South Korean prosecutors have formally indicted President Yoon Suk Yeol on charges of leading an insurrection during his brief imposition of martial law last month, local media reported on Sunday. Yoon, who was impeached on December 14, faces accusations of abusing power and undermining democratic institutions.
Yoon declared emergency martial law on December 3, claiming the opposition was plotting a “rebellion” and accusing it of sympathizing with North Korea. The controversial measure was overturned within days, leading to his impeachment by the National Assembly. Yoon’s arrest on January 15 sparked violent protests by his supporters, who stormed the Seoul Western District Court.
“After comprehensively reviewing the evidence from the accomplice cases investigated so far… and the evidence from cases referred to the police and investigated, we determined that it was appropriate (valid) to indict [Yoon],” the prosecution said in a statement, as cited by Yonhap news agency.
The prosecutors indicted Yoon without further investigation, citing sufficient evidence already collected and concerns that he could destroy evidence of his alleged crimes unless formally charged. Prosecutors have alleged that his martial law decree was part of a broader plan to seize control of state functions.
Insurrection is among the few charges for which a South Korean president does not have immunity. If convicted, Yoon could face life imprisonment or the death penalty.
Yoon’s legal team has dismissed the charges against him as politically motivated, describing the martial law declaration as a necessary measure to counter legislative gridlock and opposition-led impeachments of his cabinet members. Yoon, who remains in custody, previously vowed to “fight alongside” his supporters “to the very end to protect this nation.”
The country’s Constitutional Court is currently deliberating whether to permanently remove Yoon from office. A decision must be made within 180 days. Yoon’s presidential powers were suspended following his impeachment, and Prime Minister Han Duck-soo is serving as acting president.
Yoon is the first sitting South Korean president to face criminal charges while in office.
The reappearance of a high-ranking commander of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas in a video clip has belied the Israeli military’s claim of killing him in the northern Gaza Strip last May.
The Palestinian media outlet Arab48 released footage of Hussein Fayyad at a funeral in northern Gaza on Wednesday as he was speaking among a group of people amid the ruins of a bombed-out building.
The video, which was widely shared on social media, showed Fayyad praising Gaza’s resistance against the Israeli regime’s months-long aggression and dismissing the onslaught as futile.
“When the strong do not achieve their goals, they are defeated, but the weak, which prevented the strong from achieving their goals, are the victors,” the Hamas commander said. “Gaza has emerged unbreakable. We all saw yesterday how Gaza stood victorious with its head held high.”
The Israeli occupation army claimed in May last year that Fayyad, the commander of the Beit Hanoun Brigade of the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, had been “eliminated” in an underground operation in Jabaliya tunnel, north of Gaza City.
Following the release of the footage on Wednesday, the Israeli military was forced to admit that its claim of killing the Hamas commander was based on flawed intelligence.
Fayyad’s reappearance once again raised questions about Israel’s battlefield claims in Gaza as the regime has in the past erroneously claimed the killing of key Palestinian figures.
The Israeli regime was forced to agree to a ceasefire agreement with Hamas on Sunday, which put an end to more than 15 months of merciless aggression on the blockaded Gaza Strip.
Israel’s brutal onslaught on the besieged territory, which started on October 7, 2023, killed more than 47,000 Palestinians and wounded nearly 112,000 others.
The toll continues to climb as families return to the ruins of their former homes following the ceasefire, searching for the bodies of loved ones left in the aftermath. The Palestinian Ministry of Health has reported that around 10,000 bodies are still unaccounted for beneath the rubble.
Amongst certain circles in Washington, there is real panic right now about the possibility of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine coming to a halt, with Trump’s help. Some analysts are even speculating that the so-called “deep state” could thus come up with desperate bold measures, such as “false flag attacks” or assassination attempts targeting foreign pro-Western figures in Russia and Ukraine, so as to blame Moscow and inflame public opinion and thereby force Washington into once again stepping in.
In this scenario, some names are suggested as possible “disposable” targets: Yulia Navalnaya (Alexei Navalny’s widow, who chairs the New York based “Human Rights Foundation”), Mukhtar Ablyazov (businessman and key anti-Russian activist in Kazakhstan), or even Salome Zourabichvili (former president of Georgia).
Before giving any thought about such seemingly wild claims, let us first consider their premise, namely that the Ukrainian conflict could end really soon. Trump does seem bent on “ending the war in Ukraine”, as he has phrased it. Consider this:
1. Employing his peculiar gangster-like rhetorical style (which includes the use of uppercase typography), the Republican posted on social media, in a message to Russian leadership:
“Settle now, and STOP this ridiculous War! IT’S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE. If we don’t make a ‘deal’, and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries… Let’s get this war, which never would have started if I were President, over with! We can do it the easy way, or the hard way – and the easy way is always better. It’s time to “MAKE A DEAL”.”
Ironically, the previous Biden presidency already issued a last-minute round of energy sanctions against Russian banks and companies, which have been described as “Trump-proof” sanctions due to giving power to the US Congress in that regard (should the new President attempt to weaken the measures). Biden’s decision was in itself quite ironic, considering that Trump will be ruling with a “supermajority”. Back to Trump, his social media threats (made on “Truth Social”, a platform owned by himself) have more to do with pandering to mainstream conservative Americans (by “being tough on Russia”) while at the same time appealing to “Ukraine fatigue”. But it is, nonetheless, a sign.
2. More importantly, rhetoric aside, as one of his very first acts after his inauguration, Trump has frozen foreign aid to Ukraine for 90 days. Roksolana Pidlasa, head of the Ukrainian parliament’s budget committee responded by saying that Ukraine is “secured” in terms of “budget funding” because Biden had already transferred $50 billion (under the ERA initiative) to the World Bank. Trump’s measure in itself thus has limited efficacy (and applies to “development programs”, not to military aid), but is, nonetheless, quite telling.
3. Recently, one may recall, Ukraine’ leader Volodymyr Zelensky has accused the US and the West of embezzlement, by claiming that half of all money sent to Ukraine (that is, only $88.5 billion) ever reached Kyiv. As I wrote, this kind of accusation, if employed for leverage, risks backfiring. Be it as it may, the issue of Ukraine corruption (and the corresponding American shady interests) is very real and could thus be exploited by Republican lawmakers to further pressure the new administration into curbing aid to Ukraine or even ending American support to Ukraine, while blaming the Democrats.
All of the above is therefore plausible enough: Washington has, after all, sometimes signaled a willingness to pivot to the East while shifting the Ukrainian “burden” onto Europe – and even James Stavridis, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, argued, back in November 2023, that a Korea-style “land for peace” deal was the only “hope” for Ukraine. The problem is that there are powerful actors committed to perpetuating hostilities, and the so-called “deep state” is clearly divided and out of control. Again, consider the following:
Speaker Mike Johnson has amazingly confirmed that, while President, Biden, struggling with senility, was not really “running the country” and would often not be aware of the content of the very acts he signed. This means other players were calling the shots in a kind of palace coup (he mentions the CIA).
