The US Mainstream Media Prefer Confrontation to Cooperation
By Brian CLOUGHLEY | Strategic Culture Foundation | 15.01.2019
The Washington Post is a noisily anti-Russian newspaper which every weekday by email produces for subscribers (of whom I am one) the Daily 202 (“Power Post — Intelligence for Leaders”) which covers US politics, a little international stuff, and a section called “There’s a Bear in the Woods” aimed at denigrating, belittling and generally insulting Russia.
The Post is intent on convincing citizens of the United States and the world in general that nothing good is ever done by, in or with the government of Russia, and a favourite target is President Putin. A typical Editorial was headed “Trump just colluded with Russia. Openly” and dealt savagely with the Trump-Putin meeting in Helsinki last year. Much of the world believes that such discussions between nations’ leaders are better than hostile rhetoric, and most reasonable people are pleased and even relieved when meetings take place. They prefer amicable dialogue to venomous confrontation.
But the Post ended its comment on the meeting by asserting that “Mr Trump in fact was openly colluding with the criminal leader of a hostile power.”
That’s the ‘hostile power’ that has cooperated for twenty years with the United States in operating the International Space Station.
The Post doesn’t like such news as “[Russian space agency] Roscosmos director Dmitry Rogozin and Bill Gerstenmaier, head of NASA’s human explorations and operations, said after a conference marking the 20th anniversary of the International Space Station that their agencies plan to collaborate on developing a moon orbiting outpost. Russia is working on a heavy booster rocket and a new spacecraft to complement American projects intended for a future moon mission, Rogozin said. ‘We absolutely trust each other, and political winds haven’t touched us.’ Gerstenmaier spoke in kind, noting that partnership in space exploration could be ‘an example to the outside world. It has been a blessing that our governments have both seen the wisdom of what we are doing and both our governments have avoided placing sanctions on us or getting us caught up in the political things’.”
It is most gratifying that the United States and Russia can cooperate so closely on such an important endeavour. As noted by CNN, “since the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011 the US has depended on Roscosmos to transport astronauts to the space station.” In other words, the space station could not exist without Russia’s no-strings collaboration.
But most western media play down, ignore or deplore such instances of harmony and amity. The UK’s Daily Telegraph, for example, is entirely negative, and grudgingly reported last December that the most recent “launch of the MS-11 ship was a closely watched test for Russia’s space industry, which has suffered several high-profile failures in recent years but remains the only reliable way to deliver crew to the orbiting station.” There had been an accident in the course of a previous launch but, to the regret of many in the West, Russia’s emergency procedures were flawless and there was no loss of life.
In spite of this example of outstandingly successful bilateral cooperation, a meeting scheduled for February between the space professionals of Russia and the United States was cancelled “after mounting pressure from Capitol Hill.” Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin had hosted his NASA counterpart, Jim Bridenstine, in October last year, so his February visit was to be a combination of practicality and courtesy — but this isn’t the way the US Senate sees or does things.
Senator Bob Menendez of the Foreign Relations Committee declared that “to welcome Mr Rogozin to the United States and provide him a platform to speak is an affront to our sanctions regime and will further undermine the Trump Administration’s limited credibility on Russia policy,” and Senator Jeanne Shaheen of the Senate panel that funds NASA said the planned meeting “undermines the United States’ core national security objectives” and “weakens the US’s global standing by demonstrating the ease by which Russian officials can get around transatlantic sanctions.”
The Senate’s pressure on NASA is part of the campaign of petulant and spiteful attacks on Russia which show that Washington is intent on destruction of even the slightest efforts to bring the US and Russia closer.
Which brings us back to the Washington Post which distinguished itself by getting just a little mixed up during one of its anti-Russia forays when it enthusiastically seized on a faulty piece in the New York Times.
It all started when the Times breathlessly revealed that during the 2016 election campaign, Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort “and his Russian associate, Konstantin V. Kilimnik, discussed a plan for peace in Ukraine.” This dastardly anti-America, pro-Russia activity could not be tolerated by the US mainstream media which reported that one of Mr Manafort’s menacing machinations involved sharing “political polling data with a business associate tied to Russian intelligence.”
(As an aside, it is difficult to believe that notification of political polling data is in some fashion a national security risk. Most of us know that poll results can be made public without release conditions. Every foreign mission in Washington analysed them.)
The Times continued, in a version of the report that has been deleted, that Manafort wanted the data passed on to “Oleg V Deripaska, a Russian oligarch close to the Kremlin,” and in its ‘202’ the Washington Post went to town about this supposedly sinister character. It began by stating that “several experts said the Deripaska connection makes this news a huge deal” and quoted Steven Hall, a former head of Russia operations at the CIA, as tweeting “Remember, the polling info Manafort passed to Kilimnik was headed to Deripaska, who is close to Putin… The margins the Russians needed to change in key states during the 2016 elections [were] pretty small. Now we know how they were able to be so precise: Paul Manafort was providing polling data to Russia.” Shock! Horror!
Another expert shaken by such disclosures was Post columnist Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who declared “This is potentially very significant evidence of collusion… Why would Manafort share polling data with the Russians unless it was to help them target their pro-Trump social media campaign?”
On it went for over 400 words recounting how the dastardly Deripaska was up to his ears in conspiracy, although a cautionary note was sounded by former ambassador to Russia Mike McFaul who like a good diplomat injected the phrase “if proven” in his tweet before agreeing “this is serious.”
Yes, it was serious. But not as serious as the downplayed low-profile admission by the Washington Post that its chatter allegations were not “proven”. The Post noted that “the New York Times corrected a story we included in yesterday’s 202: ‘A previous version of this article misidentified the people to whom Paul Manafort wanted a Russian associate to send polling data. Mr. Manafort wanted the data sent to two Ukrainian oligarchs, Serhiy Lyovochkin and Rinat Akhmetov, not to Oleg V Deripaska, a Russian oligarch close to the Kremlin’.”
So much for the Washington Post’s Bear in the Woods, but a sad indicator of how determined are some of the US media to help destroy any movement towards rapprochement with Russia. Fortunately, in spite of their malevolent efforts and the spiteful Senate shenanigans, the International Space Station cooperation will continue, which shows, thank goodness, that there are still some grown-ups in the woods.
Integrity Initiative: By all means smear & attack, but at least be honest about it
By Simon Rite | RT | January 13, 2019
We’ve all met those people who describe themselves as laid back, when in reality they’re just one loud noise from a mouth frothing breakdown. So when something describes itself as having integrity, be wary.
