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Wag the Dog… British Media Watchdog Accuses Russia of Bias

By Finian CUNNINGHAM | Strategic Culture Foundation | 27.12.2018

Irony is dead when British state media controllers accuse Russian news outlets RT and Sputnik of “imbalance” over their reporting on the Skripal alleged poisoning affair.

In the past week, Ofcom, the British media watchdog, condemned seven programs aired during March and April this year following the apparent poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury. The Russian outlets may be fined or denied future broadcasting rights in Britain. The latter suggests what the real, ulterior agenda is all about.

It remains a mystery as to what happened exactly to Skripal and his daughter when they reportedly fell ill on March 4 in the famous south of England cathedral town. Neither Sergei nor Julia have been seen in public since, apart from a brief and carefully controlled interview given by Julia to Reuters a few months ago, apparently having recovered from her stricken condition. Russian consular services have been denied access to Julia by the British authorities, despite her being a Russian citizen.

The murkiness of the affair, the flagrant obfuscation by the British authorities and their violation of diplomatic norms speaks of a British state intrigue aimed at provoking international recriminations against Russia. Such is the outrageous apparent skullduggery by the British state, it is arguably very appropriate therefore for critical media coverage of the incident and the subsequent prevarication by London.

However, in a staggering inversion of reality, British media regulators complain that Russian news outlets have broken “impartiality rules” in their reporting on what is a bizarre de facto disappearance of a Russian citizen and her father while in the custody of British authorities. The protagonists are off-limits from criticism; their ropey claims must be treated as the sane version of events.

Within days of the Salisbury incident, senior British officials, including Prime Minister Theresa May, were accusing Russia of an assassination attempt against the Skripals, allegedly with a Soviet-era nerve poison.

London’s narrative inculpating the Kremlin and Russian President Vladimir Putin continues, despite Russia’s vehement denial of involvement and despite the lack of independently verifiable evidence.

This week, in her Christmas speech to the nation, premier May again repeated her condemnation of the “nerve agent attack in Salisbury” and she praised British armed forces for “protecting the country’s waters and skies from Russian intrusion”.

So, Russian media are castigated for “bias”, but British media are evidently permitted to report and broadcast official British assertions that are unproven and wildly sensational, if not tantamount to inciting international conflict. Just who is breaking journalistic standards?

Among the news outlets reporting May’s words were the BBC. The government-owned British broadcaster routinely and snidely refers to Russian news outlets RT and Sputnik as “Kremlin-backed”. As if the state-backed BBC is somehow immune from disseminating British government propaganda.

May’s assertions in her Christmas speech about Russia carrying out an alleged assassination and threatening Britain with invasion went unchallenged by the BBC. Nor were her other claims about chemical weapons being used by Syrian government forces against civilians.

On Syria, May was referring to an incident near Damascus in April this year when toxic chlorine was purportedly used in an assault on civilians. Back then, the British prime minister joined with US President Trump and France’s President Macron to order air strikes on Syria, supposedly in retaliation for the Syrian army’s use of chemical weapons. But it soon transpired that the incident was a provocation staged by jihadist militants and their media operatives, the so-called White Helmets. In other words, the British, American and French carried out a criminal act of aggression against Syria under false pretenses.

Yet May in her solemn set-piece nationwide Christmas speech this week was allowed by British media to repeat blatant lies against Syria, and brazenly avoid the issue of justice facing her government over illegal air strikes on Syria, as well as to continue smearing Russia over the murky Skripal affair.

The arrogant hypocrisy of British media and the state regulator is astounding. British citizens are compelled by law to pay an annual license fee of £150 ($190) per household for possessing a television set. Failure to pay can result in a jail sentence. The TV license fee collected by the British state is handed over to the BBC. So, here we have a state-owned media channel that is funded through a compulsory tax on citizens, and yet this same channel willingly broadcasts British government propaganda claims denigrating Russia and covering up for British war crimes in Syria. If that sounds Orwellian, that’s because it is.

The BBC’s corporate advertising claims to be the “world’s leader in breaking global news”. It also assures its listeners and readers that it produces “news you can trust”.

There are countless cases where the BBC’s pompous self-importance can be exposed, revealing an altogether more malevolent purpose. One of the most notorious cases was its complicity in orchestrating the 1953 coup in Iran carried out by the American CIA and Britain’s MI6. In his book, Web of Deceit, British historian Mark Curtis details the crucial role played by the BBC and its Persian service in helping to foment the coup against the elected premier Mohammad Mosaddegh.

More recently, BBC coverage of the war in Syria over the past eight years has been a relentless propaganda assault on the government of President Bashar al Assad. It is not merely about omission or biased distortion. The BBC has been caught out actually fabricating fake news in Syria, such as the case when it accused the Syrian army of using napalm on civilians near Aleppo in 2013. Those reports were later exposed as deliberate fabrications.

More generally on Syria, the BBC, as with other Western news media, are serving as facilitators of the criminal regime-change objective of their governments. May’s grotesque falsehoods reiterated this week – in a Christmas speech of all things! – about chemical weapons are afforded respectability and apparent credibility by the way the BBC and other British outlets dutifully report her words without any qualification, let alone criticism.

It is a measure of how distorted the British media landscape is when alternative news channels which do raise critical viewpoints and insights on propaganda narratives are then accused of being “imbalanced” and “in breach of broadcasting rules”.

In response to Britain’s Ofcom regulator condemning Russia’s RT and Sputnik, Moscow is now saying that its own state regulator is considering filing a case against the BBC and how it operates in Russia. Given how the BBC tried to tie Russia to instigating the Yellow Vest protests in France and how it recently ran an article accusing the Kremlin of “weaponizing satire”, there seems much more credibility to Russian claims that the “British state-backed outlet” is in breach of journalistic standards.

The broader background of how the BBC serves British state propaganda is panoramic in its scope. But such is official British hypocrisy, the authorities attack critical news outlets that happen to expose their propaganda service posing as “news you can trust”.

Free speech in Britain? Yes, as long as you freely speak in the service of British state propaganda.

December 27, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | 1 Comment

Organ theft, staged attacks: UN panel details White Helmets’ criminal activities, media yawns

By Eva Bartlett | RT | December 25, 2018

Utter silence. That is the sound of Western corporate media days after a more than one-hour-long panel on the White Helmets at the United Nations on December 20.

Journalists were present, so the silence isn’t due to lack of access. And in any case it was live streamed on the UNTV channel, and remains available on Youtube for keen observers to watch.

More likely, the silence is due to the irrefutable documentation presented on the faux-rescue group’s involvement in criminal activities, which include organ theft, working with terrorists — including as snipers — staging fake rescues, thieving from civilians, and other non-rescuer behaviour.