Trump is openly “at war” with the deep state, while in a quest to increase his own presidential powers. He has appointed loyalists and/or “dissidents” to head key agencies, including the CIA and the Secret Service – not to mention Tulsi Gabbard, appointed as Director of National Intelligence.
During the presidential campaign, there were three attempts against Donald Trump’s life, which is unprecedented. One of the would-be assassins, Ryan Routh, was involved in recruiting for Ukraine.
Suspicions about the role of the Secret Service in the first attempt were so serious that Kimberly Cheatle, then its Director, had to resign amid a scandal, and to this day we don’t know much about shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks or why “someone who regularly visited Crooks’ home and work also visited a building in Washington, DC located in Gallery Place… in the same vicinity of an FBI office”, among many other unexplained angles.
The terrorist behind the New Year’s bombing outside Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, is an active duty Green Beret (with a Special Operations background), and believed to have involvement with, once again, recruiting soldiers to fight for Ukraine and with radical pro-Ukraine activism.
False flag operations are part of the American clandestine operations repertoire. For instance, nowadays it is known that, in 1962, the US Department of Defense planned Operation Northwoods, which called for CIA operatives to commit actual terrorist attacks against American civilians and military targets in US cities (involving bombings and even hijacking airplanes) and then using the panic to justify a Cuban invasion. Then President Kennedy rejected the plan, but the proposal as such existed, and no one denies it today.
The assassination of Kennedy itself, far from being a talking point of “conspiracy theorists” only, remains unexplained to this day, with most documents pertaining to it still being “classified”, which is not quite consistent with a “lone gunman” scenario. Trump has announced he plans to release those, by the way, and it is fair to assume that his reasoning in doing that could involve “exposing” a culture of misdeeds to cause outrage and then justify a series of intelligence reforms in line with his goals.
On top of all the above, the US is still facing a bizarre “UFO” drone crisis spiralling out of control. Military bases and airports have been temporarily closed over the issue, and lawmakers are calling for a state of emergency while counties have already declared one and so on, with people in panic. Authorities have denied the “objects” have a foreign origin, and, unless one wants to take the extraterrestrial hypothesis seriously, this can only indicate chaos amid the intelligence services, with exercises and what-not out of control.
Considering all the above, the idea of a false flag attack to stop Trump from withdrawing American support to Ukraine is not so wild and should not be taken as “sacred victim” provocation. In fact it seems a possible and even likely scenario. This has been the wildest presidential transition in US history and there is no reason to assume the turmoil has ended already.
Uriel Araujo, PhD, anthropology researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.
Israeli gunfire has killed two Palestinian children and injured several others in the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip, despite a ceasefire currently in effect between Israel and Palestinian resistance movement Hamas.
Zakaria Hamid Yahya Barbakh was fatally shot on Monday near al-Awda Square in southern areas of Rafah city, south of the Gaza Strip, before witnesses filmed the Israeli army opening fire on a man trying to recover the child’s body.
According to reports, another Palestinian kid had been killed and nine others, among them children, were injured by Israeli gunfire in Rafah earlier in the day.
Palestinian sources reported that Israeli tanks violated a designated buffer zone, unleashing heavy gunfire on civilians. According to the sources, the military pushed forward 850 meters (2,789 feet) into the territory, surpassing the 700-meter limit established in the ceasefire agreement.
The ceasefire agreement, which took effect on Sunday, is designed to last for 42 days and includes provisions for negotiations on subsequent phases, mediated by Egypt, Qatar, and the United States. As part of the agreement, Hamas released three Israeli women in exchange for 90 Palestinian prisoners, mostly women and children.
As the ceasefire continues in war-wracked Gaza. the Israeli violence rages in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli settlers, backed by military forces, unleashed violence in the occupied West Bank villages north of al-Quds, where Palestinian homes, a nursery and a local business were burned.
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Palestine, in a statement, has expressed alarm at the “wave of renewed violence” by Israeli settlers and armed forces in the occupied West Bank, amid the implementation of the Gaza ceasefire agreement.
In addition to the violence perpetrated by settlers, Israeli forces have reportedly established military checkpoints and closed roads across the West Bank, restricting Palestinians’ movement.
According to Palestinian media outlets, all entrances to al-Khalil, Qalqilya, and Salfit, as well as several towns and villages within the Salfit governorate have been closed, with similar measures being enforced in Bethlehem.
In a related development, US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order reversing sanctions on Israeli settlers in the West Bank, which were previously implemented by the Joe Biden administration as part of efforts against what they called the “extremist settlement movement.”
Following the US hype of the so-called “Volt Typhoon” false narrative to discredit China in the first half of 2024, by the end of 2024, the US fabricated another so-called “hacker group associated with the Chinese government” – the “Salt Typhoon,” promoting the narrative of “Chinese cyber threats.” However, professionals in the field of cyberspace told the Global Times that the so-called “Salt Typhoon” not only lacks any substantial evidence but also exposes the fact that US intelligence agencies are conducting large-scale surveillance and espionage against their own citizens.
On Friday, the Global Times learned from a source that during discussions with their American counterparts, China’s diplomats on cyber affairs firmly rejected the US accusations against China regarding the individual cases such as “Salt Typhoon” and “Volt Typhoon” in the absence of evidence. They also expressed concerns about the US large-scale cyber espionage activities targeting China and the threats posed to China’s critical information infrastructure.
On the same day, China’s National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team Center of China (known as CNCERT) released two investigative reports, exposing two recent cyberattacks by US intelligence agencies targeting major Chinese technology firms to steal trade secrets.
‘Salt Typhoon’ – new farce to smear China
On September 25, 2024, an “exclusive” report by Wall Street Journal claimed that “hackers linked to the Chinese government have broken into a handful of US internet-service providers in recent months in pursuit of sensitive information” for preparation of future cyberattacks.
Then on October 25, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) sent a joint statement, claiming that the US government is investigating the unauthorized access to commercial telecommunications infrastructure by actors affiliated with China.
However, a separate report by American media on October 27 denied the aforementioned hype and revealed the underlying motives behind the US media’s sensationalism regarding “Salt Typhoon.” A report by The Washington Post said, “the Salt Typhoon group is also thought to have targeted the system that tracks lawful requests for wiretaps made by the federal government of carriers. The motive there could be to figure out who the FBI and other federal agencies have under surveillance.”
It is not difficult to see that the key behind the “Salt Typhoon” is the “private eavesdropping and surveillance system” that American telecommunications companies have specifically established for federal law enforcement agencies, Li Yan, director of Institute of Technology and Cybersecurity, China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times.
The essence of the so-called “Salt Typhoon” is the large-scale wiretapping and intelligence-gathering activities conducted by US intelligence agencies on its own citizens, including political figures. The breadth and scale of the surveillance targets are astonishing, Li Yan said.
