Obama to Continue Arming Nation’s Police with Military Gear, But with Some Tweaks
By Noel Brinkerhoff and Danny Biederman | AllGov | December 3, 2014
He expressed serious concerns over the police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, and the subsequent public outcry over the heavily militarized response by the police to the protests. He went so far as to say the nation needed to keep its police forces from turning too much into military units. But in the end President Barack Obama is unwilling to slow down or stop the transfer of military weapons and equipment to law enforcement agencies.
Instead, he just wants to tweak the federal programs responsible for helping militarize police departments across the United States.
“We found that in many cases these programs actually serve a very useful purpose,” said White House press secretary Josh Earnest. Supporters claim that providing surplus military gear to local law enforcement help police departments that are strapped for funds. A review by the Obama administration found that nearly half a million pieces of military-type gear—including mine-resistant vehicles and night-vision equipment—have landed in the hands of local police departments across the U.S.
An announcement out of the White House this week said the administration would establish new standards and guidelines for programs, such as the much discussed 1033 program operated by the Pentagon. But officials won’t end them or scale them back.
This from a president who said in August “there is a big difference between our military and our local law enforcement, and we don’t want those lines blurred.”
Now, he just wants to improve “transparency and consistency” when it comes to federal efforts that have transformed police officers into looking like soldiers with body armor and assault rifles that ride around in tanks.
One change Obama wants is for more officers to be equipped with body cameras to record their actions while on duty. This plan would cost $75 million and buy upwards of 50,000 cameras for local departments to employ.
He also is seeking better coordination between the five federal agencies that provide military hardware and other items to police and sheriffs.
“Agencies do little to coordinate efforts and often lack mechanisms to hold police accountable for misusing equipment,” according to The Wall Street Journal, so Obama has “directed his staff to draft an executive order to develop common standards for the programs. He said the new standards would ensure that law enforcement agencies aren’t building a militarized culture.”
Trevor Burrus, a research fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, was critical of the Obama administration’s unwillingness to curb the outflow of military gear to the nation’s police. “It is possible to constrain these programs with oversight, but it doesn’t seem like many people are really wanting to do it,” he told the Journal. “The gear that they have needs to be reassessed…some of it has no legitimate law enforcement purpose.”
To Learn More:
Obama Calls for Policing Standards, Funding in Wake of Ferguson (by Colleen McCain Nelson and Byron Tau, Wall Street Journal )
7 Ways the Obama Administration Has Accelerated Police Militarization (by Radley Balko, Huffington Post )
Obama Offers New Standards on Police Gear (by Mark Landler, New York Times )
Obama: Wants to Avoid ‘Militarized’ Police Culture (by Nedra Pickler, Associated Press )
Unions Successfully Beat Back Movement to De-Militarize Police (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov )
Militarization of the Police…Ferguson Edition (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov )
$4.2 Billion in Military Hardware Donations Fuels Militarization of U.S. Police Forces (by Danny Biederman and Noel Brinkerhoff)
1.7 million Syrian refugees facing ‘devastating’ food aid cuts
A Syrian refugee child peers out from his tent in Baiseriyeh in southern Lebanon, July 23, 2013. Al-Akhbar Marwan Bou Haidar
By Eva Shoufi | Al-Akhbar | December 3, 2014
This month Syrian refugees in four host countries, Lebanon, Egypt, Turkey and Jordan will not receive food assistance. The World Food Program (WFP) ran out of funding to help those affected by the Syrian crisis, meaning it can no longer help feed Syrian refugees. Given that donor countries are not providing more funding, refugees are left alone to face deadly cold weather and starvation with catastrophic humanitarian, social and health repercussions.
Suspending food aid to Syrian refugees adds to the tragedy they are already facing. Refugees worry about the rain leaking through their tents and they cannot imagine their conditions getting any worse. What is worse than displacement, homelessness, living in a tent and dying of cold weather?
On Monday, the World Food Program (WFP) announced that it does not have funding for the month of December. As a result, 1.7 million Syrian refugees in four countries – 1.1 million of them in Lebanon – will not receive food aid. Syrian refugees are now afraid they will die of the cold weather and of starvation.
By deciding to suspend funding to the WFP, is the international ‘donor’ community intent on multiplying the misery of Syrians, as if telling the refugees to “die of hunger?” Refugees could die of hunger because donor nations have donor fatigue. They have given a lot in the past three and a half years, and they gave generously. But it seems the message is that the crisis has lasted for too long and that it is not the fault of these generous donors.
According to the WFP’s statement, “Without WFP vouchers, many families will go hungry. For refugees already struggling to survive the harsh winter, the consequences of halting this assistance will be devastating.”Tensions within refugee communities will rise. Striving to secure food is the fiercest, most primal struggle in life. Psychological and financial pressures will increase which will lead to dangerous behavior. The rate of crime, prostitution, begging, child labor, child marriages and diseases might increase. Faced with these dangerous phenomena, feelings of racism within host communities could grow and lead to a destructive path.
The WFP’s statement warned that refugees are “ill-prepared for yet another harsh winter, especially in Lebanon and Jordan, where many children are barefoot and without proper clothing. Many tents are drenched in mud and hygiene conditions are growing extremely precarious.”