Enter the Integrity Initiative (II), Britain’s very own government funded influence network which is currently in the process of having its underpants revealed to the world. There’s no doubting it’s an initiative, the jury’s out on the other bit. Some of the people behind it are alleged former spies (can you be a former spy?), a calling not often linked to integrity.
There’s a good chance you may not know much about the Integrity Initiative, the mainstream media is not exactly straining to tell you about it. Labour MP Chris Williamson suggests that’s because a number of mainstream journalists have signed up to work with it.
The only time II briefly attracted the attention of the mainstream world was when it became clear it had been pushing conspiracies about Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s links to the Kremlin. That’s not a good look for an organization which receives cash from the Foreign Office.
It describes itself as non-partisan, but then as we’ve discussed, it also has “Integrity” in the title. Maybe it can get away with it, always worth a try I suppose. It also claims to be “combating propaganda and disinformation,” but as you’ll see for yourself on its Twitter account, it’s simply a stream of invective and criticism about Russia. If you want to spend cash smearing an entire nation, fine, fill your boots, but don’t then act all moral about it.
Integrity Initiative deals in propaganda, mainly against Russia, and if anyone involved tries to deny that, then they’ve clearly been drinking their own Kool Aid. Of course, it defends itself by saying it’s on the front line of the fight against so-called Russian disinformation, which is a pretty wide category these days. But it doesn’t matter if it’s propaganda you agree with or disagree with, it’s still propaganda.
One of its main aims is to put together what it calls ‘clusters’ of journalists, writers and the like who are sympathetic to the cause. If you’ve been paying attention, you won’t be surprised to find out who are making up those clusters.
Some of those journalists who have had their links revealed are carefully backtracking. One interesting form of mea culpa from some of them is to admit that while they did do some work for II, they didn’t get paid much to do it, which is a curious defense if you think about it. If you’re involved in something you might feel the need to defend in the future, at least make sure you getting paid! About £200 for a talk or an article seems to be the going rate if you’re interested.
Good luck to anyone signing up to work with II, we’ve all got mortgages to pay, there’s no judgement from me, but at least take responsibility for it. And if you really didn’t know you were engaging in propaganda, then perhaps a period of self-reflection is in order.
Guardian journalist James Ball, for example, wrote a column in which he came clean on his links to II (he gave a training talk for about 225 quid) but there was no real self-reflection. The headline “When free societies copy Russian media tactics, there’s only one winner” is indicative of the myopia which drives the movement against so-called Russian disinformation. Even when he is literally caught up in a Western government funded propaganda effort, he somehow still manages to reflect it back on Russia. Moscow made me do it!
Ball goes on to lament the hacking of Integrity Initiative in a newspaper which revelled in publishing juicy stories from WikiLeaks.
He even analyses the events around the Salisbury poisoning by saying: “Russian-backed outlets and supporters threw question after question to cast doubt on the official narrative.”
There we have it, the biggest crime of all – casting doubt on the official narrative.
Real Crickets, Fake News
By Patrick ARMSTRONG | Strategic Culture Foundation | 14.01.2019
You’re an American diplomat. Posted to Cuba. You compose yourself for peaceful slumber, as an innocent American dip should… What’s that noise? Whine, buzz. Get up. Lights on. Look. Nothing. Head on pillow. Whine, buzz. We’ve all been kept up nights by some unidentifiable sound. You promise yourself you won’t listen to it. Aha, it’s stopped… no, there it is again. Another night of tossing and turning. Very understandable. The next morning you tell a colleague, heard it too, another hadn’t but can’t help listening. Soon everybody is awake listening to this irritating noise. Doctors come, check people out and find this and that (as ageing apes we all have something. Is there any before and after take on these injuries?) This is happening in Cuba, a country richly furnished with noisy insects. At some point, this irritating sound, that could be insects, morphs into something more sinister: “‘microwave hearing,’ also known as the Frey effect” for example.
The US Embassy in Havana re-opened in July 2015. About a year later, it was reported that some American diplomats complained about strange noises. The Guardian reported the story using numerous variations on the word “attack”. Crickets are mentioned, but only to be dismissed; “But this is Cuba”, wink, wink, nudge, nudge; Russia peeps above the horizon:
In fact, almost nothing about what went down in Havana is clear. Investigators have tested several theories about an intentional attack: by Cuba’s government, a rogue faction of its security forces, a third country like Russia or some combination thereof. Yet they’ve left open the possibility an advanced espionage operation went horribly awry, or that some other, less nefarious explanation is to blame.
Attacks – the story builds. A recording is produced (verrry irritating; keep anybody awake). “High pitched cricket sound”. That’s because they are insects say the Cubans. The phrasing of the AP report that covered the Cuban findings has to be read to be believed: it’s written in the sneering tone that tells you to ignore them:
Cuba on Thursday presented its most detailed defense to date against U.S. Accusations… Cuban officials attempted to undermine the Trump administration’s assertion… alleged was a lack of evidence for the U.S. Accusations… an exhaustive investigation ordered by “the highest government authorities,” a clear reference to President Raul Castro… Thursday night’s special did not present an alternate explanation for the facts presented by U.S. officials, with one significant exception…
What a dishonest way to cover a report by Cuban specialists saying we compared the recordings with cicada sounds and there was a good fit. Fortunately, as we shall see, honest people did follow that lead.
American tourists are solemnly warned “Exercise increased caution in Cuba due to attacks targeting U.S. Embassy”. Washington expels Cuban diplomats and the Guardian helpfully tells us:
Cuba employs a massive state security apparatus that keeps hundreds and possibly thousands of people under constant surveillance. US diplomats are among the most closely monitored people on the island. It’s virtually impossible for anyone to take action against an American diplomat without an element of the Cuban state being aware.
So the state of play as of the end of 2017 is this. Facts: noises, medical findings, investigations, expulsions. Speculation, they’re “attacks”, the Cuban authorities control everything and the insect explanation should be laughed at. Next year it’s China’s turn.
But at last, in September 2018, the Russian sun rises over the horizon.
The suspicion that Russia is likely behind the alleged attacks is backed up by evidence from communications intercepts, known in the spy world as signals intelligence, amassed during a lengthy and ongoing investigation involving the FBI, the CIA and other U.S. agencies. The officials declined to elaborate on the nature of the intelligence… If Russia did use a futuristic weapon to damage the brains of U.S. personnel, it would mark a stunning escalation in Russian aggression toward Western nations, compounded recently by the use of a military-grade nerve agent to poison an ex-spy and his daughter in Britain.