Ironically, the US government has never been able to provide solid and credible evidence linking the “Salt Typhoon” to the Chinese government, and the various pieces of information in the media are vague, Li Yan noted.
The expert said that it is not difficult to see that their goal is to muddle the public discourse and divert attention because once the accusation is substantiated, the US government cannot escape responsibility. The key issue is that the authorization and legality of domestic surveillance by US intelligence agencies would provoke backlash both domestically and internationally.
Li Yan added that in this context, diverting attention and shifting blame is of utmost urgency for the perpetrators. Moreover, US intelligence agencies could continue to hype the so-called national security threats under the pretext of “Chinese hackers,” carry out large-scale surveillance, and seek to gain more departmental interests.
Zuo Xiaodong, a professor at the School of Cybersecurity at the University of Science and Technology of China, told a Global Times that the so-called “Salt Typhoon” incident is a complete fabrication with no substantial evidence, and it is suspected to be a self-directed and self-performed operation by the US.
In simple terms, “Salt Typhoon” refers to claims made by US media that hackers have stolen data from US telecommunications agencies regarding surveillance on American citizens, which precisely exposes “the tip of the iceberg” of the large-scale surveillance conducted by US intelligence agencies, Zuo Xiaodong said.
The expert believed the US fabricating and sensationalizing the “Salt Typhoon” is to elevate the “China threat theory” to the “China cyber threat theory,” attempting to isolate China globally and create momentum for establishing international rules in cyberspace that are favorable to the US.
Latest reports: US cyberattacks China’s tech firms
Despite the US’ ongoing efforts to smear China by accusing it of “cyberattacks,” the fact is that the US is the largest source of cyberattacks in the world. According to media reports, on December 18, 2024, China’s National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team Center of China (known as CNCERT) reported two incidents of cyber espionage by US intelligence agencies targeting large technology enterprises in our country. On Friday, the CNCERT released detailed investigation findings regarding these incidents.
In one case, it said that starting from August 2024, a certain advanced materials design research unit in China was suspected to have been targeted by a cyberattack from US intelligence agencies. Analysis revealed that the attackers exploited a vulnerability in a domestic electronic document security management system to infiltrate the company’s software upgrade management server. Through the software upgrade service, they delivered control trojans to over 270 host machines of the company, stealing a large amount of commercial secrets and intellectual property.
“The attacks mainly occurred from Monday to Friday US time, with no attacks reported during major US holidays,” the report stated. “The five proxy IPs used by the attackers were completely unique and located in Germany, Romania, and other places, reflecting their high awareness of anti-tracing and a rich reserve of attack resources.”
In addition, starting from May 2023, a large high-tech enterprise in China specializing in smart energy and digital information was suspected to have been attacked by US intelligence agencies. Analysis revealed that the attackers used multiple overseas proxies to exploit vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange, infiltrating and taking control of the company’s email server and implanting backdoor programs to continuously steal email data. At the same time, the attackers used the email server as a springboard to attack and control more than 30 devices belonging to the company and its subsidiaries, stealing a large amount of the company’s trade secrets.
Multiple facts indicate that documents previously disclosed by Snowden further reveal that the US has conducted the broadest range of cyber espionage and surveillance operations against China and the entire world to date. According to reports from Chinese security agencies and enterprises, the US has been conducting cyberattacks and espionage globally, including against China and the US’ own allies. Furthermore, it has deliberately inserted strings in Chinese and other languages to mislead attribution analysis and frame other countries, Zuo Xiaodong said.
‘US should maintain cybersecurity with responsible attitude’
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun stated at Friday’s press briefing that the report by CNCERT brought to light again the attempts by the US government to conduct cyberattacks and theft of trade secrets and intellectual property targeting China.
Guo expressed serious concerns about such attempts, and urged the US to immediately stop the malicious activities. China will take necessary measures to safeguard its own cyber security and interests, Guo said.
Cyberspace bears on national security and economic prosperity of all countries. The US should reflect on what it’s doing, and stop its political smears. The US should live up to its standards first before asking other countries to do the same, responsibly observe the same international rules respected by other countries, and work with the international community to maintain peace and security in cyberspace, Guo said.
The essayist and military strategist, Aurelien, has written a paper entitled: The Strange Defeat (original in French). The ‘strange defeat’ being that of Europe’s ‘curious’ inability to understand Ukraine or its military mechanics.
Aurelien highlights the strange lack of realism by which the West has approached the crisis —
“ … and the almost pathological dissociation from the real world that it displays in its words and actions. Yet, even as the situation deteriorates, and the Russian forces advance everywhere, there is no sign that the West is becoming more reality-based in its understanding – and it is very likely that it will continue to live in its alternative construction of reality until it is forcibly expelled”.
The writer continues in some detail (omitted here) to explain why NATO has no strategy for Ukraine and no real operational plan:
“It has only a series of ad hoc initiatives, linked together by vague aspirations that have no connection with real life plus the hope that ‘something [beneficial] will occur’. Our current Western political leaders have never had to develop such skills. Yet it is actually worse than that: not having developed these skills, not having advisers who have developed them, they cannot really understand what the Russians are doing, how and why they are doing it. Western leaders are like spectators who do not know the rules of chess or Go – and are trying to figure out who is winning”.
“What exactly was their goal? Now, responses such as ‘to send a message to Putin’, ‘complicate Russian logistics’, or ‘improve morale at home’ are no longer allowed. What I want to know is what is expected in concrete terms? What are the tangible results of their ‘messaging’? Can they guarantee that it will be understood? Have you anticipated the possible reactions of the Russians – and what will you do then?”
The essential problem, Aurelien bluntly concludes, is that:
“our political classes and their parasites have no idea how to deal with such crises, or even how to understand them. The war in Ukraine involves forces that are orders of magnitude larger than any Western nation has deployed on operations since 1945 … Instead of real strategic objectives, they have only slogans and fanciful proposals”.
Coldly put, the author explains that for complex reasons connected with the nature of western modernity, the liberal élites simply are not competent or professional in matters of security. And they do not understand its nature.
U.S. cultural critic Walter Kirn makes rather similar claims in a very different, yet related, context: California Fires and America’s Competency Crisis –
“Los Angeles is in flames, yet California’s leaders seem helpless, unmasking a generation of public investment in non-essential services [that leaves the Authorities floundering amidst the predicted occurrence of the fires]”.
On a Joe Rogan podcast earlier this month, a firefighter goes: “It’s just going to be the right wind and fire’s going to start in the right place and it’s going to burn through LA all the way to the ocean, and there’s not a f***ing thing we can do about it”.
Kirn observes:
“This isn’t the first fire or set of fires in Malibu. Just a few years ago, there were big fires. There always are. They’re inevitable. But having built this giant city in this place with this vulnerability, there are measures that can be taken to contain and to fend off the worst”.