Don’t they know that a few days ago, a newborn baby died of cold in Ersal? We learned of her death but we did not learn about the deaths that followed and we do not know if she is truly the first baby to die from the elements. Everyone, including international organizations, knew that babies will die from the cold because tents do not protect against the freezing cold of the hills and mountains. Despite these facts, they did nothing. News of the baby’s death passed without incident. They were too busy trying to find an excuse to justify her death. A problem at birth, lack of oxygen… It really doesn’t matter, the three-day old baby could not bear the freezing wind in the hills of Ersal. International organizations, fearing for the lives of their employees, deserted the town leaving behind children, women and men who cannot withstand the deadly cold or hunger.
Refugees received the unfortunate message on their cell phones. Those who do not have cell phones were informed by partner organizations that this month the accounts on their electronic vouchers will be zero dollars but they did not tell them what to do. The organizations themselves do not know what refugees should now do. WFP spokesperson, Sandy Maroun, said” “The program’s regional office distributes the funding. As we know, there is a big crisis in funding. We’ve been warning against it since October when funding for the program in Lebanon decreased by 33 percent. But we were surprised that there is no funding for this month.”
Children will go to sleep hungry in their cold tents, fathers will return with disappointment stamped on their brows while mothers will cry silently. Shop owners who have signed contracts with the WFP will be negatively impacted as well because their profits will decline. Refugees will not rush on the fifth of the month at 12:00 pm to buy bread, rice and grains. Many Lebanese will realize that the presence of refugees has had a positive economic impact and did not bring economic ruin, as is the common misperception. The Lebanese will experience this reality first-hand but they will not go hungry. The WFP said that $216 million were injected into the Lebanese economy in the past 10 months and $341 million since the beginning of the crisis through the Syrian refugees’ electronic vouchers.
No one knows if halting the funding will go on till next month. Maroun explains, “Funding is provided monthly that’s why we can’t say for sure if there is going to be money for next month except at the end of this month.”
“No organization can secure comprehensive and continuous food assistance to refugees like the WFP, which is considered the largest humanitarian organization in the world fighting hunger,” she added.
The program needs $64 million immediately to be able to provide food assistance to Syrian refugees residing in neighboring countries for the month of December. If funding is provided, the program will immediately resume its aid to refugees who use electronic vouchers. What will happen, however, if funding never materializes? Concerned parties cannot provide a definitive answer: “We hope they will be able to manage.” But hopes and wishes do not mean much. The international community is tired of paying to feed refugees. Donor countries prefer to spend the money on “civil society” and “democracy, transparency and citizenry” projects. Maroun explains: “Funding the program is voluntary and it involves countries, individuals and organizations. It is not based on mandatory and periodic funding even though it falls under the Consolidated Appeal Process (CAP) to respond to the Syrian humanitarian crisis but it is independent of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) funding.”What about UNHCR, the organization charged with “protecting” refugees”? “We don’t have an alternative plan to provide food assistance,” says UNHCR spokesperson, Dana Suleiman, adding that “the crisis is the same for all organizations. They are all worried about the decline in funding. Besides, we play a coordinating role. For this month, there is no decrease or change in UNHCR programs but there are no guarantees for next month.” UNHCR’s last report talked about “food security” as nearly 900,000 refugees have benefited from the electronic voucher system in November. Today, all of these people are without food assistance. The only thing they have is blankets, a fuel voucher and a tent simply because the world does not have enough money to help them.
Ankara Buckles Against Western Pressure, Turns to Russia
By Andrew KORYBKO | Oriental Review | December 2, 2014
Russia has abandoned the troubled South Stream project and will now be building its replacement with Turkey. This monumental decision signals that Ankara has made its choice to reject Euro-Atlanticsm and embrace Eurasian integration.
In what may possibly be the biggest move towards multipolarity thus far, the ultimate Eurasian pivot, Turkey, has done away with its former Euro-Atlantic ambitions. A year ago, none of this would have been foreseeable, but the absolute failure of the US’ Mideast policy and the EU’s energy one made this stunning reversal possible in under a year. Turkey is still anticipated to have some privileged relations with the West, but the entire nature of the relationship has forever changed as the country officially engages in pragmatic multipolarity.
Turkey’s leadership made a major move by sealing such a colossal deal with Russia in such a sensitive political environment, and the old friendship can never be restored (nor do the Turks want it to be). The reverberations are truly global.
Missing The Signs
It’s amazing how much the West lost in such a short period of time and due to such major and totally unnecessary political miscalculations, and they owe their roots to the disastrous regime change operations in Syria and Ukraine.
The US In The Mideast:
Nearly four years ago, the US co-opted Turkey to ‘Lead From Behind’ in overthrowing the democratically elected Syrian government. However, things didn’t go as quite as planned and the Syrian people engaged in a fierce Patriotic War to defend the existence of their secular state. Turkey purposely sat out on the anti-ISIL coalition because it wanted solid guarantees of its reward in a regime-changed Syria, but none were forthcoming. Its leadership held firm, so the US started playing the ‘Kurdish Card’ of ethnic nationalism to bully them into submitting – which eventually backfired. The US crossed the line by arming and training the Kurds (some of whom are registered as terrorists by Turkey), and faced with such an existential threat to their state (that would either be unleashed wittingly or unwittingly with time), they knew they had to pivot, and fast.
The EU And Its Energy Policy:
Meanwhile, the EU totally fudged its energy policy with Russia. As a result of the Ukraine Crisis, it began exerting tremendous pressure (which was already building up) on the South Stream project, calling upon EU energy legislation clauses to state that its member states’ cooperation with Russia was illegal. Poorer countries like Bulgaria pleaded for the EU to allow the project, emphasizing how important it was for their national economies (which haven’t received much of Brussels’ largesse since joining), but to no avail, as the EU stonewalled the project. Russia had no choice but to find a replacement route and saw that the only viable stand-in was Turkey, which just so happened to be undergoing its most serious crisis ever with the US.