On the panel was one of corporate media’s favourite targets to smear, British journalist Vanessa Beeley, who gave a fact-based lecture on her years of research into the founding, funding and nefarious activities of the White Helmets, research which includes numerous visits to White Helmets centers, countless testimonies from Syrian civilians, and even an interview with a White Helmets leader in Dara’a al-Balad, Syria.

Maxim Grigoriev, the director of the Foundation for the Study of Democracy (a member of the UN’s Global Counter-Terrorism Research Network) spoke at length, detailing some of the over 100 eyewitnesses his foundation has conducted interviews with.

These include over 40 White Helmets members, 15 former terrorists, 50 people from areas where terrorists and WH operated, with another over 500 interviewed by survey in Aleppo and Daraa.

Among testimonies presented by Grigoriev were numerous accounts of the White Helmets’ involvement in organ theft.

A head of nursing in Aleppo is cited as seeing the body of his neighbour who had been taken by the White Helmets to Turkey for “treatment”. “I lifted the sheet and saw a large wound cut from the throat to the stomach… I touched him with my hand and understood there were clearly no organs left.”

Another interviewee said: “A person receives a minor injury, is rescued… and then brought back with their stomach cut open and with their internal organs missing.”

The interviews with civilians, White Helmets and terrorist members themselves put to rest NATO’s and their lapdog media’s explanations that in the White Helmets there are a few bad apples but in general these are humanitarian rescuers.

For example, a Syrian civilian, Omar al-Mustafa, is cited as stating:

“Almost all people who worked in nearby White Helmets centers were al-Nusra fighter or were linked to them. I tried to join the White Helmets myself, but I was told that if I was not from al-Nusra, they could not employ me.”

Still more testimonies detail staged fake rescues and staged chemical attacks. Omar al-Mustafa was cited as stating:

“I saw them (White Helmets) bring children who were alive, put them on the floor as if they had died in a chemical attack.”

The testimonies incriminate not only the White Helmets organization, but also the doctors who, in 2016, Western corporate media fawned over.

According to one interviewee, Mohamed Bashir Biram, his attempt to take his father to a White Helmets affiliated al-Bayan hospital, failed. He said: “Since my father was not a fighter, the doctors in the hospital refused to help him and he died.”

But in 2016, the Western media was praising the same valiant doctors, in their crescendo of war propaganda around Aleppo.

Many other independent journalists have corroborated aspects of what the panelists — also comprising Syrian journalist Rafiq Lotef, and Russian and Syrian Representatives to the UN, Ambassadors Vassily Nebenzia and Bashar al-Ja’afari — described in detail.

In my own visits to eastern Ghouta towns last April and May, residents likewise spoke of organ theft, staged rescues, the White Helmets working with Jaysh al-Islam, while an Aleppo man likewise described them as thieves who steal from civilians, not rescuers.

Copy-paste corporate media silence

Journalists present at the panel were not interested in asking follow-up questions on organ theft, staged rescues, or any of the content presented, unsurprisingly, instead asking questions about other Syrian issues.

A CBS journalist didn’t have a single question about what had just been presented, although CBS has previously repeatedly reported on the White Helmets. But their reporting, like most in corporate media, spun the transparent propaganda that is corporate media coverage of the group.

Four days after the UN panel, to my knowledge, not a single corporate media outlet has covered the event and its critical contents.

This is in spite of the fact that the Western corporate media has been happy to propagandize about the White Helmets for years, and to attack those of us who dare to present testimonies and evidence from on the ground in Syria which contradicts the official narrative.

Russian, Syrian, and Lebanese media did report on the panel, and of course if Western corporate journalists ever do bother to mention it, they will ignore the incriminating evidence presented by panellists and instead accuse Russia of bullying the White Helmets.

Prior to the panel, a number of publications came out with articles echoing one another, and in fact echoing claims already repeatedly uttered about a “Russian disinformation campaign” against the White Helmets.

That’s right, that’s the best they’ve got.

‘Big bad Russia’ tarnishing the pristine image of the White Helmets, a theme rerun ad nauseum over the last year or two, and one which I addressed in early January 2018 when I was under attack for questioning the White Helmets.

In my rebuttal to a mid-December 2017 Guardian smear, I pointed out that it was not Russia which began looking into the White Helmets’ affiliations, funding, and role in the propaganda war, but two independent North American researchers.

Canadian journalist Cory Morningstar in September 2014 exposed the role of the New York based PR firm, Purpose Inc, in marketing campaigns for the White Helmets.

And as I wrote, “In April 2015, American independent journalist revealed that the White Helmets had been founded by Western powers and managed by a British ex-soldier, and noted the “rescuers” role in calling for Western intervention—a No Fly Zone on Syria.”

These, and the subsequent numerous investigations by Vanessa Beeley, including on the ground in Syria, taking countless testimonies of Syrian civilians on the matter of the White Helmets, far precede any Russian media reporting on the group.

That Russian media and bodies have since done their own investigations does not equate to a “disinformation campaign”, but rather doing the job corporate media are clearly incapable of, and unwilling to do.

Why haven’t the media written about the panel, or as per the corporate media norm, issued yet more smears against panelists?

They haven’t because they are cornered, and while they can always try their standard juvenile character smears and libel, they cannot refute the facts, the countless testimonies which corroborate yet still more testimonies taken by independent journalists over the years.

Or as Ambassador Nebenzia said:

“We understand why #WhiteHelmets are being defended by #Western capitals. They do not hide that they provided substantial financial support to this organization and instrumentalized it to pursue political goals under humanitarian cover. It’s logical to protect your asset.”

Last week, it came out that German reporter for Der Spiegel, Claas Relotius, winner of the German Reporter Award 2018, had falsified a number of his articles. One article on the fakery noted Relotius had, “confessed to have fabricated at least 14 of 55 articles,” including a “story about a Syrian boy who believed he triggered the civil war in the country with his graffiti, an article that won the German Reporter Prize just three weeks ago but which was made up.”

Former German journalist, Udo Ulfkotte, in 2014 reached his tipping point and admitted to having for years lied for Western, anti-Russia interests, admitting to making propaganda against Russia after having been bribed by billionaires, and by the Americans, to “not to report exactly the truth.”

As 2018, a year of staggering corporate media fake news, draws to a close, so do the last vestiges of credibility of media lauding the White Helmets.

Given the scandalous depth of their lies, it is unlikely corporate journalists will have an Ulfkotte moment and admit to their manifold deceptions.

But it doesn’t really matter, because more and more, Western corporate media, and the propaganda construct known as the White Helmets they support, are becoming irrelevant.