“To fob it off on climate change, as I say, is a wonderful thing to tell yourself, but none of this started yesterday. My only point is this, has it done everything it can to prepare for an inevitable, unavoidable situation that perhaps in scale differs from the past, but certainly not in kind? Are its leaders up to the job? There’s not a lot of sign that they are. They haven’t been able to deal with things like homelessness without fires. So the question of whether all those things have been done, whether they’ve been done well, whether there was adequate water in fire hydrants, whether they were working at all, things like that, and whether the fire department was properly trained or properly staffed, all those questions are going to arise”.
“And as far as the competency crisis goes, I think that there will be ample material to portray this as aggravated by incompetence. California’s a state that’s become notorious for spending a lot of money on things that don’t work, on high-speed rail lines that never are constructed, on all sorts of construction projects and infrastructure projects that never come to pass. And in that context, I think this will be devastating to the power structure of California”.
“In a larger sense though, it’s going to remind people that a politics that has been for years now about language and philosophical constructs such as equity and so on, is going to be seen as having failed in the most essential way, to protect people. And that these people are powerful and influential and privileged is going to make that happen faster and in a more prominent fashion”.
To which his colleague, journalist Matt Taibbi, responds:
“But pulling back in a broader sense, we do have a crisis of competency in this country. It has had a huge impact on American politics”. Kirn: “[Americans] They’re going to want less concern for the philosophical and/or even long-term political questions of equity and so on, I predict, and they’re going to want to lay in a minimum expectation of competence in natural disasters. In other words, this is a time when the priorities shift and I think that big change is coming, big, big change, because we look like we’ve been dealing with luxury problems, and we’ve certainly been dealing with other countries’ problems, Ukraine or whoever it might be, with massive funding. There are people in North Carolina right now still recovering from a flood and having a very difficult time as winter comes, which it doesn’t in LA in the same way, or as winter consolidates itself, I guess”;
“So looking forward, it’s not a question of blame, it’s what are people going to want? What are people going to value? What are they going to prize? Are their priorities going to shift? I think they will shift big time. Los Angeles will be a touchstone and it will be a touchstone for a new approach to government”.
So we have this ‘divorce from reality’ and consequent ‘Competency Crisis’ – whether in California; Ukraine or Europe. Where lie the roots to this malaise? U.S. writer David Samuels believes this to be the answer:
“In his last days in office … President Barack Obama made the decision to set the country on a new course. On Dec. 23, 2016, he signed into law the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act, which used the language of defending the homeland to launch an open-ended, offensive information war, a war that fused the security infrastructure with the social media platforms – where the war supposedly was being fought”.
However, collapse of the 20th-century media pyramid and its rapid replacement by monopoly social media platforms, had made it possible for the Obama White House to sell policy – and reconfigure social attitudes and prejudices – in entirely new ways.
During the Trump years, Obama used these tools of the digital age to craft an entirely new type of power centre for himself – one that revolved around his unique position as the titular, though pointedly never-named, head of a Democratic Party which he succeeded in refashioning in his own image, Samuels writes.
The ‘permission structure’ machine that Barack Obama and David Axelrod (a highly successful Chicago political consultant), built to replace the Democratic Party was in its essence a device for getting people to act against their beliefs by substituting new and ‘better’ beliefs through the top-down controlled and leveraged application of social pressure – effectively turning Axelrod’s construct into ‘an omnipotent thought-machine’, Samuels suggests:
“The term ‘echo chambers’ describes the process by which the White House and its wider penumbra of think tanks and NGOs deliberately created an entirely new class of experts who mutually credentialed each other on social media in order to advance assertions that would formerly have been seen as marginal or not credible”.
The aim was for a platoon of aides, armed with laptops or smart phones, to ‘run’ with the latest inspired Party meme and to immediately repeat, and repeat it, across platforms, giving the appearance of an overwhelming tide of consensus filling the country. And thus giving people the ‘permission structure’ of apparent wide public assent to believe propositions that formerly they would never have supported.
“Where this analysis went wrong is the same place that the Obama team’s analysis of Trump went wrong: The wizards of the permission structure machine had become captives of the machinery that they built. The result was a fast-moving mirror world that could generate the velocity required to change the appearance of “what people believe” overnight. The newly minted digital variant of “public opinion” was rooted in the algorithms that determine how fads spread on social media, in which mass multiplied by speed equals momentum—speed being the key variable”.
“At every turn over the next four years, it was like a fever was spreading, and no one was immune. Spouses, children, colleagues, and supervisors at work began reciting, with the force of true believers, slogans they had only learned last week. It was the entirety of this apparatus, not just the ability to fashion clever or impactful tweets, that constituted the party’s new form of power”.
“In the end, however, the fever broke”. The credibility of Élites imploded.
Samuels account amounts to a stark warning of the danger associated with distance opening up between an underlying reality and an invented reality that could be successfully messaged, and managed, from the White House. “This possibility opened the door to a new potential for a large-scale disaster – like the war in Iraq”, Samuels suggests. (Samuels does not specifically mention Ukraine, although this is implied throughout the argument).
This – both the Obama tale, as told by David Samuels, and Walter Kirn’s story of California – augment Aurelien’s point about Ukraine and European military incompetence and lack of professionalism on the field: It is one of allowing a schism to open up between contrived narrative and reality – “which”, Samuels warns “is to say that, with enough money, operatives could create and operationalize mutually reinforcing networks of activists and experts to validate a messaging arc that would short-circuit traditional methods of validation and analysis, and lead unwary actors and audience members alike to believe that things that they had never believed; or even heard of before: Were in fact not only plausible, but already widely accepted within their specific peer groups”.
It constitutes the path to disaster – even risking nuclear disaster in the case of the Ukraine conflict. Will the ‘Competency Crisis’ reaching across such varied terrain trigger a re-think as Walter Kirn – a writer on cultural change – insists?
The Metropolitan Police have summoned former UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and ex-shadow chancellor John McDonnell for an “interview” following a pro-Palestinian rally in central London on Saturday, Anadolu reported.
The Metropolitan Police is investigating what it described as a “coordinated effort by the rally’s organisers to breach conditions imposed on the event.”
Corbyn, 75, and McDonnell, 73, who agreed to the interviews, voluntarily appeared at a police station in the capital yesterday afternoon.
After leaving the police station, the two MPs did not answer reporters’ questions.
Police also summoned three unnamed persons to give voluntary testimony as part of an “ongoing investigation”.
The rally, organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and its coalition partners, saw thousands gather in Whitehall after police blocked plans for a march from Portland Place, near the headquarters of the BBC.
Officers had imposed conditions under the Public Order Act restricting the protest to Whitehall, citing concerns over a potential “serious disruption” near a synagogue.
Police said a group of protesters broke through a police line to reach Trafalgar Square, where officers stopped them.