Ducks In A Row
Let’s look at how this geostrategic masterpiece was set into motion, as the past two months contain the main moves of this political waltz — and they’re all centered on Russian President Putin.
(1) Serbia:
Putin’s October visit to Serbia served to inform his counterpart about the plans to scrap South Stream, while still giving him strong assurances that the Russian-Serbian relationship will remain intact going forward, with or without the gas project.
(2) Syria and Sochi:
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem visited Sochi last week and personally met with Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov. The meeting, held behind closed doors, was highlighted for the attention that the Russian leader gave to his guest. Putin could have told him to tell President Assad about his upcoming visit to Turkey in order to reassure his loyal and respected partner of his positive intentions and the bigger picture surrounding his motives.
(3) Turkey:
The final step was for Putin to go to Turkey and make the announcement after his meeting with Erdogan. Turkey understands that it has made a definitive move by joining the project and that there is no going back from this decision. It had been rejected by the EU for decades and it now realizes that its closest military ally, the US, had played it for a fool during the entire Syrian War.
Worse still, the Kurdish Card has gotten out of control, and it seems inevitable that sooner or later the insurrection will be rekindled, and with bloody and destabilizing consequences. On a pragmatic note, global events are shifting from the West to the non-West (read: BRICS and G20), so in the national self-interests of the Turkish state, it’s seen as wise to join the new winner’s circle (after being rejected by Europe and betrayed by the US) and try to turn over a new leaf with new friends.
The Aftershocks
The announcement of the New South Stream has global implications, but here’s just a few of them as arranged by region:
Europe:
The EU will now have to pay for expensive LNG (on average 30% higher) that will likely be sold from the terminal at the Greek-Turkish border as well as remain energy dependent on risky Ukrainian routes. But there’s a catch – the poor Balkan countries are able to get in on the deal by building relatively cheaper overland connecting lines and resurrect the project… but only if they leave the EU and its authoritative energy legislation. All that it takes is for Greece or Bulgaria to abandon Brussels (which doesn’t seem improbable), and the project can either go through Macedonia en route to Serbia or via Bulgaria as initially planned, then up to the Hungarian border. At this point, it’s certainly a tantalizing thought for the countries that have paid the most for their ‘integration’ and received scarcely anything in return. Expect the New South Stream to politically divide the EU like never before.
Mideast:
There is no way that Russia would have sold Syria out after so many years of friendship, especially after Putin’s high-profile meeting with Muallem. Thus, Turkey is not forecast to directly invade Syria (although it could continue training some anti-government fighters). It may, however, allow the US to use its airbases and airspace to carry out airstrikes on ISIL.
Since it’s now behaving in a multipolar fashion, Turkey is playing all sides to its advantage, so it will still retain a defense relationship with NATO and the US, but it will no longer behave as an absolute lackey. Taking things further, Turkey’s shift to the East might allow Iran to one day build pipelines through it to access the Western market, and it could also allow Turkmen gas to transit both countries en route to Europe.
Eurasia:
Most significantly, Turkey has shown that it has the political grit to make historical decisions independent of NATO, showing that it is embracing its pivotal geography and combining it with a multipolar policy. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (importantly encompassing Russia and China) just outlined the specific procedures for admitting new members a few months ago, although at the time analysts thought this was directed towards India and Pakistan.
Now, however, with Turkey already being a dialogue partner, it might make the rapid step to observer status and full-fledged membership just as quickly as it made its decisive pivot. There’s also been talk of the country entering into a free-trade agreement with the Russian-led Eurasian Customs Union, so it might incidentally find its EU replacement with Brussels’ eastern adversary, Moscow.
As Western decision makers are scratching their heads and wondering how it ever got to this point, they’d do well to remember that none of this would have happened had they just allowed the Syrian and Ukrainian people to live in peace with their democratically elected governments.
Andrew Korybko is the political analyst and journalist for Sputnik who currently lives and studies in Moscow.
UN adopts resolution urging Israel to join NPT
Press TV – December 2, 2014
The United Nations General Assembly has overwhelmingly adopted an Arab-backed resolution urging Israel to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The assembly approved of the resolution in a 161-5 vote, with 18 countries abstaining, on Tuesday.
The United States and Canada were among the countries that opposed the resolution.
The resolution urges the Tel Aviv regime to join the NPT and put its nuclear facilities under the safeguard of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency.
The resolution, which is backed by 18 Arab countries, also expresses deep concern over Israel’s nuclear capabilities.
The Tel Aviv regime, which is widely believed to be the only possessor of nuclear arms in the Middle East, reportedly maintains between 200 and 400 atomic warheads.
Furthermore, Israel has never allowed any inspection of its nuclear facilities and continues to defy international calls to join the NPT.
Hans Blix, the former head of the IAEA, said in an exclusive interview with Press TV that he is convinced Israel possesses nuclear weapons.
He demanded that Israel join the NPT, saying Tel Aviv’s refusal to sign international nuclear treaties and its deliberate ambiguity policy with regards to its nuclear program are because of support from Washington.
A released report in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists also confirms that Israel possesses at least 80 operative nuclear warheads and has enough material to produce up to 190 more.
Nuclear weapon proliferation experts Robert Norris and Hans Kristensen estimate in the report that Israel halted its production of nuclear warheads back in 2004 “once it reached around 80 munitions.”
