaths due to bombings, and that is not necessarily something that the US government would find a real ‘problem,’ and in fact, might even see as a possible opportunity.

The US Seeks Only to Contain ISIS

The US only wants to contain ISIS within Syria and Iraq’s borders indefinitely – not to defeat them. This was admitted to by a member of the current US government and party, Democratic Rep. Adam Smith to CNN who stated:

…we need to find partners that we can work with in Syria to help us contain ISIS. So it is a difficult problem to figure out the best strategy. I agree, they have safe haven there in parts of Syria and that will have to be part of the strategy for containing ISIS.

Chairman of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes told CBS news:

I think we are containing ISIS within the borders of Iraq and Syria. Outside of that we’re not doing much.

US President Barack Obama himself stated that he would like to like to:

…continue to shrink ISIL’s sphere of influence, its effectiveness, its financing, its military capabilities to the point where it is a manageable problem.

This suggests that President Obama wants to maintain ISIS sphere power to a contained manageable circle, like a diseases that is treated but never cured. Obama perhaps got his policies on the advice of the Brooking Institute think-tank, which stated:

Should we defeat ISIS? Rather than defeat, containing their activities within failed or near-failing states is the best option for the foreseeable future.

The US is Not Actually Bombing ISIS

The US bombing of ISIS has been mostly nominal, an exercise in perception management. Although the US Defense Intelligence Agency makes regular claims to have bombed specific targets, rarely is video evidence of the bombing strikes published. On the other hand the Russian military regularly releases video of most of the strikes on Russia Today. It was also leaked that the US had forbade its fighter jets from targeting a long list of ISIS training camps, which turn out thousands of fighters a month.

Award winning journalist Robert Fisk told the Australian program Lateline that the US could have bombed a convoy of ISIS militants who were taking over Palmyra, but instead allowed them to take over a Syrian military post as well as the ancient City which they have now begun to destroy. When the US has dropped bombs on ISIS run territory they have used the opportunity to primarily destroy Syria’s oil infrastructure. Likewise the US has largely avoided bombing ISIS and Al Qaeda targets in the Syrian district of North Hama in an attempt to prevent Syrian troops from gaining ground.Russia is now striking these targets long the benefactors of US-granted impunity.

The US Has ‘Forgotten’ its War with al Qaeda, Now Protects It

Perhaps the most ironic development of Russia’s involvement in Syria’s fight against terror, is the anger expressed by the US government and its media at Russia’s bombing of Al Qaeda (Jabhat Al Nusra) targets.

Former US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, the man largely responsible for the creation of Al Qaeda, expressed his frustration with the fact that Russia was targeting Al Qaeda as well as ISIS through his twitter account. Pro-NATO media has all but forgotten its war with Al Qaeda, and avoids any mention of its existence preferring to concentrate on ISIS instead. They have especially tried to avoid bringing to light the fact that Russia is bombing Al Qaeda in Syria where the US has largely avoided doing so including Homs, Hama, Idlib, and around Aleppo.

In the same CNN article which accuses Russia of not targeting ISIS but rather‘Syrian rebels”, two maps displayed from the Institute for the Study of War shows a very telling story. The first shows the areas in which Jabhat al Nusra controls or jointly controls with its allies – the so called moderate rebels receiving US-backing – but on a map showing locations of Russian strikes, Jabhat al Nusra territory can scarcely be seen, obstructed by highly concentrated Russian strikes – in other words – it is finally being wiped out of these areas.

The US is Continuing to Fund and Arm Terrorists

The map further illustrates how US-backed ‘moderate rebels’ working alongside Al Qaeda has become such common knowledge. In the past, commanders of rebel groups labeled ‘moderate’ by the US government have fought alongside ISIS, and reiterated their support of ISIS in satellite news interviews.

Recently “moderate rebels” from the so-called “Free Syrian Army” Division 16 joined Al Nusra in their attacks against the Kurdish city of Sheikh Maqsud in Aleppo. Pro-NATO media has even been reduced to calling the rebels ‘relatively moderate’. Relative to Al Qaeda and ISIS?

In any case, ‘moderate’ has always been a relative term, unlike the word secular which is the US run media dares not use to describe the US backed insurgency. Last week the US abandoned a Pentagon program to train rebels to fight ISIS, after all but five defected to Al Qaeda taking their weapons and training with them. Past attempts by the US to arm ‘vetted rebels’ has resulted in TOW anti-tank missiles ending up in the hands of Al Qaeda. But instead of admitting to the fact that ‘moderate rebels’ do not exist and ceasing the illegal armament of extremist insurgents, the US government has instead chosen to openly back “established rebel groups” who have close ties to Al Qaeda. The US is now sending yet another shipment of TOW missiles to these extremist groups through its ally Saudi Arabia.

Al Qaeda is not the only terrorist group the US has been accused of arming. This month, footage filmed by the Iraqi military of an oil refinery that had been captured by ISIS, shows US supply crates full of food and weapons having been delivered to Islamic State militants by parachute. In 2014, footage of another US supply drop to ISIS in Kobane Syria also emerged online. Only a few days ago the US airdropped 50 tons of ammunition into Hasake region of Syria, where there has been a lot of ISIS activity. Most of the weaponry used by ISIS is US made. In January this year, an Iraqi MP Majid al-Ghraoui publically accused the US of supplying ISIS with weapons through airdrops.