Love the juxtaposition of “suspicion”, “likely” and “alleged”: how many degrees of uncertainty is that? You have to wonder whether an Integrity-challenged Initiative clusteroid gave that little gem to NBC – the “signals intelligence” will probably turn out to be a five-year-old RT report about insomnia. Also note that the US military “has been working to reverse-engineer the weapon or weapons used to harm the diplomats”.
Ensorcelled by this “un-elaborated” “intelligence”, the Gadarene media swine rush straight for the cliff:
- Did Russia Attack U.S. Officials in Cuba? U.S.S.R. Used Microwaves Against American Diplomats During Cold War (Newsweek)
- Russia Is No. 1 Suspect in Mystery Brain Attacks in Cuba and China: Report (Daily Beast)
- Russia Might Be Behind Those Sonic Attacks on U.S. Government Workers in Cuba and China (Fortune)
- The U.S. Now Believes RUSSIA May Be Behind Sonic Attacks On Americans In Cuba And China (Daily Wire)
- So the Russians were ‘sonic-ing’ down in Cuba? (American Thinker)
- Russia main suspect behind illnesses of US staff in Cuba and China – report (Guardian)
- Russia suspected in Cuba mystery ‘attacks’ against US diplomats (NBC)
- Report: Experts Suspect Cuba May Have Had Russian Help in ‘Sonic’ Diplomat Attacks (Breitbart)
Altogether a perfect illustration of how fake news is built.
► Step One. Something that could be lots of things but we’ll call it an attack.
► Step Two. Attacks have attackers, so who is it? (I find it interesting that they weren’t quite ready to blame Havana, although they expelled a few Cuban diplomats: “‘I still believe that the Cuban government, someone within the Cuban government can bring this to an end,’ Tillerson added.”)
► Step Three. Drum roll… Putindunnit!
It’s surprising, actually, that it took so long; after all, Putin has weaponised Soviet history, Syrian refugees, Photoshop, humour, Pokemon, and Russophobia, why would you think he’d have forgotten crickets? Nothing is beyond or beneath him: “14-legged killer squid found TWO MILES beneath Antarctica being weaponised by Putin?“.
This happy complacency was interrupted…
by…
a loud…
POP!
The Sounds That Haunted U.S. Diplomats in Cuba? Lovelorn Crickets, Scientists Say.
And, because they’re Western scientists, not Castro’s Cuban Collaborators, we have to believe them. Two honest scientists – remember their names: Alexander Stubbs of the University of California, Berkeley, and Fernando Montealegre-Zapata of the University of Lincoln in England – on their own it seems, applied human reason to the problem and solved it. Here’s a summary of their paper.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
So that’s it; the story’s dead (although the NYT does its best to keep it alive: “That’s not to say that the diplomats weren’t attacked, the scientists added”). Would be nice, though, if State took its warning down. In time the details will fade away leaving a vague sense that Cuba’s a bad and dangerous place and nasty Russians do nasty things for the fun of it. But that’s the purpose of propaganda: to leave an impression when the details are forgotten.
So what really happened? Irritating cricket sounds produced a kind of dancing mania among US diplomats and the presstitutes sank to the occasion – even though the Cuban evidence was out there – and blamed Russia.
PS. My neighbours often ask me from where I get my news when I tell them something they’ve never heard of. Well not from the Guardian or the NYT or NBC or the others that boomed this fake story: I learned from Moon of Alabama that it was crickets waaaay back in October 2017 when he (a one-man operation who does more reporting than the entire NYT building) beat the NYT by 14 months. You should read him too so you too can get next year’s NYT headlines today.
WaPo recycles old Russiagate memes in latest gossip piece about Trump-Putin secret collusion
RT | January 13, 2019
Donald Trump’s reluctance to provide unfettered access to his conversations with Vladimir Putin has upset nameless American officials, the Washington Post has revealed. The US president dismissed the story as absurd and offensive.
According to the revered paper, Trump has “gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal details” of his face-to-face conversations with Putin. During a meeting with the Russian leader in Hamburg in 2017, Trump even purportedly confiscated the notes of his own interpreter, who was then instructed not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials.
Various (and of course nameless) US officials have now apparently complained to the Washington Post about how they’ve been left in the dark about five conversations that Trump had with the Russian leader, colorfully described by the newspaper as “one of the United States’ main adversaries.”
The story’s thinly veiled assumption is of course that Donald Trump has used his handful of private meetings with Putin to receive secret instructions from Moscow – impose new sanctions on Russia, bomb Syria, send lethal weapons to Ukraine, shred the Iran deal and missile treaties, and so forth.
The creatively framed story suffers from a few other inconvenient plot holes. The super-secret meeting with Putin in Hamburg was also attended by then-secretary of state Rex Tillerson. Does this mean that Tillerson is also a deep-cover KGB agent? Tillerson even released a readout after the meeting – following completely standard, but apparently unsatisfactory protocol.
The self-contradictory report goes on to explain how, as part of Trump’s obsession with ultra-secret Putin pow-wows, the president “generally has allowed aides to listen to his phone conversations” with the Russian leader.
Trump “allies” interviewed by the Post said that the president’s caution when it comes to meeting with Putin may be “driven by embarrassing leaks that occurred early in his presidency.” This theory is of course way less fun than the airtight idea that Trump is actually a Russian agent – that’s why WaPo only gave it one sentence.
Responding to the report, Trump told Fox News that there was nothing scandalous about his talks with the Russian leader. When Fox News host Jeanine Pirro asked if he is or has ever been working on behalf of the Kremlin, Trump responded: “I think it’s the most insulting thing I’ve ever been asked.” Among hardcore Russiagaters, his answer was naturally interpreted as an explosive non-denial.
“Credit to Jeannine Pirro for asking Trump if he’s a Russian Agent. The President, notably, never actually answered that question,” Colby Hall, founding editor of Mediaite, tweeted.
Rehashing months-old Russiagate news, the Washington Post also disclosed that Democratic lawmakers are still demanding details about Trump’s meeting with Putin in Helsinki last summer. House Democrats reportedly plan to form a subcommittee which aims to obtain State Department records of Trump’s various encounters with the Russian president.
Making Sense of Trump’s Foreign Policy
By Federico PIERACCINI | Strategic Culture Foundation | 11.01.2019
As was to be expected, the announcement that the US was withdrawing troops from Syria has served to provoke numerous reactions in the Middle East and beyond. Following the removal of Mattis, Pompeo and Bolton embarked on a whirlwind Middle Eastern tour of Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Kuwait to reassure regional allies.
The idea of withdrawing US troops from Syria was based on Trump wishing to fulfil one of his most important electoral promises. Trump knows that he needs to demonstrate to his electoral base that he has kept the most significant promises he made during his 2016 election campaign in order to have any chance of being reelected in 2020. People voted for change, and that includes preventing new wars and getting out of the ones the US is already embroiled in, especially in the Middle East.