Mentally Ill Man Refuses to Take Medication So SWAT Shows Up and Kills Him
By Matt Agorist | The Free Thought Project | December 2, 2014
Midland, TX — Rosendo Gino Rodriquez, 49, was shot dead in an altercation Monday while Midland Police were conducting a routine welfare check.
The Midland County mental health unit was conducting a regular welfare check at a home on the 2700 block of Washington Street, when things went sour. According to the Midland police, Rodriquez became “aggressive” during the welfare check.
The term aggressive is used loosely by the MPD, as they claim he acted out said “aggression” by running away from them, back into his house, and barricading himself in a room.
The Free Thought Project would like to clarify the definition of aggressive for the MPD: ready or likely to attack or confront; characterized by or resulting from aggression.
A person running in their house and locking themselves in a room is hardly an act of aggression. However, the MPD treated it as such and responded with its SWAT team, BearCat armored vehicle and bomb squad robot with a camera to gain a look inside the home, as well as a DPS helicopter.
Police claimed that after Rodriquez went inside, they may have heard gunshots. However no gun was found, nor evidence of any shots.
Family members say their father had not been on medication. Monday’s welfare check was intended to talk the man into taking his medication.
Rodriquez, whose family has been trying to get him help, was likely distraught by this heavy onslaught of police presence and became quite fearful, locking himself in his bathroom with a machete.
City spokeswoman, Sara Bustilloz said police attempted to use “many methods” including a negotiator to make contact with Rodriquez and end the situation without incident. However, the “many methods” were simply rubber bullets which proved to be ineffective, thus leading to the incompetent officers switching to real bullets.
“This is not how we want these situations to end,” Bustilloz said. “We want them to end without incident, and we do everything in our power to make sure we can do it that way first.”
Officers eventually confronted the tormented man in his bathroom, where they found Rodriquez armed with a machete. After the heavily armed men in body armor, who apparently all forgot their tasers that day, “feared for their lives,” they opened fire on the man, killing him.
According to CBS 7, per normal protocol, an external investigation into the officer-involved shooting will be completed by the Texas Rangers, and two officers involved in the altercation, who are identified as Sgt. Mitch Russell and Officer Sean Sharp, have been placed on administrative leave pending the completion of an investigation.
This incident is but another tragic example of the level police incompetence when dealing with the mentally ill.
A recent report out of California showed that the overwhelming majority of police have not completed state certification that focuses on the training in dealing with mental illness, suicide behavior, and drug use; this lack of training is evident, nationwide.
Instead of compassion and patience, which should be used in dealing with mentally unstable people, police most often resort to violent escalation.
The incompetence and negligence is rife throughout all levels of law enforcement which is why these deadly actions on behalf of the MPD will likely be ruled “justified.”
It’s not like police departments don’t know that this training exists, the information is out there. We’re simply witnessing callous disregard for the the preservation of life.
In a two-part study, researchers looked at use of the crisis intervention team, or CIT, model, a 40-hour program to train police to respond to those with mental health issues. They interviewed 586 officers, 251 of whom had received CIT training, and reviewed more than 1,000 police encounters with individuals believed to have behavioral disorders.
Officers who participated in CIT training were more knowledgeable about mental health issues, treatments and de-escalation skills, according to findings published in the April issue of the journal Psychiatric Services.
What’s more, when looking at emergency responses, incidents involving officers with CIT training were more likely to result in transport to mental health services and less likely to culminate in arrest. Researchers found that officers who had participated in training were also much more likely to indicate that the highest level of force used in their emergency response was verbal engagement or negotiation.
With the increased prevalence in autism and police aggression in general, something must be done before anymore innocent lives are taken.
US protesters demand the right to live
By Eric Sommer | China Daily USA | December 1, 2014
A UN anti-torture panel that is investigating the United States said on Friday it was deeply concerned by what it described as the high incidence of police brutality and shootings – especially against African-Americans – in the US.
The most basic human right is the right to remain alive. The anger which has swept through Ferguson, Missouri, and has boiled over to other cities across the United States, is an elemental protest against those who have been gradually taking away this right.
The killing of unarmed African-American teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson is only the most publicized instance of daily police killing of unarmed people in the US. Statistically, American citizens are much more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist.
No complete record of police killings in the US is available. But about 400 police killings a year were listed in a US federal database covering only a fraction of the country during a seven year period ending in 2012. Worse, nearly two times a week a black person was killed by the police in the cities listed in the incomplete report.
Among those killed by US police in the past week or so are Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy in Cleveland, Ohio, who was shot while playing in a park with a toy gun; Akai Gurley, whose only crime was walking down a dark staircase in his own apartment building in New York City; and Leonardo Marquette Little at a traffic signal in Jacksonville, Florida, who police claimed turned violent while resisting arrest.
To fully understand the epidemic of police killings, we have to see them in the broader context of the progressive militarization of US society. In the past 15 years the US has engaged in a series of wars, military occupations, bombings, air strikes and destabilization of other countries. These wars have inured a large part of the population, and of the police, to endless waves of military activities and related violence. Government reports show that about 20 percent of the US federal government budget is devoted to military costs. But the US War Resistors’ League, taking into account a broader set of military-related costs, estimates that about half the federal budget is devoted to the military.
A large amount of military equipment bought with this money has been turned over to civilian police departments, perhaps out of fear that declining living standards in the US could lead to mass unrest by American working people. … Full article
Thousands march in Manila against military accord with ‘imperialist’ US
RT | December 1, 2014
Thousands of anti-war protesters marched in the Philippine capital calling for an end to close military ties between “warmongering” Washington and Manila. They also accused Filipino President Benigno Aquino III of being a “US puppet.”