The Metropolitan Police posted a photo on social media showing a group that it said have forced its way through the police line being held at the northwest corner of Trafalgar Square.
Corbyn, however, disputed the account.
“This is not an accurate description of events at all,” he said in a post on X.
He said he was part of a delegation of speakers intending to lay flowers in memory of children killed in Gaza, which was “facilitated by the police”.
McDonnell echoed his comments.
“We did not force our way through. The police allowed us to go through, and when we stopped in Trafalgar Square, we laid our flowers down and dispersed.”
Nine people, including Corbyn’s brother Piers Corbyn, and Chris Nineham, a chief steward on the march, have been charged with public order offences and will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in the coming days.
The Met Police also confirmed that 24 people have been released on bail, while 48 remain in custody. Three other men aged 75, 73 and 61 have agreed to be interviewed under criminal caution.
The protest coincided with the announcement of a ceasefire and prisoner swap deal between Israel and Hamas.
Corbyn, who now sits as an independent member of parliament for Islington North, has been a vocal supporter of Palestinian rights.
McDonnell, the MP for Hayes and Harlington, also sits as an independent after Labour suspended the whip from him for six months in July 2024 over his vote against the government on child benefit rules.
The demonstration in London drew tens of thousands of supporters of Palestine, despite the police-imposed restrictions and banning of a previously agreed-upon route.
During the protest, 77 people were arrested.
Met Commander Adam Slonecki said security forces have been deployed for more than 20 national protests organised by the PSC since October 2023.
He highlighted that the number of arrests at yesterday’s rally marked the “highest number” recorded at such demonstrations during this period.
Outgoing US President Joe Biden used his last moments in office to roll out a blanket pardon for members of his family, effectively shielding them from potential repercussions they could face under Donald Trump.
Biden claimed on Monday that his family has long been targeted in a concerted effort to harm him politically.
“My family has been subjected to unrelenting attacks and threats, motivated solely by a desire to hurt me – the worst kind of partisan politics. Unfortunately, I have no reason to believe these attacks will end,” Biden said in a statement.
The pardon concerns “any nonviolent offences against the United States” five of Biden’s family members might have committed starting from January 1, 2014 to the end of his term as president.
“I am exercising my power under the Constitution to pardon James B. Biden, [his wife] Sara Jones Biden, [first sister] Valerie Biden Owens, [her husband] John T. Owens, and [first brother] Francis W. Biden,” the outgoing president said, adding that the “pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that they engaged in any wrongdoing.”
The pardon effectively buries the years-long James Biden influence peddling affair, being probed by Congressional Republicans and journalists. While he did not face any criminal charges, Biden’s brother James, a former nightclub owner, broker and political consultant, has been accused by Republicans of lying to Congress, as well as acting as an unregistered foreign agent.
James and the president’s son, Hunter, were subpoenaed over the alleged involvement of President Biden in their business dealings in the US and abroad, namely in China and Ukraine. Hunter Biden was pardoned by his father late last year, months after his conviction on gun and tax charges and as he faced sentencing in a separate case.
The controversial pardon came despite Joe Biden’s repeated promises not to intervene in his son’s criminal cases.
After the fall of Syria and the partial collapse of the Axis of Resistance, a predictable smear campaign has been launched in Western media, which, like for Russia, is based on distortion and lies.
It is a well-oiled Western psyops campaign to make the public believe that after Hitler, Bashar al-Assad was a feared dictator, just like they do with Putin and, before that, Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein.
The world was surprised when, on December 8, 2024, the most feared terrorists took over the old Syria, a semi-secular state form, and immediately turned it into a caliphate.
But for the American imperial planners, their European allies, and their terrorist proxies, including those in Ukraine, there was no surprise. They knew about it. The NATO-sponsored terrorist militia was trained by the CIA in Idlib, and provided with drones by Ukraine, drones that are produced in Ukraine, from semi-finished products from a company in the Netherlands called Metinvest B.V.
Large parts of the Syrian army did not defect, as the Western media and so-called experts claim. About 9,000 soldiers are still held captive in the Syrian desert, or in the Sednaya prison, held by the terrorists.
Not only the terrorists but the American army is in charge everywhere in Syria. American rulers secretly prepared for the occupation of Syria, as they did with Iraq. They primed the terrorists in Idlib for the final offensive with Operation Dawn of Freedom.
The operation included the Turkish-financed and supported so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA), which falls under the umbrella of the U.S., also known as the Syrian National Army. As early as 2016, Turkey began to assemble a new coalition of so-called Syrian rebel groups, including many former FSA fighters, in an attempt to create a more cohesive and effective opposition force. This coalition consists of the terrorists most feared by the Syrian people, who have been massacring civilians since 2011. Among others, the Syrian National Army includes Chinese Uyghurs, notorious for their brutality among head-choppers.
Little known by the Western public is that the so-called Syrian National Army was active in Karabakh during the 2020 war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Turkey provided military support to Azerbaijan by supplying the terrorists of the Syrian National Army. This proxy army of international mercenaries, controlled by the U.S. and Turkey, has been fighting in Ukraine for the NATO-backed Kiev regime. The most brutal of its senior members is Abu al Shishani, who has been hiding in Ukraine for years – despite his U.S. handlers declaring him dead in 2017.
Of course, the Western terrorist sponsors wash their hands of blood. After all, there are supposed to be no real U.S. “boots on the ground” in Syria, they will argue, but there is an army base coordinating the terrorists who fight for them. The same applies to Turkey.
Turkey has two faces: it is a member of NATO while trying to realize, under Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a political aspiration for a great Ottoman empire based on Islam. Some say it is utopian or a lie, but it is not. The Syrian people know this very well; for 14 years, this has been going on and, unfortunately, has come true.
Then there is the other “superpower” in the region, the tiny Zionist apartheid project called Israel. No one, not even the International Atomic Energy Agency, knows what its nuclear weapons arsenal is, and it has never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Since 2022, Israel has become a fully-fledged fascist regime, the most ultra-right government in the history of the colonialist project, which carries out the agenda of the settlers. These settlers are dangerous terrorists and, like ISIS (Daesh), use religion, racism and murder as weapons against all other beliefs and opinions. Yet the United States and its European lackeys continue to brazenly back the Zionist rogue state. The U.S. has supplied it with $20 billion in military aid over the past year despite the genocide in Gaza.
One of the seven political parties that govern Israel is the Otzma Yehudit Party. This party advocates for the deportation of those they consider to be the “enemies of Israel”, such as the Arabs. The party has been described in the international press and also in Israel itself as an extremist, ultra-nationalist, fascist, and racist organization.
One of the supporters of this party is Daniella Weiss, who watched with her extremist settler friends as “Gazans” were murdered on a boat off the coast of Gaza and cheered. She and her group are invited to the inauguration of Donald Trump, who himself is a Zionist and his entire incoming administration consists of nothing but Zionists.
After the attack of the U.S. and Turkish-sponsored terrorists in the north of Syria, Israel attacked the south, in Dara’a, which was agreed upon, planned and coordinated with the U.S. and Turkey. Dams and bridges were blown up, and large-scale bombardments on the Syrian army were carried out. Large parts of the army were captured and imprisoned, left in the desert, or the former prison Sednaya. They surrendered; the superior force was too great. Remnant army forces, mainly from the “Tiger Forces”, are fighting the terrorists in the hills around Hama and Latakia.
The Western media was there suspiciously quickly, after a day or so, visiting Sednaya for photo-ops. All kinds of so-called Western journalists arrived in Syria, mainly to promote the narrative that the terrible regime was gone, Syria was “free”, and Assad had turned the former Sednaya prison into a “human slaughterhouse”.
Many fake stories, especially by CNN, about so-called prisoners who were hung on ropes, photos were distributed, which later turned out to be photos from a museum in Iraq. There were also stories about prisoners in underground dungeons, yet no proof of this has ever been found.
Certainly, everything was prepared for the “journalists”; they were already waiting in Jordan, primed to cross into Syria when the “surprise fall” happened.
Years ago, there was a report made by Amnesty International called the “Slaughter House”, but now, in 2025, no evidence has been found for this fake report. What has become clear is that a large number of the prisoners were ISIS (Daesh) members, who have now been released and are imposing a terror regime on minorities such as the Alawites, Christians, and Kurds.
The West is now professing innocence and wants good relations with what they call the new government. All kinds of Western politicians have visited the terrorist leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani. He is dressed up in a new suit and his beard is trimmed. The West wants to send the Syrian refugees back from Europe. There are also flight connections again. The airport of Damascus is changed into a mosque. Is the new caliphate going to send its terrorists on holiday? To do what? Commit attacks, perhaps? Russia, in particular, must be careful, especially after the mass murder at the Crocus City shopping complex last March when 145 people were killed by Daesh-linked terrorists. Many terrorists in the new Syria are from the Caucasus and have years of experience.
Transferring terrorists to Idlib after the fall of Aleppo in 2016 was never a good idea. History has proven it.
The U.S. and its European partners want to freeze the conflict in Donbass, which can result in the same problem as in Syria. That was the biggest mistake by Assad and the former government, which took too humane a position on terrorists.
This week’s “breakthrough” in ceasefire negotiations to end the genocidal campaign against Gaza came, according to regional sources, after a single intervention by US president-elect Trump’s designated envoy Steve Witkoff in which he ordered Netanyahu’s government to capitulate. While we might be skeptical of Trump’s habit of claiming credit for any progress, it was corroborated by the far-right members of the Netanyahu government erupting into the kind of tantrum for which they are now world-famous, framing the deal as a disaster imposed on “Israel” by the incoming administration.
While a welcome relief, the imposition of the ceasefire on “Israel” by Trump also brings into stark focus the pointlessness of the last year and a half of slaughter as well as the regionalization of the war to the occupied West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Yemen.
In the aftermath of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, Biden, while parroting “Israel’s” atrocity propaganda about beheaded infants in ovens, gave Netanyahu a carte blanche to declare total war on the people of Gaza. As the unique scale of the atrocities in the Strip became clear, Biden proceeded, through his spineless UN ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, to provide diplomatic cover for the genocide at the Security Council. Breaking even with its European surrogates, the US vetoed every resolution that called for an end to the butchery, clearly straining to invent new objections to deflect global outrage at such cold-blooded cynicism.
The free rein given by the American government only emboldened the Israeli regime to widen the scope of the war. It achieved this to great effect through its airstrike on the Iranian consulate in the Syrian capital Damascus. In addition to violating every rule of modern (and ancient) diplomacy, the attack killed several high-ranking Iranian officials, guaranteeing that Tehran would retaliate directly, which it did with the largest volley of drones in military history (thus far) against “Israel”.
As was clear from the warning Tehran issued as the attack unfolded, it was deliberately calibrating its response to avert further escalation. By this point, the urgent need for a ceasefire was indisputable. It was, however, to presage the most shameful chapter of the US administration’s complicity.
Shortly afterward, in June, Biden lied that a ceasefire deal had finally been reached, that it was at the initiative of the Netanyahu government, and that the Israeli leadership had accepted it. Secretary of State Antony Blinken clownishly trumpeted this falsehood, along with the claim that the only impediment to the ceasefire was Hamas’ refusal of its terms. It was well known at the time to be a lie, but the breakthrough of the last week confirms it beyond all doubt.
The Biden Administration’s refusal from that point on to impose a ceasefire cleared the path for the Israeli regime to massively escalate the war by assassinating Hamas’ political leader Ismail Haniyeh in the Iranian capital Tehran, which, along with its flagrant campaign of terrorism against Lebanon, culminating in the assassination of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, compelled Tehran to forcefully retaliate with a further massive drone and ballistic missile barrage against Israeli military targets.
Seizing the opportunity, Netanyahu used the response to his own provocations to launch a cynical war of choice against Lebanon in the vain belief that Israeli infiltration had “decapitated” Hezbollah. This most destructive war in Lebanon’s recent history displaced more than a million Lebanese and obliterated civilian infrastructure in the South, Beirut, and the Beqaa Valley, killing at least 4,000 civilians and wounding nearly 17,000. Despite this blitzkrieg, Israeli ground forces found themselves unable to advance as much as one kilometer along the entire stretch of the south Lebanese border. Along with a mounting casualty rate, “Israel” was forced to accept a ceasefire, albeit one that has given it cover to continue detonating villages on the border and launching drone and air strikes against Lebanese targets.
Throughout the entirety of this catastrophic year, US voters were shamelessly gaslit by the Democratic Party. First, they were fed the laughable falsehood that Biden was being repeatedly “deceived” by the Israeli leadership and that he personally detested the Israeli Prime Minister. Clearly, it was never to the extent that he would even consider withholding the deluge of armaments without which Tel Aviv could not prosecute the genocide or its spill-over in more than half a dozen other regional theatres. Secondarily, we were admonished, even by supposed supporters of Palestine, that to not vote for Vice President Kamala Harris would be to see the genocide intensify in a second Trump presidency.
While there is more than ample cause for skepticism, the ease with which the US president-elect has forced the Israeli leadership to fall into line has torched the last fig leaf of justification that the Democrats were ever interested in doing anything but stalling for time so that Tel Aviv could ‘finish the job,’ even at the cost of losing the election to what they claimed is the “Hitler of our time.”
Even as the Palestinians may take comfort that the last year has thrown their cause to the forefront of the global agenda; it has nonetheless come at a still uncalculated cost in life and property. When the true toll is eventually calculated, as well as the fascists of Tel Aviv, every drop of blood will be on the heads of the now-former Biden administration that so willingly offered up an entire region for slaughter.
Syria’s new interim government, led by former Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Ahmed al-Sharaa (previously known as Abu Mohammed al-Julani) has claimed its security services thwarted an attempt by ISIS to bomb the Sayyida Zainab shrine in the southern suburbs of Damascus.
The shrine, attributed to the granddaughter of the Prophet Mohammed and daughter of Imam Ali Ibn Abi Talib is an especially revered site for Shia Muslims worldwide. Known as the Heroine of Karbala, this year, her martyrdom anniversary was commemorated on 15 January, coinciding with the Islamic date 15 Rajab.
According to news website Shia Waves, “Local sources reported a noticeable decrease in the number of visitors to the shrine compared to previous years, attributed to Syria’s ongoing security challenges and political turmoil.”
However, a closer analysis of the details provided by Syrian state media suggests the plot to bomb the shrine was fabricated. The move appears to be an attempt to present the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)-led government as a protector of minorities to western audiences. This portrayal contrasts sharply with its ongoing sectarian cleansing campaigns in Alawite areas of the country.
The would-be false flag also serves the interests of the new Syrian government’s external sponsors. By exaggerating the ISIS threat, it provides the US with a pretext to maintain its illegal military occupation in Syria. Such an attack is all the more possible now that Hezbollah fighters and advisory forces of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have withdrawn from the country, ostensibly to ensure security for the shrine.
US forces currently occupy key oil fields in the north and east of the country and maintain a strategic base at Al-Tanf on the Syria-Iraq-Jordan border. The narrative of an ISIS threat ensures continued justification for these deployments and the exploitation of Syria’s resources.
Additionally, the conspiracy helps establish a narrative of ISIS culpability in advance. This could pave the way for blame to be assigned to the group if any party—whether elements within the Syrian government pursuing the Wahhabi project of targeting Shia and Sufi shrines, or foreign intelligence agencies seeking to destabilize Syria—decides to destroy the Sayyeda Zainab shrine. Such an event would create further chaos, deepening sectarian divides and serving the interests of those looking to fragment and destabilize Syria.
A staged plot
On 11 January, an unnamed official in Syria’s General Intelligence Service claimed four members of the ISIS cell planning an attack on the shrine were arrested.
Syria state TV showed images of the men, blindfolded and standing against a wall in casual civilian clothes, claiming the group consisted of Lebanese nationals and Palestinian-Lebanese. Images also showed a number of grenades and an anti-tank mine that were allegedly to be used for a suicide attack.
However, Karim Franceschi an Italian-Moroccan who fought with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) against ISIS in Kobane in 2014, gave several reasons why the claimed plot to bomb Sayyeda Zainab was manufactured.
Franceschi observed that ISIS attacks on Sayyida Zaynab in Damascus in the past have used parked vehicles—plastic bags, cars, or motorcycles to plant bombs, rather than suicide bombers.
Further, the TM-57 anti-tank mine allegedly meant to be used in the suicide attack was rigged with the wrong fuse.
“Instead, a crude cord and igniter setup—meant for a suicide vest—is shown. This makes no sense. Using a full mine, with its specific anti-tank explosion radius, is inefficient. HTS knows this, making it clear this setup was staged for propaganda. There is no way ISIS or HTS with their extensive knowledge expertise with explosives would make something this sloppily,” Franceschi writes.
Previous ISIS attacks were not so sloppy. A string of ISIS bombings near the shrine in February 2016 killed 134 people, most of them civilians, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). In January 2016, another attack on the shrine claimed by ISIS killed 70 people.
Julani’s PR offensive
One reason for faking the plot is clear based on the statement issued by the unnamed Syrian intelligence official. He told state media the intelligence service is seeking to protect the country’s minorities, by “putting all its capabilities to stand in the face of all attempts to target the Syrian people in all their spectrums.”
The AP promoted this narrative further, reporting that although HTS leader Sharaa was a former leader in Al-Qaeda, which was notorious for calling for committing massacres against Shia in Iraq, he “has preached religious coexistence since assuming power in Damascus.”
Sharaa needs to preach co-existence and protection of minorities to have economic sanctions lifted. Crippling sanctions were imposed on Syria by the US and EU to strangle the economy and impoverish millions of Syrians in an effort to topple the previous government of Bashar al-Assad. Yet even with Assad gone, the “pointlessly cruel” sanctions remain.
Sharaa has admittedly introduced several reforms to improve life for average Syrians, including ending mandatory military service for Syrian men (which at times lasted up to eight years for meager pay), reducing draconian customs fees on imported products such as cell phones, and removing the checkpoints which slowed travel and forced Syrians to pay bribes or risk being arrested and disappearing into the prison system for arbitrary reasons.
But the lifting of the sanctions and allowing for normal economic activity is crucial for Sharaa to maintain popular support, especially given the unpopularity of his and his government’s efforts to establish a fundamentalist Islamic State in the country.
Maintaining leverage through sanctions
Just as the US and EU used sanctions for leverage against Assad, they are doing the same against Sharaa. The Intercept noted that just hours before Assad fell, and when it was obvious Sharaa and HTS would take power in Damascus, the US Congress moved to extend sanctions, rather than simply let them expire.
“Not considering sanctions relief right now is like pulling the rug out from under Syria just when it’s trying to stand,” The Intercept cited Delaney Simon, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, as saying.
Now, EU governments cite the threat to minorities from Sharaa’s security forces, which are comprised of multiple formerly Al-Qaeda linked groups with records of committing massacres against Syria’s Alawites, Druze, and Christians, as an excuse to keep sanctions in place or to reimpose them as “snapback” sanctions in the future.
Considering that the members of the US Congress most responsible for imposing the sanctions, such as French Hill and Joe Wilson, are also rapid pro-Israel supporters, it can be assumed that Sharaa will be asked in the future to sign a peace deal with Israel giving up the occupied Golan Heights to the Zionist entity in exchange for the sanctions being lifted completely and the possible return of recently occupied Syrian territory under Sharaa’s watch.
The spate of sectarian killings
By preaching religious coexistence and claiming to protect the Sayyeda Zainab shrine, Sharaa is also achieving another goal: providing cover for the ongoing campaign of sectarian cleansing that is taking place in Alawite areas of the country, including parts of Homs and the Hama and Latakia country sides.
The extremist sectarian ideology Sharaa previously embraced when dispatching car bombs to kill Shia civilians in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, is the same ideology which the armed factions under the HTS umbrella supporting his rule still embrace.
Militants affiliated with the new Syrian government, including many foreign jihadists from Uzbekistan, Chechnya, and China (Turkmenistan), are kidnapping and murdering members of Syria’s Alawite community based on their religious identity in various parts of Syria.
As a result, reports of sectarian killings by HTS or affiliated militants in Homs, Latakia, and Tartous continue to flood social media.
Syria expert Joshua Landis wrote on X that “Alawites have been attacked, many who have no history of wrongdoing in military or military service whatsoever. Today, there were demonstrations in the Sunni district of Latakia, cursing Alawites.”
Some Alawites are therefore demanding international protection, Landis notes, which further opens the door to the partition of Syria, a key Israeli goal.
To provide just one example, an Alawite man, Sheikh Ali Deeb, and his wife were killed in rural Salamiyah in the village of Dniba during an HTS search operation on 8 January. Their bodies were found on a side road connecting the village of Dniba to the neighboring village of Snida.
A pretext for US occupation
The new Syrian government’s claim to have thwarted the ISIS attack on Sayyeda Zainab also helps Sharaa remain in the good graces of Washington by giving it a pretext to continue the US military occupation of north and east Syria and its oil fields, which provide crude oil to Israel via Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkiye.
In Iraq, the US perfected the strategy of supporting and even creating Al-Qaeda groups (with Kurdish assistance), to justify its invasion and military occupation of the country.
The Bush administration relied on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s presence in Iraqi Kurdistan to justify its invasion of Baghdad in 2003. Zarqawi built Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) with help from Kurdish Jihadists from Ansar al-Islam, which fought for the CIA in Afghanistan in the 1980’s and for Masoud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) during the Kurdish civil war in the 1990’s.
Zarqawi’s car and suicide bombs targeting Shia pilgrims continued to justify the US occupation after the pretense of Saddam Hussein’s possession of WMDs collapsed.
A decade later, the US military provided weapons to ISIS to conquer large swathes of western Iraq, including Mosul, the country’s second largest city. US officials then used the existence of the so-called ISIS caliphate to return its forces to Iraq that had left after then Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has refused to sign a status of forces agreement with President Barack Obama guaranteeing non-prosecution of US troops in 2011.
Though ISIS has been defeated in Iraq, current Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani has failed to eject US forces from the country. US officials continue to claim they are still needed to fight ISIS, even though Sudani has repeatedly claimed the terror group no longer poses a threat that Iraqi forces cannot deal with on their own.
The Israeli/Wahhabi project
In a more extreme scenario, it is possible that Sharaa and/or his backers in foreign intelligence agencies may facilitate the destruction of the Sayyida Zainab shrine itself, while blaming it on ISIS. By claiming to thwart fake attacks on the shrine now, HTS is establishing a convenient narrative to claim innocence in the future if an attack does take place.
Attacking and destroying important Muslim shrines, important to both Shia and Sunnis, is a hallmark of AQI under the leadership of Zarqawi and ISIS under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Sharaa’s former bosses.
Zarqawi’s AQI is widely viewed as responsible for destroying the golden dome of the Al-Askari Shrine, home to the 10th and 11th Shia Imams, in Samarra in Iraq.
Al Askari shrine (January 2025)
To the delight of the Israelis and neoconservatives in the Bush administration—who sought the partition of the country, as outlined in the Yinon Plan and Clean Break documents—the 2006 attack almost ignited a full-blown sectarian war between Iraq’s Sunni and Shia communities. This catastrophic outcome was narrowly averted, thanks to the influential fatwa issued by Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani.
Before his defeat in Mosul in 2017, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi ordered the destruction of the Great Mosque of Al-Nuri and its iconic minaret. ISIS also destroyed the Al-Nabi Yunus Mosque, home to a tomb thought to belong of the Prophet Jonah, claiming that revering the shrine was idolatrous.
Blowing up the Sayyeda Zainab Shrine in Damascus, whether for fundamentalist religious goals or for the sake of creating strategic chaos, would help ensure that the sectarian violence that engulfed Iraq and threatens to engulf Syria now, becomes a reality.
The sectarian chaos will again benefit the occupation state, allowing it to expand its occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights and southern Syria, while incentivizing Syria’s Druze to ask for their territory to be incorporated into a Greater Israel to escape the sectarian fire consuming the rest of the country.
Alawites on Syria’s coast may turn north to Turkiye to request protection, or even annexation, if the extremist threat continues. Ankara will in turn be happy to incorporate Syrian territory, along with its offshore gas fields, as part of its ambitions to advance its neo-Ottoman ambitions and become an energy hub and transit point for West Asia gas headed to Europe.
Above all it is crucial to keep in mind that Israel, the US, Turkiye and others that orchestrated the HTS conquest of Syria do not have the well being of Syrians in mind. Many Syrians are happy to have Assad gone, but the future remains fragile and the risk of sectarian war and partition now looms large.
Soybeans generate approximately $80 million annually in mandatory producer assessments alone, funding a marketing apparatus that has transformed an industrial commodity into one of America’s most trusted “health foods.” The campaign succeeded. Soy milk lines supermarket shelves beside dairy. Soy protein fortifies everything from infant formula to energy bars. Vegetarians rely on tofu and tempeh as dietary staples. Doctors recommend soy to menopausal women. School lunch programs serve soy-based meat substitutes to children. An estimated 60 percent of processed foods contain soy derivatives. The premise underlying this proliferation—that Asians have thrived on soy for millennia and that modern science validates its health benefits—has been repeated so often it functions as established fact.
Kaayla T. Daniel’s The Whole Soy Story dismantles this premise through systematic examination of the scientific literature. The book documents that traditional Asian soy consumption averaged roughly one tablespoon daily, consumed as fermented condiments after processing methods that neutralized inherent toxins—a pattern bearing no resemblance to American consumption of industrially processed soy protein isolate, soy flour, and soy oil. Daniel catalogs the antinutrients that survive modern processing (protease inhibitors, phytates, lectins, saponins), the toxic compounds created by industrial methods (nitrosamines, lysinoalanine, hexane residues), and the heavy metals concentrated in soy products (manganese, aluminum, fluoride, cadmium). She traces the mechanisms by which soy isoflavones—plant estrogens present at pharmacologically significant levels—disrupt thyroid function, impair fertility, and interact with hormone-sensitive cancers. The evidence emerges from peer-reviewed journals, FDA documents, and industry sources themselves.
The stakes extend beyond individual dietary choices. Infants fed soy formula receive isoflavone doses equivalent to several birth control pills daily, with blood concentrations 13,000 to 22,000 times higher than their natural estrogen levels. Soy protein isolate—the ingredient in formula, protein bars, and thousands of products—has never received GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) status; its only pre-1960s use was as an industrial paper sealant. Two senior FDA scientists formally protested their own agency’s approval of soy health claims, citing evidence of thyroid damage and reproductive harm. The Honolulu Heart Program found that men consuming tofu twice weekly showed accelerated brain aging and increased dementia. These findings have not penetrated public awareness because the institutions responsible for consumer protection have been compromised by the industry they regulate. The Whole Soy Story presents the evidence that has been systematically excluded from mainstream health messaging, enabling readers to evaluate for themselves what the soy industry prefers they never learn. … continue
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