If Trump betrays his constituents by not delivering on his campaign promises, then he would simply be like any other politician who, upon being elected, soon forgets about those who put him in office. Trump is aware that such a perception would cost him the possibility of a second term.
We live in a time where Western elites completely ignore the consequences of their actions, manipulate information, lie to their citizens and spread fake news. While we may not always believe what Trumps says in his bombastic remarks, we can rest assured that MSNBC/CNN are even less reliable in terms of facts and unbiased news. Keeping oneself correctly informed is a difficult and demanding task, involving the constant comparison and weighing up of a lot of different sources and constantly researching and learning through the process. Most people do not have the time for this and usually do not care, preferring to rely instead on the mainstream media. This obviously exposes such people to manipulation, lies and distorted facts, clouding the truth and making it difficult to distinguish between what is real and what is fake. Alternative media — the real media — are riding to the rescue, but the overhauling process will require a full generation or even two.
This is why it little matters whether the wall will really built or whether it will only start to be built as a PR stunt or whether it even makes sense in the first place to build it or not. Democrats watching MSNBC/CNN will agree that it is a dumb idea and should not be funded. Republicans watching Fox News will call it a brilliant idea and demand a government shutdown (as Trumps is doing) to force the Democrats to concede. The point is that Democrats or Trump supporters, feeding on news sources based on propaganda and lies, will only have their respective biases confirmed without the need for any real debate.
What is important for us to understand is how Trump operates in order to gain the support of his base. That is what guides him in domestic, foreign and economic affairs. In the case of the wall, Trump’s battle is against the Democrats, and the actions he has taken to fight his opponents is by using the government shutdown to provide himself with a win-win outcome. If the Democrats fund the wall, they lose in the eyes of their voters, as Trump ends up getting his wall. If the Democrats do not fund the wall, Trump will blame them and point to the government shutdown to demonstrate how he valiantly struggled against the Democrats in an effort to keep his promises.
The same is the case with the economic warfare employing the US dollar and imposing tariffs and duties on allies and enemies alike. MSNBC/CNN will tell you that this is damaging the American economy. The Democrats will say that it is a failed strategy, without admitting that they hate Trump’s “economic war” because it undermines US dollar hegemony and thereby their ability to prosecute the neoliberal imperialism to which they are so addicted.
Fox News, on the other hand, will spin the news to show how Trump is battling against Xi Jinping and China in the interests of American farmers. Self-proclaimed experts will go on about the success of the White House’s economic strategy, declaring it a brilliant idea. Trump voters will enjoy the coverage of Fox News and accordingly praise the “commercial war”. Democrats will love the coverage of MSNBC/CNN and will worry about how various policies will either restore or further diminish US global leadership.
The announcement of the withdrawal from Syria follows the same logic as the examples given above. Trump announced the withdrawal only in order to keep an electoral promise. The entire Washington foreign-policy establishment is opposed to Trump’s decision. The purpose of the announcement was to convey to his voters a simple but clear message: I am trying to do what I promised you, but I have everyone against me in Washington as well as in the media.
The same logic is employed with the government shutdown in order to fund the wall. Whenever Democrats, Republicans or talking heads condemn Trump’s withdrawal from Syria/Afghanistan, his effort to build the wall, his imposition of tariffs and duties, his sanctions on Iran, they reinforce the beliefs of Trump’s supporters, showing that Trump is really trying to keep his promises in the face of tremendous opposition.
Every time they bash him they provide free advertisement for Trump and his political line, and this has been going on from the first time he announced he would run in the primaries in 2015. It is a win-win situation for him, even if he does not really build the wall, pull out of Syria, or effectively reduce the trade imbalance between China and the US. If he succeeds, he can declare that he has kept his promises. If he fails, then he can lay be blame squarely at the feet of his political opponents. People elected him on the basis of his words and promises. If he can demonstrate that he at least tried to keep his promises (even if he never actually does), then that should be enough to give him a second term.
Trump understands very well how the media works and how much Washington detests him. He does not want to change the status quo and revolutionize Washington. He does not want to openly challenge the foreign-policy establishment by following a realist-isolationist policy. That was what he said in 2015/16 during the campaign trail, but his presidency has been much different from what he promised, especially in foreign policy. Nevertheless, Trump seeks re-election, and he cannot entirely break with the Washington establishment if he hopes to succeed. Indeed in 2016 he demonstrated this by appointing a staff of generals whose credo over the span of several decades has been that of American exceptionalism, the governing religion of Washington. He used the military to protect himself from the media-intelligence community, shielding himself with four generals (Kelly, McMaster, Mattis and Flynn), in the full knowledge that none of them would support a realist-isolationist policy.
For this reason, the ructions that have followed the announcement of the withdrawal from Syria are part of normal US political theater, such as was the case with the resignation/dismissal of Mattis. It is no surprise that the deep state immediately dispatched Bolton and Pompeo to sooth the concerns of dozens of US allies, in particular Israel and the Arab states. It was a PR exercise to reassure them of the real intentions of the US in the area (i.e., enduring imperialism).
In practice, it makes little difference whether the US has 2,000 or 200 men in Syria. They will not be able to change the course of the war of aggression against Damascus in their favor. It is therefore not surprising that Bolton was not fired for publicly contradicting Trump on the question of withdrawing troops from Syria. Such contradictions play in Trump’s favor. His supporters will say that Trump is so anti-establishment that even his closest collaborators are against him.
If Trump were to fire Bolton as he did Mattis, none of his faithful voters will remember the ill-considered choice to appoint him in the first place, and will be struck instead by Trump’s determination to stick to his guns and rid himself of internal saboteurs who stand in the way of his electoral mandate. As long as Trump, in our scenario, were not to name someone worse than Bolton, the imperialist wheel will continue to turn.
Just look at North Korea as an example. Trump threatened to destroy Pyongyang, even knowing the US could not really do so. Then he meet with Kim, did an epic PR exercise that presented Trump as solving a major international problem that had eluded all his predecessors. After conveying this triumph to his base, he simply forgot all about Kim, Pyongyang and Seoul. In the meantime, the two Koreas are nonetheless speaking, advancing reconciliation and preparing for historical changes. As for Trump, he has already moved on, North Korea no longer holding his interest, the drama having served its purpose for a certain time but no longer being of relevance. (This, thankfully, is to the benefit of the Korean people.)
It seems the same playbook is being employed in Syria. Trump announced the withdrawal, while leaving a few hundred soldiers behind who continue to be unable to change the situation on the ground; Bolton and Pompeo are dispatched to reassure allies/financiers, though Trump cannot wait to forget about Syria, proclaiming the falsehood that US, under his leadership, defeated ISIS (thereby fulfilling one of his electoral promises).
As I wrote following Trump’s election, The Donald’s victory only served to accelerate the transition to a multipolar world, as we saw in the first two years of his presidency, with Trump’s focus on his base translating into a perennial electoral campaign that uses all the tools at his disposal (domestic, foreign, economic, financial, and currency policy). This creates distrust and concern amongst historical allies and pushes Washington’s enemies closer together, serving in the process to smooth out any tensions that may have hitherto existed between these countries.
Just think of the Astana format of Turkey, Iran and Russia concerning Syria, Inter-Korean talks in Asia, a peace treaty to be signed between Russia and Japan, Indian-Iranian cooperation on trade in oil, a European stance against Iranian and Russian sanctions, and, to top it off, coordination between the Russians and the Chinese on almost everything. All this is in the name of opposing US imperialist policies or trying to directly score a political win against Donald Trump and his policies.
Trump’s enemies have learned to ignore US decisions, which have now become irrelevant in certain parts of the globe. America’s historical allies cling hopefully to the words of Bolton and Pompeo, well aware that the US will not soon change their basic neoliberal and imperialist approach towards the world. Nevertheless, Washington is losing military and economic influence due to the transition into a multipolar world order, where power is shared among multiple countries (China, Russia, Iran, India). The unipolar moment is over and is not coming back, especially not with Donald Trump as president. And that is a good thing for the rest of the world.
Another Climate Propaganda Story Promoting the Normal as Abnormal
By Dr. Tim Ball | Watts Up With That? | January 8, 2019
Almost every day there are stories in the media about weather or climate events that create the impression that they are new and outside of the normal pattern. None of them are. The objective is to sensationalize the story, even if it means using a meaningless period. A simple trick is to pick a period in which your claim is valid. This practice of cherry-picking the period of study is not exclusive to the media. It was a clear sign of corruption of climatology brought to a head with Roseanne D’Arrigo’s infamous comment to the 2006 National Academy of Science (NAS) panel that “if you are going to make a cherry pie, you have to pick cherries.”
That doesn’t condone the media use of the technique. All it does is illustrate why it was a convenient technique for creating a deception about what is normal. For example, a 2017 BBC headline said “Hottest June day since summer of 1976 in heatwave.” That is 41 years, which is statistically significant but not climatologically significant. A Youtube story reports “Sydney has wettest November day since 1984.” CBS Pittsburgh reported “NWS: 2018 is the 2nd Wettest Year on Record in Pittsburgh.” The record began in 1871 or 147 years ago, but even that is not climatologically significant. The ones I like are this one from North Carolina, that says, “A Look Back at the Coldest day Ever in North Carolina.” “Ever” is approximately 4.5 billion years.
Other stories focus on a pattern or change in a pattern again with the idea that it is new or abnormal. Headlines like this one from 2012, “Why have there been more tornadoes than usual this year?” Often, they are suggestive such as this 2017 New York Times story. “The 2017 Hurricane Season Really Is More Intense Than Normal.” When you read the story, you find, as is usually the case, that the caveats at the end indicate it is not unusual. The problem is the headline already set the pattern in the public mind.
The headline says, “Forget El Nino, StormFest Is about To Hit The West Coast.” The author is talking about a series of storms tracking on to the west coast of North America. The story told us
Things often calm down after January 1 during El Nino years… but not this year… with the U.S. West Coast from central California to Washington State about to be pummeled by a series of storms. Rain, snow, wind? Plenty for everyone. A view of the latest infrared satellite imagery shows an amazing line-up of one storm after another stretching way into the Pacific. A traffic jam of storms.
The terms, “pummeled” and “traffic jam” are evocative and imply the pattern is unusual. In fact, it is perfectly normal to the point that there is a descriptive term for it, the Pineapple Express. This refers to the establishment of the Polar Front along the northwest coast of North America after it migrates south from its summer position off the coast of Alaska and northern British Columbia. Low pressure systems known as anti-cyclones develop along the Front all year round. The areas affected by these systems changes as the Front migrates between its more northerly summer position and more southerly winter position. The term Pineapple Express refers to the situation in the winter when these anti-cyclones generate in the region of Hawaii and track along the Front hitting the northwest coast in a series of storms. The pattern does not stop in an El Nino year but takes a different path.
These anti-cyclone systems are also the focus of exploitation of normal weather events as abnormal, in Europe. The southerly shift of the Polar Front in the Northern Hemisphere occurs around the globe. Two major factors influence the weather pattern, sea surface temperatures that fluctuate with ocean circulation, and the Rossby Wave pattern in the Circumpolar Vortex. This pattern of anti-cyclones hitting western Europe in the winter was added to the propaganda list when they started naming the storms. It linked them to hurricanes in the public mind, and it implied they were a recent phenomenon.
They are not recent, new, or of greater intensity.
A significant part of professor Hubert Lamb’s ground-breaking and monumental work on historical climatology was a long-term reconstruction of the pattern of these anti-cyclones. It fit with his claim about why he established the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia.
“… it was clear that the first and greatest need was to establish the facts of the past record of the natural climate in times before any side effects of human activities could well be important.”
Once he created a long-term record of these anti-cyclonic systems, there was a better chance of determining the underlying mechanisms. From this, he could achieve his final objective of better forecasting. The ability to forecast defines science. If that is not the final objective the work is mostly irrelevant.
Consider the destructive and history-altering impact of storms like the one that hit the Spanish Armada that attempted to invade England in 1588. Ironically, Phil Jones, who ran the CRU reputation into the ground while under his direction, wrote a good synopsis of Lamb’s work. There is also the storm of 1703 reported in great detail in the book “The Storm” by the famous author Daniel Defoe.
Marcel Leroux was an early major skeptic of the claim of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). His 2005 book “Global Warming: Myth or Reality” was impactful because Leroux was well qualified. As one review of his book notes,
In the global-warming debate, definitive answers to questions about ultimate causes and effects remain elusive. In Global Warming: Myth or Reality? Marcel Leroux seeks to separate fact from fiction in this critical debate from a climatological perspective. Beginning with a review of the dire hypotheses for climate trends, the author describes the history of the 1998 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and many subsequent conferences. He discusses the main conclusions of the three IPCC reports and the predicted impact on global temperatures, rainfall, weather and climate, while highlighting the mounting confusion and sensationalism of reports in the media.
The comment about sensationalism in the media is relevant to this article because Leroux, like Lamb, also worked on a reconstruction of the anti-cyclonic systems in the North Atlantic. Leroux also worked on another later exploitation of the normal by John Holdren, Obama’s Science Advisor, the so-called “Polar Vortex.” Leroux’s 1993 work on the impact of the “The Mobile Polar High: a new concept explaining present mechanisms of meridional air-mass and energy exchanges and global propagation of palaeoclimatic changes” showed how these outbreaks of cold Polar air are a normal weather event that enter the climate record because of their regular but variable appearance and impact.
We are confronted by the unholy alliance between the political use of science by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the spin doctors or, as I prefer, the professional liars, and the mainstream media, that create fake news by making the normal appear abnormal. As the Yiddish proverb observes, “Truth never dies but lives a wretched existence,” especially under such a deliberate onslaught.
Back to the USSR: How to Read Western News
By Patrick ARMSTRONG | Strategic Culture Foundation | 08.01.2019
The heroes of Dickens’ Pickwick Papers visit the fictional borough of Eatanswill to observe an election between the candidates of the Blue Party and the Buff Party. The town is passionately divided, on all possible issues, between the two parties. Each party has its own newspaper: the Eatanswill Gazette is Blue and entirely devoted to praising the noble Blues and excoriating the perfidious and wicked Buffs; the Eatanswill Independent is equally passionate on the opposite side of every question. No Buff would dream of reading “that vile and slanderous calumniator, the Gazette“, nor Blue ”that false and scurrilous print, the Independent“.
As usual with Dickens it is both exaggerated and accurate. Newspapers used to be screamingly partisan before “journalism” was invented. Soon followed journalism schools, journalism ethics and journalism objectivity: “real journalism” as they like to call it (RT isn’t of course). “Journalism” became a profession gilded with academical folderol; no longer the refuge of dropouts, boozers, failures, budding novelists and magnates like Lord Copper who know what they want and pay for it. But, despite the pretence of objectivity and standards, there were still Lord Coppers and a lot of Eatanswill. Nonetheless, there were more or less serious efforts to get the facts and balance the story. And Lord Coppers came and went: great newspaper empires rose and fell and there was actually quite a variety of ownership and news outlets. There was sufficient variance that a reader, who was neither Blue nor Buff, could triangulate and form a sense of what was going on.
In the Soviet Union news was controlled; there was no “free press”; there was one owner and the flavours were only slightly varied: the army paper, the party paper, the government paper, papers for people interested in literature or sports. But they all said the same thing about the big subjects. The two principal newspapers were Pravda (“truth”) and Izvestiya (“news”). This swiftly led to the joke that there was no truth in Pravda and no news in Izvestiya. It was all pretty heavy handed stuff: lots of fat capitalists in top hats and money bags; Uncle Sam’s clothing dripping with bombs; no problems over here, nothing but problems over there. And it wasn’t very successful propaganda: most of their audience came to believe that the Soviet media was lying both about the USSR and about the West.
But time moves on and while thirty years ago 50 corporations controlled 90% of the US news media, today it’s a not very diverse six. As a result, on many subjects there is a monoview: has any Western news outlet reported, say, these ten true statements?
- People in Crimea are pretty happy to be in Russia.
- The US and its minions have given an enormous amount of weapons to jihadists.
- Elections in Russia reflect popular opinion polling.
- There really are a frightening number of well-armed nazis in Ukraine.
- Assad is pretty popular in Syria.
- The US and its minions smashed Raqqa to bits.
- The official Skripal story makes very little sense.
- Ukraine is much worse off, by any measurement, now than before Maidan.
- Russia actually had several thousand troops in Crimea before Maidan.
- There’s a documentary that exposes Browder that he keeps people from seeing.
I typed these out as they occurred to me. I could come up with another ten pretty easily. There’s some tiny coverage, far in the back pages, so that objectivity can be pretended, but most Western media consumers would answer they aren’t; didn’t; don’t; aren’t; isn’t; where?; does; not; what?; never heard of it.
Many subjects are covered in Western media outlets with a single voice. Every now and again there’s a scandal that reveals that “journalists” are richly rewarded for writing stories that fit. But after revelations, admissions of bias, pretending it never happened, the media ship calmly sails on (shedding passengers as it goes, though). Coverage of certain subjects are almost 100% false: Putin, Russia, Syria and Ukraine stand out. But much of the coverage of China and Iran also. Many things about Israel are not permitted. The Russia collusion story is (privately) admitted to be fake by an outlet that covers it non stop. Anything Trump is so heavily flavoured that it’s inedible. And it’s not getting any better: PC is shutting doors everywhere and the Russian-centred “fake news” meme is shutting more. Science is settled but genders are not and we must be vigilant against the “Russian disinformation war“. Every day brings us a step closer to a mono media of the One Correct Opinion. All for the Best Possible Motives, of course.
It’s all rather Soviet in fact.
So, in a world where the Integrity Initiative is spending our tax dollars (pounds actually) to make sure that we never have a doubleplusungood thought or are tempted into crimethink, (and maybe they created the entire Skripal story – more revelations by the minute), what are we to make of our Free Media™? Well, that all depends on what you’re interested in. If it’s sports (not Russian athletes – druggies every one unlike brave Western asthmatics) or “beach-ready bodies” (not Russian drug takers of course, only wholesome Americans) – the reporting is pretty reasonable. Weather reports, for example (Siberian blasts excepted) or movie reviews (but all those Russian villains). But the rest is some weird merger of the Eatonswill Gazette and Independent : Blues/Buffs good! others, especially Russians, bad!
So, as they say in Russia, что делать? What to do? Well, I suggest we learn from the Soviet experience. After all, most Soviet citizens were much more sceptical about their home media outlets than any of my neighbours, friends or relatives are about theirs.
My suggestions are three:
- Read between the lines. A difficult art this and it needs to be learned and practised. Dissidents may be sending us hints from the bowels of Minitrue. For example, it’s impossible to imagine anyone seriously saying “How Putin’s Russia turned humour into a weapon“; it must have been written to subversively mock the official Russia panic. I have speculated elsewhere that the writers may have inserted clues that the “intelligence reports” on Russian interference were nonsense.
- Notice what they’re not telling you. For example: remember when Aleppo was a huge story two years ago? But there’s nothing about it now. One should wonder why there isn’t; a quick search will find videos like this (oops! Russian! not real journalism!) here’s one from Euronews. Clearly none of this fits the “last hospitals destroyed” and brutal Assad memes of two years ago; that’s why the subject has disappeared from Western media outlets. It is always a good rule to wonder why the Biggest Story Ever suddenly disappears: that’s a strong clue it was a lie or nonsense.
- Most of the time, you’d be correct to believe the opposite. Especially, when all the outlets are telling you the same thing. It’s always good to ask yourself cui bono: who’s getting what benefit out of making you believe something? It’s quite depressing how successful the big uniform lie is: even though the much-demonised Milosevic was eventually found innocent, even though Qaddafi was not “bombing his own people”, similar lies are believed about Assad and other Western enemies-of-the-moment. Believe the opposite unless there’s very good reason not to.
In the Cold War there was a notion going around that the Soviet and Western systems were converging and that they would meet in the middle, so to speak. Well, perhaps they did meet but kept on moving past each other. And so, the once reasonably free and varied Western media comes to resemble the controlled and uniform Soviet media and we in the West must start using Soviet methods to understand.
Always remember that the Soviet rulers claimed their media was free too; free from “fake news” that is.
Russian to Conclusions? NYT Misreports Manafort’s Ukraine Ties as Russian
Sputnik – 10.01.2019
The New York Times is so eager to find proof that Paul Manafort was the definitive go-between for the 2016 Donald Trump presidential campaign and Russian actors that it tweeted out a claim a court filing unsealed Tuesday proved the connection, when the connections named were Ukrainians, not Russians.
The Times article on Tuesday is based on information from a court filing unsealed that day showing that Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, asked his associate in Ukraine, Konstantin V. Kilimnik, to pass information about Trump’s polling numbers to Serhiy Lyovochkin and Rinat Akhmetov, two Ukrainians connected to the Ukrainian Party of Regions, the party of deposed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
However, when one of the story authors, Kenneth P. Vogel, tweeted about the story Tuesday, he accidentally said that Manafort asked Kilimnik to pass that information not to Lyovochkin and Akhmetov, their Ukrainian business associates, but to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire sanctioned by the US government following his rejection of FBI attempts to “flip” him into an agent of theirs, as Sputnik has reported.
If that were true, it would indeed be quite the story. It still wouldn’t vindicate the Russiagate narrative, since Deripaska is a man who despises Russian President Vladimir Putin and Manafort, both of whom have caused him no shortage of bad business, but in entirely different ways. The corrected Times article only says that Manafort might have hoped to curry personal favor with Deripaska, who he owed millions at the time, by offering him “private briefings,” but never polling data.
The newspaper’s Twitter account later redacted the statement and tweeted a correction, but the eagerness to jump to conclusions that fit their preconceived narrative is worrisome. It’s also far from the first incident of carelessly biased reporting by the mainstream media regarding Russiagate topics.
Let’s take a moment to recall some of them.
On December 1, 2017, ABC’s Brian Ross reported that Trump had directed former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn to make contact with Russian officials before the November 2016 election, when really Flynn was only asked to make such contact after the election. What a difference a single word makes!
Ross earned himself four weeks of suspension without pay for that mishap, after being forced to recant his error.
Only days later, CNN was forced to correct several dates in a story that made it sound as if the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., had played a role in the supplying of hacked Democratic National Committee emails to WikiLeaks.
An exclusive story December 8 reported that Don Jr., along with his father and other key Trump campaign officials, received a mysterious email on September 4, 2016, offering a website and decryption key for the hacked WikiLeaks documents. This heavily suggested that someone in the campaign was responsible for leaking a trove of stolen DNC emails to WikiLeaks, since that website published the emails on September 13.
However, CNN was soon forced to correct this story: It wasn’t September 4, but September 14 — the day after the leak — that the campaign officials in question received the email. The network was also forced to change the date it reported Don Jr. had first tweeted about Hillary Clinton and WikiLeaks, which also happened on September 14, and not on September 4 as originally reported.
Pretty remarkable, considering that every network that reported it claimed they’d corroborated the information from “multiple sources.” All those sources got the date wrong in the same way?
Only six months prior, CNN had been forced to correct another major report about Trump and Russia. In June 2017, the network retracted a story about ties between Trump officials and a Russian investment fund, a faux pas that caused three of the news agency’s journalists to weigh anchor.
In September 2017 (wow, 2017 was a bad year for reporting on Trump and Russia!), almost every major US news outlet reported that Russian-government-backed hackers targeted the voting systems of 21 states during the 2016 presidential election. However, a senior Department of Homeland Security official corrected this before Congress, telling a House of Representatives panel that November that no attack had happened. Virtually no network reported this whatsoever, except for Sputnik.
Can you guess how many issued retractions? One less than the Times on Tuesday. At least we’ll give NYT that. But it probably won’t be the last time a major news outlet trips over their preconceived narrative of Russian collusion or interference.
Fake News of Trump’s Volte-face on Syria Exit Strategy
By Nauman Sadiq | Blacklisted News | January 8, 2019
Quoting Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton, who was recently on a visit to Israel and told reporters in Jerusalem that American forces would remain in Syria until the last remnants of the Islamic State were defeated and Turkey provided guarantees that it would not strike Kurdish forces allied with the United States, fake news have been circulating on the mainstream media that Trump has made a turnaround by delaying his planned Syria withdrawal.
Quoting the corporate media’s preferred, though highly partisan and dubious source of information on Syria, The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), Al-Jazeera’s sister news outlet The New Arab in particular is reporting [1] the Syrian Observatory’s purportedly “extensive network of on-ground activists and reporters” has seen American military convoys of hundreds of trucks and vehicles headed to the US military bases in Raqqa in eastern Syria, and Manbij and Tal Abyad in northern Syria from the Iraq border.
The policy decision to withdraw American forces from Syria, however, has already been taken in principle by the Trump administration, and whether the complete exit of the US troops from Syria would take a few weeks or several months is simply a matter of modalities to be worked out by operational commanders of the American forces.
Taking notice of the fake news, even Donald Trump was compelled to clarify his intentions on the Syria exit strategy in a tweet on Monday, January 7, saying: “The Failing New York Times has knowingly written a very inaccurate story on my intentions on Syria. No different from my original statements, we will be leaving at a proper pace while at the same time continuing to fight ISIS and doing all else that is prudent and necessary.”
Regarding the American military convoys headed to Raqqa, Manbij and Tal Abyad, the US commanders planning for the withdrawal of the American troops from Syria have recommended that the Kurdish fighters battling the Islamic State be allowed to keep the US-supplied weapons, a move that would likely anger NATO-ally Turkey, according to an exclusive report [1] by Reuters.
The report further adds: “The proposal to leave the US-supplied weapons with the Kurdish YPG militia, which could include anti-tank missiles, armored vehicles and mortars, would reassure Kurdish allies that they were not being abandoned.”
Thus, the convoys carrying surplus weapons of the American forces in Iraq to the US military bases in Syria were actually meant to distribute the weapons among Washington’s Kurdish allies in order to compensate the Kurds for their loyalty, despite objections from Washington’s NATO-ally Ankara.
Regarding inveterate neoconservative hawk John Bolton’s reassurance to the Israelis on Washington’s Syria withdrawal in Jerusalem, it should be looked at in the backdrop that over the years, Israel not only provided medical aid and material support to militant groups battling Damascus – particularly to various factions of the Free Syria Army (FSA) and al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate al-Nusra Front in Daraa and Quneitra bordering the Israel-occupied Golan Heights – but Israel’s air force virtually played the role of the air force of the Syrian jihadists and conducted hundreds of airstrikes in Syria during the eight-year conflict.
Though after Russia provided the S-300 missile system to the Syrian military after a Russian surveillance plane was shot down in Syria on September 18, killing 15 Russians onboard, Israel has conducted only a couple of airstrikes in Syria, one on the Christmas Day in which Israeli F-16s took cover [2] of civilian airliners flying to Damascus and Beirut airports. The purpose of the airstrike was to locate the precise location of the S-300 air defense system installed in Syria by the Russians in order to target it on a later date, or to keep the Israeli air force out of its reach.
Notwithstanding, on December 28, the Syrian army said it entered Manbij for the first time in years, after the Syrian Kurds urged Damascus to protect the town from the threat of impending Turkish military offensive, though Turkish President Erdogan has termed the handover a “psyops” by the Kurds.
According to a report by RT: [3] “A high-ranking Turkish delegation arrived in Moscow on Saturday, December 29, only a day after international media broke news on Kurdish militias inviting Syrian forces to enter Manbij before the Turks do. Syria’s military proclaimed they ‘raised the flag’ over Manbij, but there have been no independent reports confirming the moving of troops into the city.”
The report notes: “The Saturday Moscow meeting was key to preventing all actors of the Syrian war from locking horns over the Kurdish enclave. Obviously, Turkey will insist that it is their forces that should enter Manbij, Russia will of course insist the city should be handed over to Assad’s forces, Kirill Semenov, an Islamic studies expert with Russia’s Institute for Innovative Development, told RT.”
The report further adds: “Realpolitik, of course, plays a role here as various locations across Syria might be used as a bargaining chip by all parties to the conflict. Semenov suggested the Turks may agree on Syrian forces taking some parts of Idlib province in exchange for Damascus’ consent for a Turkish offensive toward Manbij or Kobani.”
It becomes abundantly clear after reading the RT report that a land swap agreement between Ankara and Damascus under the auspices of Moscow is in the offing to avoid standoff over Manbij.
The agreement would likely stipulate that Damascus would give Ankara a free hand to mount offensives in the Kurdish-occupied Arab-majority towns Manbij and Kobani in northern Syria in return for Ankara withdrawing its militant proxies from Maarat al-Numan, Khan Sheikhoun and Jisr al-Shughour, all of which are strategically located in the south of Idlib governorate.
Just as Ankara cannot tolerate the presence of the Kurds in northern Syria along Turkey’s southern border in line with its “east of Euphrates” military doctrine, similarly even Ankara would acknowledge the fact that Damascus cannot possibly conceive the long-term presence of Ankara’s jihadist proxies in the aforementioned strategic locations in the south of Idlib governorate threatening the Alawite heartland of coastal Latakia.
If such a land swap agreement is concluded between Ankara and Damascus, it would be a win-win for all parties to the Syrian conflict, excluding the Kurds, of course. But the response of Damascus and Moscow to the concerns of the Kurds has been tepid of late.
Not only have the Kurds committed the perfidy of playing the proxies of Washington during the Syrian conflict which abandoned them after Trump’s announcement of withdrawal of American troops from Syria, but we must also recall another momentous event that took place in Deir al-Zor governorate in February 2018.
On February 7, the US B-52 bombers and Apache helicopters struck a contingent of Syrian government troops and allied forces in Deir al-Zor that reportedly [4] killed and wounded scores of Russian military contractors working for the Russian private security firm, the Wagner group.
The survivors described the bombing as an absolute massacre, and Kremlin lost more Russian citizens in one day than it had lost throughout its more than three-year-long military campaign in support of the Syrian government since September 2015.
The reason why Washington struck Russian contractors working in Syria was that the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – which is mainly comprised of Kurdish YPG militias – had reportedly handed over the control of some areas east of Euphrates River to Deir al-Zor Military Council (DMC), which is the Arab-led component of SDF, and had relocated several battalions of Kurdish YPG militias to Afrin and along Syria’s northern border with Turkey in order to defend the Kurdish-held areas against the onslaught of the Turkish armed forces and allied Syrian militant proxies during Ankara’s “Operation Olive Branch” in Syria’s northwest that lasted from January to March 2018.
Syrian forces with the backing of Russian contractors took advantage of the opportunity and crossed the Euphrates River to capture an oil refinery located to the east of Euphrates River in the Kurdish-held area of Deir al-Zor.
The US Air Force responded with full force, knowing well the ragtag Arab component of SDF – mainly comprised of local Arab tribesmen and mercenaries to make the Kurdish-led SDF appear more representative and inclusive – was simply not a match for the superior training and arms of Syrian troops and Russian military contractors, consequently causing a carnage in which scores of Russian citizens lost their lives.
Clearly, Moscow and Damascus hold the Kurds responsible for the atrocity along with Washington, and hence it is unlikely that the Syrian military would come to the rescue of the Kurds in the event of a Turkish military offensive east of Euphrates.
Sources and links:
[1] US weapons rushed to SDF signaling possible U-turn over Syria:
[2] Israel Used Civilian Airliners as Cover in Christmas Day Airstrikes in Syria:
[3] Land swap between Turkey and Syria – an option to avoid standoff over Manbij:
https://www.rt.com/news/447698-syria-manbij-russia-turkey-talks/
[4] Russian toll in Syria battle was 300 killed and wounded:
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From the Archives
The New Baghdad Pact
By Dr Bouthaina Shaaban | February 23, 2017
A recently declassified CIA document prepared in 1983, and released on 20 January 2017, shows that the United States had at the time encouraged Saddam Hussein to attack Syria, which would have led to a vicious conflict between the two countries, thus draining their resources.
The report, which was then prepared by CIA officer Graham Fuller, indicates that the US tried adamantly to convince Saddam to attack Syria under any pretense available, in order to get the two most powerful countries in the Arab East to destroy each other, turning their attention away from the Arab-Israeli conflict. … continue
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