Protesters came decked out in traditional garb, many carrying fake bolo knives and rifles. Others hoisted torches and placards in the air as they marched through the streets of the densely populated city.
Gathering underneath an overpass at a busy intersection, the protesters burned a poster depicting Aquino as a puppet of Uncle Sam.
Pete Pinlac, a trade union leader and march organizer, said the protest was a way for the people to express their discontent with Washington’s “imperialist” ways.
“To Barack Obama, we say this: we are a peaceful nation so let the Philippines loose. We do not want your warmongering. We do not want your imperialist ends. We do not want your hegemonic purposes,” he said.
The protesters called for the abolition of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) and the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) with the USA.
The controversial VFA allows the US government to retain jurisdiction over US military personnel accused of committing crimes in the Philippines, unless those crimes are deemed to be of “particular” importance to the Philippines.
Activists argue the agreement gives US troops immunity from prosecution and makes them second-class citizens in their own country.
The EDCA was signed in April and represents the first major military accord inked between the two countries since the US withdrew troops stationed on a naval base in Subic Bay in 1992. Although the 10-year agreement allows US forces to operate out of certain areas, it does not allow Washington to establish a permanent military base.
Sunday’s protest coincided with Bonifacio Day, which pays homage to Andres Bonifacio, the “Father of the Philippine Revolution.”
Demonizing Russia as US goes to war
By Finian Cunningham | Press TV | November 30, 2014
Every Russian maneuver is now being recklessly construed as a sinister war threat by the Western media – no matter that the Russian maneuvers are entirely in keeping with international law and are a normal part of any nation’s right to movement of its military forces.
The latest “incident” was reported by Britain’s Daily Mail in which a squadron of Russian warships was “escorted” by the British Royal Navy as it sailed through the English Channel.
The Daily Mail headline was spiced with sinister innuendo of Russia doing something untoward, illegal and threatening. ‘Royal Navy catches up with Russian warships to ‘keep an eye’ on Putin’s fleet sailing along the Channel.’
Note the sly demonization of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, by attributing the Russian leader as the personal owner of the warships – as if he were some kind of arch-villain in a cheesy James Bond movie.
The report informs readers: “The Royal Navy has escorted [sic] a squadron of Russian warships sailing through the English Channel [sic]. Four ships passed through the through the Strait of Dover after carrying out military exercises [sic] in the North Sea. HMS Tyne, a Type 45 Destroyer and one of the Royal Navy’s most technically advanced warships, was able to pinpoint and monitor [sic] the movement of the group led by Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov as it approached [sic] the UK.”
The words and tone used by Daily Mail are loaded with malign implication suggesting that the Russian vessels were performing a secretive mission that transgressed international law. The facts are that the Russian ships were at all times in internationally navigable waters, had complied with maritime reporting regulations, and were conducting legitimate military training maneuvers, which is the prerogative of all countries’ navies and is a routine occurrence.
Even a British Ministry of Defense spokesman quoted by the newspaper acknowledged that the Russian warships were not doing anything illegal.
“We are aware that four Russian naval ships have passed through the Dover Strait from the North Sea into the English Channel, which all ships have the right to do under international law,” said the British MoD spokesman.
A British navy source is quoted as saying: “It’s not provocative but we are keeping an eye on them.”
So, the Russian “provocation” is not supported by any facts; it is merely being contrived by the Western media, who are evidently following a political line.
Ever since Washington and its European allies backed the illegal coup in Kiev last February by helping to overthrow the elected government and installing a hostile anti-Russian neo-Nazi regime, the Western powers have been accusing Russia of subversion, annexation and aggression. Thus, Western governments and the Western media have completely turned reality on its head.
The media spin of Russian forces conducting stealthy maneuvers and posing an international threat is part of this Western anti-Russian narrative aimed at distracting from the real cause of insecurity and conflict in Europe.
Earlier this week, General Philip Breedlove, the American commander of the NATO military alliance, was in Kiev reiterating claims that Russia is escalating tensions by acting aggressively, not just in Ukraine, but in the Baltic region and Black Sea. Breedlove went as far as claiming that Russia was militarizing the Crimea with nuclear weapons.
Russia has had a naval base and military forces in Crimea for decades under an internationally recognized agreement with Ukrainian governments – before the West helped overthrow President Yanukovych.
The people of Crimea invoked the Western-backed secession by Kosovo from Serbia in 2008, by voting in March to secede from the Kiev regime and join the Russian Federation.
Russia is therefore not doing anything illegal in Crimea or in international airspace and seas in the Baltic region, the Black Sea, or anywhere else, including that narrow strait between the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean that Britain presumptuously calls the “English Channel.”
NATO commander Breedlove has had ample Western media coverage for his assertion that US-supplied fighter jets “have been scrambled” threefold times more this year compared with last year in order “to intercept” Russian military aircraft across Europe.
But, quietly between the lines, NATO spokesmen acknowledge that Russian aircraft have not actually breached any national airspace in all this time. Again, as with the “incident” of the Russian naval vessels passing through waters off Britain, there is no factual basis for the alarmist response. The alarmist response is simply being manufactured in order to give credence to the hoary narrative of “Russian threat.”
The absurd and pernicious logic of this narrative is that any Russian vessel or aircraft, whether civilian or military, anywhere in the world is being tagged as a potential threat. This is the corollary of Western sanctions and NATO military encirclement of Russia.
Russia is little by little being turned into a pariah by Western governments and their media to the extent that Russia is being excluded from its legitimate and normal access to international territorial space.
It is the Western powers that are acting illegally in pursuing this unlawful interdiction of Russia.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, the US and its allies continue to build up aggressive military forces around Russia. NATO warplanes have increased their number in the Baltic region by 400 per cent compared with last year. That is a fact, according to NATO’s own information.
The US-led military alliance has spent at least $200 million over the past year in upgrading air bases in Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, according to a report last month in the Financial Times.
And the US navy has deployed an increasing number of Aegis missile-capable warships in the Black Sea. All these US and NATO maneuvers on Russia’s doorstep are in contravention of binding agreements – the Founding Act of 1997 and the Montreux Convention, respectively.
Ironically, as NATO’s General Breedlove was being hosted by the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev this week, there were low-key US media reports noting that American troops from Fort Carson in Colorado “will deploy for supporting Ukraine.”
The Colorado-based Gazette reports: “US European Command said that a 100-soldier team from the 16,000-soldier division will head to Europe in early 2015 to lead ground forces in ‘Operation Atlantic Resolve.’”
The report added: “Leaders from the division will run a series of training exercises to ensure American forces are ready to fight alongside partners.”
Two significant things about Fort Carson are that it is a base not only for infantry but also for Special Forces trained in unconventional warfare. Its troops are dedicated to European Command of the US army.
European Command is headed up by none other than General Philip Breedlove who wears a second military hat in addition to his NATO one.
It is significant that Breedlove, as NATO leader, is touring Europe rallying a “response” to alleged Russian aggression; then, in the very same week that he is in the anti-Russian regime capital of Kiev, the Pentagon announces that US troops under Breedlove’s European Command are now being dispatched to “support Ukraine.”
Washington is playing European governments like a fiddle. But shamefully while the US is mobilizing war efforts in Europe, Western media are chasing after Russian phantoms in the air and at sea.
Is Washington training a rebel army to “Occupy” Syria?
RT | November 27, 2014
Is the US planning the occupation of Syria by training an unconventional insurgent invasion force?
Think regime change in Syria is off the drawing board? Think again. The bombing of the ISIL or ISIS in Syria is part of a brinkmanship campaign leading up to a potential non-conventional invasion, parallel to the re-introduction of the US military to Iraq.
The ISIL and the other anti-government forces in Iraq and Syria are not the only ones to disregard the Iraqi-Syrian border drawn by the British and French by Sykes-Picot in 1916. The US also disregarded the border and international law when it began to illegally bomb Syria.
The bombing campaign was not enough for some in the US Congress. In a joint statement on September 23, the arch-hawks US Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham called for US troops to be sent into Syria too. Both of them praised the Pentagon’s illegal airstrikes in Syria and then argued for US ground troops as well.
Although McCain and Graham went out of their way to say that this would not be an occupation of either Syria or Iraq, this is almost exactly what they were calling for when they said that the military campaign had to also be directed against the Syrian government.
Since, and even before the calls for an invasion of Syria by McCain and Graham different suggestions have circulated about an invasion of Syria.
The dilemma is that Washington does not want the Pentagon to directly invade Syria itself. It wants to pull the strings while another force does the work on the ground. Candidates for an outsourced invasion of Syria include the Turkish military or other US regional allies. There, however is also an impasse here as Washington’s allies are also afraid of the consequences of an invasion of Syria.
This is where a third opinion comes into the picture: the construction of a multinational insurgent army by the US.
Using non-state actors to invade and occupy Syria
While there seems to be no consensus on a Syrian strategy within the US political, intelligence, and military establishments, the objective of regime change is universally adhered to across the board. Regardless of the existence of a consensus, the US is moving ahead with the creation of an anti-government invasion force.
The third option is slowly emerging.
A few days after the US began the bombing of Syria, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey made it clear that the Pentagon also planned on creating a viable anti-government army in Syria consisting of 12,000 to 15,000 insurgents.
There also seems to be a growing consensus among the realists and neocons for US President Obama’s preference of using a rebel army to invade Syria. The Brookings Institute has been a major cheerleader for this.
During this same timeframe, the Brookings Institute released an opinion piece clearly calling for US intervention. The text, authored, by former CIA analyst for monitoring the Persian Gulf and US National Security Council official Kenneth Pollack, stipulated that Washington’s “strategy cannot require sending U.S. troops into combat. Funds, advisers, and even air power are all fair game — but only insofar as they do not lead to American boots on the ground.”
Pollack played an influential role in getting support for the illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq. He worked at the Council of Foreign Relations as its director of national security studies. He made the above statement as the director of research for the Saban Center for Middle East Policy and goes well beyond it by publishing a drawn-out October 2014 proposal for creating a US-made rebel invasion force as a means of taking over Syria and eventually conducting regime change in Damascus.
Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.. (Image from wikipedia.org)
The Brookings Institute proposal suggests that a rebel Syrian army “is best not done in Syria itself. At least not at first” (p.9). The report points to the US and NATO success in “covertly” creating armed forces around the world, including the assembly of a Croat military, and deduces that these experiences would make it “entirely realistic for the United States to build a new Syrian opposition army” (p.8). It also says that the ideology of the fighters does not matter by stating the following: “A great many of those recruited may well be religious, even highly religious, including Salafist. That is not the issue” (p.9).
Welcome to the Brookings Institute and its Saban Center
What is the Brookings Institute exactly and why do suggestions from this think tank and others like it, matter?
The Brookings Institute is an influential think tank that has a revolving door of personnel with the US government and major corporations. All that one needs to do is look at its trustees and executives, which include interlocked directorships with the Carlyle Group, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan Chase.
Brookings also has ties to Israel and a full branch dedicated to Washington’s Middle East strategies and policies called the Saban Centre for Middle East Policy. Martin Indyk – the former US ambassador to Israel, a former high-level lobbyist for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and the founder of AIPAC’s research arm (the Washington Institute for Near East Policy) – is the Director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings. Like Indyk, Kenneth Pollack was involved in shaping the Middle East policies of the Clinton Administration.
It is also worth noting that the Brookings Institute’s Saban Center is named after US-Israeli businessman and media mogul Haim Saban. Saban himself is on the board of trustees for Brookings.
There is a Qatari connection too. One may remember that Washington was hostile towards Al Jazeera when it first emerged as a news broadcaster, because of its coverage of US actions in the Middle East.
Saban tried to buy half of the Al Jazeera network from Qatar in 2004 and 2009, but failed. In the same timeframe as the 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, the first set of negotiations happened when he went to Qatar with Bill Clinton in 2003.
It is possible that Brookings may have played a role in pacifying Al Jazeera. In 2009, the Institute setup an overseas branch in Qatar called the Brookings Doha Center. The new chapter in Doha included Qatar’s ruling Al-Thani family alongside people like Madeleine Albright, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Fareed Zakaria as chairs and advisors.
It was in the same year that the Brookings Institute published a report, which included Pollack and Indyk as authors, called Which Path to Persia? The report outlined a map for confronting Iran and alluded to the neutralization of Syria, in one way or another (including the procurement of a peace agreement with Damascus by Israel), to “mitigate blowback” from Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the Palestinians, specifically Hamas, as a prerequisite for an enabling an attack on Iran.
All in all, the ideas that come out of the Brookings Institute are discussed at the highest levels within policy-making and corporate circles.
Is the Syrian Invasion Force Slowly Emerging?
Is a rebel invasion force emerging to attack Syria? In no uncertain terms, Brookings argues that it is.
Pollack’s report stipulates the following: “Adopting such a strategy would mean first and foremost that Washington would have to commit itself to building a new Syrian army that will rule Syria when the war is over. Although [Obama’s] description of his new Syria policy was more modest and tepid than his explanation of the Iraq piece of the strategy, he does appear to have committed the United States to just that course. More than that, it will mean putting the resources, prestige and credibility of the United States behind this effort. The $500 million now appropriated is a good start, but it is only a down payment on a much larger project” (p.8).
The US goal of training rebels in Saudi Arabia and Turkey is an indication of this too. On September 10, about two weeks before it started bombing Syria, Washington declared that Saudi Arabia had given it the green light to train a rebel army in the Arabian Peninsula. “We now have the commitment from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to be a full partner in this effort — the train-and-equip program — to host that program,” one official was quoted as saying by the New York Times.
The Brookings Institute in its proposal for an invasion of Syria claims: “The Saudi offer to provide facilities to train 10,000 Syrian opposition fighters is one of reasonable possibility, although one of Syria’s neighbors would probably be preferable. Jordan already serves as a training ground for America’s current training program and it would be an ideal locale to build a real Syrian army. However, Turkey could also conceivably serve that purpose if the Turks were willing” (p.10).
About two months later, in November, after US Vice President Joe Biden met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul, it was announced that Kirsehir would be used by Turkey to train Syrian anti-government forces that the US would equip against Damascus.
The report also makes it clear that building the new opposition army “should not mean bolstering the existing ‘Free Syrian Army’” (p.10). Instead, the existing US-backed insurgent groups will slowly be swallowed or destroyed by the new opposition force that the US and its allies are constructing.
In mid-November, the Pentagon also presented a proposal to the US Congress, saying that it wants to arm Iraqi tribesmen with Kalashnikov rifles, rocket propelled grenades, and mortars. What is omitted is the cross-border dispersion of these tribes in both Iraq and Syria and the possibility that these weapons could be used in an attack on the Syrian government.
What moderates?
The talk about supporting “moderates” is very misleading. It is already clear that the ideology of the proposed insurgent army is not a key issue in practice for many US officials. There is also enough evidence to show that the Free Syrian Army, Al-Nusra, the ISIL, and the other insurgent forces are also collaborating and trading fighters.
The Telegraph, for example, had this to say on November 10 about Saddam Jamal, a US-backed Free Syrian Army commander that became an ISIL commander: “Before joining ISIL, Jamal had been a drug dealer, then a commander in the western-backed Free Syrian Army, claiming contacts in the CIA.”
It is also clear that religion is a mask for the ISIL too. The same British article writes the following testimony from Saddam Jamal’s body guard about his massacre of a Syrian family: “The ISIL commander felt no remorse for killing this Syrian family, his bodyguard said, nor did he believe he was fulfilling a God-given creed: for him being a member of the extremist group was a matter of business, not religion.”
In the end the ISIL may be used to incubate fighters or collapse, like the Free Syrian Army, into the proposed invasion force to occupy Syria.
Invasion army or armies?
General Dempsey said that “the anti-ISIL campaign could take several years to accomplish.” Leon Panetta, the former head of the CIA and Pentagon, has also claimed that this war will turn into a thirty-year US military project that will extend to North Africa, West Africa, and the Horn of Africa.
According to Brookings: “At some point, such a new Syrian army would have to move into Syria, but only when it was ready. Only when a force large enough to conquer and hold territory – something on the order of two to three brigades -were ready should it be sent in” (p.11).
A war of attrition that that will take years of fighting is underway. This matches up with the ideas about training an insurgent invasion force over the years.
In their joint statement Senators McCain and Graham said that President Bashar Assad will not stop fighting the so-called “moderate” US-backed insurgents “that remain committed to his ousting- especially when the United States and [its] partners still, correctly, share the same goal and will now be arming and training Assad’s moderate opponents.” In other words, the US-trained Syrian forces will ultimately target the Syrian government.
Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is a sociologist, award-winning author and geopolitical analyst.
Civilians killed in US drone attacks: Rights group
Press TV – November 28, 2014
A rights group says many civilians have been targeted and killed in US drone attacks in Pakistan and other countries where such raids are carried out, Press TV reports.
The UK-based rights group Reprieve revealed that civilians have been killed in Pakistan and other places before militants were targeted by US assassination drones.
Reprieve has presented several cases on how ruthlessly the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has killed civilians but declared them militants through dubious reports in the media, which regularly cite anonymous Pakistani and US officials.
In one such case, the CIA killed 221 people, including over 100 children, in Pakistan in search of just four militants. This is while three of the militants are reportedly still alive and the fourth one has died of natural causes.
In another example, the report pointed out that on average each militant was targeted and reported killed more than three times before they were actually killed.
To kill one militant, sometimes “more than 300 people have been killed,” said Mirza Shazad Akbar, Reprieve’s representative in Pakistan.
“A former US drone operator said that by looking at the monitor and looking at people’s movement, he could actually tell who is a bad person and who is a good person… This is the extent of… the [US] flawed intelligence,” Akbar added.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg of the scale of tragedy in Pakistan’s tribal areas, where more than 3,800 people have been killed with the same pattern of the so-called precise surgical drone strikes.
The US carries out targeted killings through drone strikes in several Muslim countries, such as Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia. Washington claims the targets of the drone attacks are militants, but local officials and witnesses maintain that civilians have been the main victims of such raids over the past few years.
The United Nations and several human rights organizations have identified the US as the world’s number-one user of “targeted killings,” largely due to its drone attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
EU chief calls for decentralization and federalization of Ukraine
RT | November 27, 2014
To solve the current crisis in Ukraine, the country should become decentralized and federalized, Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, announced in his political anniversary speech in Paris this week.
Quoting “1,000 deaths” in the country since the cease-fire agreement was reached in Minsk on September 5, Van Rompuy said he could no longer call the situation a cease-fire. And a new cessation of conflict, if controlled by the same players, would have the identical outcome, the politician said in his speech, marking his five years presidency of the European Council.
Urging a “global solution,” the EU chief said a way for Ukraine to become a “decentralized (or federalized) country” must be found. He called for the country’s closer ties with the EU. However, he also said, “Europe has become unpopular among Europeans” in the past five to six years.
Kiev should “establish a correct relationship with Russia, its neighbor, with which it shares history, culture and language,” Van Rompuy said, adding that the interests of minorities in Ukraine should be respected.
Sharing his EU “experiences and perspectives” with students at the Sciences Po institute of political studies in Paris, he pointed out that the current crisis in Ukraine is “the most grave geopolitical crisis we’ve experienced in Europe since the end of the Cold war.” What makes it even worse, according to the Rompuy, is the fact that the “war” is happening on European soil.
Van Rompuy is not the first European politician to suggest Ukraine’s federalization. Earlier in August, Germany’s Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, who is also the country’s economy minister, spoke out for federalization to be introduced in Ukraine once the conflict in the east of the country is resolved.
The same measures to help settle the crisis in eastern Ukraine have been voiced by Moscow. However, Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko keeps ruling out such political changes, saying the country’s federalization is out of question.
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Book Review
The Zeolite Book — First Edition, 2026, Paperback
The volcanic mineral medicine will not patent — for the toxic burden medicine will not name
Lies are Unbekoming – October 30, 2026
Zeolite is old. It is in Roman concrete that has held for two thousand years. It’s in the water filters of ancient cisterns. It’s in the stomachs of Pacific livestock whose keepers knew, somehow, that this grey crumbling rock made the animals healthier. It’s in Soviet clinical protocols from the 1960s. It’s in the standard emergency response to the Chernobyl explosion.
In 1986, after the Chernobyl reactor failure, the Soviet Union manufactured and distributed natural zeolite at industrial scale — for soil remediation, for livestock feed, for human consumption, for the cleanup itself. Karl Hecht, who had been director of the Institute for Experimental and Clinical Pathophysiology at the Charité of Humboldt University Berlin, spent the six decades after that building the clinical research base — on silicon’s role in human health, on zeolite’s clinical safety, on its applications in ageing. In 2018, Pavelić and colleagues published a comprehensive clinical safety review of natural clinoptilolite in Frontiers in Pharmacology. In 2019, Mastinu analysed its binding affinities. In the Western medical literature, these works sit largely uncited.
What has not been treated at book length, until now, is how a volcanic mineral with six decades of Soviet clinical work behind it, two major peer-reviewed Western reviews, and ongoing clinical use across the former Eastern Bloc, remains almost entirely absent from Western medical practice — and what the toxic burden it’s meant to address actually is.
The Zeolite Book gathers the Soviet clinical record, the Western peer-reviewed studies, three contemporary practitioner voices, and three serious counterviews into one honest treatment. That’s why the book runs to seven appendices. 288 pages, four parts, three practitioner voices, three counterviews, seven appendices. The honest treatment is the argument.
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