Iraq Trusts Russia More Than the US in a Real Fight Against Terrorism

The Iraqi government has become increasingly suspicious of the US’ lack of real commitment in fighting ISIS. On the other hand, Russian strikes have thus far been so effective against ISIS that the Iraqi government has asked Russia to take on a bigger role against ISIS than the US.

Russia has in turn signaled that it may start bombing ISIS in Iraq as well as Syria, with the permission of the Iraqi government. Unlike the US, Russia has not broken international law and has sought permission to enter Iraq and Syria from each respective state’s legitimate government.

With these actions Russia has called the US’ bluff on fighting ISIS, and is effectively forcing the US to do a better job of convincing the Iraqi government that it is truly fighting ISIS. If Russia does enter Iraqi airspace, it will more easily cross into Syrian airspace to provide supplies to the Syrian government, since the US has bullied many countries in the region to close their airspace to Russian aircraft. Furthermore, if Iraq asks Russia to enter, it is a scenario that would reverse any of the influence the US had gained in Iraq throughout its lengthy occupation of the country since 2003.

The US has been backed into a corner, and in doing so, has exposed itself and its allies as the source of terrorism, not champions truly fighting it. Terrorism has always been a means by which the US has sought to deconstruct Russian spheres of influences. Ironically over the last decade it has also simultaneously perpetuated the myth that it is actually fighting a war against terror. However as its allied states grow increasingly tired of this game, how long can the US continue to juggle this duplicity, before the entire deck of cards crumbles?

Maram Susli also known as “Syrian Girl,” is an activist-journalist and social commentator covering Syria and the wider topic of geopolitics. especially for the online magazine“New Eastern Outlook”.

Why America Will Never Hear the Entire Benghazi Story

Posted on October 26, 2015 by Reid Mukai

By Larry Hancock

Source: WhoWhatWhy.org

The underlying story of Benghazi is one that cannot and will not be talked about in any open session of Congress. This means that Thursday’s hearing featuring former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was nothing but an exercise in futility.

It is the story of a covert CIA operation that was operating from a separate facility in the Benghazi compound that was simply known as the “Annex.” Some two dozen CIA case officers, analysts, translators and special staff were a part of this operation and its security was provided by CIA Global Response Staff (GRS), who had entered the country under diplomatic cover.

The CIA’s mission included arms interdiction — attempting to stop the flow of Soviet-era weapons to Central Africa — and very possibly the organization of Libyan arms shipments to vetted insurgent groups on the ground in Syria.

There is also evidence that the mission was working in concert with military personnel from the Joint Special Operations Group Trans-Sahara. At the time of the attack, an unarmed American surveillance drone was in flight over the territory east of Benghazi and Trans-Sahara military personnel were stationed in the Libyan capital of Tripoli.

In contrast, the State Department’s special diplomatic mission facility, classified as “temporary,” was minimally staffed with a rotating series of State Department officers sent to and from Tripoli.

US Ambassador Christopher Stevens had not been in Benghazi for a year. When he arrived for a short stay in September 2012, only a single diplomatic officer was present there, and that officer rotated back to Tripoli upon the ambassador’s arrival. Stevens was accompanied by a communications officer and a handful of Diplomatic Service Security staff. The security personnel provided protection for the ambassador during his travels and meetings in the city. His presence was intended to be extremely low key, but it was exposed in the local media shortly after his arrival.

Fruitless, Meaningless, Pointless Questioning

Asking Clinton to justify maintaining the State Department temporary mission in the face of a worsening security situation is fruitless, given its actual function as a clandestine national security mission cover.

Questioning Clinton about that role would be as meaningless as questioning senior CIA personnel about operational information. Such missions cannot be publicly acknowledged or discussed, and revealing anything about them is strictly prohibited.

The same national security laws constraining State Department and CIA personnel also prevent lawmakers, other than those on select intelligence committees, from being briefed on such missions. And even those privileged individuals could not raise related questions in public — or even in closed sessions that include committee members or staff without the appropriate clearances.

In addition, querying Clinton about her involvement in the immediate response to the attacks is also pointless. The Secretary of State has no legal or operational role in a military response to a diplomatic facility attack. Only National Command Authority (president/secretary of defense) can order a foreign military intervention. The State Department does have Foreign Emergency Support Teams (FEST), composed of personnel from multiple agencies and maintained on alert to respond to crisis. But the FEST teams have no military elements and are dispatched only in the aftermath of a crisis, when the security situation allows. Following an attack their role is damage assessment and recovery.

Earlier investigations have already documented that President Obama ordered a military response immediately upon word reaching Washington. They showed as well that the AFRICOM commander responded to that order right away, directing deployment of the closest military quick reaction units — units which were on station in Spain, training in Eastern Europe, or back in the United States.

There were no armed American aircraft or naval units close enough to respond during the attack, those assets were in operation in Afghanistan, Iraq and around the Horn of Africa in Somalia and Yemen.

Maintaining a Covert Profile

As for the well-equipped paramilitary operatives at the CIA station, according to their own statements, they were initially held back by the CIA station chief — as they had been in other incidents. And the station chief was, in turn, acting under his directive to let local militia groups respond. That practice was intended to maintain the station’s covert profile. Unfortunately, it was not consistent with providing any real time defense for the State Department compound.

Given all of the above, it is clear why the hearing quickly turned into a game of “pin the tail on the donkey.” As Democrats have claimed all along — and some Republicans have recently admitted — the committee’s work is mostly about beating up a political adversary and not at all about advancing the security of American diplomats abroad.

Larry Hancock conducts investigative and historical research in the areas of intelligence and national security. He has studied Benghazi in regard to both its covert aspects and the issues it raises for diplomatic security. That work is published in Shadow Warfare, A History of America’s Undeclared Wars (Counterpoint, 2014) and his most recently published book, Surprise Attack, from Pearl Harbor to 9/11 to Benghazi (Counterpoint, Sept. 2015).

The Human Aversion to “Doing the Right Thing”

Posted on July 30, 2015 by Reid Mukai

Does Anyone Want to Make the World a Better Place?

By John Kozy

Source: Global Research

Does anyone want to make the world a better place? Do you know anyone who does? Have you known of anyone who has? Think carefully about these questions, because things are not always as they seem.

In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued an Executive Order as a wartime measure freeing the slaves in the ten states that were in rebellion. It freed about three quarters of the four million slaves in the United States at the time. The remainder were not freed until the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1865. The order did not outlaw slavery and did not confer citizenship on those freed. It was merely a strategic measure, not a humanitarian gesture. Nevertheless, Lincoln has become known in American history as the Great Emancipator.

The war during which the order was issued resulted in the deaths of approximately three quarters of a million people, and the freedmen, as the former slaves were called, were left to fend for themselves. Many joined the army and after the war were sent West to fulfill America’s Manifest Destiny by killing Indians. What a magnificent event the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation was. Men were freed from slavery so they could become Indian slayers. What a great contribution to the improvement of the human condition that was!

Yet in 1861, two years before the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, Tsar Alexander II, a brutal Russian Autocrat, abolished serfdom in Russia by merely signing a document. Lincoln’s order freed about three million slaves; the Tsar’s edict freed 23 million without firing a single shot, without killing a single person or causing a single person to have to fend for himself. How dastardly! What a barbarian! You would think that he could have killed at least half a million. After all, he was the Tsar! He was a brutal Russian, not a benevolent American!

Really? Who was the greater humanitarian? The Great Emancipator or the Tsar? Did either make the world a better place? Were people any better off after the edicts were issued than before? Did being freed sate any person’s hunger?

Lincoln was elected president of “a house divided.” He went to war to preserve the house, to preserve the union. He succeed marvelously. The house has been divided ever since! Was the world made any better by the war? Was the world any better after the war than it was before? Judge for yourselves. Were America’s Blacks any better off? Are they better off today? These questions are not easy to answer.

In 1889, Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany enacted the world’s first old-age social insurance program which was designed by Germany’s arch-conservative Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck. In a letter to the German Reichstag. Wilhelm wrote: “. . . those who are disabled from work by age and invalidity have a well-grounded claim to care from the state.” How reactionary! Imagine a Kaiser caring about the well-being of workers? What in the world can we make of that?

A short time later—well, quite a bit later in 1935—Franklin Delano Roosevelt basically copied the German program and induced the Congress to enact it. Roosevelt may have been a man of the people, although he was not quick to come to that position, but he was no original thinker. Yet he has an endearing place in the hearts of Americans. German Kaisers do not! Humanitarianism just oozes out of the hearts of America’s political leaders, doesn’t it? Did Roosevelt make the world a better place? If so, did the autocratic Kaiser make it a better place too?

Between 1939 and 1941 New Zealand created the first universal health care system. Other nations soon followed: The United Kingdom in 1948, Sweden in 1955, Iceland and Norway in 1956, Denmark in 1961, Finland in 1964, Japan in 1961, Canada between 1968 and 1972, the Soviet Union in 1969, Australia in 1974 and 1984, Italy in 1978, Portugal in 1979, Greece in 1983, Spain in 1986, South Korea in 1989, Taiwan in 1995, Israel in 1995, the Netherlands in 1986 and 2006, and Switzerland in 1996. From the 1970s to the 1990s, the Western European countries of Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, and Luxembourg expanded their social health insurance systems to provide universal coverage. The United States of America? Well, not yet. Maybe someday. Perhaps never. Obama believes his reform of private health insurance has rendered universal healthcare unnecessary. America’s leading from behind—way behind—does not extend to improving the human condition, and America does not boast of belonging to this international sommunity.

These examples provide evidence for the assertion often inaccurately attributed to Winston Churchill that “Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing after they have exhausted all other possibilities.” But things are really much worse than that. When Americans do set out to do the right thing, they often do it so badly and so ineffectively that the pathos of the human condition is hardly improved at all. Healthcare in America is so poorly distributed that many people lack access to it under any conditions and every physical ailment is not covered by medical insurance. Many communities lack even one primary care physician; others boast of scores, and vision, hearing, and dental problems are not covered by most medical insurance plans, not even Medicare! But of course not! Why do people, especially the elderly, need to see, hear, or chew? Making the world a better place is not an American forte. Nor is it a forte in many other countries.

In trying to judge the value of something, the Romans often asked, “Cui bono?” Who benefits? is an important question. So is the question, Who suffers? For instance, when an elderly person whose hearing is impaired is denied a hearing aid, who benefits? Anyone at all? When an unemployed person is denied unemployment compensation, who benefits? Anyone? When a family with little or no income is denied nutritional assistance, who benefits? When an ill person is denied medical care, who benefits? And who benefits when a homeless family is denied a domicile? Who benefits when a school child is denied a lunch? Does anyone benefit? Yet who suffers is obvious, isn’t it? Helping no one and making many suffer is merely cruel, and being cruel is a moral fault. America and many other nations are not people-countries; they do not exist for the welfare of people. Making the world a better place is not something human beings do easily.

When people are denied these benefits, the deniers are engaged in simple cruelty. No, gratuitous cruelty inflicted gratuitously! The Earth is awash in it, and most of it is inflicted by human beings, many of whom are content to do nothing in the face of it. The American Congress has traditionally been know as a “do nothing” institution. And Edmund Burke, a very conservative political philosopher said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” When the American Congress or any political institution anywhere is content to do nothing to alleviate human suffering, it follows that the institution is aiding and abetting “the triumph of evil.” But something else follows as well. Those who do nothing are not good people! That, above all, needs to be made obvious. Bad people do nothing and aid and abet the triumph of evil in the world. So much for making the world a better place!

I asked above whether the American Civil War made the world a better place. Now the world is in a continuous war. The Western world is at war with most of the nations in the Middle East, North Africa, and is promoting war in Ukraine. The Sunnis are now are even being encouraged to kill other Sunnis. How can it possible end well? When the Kurds, who are being encouraged to kill Sunnis too and who live in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, want to form a nation of their own, Kurdistan, and Turkey objects, who is the West going to support? The Kurds or a NATO partner?

Will there be no end to this killing? Is any human being’s life anywhere made better by all this killing? Was the life of any American bettered when Osama bin Laden was assassinated? Did that assassination sate any child’s hunger? Did the American economy suddenly awaken from the doldrums? Can’t you just see how much better off everyone is because of the killing frenzy? Apparently no one but the world’s leaders can.

Abba Eban, an Israeli diplomat, said in June 1967 at the United Nations that “The question is whether there is any reason to believe that . . . a new era may yet come to pass. If I am sanguine on this point, it is because of a conviction that men and nations do behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives. Surely the other alternatives of war and belligerency have now been exhausted.”

How “hope springs eternal” even in the hearts of those who blankly stare into the abyss. The West, following America’s lead has proven that the alternatives of war and belligerency have not yet been exhausted. So let peoples everywhere be warned: if you are willing to follow America to the gates of Hell, be prepared to enter it. Those gates swing in only one direction!

The world will not become a better place until human beings want it to. Those who deny benefits to needy people and promote orgies of killing do not want it to. They want to protect the status quo. But denying benefits to the needy and promoting continuous war define the status quo. At least since Alexander the Great, war has been the instrument of what is now called foreign policy. They also comprise domestic policy in most nations. States can just as easily wage war against their own citizens as foreigners. Is this cruelty the essence of human nature? Will it ever be different?

Not until the questions, “Who benefits?” and “Who doesn’t?” are being answered, “The needy!” and “Nobody!”. The goal of human endeavor must become the welfare of human beings. Nothing good comes of doing otherwise.

John Kozy is a retired professor of philosophy and logic who writes on social, political, and economic issues. After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he spent 20 years as a university professor and another 20 years working as a writer. He has published a textbook in formal logic commercially, in academic journals and a small number of commercial magazines, and has written a number of guest editorials for newspapers. His on-line pieces can be found on http://www.jkozy.com/ and he can be emailed from that site’s homepage.

Freedom Rider: U.S. Pushes Russia Towards War

Posted on June 29, 2015 by Reid Mukai

By Margaret Kimberly

Source: Black Agenda Report

“The United States has intervened in too many countries without paying a high enough price.”

This columnist recently said that “Russia Wins” in its handling of America’s attempt to eviscerate its influence and its economy. At the time those words were written Secretary of State John Kerry met with Vladimir Putin in Sochi, Russia. The meeting appeared to be an admission that the imperial power grab was not working out as Washington hoped. Among other things, Kerry was concerned that the Ukrainian tail was starting to wag the American dog.

In a public statement he warned Ukrainian president Poroshenko, who threatened to retake Crimea and the Donbass. “We would strongly urge him to think twice not to engage in that kind of activity, that that would put Minsk [accords] in serious jeopardy. And we would be very, very concerned about what the consequences of that kind of action at this time may be.” Barack Obama promptly tossed Kerry under the bus upon his return home.

Kerry’s subordinate Victoria Nuland and the United Nations ambassador Samantha Power repeated the very words that Kerry warned against and contradicted everything he said. Power went to Kiev to sing the praises of the Ukrainians in person. She didn’t have to mention Kerry by name, her presence alone said that he and any talk of diplomacy were on the outs. Of course the meeting between Kerry and Putin had to have been approved by president Obama, but just one month later it appears to have been a figment of the world’s imagination.

“Russia has every right to arm its own territory.”

In the battle to stay on top of the world and remain in control of it, Washington inevitably lurches back and forth in its policy decision making. Now they and their scribes in corporate media have settled back into comfortable territory, simultaneously vilifying the Russian government and endlessly repeating anti-Russian propaganda.

A recent New York Times editorial with the grandiose title, “The Fantasy Mr. Putin is Selling,” claimed that president Putin has a “willingness to brandish nuclear weapons.” There was no mention of America’s unilateral withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty in 2002. Not content to tell one lie the Times then criticized Putin for “aggressive behavior, including pouring troops and weapons into Kaliningrad, a Russian city located between NATO members Lithuania and Poland.” Of course, Russia has every right to arm its own territory. The Times also neglected to mention that the American military are positioning weapons and holding training exercises in Ukraine, Poland, Romania and the Baltic states that border Russia. It seems that those provocations are not deemed worthy of mention.

The New York Times and its counterparts always play this role. They cozy up to president Obama as they have with all his predecessors and support any and all of their mischief. Far from being a voice of information for the public, they do the bidding of the powerful and are accessories to their crimes.

“Antagonizing Russia is riskier than paying jihadists to take over Libya.”

The Obama administration is in the process of killing the Minsk accords which were shepherded by France and Germany. This is the only process which can defang the beast, and that is why it is being sabotaged. The United States has intervened in too many countries without paying a high enough price. It is like a serial criminal who remains at large and thus thinks of himself as invincible. This county is responsible for carnage in Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Somalia, Yemen, and Syria and that is the list of victims only since 2001.

One has to ask where and when the straw will break the camel’s back. American military power has allowed it to run rough shod over humanity, but antagonizing Russia is riskier than paying jihadists to take over Libya.

Not only does the United States have the most and the biggest guns but it has the corporate media at its disposal, parroting every word as if they were gospel truth. Americans who think of themselves as well informed will be in for a shock if Moldova turns out to be the flash point for open warfare that was instigated by their government.

”Russia will never be beholden to America.”

Everyone knows that an assassination in Sarajevo in 1914 pushed the world into war. In 2015 the signs are ominous that something terrible may happen because of an incident in Transnistria or Donetsk or some other locale Americans know nothing about.

The process of marginalizing Russia began as soon as the Soviet Union collapsed. While the Warsaw Pact disbanded, NATO grew at Russia’s expense. But Russia will never be beholden to America. There is no puppet they can place in the Kremlin. These fantasies have put the world on the brink.

Obama and his friends in NATO may not want to start a war but they may get one all the same. Of course the president is concerned about his legacy. He ought to be. If he continues as he has done since 2009, his legacy may be that he was head inmate in the asylum when the last war began.

Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

America as Dangerous Flailing Beast

Posted on June 19, 2015 by Reid Mukai

Despite pretty talk about “democracy” and “human rights,” U.S. leaders have become the world’s chief purveyors of chaos and death – from Vietnam through Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine and many other unfortunate nations, a dangerous dilemma addressed by John Chuckman.

By John Chuckman

Source: Counterpunch

When I think of America’s place in the world today, the image that comes to mind is of a very large animal, perhaps a huge bull elephant or even prehistoric mammoth, which long roamed as the unchallenged king of its domain but has become trapped by its own missteps, as caught in a tar pit or some quicksand, and it is violently flailing about, making a terrifying noises in its effort to free itself and re-establish its authority.

Any observer immediately knows the animal ultimately cannot succeed but certainly is frightened by the noise and crashing that it can sustain for a considerable time.

I think that is the pretty accurate metaphor for the situation of the United States today, still a terribly large and powerful society but one finding itself trapped after a long series of its own blunders and errors, a society certain ultimately to become diminished in its prestige and relative power with all the difficulties which that will entail for an arrogant people having a blind faith in their own rightness.

America simply cannot accept its mistakes or that it was ever wrong, for Americanism much resembles a fundamentalist religion whose members are incapable of recognizing or admitting they ever followed anything but the divine plan.

America has made a costly series of errors over the last half century, demonstrating to others that the America they may have been in awe of in, say, 1950, and may have considered almost godlike and incapable of mistakes, has now proved itself indisputably, in field after field, as often not even capable of governing itself. The irony of a people who are seen as often unable to govern themselves advising others how to govern themselves brings a distinct note of absurdity to American foreign policy.

America’s establishment, feeling its old easy superiority in the world beginning to slip away in a hundred different ways, seems determined to show everyone it still has what it takes, determined to make others feel its strength, determined to weaken others abroad who do not accept its natural superiority, determined to seize by brute force and dirty tricks advantages which no longer come to it by simply superior performance.

Rather than learn from its errors and adjust its delusional assumptions, America is determined to push and bend people all over the world to its will and acceptance of its leadership. But you cannot reclaim genuine leadership once you have been exposed enough times in your bad judgment, and it is clear you are on the decline, just as you cannot once others realize that they can do many things as well or better than you.

In the end, policies which do not recognize scientific facts are doomed. Policies based on wishes and ideology do not succeed over the long run, unless, of course, you are willing to suppress everyone who disagrees with you and demand their compliance under threat. The requirement for an imperial state in such a situation is international behavior which resembles the internal behavior of an autocratic leader such as Stalin, and right now that is precisely where the United States is headed.

Stalin’s personality had a fair degree of paranoia and no patience for the views of others. He felt constantly threatened by potential competitors and he used systematic terror to keep everyone intimidated and unified under him.

Stalin’s sincere belief in a faulty economic system that was doomed from its birth put him in a position similar to that of America’s oligarchs today. They have a world imperial system that is coming under increasing strain and challenge because others are growing and have their own needs and America simply does not have the flexibility to accommodate them.

America’s oligarchs are not used to listening to the views of others. Stalin’s belief in a system that was more an ideology than a coherent economic model is paralleled by the quasi-religious tenets of Americanism, a set of beliefs which holds that America is especially blessed by the Creator and all things good and great are simply its due.

Dominion over the Earth?

Americanism blurrily assumes that God’s promise in the Old Testament that man should have dominion over the earth’s creatures applies now uniquely to Americans. Such thinking arose during many years of easy superiority, a superiority that was less owing to intrinsic merits of American society than to a set of fortuitous circumstances, many of which are now gone.

In Vietnam, America squandered countless resources chasing after a chimera its ideologues insisted was deadly important, never once acknowledging the fatal weaknesses built right into communism from its birth. Communism was certain eventually to fail because of economic falsehoods which were part of its conception, much as a child born with certain genetic flaws is destined for eventual death.

America’s mad rush to fight communism on all fronts was in keeping with the zealotry of America’s Civic Religion, but it was a huge and foolish practical judgment which wasted colossal resources.

In Vietnam, America ended in something close to total shame – literally defeated on the battlefield by what seemed an inconsequential opponent, having also cast aside traditional ethical values in murdering great masses of people who never threatened the United States, murder on a scale (3 million) comparable to the Holocaust.

The United States used weapons and techniques of a savage character: napalm, cluster bombs, and secret mass terror programs. The savagery ripped into the fabric of America’s own society, dividing the nation almost as badly as its Civil War once had. America ended reduced and depleted in many respects and paid its huge bills with devalued currency.

Following Vietnam, it has just been one calamity after another revealing the same destructive inability to govern, the same thought governed by zealotry, right down to the 2008 financial collapse which was caused by ignoring sound financial management and basically instituting a system of unlimited greed. The entire world was jolted and hurt by this stupidity whose full consequences are not nearly played out.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were completely unnecessary, cost vast sums, caused immense misery, and achieved nothing worth achieving. We now know what was kept hidden, that more than one million Iraqis died in an invasion based entirely on lies. These wars also set in motion changes whose long-term effects have yet to be felt. Iraq, for example, has just about had its Kurdish, oil-producing region hived off as a separate state.

Mishandling Russia

America’s primitive approach to the Soviet Union’s collapse, its sheer triumphalism and failure to regard Russia as important enough to help or with which to cooperate, ignored America’s own long-term interests. After all, the Russians are a great people with many gifts, and it was inevitable that they would come back from a post-collapse depression to claim their place in the world.

So how do the people running the United States now deal with a prosperous and growing Russia, a Russia which reaches out in the soundest traditional economic fashion for cooperation and partnership in trade and projects? Russia has embraced free trade, a concept Americans trumpeted for years whenever it was to their advantage, but now for Russia is treated as dark and sinister.

Here America fights the inevitable power of economic forces, something akin to fighting the tide or the wind, and only for the sake of its continued dominance of another continent. Americans desperately try to stop what can only be called natural economic arrangements between Russia and Europe, natural because both sides have many services, goods, and commodities to trade for the benefit of all. America’s establishment wants to cut off healthy new growth and permanently to establish its primacy in Europe even though it has nothing new to offer.

America’s deliberately dishonest interpretation of Russia’s measured response to an induced coup in Ukraine is used to generate an artificial sense of crisis, but despite the pressures that America is capable of exerting on Europe, we sense Europe only goes along to avoid a public squabble and only for so long as the costs are not too high.

The most intelligent leaders in Europe recognize what the United States is doing but do not want to clash openly, although the creation of the Minsk Agreement came pretty close to a polite rejection of America’s demand for hardline tactics.

The coup in Ukraine was intended to put a hostile government in control of a long stretch of Russian border, a government which might cooperate in American military matters and which would serve as an irritant to Russia. But you don’t get good results with malicious policy.

So far the coup has served only to hurt Ukraine’s economy, security and long-term interests. It has a government which is seen widely as incompetent, a government which fomented unnecessary civil war, a government which may have shot down a civilian airliner, and a government in which no one, including in the West, has much faith.

Its finances are in turmoil, many important former economic connections are severed, and there is no great willingness by Europe, especially an economically-troubled Europe, to assist it. It is not an advanced or stable enough place to join the EU because that would just mean gigantic subsidies being directed to it from an already troubled Europe.

And the idea of its joining NATO is absolutely a non-starter both because it can’t carry its own weight in such an organization and because that act would cross a dangerous red line for Russia.

Kiev is having immense problems even holding the country together as it fights autonomous right-wing outfits like the Azov Battalion in the southeast who threaten the Minsk Agreement, as the regime tries to implement military recruiting in western Ukraine with more people running away than joining up, as it finds it must protect its own President with a Praetorian Guard of Americans from some serious threats by right-wing militias unhappy with Kiev’s failures, as it must reckon with the de facto secession of Donetsk and the permanent loss of Crimea – all this as it struggles with huge debts and an economy in a nosedive.

America is in no position to give serious assistance to Ukraine, just plenty of shop-worn slogans about freedom and democracy. These events provide a perfect example of the damage America inflicts on a people with malicious policy intended only to use them to hurt others.

There is such a record of this kind of thing by America that I am always surprised when there are any takers out there for the newest scheme. One remembers Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1975 encouraging the Iraqi Kurds to revolt against Saddam Hussein and then leaving them in the lurch when the dictator launched a merciless suppression.

I also think of the scenes at the end of the Vietnam War as American helicopters took off in cowardly fashion from the roof of the embassy leaving their Vietnamese co-workers, tears streaming down their faces, vainly grasping for the undercarriages of helicopters, a fitting and shameful end to a truly brainless crusade.

Messing up Ukraine

I don’t know but I very much doubt that the present government of Ukraine can endure, and it is always possible that it will slip into an even more serious civil war with factions fighting on all sides, something resembling the murderous mess America created in Libya. Of course, such a war on Russia’s borders would come with tremendous risks.

The American aristocracy doesn’t become concerned about disasters into which they themselves are not thrust, but a war in Ukraine could easily do just that. In ironic fashion, heightened conflict could mark the beginning of the end of the era of European subservience to America. Chaos in Ukraine could provide exactly the shock Europe needs to stop supporting American schemes before the entire continent or even the world is threatened.

I remind readers that while Russia’s economy is not as large as America’s, it is a country with a strong history in engineering and science, and no one on the planet shares its terrifying experiences with foreign invasion. So it has developed and maintains a number of weapons systems that are second to none. Each one of its new class of ballistic missile submarines, and Russia is building a number of them, is capable of hitting 96 separate targets with thermo-nuclear warheads, and that capability is apart from rail-mounted ICBMs, hard-site ICBMs, truck-mounted missiles, air-launched cruise missiles, sea-launched cruise missiles, and a variety of other fearsome weapons.

Modern Russia does not make threats with this awesome power, and you might say Putin follows the advice of Theodore Roosevelt as he walks softly but carries a big stick, but I do think it wise for all of us to keep these things in mind as America taunts Russia and literally play a game of chicken with Armageddon.

I don’t believe America has a legitimate mandate from anyone to behave in this dangerous way. Europe’s smartest leaders, having lived at the very center of the Cold War and survived two world wars, do understand this and are trying very carefully not to allow things to go too far, but America has some highly irresponsible and dangerous people working hard on the Ukraine file, and accidents do happen when you push things too hard.

The Israel Obsession

In another sphere of now constant engagement, instead of sponsoring and promoting fair arrangements in the Middle East, America has carried on a bizarre relationship with Israel, a relationship which is certainly against the America’s own long term interests, although individual American politicians benefit with streams of special interests payments – America’s self-imposed, utterly corrupt campaign financing system being ultimately responsible – in exchange for blindly insisting Israel is always right, which it most certainly is not.

An important segment of Israel’s population is American, and they just carried over to Israel the same short-sightedness, arrogance and belligerence which characterize America, so much so, Israel may legitimately be viewed as an American colony in the Middle East rather than a genuinely independent state.

Its lack of genuine independence is reflected also in its constant dependence on huge subsidies, on its need for heavily-biased American diplomacy to protect it in many forums including the United Nations, and on its dependence upon American arm-twisting and bribes in any number of places, Egypt’s generous annual American pension requiring certain behaviors being one of the largest examples.

Here, too, inevitability has been foolishly ignored. The Palestinians are not going anywhere, and they have demonstrated the most remarkable endurance, yet almost every act of Israel since its inception, each supported by America, has been an effort to make them go away through extreme hardship and abuse and violence, looking towards the creation of Greater Israel, a dangerous fantasy idea which cannot succeed but it will fail only after it has taken an immense toll.

Despite America’s constant diplomatic and financial pressure on other states to support its one-sided policy here, there are finally a number of signs that views are turning away from the preposterous notion that Israel is always right and that it can continue indefinitely with its savage behavior.

Recently, we have had a great last effort by America and covert partners to secure Israel’s absolute pre-eminence in the Middle East through a whole series of destructive intrusions in the region – the “Arab Spring,” the reverse-revolution in Egypt, the smashing and now dismemberment of Iraq, the smashing and effective dismemberment of Libya, and the horrible, artificially-induced civil war in Syria which employs some of the most violent and lunatic people on earth from outside and gives them weapons, money and refuge in an effort to destroy a stable and relatively peaceful state.

I could go on, but I think the picture is clear: in almost every sphere of American governance, internally and abroad, America’s poor political institutions have yielded the poorest decisions. America has over-extended itself on every front, has served myths rather than facts, has let greed run its governing of almost everything, and has squandered resources on achieving nothing of worth.

I view America’s present posture in the world – supporting dirty wars and coups in many places at the same time and treating others as game pieces to be moved rather than partners – as a desperate attempt to shake the world to gain advantages it couldn’t secure through accepted means of governance and policy.

America is that great beast, bellowing and shaking the ground, and for that reason, it is extremely dangerous.

Never Mind FIFA, How about a Crackdown on the Banksters?

Posted on June 5, 2015 by Reid Mukai

By Finian Cunningham

Source: Strategic Culture Foundation

FIFA boss Sepp Blatter’s sudden resignation this week only days after being re-elected shows that the US campaign to bust the football federation over alleged financial corruption is probably going to intensify during the weeks and months ahead.

Blatter had been re-elected for the fifth time last Friday as the federation’s president. He had earlier brushed off calls for his resignation from the American and British governments, amid a storm of media allegations over corruption at the World Cup organising body. Now only four days after being re-elected, the FIFA chief executive is quitting, saying somewhat cryptically that he does not have a sufficient mandate in the world of football to continue at the helm of the organisation.

The dramatic bust in a Zurich hotel last week of FIFA executives is «just the beginning», top US law enforcement officials have warned. British authorities have also jumped on the bandwagon with their own announced probe into financial irregularities at the World Cup organiser.

With seven FIFA officials arrested so far and seven more indicted, and the US authorities vowing to pursue others in the footballing federation over alleged financial corruption, it can be anticipated that this scandal will run and run into interminable extra-time.

An ulterior political agenda behind the apparent American-led crackdown on the international footballing federation could very well be the desire by US and British governments to scupper the 2018 World Cup venue in Russia. Both the Americans and the British lost out when Russia won the bid back in 2010 to host the forthcoming quadrennial tournament, following last year’s event in Brazil. A re-run of the selection process would give the US and Britain a second chance to pitch their bids, and with a generated cloud hanging over Russia due to the FIFA scandal, they both stand a better chance of winning if it comes to a re-selection.

The sporting event is highly coveted, being the most popularly watched on the planet – even exceeding the Olympics. Billions of dollars are at stake for corporations, from construction, hospitality, sportswear and media. There is also the immense national prestige that comes with hosting the global spectacle.

A second, more important, political objective for Washington and its British ally is to augment their ongoing campaign to isolate Moscow over the Ukraine crisis. The West accuses Vladimir Putin’s government of annexing Crimea last year and they have mounted a barrage of economic sanctions on Russia seemingly in retribution. Washington and London have been most gung-ho among Western countries in pushing the anti-Russian agenda over Ukraine.

President Putin has shown no sign of weakening under this relentless Western pressure. Moscow denies any impropriety over Ukraine. Indeed, it accuses the West of fomenting an illegal coup in that country and of trying to use the resulting conflict as a way to destabilise Russia. Moscow has retaliated to Western sanctions by imposing its own bans on European trade exports and, in recent days, imposing travel restrictions on 89 European Union parliamentarians.

So, very plausibly, the Americans and their trusty British ally are using the issue of alleged corruption in World Cup organising body, FIFA, as a stalking horse to further get at Russia over the geopolitical tensions in Ukraine.

US law enforcement officials at the highest level – including attorney-general Loretta Lynch and FBI chief James Comey – say their investigation into FIFA will continue until all suspicions of corruption in the organisation are uncovered. This high-level US involvement in targeting FIFA strongly suggests a political direction being given by the Obama administration.

The concerted nature of the American corruption onslaught against FIFA also points to a top-level decision to go after the Swiss-based federation. The British government, from prime minister David Cameron to his foreign secretary Philip Hammond, quickly stepped into the FIFA scandal following the American lead, making highly unusual public calls for the federation’s president Sepp Blatter to resign.

Both the timing of the US-launched corruption probe – in the week of FIFA’s annual conference and leadership election – plus the way that senior American and British officials, not to mention the publicity of Western news media, have weighed-in to rebuke FIFA suggests that it is all part of a coordinated political campaign authored at the highest level of government. That, in turn, suggests that there is an ulterior political agenda behind the supposed criminal crackdown on FIFA, and that the ulterior agenda is the Western objective to undermine Russia.

Another measure for assessing the credibility of the US-led corruption campaign against FIFA is to put the alleged wrongdoing in perspective with other known spheres of financial corruption. Few people believe that FIFA is free from sleaze and dodgy kickbacks. With so much corporate advertising at stake and broadcasting rights for global media audiences, it would be naive to assume that large wads of money have not crossed palms with a wink and a nod.

The US authorities are throwing a book of charges at the organisation, ranging from bribery to commercial fixing, racketeering to tax evasion. It is claimed by the Americans that the corruption at FIFA amounts to $150 million.

That sounds like a lot of sleazy money, but this figure pales in significance to the amount of corruption and criminality attributable to Wall Street banks and other Western financial institutions. For example, British bank HSBC alone has been caught running tax evasion, money-laundering for drug cartels and other illicit schemes that is estimated at $180 billion – or more than a thousand-fold the scale of criminality alleged at FIFA.

Wall Street banks, including JP Morgan, are accused of massive, systematic rigging of gold price markets all in a shady bid to shield the US dollar value. That criminality, affecting the price of basic commodities and livelihoods for billions of people worldwide, is estimated to be in the order of trillions of dollars – or a thousand, thousand-fold the FIFA debacle.

Moreover, these same banks, along with a slew of other global names – Citibank, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Credit Agricole among many others – were all directly responsible for the explosion in toxic financial derivatives that made their executives multimillionaires but which led to the global financial and economic meltdown in 2008.

That meltdown – which persists seven years on from its inception – has resulted in millions of lives ruined from unemployment and the collapse of pensions and savings funds. Added to that are the myriad social hardships and crippled lives from the ensuing austerity imposed on the general Western public to pay for the financial catastrophe – a catastrophe that was deliberately and recklessly engineered by the major banks, hedge funds and other capitalist investment agencies.

As Michel Chossudovsky writes in his co-authored book, The Global Economic Crisis: «The meltdown of financial markets in 2008-2009 was the result of institutionalised fraud and financial manipulation. The ‘bank bailouts’ were implemented on the instruction of Wall Street, leading to the largest transfer of money wealth in recorded history, while simultaneously creating an unsurmountable public debt».

It is probable that generations of children to come will be forced to pay for the trillions of dollars of debt that was created by American and European banks, which have now been offloaded on to the public by governments in so-called «bail-outs». Make no mistake, thousands of people have already died from the austerity that Western governments have imposed on their public in order to pay for the corporate fraud, tax evasion, fixing and embezzlement that has taken place in front of our eyes on a massive scale in the order of trillions of dollars.

Yet in the face of this gargantuan, genocidal criminality not one board member or executive from the major banks involved in precipitating the global crash has been charged, let alone prosecuted or imprisoned. In fact, the Wall Street banking elite and their counterparts in the City of London are among the main political donors that helped to re-elect Barack Obama and David Cameron.

The belated focus of American and British authorities on the alleged wrongdoings at FIFA can thus be readily seen as both ludicrous and laughable when we compare that with the absolute dearth of interest by these same authorities in applying law enforcement where it ought to be applied – on the Wall Street and City of London banksters.

Obviously, then, the self-righteous campaign to «root out fraud at FIFA is just so much pious nonsense. The astounding hypocrisy of US and British authorities leaves one with the unmistakable conclusion that the whole media-driven campaign against FIFA is nothing but a self-serving and cynical political agenda. And top of that agenda is to score geopolitical points against Russia.

Until Washington and London governments go after priority financial crime in their midst, then anything they say about FIFA can be taken as very wide off the mark.

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