Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Grenfell: Plastic firms helped write climate-related safety rules

Tall Bloke’s Talk Shop | November 27, 2017

Insulation added to buildings like the ill-fated Grenfell Tower was a result of climate regulations, as this extract from a Sky News report shows. But the manufacturers themselves helped write those rules, and now some critics who tried to point out potential fire hazards in the materials say they were subjected to intimidation by them.

While legal threats were being made in private, the plastic insulation industry was openly advertising its role in writing the rules that govern the fitting of its products to millions of buildings across the country.

The main lobby group for the plastic insulation trade was, until November 2017, called the British Rigid Urethane Foam Manufacturers’ Association [BRUFMA].

Partly in response to Grenfell Tower – or what it refers to as “events of this year” – BRUFMA changed its name to the Insulation Manufacturers Association.

They advertise that they are “influencing UK and local government, specifying authorities, relevant approval and certification bodies,” and have “high level involvement in the drafting and regular revision of British and European standards [and] the Building Regulations.” Its members are promised the “opportunity to influence Government bodies and NGOs” and “direct input into relevant British Standards committees.”

How that influence works in practice is exposed by examination of government efforts to meet the UK’s climate change commitments. Since the Kyoto agreement in 1997 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, successive governments have created rules about how new and refurbished buildings must be insulated to reduce heat loss.

In 2011 the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) turned to the insulation industry for help, inviting representatives onto a Green Deal committee to come up with ways to push more insulation into homes. We discovered that of the 10 firms and construction industry groups on that committee, four were members of BRUFMA.

One of them was Celotex, the firm whose plastic insulation would be fitted to the outside of Grenfell Tower four years later.

November 27, 2017 Posted by | Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | 1 Comment

US Trying to Deliberately ‘Provoke’ North Korea, says Lavrov

US to Hold Massive Military Exercise on Korean Peninsula… Again

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
By Richard Edmondson | Fig Trees and Vineyards | November 24, 2017

It was back in August that the US staged a massive 10-day war war games exercise on the Korean peninsula. Involving some 75,000 US and South Korean troops, the exercise, dubbed “Ulchi-Freedom Guardian,” saw forces deployed on land, sea, and in the air–a massive display of military power denounced by the North Koreans as a “reckless behavior driving the situation into the uncontrollable phase of a nuclear war”… and it was also around this time that the DPRK threatened to attack Guam.

Now here we are three months later, and the US is about to do it all again. An exercise called “Vigilance Ace” is scheduled to run December 4-8, and according to Sputnik it will involve 230 war planes, including F-22 Raptors and F-35 Joint Strike Fighters.

The “realistic” combat exercise is tailored to “enhance interoperability between US and Republic of Korea forces and increase the combat effectiveness of both nations,” the Seventh US Air Force, which operates out of South Korea, said in a Friday statement.

All this comes just 10 days after reports emerged of three US aircraft carrier groups taking positions in waters around the Korean peninsula in what North Korea’s UN ambassador described as a “strike posture.”

As in the previous two incidents–the Ulchi-Freedom exercise in August and the carrier deployments earlier this month–the North Koreans are again speaking out in protest, calling the upcoming Vigilance Ace games a “serious provocation.”

But perhaps the most arresting, eye-brow-raising remarks of all have come from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who suggested that the US is intentionally trying to provoke the North Koreans.

“We are alarmed that in the last two months when North Korea conducted no tests or rocket launches, it seemed that Washington was not happy about that, and tried to do things that would irritate and provoke Pyongyang,” Lavrov said.

He has a good point. It has been approximately 70 days since North Korea’s last missile test. Why the need for a massive military exercise now?

Lavrov also suggested that the confrontation with North Korea is a pretext, and that the real objective is the placement of US missiles on Russia’s doorstep. He is almost certainly correct in this, but of course it is extremely rare for a high-ranking Russian official to speak this candidly.

“We are expressing deep concern, with facts to back it up, that Japan, along with South Korea, is becoming a territory for the deployment of elements of the US global missile defence system which is being rolled out in that region under the pretext of the North Korea threat,” Lavrov said.

“We have no problems directly with Japan, we do not see risks there. We see risks because of the proliferation of a global US missile defence system on the territory of countries that neighbour Russia, including Japan,” he added.

Lavrov made the remarks during a visit to Moscow by Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono.

Russia and China have proposed an agreement calling for an end to US war games on the Korean peninsula in exchange for a halt in missile testing by the North. The proposal has been rejected by the US and South Korea.

November 27, 2017 Posted by | Militarism | , , | 2 Comments

Why Saudi Public Relations Are So Disastrous

By Finian CUNNINGHAM | Strategic Culture Foundation | 27.11.2017

What a disastrous past week it’s been for Saudi Arabia’s international public relations. It’s hard to imagine how it could possibly become more ignominious or cringe making for the House of Saud.

But of course, how could it be otherwise? When the oil-rich kingdom is run by a father-and-son clique, cosseted by venal super-wealth, and ruled by patronage, pampered by cowering flunkies. In addition, obsessed with an obscurantist Wahhabi sectarian hatred, and to cap it all, indulged by an ignorant American president who himself shares dynastic family ambitions.

Last week’s roll call of PR disasters included the Syrian peace process getting underway in earnest, in spite of Saudi efforts to derail. Secondly, Lebanon appears to have stabilized politically with the return of its Prime Minister Saad Hariri, again in spite of Saudi attempts to sabotage the government in Beirut. And thirdly, most shamefully, the shocking images of emaciated children in Yemen have shown the world the sickening reality of the Saudi-led blockade on that war-stricken country.

Let’s start with the tale of two summits. While Russian President Vladimir Putin was last week hosting his Syrian, Iranian and Turkish counterparts in the Black Sea city of Sochi in a major diplomatic boost for a peaceful end to the Syrian war, at the same time the Saudi rulers were convening something lackluster and frankly, irrelevant, by comparison.

The Saudis held a summit in Riyadh for the so-called Syrian “opposition” comprising the discredited political talking heads of sundry terror groups that have ravaged Syria for the past nearly seven years. Disgracefully, the UN envoy Staffan de Mistura was present in a vain bid to lend some ersatz credibility to the terrorist apologists.

Putin, and Iran’s Hassan Rouhani and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan joined political forces to push for a comprehensive peace settlement in Syria “determined by the Syrian people alone without external interference”. Whereas at the Saudi conference of has-been Syrian opposition figures, who have been living a charmed life in exile in Saudi Arabia, there were the tired-old, futile calls for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to quit as leader.

With the Syrian War near over and with Assad’s state forces dominant over the foreign-backed insurgents, no-one can take the demand for Assad to stand down as serious. It’s a pipe-dream that the Saudis still keep puffing on. Not even Washington and its NATO allies bother to make this demand seriously any more.

In a nutshell, the Saudi rulers are seen to be left holding the putrid remnants of their defeated regime-change intrigue in Syria.

Moving on to the debacle over Lebanon. Again, Saudi machinations were seen here to have turned pear-shaped. After nearly two weeks of trying to arm-twist Lebanese premier Saad Hariri to resign and thereby collapse the coalition government in Beirut with Shia group Hezbollah, Hariri returned last week to his country.

In the meantime, Lebanon has rallied across sectarian lines to unite against Saudi interference – the exact opposite of what the Saudi rulers were agitating for. The whole Saudi-inspired attempt to sabotage Lebanese politics and even incite a sectarian war in the country has ended up only strengthening the country and in particular elevating Hezbollah as a defender of the nation’s sovereignty.

The Saudi paymaster had wanted Sunni politician Saad Hariri to resign as prime minister. His resignation was broadcast on Saudi television on November 4 after Hariri had been summoned to Riyadh and where he inexplicably stayed for the next two weeks. According to the Saudi-inspired script, Hariri said his life was in danger from an assassination plot by Hezbollah and its Shia ally Iran. Hezbollah and Iran scoffed at that claim as ridiculous. Lebanese President Michel Aoun, from the Christian constituency, also dismissed Hariri’s sensational claims.

Last week when Hariri returned to Lebanon, he abruptly reversed his resignation decision, saying now that he would remain in the prime minister’s post. The bizarre images of Hariri looking relaxed at a military parade in Beirut marking Lebanon’s independence day last Wednesday were a stupendous rebuttal of Saudi-orchestrated fear-mongering that this was a man whose life was purportedly under threat.

The Saudi reckless attempts at destabilizing Lebanon not only spectacularly backfired. Their interference in the sovereign affairs of Lebanon has earned the Saudis the scorn of Lebanese and Arab people across the entire region.

As if those PR cock-ups weren’t bad enough, then the world was shocked by images out of Yemen showing skeletal children starving to death from the Saudi blockade on the country. Also, caught on the hook of Saudi barbarity were the US and Britain which have been supplying the Saudi regime with weapons and logistics in its nearly three-year war on the poorest nation of the Arab region.

The Saudis imposed a total sea, air and land blockade on Yemen on November 6 following a ballistic missile attack near the Saudi capital by Houthi rebels from Yemeni territory. The Houthis say they are taking the war to Saudi Arabia because of the latter’s aerial bombing campaign which has targeted civilians. For the Saudis to respond by imposing collective punishment through a blockade on vital aid entering into Yemen is a gross violation of humanitarian law – a war crime.

Nearly two weeks of this total blockade provoked the UN and other international aid agencies to issue dire warnings that millions of Yemenis are facing starvation. So bad is the international image of the Saudis that the US State Department was motivated to urge its client regime to relent on the suffering it was inflicting. At the end of last week, the Saudi rulers claimed that they were lifting the blockade on Yemen’s airports and sea ports. The UN and aid agencies still said the dubious Saudi lifting of blockade would not alleviate the suffering.

How could any country preside over such a week of horrible public relations? What is it about the Saudi rulers that make them so incorrigibly incompetent, so barbaric and so self-defeating?

Several factors combine to make the Saudi rulers a perfect shit-storm.

The House of Saud is a family-run crony dynasty. That’s not new. But over the past year or so, the present rulers have consolidated absolute power to a father-and-son clique, headed by ailing King Salman (82) and the precocious 32-year-old Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. These scions of intoxicating hyper-wealth live in an ivory tower within an ivory tower.

The Saudi system of governance never had accountability except within its own arcane crony inner-circle. Now it has even less accountability. It’s therefore not hard to imagine how the Saudi rulers are prone to making ever-more foolish foreign policy calculations. The war on Yemen was “masterminded” by the ambitious, insecure Crown Prince trying to prove his mettle, when he probably never had any competence to begin with. The guy probably reads intricate regional politics through the prism of one of his puerile computer games.

Secondly, the Saudi rulers, present and past, are guided by an obsessive sectarian Wahhabi hatred towards Shia Islam. All policy decisions are made out of an irrational abhorrence towards Shia Iran, and any ally of Iran, from Hezbollah to Syria. The reasons for this obsessive hatred are rooted in an obscurantist religious belief that Shia Islam is “heretical”. That antipathy is also fueled by an insecure sense of envy and nemesis that Iran’s relatively progressive politics are more legitimate and appealing to the masses in the Middle East than the feudalist monarchy of the Saudis. In any case, to construct foreign policy relations on the basis of a Medieval-like worldview is inevitably problematic, to say the least, in the 21st Century.

A third reason why the Saudis are so incorrigibly inept is because the rulers are indulged by American and European governments and the Western media. Admittedly, some Western media outlets have belatedly given some coverage to the horror inflicted on Yemen.

Nevertheless, the media coverage is still shamefully muted considering the scale of suffering and crimes perpetrated. We are talking about a genocide unfolding in Yemen imposed by the Saudi rulers with the support of their American and British patrons. Yet in spite of this utter barbarity, Western media remain relatively mute. Contrast the Western media reporting on Yemen with the hysterical coverage they were giving to the Syrian city of Aleppo last year when the Syrian army and Russian forces were moving in to liberate that city from a siege by foreign-backed militants.

Western indulgence of the Saudis – in the form of low-key hypocritical media coverage – emboldens these despots to embark on their reckless and ruinous schemes.

None is more to blame for Western indulgence than the British and American governments who have plied the Saudi regime with billions of dollars-worth of warplanes and bombs over the past three years in the war on Yemen. Despite the evidence of war crimes against civilians, Washington and London maintain the despicable, risible fiction that all is ethical and legal.

Topping the Western indulgence of the Saudi despots is US President Donald Trump and his businessman son-in-law Jared Kushner, who is his unelected “top aide” on Middle Eastern affairs. Every recent PR disaster by the Saudis has been encouraged and approved by Trump who seems to run the White House as if it were a family business dynasty. Both Trump and Kushner are regarded as having very limited knowledge about history and geopolitics. Dumb and Dumber, in short.

Trump’s dispatch of 36-year-old gormless Kushner to delve into Middle East affairs and to pander to the whims of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman is certainly a major factor in why the House of Saud keeps making foreign policy like operating a wrecking ball.

When House of Trump pairs up with House of Saud, no wonder then that it’s a super-sized PR fiasco.

November 27, 2017 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

US-DPRK: How the US Observed the 1994 Agreed Framework

By Konstantin Asmolov – New Eastern Outlook – 25.11.2017

Let us start with the fact that the Agreed Framework was not an official form of diplomatic treaty and it would be more appropriate to name it a Framework Arrangement (this is also suggested by the word Framework in it), since the word “agreement” by default would create the false impression that it was not a gentleman’s agreement but a ratified treaty.

Then, although the framework was perceived only as an obligation on the part of the DPRK to freeze its nuclear program, in fact Article 2 of the document stated that “the two sides will move towards full normalization of political and economic relations.” According to Article 3, the US had to “provide the DPRK with formal safeguards against the threat of US use of nuclear weapons.” As can be seen, we do not see any guarantees or promise of diplomatic relations.

As far as freezing is concerned, North Korea froze its nuclear facilities in exchange for fuel oil supplies and the promise to build two light-water reactors which could not serve as a source of weapons-grade plutonium. The commissioning of the first such reactor was scheduled for 2003, and prior to that, the Americans were to supply the DPRK with 500,000 tons of fuel annually for conventional power plants. To fulfill this task, an international (American-Japanese-South Korean) Organization for the Development of North Korean Energy (KEDO) was specifically created in March 1995.

The very idea of ​​the Agreed Framework seemed to be the best option for resolving the nuclear crisis: North Korea retained the right to peaceful nuclear energy and received the political guarantees necessary for it to integrate into the international community. However, the devil was in the details.

First, the Agreed Framework was never ratified by the US Senate, which was dominated by conservatives. If the DPRK considered the Framework to have been ratified, the United States could renege on the performance of its obligations under legal pretexts, since from a formal point of view, the Arrangement was perceived as a protocol of intentions or a gentlemen’s agreement.

Secondly, the wording of the English text of the Framework could be interpreted in two ways. A phrase like “We shall take all possible measures to …”, “We shall move to …”, “We shall provide guarantees.” did not contain any specific commitments, and because from a formal point of view it was reminiscent of the joke: “We shall search, but we don’t promise to find”. So, the construction of reactors would have been done not by the US, but by a consortium, and Washington would not be directly responsible for the success or failure. This in particular allowed representatives of the conservative right to dismiss accusations that the US had committed any violation of the agreement.

Thirdly, KEDO was organized on the basis of the principle “Too many cooks spoil the broth.” Initially, the main responsibility and expenses were supposed to be rested on the shoulders of the RK, while the US and Japan from the very beginning did not intend to invest particularly in this rather expensive enterprise. However, the subsequent financial crisis of 1997 significantly undermined the possibility of South Korea participating, and this was not compensated for by other parties. At the same time, we note that the text of the Framework did not contain a mechanism for settling disputes, the event of the slow construction of reactors, or if they were not built at all. It was assumed that the DPRK would regularly receive fuel during this entire period.

Fourthly, the difficulties experienced by North Korea, in connection with the death of Kim Il Sung and the beginning of “the difficult journey”, led the United States and the Republic of Korea to have certain illusions regarding the impending collapse of the North Korean regime, which made it appear irrational to invest in a “lost cause”. As a result, a year before the reactors were planned to be brought on line, the foundations on the construction were barely completed.

Nevertheless, the DPRK still remained in the crosshairs of nuclear weapons. In June 1998, at the base in North Carolina, the US troops developed plans for the nuclear bombing of the North, including the dropping of nuclear explosion simulators. In October of the same year, one of the two-star American generals publicly admitted the existence of a plan to attack the North and the establishment of a South Korean regime of occupation. This plan was to be activated not only in response to an attack from the North, but also in the event of the “unconditional signs” of a possible attack. However, when the “White Paper” published by the Pentagon in 1998 indicated that victory over the DPRK would require 640 thousand American armed service men from all branches of the armed forces, the hawkish cries fell silent.

A surge of interest in the North’s nuclear program was associated with an interesting incident. At the end of August 1998, the press was flooded with a wave of “satellite intelligence data” suggesting that North Korea was building an unprecedented underground nuclear complex in the town of Kumchang-ni, protected from the attacks of American precision weapons. For a long time both sides had been stirring up passions, but in the spring of 1999, in exchange for a large batch of humanitarian assistance, the North unexpectedly allowed Americans access to this site, which (as the North had frequently claimed) turned out to be an empty cave. Actually, it was at this time that media owned by opponents of the North began to develop a thesis that the nuclear program, if not a bluff, was basically a way of demanding food aid.

On the back of the Pyongyang summit in 2000, the North Korean-American relations also began to improve. Of particular note was the visit to Washington by the second in command in the DPRK hierarchy, Jo Myong-rok, in October 2000, and soon after, between October 22-25, 2000, the US State Secretary Madeleine Albright first visited North Korea.

Negotiations with Kim Jong Il lasted more than five hours, and the result seemed to satisfy both sides. The Americans considered that they had succeeded in taming the Korean regime to a certain extent by achieving the freezing of its missile program, while Kim Jong Il was able to impress Americans as a man with whom they could conduct normal negotiations. They even talked about a DPRK-American Summit and when offering the idea, Albright emphasized that a visit to Pyongyang by the US President could radically change the situation, just as it did when Nixon visited China. However, the visit by the American president to the DPRK did not take place. It was not due to the president’s unwillingness, but changes to the foreign policy situation that required his presence in the Middle East. In addition, etiquette and respect for traditional American allies would require that after visiting Pyongyang the president would also visit Seoul and Tokyo, thus prolonging the entire programme.

The author would like to dwell on the events of the 2000s, since there is one particular factor which is of importance for an understanding of the current situation. Thus the results of Albright’s visit and the signing of the 1994 Agreed Framework suggest that when the US leadership has the political will and desire to solve problems connected to the Korean peninsula, it can resolve them.

Before the US presidential elections in 2000, the North Koreans even reduced the intensity of anti-American rhetoric, but when the Republicans came to power, the hope for dialogue was lost. The neo-conservatives who had come to power were concerned that the process of settlement between the two Koreas might go too quickly and they would lose control of it. Against this background, the supply of heavy fuel oil from the United States to the DPRK became irregular, and the construction of the reactors was effectively frozen. By this time it had become clear that if the reactors were to be built, it would not be in 2003 as originally planned.

In autumn 2001, in the presence of several Asian leaders, Bush referred to Kim Jong Il as a “pygmy.” A few days later, he publicly declared that “Kim Jong-il made him sick,” and “the sinking of the North Korean regime would be one of the priority areas of his policy.” In his annual address to the Congress on January 29, 2002, George Bush said openly: “… Our … goal is to hinder regimes which support terrorism, threaten America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction. Some of these regimes are much quieter after September 11. However, we know their true face. North Korea is a regime armed with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while its people are starving”.

This political direction also led to a revision of fuel oil supplies. They were made dependent not on the country complying with the decisions of the Agreed Framework, but on improvements in the human rights situation in the DPRK. The response to the North Korean question when translated from diplomatic language meant “our policy has changed, and we are not responsible for any of the decisions taken when the Democrats were in power.

We should note that all this time the Americans did not accuse the DPRK of violating the Agreed Framework; all such invective was to emerge later, in the context of the second phase of the nuclear crisis. Prior to this time, it is sufficient to compare the text of the agreement with the real facts, in order to understand that it was NOT North Korea which failed to comply with the majority of the points of the Agreed Framework.

Konstantin Asmolov, Ph.D. (Hist.) is a leading researcher at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of the Far East of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

November 27, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Is North Korea Really a ‘State Sponsor of Terrorism’?

By Ron Paul | November 27, 2017

President Trump announced last week that he was returning North Korea to the US list of “state sponsors of terrorism” after having been off the list for the past nine years. Americans may wonder what dramatic event led the US president to re-designate North Korea as a terrorism-sponsoring nation. Has Pyongyang been found guilty of some spectacular terrorist attack overseas or perhaps of plotting to overthrow another country by force? No, that is not the case. North Korea is back on the US list of state sponsors of terrorism because President Trump thinks the move will convince the government to give up its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program. He believes that continuing down the path toward confrontation with North Korea will lead the country to capitulate to Washington’s demands. That will not happen.

President Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson argued that North Korea deserved to be back on the list because the North Korean government is reported to have assassinated a North Korean citizen – Kim Jong-Un’s own half-brother — in February at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. But what does that say about Washington’s own program to assassinate US citizens like Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16 year old son under Obama, and later Awlaki’s six year old daughter under Trump? Like Kim’s half brother, Awlaki and his two children were never tried or convicted of a crime before being killed by their own government.

The neocons, who are pushing for a war with North Korea, are extremely pleased by Trump’s move. John Bolton called it “exactly the right thing to do.”

Designating North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism will allow President Trump to impose the “highest level of sanctions” on North Korea. Does anyone believe more sanctions – which hurt the suffering citizens of North Korea the most – will actually lead North Korea’s leadership to surrender to Washington’s demands? Sanctions never work. They hurt the weakest and most vulnerable members of society the hardest and affect the elites the least.

So North Korea is officially a terrorism-sponsoring nation according to the Trump Administration because Kim Jong-Un killed a family member. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is in the process of killing the entire country of Yemen and no one says a word. In fact, the US government has just announced it will sell Saudi Arabia $7 billion more weapons to help it finish the job.

Also, is it not “state-sponsorship” of terrorism to back al-Qaeda and ISIS, as Saudi Arabia has done in Syria?

The truth is a “state sponsor of terrorism” designation has little to do with actual support for global terrorism. As bad as the North Korean government is, it is does not go abroad looking for countries to invade. The designation is a political one, allowing Washington to ramp up more aggression against North Korea.

Next month the US and South Korean militaries will conduct a massive military exercise practicing an attack on North Korea. American and South Korean air force fighters and bombers will practice “enemy infiltration” and “precision strike drills.” Are these not also to be seen as threatening?

What is terrorism? Maybe we should ask a Yemeni child constantly wondering when the next Saudi bomb overhead might kill his family. Or perhaps we might even ask a Pakistani, Somali, Iraqi, Syrian, or other child who is terrified that the next US bomb will do the same to his family. Perhaps we need to look at whether US foreign policy actually reflects the American values we claim to be exporting before we point out the flaws in others.

November 27, 2017 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , | 2 Comments

There’s light at the end of Syrian tunnel

By M K Bhadrakumar | Indian Punchline | November 24, 2017

For the 330,000 dead souls of Syria it may be small comfort that the bloody conflict in their homeland is drawing to a close, finally, but it is brilliant news nonetheless.

Although there has been a struggle against terrorism on Syrian soil, the struggle was quintessentially geopolitical. The decades-long US agenda – at least, dating back to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 – was at the core of it. That agenda, which sucked in regional and extra-regional powers, has conclusively failed. Therefore, it is the regional settlement that becomes crucial at this stage.

Peacemaking makes strange bedfellows because protagonists are jockeying for position to secure their interests. The trilateral summit in Sochi between Russia, Iran and Turkey on Wednesday can be regarded as a celebratory event insofar as Russia and Iran have not only ‘won’ the Syrian war but also cemented the ‘defection’ of Turkey to their side. The locus of Middle East politics itself has shifted. This is one thing.

Equally, Russian diplomacy has effectively ‘neutralized’ Saudi Arabia and encouraged that country to ‘sanitize’ the Syrian opposition groups who are under its influence and nudge them toward swallowing the bitter pill and drop their persistent pre-condition that President Bashar al-Assad cannot be part of any solution to the Syrian problem.

With Qatar and Jordan having already moved to a ‘neutral position’ on their own accord in the recent months – each for its own reasons of self-interest – and with Egypt all along being fully behind the Russian leadership, there is no regional state that is any longer in the business of prolonging the fratricidal war by putting up proxy groups.

Except, of course, Israel. But then, Israel is a small country and non-Muslim and lacks the clout to influence the prevailing winds or to create new facts on the ground in Syria. The Russian President Vladimir Putin who spoke to all key regional leaders and (US President Donald Trump) on Tuesday night in a flurry of ‘telephone diplomacy’ pointedly ignored Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu who then had to initiate a request to the Kremlin to solicit a briefing by Putin. (Putin graciously obliged.) But it was a signal of displeasure to ‘Bibi’ from the Kremlin as well as a warning to behave responsibly in the period ahead.

Added to the Saudi back-tracking in Lebanon, Israel has been virtually put out of business. Besides, the fact of the matter is that ISIS has been defeated and the Syrian army controls over 98 percent of territory (according to Russian estimates.) There is already talk of a winding down of the Russian military presence in Syria before the end of the year.

So, how will the post-conflict scenario look in Syria? The Sochi summit provided some signposts. There are five main ‘takeaways’.

  • Turkey has a deal with Russia and Iran to accept Assad’s continuance as leader through the transition – and even beyond (more of that below) – and in return, President Erdogan scored a major victory in keeping the Kurds from inclusion in the settlement.
  • The troika – Russia, Iran and Turkey – will be in the driving seat to shepherd the Syrian parties to the negotiating table in Geneva where the UN will notionally preside over the talks. The three countries will decide the participants for the upcoming Syrian Dialogue to be held in Sochi in early December to discuss a constitution and deliberate on the broad contours of a settlement.
  • The troika will also continue to be the ‘guarantor powers’ ensuring the ceasefire and will coordinate the maintenance of security within Syria through the uncertain period ahead. But the so-called ‘de-escalation zones’ as such will be an interim measure, which will be disbanded once the transition is complete. That means, there is no scope for external powers to carve out ‘spheres of influence’ on Syrian territory.
  • A US withdrawal from Syria becomes inevitable, no matter what Defence Secretary James Mattis might say or not. In fact, an open-ended US military presence (such as in Afghanistan) will be possible only through the establishment of a puppet government in Syria, which is inconceivable.
  • Russia has emerged as the Master of Ceremonies. This is not at all surprising since Russia is the only power on earth which has networking with all protagonists within Syria, in the region and internationally. The Russians displayed a masterly performance in optimally conducting ‘coercive diplomacy’. It is an incredible feat that they entered the Syrian conflict only in September 2015 but turned the tide of the war within a short period of time, went on to crush the ISIS, and consolidated Assad’s position as the unassailable future leader – all within a matter of two years flat – and are now putting together the nuts and bolts of a settlement almost suo moto, while also carrying along the ‘losers’ in the war and altogether eschewing triumphalism.

Trump himself appears to be on board Putin’s settlement formula, which is of a unitary Syrian state and a democratically government that comes out of UN-supervised elections in which all Syrians (including Assad) can contest. (To jog memory, the Trump-Putin statement on Syria after their meeting in Da Nang even made a reference to Assad.)

Indeed, there are grey areas still. The most important one involves the continued presence of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, the militia supported by Iran and Hezbollah who have been the real source of strength on the ground for the Syrian government. But it is unrealistic to expect the Syrian army to handle the security all by itself through the delicate period of transition. There are terrorist groups present on Syrian soil, as the massive attack in Damascus today shows.

The bottom line is that the above becomes a non-issue if Assad remains in power because as the democratically elected leader of a sovereign country, it will be his prerogative to seek help from any quarter to strengthen national security. And the plain truth is that there is no credible opposition figure who can rival Assad in a free and fair election in Syria. If anything, the 7-year bloody civil war strengthens Assad’s appeal to the Syrian people cutting across religion or sects as the only bulwark against instability and chaos. To my mind, all that Assad needs is a level playing field in the nature of an inclusive democratic process.

Russia and Iran insisted throughout that it is for the Syrian people to elect or reject candidates in a democratic election. Turkey has now virtually identified with that principled stance. In a very significant remark, Turkish President Recep Erdogan said after the Sochi summit that he does not rule out resuming contacts with Assad in the coming period. The principle that it is simply not for outsiders to prescribe the political future of Syria is only going to get wider regional and international acceptance. In fact, one can visualize even European countries re-establishing ties with Damascus in a near future.

November 27, 2017 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Mainstream Media’s double-betrayal of Libya

By Adam Garrie Adam Garrie | The Duran | November 26, 2017

The Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya whose most prominent leader was Muammar Gaddafi, even after he relinquished titular status, was a country that moulded itself on the unique Third International Theory. This new ideology combined elements of traditional Arab Nationalism, the socialist model of Yugoslavia, direct democracy and pan-Africanism.

As detailed on his Green Books, Gaddafi’s official ideas helped develop Libya from a state which in its pre-revolutionary days had virtually no modern infrastructure, little modern housing, no real modern irrigation or sewage systems, low levels of literacy and a very low life expectancy, to one which attained the highest living standards in Africa history, where housing was either cheap or free, education and healthcare were free, petrol and car ownership was subsidised by the state, food was cheap and plentiful and where a highly elaborate man made river made the desert bloom.

But above all of these achievements, Gaddafi’s revolutionary leadership helped close the gap between Arabism and the pan-African liberation movement.

Gaddafi’s foreign policy could not be easily pinned-down into any specific geo-political bloc. He was his own man and the foreign policy of the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya reflected this.

Libya was the only Arab state to support Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, apart from Syria and likewise, one of the few states in the wider Muslim world to support the socialist Yugoslav government in its war against terrorism and fascism during the 1990s.

As Gadafi became increasingly ostracised by Arab League governments who loathed his independent streak in foreign policy and moreover, resented Libya’s general independence from the western financial system, Gaddafi turned increasingly little to the prodigal Arab world and more towards Africa.

Gaddafi supported every major African liberation movement on the continent, even those who were rejected by both China and the Soviet Union. South Africa’s Nelson Mandela maintained a lifelong friendship with Gaddafi whom he called ‘Brother Gaddafi’, as did many Africans.

But Gaddafi did more than support liberation movements in Africa. Because the economic boom Gaddafi created required a larger labour force than Libyans could provide, Gaddafi invited many black Africans to work in the Arab state. They were paid incredibly well, not just by African but international standards and they became integrated into Libyan society in spite of their racial backgrounds. While most of the black Africans who came to Libya were Muslims, some Christians also come and they were treated with the same courtesy as Muslims.

This was Libya then. Today, Libya is a failed state with several governments and many terrorist groups and piratical gangs competing for land, resources and influence. Among the first casualties of Libyan society when NATO invaded, was the safety of the black population. From the beginning of the NATO led war, black men and women in Libya were beaten, tortured, physically molested in other unspeakable ways and of course many more were killed. Those who could escape, did so, with many dying of dehydration in the desert, during the process.

Shortly after 2011, captured blacks became literally enslaved by various Takfiri gangs ruling Libya. This trend is nothing new, all that has changed is that the price of a black slave has recently gone up from the low hundreds or a few barrels of oil, to at most, the mid hundreds.

It has only been since the defeat of ISIS in Syria and Iraq that the western mainstream media has paid any attention to the tragic condition of black men and women in Libya. From 2011 until very recently, very little was ever said about this tragic development.

While some welcome this apparent about face from the mainstream media, I would urge caution. It was the mainstream media that lied constantly about Libya in the prelude to NATO’s deadly invasion in 2011.

It was the mainstream media that failed to state that those in 2011 causing agitations in Benghazi were al-Qaeda terrorists, many of whom were trained and transported to Libya by western governments. It was the mainstream media that made up a total lie about Libya, saying that the armed forces gave the drug Viagra to soldiers and told them to go on a raping spree. This outlandish allegation had zero basis in fact.

It was the mainstream media that failed to tell its gullible viewers that Libya was transformed by Gaddafi from a wasteland into a sophisticated society with high living standards and a population with extremely long life expediencies. More to the point, it was the mainstream media which dismissed early reports that black people in Libya, would be among the first victims of the war.

With the western powers on the losing side of the wars in Syria and to a degree, in Iraq also, many of the terrorists who have not been killed will flee to Libya. Many already have reached Libya which is effectively the next stop on the ‘jihad express’.

Because of this, western media outlets are looking for an angle to justify further military intervention in Libya. Moreover, with the secular Libyan House of Representatives making gains against terrorists thanks to the leadership of Khalifa Haftar and the Libyan National Army, many are worried that the western backed puppet government in Tripoli called the Government of National Accord, may lose what very little power it has. Haftar by contrast is openly supported by Egypt and has had many high-level meetings with Russian officials, including Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

If Haftar is able to gain further success in his war against terrorism, it would be another sign that the west has lost control of a country they once successfully destroyed.

If the western mainstream media did not care about the black population of Libya when they cheered on the terrorists who killed and enslaved them, why should they care now? The logical answer is that they do not care any more now than they did when they had a chance to explain why a war on Libya would unleash a plague of racist violence on a stable country. The mainstream media are now, simply looking for a new narrative to justify further war on a country whose only stable, secular factions are those operating independently of the west.

November 27, 2017 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

The US-Saudi Starvation Blockade

By Pat Buchanan • Unz Review • November 24, 2017

Our aim is to “starve the whole population — men, women, and children, old and young, wounded and sound — into submission,” said First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill.

He was speaking of Germany at the outset of the Great War of 1914-1918. Americans denounced as inhumane this starvation blockade that would eventually take the lives of a million German civilians.

Yet when we went to war in 1917, a U.S. admiral told British Prime Minister Lloyd George, “You will find that it will take us only two months to become as great criminals as you are.”

After the Armistice of Nov. 11, 1918, however, the starvation blockade was not lifted until Germany capitulated to all Allied demands in the Treaty of Versailles.

As late as March 1919, four months after the Germans laid down their arms, Churchill arose in Parliament to exult, “We are enforcing the blockade with rigor, and Germany is very near starvation.”

So grave were conditions in Germany that Gen. Sir Herbert Plumer protested to Lloyd George in Paris that morale among his troops on the Rhine was sinking from seeing “hordes of skinny and bloated children pawing over the offal from British cantonments.”

The starvation blockade was a war crime and a crime against humanity. But the horrors of the Second World War made people forget this milestone on the Western road to barbarism.

A comparable crime is being committed today against the poorest people in the Arab world — and with the complicity of the United States.

Saudi Arabia, which attacked and invaded Yemen in 2015 after Houthi rebels dumped over a pro-Saudi regime in Sanaa and overran much of the country, has imposed a land, sea and air blockade, after the Houthis fired a missile at Riyadh this month that was shot down.

The Saudis say it was an Iranian missile, fired with the aid of Hezbollah, and an “act of war” against the kingdom. The Houthis admit to firing the missile, but all three deny Iran and Hezbollah had any role.

Whatever the facts of the attack, what the Saudis, with U.S. support, are doing today with this total blockade of that impoverished country appears to be both inhumane and indefensible.

Almost 90 percent of Yemen’s food, fuel and medicine is imported, and these imports are being cut off. The largest cities under Houthi control, the port of Hodaida and Sanaa, the capital, have lost access to drinking water because the fuel needed to purify the water is not there.

Thousands have died of cholera. Hundreds of thousands are at risk. Children are in danger from a diphtheria epidemic. Critical drugs and medicines have stopped coming in, a death sentence for diabetics and cancer patients.

If airfields and ports under Houthi control are not allowed to open and the necessities of life and humanitarian aid are not allowed to flow in, the Yemenis face famine and starvation.

What did these people do to deserve this? What did they do to us that we would assist the Saudis in doing this to them?

The Houthis are not al-Qaida or ISIS. Those are Sunni terrorist groups, and the Houthis detest them.

Is this now the American way of war? Are we Americans, this Thanksgiving and Christmas, prepared to collude in a human rights catastrophe that will engender a hatred of us among generations of Yemeni and stain the name of our country?

Saudis argue that the specter of starvation will turn the Yemeni people against the rebels and force the Houthi to submit. But what if the policy fails. What if the Houthis, who have held the northern half of the country for more than two years, do not yield? What then?

Are we willing to play passive observer as thousands and then tens of thousands of innocent civilians — the old, sick, weak, and infants and toddlers first — die from a starvation blockade supported by the mighty United States of America?

Without U.S. targeting and refueling, Saudi planes could not attack the Houthis effectively and Riyadh could not win this war. But when did Congress authorize this war on a nation that never attacked us?

President Obama first approved U.S. support for the Saudi war effort. President Trump has continued the Obama policy, and the war in Yemen has now become his war, and his human rights catastrophe.

Yemen today is arguably the worst humanitarian crisis on earth, and America’s role in it is undeniable and indispensable.

If the United States were to tell Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that we were no longer going to support his war in Yemen, the Saudis would have to accept the reality that they have lost this war.

Indeed, given Riyadh’s failure in the Syria civil war, its failure to discipline rebellious Qatar, its stalemated war and human rights disaster in Yemen, Trump might take a hard second look at the Sunni monarchy that is the pillar of U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf.

Copyright 2017 Creators.com

November 27, 2017 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Ignoring Washington’s Role in Yemen Carnage, 60 Minutes Paints US as Savior

By Adam Johnson | FAIR | November 20, 2017

In one of the most glaring, power-serving omissions in some time, CBS News’ 60 Minutes (11/19/17) took a deep dive into the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, and did not once mention the direct role the United States played in creating, perpetuating and prolonging a crisis that’s left over 10,000 civilians dead, 2 million displaced, and an estimated 1 million with cholera.

Correspondent Scott Pelley’s segment, “When Food Is Used as a Weapon,” employed excellent on-the-ground reporting to highlight the famine and bombing victims of Saudi Arabia’s brutal two-and-a-half year siege of Yemen. But its editors betrayed this reporting—and their viewers—by stripping the conflict of any geopolitical context, and letting one of its largest backers, the United States government, entirely off the hook.

As FAIR has previously noted (10/14/16, 2/27/17), US media frequently ignore the Pentagon’s role in the conflict altogether. Pelly did not once note that the US assists Saudi Arabia’s bombing campaign with logistical support, refueling and the selling of arms to the tune of $400 billion.  The US also routinely protects Saudi Arabia at the UN from condemnation—a shield that may have vastly prolonged the war, given that it signals the support of the most powerful country on Earth.

Meanwhile, Iran’s involvement in the conflict—which, even by the most paranoid estimates, is far less than the United States’—is placed front and center as one side of the “war.” The conflict is framed in hackneyed “Sunni vs Shia” terms, with Saudi Arabia unironically called the “leader of the Sunni world” and Iran the “leader of the Shia world.” A reductionist narrative that omits that Sunnis have fought alongside the Houthis, and the fact that Saudi bombs kill members of the marginalized, mostly Sunni Muhamasheen caste, who are neither “led” by Saudi Arabia nor part of the “Shia world.”

This cartoon dichotomy is the extent of the context. Saudi Arabia is rightly singled out as the primary aggressor (though a dubious comparative body count of 3,000 killed by Saudis vs. 1,000 by Houthis is proffered that is far lower than the UN’s January 2017 estimates of 10,000 total civilians killed), but who the Saudis’ primary patrons are—the United States and Britain (and Canada, too)—is simply not mentioned. One would think, watching Pelley’s report, it was a purely regional conflict, and not one sanctioned and armed by major Western superpowers to counter “Iranian aggression.”

To compound the obfuscation, 60 Minutes doesn’t just omit the US role in the war, it paints the US as a savior rescuing its victims. The hero of the piece is American David Beasley, the director of the UN’s World Food Programme, the organization coordinating humanitarian aid. “The US is [the World Food Programme]’s biggest donor, so the director is most often an American. Beasley was once governor of South Carolina,” Pelly narrates over B-roll hero shots of Beasley overseeing food distribution.

Beasley, in his sit-down interview, bends over backwards to downplay Saudi responsibility, insisting at every turn that “all parties” are to blame:

You see it’s chaos, it’s starvation, it’s hunger, and it’s unnecessary conflict, strictly man-made. All parties involved in this conflict have their hands guilty, the hands are dirty. All parties.

The spin that the crisis is the fault of “all parties” is understandable from a US-funded de facto diplomat, charged with providing some cover for a major regional ally. But the premise that “all parties” are causing the famine is never challenged by Pelley. It’s taken as fact, and the piece moves on.

It’s part of a broader trend of erasing American responsibility for the conflict and resulting humanitarian disaster. The Washington Post ran an editorial last week (11/8/17) and an explainer piece Saturday (11/19/17) detailing the carnage in Yemen, neither one of which bothered to mention US involvement. American complicity in the war is so broad in scope, it merited a warning last year from the US’s own State Department they could be liable for war crimes—yet it hardly merits a mention in major media accounts. The war just is, a collective moral failing on the part of “all parties”—irrational sectarian Muslims lost in a pat “cycle of violence” caricature.

As momentum builds in Congress, animated by grassroots anti-war activists, to push back against the war and hold US lawmakers accountable, how the US contributes to the death and disease in the Arabian peninsula is of urgent political import. By erasing the US role in the war, CBS producers obscure for viewers the most effective way they can end the war: by pressuring their own lawmakers to stop supporting it. Instead, viewers are left with what filmmaker Adam Curtis calls “Oh, dearism”: the act of feeling distressed but ultimately helpless in the face of mindless cruelty—perpetrated, conveniently, by everyone but us.

You can send a message to 60 Minutes at 60M@CBSNews.com (or via Twitter: @60Minutes).

November 27, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, War Crimes | , | 1 Comment

Trump’s line on Syria prevails – in Washington

By M K Bhadrakumar | Indian Punchline | November 27, 2017

Some of the confusion as to who sets the US policies on Syria may be clearing up. It seems Trump plays an influential role.

This first became discernible when despite the shenanigans of state department functionaries to scuttle a meeting between him and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Danang on November 10 (pleading ‘scheduling difficulty’), the two veterans snatched a few minutes together the next day to be able to sign up on a US-Russian joint statement on Syria stressing an inclusive political solution through free and fair elections under a new constitution.

The very next day, however, senior state department officials began fudging the statement by injecting a dose of poison into it – by hinting at a continued US military presence in Syria (echoing an earlier remark by US Defence Secretary James Mattis) and reiterating the archaic demand that President Bashar Al-Assad just cannot be part of even the transition.

Moscow objected promptly to point out that the Trump-Putin statement did not require any annotation. At any rate, Putin touched base with Trump personally exactly 10 days later on November 21 (on the eve of the famous ‘trilateral summit’ in Sochi) where they simply picked up the threads of discussion in Danang.

Once again, they had an amiable conversation. (The Kremlin released an unusually detailed press release, here)  Once again, Trump appeared to be clear-headed and purposive about working with Putin to bring the war to an end and to negotiate an inclusive settlement that brought enduring peace. Possibly, Trump senses that there are pockets of resistance within the administration to his line on Syria.

Indeed, on Sunday, the State Department came out with a statement on the upcoming intra-Syrian talks in Geneva. It made no ‘pre-condition’ on Assad and instead acknowledged that the elections under a new constitution “should include the broadest spectrum of Syrian citizens, including all groups with representation and influence on the ground.” Bravo!

Interestingly, it also urged Assad’s government pointedly “to enter into substantive negotiations.” (The Trump-Putin statement in Danang had mentioned Assad by name.) There was absolutely no trace of polemics, rancor or sophistry.

Now the ‘residual’ ambiguity is limited to the US presence in Syria. But here again, a backtracking seems to be under way. The official US position was that 500 American personnel were deployed to Syria to help the Syrian Democratic Forces (read Kurdish militia) to fight the ISIS. But the Pentagon is considering how to acknowledge that the actual number could be 2,000! (Reuters )

However, the good thing is, again, that Trump in a phone call to Turkish President Recep Erdogan on November 24 pledged to “ensure the stability of a unified Syria” and, more importantly, held out the commitment that the US will no longer supply arms to the Syrian Kurdish militia whom the Turks regard as terrorists. Prior to that, Trump had tweeted, “Will be speaking to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey this morning about bringing peace to the mess that I inherited in the Middle East. I will get it all done, but what a mistake, in lives and dollars (6 trillion), to be there in the first place!”

Of course, Turkey has now demanded that it expects the US to altogether end its partnership with Syrian Kurds. (Xinhua) To be sure, the US presence in Syria will be wound up, no matter Mattis’ swagger. A commentary today in the Jerusalem Post argues persuasively that continued US military presence in Syria really doesn’t make sense – not even for ‘containing’ Iran.  

The point is, unless Turkey, Syria and Iraq allowed the US supply lines to the remote northeastern region of Syria, a presence there is impossible to maintain – and all these three countries (plus of course, Iran and Russia) want the US troops to vacate.

The sobriety of the latest US state department statement is also to be attributed to the dramatic shift in the Saudi stance. The Russian presidential envoy on Syria, Alexander Lavrentiev, was present in Riyadh last week (and was received by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman) even as Syrian opposition groups congregated there to pick a negotiating team for the Geneva talks. Their new leader Nasr al-Hariri, is a cardiologist by profession. He is a Syrian dissident but not an embittered defector like his predecessor Riyad Hijab, who used to be the Syrian prime minister. Moscow has dealt with Nasr al-Hariri previously.

November 27, 2017 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment