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5,000 terrorists entered Aleppo via Turkey in 2 months: Assad

Prensa Latina | July 21, 2016

Prensa Latina transmits below the full text of the exclusive interview with Syrian President Bashar Al Assad:

PRENSA LATINA: Mr. President, thanks for giving Prensa Latina this historic opportunity of conveying your point of views to the rest of the world about the reality in Syria, because as you know, there is a lot of misinformation out there about your country, about the foreign aggression that is taking place against this beautiful country.

Mr. President, how would you evaluate the current military situation of the external aggression against Syria, and what are the main challenges of Syrian forces on the ground to fight anti-government groups? If it is possible, we would like to know your opinion about the battles or combats in Aleppo, in Homs.

President Assad: Of course, there was a lot of support to the terrorists from around the world. We have more than one hundred nationalities participating in the aggression against Syria with the support of certain countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar with their money and Turkey with the logistical support, and of course with the endorsement and supervision of the Western countries, mainly the United States, France, and the UK, and some other allies.

But since the Russians decided to intervene in supporting legally the Syrian Army in fighting the terrorists in Syria, mainly al-Nusra and ISIS and some other affiliated groups, the scales have been tipped against those terrorists, and the Syrian Army has made many advancements in different areas in Syria.

And we are still moving forward, and the Syrian Army is determined to destroy and to defeat those terrorists. You mentioned Homs and Aleppo.

Of course, the situation in Homs, since the terrorists left Homs more than a year ago, the situation has been much, much better, more stable.

You have some suburbs of the city which were infiltrated by terrorists. Now there is a process of reconciliation in those areas in which either the terrorists give up their armaments and go back to their normal life with amnesty from the government, or they can leave Homs to any other place within Syria, like what happened more than a year ago in the center of the city.

For Aleppo it is a different situation, because the Turks and their allies like the Saudis and Qataris lost most of their cards on the battlefields in Syria, so the last card for them, especially for Erdogan, is Aleppo.

That is why he worked hard with the Saudis to send as much as they can of the terrorists – the estimation is more than five thousand terrorists – to Aleppo.

PRENSA LATINA: Through the Turkish borders?

President Assad: Yes, from Turkey to Aleppo, during the last two months, in order to recapture the city of Aleppo, and that didn’t work.

Actually, our army has been making advancement in Aleppo and the suburbs of Aleppo in order to encircle the terrorists, then, let’s say, either to negotiate their going back to their normal life as part of reconciliation, or for the terrorists to leave the city of Aleppo, or to be defeated. There’s no other solution.

PRENSA LATINA: Mr. President, which are the priorities of the Syrian Army in the confrontation with the terrorist groups? What is the role that the popular defence groups are playing in the theatre of operations?

President Assad: The priority of the Syrian Army, first of all, is to fight ISIS, al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Cham and Jaish al-Islam. These four organizations are directly linked to Al Qaeda through the ideology; they have the same ideology, they are Islamic extremist groups who want to kill anyone who doesn’t look or doesn’t feel or behave like them.

But regarding what you called the popular militia groups, actually, at the beginning of the war, the terrorists started an unconventional war against our army, and our army is a traditional army, like any other in the world, so the support of those popular defence groups was very important in order to defeat the terrorists in an unconventional way.

That was very helpful to the Syrian Army, because those fighters, those national fighters, they fight in their regions, in their cities, in their villages, so they know the area very well, they know the region very well, I mean the pathways, the terrain, let’s say, very well.

So, they can be very huge assets for the Syrian Army. That is their role.

PRENSA LATINA: Mr. President, how does the resistance of the Syrian people take place in the economic front to foreign aggression, I mean the economy, and please, what is your opinion on which sectors of the Syrian economy have remained functioning despite the war, economic blockade, looting, and so forth?

President Assad: Actually, the war on Syria is a full-blown war; it is not only supporting terrorists. They support the terrorists, and at the same time they launched a political war against Syria on the international level, and the third front was the economic front, in which they dictate to their terrorists, to their surrogate mercenaries, to start destroying the infrastructure in Syria that helped the economy and the daily needs of the Syrian citizens.

At the same time, they started an embargo directly on the borders of Syria through the terrorists and abroad through the banking systems around the world. In spite of that, the Syrian people were determined to live as much normal life as they can.

That prompted many Syrian businessmen or the owners of, let’s say, the industry, which is mainly medium and small industry, to move from the conflict areas and unstable areas toward more stable areas, on a smaller scale of business, in order to survive and to keep the economy running and to keep the needs of the Syrian people available.

So, in that regard, most of the sectors are still working. For example, the pharmaceutical sector is still working in more than 60 percent of its capacity, which is very important, helpful, and very supportive to our economy in such circumstances.

And I think now we are doing our best in order to re-expand the base of the economy in spite of the situation, especially after the Syrian Army made many advancements in different areas.

PRENSA LATINA: Mr. President, let’s talk a little bit about the international environment, please, give me your opinion about the role of the United Nations in the Syrian conflict, the attempts of Washington and its allies to impose their will on the Security Council and in the Geneva peace talks.

President Assad: Talking about the role of the United Nations or Security Council could be illusive, because actually the United Nations is now an American arm, where they can use it the way they want, they can impose their double standards on it instead of the Charter.

They can use it like any other institution within the American administration. Without some Russian and Chinese stances in certain issues, it would be a full American institution.

So, the Russian and Chinese role has made some balance within these institutions, mainly regarding the Syrian issue during the last five years. But if you want to talk about their role through their mediators or their envoys, like recently de Mistura, and before that Kofi Annan, and in between Brahimi, and so on. Let’s say that those mediators are not independent; they reflect either the pressure from the Western countries, or sometimes the dialogue between the main powers, mainly Russia and the United States.

So, they’re not independent, so you cannot talk about the role of the United Nations; it is a reflection of that balance. That is why so far, there is no United Nations role in the Syrian conflict; there is only Russian and American dialogue, and we know that the Russians are working hard and seriously and genuinely in order to defeat the terrorists, while the Americans always play games in order to use the terrorists, not to defeat them.

PRENSA LATINA: Mr. President, how do you see at the present time the coexistence among Syrian ethnic and religious groups against this foreign intervention? How do they contribute or not in this regard?

President Assad: The most important thing about this harmony between the different spectrums of the Syrian fabric, is that it is genuine, because that has been built up through the history, through centuries, so for such a conflict, it cannot destroy that social fabric.

That is why if you go around and visit different areas under the control of the government, you will see all the colors of the Syrian society living with each other.

And I would say, I would add to this, that during the conflict, this harmony has become much better and stronger, and this is not rhetoric; actually, this is reality, for different reasons, because this conflict is a lesson.

This diversity that you have, it is either to be a richness to your country, or a problem. There’s no something in the middle. So, the people learned that we need to work more on this harmony, because the first rhetoric used by the terrorists and by their allies in the region and in the West regarding the Syrian conflict at the very beginning was sectarian rhetoric.

They wanted people to divide in order to have conflict with each other, to stoke the fire within Syria, and it didn’t work. And the Syrians learned that lesson, that we had harmony; we had had harmony before the conflict, in the normal times, but we have to work more in order to make it much stronger.

So, I can say without any exaggeration that the situation regarding this part is good. In spite of that, I would say the areas under the control of the terrorists – and as you know those terrorists are mainly extremist groups affiliated to Al Qaeda – in which they worked very hard in order to indoctrinate the young generation with their dark ideology, and they succeeded in some areas, this dark ideology with the killing and beheading and all these horrible practices.

With the time, it is going to be more difficult to deal with this new generation of young people who have been indoctrinated with Al Qaeda and Wahabi doctrine and ideology. So this is the only danger that we are going to face regarding our society, harmony, and coexistence that you just mentioned.

PRENSA LATINA: Mr. President, I would like to go again to the international arena. What is in your opinion the role of the U.S.-led international coalition in relation to the groups that operate in northern Syria, in particular regarding the Kurds group. I mean the bombing of the American airplanes and the coalition in the northern part of the country. What to do you think about that?

President Assad: You know, traditionally, the American administrations, when they had relations with any group or community in any country, it is not for the sake of the country, it is not for the interest of the people; it is for the agenda of the United States.

So, that is what we have to ask ourselves: why would the Americans support any group in Syria? Not for Syria. They must their agenda, and the American agenda has always been divisive in any country. They don’t work to unite the people; they work to make division between the different kinds of people.

Sometimes they choose a sectarian group, sometimes they choose an ethnical group in order to support them against other ethnicities or to push them in a way that takes them far from the rest of the society.

This is their agenda. So, it is very clear that this American support is not related to ISIS, it is not related to al-Nusra, it is not related to fighting terrorism, because since the beginning of the American intervention, ISIS was expanding, not shrinking. It has only started to shrink when the Russian support to the Syrian Army took place last September.

PRENSA LATINA: Mr. President, what is your opinion about the recent coup d’état in Turkey, and its impact on the current situation in that country, and on the international level, and on the Syrian conflict also?

President Assad: Such a coup d’état, we have to look at it as a reflection of instability and disturbances within Turkey, mainly on the social level. It could be political, it could be whatever, but at the end, the society is the main issue when you have instability.

Regardless of who is going to govern Turkey, who is going to be the president, who is going to be the leader of Turkey; this is an internal issue. We don’t interfere, we don’t make the mistake to say that Erdogan should go or should stay. This is a Turkish issue, and the Turkish people have to decide.

But what is more important than the coup d’état itself, we have to look at the procedures and the steps that are being taken by Erdogan and his coterie recently during the last few days, when they started attacking the judges; they removed more than 2,700 judges from their positions, more than 1,500 professors in the universities, more than 15,000 employees in the education sector. What do the universities and the judges and that civil society have to do with the coup d’état?

So, that reflects the bad intentions of Erdogan and his misconduct and his real intentions toward what happened, because the investigation hasn’t been finalized yet. How did they take the decision to remove all those?

So, he used the coup d’état in order to implement his own extremist agenda, Muslim Brotherhood agenda, within Turkey, and that is dangerous for Turkey and for the neighboring countries, including Syria.

PRENSA LATINA: Mr. President, how do you evaluate the Syrian government’s relations with the opposition inside Syria? What is the difference between these opposition organizations and those based outside Syria?

President Assad: We have good relations with the opposition within Syria based on the national principles. Of course, they have their own political agenda and they have their own beliefs, and we have our own agenda and our beliefs, and the way we can make the dialogue either directly or through the ballot boxes; it could be a different way of dialogue, which is the situation in every country.

But we cannot compare them with the other oppositions outside Syria, because the word “opposition” means to resort to peaceful means, not to support terrorists, and not to be formed outside your country, and to have grassroots, to have real grassroots made of Syrian people.

You cannot have your grassroots be the foreign ministry in the UK, Franceor the intelligence in Qatar and Saudi Arabia and the United States. This is not opposition, this is called, in that case, you are called a traitor.

So, they call them oppositions, we call them traitors. The real opposition is the one that works for the Syrian people and is based in Syria and its agenda derived its vision from the Syrian people and the Syrian interests.

PRENSA LATINA: Mr. President, how do you evaluate the insistence of the U.S. and its allies that you leave power in addition to the campaign to distort the image of your government?

President Assad: Regarding their wish for me to leave power, they have been talking about this for the last five years, and we never responded even with a statement.

We never cared about them. Actually, this is a Syrian issue; only the Syrian people can say who should come and go, who should stay in his position, who should leave, and the West knows our position very well regarding this.

So, we don’t care and don’t have to waste our time with their rhetoric. I am here because of the support of the Syrian people. Without that, I wouldn’t be here. That is very simple.

About how they defame, or try to demonize certain presidents, this is the American way, at least since the second World War, since they substituted British colonization in this region, and maybe in the world, the American administrations and the American politicians haven’t said a single honest word regarding anything.

They always lie. And as time goes by, they are becoming more inveterate liars, so this is part of their politics. So, to demonize me is like how they tried to demonize President Vladimir Putin during the last two years and they did the same with the Cuban leader Fidel Castro during the last five decades.

This is their way. So, we have to know that this is the American way. We don’t have to worry about it. The most important thing is to have good reputation among your own people. That is what we have to worry about.

PRENSA LATINA: Mr. President, what is your opinion on Syria’s relation with Latin America, particularly the historical links with Cuba?

President Assad: In spite of the long distance between Syria and Latin America, we are always surprised how much the people in Latin America, not only the politicians, know about this region. I think this has many reasons, but one of them is the historical similarities and commonalities between our region, between Syria and Latin America.

Latin America was under direct occupation for long time ago but after that it was under the occupation of the American companies, and the American coup d’états and the American intervention.

So, they know what is the meaning of being independent or not to be independent. They understand that the war in Syria is about independence.

But the most important thing is the role of Cuba. Cuba was the spearhead of the independence movement within Latin America and Fidel Castro was the iconic figure in that regard.

So, on the political level and the knowledge level, there is a strong harmony between Syria and Latin America, especially Cuba. But I do not think we work enough to improve the other part of the relation; to be on the same level mainly on the educational and the economic level.

That was my ambition before the crisis and that is why I visited Latin America, Cuba, Venezuela, Argentine and Brazil, in order toinvigorate this relation. Then, we had this conflict started and it was a big obstacle to do anything in that regard, but I think that we have not to restrain the relation on the historical and the political levels. That is not enough. You have so many other sectors, people should know more about each other. The long distance could be an obstacle, but it shouldn’t because we have strong relations with the rest of the world, east and west.

So, it is not an obstacle in these days. So, I think if we overcome this crisis and this war, we should work harder in order to invigorate the different sectors of this relation with Latin America and especially with Cuba.

PRENSA LATINA: Mr. President, would you tell me your opinion about the electoral process in the United States mainly for the president? Now, there are two candidates; the Republican one is Mr. Donald Trump and the Democrat one is Mrs. Hillary Clinton, what is your opinion about this process, about the result of this process and how it could impact the conflict here, in the war in Syria?

President Assad: We resumed our relation with the United States in 1974. Now, it has been 42 years since then and we witnessed many American presidents in different situations and the lesson that we have learned is that no one should bet on any American president, that is the most important thing. So, it is not about the name.

They have institutions, they have their own agenda and every president should come to implement that agenda in his own way, but at the end he has to implement that agenda.

All of them have militaristic agendas, and the only difference is the way. One of them sends his army like Bush and the other one sends mercenaries and proxies like Obama, but all of them have to implement this agenda.

So, I do not believe that the president is allowed completely to fulfill his own political convictions in the United States, he has to obey the institutions and the lobbies, and the lobbies have not changed and the institutions’ agenda has not change.

So, no president in the near future will come to make a serious and dramatic change regarding the politics of the United States.

PRENSA LATINA: Mr. President, one final question: what message would you send using this interview with Prensa Latina to the governments and people of Latin America, the Caribbean, and also why not the American people, about the importance of supporting Syria against terrorism?

President Assad: Latin America is a very good and important example to the world about how the people and their governments regain their independence.

They are the backyard of the United States as the United States sees, but this backyard was used by the United States to play its own games, to implement its own agenda and the people in Latin America sacrificed a lot in order to regain their independence and everybody knows that.

After regaining their independence, those countries moved from being developing countries, or sometimes under-developed countries, to be developed countries. So, independence is a very important thing and it is very dear for every Latin American citizen.

We think they have to keep this independence because the United States will not stop trying to topple every independent government, every government that reflects the vast majority of the people in every country in Latin America.

And again, Cuba knows this, knows what I am talking about more than any other one in the world; you suffered more than anyone from the American attempts and you succeeded in withstanding all these attempts during the last sixty years or more just because the government reflected the Cuban people.

So, holding strongly to this independence, I think, is the crucial thing, the most important thing for the future of Latin America. Regarding Syria, we can say that Syria is paying the price of its independence because we never worked against the United States; we never worked against France or the UK. We always try to have good relations with the West.

But their problem is that they do not accept any independent country and I think this is same for Cuba. You never tried to do any harm to the American people but they do not accept you as an independent country.

The same is true for other countries in Latin America and that’s why you always have coup d’états mainly between the sixties and the seventies.

So, I think preserving the independence of a certain country is not only an isolated case; if I want to be independent, I have to support the independence in the rest of the world. So, the independence anywhere in the world, including Latin America, will support my independence. If I am alone, I will be weak.

Supporting Syria will be mainly in the international arena. There are many international organizations, mainly the United Nation, in spite of its impotence, but at the end, their support could play a vital role in supporting Syria and, of course, the Security Council; it depends on who is going to be the temporary member in the Security Council, and any other organization supporting Syria will be very important.

PRENSA LATINA: Mr. President, we know you are a very busy person, that is why I appreciate very much your time that you have dedicated to Prensa Latina interview in this moment. I hope this would not be the last interview that we have with you.

President Assad: You are welcome anytime.

July 21, 2016 Posted by aletho | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Al-Nusra, Bashar al-Assad, France, ISIS, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, UK, United States | Leave a comment

EU eyes Israeli technology for surveillance: Official

Press TV – July 20, 2016

A senior European Union security official says the body is looking into Israeli technology for online surveillance in Europe.

EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator Gilles de Kerchove said Tuesday that the bloc was turning to Israeli methods after internet companies proved reluctant to monitor individuals.

The official cited a series of deadly attacks across Europe which had prompted officials to think of using Israeli technologies.

Once focused on “meta data” or information regarding individuals’ communications patterns, Israeli spy agencies now have refocused on social media as a complementary means of snooping on Palestinians.

An Israeli military official who administers these methods said human intervention is required to set parameters such as age, religiosity, socio-economic background for the population being monitored.

Traditionally a source of funds for the Israeli military to maintain its “edge” in the Middle East, the US and Europeans have recently turned to a major customer of Israeli weapons.

Last month, the US military said it had tested an Israeli short-range missile for possible use in its European network of missile systems to deter Russia.

Major General Glenn Bramhall of the US Army’s Air and Missile Defense Command said a variant of the Israeli “Tamir” rocket which is incorporated to Tel Aviv’s so-called Iron Dome missile system had been tested.

Last month, a report said European countries were increasingly purchasing weapons from Israeli arms manufacturers, promoting their products on the grounds that they have been “field-tested” against Palestinians.

The report came as 29 Israeli arms makers displayed their military technologies earlier this week at the Eurosatory conference in Paris, one of the world’s largest land defense exhibitions.

French purchases of weaponry from Israeli firms more than doubled in 2015 compared to a year earlier, amounting to $355 million.

In 2016, Israel is projected to overtake Italy as the world’s seventh-largest weapons exporter, the report said, citing IHS Jane’s.

Many of the Israeli arms technologies being sold to Europe are used in the repression of Palestinians, including in the destructive 2014 war on the besieged and densely-populated Gaza Strip.

The war left over 2,200 dead — mostly civilians — while injuring thousands more and displacing nearly 500,000 people, according to UN figures.

Human Rights Watch has criticized the purchase of field-tested Israeli weapons, saying the group has documented “violations of the rules of war that appear to rise to the level of war crimes in Gaza using some of these weapons.”

July 21, 2016 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism, Wars for Israel | European Union, Human rights, Zionism | Leave a comment

Lawmaker hints at US role in turmoil around Russian borders

RT | July 21, 2016

The recent violent events in Turkey, Armenia and Kazakhstan could have been provoked by special services “from across the ocean,” a Russian MP working on the committee in charge of Eurasian integration has commented.

“In my opinion these are all links in one chain. The events in Turkey, Armenia and in Aktobe, Kazakhstan, are all connected and were all provoked from abroad. I think that special services from across the ocean are dealing with these issues, destabilizing the situation in these countries,” the deputy chair of the State Duma Committee for Eurasian Integration and Commonwealth of Independent States, Kazbek Taisayev, told Life news portal.

The MP said that Western nations were not interested in a calm situation near Russian borders and took steps to prevent such developments.

“As soon as we start a normal dialogue with our neighbors, something immediately happens in these countries,” he said.

“We need to unite our efforts, I think that we have enough political will to render mutual help to poor nations,” Taisayev stated.

The comment came shortly after a group of radical nationalists stormed and captured a police station in Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, killing one policeman and taking several more hostage. The attackers demanded the release of Armenian opposition figure Jirayr Sefilyan, who was detained last month after authorities reportedly uncovered a plot to seize several buildings and telecommunication facilities in Yerevan.

The standoff continues and on Wednesday night Armenian police used tear gas to dissolve a rally of Sefiyan’s supporters in central Yerevan.

In early June, a group of radicals raided two gun shops, hijacked a bus and attacked a military base in the city of Aktobe, Kazakhstan, killing at least five people and wounding 10 more. Police fought off the terrorists, killing four of them and arresting seven more.

This week two people allegedly connected with radical Islamist groups opened fire at a police station in Kazakhstan’s largest city, Almaty, killing seven people and injuring nine more. President Nursultan Nazarbaev has called the attack an act of terrorism.

On July 15, an attempted military coup took place in Turkey. A large group of military officers attempted to seize power, displacing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. However, their plans were thwarted by police and thousands of ordinary people who took to the streets of Ankara and Istanbul. According to Turkish authorities 246 government supporters and at least 24 coup plotters were killed during the conflict. Thousands of Turkish military and law enforcement personnel were arrested and fired in the large-scale purge that followed these events.

On Wednesday, Erdogan announced the introduction of a state of emergency in Turkey for three months.

Erdogan and the government have said that the attempted coup was masterminded by Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen who is currently living in the United States. Ankara also demanded Gulen’s extradition.

5 killed, 9 injured in Almaty terrorist attack on police station (GRAPHIC)

July 21, 2016 Posted by aletho | Militarism | Armenia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkey, United States | Leave a comment

Before Prosecuting Iraq War Criminals, US Must Deal With Afghan War Crime

By Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould | Sputnik | July 20, 2016

Iraq war criminals deserve to be prosecuted. Britain’s Chilcot report is only the most recent example of a worthy cause needing to be addressed. But in 1979, long before false intelligence was used to justify the Iraq war, a heinous war crime was committed against Afghanistan by President’s Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski.

It’s not just Brzezinski who is culpable. It was the Washington bureaucracy that enabled Brzezinski to activate his Machiavellian plot of intentionally drawing the Soviets into his “Afghan Trap.”

How the Washington bureaucracy enabled Brzezinski’s scheme and why it’s still important today

Once the Soviets took Brzezinski’s bait and crossed the border into Afghanistan on December 27, 1979 the fates of both countries were doomed. As if in a trance, a complacent bureaucracy turned a blind eye to the lack of proof of the American claims that the Soviet invasion was a step towards world domination. Within days the beltway became a cheering squad, enabling Brzezinski to fulfill his imperial dream of giving the Soviets their own “Vietnam.” The bureaucracy’s motivation was simple. Brzezinski was winning the only game in town, the Cold War against the “Evil Empire.” The fact that Brzezinski’s deceitful plot could lead to the death of Afghanistan as a sovereign state did not concern Washington’s elites, either from the right or the left. Predictably, Afghans’ lives have been turned into an endless nightmare that festers to this day. Not only is Brzezinski’s scheme continuing to undermine Afghanistan’s sovereignty, his Russophobia also drives NATO’s unjustified aggression towards Russia today!

How Brzezinski activated his Russophobic Imperial Dream that now dominates Washington

In 1977 when Brzezinski stepped into the Oval office as National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter, his Russophobia was a well-known fact from Washington to Moscow. It was no surprise that he was not content with the American moderates’ pragmatic Cold War acceptance of coexistence with the Soviet state. The Polish born Brzezinski represented the ascendency of a radical new breed of compulsive xenophobic Eastern European intellectual bent on holding Soviet/American policy hostage to their pre-World War II world view. According to Brzezinski biographer Patrick Vaughan, Brzezinski rejected the very legitimacy of the Soviet Union itself, calling it “a cauldron of conquered nationalities brutally consolidated over centuries of Russian expansion.”

Racism is not a basis for a rational foreign policy

A phobia is defined as an extreme or irrational fear. Therefore it is reasonable to define a Russophobe as one who has an irrational fear of Russians. Simply put, a Russophobe hates Russians for being Russian! That’s called racism, pure and simple, not the basis of creating rational foreign policy. The Beltway should have demanded that a well-known Russophobe like Brzezinski back his claims with proof that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was the first step to taking over the world. Instead, the Washington Bureaucracy dined out on his fantasy and we have been living with the consequences ever since.

The Bureaucracy knows Brzezinski has always been a Russophobe

Paul Warnke, President Carter’s SALT II negotiator put Brzezinski’s racial bias this way in an interview we conducted with him in 1993. “It was almost an ethnic thing with Zbig, basically that inbred Polish attitude toward the Russians. And that of course that was what frustrated the Carter Administration. [Secretary of State] Vance felt very much the way that I did. Brzezinski felt the opposite. And Carter couldn’t decide which one of them he was going to follow. So it adds up to a recipe for indecision.” Warnke went on to say that he believed the Soviets would never have invaded Afghanistan in the first place if Carter had not fallen victim to Brzezinski’s irrational attitude toward détente and his undermining of SALT II. In our own research into the causes of the Soviet invasion we did prove Warnke’s assumption that there would have been no invasion without Brzezinski’s willful use of entrapment.

At a conference conducted by the Nobel Institute in 1995, a high-level group of former US and Soviet officials faced off over the question: Why did the Soviets invade Afghanistan? Former National Security Council staff member Dr. Gary Sick established that the US had assigned Afghanistan to the Soviet sphere of influence years before the invasion. So why did the US choose an ideologically-biased position when there were any number of verifiable fact-based explanations for why the Soviets invaded? To former CIA Director Stansfield Turner, responsibility could only be located in the personality of one specific individual. “Brzezinski’s name comes up here every five minutes; but nobody has as yet mentioned that he is a Pole.” Turner said. “[T]he fact that Brzezinski is a Pole, it seems to me was terribly important.” What Turner was suggesting in 1995 was that Brzezinski’s well-known Russophobia led him to take unjustifiable advantage of a Soviet miscalculation.

The conference revealed that “self-fulfilling prophecies,” “a dubious deductive apparatus,” and “decisions that provoked as often as they deterred” provided the operating system for more than a decade of Cold War policy under Presidents Carter and Reagan. Numerous scholars pondered Brzezinski’s decision-making process before, during and after the Soviet invasion. Dr. Carol Saivetz of Harvard University testified, “Whether or not Zbig was from Poland or from someplace else, he had a world view, and he tended to interpret events as they unfolded in light of it. To some extent, his fears became self-fulfilling prophecies… Nobody looked at Afghanistan and what was happening there all by itself.”

But it wasn’t until the 1998 Nouvel Observateur interview that Brzezinski boasted that he had provoked the invasion, by getting Carter to authorize a presidential finding to intentionally suck the Soviets in, six months before Moscow considered invading. Yet, despite Brzezinski’s admission, Washington’s entire political spectrum continued to embrace his original false narrative, that the Soviets were embarked on world conquest.

Brzezinski’s Russophobia is still the basis of U.S. foreign policy towards Russia

For Brzezinski, getting the Soviets to invade Afghanistan was an opportunity to shift Washington toward an unrelenting hard line against the Soviet Union. By using deceit combined with covert action, he created the conditions needed to provoke a Soviet defensive response, which he then used as evidence of Soviet expansion. However, after Brzezinski’s exaggerations and outright lies about Soviet intentions became accepted, they found a home in America’s imagination and never left. US foreign policy, since that time, has operated in a delusion of triumphalism, provoking international incidents and then capitalizing on the chaos.

Brzezinski’s current status as the almost mystical “wise elder” of American foreign policy should be viewed with extreme caution given the means by which he achieved it. Today, the legacy of Brzezinski’s Russophobic ideological agenda continues through many acolytes including his two sons, as they carry on the Brzezinski lineage by aggressively pushing beltway polices towards dangerous confrontations with Russia. Tragically, Brzezinski’s legacy also lives on in the failed state of Afghanistan as the hated Taliban are poised to take over again. While all this horror is happening to the Afghan people, NATO forces are using Brzezinski’s homeland of Poland to push provocatively against Russia’s border.

The role that Brzezinski played, as well as those officials who enabled him to cause the death of Afghanistan while intentionally triggering the rise of Islamic extremism, must be examined. Building to a trial, even in absentia, will begin the desperately needed process of breaking the trance-like hold Brzezinski’s Russophobia still has on Washington’s foreign policy that is denying its core role in creating Islamic extremism and driving America to the brink of nuclear war with Russia.

No matter whom the next president is, if we are to save America, this forty year old crime against Afghanistan must first be made right.

July 21, 2016 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Afghanistan, NATO, Russia, United States | Leave a comment

Kremlin Regrets UK Prime Minister May’s Statement on Russian Threat

Sputnik – July 19, 2016

Russia regrets British Prime Minister Theresa May’s latest statements on the perceived Russian threat to the United Kingdom, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday.

May cited a “very real” threat from Russia and North Korea that the UK faced, as she advanced her argument on Monday in favor of renewing the aging Trident nuclear deterrent. British lawmakers voted later that day to approve the multibillion-dollar program to build four Vanguard-class nuclear submarines.

“The Kremlin regards these statements with regret. Apparently Mrs. Prime Minister has not yet fully caught up with the course of international affairs. Russia, in fact, is one of the main guarantors of international stability and nuclear security, strategic security, and this is an absolutely indisputable fact,” Peskov told reporters.

Peskov, noting Russia’s active role in the non-proliferation process, voiced hope that “an objective point of view with regard to our country would prevail” within May’s administration.

July 19, 2016 Posted by aletho | Militarism | Russia, UK | Leave a comment

Neocon Schizophrenia

When friends of friends are enemies

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • July 19, 2016

A friend recently observed to me that it is ironic that the neoconservatives, whose bottom line foreign policy issue is the uncritical support of Israel, should be obsessed with constantly confronting and goading Russia even though Tel Aviv and Moscow get along just fine. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has traveled to Russia three times in the past year and he and President Vladimir Putin reportedly understand each other very well.

To be sure, part of the reasoning behind the Israeli offering the hand of friendship is certainly demographic and electoral as many Israelis are Russian in origin and also characteristically strongly support recent right wing governments. They are regarded as essential members of Netanyahu’s coalition, but there is clearly more to it than counting votes.

From the Israeli point of view, Russia, though allied with Syria and friendly with Iran, does not threaten Israel and it also is an available resource to help Tel Aviv develop, refine and market its claimed offshore energy resources. Israel, increasingly isolated because of its repression of the Palestinians, is always eager to make new friends who will help protect it in international fora, witness Netanyahu’s recent charm offensive in Africa.

From the Russian point of view, Israel is a useful friend given its unparalleled access to the U.S. Congress, the White House and the American media. The Netanyahu government also understands Moscow’s concerns about radical Islam in the Arab world and Central Asia and is willing to share information that it obtains to contain the problem. For both Israel and Russia terrorism is not an abstraction – it sits right on and even inside their borders.

Even though Israel is undercutting the neocon plan to isolate and punish Russia at every opportunity people like Bill Kristol, the Kagans and John Bolton make no effort to criticize Netanyahu for his temerity. It is a policy of deliberately looking the other way and it underlines the essential phoniness of what the neoconservatives stand for. To put it bluntly, the neocons claim to support American military dominance globally for altruistic reasons but the reality is that they are largely in it for the money as well as the political and media access to power that money brings with it in contemporary America. What would Sunday morning talk shows be like without a beaming Bill Kristol?

And the cash for the neocons comes mostly from defense contractors who are eager to have a clearly defined serious enemy to boost military spending coupled with an articulate group of pundits who insist on seeing threats worldwide and are willing to promote that viewpoint. Keeping the cash flowing to fund that nice corner office with a view of the Capitol even trumps the Israel relationship but the neocons are careful to make sure the two issues never bump up against each other when they are fulminating against Obama’s national security policies.

We are currently witnessing neocon perfidy at its most refined. They are jumping over themselves to support Hillary Clinton for president in spite of her manifest corruption and unreliability because Donald Trump has threatened to do two things: first he has expressed his unwillingness to enter into new wars in the Middle East or anywhere else and second he has stated that Washington should be even handed when attempting to negotiate peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Both are anathema to the neocons and Trump has further complicated matters by indicating that he would be willing to talk with Vladimir Putin. If Trump were to win, many neocons would likely find themselves having to look for a real job, a terrifying prospect for people with few skills to fall back on.

Hillary Clinton on the other hand will do what is right from the neocon point of view – confronting the world one nation at a time starting with Iran, which she has threatened to “obliterate.” She will also need to boost defense spending to support her wars, will stiff Vlad, and will allow Bibi to move in down the hall at the White House as Bill will often be out on the town and his room in the East Wing is not needed.

Hillary’s bellicosity guarantees that the military industrial complex cash machine will continue to operate full speed, driving scores of leading neocons to announce that they will vote for her. Reuel Marc Gerecht, one of the neocons’ favorite Iran bashers, concluded in an article appearing in a recent issue of the Weekly Standard that Hillary’s “not a neoconservative, but Hillary Clinton isn’t uncomfortable with American power. Unlike Obama, she isn’t the apologetic type. Whatever her opinions were in the Vietnam era, she doesn’t now view the Cold War ambivalently. She’s certain that might married right in that struggle, even in the Third World, where Obama and many on the left have serious doubts.” I’m not completely sure what that pompous bit of prose is supposed to mean but Gerecht in a backhanded fashion also provided what is for me a ringing endorsement of Donald Trump, though he of course meant to do the opposite having stated his intention to vote for Hillary, writing “Trump is probably the most anti-interventionist presidential candidate since Eugene V. Debs, the indefatigable socialist, in 1912.”

The issue of Israel has, of course, been somewhat hidden during the lead-up to the major party nominating conventions, with everyone inevitably expressing his or her deep affection for Netanyahu, but it has surfaced somewhat in the Democratic Party platform deliberations where Cornel West and James Zogby attempted to introduce some language critical of the occupation of the former Palestinian West Bank. They failed in that attempt though it is possible that something similar will be introduced from the floor during the actual convention. It will undoubtedly also fail even if it succeeds as it did in 2012 when the presiding chairman seemed to hear more “yea” votes than anyone else present in the hall.

The Republicans, still firmly under control of the neocon foreign policy clique, have outdone the Democrats. On July 12^th the platform committee, with input from Jason Greenblatt and David Friedman, advisers to presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, approved a plank on Israel that does not accept creation of a Palestinian state at all unless Israel decides to take action to permit that to develop. On that and all other issues there will be “no daylight” between the U.S. and Israel. The subcommittee that drafted the position reportedly approved it by an overwhelming majority followed by a standing ovation.

The document calls Israel a “beacon of democracy and humanity.” It states that “support for Israel is an expression of Americanism” and declares that the U.S. Embassy will be moved to Jerusalem. It denies that Israel is an “occupier,” and calls for legislation to combat the “anti-Semitic” Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. The plank could have been written by Netanyahu’s Foreign Ministry or perhaps by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and basically cedes to Israel control over the direction of U.S. foreign policy in a critical and unstable region.

And there has been additional activity in Congress lately regarding Iran, with a large sale of Boeing jets being blocked and three additional bills submitted for consideration that will punish that country by, among other steps, denying it access to international finance. Indeed, the unrelenting neocon hostility towards Iran is a subset of the pro-Israel bias as Tehran is perceived as a problem for Tel Aviv while the arguments made to suggest that Iran threatens Europe and the United States lack any plausibility.

The creation of enemies unnecessarily, as applied to both Iran and Russia, is a symptom of the neoconservative disease. It is a pointless search for full spectrum military dominance that panders to an inchoate fear that the U.S. is surrounded by foes that can only be dealt with by decisive kinetic action which will require large defense budgets. Today’s neo-conservatism is a movement born from a curious amalgam of interests that have come together at a time when the United States is in reality militarily unchallenged worldwide and is threatened neither by any other country nor by the pinpricks inflicted by terrorists. Neocons and their associated liberal interventionists have to an extent dominated the foreign and defense policy thinking of the two major parties and most of the media but their message is ultimately based on emphasizing national insecurity, which in the current context is somewhat inexplicable. The United States has never been more secure internationally, if not domestically, and the only problems it is confronting are themselves part and parcel of the imbroglios that have been engineered by the interventionists and their friends. Speculation is that a Trump victory will actually end their dominance. If that is so, it might just be sufficient reason to vote for Donald Trump.

July 19, 2016 Posted by aletho | Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Israel, Middle East, Russia, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

Progressive Norman Solomon Joins with Neocon Robert Kagan

By John V. Walsh | Dissident Voice | July 15, 2016

Norman Solomon betwixt the political sheets with Robert Kagan? How could that be? Has our political world turned upside down?

Driving south to Mountain View in my new home state of California, I tuned into KPFA, the Pacifica outlet in the Bay Area. Norman Solomon, longtime prominent figure in Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) and co-founder of “Roots Action” was being interviewed on a program called “Talkies.” Just a few hours earlier Bernie Sanders had endorsed Hillary Clinton, betraying the millions who voted for him (and voted against her) and losing the respect of many millions more.

On air Solomon was commenting on the termination of Bernie Sanders’s milquetoast campaign against Hillary Clinton. And he was contrasting Hillary unfavorably with Bernie in a very detailed way with lots of references to Hillary’s policies. No personality analysis, no psychobabble. He mentioned that perhaps the most prominent neocon these days, Robert Kagan, was supporting Hillary Clinton for President. Yes, the same Kagan who calls for ever more US wars in the Middle East and for confrontation with the second mightiest nuclear power, Russia. Solomon pointed out quite correctly that Kagan had even said that Hillary shared his beliefs, but she would call them something other than neoconservatism.”

Then in almost the next breath Solomon called on Bernie’s followers to support Hillary for President. No, not Jill Stein, but Hillary.

No sooner did he say that than a caller to the show got on air and asked a very pointed question. The caller asked Solomon why he was throwing in with Robert Kagan. Solomon seemed mystified. The caller reminded him that, by his own admission minutes before, he and Kagan were now backing the same candidate – Hillary.

Solomon promptly went berserk. He quickly changed the subject to Trump who was not mentioned by the caller. Moreover, Solomon had no substantive comments on Trump, merely responding with psychobabble that Trump is “crazy.” The KPFA host quickly shut the caller off before he could utter any more heresy. (So much for real discussion on what passes for the media of the left these days.)

It may seem harsh on poor Norm to point out the sleazy company he is now keeping. But facts are facts. Both Norm and Robert Kagan will be supporting Hillary. And the main reason for Kagan’s opposition to Trump is quite clear. Trump is not a reliable warmonger. Thus Trump is a threat to the further depredations of the US Empire and the machinations of Israel which Kagan so loves.

It is fully understandable for progressives to back Jill Stein. It is a morally and ethically defensible position for a progressive – as is staying at home and not voting at all. In that regard the Bernie or Bust people have been right on the money. But backing a mass murderer like Hillary, who is intent on doing more of the same and threatens the whole human race with a bellicosity that may lead on to World War, is not morally defensible.

To be fair to Norm, he was not advocating a vote for Hillary in “safe states,” ie., states where she is sure to win, but “only” in states, where she needs every vote she can get. In other words vote for Hillary wherever your vote will count. Mr. Kagan would certainly rub his bloated hands in satisfaction with Solomon’s recommendation.

Some may feel that this is all very unfair to poor Norm and the many fake “progressive” leaders who will soon join him in embracing Kagan’s candidate, Hillary – if they have not already done so. Watch for other “progressive” leaders to jump on board the Hillary bandwagon in the next few days and weeks. Norm is not alone. Progressives who do not like this kind of thing should speak up now and do so forcefully.

What makes such a position not only unethical but downright criminal is that Hillary has labeled Putin as “Hitler.” You only do one thing with a Hitler. You go to war with him. So Hillary puts the entire human race at risk of nuclear conflict. There is no greater evil than that. Many people not just former DoD capo, William Perry, are pointing out that we are now closer to nuclear conflict than we have been since the Cuban Missile Crisis. And Hillary is the most likely to get us into such an Armageddon.

So Norman, as a leader amongst progressives where are you and others like you taking them?

John V. Walsh can be reached at john.endwar@gmail.com.

July 16, 2016 Posted by aletho | Militarism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | KPFA, Norman Solomon, Robert Kagan, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

Canada’s Liberal Government Joins NATO’s War Escalation

By Roger Annis | A Socialist In Canada | July 15, 2016

Canadians who hoped the federal election last October 19 would usher in change to the aggressive, foreign policy of the defeated Conservative government are wondering what happened to their wishes. The transition in imperialist foreign policy from the Harper Conservatives to the Justin Trudeau-led Liberals has been utterly seamless, if not predictable.

In the Middle East, Canada’s support to ‘regime change’ in Syria stands. The Liberals stirred controversy during the election when they promised to end Canada’s participation in the U.S.-led military intervention in northern Iraq. But surprise: while the Liberals did carry out a promised withdrawal of the six fighter jets that weren’t doing much anyway in the skies over Syria and Iraq, they ended up tripling the presence of Canadian soldiers on the ground in Iraq, to approximately 200.

And the new government made unpleasant waves when it upheld the export permit approval by the Conservatives for the U.S. arms manufacturer General Dynamics to sell $15 billion worth of the armoured personnel transport vehicles it manufactures in London, Ontario to the dictatorship in Saudi Arabia.

Sabre rattling by the new-same-old government in Ottawa has been expressed most fully during and after the NATO summit meeting held in Warsaw, Poland on July 8 and 9.

Canada and the NATO war summit meeting in Warsaw, Poland

The NATO summit approved a final communiqué which places the military alliance on a collision course with Russia. The communiqué voices NATO’s determination to escalate its threats against Russia, using the pretexts of an alleged “annexation” of Crimea by Russia and military intervention by it in eastern Ukraine.[1]

Clause five of the 138 clauses in the communiqué reads:

Russia’s aggressive actions, including provocative military activities in the periphery of NATO territory and its demonstrated willingness to attain political goals by the threat and use of force, are a source of regional instability, fundamentally challenge the Alliance, have damaged Euro-Atlantic security, and threaten our long-standing goal of a Europe whole, free, and at peace.

Clause ten details the alleged transgressions of Russia:

Russia’s destabilising actions and policies include: the ongoing illegal and illegitimate annexation of Crimea, which we do not and will not recognise and which we call on Russia to reverse; the violation of sovereign borders by force; the deliberate destabilisation of eastern Ukraine; large-scale snap exercises contrary to the spirit of the Vienna Document, and provocative military activities near NATO borders, including in the Baltic and Black Sea regions and the Eastern Mediterranean; its irresponsible and aggressive nuclear rhetoric, military concept and underlying posture; and its repeated violations of NATO Allied airspace. In addition, Russia’s military intervention, significant military presence and support for the regime in Syria, and its use of its military presence in the Black Sea to project power into the Eastern Mediterranean have posed further risks and challenges for the security of Allies and others.[2]

Ottawa announced at the summit it will send hundreds of additional soldiers to eastern Europe to join the latest NATO provocation: it will lead one of the four, new, proto-combat brigades being established by NATO in countries bordering Russia. Canada will land some 450 troops in Latvia.

Ottawa is also re-equipping its entire army, including its soon-to-be Latvia force on the Russian border, with anti-tank missiles.

Canada’s voice has been one of the loudest amidst NATO’s anti-Russia rhetoric as first the Conservatives, now the Liberals pander to the extremist minority among the estimated 1.2 million Canadians of Ukrainian origin. That pandering was on full display in Ukraine when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau paid a visit to the country immediately following the NATO summit.

Ongoing intervention in Ukraine

The Latvia intervention adds to Canada’s existing military presence in Ukraine. Since last year, Canadian, British and U.S. soldiers began an intervention into the country consisting, in the first instance, of training the Ukrainian army and extremist paramilitaries at the so-called International Peacekeeping and Security Center in western Ukraine. Canada has 200 troops in the country.

The military training is designed to improve Ukraine’s capacity to wage the civil war it launched against the populations of the Donbass region in the east of the country in April 2014. There, the large majority of the population rejected a violent seizure of power by a right-wing coalition of conservatives, extreme-rightists and neo-Nazis in February 2014. When the new regime in Kyiv sent soldiers and extremist paramilitaries to eastern Ukraine to quash civil resistance against the ‘Maidan coup’, self-defense forces were hastily thrown up and military conflict ensued.

Prime Minister Trudeau visited the military training center on July 11. His media entourage reported a disturbing insight into what the foreign soldiers are up to there. A July 13 article by the Canadian Press‘ Lee Berthiaume wrote:

Trudeau flew into Lviv in western Ukraine before driving to a nearby military base for a first-hand look at the work of 200 Canadian soldiers who have been training the Ukrainian army since last summer.

From a distance, Trudeau, his son Xavier and defence chief Gen. Jonathan Vance watched through binoculars as a Soviet-era armoured personnel carrier led a group of Canadian and Ukrainian soldiers toward a wooden building. The air shook as the vehicle’s cannon fired several bursts in quick succession.

The troops then moved away from the vehicle and spread out in a line facing the building. Four Canadians followed close behind as the eight Ukrainians slowly closed on the building while firing their rifles before placing an explosive inside and setting it off.

The exercise was the type of attack those Ukrainian soldiers could soon be conducting on their own in the east of their country, where the army has been fighting Russian-backed separatists for more than two years.

Trudeau’s son Xavier is nine years old. It’s not known what the “building” in the training exercise represents in real life. Ukraine’s ‘Anti-Terrorist Operation’ in the east heavily targets residential neighbourhoods. In addition to houses and apartment buildings, schools, daycare centers and even medical centers have been struck by Ukrainian tank and other artillery shelling. The ongoing reports of the Donetsk International News Agency document the havoc. (Latest report, dated July 11, is here).

Effective anti-aircraft defense on the rebel side is the only reason why Ukraine has not employed fighter aircraft against its nominal citizens, as NATO-member Turkey is doing in its civil war against the Kurdish population in the east of that country.

Earlier the same day, Trudeau addressed Canadian soldiers about their work in Ukraine. He said, “It has been a long time since Canada had to defend our valour and defend our territory. But we need to continue to work with those who are fighting for democracy and their territorial integrity.”

Trudeau voiced the usual NATO stories about Russia’s actions in the region since the Maidan coup. “Russia has not been a positive partner,” he told his hosts in Ukraine, speaking of the situation in eastern Ukraine. “It has not been moving appropriately on things like ceasefires and international observers.”

While in Ukraine, Trudeau also signed a “free trade” agreement with Ukraine. The agreement is unlikely to change much in the small amount of trade between the two countries. According to the Canadian government, Canada exported some $210 million in goods to Ukraine in 2015, including pharmaceuticals, fish and seafood and coking coal. Ukraine sent to Canada some $67 million the same year, including fertilizers, iron and steel and anthracite coal.

Meanwhile, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion trundled off to Latvia following the Warsaw summit to voice his own harsh language. He told a press conference in Riga, “A neighboring country [Russia] chooses to throw its weight around and cause trouble and international instability. Latvia and Canada, together with our NATO allies, answer the call both for strong deterrence and strong dialogue [sic].

“We will stay strong as long as the relationship has not been changed for something positive – as long as Russia is a troublemaker in the region we need to be strong together and Canada will be part of it.”

Dion said Ukraine, too, has been “confronted directly with aggression from our shared neighbour.”

What about the Minsk-2 ceasefire?

As with its NATO partners, Canada’s government tells lies when it comes to the ongoing violations by Kyiv of the ceasefire agreement for eastern Ukraine that was signed in Belarus on February 12, 2015.

Ukraine has failed to live up to all of the 13 clauses of Minsk-2. This was noted (though understated) in the aforementioned Canadian Press report when it said, “[Trudeau] called Russia’s recent actions in the region “illegitimate” and “illegal”, and voiced strong support for NATO members in Eastern Europe as well as Ukraine, despite rampant corruption in Ukraine and its failure to implement parts [sic] of a peace deal with Russia and the rebels.”

Ukraine continues its military attacks against Donetsk and Lugansk (the two former provinces of Ukraine which make up the historic region called Donbass). It does not recognize the elected authorities of the people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, and so no progress has been made on a political settlement, including a regional election. Prisoner exchanges have been very partial. And so on. (Text of Minsk-2 ceasefire here.)

Canada, the U.S. and the rest of NATO have nothing to say about Ukraine’s dereliction of duty with the ceasefire. On the contrary, they accuse Russia of failing to live up to the agreement, even though Russia, with France and Germany, is but a guarantor, not a signatory, of the agreement. As the Russian government has patiently explained for the past 18 months, only the Ukrainian government and the rebel side against which it is fighting can and should decide what happens on Ukrainian soil.

The criticism of Russia by Canada is carefully orchestrated to shield the true state of affairs. In 2014, following the Maidan coup, Russia stood by the people in Crimea and then in Donbass who rose up to oppose the coup. This is what has infuriated the NATO countries. According to their script, Russia is supposed to act like the other countries of the region and meekly accept NATO diktats. In this case, Russia was supposed to stand aside and allow an illegal, right-wing regime in Kyiv to wage a violent campaign against civil dissent opposing the new regime’s pro-Europe, anti-Russia and pro-austerity course to proceed. Oh, and Russia was supposed to meekly give up its historic, centuries old naval base in Crimea and turn the keys over to NATO.

The NATO powers are not used to defiance. They don’t like the “bad” example that Russia’s defiance sets for people or countries in Europe who may wish to battle EU-dictated austerity and violations of national sovereignty, as, for example, the people in Greece and, more recently, in Britain are trying to do.

The other large, longstanding factor at play in eastern Europe is the historic, U.S.-led drive by NATO to weaken and dismantle first the Soviet Union and now the Russia Federation. Events in Ukraine and Crimea have given the U.S., its allies and pliant media new propaganda ammunition to bamboozle world opinion and renew the post-WW2, not-so-cold-anymore war.

Media and Parliamentary opposition in Canada join the pro-war chorus

The obfuscation over Minsk-2 and the dangerous, ‘new cold war’ backdrop rely on a compliant mainstream media to dissuade questioning if not opposition by ordinary citizens. As in the U.S. and Europe, mainstream media in Canada does little or nothing to accurately inform the public of the true state of affairs in Ukraine and Crimea and the broader region. Instead, it is increasingly parroting whatever line emanates from NATO country capitals while adding its own unique stamp to the mix.

The national daily Globe and Mail editorialized on July 13 in favour of the Liberal’s latest moves. It wrote, ” The risk of a new cold war, let alone a third world war in Eastern Europe, is small, but Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, and its thinly disguised subversion of order in eastern Ukraine, shows how willing President Vladimir Putin is to make serious mischief…

“The risk of leaving a whole set of countries [the Baltic region] virtually undefended would be most unacceptable.”[3]

The same compliance goes for Canadian Parliamentarians. A case in point is an op-ed commentary by Thomas Mulcair published on July 12 in the Toronto Star, Canada’s largest-circulation daily newspaper.

Mulcair is the leader of Canada’s social democratic party, the New Democratic Party, the third largest party in Parliament. He writes in the Star, “There can be no doubt Russia poses a significant threat to the people of Eastern Europe. In March, the United Nations estimated that at least 9,160 civilians have died in Ukraine since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.” Note the writer’s named starting date of the tragic deaths of thousands in eastern Ukraine: not the launching of Ukraine’s civil war (‘Anti-Terrorist Operation’) in April-May 2014 but the Crimea referendum in March.

Mulcair writes further, “Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown himself to be a volatile leader, not above searching for any pretext to escalate into violence.”

The op-ed expresses some unease with the decision of Canada to join and head up one of NATO’s projected combat brigades. Parliament has not been consulted, Mulcair complains. And he worries, “If military buildup becomes our only way of communicating with Russians, there is a real risk that falling into a permanent deterrence mode will lead to escalation and the re-emergence of a dangerous Cold War-style deadlock.”

But the headline to the commentary summarizes the essence. It reads, ‘Military-only response to Russia is dangerous’. In other words, a military posture against Russia is needed, yes, and so are additional measures. To wit, Mulcair says Canada should extend its sanctions against Russia’s economy. He urges adoption of a version of the ‘Magnitsky Act’ which was adopted in the United States in 2012 and which extended the freezing of assets and banning of travel by Russian political and business leaders. The law is named after Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian accountant working in the financial industry who died while in prison in Russia in 2009.

Evidently, Mulcair has not viewed the new documentary film exposing the propaganda campaign behind the U.S. law. The film is titled ‘The Magnitsky Act. Behind the Scenes’. The Russian filmmaker began his documentary quest by presenting the accepted story of Magnitsky as a fighter against endemic corruption and favouritism in the Russian government. But along the way, he discovered a very different view of events in which the Russian government happened to be battling, not coddling, corruption, in this case by going after a set of foreign and Russian businessmen who had hired Magnitsky to manage their books.

Mulcair concludes his commentary with a repeat that it is “the Russian threat” which is at fault for escalating tensions in eastern Europe and that more than military means alone are needed to meet the “threat”.

Such is the state of official political opposition in Canada today on the Ukraine file, where ‘opposition member of Parliament’ means ‘compliant member of Parliament’.

Oppose war and militarism

Since last year’s election in Canada, the language coming out of Ottawa with respect to Russia has shifted ever so slightly. Stéphane Dion has been speaking of the need for “dialogue” with Russia. But nothing with respect to policy has changed. Canada is stepping up its military intervention in Ukraine and eastern Europe. It maintains the U.S. and EU-led sanctions targeting Russia’s political leaders and business men and women. It still calls Crimea’s referendum vote in 2014 to rejoin the Russia Federation a Russian “annexation”. It still accuses Russia of conducting a military intervention into eastern Ukraine.

The larger danger in all of NATO’s war posturing is the threat of nuclear war. Three of the countries ganging up against Russia are nuclear powers–the United States, France and Britain. Each of them are busily renewing and improving their nuclear arsenals, led by the estimated trillion dollars which the U.S. is slated to spend on new nuclear arms technologies, which it hopes might provide it with a cherished, first-strike nuclear capacity.

Progressive social and political forces in Canada that should be opposing the war posturing in eastern Europe have been largely silent. That’s because they have dug themselves into a hole during the past two and a half years by ignoring events in and around the Maidan coup in Ukraine or, worse, by buying into the NATO rhetoric of ‘aggressive Russia’ and ‘imperialist Russia’. Ignorance and prejudice about Russia, rather than factual analysis, rules the day.

As Canadians begin to rebuild an antiwar movement out of the ashes of the old, three key demands should come to the fore. One is to end the sanctions, threats and outright attacks by NATO and Ukraine against Russia, Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Two is to demand that the government in Kyiv implement the terms of the ceasefire agreement it signed in Minsk in February 2015.

Thirdly and fourthly, it is high time to renew two historic demands of the peace and antiwar movements over the decades which, sadly, have a new urgency:
Abolish nuclear weapons!

Canada out of the NATO alliance!

Notes:

[1] On March 16, 2014, the people of Crimea voted overwhelmingly to secede from Ukraine and rejoin the Russian Federation. The vote was conducted by the elected, autonomous assembly of Crimea. The March 2014 referendum was prompted by the violent overthrow one month earlier of the elected president of Ukraine. Victor Yanukovych had received the large majority of votes in Crimea in Ukraine’s 2010 presidential election.

Crimea was annexed to then-Soviet Ukraine in 1954 by a decision of the government of the USSR in order to facilitate post-WW2 reconstruction. But the Crimean people were given no vote on the matter.

[2] Clause ten of the NATO communiqué introduces a novel concept into international diplomacy: not only do nation states and countries (or parts thereof) have “borders”; apparently, self-proclaimed military alliances have borders, too. Clause ten of the NATO communiqué refers to “NATO borders [sic], including in the Baltic and Black Sea regions and the Eastern Mediterranean”.

[3] With one exception–the Toronto Star–the entirety of Canada’s print mainstream media supported the re-election of Stephen Harper’s Conservatives in the October 19, 2015 election.

July 15, 2016 Posted by aletho | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Canada, European Union, NATO, Thomas Mulcair, Ukraine | Leave a comment

US missile defense blasted as ‘flawed,’ wasteful & dangerous

RT | July 14, 2016

The US missile defense system deployed in Alaska and California does not work, suffers from “fundamental flaws,” and endangers the country by encouraging reckless foreign policy, the Union of Concerned Scientists says.

In a new 60-page report, Shielded from Oversight: The Disastrous U.S. Approach to Strategic Missile Defense, the union takes aim at the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system, set up under President George W. Bush but later embraced by the Obama administration.

The report, signed by UCS researchers Laura Grego, George Lewis and David Wright, “found fundamental flaws throughout the missile defense program, from its administration and oversight procedures to the tough technical realities of defending against a nuclear strike.”

As part of the efforts to de-escalate the Cold War, the ABM treaty of 1972 outlawed missile defense research. In 2002, the US withdrew from the treaty and established the Missile Defense Agency. The GMD system was intended to defend the US from a “limited” nuclear attack by non-superpowers, such as North Korea or Iran, the report noted. To make it operational as quickly as possible, the MDA was exempted from Pentagon procurement and testing requirements, drawing funding from research and development budgets.

The MDA set up two sites, one in Fort Greely, Alaska, and the other at the Vandenberg Air Force base in California, with 30 interceptor missiles deployed by now and another 13 on the way. Fourteen years and $40 billion later, however, the system has failed to demonstrate that it would actually work to defend the US from limited attacks, let alone a general nuclear exchange.

Asked for comment about the report, MDA spokesman Chris Johnson told the Los Angeles Times that the National Missile Defense Act of 1999 called for deploying an effective system “as soon as was technologically possible.”

According to the USC, however, the GMD counter-missiles “consistently failed intercept tests — six out of nine — despite heavily-scripted test conditions,” the report notes. “None of the tests have been operationally realistic.”

Almost all of the interceptors were deployed at the two locations before their design was successfully tested even once, the report says. “Given the problems with the current development process, the GMD is not on a credible path to achieving an operationally useful capability,” the authors conclude.

“US officials have strong incentives to exaggerate the capability of the GMD system to reassure the public and international allies—and have done so, despite its poor test record,” the report adds.

Pursuing a strategic missile defense system may actually make the US less safe, the researchers argued in their recommendations, by “encouraging a riskier foreign policy” as well as “short-circuiting creative thinking about solving strategic problems diplomatically, and by interfering in US efforts to cooperate with other nuclear powers on nuclear threat reduction.”

The scathing analysis of the GMD comes a week after the Los Angeles Times published documents showing that the January 2016 test – lauded by the contractors as a great success – was actually a failure, with the interceptor flying far off course due to a thruster malfunction. One of the Pentagon scientists who spoke to the paper on condition of anonymity described the official reports about the test as “hyperbole, unsupported by any test data.”

The Union of Concerned Scientists was founded in 1969 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, calling for scientific research to be directed away from military technologies and used for “solving pressing environmental and social problems” instead.

July 14, 2016 Posted by aletho | Deception, Militarism | United States | Leave a comment

Will the US increase military spending yet again?

By Dr. Lawrence Wittner | Peace and Health Blog | July 13, 2016

At the present time, an increase in US military spending seems as superfluous as a third leg. The United States, armed with the latest in advanced weaponry, has more military might than any other nation in world history. Moreover, it has begun a $1 trillion program to refurbish its entire nuclear weapons complex. America’s major military rivals, China and Russia, spend only a small fraction of what the United States does on its armed forces―in China’s case about a third and in Russia’s case about a ninth. Furthermore, the economic outlay necessary to maintain this vast US military force constitutes a very significant burden. In fiscal 2015, US military spending ($598.5 billion) accounted for 54 percent of the US government’s discretionary spending.

Certainly most Americans are not clamoring for heightened investments in war and war preparations. According to a Gallup poll conducted in February 2016, only 37 percent of respondents said the US government spent too little “for national defense and military purposes,” compared to 59 percent who said it spent too much (32 percent) or about the right amount (27 percent).

These findings were corroborated by a Pew Research Center survey in April 2016, which reported that 35 percent of American respondents favored increasing US military spending, 24 percent favored decreasing it, and 40 percent favored keeping it the same. Although these latest figures show a rise in support for increasing military spending since 2013, this occurred mostly among Republicans. Indeed, the gap in support for higher military spending between Republicans and Democrats, which stood at 25 percentage points in 2013, rose to 41 points by 2016.

Actually, it appears that, when Americans are given the facts about US military spending, a substantial majority of them favor reducing it. Between December 2015 and February 2016, the nonpartisan Voice of the People, affiliated with the University of Maryland, provided a sample of 7,126 registered voters with information on the current US military budget, as well as leading arguments for and against it. The arguments were vetted for accuracy by staff members of the House and Senate appropriations subcommittees on defense. Then, when respondents were asked their opinion about what should be done, 61 percent said they thought US military spending should be reduced. The biggest cuts they championed were in spending for nuclear weapons and missile defense systems.

When it comes to this year’s presumptive Presidential candidates, however, quite a different picture emerges. The Republican nominee, Donald Trump, though bragging about building “a military that’s gonna be much stronger than it is right now,” has on occasion called for reducing military expenditures. On the other hand, his extraordinarily aggressive foreign policy positions have led defense contractors to conclude that, with Trump in the White House, they can look forward to sharp increases in US military spending. Indeed, insisting that US military power has shrunk to a pitiful level under President Obama, he has promised that, under his presidency, it would be “funded beautifully.” In March 2016, when Trump appeared on Fox News, he made that commitment more explicit by promising to increase military spending.

Given the considerably more dovish orientation of the Democratic electorate, one would expect Hillary Clinton to stake out a position more opposed to a military buildup. But, thus far, she has been remarkably cagey about this issue. In September 2015, addressing a campaign meeting in New Hampshire, Clinton called for the creation of a high-level commission to examine US military spending. But whether the appointment of such a commission augurs increases or decreases remains unclear. Meanwhile, her rather hawkish foreign policy record has convinced observers that she will support a military weapons buildup. The same conclusion can be drawn from the “National Security” section of her campaign website, which declares: “As president, she’ll ensure the United States maintains the best-trained, best-equipped, and strongest military the world has ever known.”

Although the big defense contractors generally regard Clinton, like Trump, as a safe bet, they exercise even greater influence in Congress, where they pour substantially larger amounts of money into the campaign coffers of friendly US Senators and Representatives. Thus, even when a President doesn’t back a particular weapons system, they can usually count on Congress to fund it. As a Wall Street publication recently crowed: “No matter who wins the White House this fall, one thing is clear: Defense spending will climb.”

Will it? Probably so, unless public pressure can convince a new administration in Washington to adopt a less militarized approach to national and international security.

Dr. Lawrence Wittner is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press).

July 14, 2016 Posted by aletho | Corruption, Militarism | United States | Leave a comment

Who will protect Main Street, USA from militarized police forces?

By Robert Bridge | RT | July 12, 2016

A radical transformation is occurring inside US society as local police, government agencies and even colleges are stockpiling military-grade weapons, as well as military training. How did this perilous scenario come to pass under a Democratic president?

Ironically, and potentially tragically, at the very same time Sheriff Obama seems determined to disarm Americans of their cherished Second Amendment, US police forces are steadily stockpiling an arsenal of weapons that would be the envy of many a foreign army. And those weapons are not just harmlessly gathering dust in the closet. Indeed, with alarming regularity the weapons, equipment and training are being put to use against the very citizens the police were meant to serve and protect.

In 2014, the ACLU released a startling report on the militarization of US police forces. In it, investigators examined the cache of weapons being collected by US states, which then distribute the hardware to localities. Here is a list of the military toys that just one state – Arizona – got courtesy of Uncle Sam: 32 bomb suits, 704 units of night vision equipment, 1,034 guns, of which 712 are rifles, 42 forced entry tools, such as battering rams, 830 units of surveillance and reconnaissance equipment, 13,409 personal protective equipment (PPE) and/or uniforms, 120 utility trucks, 64 armored vehicles, 4 GPS devices, 17 helicopters, 21,211 other types of military equipment.

The immediate problem with handing over such massive firepower to state and local agencies is the same problem confronted by every military: Eventually those spanking new weapons, and regardless how lethal they are, will be used. Yet the Obama administration, which has had a full 8 years to address the issue, has let the problem fester to the point where trust – as witnessed by the tragic events in Dallas last week – has completely broken down between members of the American public and the police.

The argument I would like to make here, in light of the ongoing string of American tragedies, is that the militarization of the police – as opposed to the police officers themselves – is the real culprit. Our civil servants were never meant to be members of standing armies, working on behalf of faceless corporate entities.

Last year, according to an exhaustive report in the Washington Post, 990 Americans were killed by the police – more than two times the recently reported compilation of fatalities. Meanwhile, with over 500 US citizens already killed by the police this year, 2016 is on track to exceed last year’s recording-breaking tally by a wide margin.

Incidentally, lest we think police-related killings are simply a manifestation of race, the number of White Americans killed by police last year (494) was almost two-times the number of Black Americans killed in the same period (258). The investigative journalism group ProPublica, using FBI data from 1980 to 2012, reported that 44 percent of all those killed by police were in fact white.

If the police had more training on how to defuse potentially explosive situations instead of receiving military tactical training, would the streets of America be the better for it? I think the answer to the question is obvious.

Presently, citizens and police alike are being victimized by a system that recklessly throws a lot of military weapons and military training into communities in the belief that firepower alone will deter crime (which, in many cases, is symptomatic of a faltering economy). That militaristic approach has clearly failed. All things considered, it would be more helpful and less divisive for Americans to promote the idea that ‘Human Life Matters’ – as opposed to Black Lives, White Lives or What-have-you Lives – when considering the disturbing new phenomenon of police violence.

How did we get here?

I am just old enough to remember the days when American neighborhoods were not the running battlefields many have become today, a less neurotic time when police resorting to armored vehicles, menacing weaponry and military tactics was the great exception not the rule. Observatory Hill, the diverse, middle-class Pittsburgh neighborhood where I enjoyed a crime-free childhood in the 1970s, is no longer remotely recognizable to me. A healthy, vibrant, God-fearing community just 30 years ago, Observatory Hill now plays occasional host to visiting SWAT teams searching for the latest drug pusher or violent offender.

These SWAT visits, however, are no longer reserved for hunting down the occasional criminal in the hood. Excessive police force is also being employed to crackdown on democratic demonstrations against the powers-that-be. To use my hometown of Pittsburgh yet again as an example, consider what happened in October 2009 amid a G-20 Summit. University of Pittsburgh students, protesting peacefully against the global movers and shakers, said they were subjected to heavy-handed police tactics that included the use of tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and, freshly introduced for the first time in the US, sound cannons [officially known as the Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD, the only other time this device was reportedly used was by the US military in Iraq]. Nearly 200 people were arrested during the protests.

Bill Quigley, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, explained in an interview with Democracy Now what he saw in Pittsburgh during the G-20.

“Well, we saw a heavily militarized town… The police really were supposed to be there for terrorists, and when no terrorists showed up, they turned their power and their toys, including this, first time in the United States, sound cannon, on protesters, and unfortunately, in the evenings, on the students… It was a complete overreaction. The people of Pittsburgh worked really hard to put on a good peace protest, to talk — challenge globalization, to talk about immigration, Iraq, Afghanistan and all these things. And the security forces were just totally out of hand.”

Following Pittsburgh’s no-contest showdown against Robocop, Boston got a glimpse of full-blown martial law following the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings in which three people died. Former Senator Ron Paul said the government’s over-the-top response to the attacks should frighten Americans more than the attack itself.

In an article entitled ‘Liberty Was Also Attacked in Boston’, Paul compared the door-to-door searches without warrants for suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to “scenes from a military coup in a far off banana republic.”

“These were not the scenes from a military coup in a far off banana republic, but rather the scenes just over a week ago in Boston as the United States got a taste of martial law. The ostensible reason for the military-style takeover of parts of Boston was that the accused perpetrator of a horrific crime was on the loose. The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city,” Paul wrote.

The former US statesman could have been paraphrasing one of America’s Founders when he reminded: “We have been conditioned to believe that the job of the government is to keep us safe, but in reality the job of the government is to protect our liberties. Once the government decides that its role is to keep us safe… they can only do so by taking away our liberties. That is what happened in Boston.”

Benjamin Franklin was of a similar mind when he warned over 200 years ago: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

From the streets of Los Angeles to New York City, an increasing number of Americans are asking, as investigative reporter Radley Balko did in his 2014 book, ‘Rise of the Warrior Cop,’ how Americans came to inherit a system where “protests are met with flash grenades, pepper spray, and platoons of riot teams dressed like Robocops… and order is preserved by armed government agents too often conditioned to see streets and neighborhoods as battlefields and the citizens they serve as the enemy?”

The answer can be found in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Signed into law by President Bill Clinton on Sept 23, 1996, Section 1033 of the NDAA allowed for the transfer of excess military equipment to civilian law enforcement agencies.

The American public only started getting suspicious about the transformation of their police into something akin to a paramilitary outfit following the 2014 shooting of unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, and the protests that erupted in Ferguson, Missouri thereafter. In response to the riots, police deployed armored MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) assault vehicles and firearms, together with police that appeared better outfitted for a role in a Star Wars battle scene as opposed to a public protest in a suburb of St. Louis.

Forbes magazine put the police purchases into perspective: “Pentagon donations to the police reached $532 million in 2012 and $449 million in 2013. The figure has already topped $750 million in 2014…. A new MRAP sells for somewhere between $500,000 and $700,000 but law enforcement agencies are picking up these valuable beasts for free through the 1033 program.”

This inexplicable hoarding of guns and ammo presents not just a threat to the citizens of the United States. It also presents a real problem for the police themselves who are increasingly now looked upon with fear and loathing by many people who believe the police no longer uphold the motto to “protect and serve.” Better to de-militarize the police forces and let the US Army keep their lethal toys for themselves.

@Robert_Bridge

July 13, 2016 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Militarism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, United States | Leave a comment

British politics: The Establishment versus Democracy

By Neil Clark | RT | July 13, 2016

With the dramatic withdrawal of the pro-Brexit Andrea Leadsom from the Conservative Party leadership race, the coronation of Theresa May, who supported ’Remain’ in the EU Referendum, is confirmed.

Ms. May is expected to be handed the keys to 10, Downing Street on Wednesday.

At the same time, the pro-Iraq war Labour MP Angela Eagle has launched her leadership challenge to the anti-war Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

It’s not hard to see the connection between these two developments. May and Eagle, who says that she thinks ‘Tony Blair has suffered enough’, are the clear choices of the Establishment power brokers; Leadsom and Corbyn are most definitely not. Their appeal is with their party’s membership and the wider public and not with the Westminster/media elites.

What we are seeing played out before our very eyes is an attempt by said elites to reverse the democratization of Britain’s ‘Big Two’ political parties and to restore the power of Establishment insiders to shape the direction which those parties and the country takes. Party members who think differently must be put in their place. They must be seen, not heard.

The aim of this anti-democratic counter-revolution is simple. It‘s to make sure there is no major deviation from elite-friendly, neo-liberal, crony capitalist pro-war policies, whether it be a populist left-wing deviation, which promises re-nationalisation of the railways, wealth taxes and a less aggressive stance on foreign affairs, or a populist right-wing one, which wants the UK to Brexit without further delay and which opposes Blairite ‘liberal interventionism’ in foreign policy.

Anyone who threatens to take us away from the ‘extreme centre’ (a phrase used by Miriam Cotton and Tariq Ali) of crony capitalism, endless war and the cynical use of identity politics as a cover for the most regressive policies, is targeted for destruction.

One only has to consider the relentless smears and attacks that the anti-status quo Jeremy Corbyn has been subject to from the extreme centre since he announced he was standing for the vacant Labour leadership last summer. The attacks intensified after he was elected leader. The plotters of the current ‘Chicken Coup’ against Corbyn, clearly hoped to oust the Labour leader by a procedural technicality – they hoped that Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) would decide that Corbyn needed the nomination of 51 MPs or MEPs in order to stand. However, the NEC voted by 18-14, that Corbyn, as the incumbent, should automatically be on the ballot.

The fact that Labour’s coup supporters tried to keep Corbyn (who was elected with a huge mandate by the party’s members and supporters only last summer) off the ballot shows the utter contempt for party democracy that these people have. Blairites support bombing other countries to smithereens to promote ‘democracy’- but they hate it in their own party!

The coup plotters say that Corbyn is a disaster, yet he has been responsible for a massive surge in Labour party membership – which now stands at over 500,000 – its highest in modern history.

But instead of welcoming the recent membership surge, the anti-democratic Blairites seem appalled that the ‘great unwashed’ are signing up. For supporting Corbyn, Labour members have been called ‘wide-eyed loonies’, ‘rabble’ and even ‘scum’. But of course, let’s just focus on Momentum and Corbyn supporters being rude to Blairites who insult them, shall we?

The arguments given by those representing the extreme center for replacing Corbyn as Labour leader are as bogus as the claims the same people made about Iraq having WMDs in 2003.

We’re told Corbyn has to go because he’s ‘unelectable’ – in fact Labour were the most popular party in May’s local elections. Labour lost millions of traditional supporters during the Blair/Brown years, while Corbyn has encouraged these people – genuine Labour people – to return to the fold.

It’s also patently absurd to argue that in order to ‘reconnect’ with the electorate, Labour needs to ditch Corbyn – who accepts Brexit – and instead have a Blairite or Brownite who is in love with the EU as its leader. And in the very week following Chilcot, it’s an insult to the 1m people killed to have an MP who voted consistently for the Iraq war – and against an inquiry into it – challenging a principled MP (Corbyn) who opposed it.

Although Corbyn will be on the ballot for the leadership campaign, his opponents have done their best to tilt things in the contest in their favour. The NEC decided that only members who signed up before 12th January and those prepared to pay a £25 fee as a ‘registered supporter’ will be able to vote.

In last year’s election the fee for being a registered supporter was just £3: the thinking behind the change is clearly to deter poorer people- who more likely to support Corbyn, from voting.

However, Unite the Union, which supports Corbyn, and is affiliated to Labour, offers 50 pence a week community membership, providing a way for Corbyn supporters to make their voices heard.

If Corbyn is toppled this summer, then we can expect new leadership rules to be introduced by the party to make sure that a popular left-winger who promises a genuine move away from the ‘extreme centre’ can never again lead the party.

In the Conservative Party leadership election, we’ve witnessed a master-class in how the Establishment engineers the result it desires. Theresa May was obviously the anointed one, but in order for her to be crowned a few things had to happen first. The maverick Boris Johnson, who was decidedly dodgy on foreign policy, as I explained here, had to be knocked out of the race. And then, after she had beaten Murdoch’s favourite, Michael Gove, onto the final short-list it was time for the Establishment’s attack-dogs to be unleashed on Mrs. Andrea Leadsom.

Revealingly, the newspaper which did it for Leadsom is also the newspaper that’s been the most unrelentingly and obsessively hostile to Jeremy Corbyn. Rupert Murdoch’s Times is an Establishment organ that regards any deviation from the extreme Blairite/Cameronite center as a heresy that needs to be firmly stamped on. All of course in the interests of ‘democracy’ and ‘moderation’!

Rather naively, Leadsom, who supported Brexit, and said she’d send off Article 50 to the EU in September if she became Prime Minister, consented to be interviewed by the pro-Remain Times.

It was the biggest mistake of her political life.

Deeply shocked when she saw the Times headline on Saturday, she accused the paper of ‘gutter journalism’ for the way they presented the interview. The Times, in response, released a partial audio recording of the interview, but still hasn’t released a full one. The journalist who interviewed Leadsom, Rachel Sylvester, was accused of contradicting her own story about not raising the subject of family and motherhood to her interviewee.

A day later, the Sunday Times, intensifying the pressure on Leadsom, reported that up to 20 Tory MPs would quit the party if she won – in effect warning her that she would have the same problems in Westminster as Jeremy Corbyn. But this report was later denied by MPs.

One doesn’t have to share her politics to acknowledge that Leadsom was stitched up by Murdoch’s Establishment mouthpiece.

She became the target of some pretty unpleasant attacks by Parliamentary colleagues, inside-the-tent journalists and some liberal-leftists too who were only too keen to support The Times against her – not to mention the newspaper’s shameful record of neocon/Blairite warmongering.

It was no surprise that after a tearful weekend,

Leadsom pulled out of the Tory leadership race on Monday. Her campaign manager Tim Loughton said: “It is absolutely not the job of media commentators to ‘big up’ politicians whether in this leadership contest or elsewhere in politics. But neither should it be their compulsion constantly try to trip them up”.

With Leadsom successfully tripped up, and the Tory party’s 150,000 members deprived of having their democratic say in their party’s leadership election, Rachel Sylvester moved on to another outsider who threatens the status quo – Jeremy Corbyn – with an article in Tuesday’s Times charmingly entitled ‘Corbyn’s Labour must be tested to destruction’.

Destroy. Destruction. Weapons of Mass Destruction. These are words the Establishment loves to use in its war against its enemies.

Meanwhile, the fear of ‘the mob’ from those inside-the-tent is there for all to see. ‘If we don’t tame Twitter, we’ll face mob rule’ was the title of one Times comment piece on Monday.

Meanwhile, Tony Blair himself is concerned about ‘the mob’, and the way the extreme centre, which he personifies, is currently threatened. “It was already clear before the Brexit vote that modern populist movements could take control of political parties. What wasn’t clear was whether they could take over a country like Britain. Now we know they can”, he bemoaned in the New York Times.

Blair and his disciples – in both Labour and the Conservative parties – want to get back to ‘business as usual, that is, a situation where they and not us are in control. People power has already gone way too far for the party elites and they desperate to put a stop to it.

The coronation of Theresa May boosts their cause, but the Extreme Center also needs to topple Jeremy Corbyn if they‘re to succeed in their One Party Britain anti-democratic project.

The stakes really could not be any higher.

Follow Neil Clark on Twitter @Neil Clark

July 13, 2016 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Economics, Militarism | Andrea Leadsom, Jeremy Corbyn, Theresa May, UK | Leave a comment

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