Eva Bartlett is a freelance journalist and rights activist with extensive experience in the Gaza Strip and Syria. Her writings can be found on her blog, In Gaza.

READ MORE:

 Absurdities of Syrian war propaganda

Decision to bring White Helmets to Canada dangerous and criminal

The ‘other’ Omran: Aleppo civilians expose MSM lies & child exploitation

‘Organ traders, terrorists & looters’: Evidence against Syrian White Helmets presented at UN

December 27, 2018 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | 1 Comment

Company Behind Meddling Report Helps Businesses ‘Smear Critics as Russian Bots’

Sputnik – 27.12.2018

One of the authors of a major report on alleged Russian social media meddling during the 2016 elections, Jonathon Morgan, has been banned from Facebook following revelations that the company he serves as a CEO of – New Knowledge – staged a “false flag” operation during the 2017 special election in Alabama.

Four other accounts run by “multiple” people were also banned, but it isn’t clear which accounts they were. “There’s really no transparency from Facebook,” documentary filmmaker and RT America correspondent Dan Cohen, who published an explosive article on the New Knowledge influence operation in Alabama recently, told Radio Sputnik’s Loud & Clear.

“Who knows what else those four Facebook accounts reveal about this operation or other operations. I’m guessing we saw a very small amount of what happened here. You know, when there’s smoke there’s fire,” Cohen added.

New Knowledge’s report on the alleged Russian operation was touted on both sides of the aisle of the Senate Intelligence Committee, for whom the report was prepared.

Committee Chairman Sen. Mark Warner (D-IN) called the report a “bombshell” and “wake up call.” Ranking Republican Richard Burr (R-NC), called it “proof positive that one of the most important things we can do is increase information sharing between the social media companies who can identify disinformation campaigns and the third-party experts who can analyze them.”

The reports’ author — New Knowledge — was recently revealed to have “orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet,” an internal report from the company obtained exclusively by the New York Times says.

Morgan, the CEO of the company, had previously — during the height of the campaign — blamed “Russian trolls” for seeking to influence the election as New Knowledge did exactly that, Sputnik News reported.

Morgan also helped start the Hamilton 68 Dashboard, a tool which claimed it tracked Russian trolls. However, it does no such thing and one of the project founders, Clint Watts even said he was “not convinced on this bot thing.”

In fact, according to Watts, unnamed people on the project didn’t even believe the accounts were “commanded in Russia — at all. We think some of them are legitimately passionate people that are just really into promoting Russia.”

Cohen scoured Morgan’s interviews and discovered a number of absurd claims.

“We developed some techniques for determining who matters in a conversation,” Morgan said of the dashboard’s methodology. “Using some of those techniques, we’ve identified a subset of accounts that we’re very confident are core to furthering the Russian narrative in response to mainstream events.”

In another interview, Morgan informed Americans how they can tell whether they have been misled by Russian disinformation: “If it makes you feel too angry or really provokes that type of almost tribal response, then it may be designed to manipulate you… People should be concerned about things that encourage them to change their behavior.”

Morgan is “basically a career spook who came up through the Obama White House and State Department, acting as an advisor; founded a series of startups using USAID and funds from the Omidyar Network,” Cohen told Loud & Clear hosts Brian Becker and John Kiriakou. “And then he founded this group called New Knowledge, and thanks to a massive investment from venture capitalists, he was able to basically manipulate the 2017 special [Senate] elections to replace Jeff Sessions in Alabama.”

The race was hotly contested by the two candidates: “centrist” Democrat Doug Jones and “far right Christian theocrat” Roy Moore. Jones narrowly beat Moore, but “we’ll never know how much this cyber meddling operation that Morgan and New Knowledge — what the impact was,” Cohen said.

Nonetheless, New Knowledge’s impact is clear and significant in the case of the Senate report it authored with innumerable articles breathlessly covering its contents. That’s despite the assessment of the news site Foreign Policy, which profiled an analyst at New Knowledge and included the caveat that New Knowledge’s “method of analysis is in its infancy, remains a fairly blunt instrument, and still requires human intervention. It sometimes mistakes real people who post anti-imperialist arguments about US foreign policy for Kremlin trolls, for example.”

It’s also “important” to note that New Knowledge primarily concerns itself with private affairs, Cohen said. “They serve the private sector, so if you’re an oil or gas corporation who does fracking or something like that, and you’re getting criticized online, you can hire your New Knowledge to smear your critics as Russian bots.”

December 27, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli Provocative Strikes on Syria Endangered Two Passenger Jets: Russian MoD

Al-Manar | December 26, 2018

‘Israel’ conducted its airstrikes on Syria while passenger planes were landing in Damascus, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

The ministry also reported that at least three Syrian servicemen were injured after two Israeli bombs hit the territory of a Syrian Army logistics center.

Syria’s air defenses managed to destroy 14 out of 16 Israeli bombs during the airstrike, according to the ministry. It added that none of the passenger planes that were under threat due to the airstrike were related to Russian air carriers.

December 26, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , | 1 Comment

Syria Withdrawal Enrages the Chickenhawks

A Christmas present for the American and Syrian people

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • December 25, 2018

President Donald Trump’s order to withdraw from Syria has been greeted, predictably, with an avalanche of condemnation culminating in last Thursday’s resignation by Defense Secretary James Mattis. The Mattis resignation letter focused on the betrayal of allies, though it was inevitably light on details, suggesting that the Marine Corps General was having some difficulty in discerning that American interests might be somewhat different than those of feckless and faux allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia that are adept at manipulating the levers of power in Washington and in the media. Mattis clearly appreciates that having allies is a force multiplier in wartime but fails to understand that it is a liability otherwise as the allies create an obligation to go to war on their behalf rather than in response to any actual national interest.

The media was quick to line up behind Mattis. On Friday, The New York Times featured a lead editorial entitled “Jim Mattis was right” while neocon twitter accounts blazed with indignation. Prominent chickenhawk mouthpieces David Frum and Bill Kristol, among many others, tweeted that the end is nigh.

During the day preceding Mattis’s dramatic announcement, the press went to war against the Administration over Syria and also regarding other reports that there would be troop reductions in Afghanistan. The following headline actually appeared on a Reuters online article the day after the announcement by the president: “In Syria retreat, Trump rebuffs top advisers and blindsides U.S. commanders.” It would be difficult to imagine stuffing more bullshit into one relatively short sentence. “Retreat,” “rebuffs” and “blindsides” are not words that are intended to convey any sort of even-handed assessment of what is occurring in U.S. policy towards the Middle East. They are instead meant to imply that “Hey, that moron in the White House has screwed up again!”

Consider for a moment the agenda that Reuters is apparently pushing. It is supporting an illegal and unconstitutional invasion of Syria by the United States that has a stated primary objective of removing a terrorist organization which is already mostly gone and a less frequently acknowledged goal of regime change for the legitimate government in Damascus and the expulsion of that government’s principal allies. Reuters is asserting that staying in Syria would be a good thing for the United States and also for its “allies” in the region even though there is no way to “win” and no exit strategy.

Reuters is presumably basing its assessment on the collective judgments of a group of “top advisers” who are warmongers that the rest of the world as well as many Americans consider to be psychopaths or possibly even insane. And then there are the preferences of the “blindsided” generals, like Mattis, who have a personal interest in career terms for maintaining a constant state of warfare. If you want to really know how what the military thinks about an ongoing war ask a sergeant or a private, never a general. They will tell you that they are sick of endless deployments that accomplish nothing.

The New York Times lead story headline on Thursday also let you know that its Editors were not pleased by Trump’s move. It read “U.S. Exit Seen as a Betrayal of the Kurds, and a Boon for ISIS.” They also editorialized “Trump’s Decision to Withdraw From Syria Is Alarming. Just Ask His Advisers.”

The Washington Post was not far behind. It immediately ran an op-ed by the redoubtable neocon chickenhawk Max Boot, whom Caitlin Johnstone has dubbed “The Man Who Has Been Wrong About Everything.” The piece was entitled Trump’s surprise Syria pullout is a giant Christmas gift to our enemies making a twofer with an incredible “Fuck the EU” Victoria Nuland’s piece entitled “In a single tweet Trump destroys U.S. policy in the Middle East,” which appeared simultaneously. That anyone would regard Boot and Nuland as objective authorities on the Middle East given their ultimate and prevailing loyalty to Israel has to be wondered at, but then again Fred Hiatt is the editorial/opinion page editor and he is of the same persuasion, both ethnically and philosophically. They are all, of course, devoted Zionists and the big lie about what is going on in the region is apparently always worth repeating. As Joseph Goebbels put it in 1941 “… when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it… even at the risk of looking ridiculous.”

Comments relating to the articles, op-eds and editorials in the Post and Times bordered on the hysterical, sometimes suggesting that readers actually believe that Trump was following orders from Russian President Vladimir Putin. And what was stirring at Reuters, The Times, and the Post was only the tip of the iceberg. The mainstream television news providers united in condemning the audacity of a president who might actually try to end a war while the only favorable commentary on Trump’s having taken a step that is long overdue came from the alternative media.

One might profitably recall how Trump has only been praised as “presidential” by the Establishment twice – when he staged cruise missile attacks on Syria based on faulty intelligence. The Deep State wants blood, make no mistake about it and it is not interested in “retreat.” And Trump will also get almost no support from Congress, with only longtime critics of Syrian policy Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee as well as Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard praising the move initially.

The arguments being made to criticize the Trump initiative were essentially cookie cutter neocon soundbites. The Reuters piece in its first few lines of text asserts that the reversal of policy “stunned lawmakers and allies with his order for U.S. troops to leave Syria, a decision that upends American policy in the Middle East. The result, said current and former officials and people briefed on the decision, will empower Russia and Iran and leave unfinished the goal of erasing the risk that Islamic State, or ISIS, which has lost all but a sliver of territory, could rebuild.” The article goes on to quote an anonymous Pentagon source who opined that “… Trump’s decision was widely seen in the Pentagon as benefiting Russia as well as Iran, both of which have used their support for the Syrian government to bolster their regional influence. Iran also has improved its ability to ship arms to Lebanese Hezbollah for use against Israel. Asked who gained from the withdrawal, the defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, replied: ‘Geopolitically Russia, regionally Iran.’”

Another so-called expert Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute was also cited in the article, saying “It completely takes apart America’s broader strategy in Syria, but perhaps more importantly, the centerpiece of the Trump administration policy, which is containing Iran.”

Israel is also turning up the heat on Trump, claiming that the move will make it more insecure. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to increase air attacks on Iranian targets in Syria as an added security measure to make up for the American betrayal. Normally liberal American Jews have joined the hue and cry against Trump on behalf of Israel. Filmmaker Rob Reiner tweeted on Thursday that the president is a “childish moronic mentally unstable malignant narcissist” who is “committing Treason” against the United States.

The real story, lost in the wailing and gnashing to teeth, is that even after conceding that Donald Trump’s hyperbolic claim that the United States had defeated ISIS as the motive for the withdrawal is nonsense, there is still no good reason for Washington to continue to keep troops in Syria. The U.S. in reality did far less in the war against the terrorist groups infesting the region than did the Russians, Iranians or the Syrians themselves and, as a result, it will have less say in what kind of Syria emerges from the carnage. That is almost certainly a good thing for the Syrian people.

But let’s assume for sake of argument that the U.S. invasion really was about ISIS. Well, ISIS continues to hold on to a small bit of territory near the Euphrates River and is reported to have between one and two thousand remaining fighters. There are other estimates suggesting that between 10,000 and 20,000 followers have dispersed and gone underground awaiting a possible resurgence by the group. The argument that ISIS will reorganize and re-emerge as a result of the American withdrawal assumes that it is the 2,000 strong U.S. armed forces that are keeping it down, which is ridiculous. The best remedy against an ISIS recovery is to support a restored and re-unified Syria, which will have more than enough resources available to eliminate the last bits of the terrorist groups remaining in its territory.

So we go to fallback argument B, which is “containing Iran.” “Containment” was a U.S. policy devised by George Kennan in 1947 to inhibit the expansion of a powerful and sometimes aggressive soon-to-be nuclear armed Soviet Union, which was rightly seen as a serious threat. Iran is a second world country with a small military and economy with no nuclear arsenal and it neither threatens the United States nor any of its neighbors. But Israel supported by Saudi Arabia does not like Iran and has induced Washington to follow its lead. Withdrawing from Syria recognizes that Iran is no threat in reality. Positioning American military forces to “counter” Iran does not reduce the threat against the United States because there was no threat there to begin with.

And then there is the argument that the U.S. departure empowers Iran and Russia. Staying in Syria is, on the contrary, a drain on both those countries’ limited resources. The more money and manpower they have to commit to Syria the less they have to become engaged elsewhere and it is hard to imagine how either country would exploit the “victory” in Syria to leverage their involvement in other parts of the world. Both would be delighted if a final settlement of the Syrian problem could be arrived at so they can get out.

And as for the United States, the military should only be deployed anywhere to defend the U.S. itself or vital interests. There is nothing like that at stake in Syria. So, is American national security better or worse if the U.S. leaves? As Russian and American soldiers only confront each other directly in Syria, U.S. national security would in fact be greatly improved because the danger of igniting an accidental war with Russia would be dramatically reduced. There have reportedly already been a dozen incidents between U.S. and Russian troops, including some involving shooting. That has been a dozen too many. Even the possibility of starting an unintended war with Iran would potentially be disastrous for the United States as well as for everyone else in the region, so it is far better to put some distance between the two sides.

And finally, it is necessary to go to the argument for disengagement from Syria that is too little heard in the western media or from the usual bonehead politicians named Graham and Rubio who pronounce on foreign policy. How has American intervention in the Middle East and south and central Asia benefited the people in the countries that have been invaded or bombed? Not at all. By some estimates four million Muslims have been killed as a consequence of the wars since 2001 and millions more displaced. More than eight thousand U.S. military have died in the process in wars that had no purpose and no exit strategy. And the wars have been expensive – $6 trillion and counting, much of it borrowed. War without end means killing without end and it has to stop.

Withdrawing from Syria is the right thing to do, though one has to be concerned that there might be some secret side deals with Israel or Turkey that could actually result in more attacks on Syria and on the Kurds. Donald Trump is already under extreme pressure coming from all directions to reverse his decision to leave Syria and it is quite possible that he will either fold completely or bend at least a bit. It is to be hoped that he will not do so as a Christmas present to the American people. And he might want to think of a Christmas present for 2019. One might suggest a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

December 26, 2018 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Troops Out of Syria and Afghanistan? That’s a Good Start!

By Ron Paul | December 24, 2018

We all had a big shock this week when, seemingly out of the blue, President Trump announced that he was removing US troops from Syria and would draw down half of the remaining US troops in Afghanistan. The president told us the troops were in Syria to fight ISIS and with ISIS nearly gone the Syrians and their allies could finish the job.

All of a sudden the Trump haters who for two years had been telling us that the president was dangerous because he might get us in a war, were telling us that the president is dangerous because he was getting us out of a war! These are the same people who have been complaining about the president’s historic efforts to help move toward peace with North Korea.

There was more than a little hypocrisy among the “never Trump” resistance over the president’s announcement. Many of the talking heads and politicians who attacked George W. Bush’s wars, then were silent for President Obama’s wars, are now attacking President Trump for actually taking steps to end some wars. It just goes to show that for many who make their living from politics and the military-industrial complex, there are seldom any real principles involved.

Among the neoconservatives, Sen. Lindsey Graham’s reaction was pretty typical. Though it seems Sen. Graham is never bothered when presidents violate the Constitution to take the US into another war without authorization, he cannot tolerate it when a president follows the Constitution and removes US troops from wars they have no business being involved in. Sen. Graham is now threatening to hold Congressional hearings in attempt to reverse the President’s decision to remove troops from Syria.

Neoconservatives are among the strongest proponents of the idea that as a “unitary executive,” the president should not be encumbered by things like the Constitution when it comes to war-making. Now all of a sudden when a president uses his actual Constitutional authority to remove troops from a war zone the neocons demand Congressional meddling to weaken the president. They get it wrong on both fronts! The president does have Constitutional authority to move US troops and to remove US troops; Congress has the power and the obligation to declare war and the power of the purse to end wars.

Most of the Washington establishment – especially the “resistance” liberals and the neocons – are complaining that by removing US troops from these two war zones President Trump has gone too far. I would disagree with them. I call President Trump’s announcement a good start. Americans are tired of being the world’s policemen. The United States does not “lose influence” by declining to get involved in disputes oceans away. We lose influence by spending more on the military than most of the rest of the world combined and meddling where we are not wanted. We will lose a whole lot more influence when their crazy spending makes us bankrupt. Is that what they want?

We should pay attention to Washington’s wild reaction to Trump’s announcement. The vested interests do not want us to have any kind of “peace dividend” because they have become so rich on the “war dividend.” Meanwhile the middle class is getting poorer and we’re all less safe. Let’s hope President Trump continues these moves to restore sanity in our foreign policy. That would really make America great again!

December 26, 2018 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | 2 Comments

Fiasco In Islington, Part 2

Gilad Atzmon
By Richard Hugus | December 26, 2018

More facts have come to light in the case of Gilad Atzmon and his banning by the Islington Town Council from performing at a jazz concert on December 21, 2018. The original scenario was that one  e-mail from one person calling Atzmon an antisemite somehow persuaded the Islington council to take the drastic step of removing Atzmon from a town-owned venue. Many who heard the story felt this was a rash decision which would surely be reversed when the facts were brought to light. But the Council voted to uphold its decision and Atzmon was indeed not allowed to play.

Now it appears that the single complainant – Martin Rankoff –  was not just an anonymous fan of Israel but the UK director of Likud-Herut. Herut (or ‘freedom’) was Israel’s founding nationalist party from 1948 until it later merged with Likud. It is a militant and extreme Zionist organization whose roots go in a straight line from Ze’ev Jabotinsky and Menachem Begin up to Benjamin Netanyahu today. Jabotinsky and Begin helped form the Irgun terrorists in 1937. Irgun committed notorious massacres in Palestine leading up to and during the Nakba (or ‘catastrophe’) of 1947-1948. These include the bombing of the King David Hotel  in Jerusalem in 1946, killing 91 people, and the massacre at Deir Yassin  in 1948 in which 254 unarmed Palestinian villagers were brutally murdered as an incentive for other Palestinians to leave. On its web site Likud-Herut UK lists Jabotinsky and Begin as “visionaries.” Likud-Herut is a member of the World Zionist Organization and the Zionist Federation of the UK  who believe in “the inalienable right of all Jews to live and settle in all parts of the Land of Israel.”

In a letter to the New York Times in 1948 Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, and others compared Herut to the Nazis and Fascists who had just been defeated in World War II. Referring to this letter, Ramzy Baroud recently wrote, “the ‘Nazi and Fascist’ mentality that defined Herut in 1948 now defines the most powerful ruling class in Israel. Israel’s leaders speak openly of genocide and murder, yet they celebrate and promote Israel as if an icon of civilization, democracy and human rights.”

The history of Herut and Likud tells us a great deal about who the people are who complained about Atzmon to Islington Town Council. When Atzmon moved to appeal his being banned, formidable opponents again appeared in the form of the Simkins Law firm, one of the most expensive law practices in Britain, with  not one but two partners at Simkins being put on the case. These are Gideon Benaim and Tom Iverson. Benaim recently became well known in Britain for winning an invasion of privacy suit against the BBC on behalf of pop singer Cliff Richard, who said he spent £3.4m ($4.3 million) on the case. Clearly, representation by Simkins doesn’t come cheap. Also listed in Benaim’s resumé as a client is the Las Vegas Sands Corporation which likely has no problem with Simkins’ fees either. The Sands casino is owned by billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who, as it happens, is a primary sponsor of the Likud Party in Israel, led by Benjamin Netanyahu. Adelson owns the newspaper Israel Hayom, a mouthpiece for Netanyahu and Likud.

American businessman and investor Sheldon Adelson with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the ceremony of a laying of a cornerstone for new Medicine Faculty buildings at the Ariel University in the West Bank, on June 28, 2017. Photo by Ben Dori/Flash90

It now appears that Atzmon’s banning was not the result of a casual complaint; it was an intentional attack on a well-respected supporter of Palestinian human rights by the Likud organization, directly represented by Martin Rankoff. The attack was followed up by the hiring of a lawyer who has worked for Likud godfather Sheldon Adelson. The connection to these powerful forces may explain why Islington Town Council leader Richard Watts, without any delay or attempt at negotiation, took the step of going straight to a decision to hire an expensive law firm. This is while Islington is facing serious austerity and shortage of funds in its own operating budget. Islington has a population of about 206,000 people. This very month, 43 of those people were counted in one survey as homeless and sleeping on the streets.

Regarding the financial problems of his borough and others around London, Richard Watts, told The Independent in October 2018 :

“unprecedented” funding pressures and demand for adult and children’s social care and homelessness services was “pushing councils to the limit”.

“As a result less money is being spent on the other services that keep our communities running such as libraries, local roads, early intervention and local welfare support,” he added.

Yet, to Watts and his fellow councilors in Islington, backing partisans for a foreign country -Israel- took precedence over the pressing needs of the people whom they are supposed to represent. Either Watts was inexcusably careless with scarce town funds or a deal was made and he knew that he could depend on Likud-Herut to back him. Or, like politicians all across Europe and the US facing the power of the Israel lobby, he knew he couldn’t afford to say no.

According to Simkin’s web site, Gideon Benaim “has extensive expertise in the areas of defamation, privacy, harassment and copyright.” Perhaps it is not a coincidence that immediately after Islington brought in Simkins, identical statements from an unnamed Labour spokesman describing Atzmon as “a vile antisemite” appeared in both the BBC and The Guardian. Perhaps a lawyer experienced in defending people against defamation and harassment would also know how to perpetrate these things. Perhaps this was Benaim’s opening move. Character assassination is a common tactic in cases that have a weak legal foundation, such as this one, as it goes a long way to convicting the accused before their case ever reaches a courtroom.

The involvement of Likud-Herut in the attack on Gilad Atzmon, and Islington’s official backing of that attack, constitutes a monumental scandal. This wasn’t just a stupid mistake; it was a hit. It is an affront to reason that an an arch-racist organization like Likud, who from the beginning have stood for the removal of the people of Palestine from their own land by means of terror, murder, and forced expulsion, could possibly claim they they were defamed by someone pointing out these very crimes. There is a case of defamation here for sure – the defamation of Gilad Atzmon. For Zionists, defamation is nothing more than a tool to destroy opponents who can’t be dealt with by other means. We are long since tired of truth tellers being accused of antisemitism. We’re tired of national and local resources being used to prop up the criminal state of Israel. Coercion by advocates for Israel is at the center of this issue in Islington, as it is in many other towns and many other countries. For the sake of Palestine and our own sovereignty, it has to be called out and stopped.

To sign a petition in support of Gilad click here

Lodge a formal complaint with Islington Council: https://www.islington.gov.uk/contact-us/comments-and-complaints?status=inprogress

Email: assemblyhall@islington.gov.uk

Contact the Council: +4420 7527 2000

To support Gilad’s legal battles:  https://donorbox.org/gilad-needs-additional-support

Fiasco In Islington

December 26, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism, Video | , , , , | 1 Comment

9/11 Facts Collection

Events of September 11, 2001 – Evidence-Based Facts

A Summary of the Most Credible Facts

Focusing on Academic and Scientific Research

Many Published in Peer-Reviewed Journals

9/11 Facts

Introduction

On September 11, 2001 a third World Trade Center high-rise building, WTC 7 (47 stories) also completely collapsed some hours after WTC 1 and 2. The building was not hit by a plane and had fires on some floors.

The collapse was sudden, symmetrical and at free-fall acceleration (confirmed officially by NIST). This means the building collapsed through the path of greatest resistance (itself) without any resistance (free-fall).

According to the laws of physics, this is consistent with controlled demolition. The planning and setup of controlled demolition takes weeks to months and requires unrestricted access through building security.

World Trade Center Building 7 (WTC 7) Collapse Footage (1:06) *

The third high-rise to collapse on 9/11 and was not hit by a plane

Other facts on that day include:

  • The discovery of nano-thermite explosive in the WTC building dust
  • Extreme temperatures as high as 2,760’C (5000’F) compared to a maximum possible temperature of 1,000’C (1,800’F) for jet-fuel ignited office fires
  • Various forms of molten metal
  • Many first-responder testimonies of explosions
  • Seismic analysis indicating explosive events before plane impacts and before building collapses and
  • Horizontal ejection of human bone fragments.

These facts are in-conflict with the official explanation and are all consistent with the controlled demolition hypothesis.

The 9/11 Commission Report made no mention of WTC 7. The NIST investigation stated a “new phenomenon” had occurred where a high-rise building collapsed due to fire – a first in the history of tall building fires where no building has ever fully collapsed due to fire, with many examples of much larger and longer-lasting fires.

Many issues with the official investigations have been reported including the 9/11 Commissioners themselves stating they didn’t get to the truth (see Official Investigations).

Further facts include:

  • Significant anomalies of the air defense
  • A stand-down order of the air defense
  • Multiple war games occurring simultaneously and directly related to the event
  • Suspicious accounts of the activities of several officials in charge
  • Evidence of government agency complicity and
  • Insider trading confirmed during the days prior.

These facts come from credible sources including many scientific and academic papers published in peer-reviewed journals (see Evidence-Based Facts).

There is also a relevant historical context that includes:

  • “Operation Northwoods” – an earlier US plan to deceptively orchestrate violent terrorism on US cities and blame it on an enemy as justification for war – a “false flag” operation
  • A US plan to invade 7 countries in 5 years
  • The Project for a New American Century calling for a “new Pearl Harbor event” to expand US global superiority
  • The manufacture of an external threat for political gain
  • The fabricated justification for the Iraq War
  • A pattern of fabrications for US engagement in war
  • US government-created domestic terrorism
  • US support of international terrorism
  • A history of false flag terrorism by governments
  • A history of US “State Crimes Against Democracy”, and
  • Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld convicted as war criminals.

See Historical Context.

There are credible explanations as to why we in the West resist this information, including a ‘cultural taboo’ regarding possible ‘conspiracy theories’ (see Psychology ).

Many credible people who have spoken out include:

  • Ferdinando Imposimato – Honorary President of the Supreme Court of Italy
  • Dr. Tun Mahathir Mohamad – former Prime Minister of Malaysia
  • Dr. Paul Craig Roberts – former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal
  • Bill Christison – former senior CIA National Intelligence Officer and Director of the CIA’s Office of Regional and Political Analysis

Plus a catalog of more than 1000 public statements by credible people (see Credible Statements).

A selection of evidence-based resources for further information is provided (see Resource List).

Next – Part 1 – Official Investigations

December 23, 2018 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | 4 Comments

Tanks on Maidan, president’s gold bath & more outrageous Ukraine fakes by disgraced Spiegel reporter

RT | December 22, 2018

One wonders just how outrageous ‘fake news’ must be in order to get busted, but Der Spiegel’s ex-star reporter Claas Relotius got away with it all while writing for several outlets – maybe because it was about places like Ukraine.

Titled ‘Bribing prohibited’ Relotius’ piece on the new Ukrainian police has all the elements of his trademark style: dramatic narrative, likeable heroes – and entirely made-up ‘facts’.

The ‘report’, published by the Swiss magazine Reportagen in June 2016, tells a tale of two young people – Dimitri and Valeria – who became members of the rebranded police force of post-Maidan Ukraine. Given the recent revelations over his fictional reporting, it’s now unclear whether Relotius met the duo in reality, but the story makes for a very compelling read indeed.

It states that each day before going on patrol, Dimitri and Valeria have been coming to the center of Kiev to pray near the “altar” erected in memory of those who died during the 2014 Euromaidan unrest. The two were among the protesters back then, it reveals, describing how they recall burning buildings, the “smell of corpses,” a man “with a child in his arms” shot dead beside an old well – and a ruined wall, where dozens were “slayed by snipers” and “rolled over by tanks.”

Wait, what? Given that the majority of victims in Kiev – both protesters and law enforcement officers – were killed over two days of murky clashes in February 2014, the “smell” of dead bodies appears to be a little of an exaggeration. No “old wells” could immediately be found in central Kiev, and there’s nothing to back up the story about a “man with a child” either.

But most glaring of all, no “tanks” were ever deployed to curb the city unrest, so the “ruined wall” part was made up in its entirety. In reality, the police unsuccessfully tried to use light APCs to storm some barricades, but the vehicles were pelted with Molotovs and burnt down. At least the “burning buildings” part holds some water, as some central Kiev sites, including the Trade Unions Building, were indeed put to the torch.

It’s not much of a surprise that the rest of the article is riddled with inconsistencies and false statements. Notably, it claims that the ousted President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, had a mansion where he “lived like a pharaoh, with banisters and baths made of pure gold.” The claim appears to be based on the long-debunked rumor that the protesters who stormed the president’s lavish residence discovered a golden toilet.

Incumbent president of the country – Petro Poroshenko – is also described, for some reason, as a “billionaire praline manufacturer from Odessa.” Poroshenko has held several top government posts since the early 2000s, but this fact is not even mentioned in the article. He was indeed born in the Odessa region in the Soviet Union, yet the image of a “successful businessman from Odessa” seems to be quite a stretch.

Describing the old bribery mindset the new police officers have been supposedly battling, Relotius managed to make another, quite outlandish, mistake. The article says that the new police force was in use not only in the capital city of Kiev, but in other major cities, namely “in Kharkiv and Donetsk, in Lviv and in Odessa.”

The problem is, at the time of publication, the eastern city of Donetsk had for two years been under the control of anti-Kiev rebels, who rejected the Euromaidan coup, proclaimed their own republic, and had actual tanks and warplanes sent to crash them into submission – with only limited success.

It doesn’t seem probable that the new Ukrainian police force would have been welcome there – a fact that may have eluded the disgraced Der Spiegel reporter. Just as it, sadly, would go over the head of many of his readers, submerged in the MSM reporting on Ukraine – a narrative often fed from the Kiev government’s POV – and with little fact-checking.

Read more:

Kiev scheduled shooting contest to mark Maidan protest, where dozens were killed by snipers

Game of deception: How a fraudster who faked his stories for years got to be Germany’s top reporter

December 22, 2018 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Trump made the right decision to quit Syrian conflict

Despite the criticism, there is a strong argument that the US president has done the right thing by withdrawing his forces from Syria

By M.K. Bhadrakumar | Asia Times | December 21, 2018

If 700 days out of US President Donald Trump’s 1,461 days of presidency seem a wasteland of unfulfilled promises and expectations in foreign policy – except, perhaps, on the Korean Peninsula – things dramatically changed on December 19 when he announced the troop withdrawal from Syria.

Taken together with Washington’s hurry to negotiate with the Afghan Taliban, it appears that Trump is, finally, on the move as a man of peace, fulfilling the pledge of Candidate Trump to prioritize nation-building over extravagant military adventures in faraway lands.

However, the big question remains: Is the Washington establishment ready for Trump’s action plan? The signs so far are very discouraging. The resignation of US Defense Secretary James Mattis raises the stakes incalculably.

Russian President Vladimir Putin echoed on Thursday the widespread skepticism whether Trump’s decision will be enforced by Pentagon commanders. Yet the odds are that they just might. This needs explaining.

Admittedly, Trump is still a quintessential “outsider” in the Washington Beltway, but then, he also enjoys the backing of a good majority of the American people who are tired of the United States’ endless wars abroad. And that becomes a decisive factor in Trump’s political calculus. This is one thing.

A proxy war

Indeed, a coalition of disgruntled elements and assorted interest groups is forming to debunk Trump. Simply put, they are unhappy that the US military is pulling out of Syria. For many, a gravy train is running while for some others, the issue is Trump – not even Syria.

For the Cold Warriors in the strategic community, Syria is a proxy war against Russia.

Evidently, there is a sophistry in their campaign against Trump’s decision. Principally, three phony arguments are being advanced – that Trump’s decision “baffles” the United States’ allies; that he has thrown the Kurds under the bus; and that a US pullout from Syria harms the anti-ISIS fight.

To take the last argument first – what will be the impact on the Syrian situation? To be sure, ISIS is down, but not quite out. But then, ISIS is today only residual terrorism, after the huge defeat in Iraq.

At any rate, the brunt of the fight against the ISIS was borne by the Syrian government forces and their allies – remember Aleppo? Their grit to finish the job has never been in doubt and there is no reason to fear any let-up.

In fact, their interest lies in stabilizing the security situation in the quickest possible way so the political process leading to a post-conflict Syrian order can be sped up.

Ironically, the departure of the US forces could help matters, since in many ways the US military presence only impeded the anti-ISIS fight in Syria. It is well known that terrorist groups took shelter in the US-led security zones in eastern Syria.

The Al-Tanf base and its 50-square-kilometer security perimeter was only the most glaring example. Again, the “no-fly zones” prevented Syrian and Russian jets from hunting down the ISIS cadres and de facto amounted to US air cover for terrorists.

National security

Succinctly put, the Americans are laboring under an illusion that they alone “won” the war against the ISIS in Syria, or Iraq. This illusion must be purged.

No, without the 2,000 American troops, Syria isn’t about to collapse like a sack of potatoes or become the revolving door for international terrorists. Trust the Russians and Iranians to eliminate the scourge of terrorism from Syrian soil, because it directly affects their own national security.

Therefore, isn’t it the smart thing to do to let “others” do the job, as Trump put it? However unpalatable the thought might be, a tragedy like the attack on the US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut in 1983 is waiting to happen in Syria once the Turkish military crushes and scatters the Kurdish militia, leaving the 2,000 US troops stranded like sitting ducks in 12 bases in the middle of nowhere spread over a vast territory about one-third the size of all Syria.

Wouldn’t Trump know he’s skating on thin ice? For if body bags were to come home, the political cost would be his – not Mattis’.

Equally, Trump can no longer take for granted the Saudi willingness generously to bankroll the United States’ war in Syria, especially if the self-styled humanists on the Hill proceed with their foreign-policy agenda to wreak vengeance on Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. You can’t have the cake and eat it too, can you?

The ground reality is that Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Jordan have exited the Syrian conflict. Egypt has no stomach to get involved and Turkey, of course, has turned hostile. So who are these “allies” that the agitated folks in the US are talking about? The frank answer is: a clutch of British and French operatives and a horde of Western mercenaries. Isn’t this a macabre joke?

The Americans have been acting as “spoilers” in Syria, locked in a geopolitical struggle that has very little to do with fighting terrorism and has only impeded the stabilization of the Syrian situation. Thus it is no coincidence that Trump unveiled his considered decision just as the announcement was made in Geneva that the pan-Syrian committee for the drafting of a new constitution has been set up, which will work under United Nations supervision to galvanize a political process leading to elections and the formation of a new government enjoying the mandate of the people.

Turkey and the Kurds

Finally, the Kurdish factor. The alliance with the Kurdish militia in Syria has severely damaged US-Turkish relations. Turkey will never allow the creation of a Kurdish homeland on its borders, and it has a congruence of interests with Iraq and Iran – and even Syria – in this regard.

On the other hand, without a strong partnership with Turkey, a “swing” state overlooking several regions, American strategies not only in the Greater Middle East but also in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Balkans, the Black Sea and the Caucasus will be at a serious disadvantage. Now, is that something the US can afford?

The US has done a great injustice to the Kurds by giving them false hopes. Leave them alone. They will reconcile with Damascus, availing of the good offices of Russians who have dealt with them from time immemorial.

Plainly put, the Pentagon’s trainers and Special Forces “embedded” with Kurdish men and women fighters helped develop romantic notions of creating an independent country for their partners. This should never have happened.

December 22, 2018 Posted by | Militarism | , , | 1 Comment

Turkey Won’t Drop S-400 Deal Despite Trump’s Promise to Sell Patriots – Report

Sputnik – 22.12.2018

The US has been attempting to thwart the Russian S-400 air defence systems’ sale to Turkey ever since the contract was signed in December 2017, threatening to halt F-35 jet shipments to Ankara. In its latest attempt to dismantle the deal, the US State Department approved the sale of US-made Patriot systems to Turkey.

Turkey has “zero chance to drop S-400” deal with Russia despite the US planning to sell its Patriot defence systems to Ankara, Hürriyet Daily News reported citing an anonymous diplomatic sources. The source added that Turkey is going to try and convince Washington that it will take all measures to develop its own software to prevent any alleged problems over the S-400 deployment.

Hürriyet’s source also shared that US President Donald Trump assured his Turkish colleague Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the Congress will not thwart the proposed sale of Patriot missile systems to Ankara, which received a green light from the US State Department earlier this week. Trump reportedly didn’t elaborate how he was going to ensure the fulfilment of this promise.

The media’s diplomatic source also added that apart from his promise on the Patriot sale, Trump vowed that there will be no problem with F-35 jet deliveries, which came into question after Turkey struck a deal with Russia to buy the S-400 systems.

The supplies of the newest fifth generation jets to Turkey are being threatened by a bill, adopted earlier by the US Congress, requiring the US Defence Department to present a report on the possibility of Russian defence systems in Turkey revealing sensitive data about the F-35s and sending it to Moscow. Without a report from the Defence Department, the F-35 deliveries to Turkey will be impossible.

The issue was raised in the US Congress after Turkey signed a $2.5 billion contract with Russia to buy its S-400 air defence systems in December 2017. Ankara pointed out then that it would gladly buy missile systems produced by the US and its allies, if it would have been given such an option.

December 22, 2018 Posted by | Aletho News | , | 1 Comment

History Is Written By The Winners

Corbett Report | December 14, 2018

Who gets to write the history textbooks? Where do the history teachers learn about history? What documents are allowed into the historical record, and what documents are excluded? These are not merely academic questions, they go right to the heart of the question of history itself. Join James Corbett for today’s edition of The Corbett Report and an in-depth exploration of the formation of the historical record about World War One.

For those with limited bandwidth, CLICK HERE to download a smaller, lower file size version of this episode.

For those interested in audio quality, CLICK HERE for the highest-quality version of this episode (WARNING: very large download).

Watch this video on BitChute / DTube / YouTube or Download the mp4

SHOW NOTES
The WWI Conspiracy

Richard Grove on the Rothschilds and WWI

Gerry Docherty on the Hidden History of WWI

How & Why Big Oil Conquered the World

Norman Dodd On Tax Exempt Foundations

Archive.org repository of Reece Committee documents

Rene Wormser on The Canegie Endowment’s role in molding public opinion

The Guns of August

The Innocence of Kaiser Wilhelm II

Daily Telegraph Affair

MacMillan intelligencesquared debate

Meet Margaret MacMillan, David Lloyd George’s great-granddaughter

Meet Margaret MacMillan, former Rhodes Trustee

Jim and Gerry’s Hidden History blog

Fake History. How The Money Power Controls Our Future By Controlling Our Past

Fake History 3: From Burning Correspondence To Permanently Removing The Evidence

December 22, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment