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.

FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH IN PARIS AND THE UGLY TRUTH OF STATE TERROR

Posted on November 23, 2015 by Reid Mukai

By John Chuckman

Source: RINF

Mass murder, as that which just occurred in Paris, is always distressing, but that does not mean we should stop thinking.

Isn’t it rather remarkable that President Hollande, immediately after the event, declared ISIS responsible? How did he know that? And if he was aware of a serious threat from ISIS, why did he not take serious measures in advance?

Within days of Friday 13, French forces assaulted an apartment with literally thousands of bullets being fired, killing a so-called mastermind, Abdelhamid Abaaoud. Just how are you instantly elevated to the rank of “mastermind”? And if security people were previously aware of his exalted status, why did they wait until after a disaster to go after him?

Well, the ugly underlying truth is that, willy-nilly, France for years has been a supporter of ISIS, even while claiming to be fighting it. How do I know that? Because France’s foreign policy has virtually no independence from America’s. It could be described as a subset of American foreign policy. Hollande marches around with his head held stiffly up after getting off the phone at the Élysée Palace, having received the day’s expectations from Washington. He has been a rather pathetic figure.

So long as it is doing work the United States wishes done, ISIS remains an American protectorate, and regardless of Hollande’s past rhetoric, he has acted according to that reality. But something may just have changed now.

It is important to note the disproportionate attention in the West to events in Paris. I say disproportionate because there are equally ugly things going on in a number of places in the Middle East, but we do not see the coverage given to Paris. We have bombs in Lebanon and Iraq. We have daily bombings and shootings in Syria. We have cluster bombs and other horrors being used by Saudi Arabia in Yemen. And of course, there are the ongoing horrors of Israel against Palestinians.

We have endless interviews with ordinary people in Paris, people who know nothing factual to help our understanding, about their reaction to the terror, but when was the last time you saw personal reactions broadcast from Gaza City or Damascus? It just does not happen, and it does raise the suspicion that the press’s concern with Paris is deliberately out of proportion. After all, Israel killed about twenty times as many people in Gaza not very long ago, and the toll was heavily weighted with children, many hundreds of them. Events in Paris clearly are being exploited for highly emotional leverage.

Leverage against what? Arabs in general and Muslims in particular, just part of the continuing saga of deliberately-channeled hate we have experienced since a group of what proved (after their arrest) to be Israeli spies were reported on top of a truck, snapping pictures and high-fiving each other as the planes hit the World Trade Center in 2001. What those spies were doing has never been explained to the public. I’m not saying Israel is responsible for 9/11, but clearly some Israeli government interests were extremely happy about events, and we have been bombarded ever since with hate propaganda about Muslims, serving as a kind of constant noise covering the crimes Israel does commit against Palestinians and other neighbors.

It is impossible to know whether the attack in Paris was actually the work of ISIS or a covert operation by the secret service of an ISIS supporter. The point is a bit like arguing over angels on a pinhead. When you are dealing with this kind of warfare – thugs and lunatics of every description lured into service and given deadly toys and lots of encouragement to use them – things can and do go wrong. But even when nothing goes wrong in the eyes of sponsors for an outfit like ISIS, terrible things are still happening. It’s just that they’re happening where the sponsors want them to happen and in places from which our press carefully excludes itself. Terrible things, for example, have been happening in the beautiful land of Syria for four or five years, violence equivalent to about two hundred Paris attacks, causing immense damage, the entire point of which is to topple a popularly-supported president and turn Syria into the kind of rump states we see now in Iraq.

A covert operation in the name of ISIS is at least as likely as an attack by ISIS. The United States, Israel, Turkey, and France are none of them strangers to violent covert activities, and, yes, there have been instances before when a country’s own citizens were murdered by its secret services to achieve a goal. The CIA pushed Italian secret services into undertaking a series of murderous attacks on their own people during the 1960s in order to shake up Italy’s “threatening” left-wing politics. It was part of something called Operation Gladio. Operation Northwoods, in the early 1960s, was a CIA-planned series of terrorist acts on American civilians to be blamed on Cuba, providing an excuse for another invasion. It was not carried out, but that was not owing to any qualms in the CIA about murdering their own, otherwise no plan would have ever existed. The CIA was involved in many other operations inside the United States, from experiments with drugs to ones with disease, using innocent people as its subject-victims.

There have been no differences worth mentioning between Hollande’s France and America concerning the Middle East. Whatever America wants, America gets, unlike the days when Jacques Chirac opposed the invasion of Iraq, or earlier, when de Gaulle removed France’s armed forces from integration within NATO or bravely faced immense hostility, including a coup attempt undertaken by French military with CIA cooperation, when he abandoned colonialism in Algeria.

If anything, Hollande has been as cloyingly obsequious towards America’s chief interest in the Middle East, Israel, as a group of Republican Party hopefuls at a Texas barbecue fund-raiser sniffing out campaign contributions. After the Charlie Hebdo attack, Hollande honored four Jewish victims of the thugs who attacked a neighborhood grocery store with France’s highest honor, the Legion of Honor. I don’t recall the mere fact of being murdered by thugs ever before being regarded as a heroic distinction. After all, in the United States more than twenty thousand a year suffer that fate without recognition.

Israel’s Netanyahu at the time of the Charlie Hebdo attack actually outdid himself in manic behavior. He barged into France against a specific request that he stay home and pushed himself, uninvited, to the front row of the big parade down the Champs-Élysées which was supposed to honor free speech. He wanted those cameras to be on him for voters back home watching.

Free speech, you might ask, from the leaders of Egypt, Turkey, the UAE, and Israel, who all marched in front? Well, after the free-speech parody parade, the Madman of Tel Aviv raced around someone else’s country making calls and speeches for Jewish Frenchmen to leave “dangerous” France and migrate “home” to Israel. It would in fact be illegal in Israel for someone to speak that way in Israel to Israelis, but illegality has never bothered Netanyahu. Was he in any way corrected for this world-class asinine behavior? No, Hollande just kept marching around with his head stiffly up. I guess he was trying to prove just how free “free speech” is in France.

But speech really isn’t all that free in France, and the marching about free speech was a fraud. Not only is Charlie Hebdo, the publication in whose honor all the tramping around was done, not an outlet for free speech, being highly selective in choosing targets for its obscene attacks, but many of the people marching at the head of the parade were hardly representatives of the general principle.

France itself has outlawed many kinds of free speech. Speech and peaceful demonstrations which advocate a boycott of Israel are illegal in France. So a French citizen today cannot advocate peacefully against a repressive state which regularly abuses, arrests, and kills some of the millions it holds in a form of bondage. And Hollande’s France enforces this repressive law with at least as much vigor as Israel does with its own version, in a kind of “Look, me too,” spirit. France also has a law which is the exactly the equivalent of a law against anyone’s saying the earth is flat: a law against denying or questioning the Holocaust. France also is a country, quite disgracefully, which has banned the niqab.

Now, America’s policy in the Mideast is pretty straightforward: subsidize and protect its colony Israel and never criticize it even on the many occasions when it has committed genuine atrocities. American campaign finance laws being what they, politics back home simply permits no other policy. The invasion of Iraq, which largely was intended to benefit Israel through the elimination of a major and implacable opponent, has like so many dark operations backfired. I call the invasion a dark operation because although the war was as public as could be, all of America’s, and Britain’s, supposed intelligence about Iraq was crudely manufactured and the reasons for undertaking an act which would kill a million people and cripple an entire country were complete lies.

America’s stupid invasion created new room for Iran to exert its influence in the region – hence, the endless noise in Israel and Saudi Arabia about Iran – and it led directly to the growth of armed rabble groups like ISIS. There were no terrorists of any description in Saddam’s Iraq, just as there were no terrorists in Gadhafi’s Libya, a place now so infested with them that even an American ambassador is not safe.

Some Americans assert that ISIS happened almost accidentally, popping out of the dessert when no one was looking, a bit like Athena from the head of Zeus, arising from the bitterness and discontents of a splintered society, but that view is fatuous. Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens by accident in this part of the world. Israel’s spies keep informed of every shadowy movement, and America always listens closely to what they say.

It is silly to believe ISIS just crept up on America, suddenly a huge and powerful force, because ISIS was easy for any military to stop at its early stages, as when it was a couple of thousand men waving AK-47s from the backs of Japanese pick-up trucks tearing around Iraq. Those pick-up trucks and those AK-47s and the gasoline and the ammunition and the food and the pay required for a bunch of goons came from somewhere, and it wasn’t from Allah.

A corollary to America’s first principle about protecting Israel is that nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in Israel’s neighborhood that is not approved, at least tacitly, by the United States. So whether, in any given instance of supply and support for ISIS, it was Israel or Saudi Arabia or Turkey or America – all involved in this ugly business – is almost immaterial. It all had to happen with American approval. Quite simply, there would be hell to pay otherwise.

As usual in the region, Saudi Arabia’s role was to supply money, buying weapons from America and others and transshipping them to ISIS. Ever since 9/11, Saudi Arabia has been an almost pathetically loyal supporter of America, even to the extent now of often cooperating with Israel. That couldn’t happen before an event in which the majority of perpetrators proved to be Saudi citizens and which led to the discovery that large amounts of Saudi “go away” money had been paid to Osama bin Laden for years. But after 9/11, the Saudis feared for the continuation of their regime and now do what they are told. They are assisted in performing the banking function by Qatar, another wealthy, absolute state aligned with the United States and opposing the rise of any possibly threatening new forces in its region.

Of course, it wasn’t just the discoveries of 9/11 that motivated Saudi Arabia. It intensely dislikes the growing influence of Iran, and Iran’s Shia Muslim identity is regarded by Sunni sects in Saudi Arabia in much the way 17th century Protestantism was viewed by an ultramontane Catholic state like Spain. The mass of genuine jihadists fighting in Syria – those who are not just mercenaries and adventurers or agents of Israel or Turkey or the Saudis – are mentally-unbalanced Sunni who believe they are fighting godlessness. The fact that Assad keeps a secular state with religious freedom for all just adds to their motivation.

ISIS first achievement was toppling an Iraqi government which had been excessively friendly to Iran in the view of Israel, and thereby the United States. Iraq’s army could have stopped them easily early on but was bribed to run away, leaving weapons such as tanks behind. Just two heavy tanks could have crushed all the loons in pick-up trucks. That’s why there was all the grotesque propaganda about beheadings and extreme cruelty to cover the fact of modern soldiers running from a mob. ISIS gathered weapons, territory, and a fierce reputation in an operation which saw President al-Maliki – a man disliked by the United States for his associations with Iran and his criticism of American atrocities – hurriedly leave office.

From that base, ISIS was able to gain sufficient foothold to begin financing itself through, for example, stolen crude sold at a discount or stolen antiquities. The effective splitting up of Iraq meant that its Kurdish population in the north could sell, as it does today, large volumes of oil to Israel, an unheard of arrangement in Iraq’s past. ISIS then crossed into Syria in some force to go after Assad. The reasons for this attack were several: Assad runs a secular state and defends religious minorities but mainly because the paymasters of ISIS wanted Assad destroyed and Syria reduced in the fashion of Iraq.

Few people in the press seem to have noted that ISIS never attacks Israel or Israeli interests. Neither does it attack the wheezingly-corrupt rulers of Saudi Arabia, the Islamic equivalent of ancient Rome’s Emperor Nero. Yet those are the very targets a group of genuine, independent warrior-fundamentalists would attack. But ISIS is not genuine, being supplied and bankrolled by people who do not want to see attacks on Israel or Saudi Arabia, including, notably, Israel and Saudi Arabia. ISIS also is assisted, and in some cases led, by foreign covert operators and special forces.

There does seem to be a good deal of news around the idea of France becoming serious in fighting ISIS, but I think we must be cautious about accepting it at face value. Putin is reported as telling ship commanders in the Mediterranean to cooperate and help cover the French aircraft carrier approaching. Hollande keeps calling for American cooperation too, as Putin has done for a very long time, but America’s position remains deliberately ambiguous. A new American announcement of cooperation with Turkey in creating a “safe zone” across the border with northern Syria is a development with unclear intentions. Is this to stop the Kurds Erdogan so despises fighting in the north of Syria from establishing themselves and controlling the border or is it a method for continued support of ISIS along the that border? Only time will tell.

I do think it at least possible Hollande may have come around to Putin’s view of ISIS, but America has not, and the situation only grows more fraught with dangerous possibilities. I’ve long believed that likely America, in its typically cynical fashion, planned to destroy ISIS, along with others like al-Nusra, once they had finished the dirty work of destroying Syria’s government and Balkanizing the country. In any event, Israel – and therefore, automatically, America – wants Assad destroyed, so it would be surprising to see America at this point join honestly with Putin and Hollande.

America has until now refused Russia any real support, including such basic stuff as sharing intelligence. It cooperates only in the most essential matters such avoiding attacks on each other’s planes. It also has made some very belligerent statements about what Russia has been doing, some from the America’s Secretary of Defense sounding a lot like threats. Just the American establishment’s bully-boy attitude about doing anything which resembles joining a Russian initiative does not bode well.

After all, Putin has been portrayed as a kind of Slavic Satan by American propaganda cranking stuff out overtime in support of Ukraine’s incompetent coup-government and with the aim of terrifying Eastern Europe into accepting more American weapons and troops near Russia’s border, this last having nothing to do with any Russian threat and everything to do with America’s aggressive desire to shift the balance of power. How do you turn on a dime and admit Putin is right about Syria and follow his lead?

And there are still the daily unpleasant telephone calls from Israel about Assad. How do you manoeuvre around that when most independent observers today recognize Assad as the best alternative to any other possible government. He has the army’s trust, and in the end it is the Syrian army which is going to destroy ISIS and the other psychopaths. Air strikes alone can never do that. The same great difficulty for Hollande leaves much ambiguity around what he truly means by “going to war against ISIS.”

It is an extremely complicated world in which we live with great powers putting vast resources towards destroying the lives of others, almost killing thousands on a whim, while pretending not to be doing so. We live in an era shaped by former CIA Director Allen Dulles, a quiet psychopath who never saw an opportunity for chaos he did not embrace.

The only way to end terror is to stop playing with the lives of tens of millions in the Middle East, as America has done for so long, and stop supporting the behaviors of a repressive state which has killed far greater numbers than the madmen of ISIS could dream of doing, demanding instead that that state make peace and live within its borders. But, at least at this stage, that is all the stuff of dreams.

Follow the Money: From Paris to ISIS to Paris

Posted on November 20, 2015 by Reid Mukai

By James Corbett

Source: The Corbett Report

Let us for one moment accept the whole Paris attacks narrative hook, line and sinker.

That the French government could not possibly have foreseen an attack.

That a multi-site emergency exercise planned for the same day just happened to be simulating an armed group committing attacks around the city just hours before that very scenario unfolded.

That the “mastermind” of the attacks just happens to be the latest in a string of terrorist boogeymen who manage to escape capture time and time again.

OK, fine. The question that the French people should STILL be asking themselves, even if they believe all of that, is this: How does the Islamic State, a ragtag band of jihadis who are supposedly at war with the combined military might of the US, Turkey, the Saudis, the Russians, the Iraqis, the Iranians and many others (including, of course, the Syrians) manage to fund and coordinate spectacular international terror attacks, including not only the Paris attack, but also (apparently) bombings in Turkey and Lebanon, and the take down of Russian airliners? How is it that governments can flag and track the “suspicious” financial transactions of anyone withdrawing or transferring over $10,000 from their own bank account, but can’t seem to find a way to restrict cash flows, arms and munitions to a geographically isolated enemy who are dependent on oil sales for their financial survival?

Good question. Just don’t ask the US State Department spokesman those questions, because he doesn’t have the answers. When asked earlier this week by RT’s Gayane Chichakyan “whether the US has sanctioned any banks suspected of carrying out transactions for ISIL,” department spokesman Mark Toner responded with a resounding: “I’d have to look into that. I don’t have the answer in front of me.”

Apparently the question of how ISIS is financing its operations is of so little interest to the State Department that they haven’t bothered to look into it. So in the interest of helping them out with their homework, let’s connect a few dots, shall we?

Earlier this year it was revealed that French President François Hollande had authorized illegal shipments of arms to the Syrian terrorists in 2012. The deliveries–including cannons, machine guns, rocket launchers and anti-tank missiles–were in direct contravention of an EU embargo that was in place at the time.

In late 2012 it was revealed that one of the most prominent backers of the Syrian terrorists was the French government, who in addition to their illegal arms shipments were also delivering money directly to the terrorist opposition leaders.

Last year the French arms export industry enjoyed its best sales in 15 years, with revenues up 18%. The reason for the Merchant of Death bonanza? A spike in sales to Saudi Arabia and Qatar, two of the main funders and supporters of ISIS.

Of course, not all of the blame for the fostering, funding, arming, equipping and training of ISIS belongs to France. Much of it belongs to the United States, its Gulf allies, Turkey and Israel, as well as assorted other NATO members. But there is a line to be drawn from the arms and funds that France supplied to the “moderate” terrorists in Syria and the seeming international operational abilities of this seemingly unstoppable terrorist boogeyman group.

France is a nation in mourning. But perhaps the French people can reserve at least some of their outrage for the government which has used their own tax money to fund, supply and support the terrorists they are now at war with.

Related Video:

Syrian Passports Planted by Police At Scene of Paris Terror Attack Are Confirmed Fakes

Posted on November 18, 2015 by Reid Mukai

By M. David

Source: CounterCurrentNews.com

In the aftermath of the French terrorist attacks last Friday, many people were shocked to hear claims from law enforcement that Syrian passports had been found near the bodies of two of the suspected Paris attackers. The thought that terrorists could be blown up, and yet have their passports survive seemed implausible, at the very least.

Now we know that those passports were in fact complete fakes according to the Wall Street Journal.

Those fakes were almost certainly made in Turkey, according to what police sources told Channel 4 News on Sunday.

Middle East Eye reports that “Greek officials said on Saturday that one of the two passports was held by someone who had registered as a refugee on the Greek island of Leros on 3 October.”

They added that “Officials denied, though, that a second attacker had taken a similar route, telling the Guardian there was “no indication whatsoever” that the assailant had enteredEurope through Greece.”

Meanwhile, law enforcement agencies across Europe have continued their investigation into the seven attackers, trying to figure out how they coordinated the series of attacks without supposedly attracting any attention from the intelligence community.

French and German Intelligence Services, however, did in fact know that the Paris attack was coming, over a month ago and yet they still apparently did nothing.

Police named one of the attackers as Omar Ismail Mostefai, a 29-year-old French citizen who was born and raised in Paris. In spite of claims by police that some of the attackers were there on Syrian passports, that was not the case.

Paris police sources say the 2 Syrian passports found on the terrorists were fakes probably made in Turkey

— Jon Snow (@jonsnowC4) November 15, 2015

Who put the fake Syrian passport at the scene of the crime?

Middle East Eye notes that “fake Syrian passports have become a valuable commodity in recent months and are freely traded on the black market, as they can help ease the path for non-Syrians to get protection as refugees in Europe.”

They add that “a Dutch journalist reported in September that he had bought a fake Syrian passport and ID card, both bearing the picture of the Dutch prime minister, for $825.”

But there would have been no need for French citizens to utilize such fake passports.

What does that tell us? The logical answer is that the passports were planted.

But who would plant them? Clearly, it would be foolish to imagine that one of the victims or bystanders just happened to have a fake Syrian passport, and they decided to plant it at the scene of the attacks.

Not only does it not make any sense that the passports would have survived explosions, but it makes even less sense that the passports would have been on the attackers at the time of the attacks.

Finally, it makes the least sense that French citizens would have fake Syrian passports, and would bring them to the attacks, only for police investigators to conveniently “find” them at the scene of the crime.

This really only leaves us with one logical possibility: that the fake Syrian passports were planted by law enforcement. The motivation is obvious: to bolster the government’s position that a military invasion of Syria is both necessary and a direct response to attacks from Syrian nationals.

France has moved to attack Syria in spite of the fact that these passports have now been confirmed fakes, with no logical connection to the terrorists they were found by. If law enforcement didn’t plant them near the bodies, then who did?

Related Video:

The Matrix Extends Its Reach

Posted on November 16, 2015 by Reid Mukai

By Paul Craig Roberts

Source: PaulCraigRoberts.org

NOTE: The remnant of the American left has again fallen in with the official terror story of the Paris attacks, because the official story serves the left-wing’s denunciatory needs. I see that the Russians as well are on board with the official story as it serves their posture that we must all unite against terrorism. Amazing. Washington can rely on the world’s total blindness.

Within one hour of the Paris attacks and without any evidence, the story was set in stone that the perpetrator was ISIL. This is the way propaganda works.

When the West does it, it always succeeds, because the world is accustomed to following the lead of the West. I was amazed to see, for example, Russian news services helping to spread the official story of the Paris attacks despite Russia herself having suffered so often from planted false stories.

Has the Russian media forgotten MH-17? The minute the story was reported that the Malaysian airliner was hit by a Russian missile over eastern Ukraine in the hands of separatists, the blame was ascribed to Russia. And that is where the blame remains despite the absence of evidence.

Has the Russian media also forgotten the “Russian invasion of Ukraine”? This preposterous story is accepted everywhere in the West as gospel.

Has the Russian media forgot about the book by the German newspaper editor who wrote that every European journalist of consequence was an asset of the CIA?

One would have thought that experience would have taught Russian media sources to be
careful about explanations that originate in the West.

So now we have what is likely to be another false story set in stone. Just as a few Saudis with box cutters outwitted the entire US national security state, ISIL managed to acquire unacquirable weapons and outwit French intelligence while organizing a series of attacks in Paris.

Why did ISIL do this? Blowback for France’s small role in Washington’s Middle East violence?
Why not the US instead?

Or was ISIL’s purpose to have the flow of refugees into Europe blocked by closed borders? Does ISIL really want to keep all of its opponents in Syria and Iraq when instead it can drive them out to Europe? Why have to kill or control millions of people by preventing their flight?

Don’t expect any explanations or questions from the media about the story that is set in stone.

The threat to the European political establishment is not ISIL. The threats are the rising anti-EU, anti-immigrant political parties: Pegida in Germany, the UK Independence Party, and the National Front in France. The latest poll shows the National Front’s Marine Le Pen leading as the likely French president.

Something had to be done about the hordes of refugees from Washington’s wars, or the establishment political parties faced defeat at the hands of political parties that are also unfriendly to Europe’s subservience to Washington.

EU rules about refugees and immigrants and Germany’s acceptance of one million of the refugees, together with heavy criticism of those governments in Eastern Europe that wanted to put up fences to keep out the refugees, made closing borders impossible.

With the Paris terror attacks, what was impossible became possible, and the President of France immediately announced the closing of France’s borders. The border closings will spread. The main issue of the rising dissident political parties will be defused. The EU will be safe, and so will Washington’s sovereignty over Europe.

Whether or not the Paris attacks were a false flag operation for the purpose of obtaining these results, these results are the consequences of the attacks. These results serve the interests of the European political establishment and Washington.

Is ISIL so unsophisticated not to have realized that? If ISIL is that unsophisticated, how did ISIL
so easily deceive French intelligence? Indeed, can French intelligence be intelligent?

Can Western peoples be intelligent to fall for a story set in stone prior to any evidence? In the West, facts are created by self-serving statements from governments. Investigation is not part of the process. When 90 percent of the US media is owned by six mega-corporations, it cannot be any different.

As The Matrix grows in the absurdity of its claims, it nevertheless manages to become even more invulnerable.

11/15/15 Updates:

French Security Left Blind During Paris Attacks

Paul Craig Roberts

I have received a report from European security that there was a massive cyber attack on French systems 48 hours prior to and during the Paris attacks. Among other things, the attack took down the French mobile data network and blinded police surveillance The attack was not a straightforward DDOS attack but a sophisticated attack that targeted a weakness in infrastructure hardware.

Such an attack is beyond the capability of most organizations and requires capability that is unlikely to be in ISIL’s arsenal. An attack on this scale is difficult to pull off without authorities getting wind of it. The coordination required suggests state involvement.

It is common for people with no experience in government to believe that false flag attacks are not possible, because they think the entire government would have to be involved and not everyone would go along with it. Someone would talk. However, if the report I have received is correct, hardly anyone has to be involved, and security forces are simply disabled.

Remember the reports that during 9/11, a simulation of the actual events that were occurring was being conducted, thus confusing responsible parties about the reality.

I am unable to reveal any further information. If security experts find the information credible, they should direct their inquiries to the French authorities.

Food For Thought: The Found Passport

The “found passport” worked for them for 9/11. It worked again for Charlie Hebdo. So now they have used it a third time. They know that Americans are total dumbshits and can be told anything. No matter how preposterous, the dumbshits will believe it. But Americans are not capable of believing truth. They have been brainwashed that truth is “conspiracy theory.” A population this stupid has no future.

Remember, on 9/11 an exercise simulating the day’s real events was being conducted. Again, we hear the same thing about the Paris attacks. What an unusual coincidence! But the dumbshit Western populations are not capable of noticing. Apparently neither are the Russians.

The articles below show that there is a lot of room for a lot of suspicion. But blinded eyes cannot see.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/we-were-prepared-large-military-exercise-took-place-on-same-day-as-paris-terrorist-attacks/5489164

http://www.globalresearch.ca/before-paris-terrorist-attacks-cia-director-brennan-met-with-french-intelligence-ggse-chief-bernard-bajolet-report/5489143

http://www.globalresearch.ca/magic-passports-redux-syrian-passport-allegedly-discovered-on-paris-suicide-bomber/5489003

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/11/15/french-security-left-blind-during-paris-attacks-2/

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/11/14/the-matrix-extends-its-reach-paul-craig-roberts/

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-15/false-flag-link-passport-found-next-suicide-bomber-was-fake-claim-us-french-sources

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.

Headline News: US Congress Member Speaks the Truth on CNN

Posted on November 4, 2015 by Reid Mukai

In a time when politicians are expected to lie and corporate news networks more often than not self-censor (if/when covering actual news), it’s indeed a headline story when a member of congress speaks the truth on a corporate cable news program. Not surprisingly for those who’ve followed her career, the refreshingly honest words came from Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.

Gabbard was one of the first female combat veterans and became the youngest woman elected to a U.S. state office (as Representative for for Hawaii’s 42nd House District ) at age 21 in 2002. In 2004, Gabbard deployed with her Hawaii Army National Guard unit for a 12-month tour in Iraq where she served in a field medical unit as a specialist with a 29th Support Battalion medical company. Upon her return from Iraq in 2006 Gabbard served as a legislative aide for U.S. Senator Daniel Akaka in Washington, DC. During this time she attended the Accelerated Officer Candidate School at the Alabama Military Academy and finished as the distinguished honor graduate in March 2007 (a first for a woman in the Academy’s 50-year history). From 2011 and 2012 Gabbard served in the Honolulu City Council and in 2012 became the first American Samoan and Hindu member of the US Congress. On October 12, 2015 Captain Gabbard was promoted to Major at a ceremony at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, the same day she was disinvited by the DNC from the Democratic presidential debate for publicly stating she wanted to see more debates. Gabbard has been politically outspoken as a pro-choice and same-sex marriage supporter and has advocated for alternative energy, Native Hawaiian rights and a return of the Glass-Steagall Act. She has also opposed the use of drones to kill U.S. citizens.

As cynical as most of us should be about politics and government in this day and age, it’s promising when individuals who seem to have the honesty, intelligence and work ethic to be a true leader rise through the ranks. It’s especially hopeful for those who’d like to see more women in positions of power (other than Hillary, Palin, Fiorina, etc), regardless of whether improved leadership does anything significant to fix the current system.

Statements from Gabbard in the CNN segment that may startle those who habitually get news from corporate media include:

“The U.S. and the CIA are working to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad…

…while Russia, a long-time ally of Assad for decades now, is working to defend or uphold the Syrian government of Assad, and this puts us in a position of a possible direct head-to-head conflict with Russia as long as the U.S. and CIA continue down this path.”

(H/T: Truthstream Media)

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”.

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