The Daily Caller has revealed a new report on dark money flowing into an organisation with close links to Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele – key figures in the investigation into US President Donald Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia during the 2016 election.
Fund for a Better Future (FBF), a California-based group, donated $2,065,000 to The Democracy Integrity Project (TDIP), the non-profit that contracted with private investigative firm Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele, author of the Trump-Russia dossier, to probe POTUS, according to IRS filings reviewed by The Daily Caller News Foundation (TheDCNF).
TDIP was founded in 2017 by Daniel Jones, a consultant who worked for Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat and the first female chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Jones told the FBI that he had hired Fusion GPS and Steele to continue the investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump team and Russia in 2016.
Jones reportedly told an associate that TDIP operated as a “shadow media organisation helping the government”, and suggested that his team had planted several articles against President Trump.
Still, little is known about the donors of the two organisations – TDIP and FBF, but according to The Daily Caller, this type of public advocacy group is most closely associated with “dark money” donations.
Scott Walter, the president of the Capital Research Centre, a conservative watchdog, said this was an example of “dark money”:
“You’ve found one ‘dark money’ outfit providing dark millions to another ‘dark money’ outfit and refusing to reveal anything to you. That’s ‘dark’ two or three times over. Ironically, ‘dark money’ is most often applied only to conservative funding”, Walter said, adding that “the Left has a vast empire of ‘dark money’ groups, including the Fund for a Better Future and The Democracy Integrity Project”.
According to FBF’s recent audit, the group has four key donors, who have not been identified. In the meantime, one renowned TDIP donor has successfully been identified and is none other than Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros.
A spokesman for Soros told The New York Times last October that the billionaire had contributed $1 million to TDIP. The revelation came only after TheDCNF reported that Jones had disclosed to his associate that Soros was one of TDIP’s donors.
A report release by the House Intelligence Committee in April 2018 suggests that Jones told the FBI a year before that his group would receive $50 million in funding from seven to ten wealthy funders from New York and California.
Jones went on to say that TDIP “planned to share the information he obtained with policymakers… and with the press”, and that his organisation “had secured the services of Steele, his associate [redacted], and Fusion GPS to continue exposing Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election”.
Fusion GPS, founded by ex-Wall Street Journal reporter Glenn Simpson, hired Christopher Steele, a former MI6 officer, in June 2016. At the time, Fusion was working for the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to look into Trump’s alleged links to Russia.
Simpson’s firm hired Steele to compile a disparaging dossier that contained unverified allegations that Trump took part in activities that could make him vulnerable to Russian blackmail attempts. The White House has flatly rejected the allegations, with POTUS slamming the dossier as “fake” and “discredited”.
Russia has also denied any interference in the election process, stressing that the allegations were made up to excuse the defeat of Trump’s rival.
The ongoing investigation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller has also failed to find any evidence that would implicate Trump directly with Russia.
CARACAS, VENEZUELA — For nearly four days, much of Venezuela has been without power, bringing the country’s embattled economy to a near standstill. Though power is now returning, the outage saw U.S. officials and politicians blame the Venezuelan government for the crisis while officials in Caracas accused the U.S. of conducting “sabotage” and launching cyberattacks that targeted its civilian power grid as well as of employing saboteurs within Venezuela.
Although many mainstream media outlets have echoed the official U.S. government response, some journalists have strayed from the pack. One notable example is Kalev Leetaru, who wrote at Forbes that “the United States remotely interfering with its [Venezuela’s] power grid is actually quite realistic.”
Leetaru also noted that “timing such an outage to occur at a moment of societal upheaval in a way that delegitimizes the current government, exactly as a government-in-waiting has presented itself as a ready alternative, is actually one of the tactics” he had previously explored in a 2015 article detailing U.S. government hybrid warfare tactics “to weaken an adversary prior to conventional invasion or to forcibly and deniably effect a transition in a foreign government.”
In addition to Leetaru’s claims, others have asserted U.S. government involvement after U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), who is deeply involved in Trump’s Venezuela policy, appeared to have prior knowledge that the blackouts would occur when he tweeted about them only three minutes after they had begun.
While several journalists have pointed out that the probability that the Trump administration was responsible for the blackout is highly likely, few — if any — pointed out that the U.S. has long had highly developed plans involving the use of cyberattacks to attack critical power-grid infrastructure in countries targeted for regime change by Washington.
Indeed, the most well-known plan of this type, known by its codename “Nitro Zeus,” was originally created under the George W. Bush administration and was aimed at Iran. With so many former Bush officials now calling the shots in the Trump administration, particularly its Venezuela policy, the potential return of a “Nitro Zeus” virus, this time tailored to Venezuela, seems increasingly likely.
A little hammer to use when big hammers have been nixed
The “Nitro Zeus” plan first came to light in a November 2016 exposé published in the New York Times, which described it as an “elaborate plan” that was created for use against Iran were negotiations over its nuclear program to fail. That program targeted “Iran’s air defenses, communications systems and crucial parts of its power grid. At its height it “involved thousands of American military and intelligence personnel” and is believed to have cost tens of millions of dollars. The program intimately involved both the National Security Agency’s Tailored Access Operations unit and the U.S. Cyber Command.
The program was shelved when the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was established, though the Trump administration’s decision to unilaterally withdraw from the deal has led some to ask whether the Trump administration has been considering reviving the program. While they may not have revived it for use against Iran, they instead may have done so in Venezuela, if Venezuelan government assertions that a U.S. cyberattack is to blame for much of the country’s recent power outage are to be believed.
Indeed, Leetaru noted in his recent Forbes article that “given the U.S. government’s longstanding concern with Venezuela’s government, it is likely that the U.S. already maintains a deep presence within the country’s national infrastructure grid,” much as it did with Iran in connection with the Nitro Zeus program prior to its public revelation three years ago.
The Nitro Zeus program is not nearly as well known as its relative, the Stuxnet virus, which was co-developed by the U.S. and Israel and used to attack Iranian software controlling uranium enrichment centers. Yet Nitro Zeus, despite its relative lack of infamy, is notable for several reasons. First, it “took it [U.S. cyberwarfare] to a new level,” according to a former official involved in the project cited by the Times. This was because, prior to Nitro Zeus, “the U.S. had never assembled a combined cyber and kinetic attack plan on this scale,” and also because executing the program would have “significant effects on civilians, particularly if the United States had to cut vast swaths of the country’s electrical grid and communications networks.”
Another reason Nitro Zeus is notable, particularly in light of U.S. efforts to meddle in Venezuela, is the motive for its creation. Indeed, although Nitro Zeus became the “enormous, and enormously complex” program detailed by the Times during the Obama administration, work on the program had actually begun during the George W. Bush administration. According to a report in the Daily Beast, Bush had considered Nitro Zeus “a necessary tactical alternative after the Iraq War sabotaged his chances of starting another Middle East invasion.” In other words, after the Iraq War debacle made it more difficult for the U.S. to launch unilateral military interventions, the Bush administration opted to develop “non-kinetic” military tools that would avoid angering the U.S. public and U.S. allies abroad.
Furthermore, as Tyler Rogoway wrote at Foxtrot Alpha :
[Programs like Nitro Zeus] can be paired for synergistic effect, leaving its target country’s military blind and deaf and its population suffering. And all this can be had without ever dropping a bomb and even under the veil of plausible deniability.”
This, according to Rogoway, has led such programs to become “more and more a viable alternative to traditional forms of attack,” given that the U.S. can deny its involvement, avoiding potential diplomatic blowback, and because it can wreak havoc not just on a country’s military but its civilian population.
The logic behind the likelihood of U.S. cyber sabotage
While “Nitro Zeus” was never unleashed upon Iran, it’s likely that the program spawned similar attack plans on the power grids of other adversarial nations given the precedent it set. As the Times pointed out in its Nitro Zeus exposé:
The United States military develops contingency plans for all kinds of possible conflicts, such as a North Korean attack on the South, loose nuclear weapons in South Asia or uprisings in Africa or Latin America. Most sit on the shelf, and are updated every few years.”
This point was expanded upon by Rogoway, who noted:
Nitro Zeus is most likely one of a whole slew of plans to attack potential enemies via cyber weaponry. Plans surely exist for all of America’s potential adversaries, and some are likely to be far more elaborate and deadly than anything that has been disclosed to date.”
There are more than a few indications that many of the more aggressive “contingency plans” have moved to the top of the toolbox under the Trump administration. For instance, key former Bush officials that are now in the Trump administration, particularly John Bolton and Elliot Abrams, are known for their aggressive stances and willingness to promote extreme policies targeting adversaries, even those policies that harm or kill scores of innocent civilians. Thus, voices like those in the Obama State Department and National Security Council, who had warned of the potential adverse effects on civilians that a Nitro Zeus blackout could cause, are unlikely to influence the likes of Bolton and Abrams — who have an outsized role in creating the administration’s Venezuela policy.
Furthermore, such a plan would be considered valuable by Bolton and Abrams in the same way that Bush valued Nitro Zeus after his “hands were tied” following the Iraq War disaster. In regard to Venezuela, Bolton and Abrams similarly have their hands tied when it comes to military action, given that military intervention of any type has been resoundingly rejected by the U.S.’ allies in Latin America and elsewhere. Not only that but Abrams’ favored tactic of providing arms disguised as “humanitarian aid” to insurgents has also failed, limiting the aggressive actions that can be taken by the administration.
Unable to launch a military intervention — either overt or covert — a Nitro Zeus cyberattack would likely have been a top contender for a next step following the failed “humanitarian aid” stunt and the rejection of any type of military intervention by the U.S.’ Latin American allies.
In addition, many of those responsible for the creation of the Nitro Zeus program share connections with neoconservatives who are influential in the Trump administration. For instance, Keith Alexander — who was NSA director at the time the Nitro Zeus program began and for much of its development — is now the CEO of his new cybersecurity consultancy, IronNet Cybersecurity. Sitting on IronNet’s board of directors alongside Alexander is Jack Keane, a zealously pro-war retired general whom Trump valued enough to offer the position of Secretary of Defense, an offer Keane declined. Keane is a close associate of the neoconservative Kagan family and is currently chairman of the Institute for the Study of War, founded by Kimberly Kagan and financed by top U.S. weapons companies.
With Bush-era warmongers now dominating Trump’s Venezuela policy, it seems increasingly likely that efforts to revive the Bush/Obama-era Nitro Zeus program have taken place. Indeed, with such an enormous and complex program already on the books and the likely existence of spin-off programs that have developed over the past decade, it was likely the easiest route for another “aggressive” U.S.-backed measure targeting the Venezuelan government.
However, if the U.S. did conduct a cyber attack on Venezuela’s power grid, it would not be powerful neoconservatives in the administration who would ultimately be to blame, as only the U.S. president can authorize an offensive cyberattack. Thus, if any part of Venezuela’s current blackout was indeed U.S.-directed sabotage, it was President Donald Trump who gave the order to attack Venezuela’s civilian power infrastructure, a strange thing to do for someone who professes to care so much for the Venezuelan people.
Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism.
A recent article by Andrew Sullivan in the New York magazine considers how one might discuss the issue of Israel and its powerful domestic lobby without being accused of anti-Semitism. Sullivan is a keen observer of the dynamics of American political power and the article pretty clearly lays out why the relationship with Israel is poison for the United States, but he cautions that words matter and one has to be careful about the packaging surrounding any critique of the Israel Lobby and its American Jewish supporters.
Sullivan begins with: “Let’s get this out of the way first: Using the phrases ‘all about the Benjamins’ and ‘allegiance to a foreign country’ when referring to the Israel lobby in D.C., as freshman Democratic representative Ilhan Omar recently did, is anti-Semitic. It should be possible to criticize Washington’s relationship with Israel without deploying crude and freighted language like this.”
And that is precisely where some critics of the Israel-America relationship might have a problem with observers like Sullivan as what for him passes as “crude and freighted” is for others frankness. Okay, “all about the Benjamins” is slang and the implication is that Jewish money is what has corrupted American politics and the media to stifle any honest discussion on Israel-Palestine and to skew U.S. government activity in the Middle East so that it favors what Israel perceives to be its own interests. This process operates right out in the open with Israel-firster Jewish billionaires Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban respectively serving as principal donors for the Republican and Democratic parties.
This flood of Jewish money into foreign policy generation has done incalculable damage to the actual interests of the United States as Sullivan, to his credit, makes clear in his article. The point is that politics in America is all about money and Ilhan Omar was quite right to make that connection. Most congress-critters do not love Israel because they honestly like the hordes of lobbyists that it is able to send their way. In fact, many of them privately complain about the pressure, but they do love the campaign donations and the lucrative sinecure jobs in the financial services industry that come with their retirements. And they also know that if they cross Israeli interests while in office they will soon be unemployed.
And as for the “allegiance to a foreign country,” how else does one describe doing everything possible to favor a foreign state at the expense of the nation where one lives? Sullivan himself provides ample evidence in his article that the one-way relationship with Israel inflicts major damage on the United States and that the enabling of that process comes from a disciplined and well-funded lobbying effort that operates at all levels of government and also through the media. Is that not allegiance to a foreign country?
After expressing the “thou shalt nots” regarding Israel, Andrew Sullivan pulls no punches in his article, which should be read in extenso. He writes “The basic facts are not really in dispute. A very powerful lobby deploys the money and passions of its members to ensure that a foreign country gets very, very special treatment from the U.S.” and then goes on to detail exactly how Israel is a major liability to America. He discusses the $3.8 billion it receives annually in spite of the fact that is a wealthy country, its failure to support U.S. foreign policy objectives, its unwillingness to curtail a brutal occupation of the West Bank, its humiliation of President Obama because he entered into an agreement with Iran, and its nearly complete subjugation of Congress, congressional leaders and the White House.
Sullivan fails to mention how Israel also spies on the United States, steals U.S. developed technology and benefits hugely from beneficial trade agreements that kill American jobs. And there are also the “suspected but not proven” issues like Israel’s role in 9/11, its apparent manipulation of Jewish American officials in the Pentagon to start the disastrous 2003 war with Iraq, and its current clandestine agitation for Washington to attack Iran. Jewish billionaires also are the prime sources of “charitable” contributions that feed the illegal settlement outposts on the West Bank populated largely by fundamentalist Jews whose prime mission is to make the lives of their Palestinian neighbors so miserable that they will emigrate. That is sometimes referred to as ethnic cleansing. Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt, and David Friedman, the key components of the Trump Administration Middle East “peace” team, are all passionate about Israel and have all supported the illegal settlements. Friedman, in particular, has sought to eliminate the word “occupation” from official U.S. government descriptions of the Israeli activity in Palestinian areas.
And then there is the Israeli predilection to use unarmed Palestinian demonstrators for target practice and to bomb schools and vital infrastructure in Gaza, which once upon a time most Americans would have considered war crimes or crimes against humanity. Sullivan does mention how Congress is willing to pass legislation to restrict freedom of speech if such speech involves criticism of Israel, noting that the very first bill to come up in the Senate after the recent shutdown was supporting the punishment of those who advocate nonviolent boycotting of Israel. He might have added how Israel’s friends at state and local levels are pushing to rewrite world history texts to eliminate any references to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. And holocaust study is becoming mandatory in many U.S. school systems without any suggestion that the standard narrative might be in large part bogus. And then there are the holocaust museums springing up like mushrooms at the taxpayers’ expense. Is it all driven by money and enabled by the power that money buys to propagandize for Israel? And is it maybe just a bit of allegiance to a foreign country? Yes indeed, thank you, Ilhan Omar, for saying so.
All of this warm and fuzzy feeling about Israel did not happen by magic. By one estimate there are 600 Christian and Jewish organizations in the United States that have at least part of their agendas the promotion of the relationship with Israel. Christian Zionists are formidable in numbers but the money, as well as the political and media access that drive the so-called Israel Lobby process, is Jewish. The directors and presidents of those organizations meet regularly and discuss what they can do to help Israel. How does one describe such collusion? Some might prefer to call it a conspiracy.
So how should one view the dystopic nature of the relationship with Israel? No one has ever described it better than America’s first president George Washington. In his Farewell Address he wrote:
“The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest… So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.”
Andrew Sullivan concludes with some optimism and also a warning, which should be heeded: “Can our current controversy lead to a less inhibited debate? I sure hope so. Will that actually happen? All I can say is that AIPAC will wield all the power it can muster to prevent it.” It is, to be sure, AIPAC versus all decent Americans and one has to hope that this time the voice of the people will be heard in defense of the actual interests of the United States of America rather than those of Israel.
Former Royal Ulster Constabulary officer and Ulster Volunteer Force operative John Weir has claimed British military intelligence initiated a plan to carry out a massacre at a Catholic primary school in County Armagh in the 1970s.
Similar claims were previously made by fellow former RUC officer Billy McCaughey, now deceased, who was in 1980 convicted along with Weir for the murder of a chemist in Ahoghill in 1977.
Weir, a member of the UVF’s notorious Glenanne Gang — a secret alliance of Ulster loyalists who carried out shooting and bombing attacks against Catholics and Irish nationalists, and are linked to at least 120 murders — made his incendiary allegation in the new documentary Unquiet Graves, which premieres in Belfast 21 February.
He says “the plan was to shoot up a school in Belleeks”, in retaliation for the January 1976 Kingsmill massacre of January 1976 in which 10 Protestants were shot dead by the IRA — the plot was formulated in order to make the Troubles “spiral out of control” into a full civil war. It was only cancelled because the UVF leadership considered it a step too far.
Unquiet Graves is the work of filmmaker Sean Murray, who spent four years researching and producing the project. He suggests “hawks” within British intelligence were responsible for the plot, and “there was an internal power battle going on” at the time.
“There were people who would have been against that, but the hawks wanted a gloves-off approach to the IRA. It’s quite revealing the UVF were unwilling to go through with this. Films like this are the only viable option for some semblance of the truth for victims, particularly against state violence,” he added.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland has recently been criticised for not releasing files to the Police Ombudsman related to the 1992 mass-shooting in Sean Graham bookmakers, in which five Catholics — including 15-year-old James Kennedy — were murdered by the Ulster Defence Association.
“Trust needs to be built for both communities to move on. I viewed [loyalist groups] as de facto paramilitary groups. I’m still willing to speak and work with former members to move forward. It’s OK to sit in 2019 and reflect that these people were psychopaths. In many ways, they were born into an era when this was sanitised. It was normal behaviour in many working class areas. I think admitting this is a great justice to the victims. Without [Weir], I’m not sure a lot of families would get some semblance of truth,” he concluded.
Across the Western world, there has been discussion and argument and consternation over the apparent failure to make progress on disarmament at the recent talks in Hanoi. Examination of the reasons for that failure has been replaced by speculation about the DPRK’s next move and suspicions about its motives, without any similar skepticism or doubts about the US intent and strategy. But such speculation is entirely misguided, and only possible because of ignorance of one key detail in the discussions in Hanoi.
Thanks mostly to the efforts of Australia’s former ambassador to South Korea and Vietnam, Richard Broinowski, whose diplomatic contacts in Canberra relayed inside information about the discussions, the alarming truth on why the talks suddenly fell apart was revealed to the SBS TV network, and to its listeners in the evening news broadcast on March 1st.
While media around the world, apparently including those not allied to the US, broadcast the press briefing by Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo laying the blame on North Korea for demanding all the sanctions be lifted, only SBS listeners got to hear what really happened, and thenceforth to see things in an entirely different light. As Richard Broinowski explained several days later writing on John Menadue’s influential blog Pearls and Irritations :
… “a well-informed senior Asian diplomatic source in Canberra has added another reason for the Summit’s breakdown: that Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, persuaded Trump to add another demand, without notice, that led to North Korean refusal and a premature end to the summit even before negotiations had begun.”
“The Asian diplomat recalled that John Bolton had been scheduled to visit Canberra at the end of February. But the visit was cancelled when he suddenly went to Hanoi instead, whether at Trump’s directive or on his own initiative being unclear. The diplomat’s understanding is that Bolton suggested to Trump that as well as demanding a complete inventory of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and delivery systems, Trump should also request details of the country’s chemical and biological arsenal, a demand Kim found unexpected, and for which he was unprepared, and refused. Trump then broke off the meeting before substantive negotiations had even begun.”
We may all too easily forget the anticipation before these crucial talks between Trump and Kim Jong Un, where it at least looked possible that Trump might “do a deal” on a basis that the North Koreans could accept. The early signs were more than promising, with Kim Jong Un assuring that he would not have been there had he not sought progress on denuclearisation, and Trump prepared to take him at his word. While “substantive negotiations” had not begun, the North Koreans had already suggested they would make very significant concessions in return for the lifting of some sanctions and some other commitments by the US to reduce tensions – “security guarantees” in other words.
It’s worth noting in this context that Sergei Lavrov, speaking at a parallel meeting of the Valdai Club in Ho Chi Minh city had stated quite clearly that the US must make significant concessions, rather than demanding that the DPRK completely denuclearise before lifting sanctions. As always it’s worth reading Lavrov’s wide-ranging and straightforward remarks on the poor state of the world and the destabilizing and destructive role being played by the US.
The necessity for lifting some sanctions on the DPRK is further emphasized by the news that their food production this year is severely restricted by the worst climatic conditions for a decade, making food imports and relief urgent. Their demands for sanctions relief in Hanoi concerned this issue rather than anything connected with the nuclear program.
The truth of the story of Bolton’s demands, which look very much like a planned act of sabotage, is beyond doubt and endorsed in statements from South Korea’s former unification minister Chong Se-Hyun published in Korean newspapers and reported elsewhere. The Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian also covered the story on the following Monday, but this was a temporary blip on their normally unchallenging sympathy for the official US viewpoint. Australia’s other State broadcaster the ABC, however, made no mention of it, simply repeating Trump’s cover-up claim on the sanctions removal.
These media along with their Western partners in officially approved disinformation are now once again adding to the rumor mill on “North Korea’s ongoing nuclear threat” with suspect stories about the renewal of a missile launching site. Satellite photos taken only hours after the failure of the talks claim to show such activity. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute, which has close links to government, has meanwhile warned that moves to scale down the annual war games proposed belatedly as a “goodwill gesture” by the US, are “dangerous and will embolden the North”.
Putting things into a wider perspective, former Australian ambassador to the UN and nuclear disarmament negotiator Richard Butler added his weight to the subject the following day with this footnote on Broinowski’s article:
“This report has now been confirmed by a report published in the March 4th edition of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which cites a statement by the DPRK Foreign Minister, Ri Yong-Ho, in Hanoi, that “John Bolton disrupted the talks by demanding that North Korea disclose its chemical and biological arsenal as well as its nuclear arsenals”. This would seem to answer the question I posed in my article on whether or not a spanner had been thrown into the works and if so, by whom? Not unusually, there seems to have been no report of this highly salient fact by western mainstream media.”
What matters here however is not simply to expose the misinformed and fraudulent claims made about the failure of the Hanoi talks. Bolton and his allies – whoever they are – evidently sought to sabotage the talks and the possibility of agreement and détente, against the intention of Donald Trump. The last thing they want is to lose the pretext for maintaining and expanding missile systems in the region aimed at threatening or “countering” China. An informative report from the East Asia Forum think-tank also makes this suggestion:
For many in the US security community the ‘no deal’ comes as a relief. There were concerns that Trump would be eager to rush into a deal, no matter what the costs of the concessions, to claim the diplomatic achievement for his administration. This seemed an over-urgent goal due to the impending report by FBI special prosecutor Robert Mueller on the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia and possible obstruction of justice, as well as the heat on Trump from his former fixer Michael Cohen’s damning testimony last week to Congress.
So far from returning to the US with an extra feather in his golden cap, Donald Trump came home to face the music, and not just from the Russia-gate witch-hunt. Even though he had called off the talks with Kim Jong Un, he had already engaged in friendly exchanges and pleasantries that some found offensive, inviting media to repeat the tired nonsense about his dealings with President Putin – that “Trump takes the advice of “dictators” over that of his own intelligence community”. (perhaps not an unwise move under the circumstances!)
The story of his brief meeting with Kim then immediately focussed on how Trump had “taken Kim’s word” over the case of Otto Warmbier, the detained American student allegedly killed by mistreatment in a North Korean hospital. The grotesque demand of the DPRK for $500 million compensation for his death from a US court illustrates the problem that many in the US seem to have in relating to those with a different viewpoint and different attitude. If similar suits were brought against the US government by relatives of the millions of North Koreans who have died over the last sixty-five years as a direct or indirect result of US aggression and sanctions, the US would be bankrupted.
It’s hard not to conclude that the man who was considered “too extreme” to join the regime of George W Bush because of his preference for armed attacks and even nuclear strikes over diplomacy has now launched a soft coup against his own President. Immediately following the Vietnam venture, Bolton was making threats of military action against Venezuela’s President Maduro which had a strange resonance. The demand that Venezuela’s democratically elected President be replaced by an unknown and unelected puppet selected and launched like a missile into Caracas by the US and its European allies is now being copied by the self-selected “Interim President of the United States”, John Bolton.
And a world under this new de facto President with his choice of puppet might just make us look back on the Golden Age of Trump if we are lucky enough to survive it.
The first Kim-Trump Summit, which took place in Singapore a mere eight months ago, seemed so hopeful—a real breakthrough, a new landmark, new history being made. Of course it was due to Trump’s extreme threats—to totally destroy North Korea with fire and fury—that inflated the value of the first summit in the first place. Trump now likes to assert that had he not been elected president, the US would now be at war with North Korea. One cannot prove such an assertion right, or wrong, since it is impossible to prove “what would have been”. We can, however, assume that if, (a) the prior state of relations had continued untouched (unlike Trump, who actively went about making North Korea into the kind of problem he never mentioned during his electoral campaign), and, (b) without any threats from the US (and certainly without any of Trump’s extreme threats), then it is likely that, like before, open war would not have been on the horizon. Trump put in an extra effort into magnifying “the problem of North Korea,” and then made a special effort to “fix” the problem—only he has not fixed anything really, and now Trump is hostage to whatever North Korea decides to do, a fact that could mean North Korea could do something to negatively affect Trump’s chances of getting re-elected by reminding the US electorate of just how badly Trump failed. Meanwhile, North Korea has in fact achieved all of the extra time which analysts said it needed in order to finally complete development of its nuclear weapons program. No longer being published are articles suggesting that North Korea is not quite ready to strike the US mainland, and to do so over and over. As I wrote in an end-of-year review essay in 2018:
“It would be one of the most striking of ironies if Trump, who campaigned against globalism, were to lose his next electoral campaign thanks to the impact of foreign forces, regardless of whether they are China, North Korea, Iran, or others. On the other hand, it should serve as a reminder that as long as US presidents style themselves as ‘war presidents’ or ‘foreign policy presidents,’ then it should be expected that they will be vulnerable to the influences of developments beyond their borders. And it’s a fitting outcome, given the extent to which the US interferes in other nations…”.
Was the second Kim-Trump summit, in Hanoi, a “failure”? Some analysts seem confused about this question, and are very reticent to call it a failure. How does one define failure? In this case, the meeting failed to produce an agreement. The meeting failed to produce an advance toward any of the stated goals of the last meeting—even the value of simply talking was called into question by Trump walking out and thus ceasing to talk. The result was the same as if the two sides had chosen not to meet, only worse, because they had in fact met and now for the expended effort they had little or nothing to show. Now the two sides do not even know if they will meet again.
Trump did his best to downplay the significance of his walking out, but by blaming events such as the congressional testimony of his former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen—which was truly riveting—Trump seemed to suggest that the summit had indeed been a failure. Had it not been a failure, then there would be no need to blame anyone for anything.
Trump reaped the fruit of his labour, and that of his predecessors, in Hanoi. There are lessons to be learned here (which means that thanks to the “mindless inertia of history,” nothing will be learned). The Hanoi summit produced the kinds of results which were foreseen by some, like Patrick Lawrence who argued that, “it is clear what would produce a breakthrough if Trump truly wants one”: first, exempting the extensive North-South Korean development plans from sanctions; second, relaxing the untenable US demand that North Korea surrender everything before any sanctions can be lifted—that the US in effect would concede nothing at all, until it got everything. That is not a negotiating position; rather, it is a demand for unconditional surrender. Such a position also erroneously implies that North Korea has no cards on its side of the table—when clearly it does—and thus the failure of the summit bites the US. But there is even more that can be learned from this failure.
Regime change, sanctions, and violations of international law all came back to haunt Trump. The US president could not do and say things in one arena, and then turn around in another and pretend that the big smile on his face would make people forget. Such a strategy assumes that all people, like Americans presumably, are incapable of connecting the dots and seeing how one side of a face contradicts the other side. In terms of international law, Trump—and his predecessors—had already established the fact that any agreement reached with the US might not be worth the paper on which it was printed. Trump tore up the JCPOA (the Iran nuclear agreement), even though Iran had violated none of its provisions, and all the other parties to the agreement defended its value. Likewise, Obama attacked Libya after his predecessor had promised benefits in return for Libya disarming itself. There is already too much painful evidence that the US uses disarmament agreements as a maliciously destructive trick—evidence enough for North Korea not to play the role of the sucker, especially when people like John Bolton openly talked about a “Libya model” with reference to North Korea. Expecting the North Koreans to simply ignore all of this is to assume that they are either beyond desperate, or just stupid, or both. Then there is the problem that the US Congress might not ratify any agreement secured by Trump—a fact that allowed Trump to walk out of the JCPOA. Note how the US Congress has yet to even begin talking of ratifying the USMCA, the successor to NAFTA. The US record of respecting international law is utterly abysmal, whether it is dismissing negative judgments by the International Court of Justice (on Nicaragua and Iran), or by the UN Human Rights Council on Venezuela, or its unlawful acts of aggression against Iraq, Libya, and Syria, or its commission of torture, extrajudicial executions, extraterritorial sanctions, violation of diplomatic missions, propaganda inciting violence, and so forth. In other words, North Korea has been given very little reason to trust the US.
Sanctions clearly stood in the path of achieving anything of substance at the Hanoi summit. Once the US imposes sanctions, it never seems to know how to scale down. Sanctions become effectively permanent, an end in themselves. In place of removing sanctions, US officials, politicians, and the media elevate trivial and basic courtesies to the level of grand concessions: they thus inflate the value of a mere handshake, a photo, or a phone call. They therefore confuse the symbolic with the material, hence the insufferable US fretting about “optics” (image management). North Korea is dealing with a dangerously armed adversary that is also narcissistic, superficial, and dishonest—an ugly combination. What also stands out are the drastically differing visions of “total denuclearization of the Korean peninsula”. The US seems to think this means that North Korea would totally destroy all of its nuclear weapons manufacturing facilities and surrender all of its nuclear weapons. A different, more balanced view, is that the US should also dismantle its ability to threaten North Korea with nuclear destruction—or else how can one argue that the Korean peninsula has been “denuclearized”? What Trump walked out on was an entirely reasonable proposition offered by North Korea: the partial destruction of its nuclear facilities, in return for the partial termination of US sanctions (those that most hurt civilians). The US knew that North Korea would not surrender the keys that ensured regime survival. Even Trump himself did not expect full “denuclearization” to be an outcome, so what did he expect? Trump misrepresenting the North Korean offer does not help matters for the future. Furthermore, well before the Hanoi summit, Kim Jong-un made it plainly clear that he expected the US to make concessions in return for concessions on his side. Intelligent arguments that even peace without disarmament would be a great achievement, were simply ignored. After all, Nixon’s deal with China did not require China to disarm, nor did Reagan’s agreements with Russia. The longer that the US continues maintaining the absurd position that a peace declaration is itself a concession, the longer such talks will continue to fail.
Regime change: when at the very same time that the US continues to threaten Iran and Venezuela, and the US president has committed himself to a war on socialism both at home and abroad, then why would a communist leader of the DPRK sit down with Trump and expect a balanced relationship of mutual respect? North Korea is dealing with the same US where Trump’s friends, including influential senators like Marco Rubio, wave pictures of a brutally murdered Muammar Gaddafi and publicly take lusty pride in regime change atrocity. Trump’s monologues in Twitter, where he fantasized about how much North Korea could be transformed (thanks to US capital investment), is basically a veiled desire by an acknowledged plunderer to steal North Korea out from under its people. Until the US formally and officially renounces regime change, permanently, it can continue to expect more failures like we witnessed in Hanoi.
Lessons from Caracas: One Failed Test after Another
The US is facing the distinct prospect that President Maduro will outlast President Trump, the latter becoming even more vulnerable to domestic efforts that seek to remove him from office by impeaching and/or imprisoning him—and in any case Trump’s re-election is far from certain. It’s one of the ironies to be discussed later, that Trump—the target of a domestic regime change movement—should align himself with his opponents in seeking the overthrow of a foreign leader. Can Americans ever make these connections?
There are a number of foreign leaders that the US tried to overthrow, for decades, leaders the US commanded “must go” and whose “days” were supposedly numbered. One of them, Fidel Castro, outlived and/or outlasted US presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama, before finally passing away naturally at a very advanced age. Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad was told to go by Obama, who also said his days were numbered—Obama is gone, Assad is still firmly in power. The succession from Kim Il-sung to Kim Jong-un in North Korea is one that outlasted as many US presidential administrations as Cuba has done. Having the “mighty US” as a determined opponent is no guarantee that a government will simply collapse. On the other hand, having the US as a “friend” is no guarantee against the US one day deciding to assassinate or abduct a proxy.
The US-led regime change effort in Venezuela, by most accounts, is coming apart. Certainly, the sanctions are doing what they were intended to do: to inflict maximum hardship on all Venezuelans, regardless of their political affiliations. The legitimate government of Venezuela, however, has already shown an ability and determination to continue, in spite of those sanctions—so the sanctions are failing, just as they have always failed everywhere else to bring about regime change. The US then established two key tests by which to measure success in its efforts to overthrow President Maduro: one was the failed attempt to force entry for fake “humanitarian aid” from the US, and the second was the failure of daring the Venezuelan authorities to arrest Juán Guaidó when he recently returned to Venezuela after ignoring a court-ordered travel ban. It turns out that Guaidó does not matter enough to be arrested—he can travel freely in or out of Venezuela, because who cares.
The US had threatened Venezuela, obliquely, with an unspecified “strong and significant response” should Guaidó be arrested. That was the US engaging in projection: we dare you to arrest Guaidó, because we want you to arrest him. The Venezuelan authorities instantly sniffed out the bait—it was a clumsy attempt by the US to fabricate a provocation, while simultaneously inflating Guaidó’s value as an opposition “leader,” “interim president” even. It was thus an effort by the US to turn a joke into something serious and substantial. The likes of John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, and Mike Pence would have gladly “martyred” Guaidó for the cause, if this could advance US aims—and if Guaidó were smart (doubtful proposition), he would be looking over his back in two different directions at once. As it turns out, however, not even an arrest warrant was ever issued for Guaidó.
They were already preparing their excuses, with fear-mongering from state media about “Russian meddling” in upcoming Canadian elections. The ruling Liberals, under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau—unable to free Canada from continuing US tariffs, despite caving in to Trump on NAFTA, were still pushing the Russia conspiracy theories (Russia, which never slapped tariffs on Canada, unlike our “friends”). But is it “Russian meddling” even when Canada furnishes RT.com with such a delicious opportunity to trounce Trudeau as this one? (See Danielle Ryan’s excellent, “Surprise! ‘Progressive hero’ Justin Trudeau is a fraud and a hypocrite”.)
More than once, but much more so now, Justin Trudeau has been exposed as a fraud, an empty, virtue-signalling hypocrite who, behind the masks of “diversity” and “inclusion,” panders as a minor technocrat in the service of transnational capitalists and powerful financial donors to his Liberal Party. In an ongoing saga of his abuse of power, unfolding still as this is being written, Trudeau has been revealed as attempting to pervert the course of justice in a series of moves that look increasingly corrupt.
Explosive truths were revealed by the former Attorney General, Jody Wilson-Raybould, who resigned (starting a series of high-profileresignations). She resigned in protest against Trudeau’s attempts to pressure her to change the course of the prosecution against the firm SNC-Lavalin (whose executives, by the way, once sat on the Board of Governors of Concordia University). One immediate result was that Trudeau lost any “moral authority” to govern Canada. Having demanded that President Maduro in Venezuela get out of office, now Trudeau faced the same domestic curse suffered by other regime changers before him, including Nicolas Sarkozy, Hillary Clinton, David Cameron, and possibly Trump. Now the calls were all about demanding that Trudeau himself go, that he immediately resign, and that early elections should be called in Canada. (At least the Conservatives are being tragically consistent: they want regime change both at home and in Venezuela.)
When all of the sordid details are played out, over and over again, during the upcoming electoral campaign, and the Liberals lose, they will likely cry about “Russian interference”. In other words, they will lose like losers. Can Canadians ever make such connections?
Lessons from Tel Aviv: Also Fix Your Own Damned House
At the same time as Justin Trudeau’s collapse in Canada, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu has been formerly indicted on corruption charges. Netanyahu, who endorsed regime change in Iraq, Libya, Iran, Syria, and most recently Venezuela too, instead faces domestic regime change.
Who exactly are these people? Where do such persons come from? I mean these figures who presume to wag a finger at others, to lecture and even hector them, commanding the removal of this leader and demanding the resignation of the other leader, when just behind them are closets full of skeletons?
Lessons
Among the lessons of these recent episodes, or what I call “reality checks” for regime change, are the following, pretty basic ones (perhaps that is one reason why they are so easily forgotten or overlooked:
Impunity: Can Western leaders afford to govern imperiously, as if they could afford to rule with impunity? No, there are always consequences, and the less powerful and the more vulnerable the leader, the greater the impact of those consequences. Having worked to establish regime change as acceptable in the international sphere, they cannot escape its domestic applications and translations. Having interfered in the domestic affairs of other nations, they invite other nations to do the same in return.
Limits to power: one can sanction, threaten, demand, petition, smear or even invade a target state, but there is little guarantee that what will result is regime change. Not even being opposed by the world financial centre equipped with the most powerful military, means that regime change is a certain outcome.
Loss of credibility: loss of legitimacy inevitably follows from the loss of credibility. It means there is a loss of persuasive authority. A Western leader of a liberal democracy, who threatens and demands the resignation of another country’s leader, better have all his ducks in a row at home. If it is discovered that you routinely lied about your behind-the-scenes actions at home, why should anybody believe you when you start preaching about those abroad?
Authoritarian liberalism: we live in a period where supposed liberals, acting putatively in the name of saving “liberalism” and “liberal democracy,” resort to the most illiberal means. Liberals today are more likely to be reactionary, orthodox, authoritarian, and even violent. Whatever checklist of contemporary “threats” and “dangers” you might be keeping, feel free to add liberals to it.
The power of elections: while I cannot do this subject any justice in just a few words, we have to beware the seductive belief that elections will result in real change. For example, in the US, it is very doubtful that elections themselves will end the regime change addiction that pervades American society, American moralism, and American exceptionalism. Right now, those who can be counted on—unreliably—as standing against regime change, can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Even if any one of them ever won presidential office, the big question we should be asking (especially since 2016), is whether they would even be allowed to effectively govern. American politicians are notorious flip-flopping fabricators of fables, so even those who seem to be against regime change one day, are likely to disappoint the very next day. It will have to be something beyond elections that impedes the US will to engage in regime change.
For those of you who don’t know, the Integrity Initiative is (was?) a UK-government funded operation to “counter disinformation”. It was run under the auspices of the (fake) charity the Institute for Statecraft, paid for by the foreign office and intelligence agencies, and co-opted journalists to spread propaganda.
Journalists and other influencers were collected into cells, what the Integrity Initiative’s (II) internal memos called “clusters”, usually by region. These clusters were tasked with “combating Russian disinformation”, or other polite translations of “disseminating propaganda”.
The II’s target list is short but predictable – it attacked Russia, Russian media and “Russian bots”. It attacked Scottish nationalists and the independence movement, and it attacked Jeremy Corbyn. Essentially, they turn the fire of their “clusters” on those perceived to be enemies of the status quo.
Those contributing to these clusters are then little more than attack dogs. They never call themselves that, of course, they have all sorts of mechanisms for defending themselves from the truth of their actions. That’s how the shallow have lived with the unconscionable since the beginning of time.
A good example of how this works is Scottish journalist David Leask – written about here by Craig Murrary.
We know from internal memos that Leask had a meeting with II personnel in late March of 2018. We know, from these notes, that Leask was “briefed” about how Scottish nationalism and independence played into Russia’s hands. Or the prevalence of “McBots” spreading anti-union messages on Twitter. He is “appraised of the dangers”, and then toddles off back to his computer, safe in the knowledge that – though he is doubtless writing about the government told him to write about – he’s making the world a safer, freer and better place. Somehow.
The details of the leaks are not important right now. They have been analysed and dissected in great detail already. The actual mechanics, how the different clusters worked, can be reasoned and guessed at, but never known for certain… short of more leaks.
What we DO know is that the foreign office spent millions of pounds funding an organisation which worked with journalists to spin pro-government narratives and smear the head of the opposition. This is a big deal. It should be enough to bring down the government, or least spark an investigation.
Neither happened. In fact, the content of these leaks was never reported in detail in the mainstream media. Indeed, it was barely covered at all – short of vague, snide opinion pieces about the UK “stooping to Russia’s level” and other childish nonsense. (The Guardian closed the comment section on that piece after 2 hours, when it was clear nobody was buying what they were trying to sell).
The detailed write-ups available are only on alternate media sites, or rebel academic groups. The only MP to raise the issue in Parliament was Chris Williamson… since hounded out of Labour under spurious charges of antisemitism. For the most part, the establishment simply ignored all mention if the Integrity Initiative.
Until now.
Now, months later, the media have awakened to the II’s presence. Sky reported today:
‘Highly likely’ GRU hacked UK institute countering Russian fake news
It’s a long, rambling article that contains only one important point: Chris Donnelly, head of the Institute for Statecraft, admits there is “no proof” Russia was behind the “hack”.
Everything past that point is moot. There’s no proof, there’s no evidence even (at least, none that we are shown). We have no reason to simply accept, on faith, the assertion of the NCA.
A simple analysis of motive would suggest that, of course the government are going to blame Russia. They have to shift focus from their now proven corruption. This is politics 101. Deflection and diversion. It’s old-fashioned and, unfortunately, it works. Especially when you have a small army of government-backed hacks to shovel your bullshit narrative down the public’s throat.
Note that nowhere in this story, or anywhere else, is the veracity of documents questioned. They are real. They are the truth. The mainstream media are attempting to undermine a known, proven truth by repeating – without analysis or question – a government-backed theory, for which they admit they have “no proof”.
Interestingly, both Cadwalladr and Deborah Haynes (the author of the Sky article) are named as members of the “UK Cluster” in the leaked documents.
So, essentially, we have journalists accused of working with a government propaganda office to smear Russia… who are defending themselves by spreading government propaganda which smears Russia. (It’s a very “My aunt, who I live with…” scenario). But when you only have the one card you’ve got to play it, and play it with conviction, I suppose.
All of this, of course, mirrors the leaked DNC e-mails from 2016. The e-mails proved corruption on behalf of Hillary Clinton, and yet were attacked in the media as being the result of “Russian hacking”. No evidence for Russian hacking has ever emerged, and WikiLeaks have said – dozens of times – that the e-mails were leaked by an insider.
In fact, the media’s defensive strategy is a move straight out of the DNC playbook:
“Yes I’m corrupt and malign, but you only know I’m corrupt and malign because the Russians hacked my e-mail!”
It’s not really anything like the brilliant defense they seem to think it is.
Kit Knightly is co-editor of OffGuardian. The Guardian banned him from commenting. Twice. He used to write for fun, but now he’s forced to out of a near-permanent sense of outrage.
NOAA has updated its coastal tide gauge measurement data through year 2018 with this update now providing 30 years of actual data since the infamous 1988 Senate hearings that launched the U.S. climate alarmist political propaganda campaign.
In June of 1988 testimony was provided before Congress by various scientists, including NASA’s Dr. James Hansen, claiming that man made greenhouse gas emissions were responsible for increasing global temperatures with the New York Timesreporting, “Global Warming Has Begun, Experts Tells Senate”.
The Times article noted that “The rise in global temperature is predicted to cause a thermal expansion of the oceans and to melt glaciers and polar ice, thus causing sea levels to rise by one to four feet by the middle of the next century. Scientists have already detected a slight rise in sea levels.”
NOAA has updated its extensive U.S. coastal tide gauge data measurement records to include data through year 2018. These measurements include tide gauge data coastal locations for 25 West Coast, Gulf Coast and East Coast states along the Pacific Ocean, Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean. In addition 7 Pacific island groups and 6 Atlantic island groups also have coastal location tide gauge data measurements updated as well.
In all more than 200 coastal locations are included in these measurements with more than 100 of these coastal locations with recorded data periods in excess of 50 years in duration. None of these updated NOAA tide gauge measurement data records show coastal location sea level rise acceleration occurring anywhere on the U.S. coasts or Pacific or Atlantic island groups.
Three decades after the politically driven speculation and conjecture offered at these 1988 Senate hearings NOAA tide gauge data fails to confirm or otherwise support these alarmist claims.
The latest updated NOAA coastal tide gauge measurement data shows locations likely to experience only inches of sea level rise by mid century (not one to four feet as climate alarmists speculated to Congress in 1998) with that increase consistent with long standing and unchanging rates of sea level rise measured at these coastal locations.
The longest NOAA tide gauge data record is at the Battery, New York with a 162 year long measurement period. This location along with all other NOAA U.S. coastal locations show no sea level rise acceleration occurring over the past 30 years despite scientifically flawed assertions otherwise by climate alarmists.
Dr. Judith Curry recently conducted an interview presented here at WUWT where she addressed the political drivers behind the climate alarmism campaign which distinguish it from being a genuine scientific endeavor. She offered the following comments:
“Sea level is rising, but this has been gradually happening since the 1860s; we don’t yet observe any significant acceleration of this process in our time.” Here again, one must consider the possibility that the causes for rising sea levels are partly or mostly natural, which isn’t surprising, says Curry, for “climate change is a complex and poorly understood phenomenon, with so many processes involved.”
“Climatology is becoming an increasingly dubious science, serving a political project,” she complains. In other words, “the policy cart is leading the scientific horse”
NOAA’s coastal tide gauge measurement data are systematically ignored by climate alarmist propaganda campaign activists and media. That action represents a clear condemnation of any scientific validity regarding their efforts.
Hezbollah has earned a formidable reputation for military prowess on the battlefield and political nous off it. It’s no wonder ‘they’ want to ban it.
Attaining to the status of rule of thumb is that whenever a military and/or political organization is proscribed in the West, prudence demands a closer look; this on the basis that in most cases (though not all) what ‘they’ deem worthy of being proscribed and banned is in truth worthy of support.
Take Hezbollah, for example, and the British government’s decision to criminalise the Shiite group’s political wing. Previously only the group’s military wing had been banned in the UK. Is there anyone left in the room that seriously believes this constitutes anything other than another feeble manifestation of the UK’s servile toadying to Washington?
In what stands as a monument to opportunism, the Trump administration has consistently placed Hezbollah in same terrorism box as Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) and Al-Qaeda, conveniently eliding the small detail that the Lebanese resistance and national liberation movement has done as much as, if not more than, any single military force in fighting and defeating IS and Al-Qaeda in Syria.
Author of ‘The Battle For Syria’, Christopher Phillips, writes, “Given Hezbollah’s reputation as the most impressive military force in the Arab world, [the group’s involvement in the conflict] sapped rebel morale and boosted the regime. By offering expertise that Assad lacked, such as light infantry and urban warfare expertise, training, or directing military tactics, from 2013 [Hezbollah] became a vital component of Assad’s forces and greatly shaped the conflict.”
The move to ban Hezbollah’s political wing in the UK combines with the organization’s consistent demonization in Washington as part of the ongoing neocon crusade against Iran. It is a crusade that attests to the Shia behemoth’s resolute stance in resistance to and defiance of US hegemony and its regional proxies, Israel [???] and Saudi Arabia.
Joining Iran in what has come to be known as an axis of resistance in the region is Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, where it enjoys overwhelming support and allegiance, and Syria.
Hezbollah, it is worth remembering, is also an electoral force of note in Lebanon, playing a full and transparent part in the country’s politics. In fact the group’s legitimacy in Lebanon is not in doubt, reflected in its endorsement by the country’s Christian president, Michel Aoun, no less.
A proper accounting of Hezbollah requires a grasp of the organization’s roots as a child of Israeli militarism and aggression over the course of repeated military incursions and invasions into Lebanon by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), stretching back to the late 1970s.
Veteran Middle East correspondent David Hirst, in his work ‘Beware Of Small States,’ delineates the factors responsible for the group’s birth in the mid-1980s, revealing that “Israel, with its invasion” [of southern Lebanon] supplied “the provocation, the anger, the turmoil, or, as Israel’s like-minded American friends, the neoconservatives, might have put it, the ‘constructive chaos’ out of which new orders grow.”
Confirming Hirst’s analysis are the words of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah himself, whom Hirst quotes, “Had the enemy [Israel] not taken this step, I don’t know whether something called Hizbullah (sic) would have been born.”
Hezbollah’s establishment in resistance to an apartheid state bears an historical comparison with the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s branding of the ANC as a terrorist organization in the 1980s is no surprise either, considering the British establishment’s long tradition of standing on the side of the oppressor against the oppressed.
Hezbollah is, then, the Middle East’s answer to the ANC; like its African counterpart born of apartheid, along with the militarism and aggression it spawns.
The group’s formidable military reputation was elevated to near legendary status during its short conflict against Israeli forces in 2006. Hezbollah is widely perceived to have out-thought and outfought its IDF adversary.
Former MI6 officer Alastair Crooke, in a comprehensive analysis of the conflict, revealed, “Hezbollah’s fighters proved to be dedicated and disciplined. Using intelligence assets to pinpoint Israeli infantry penetrations, they proved the equal of Israel’s best fighting units. In some cases, Israeli units were defeated on the field of battle, forced into sudden retreats or forced to rely on air cover to save elements from being overrun.”
Hezbollah’s victory over the IDF in 2006 mirrors the victory of Cuban forces against the forces of white apartheid South Africa at the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale in Angola between 1987-88.
Nelson Mandela, a totemic and towering symbol of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, described the outcome of Cuito Cuanavale as “a historic turning point in the struggle for the total liberation of the region from racist rule and aggression.”
Though too soon to assert that Hezbollah’s victory over the apartheid forces of Israel in 2006 marked a similar historic turning point, it is possible to argue that it went some way to demoralizing the Israeli military and political establishment, which hitherto operated on the basis of the invincibility of Israeli military power in the region, bolstered by its close alliance with Washington and other Western states, the UK among them.
Crooke says “Hezbollah’s military defeat of Israel [in 2006] was decisive, but its political defeat of the United States – which unquestioningly sided with Israel during the conflict and refused to bring it to an end – was catastrophic and has had a lasting impact on US prestige in the region.”
One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, goes the well-worn truism, and is ineffably appropriate when it comes to the standing of Hezbollah.
Organized on the basis of non-sectarianism, the organization has been at the forefront of resistance to Islamic State and other Salafi-jihadi groups in the region, while enjoying a vaunted reputation as a positive force in Lebanon itself for its dedication to upholding the country’s sovereignty and dignity, defending it from Israeli aggression and militarism.
Taking all these factors into account, and seasoning them with Britain’s own regressive role in the region, being banned in London has to count as a badge of honor.
They say history is written by the victors, but the Crusades offer an interesting historical contrast: a two-century collision that produced not one history, but two parallel, irreconcilable realities. The dates and the battles are identical in both accounts, but the moral axis is entirely flipped.
In the traditional Western narrative, the Crusades are framed as a heroic, if tragic, epic. The First Crusade is a pious pilgrimage; the knights are romanticized figures of chivalry in shining armor, bravely holding the line in a hostile, exotic land. The eventual loss of the Holy Land is mourned as the “fall of Outremer,” a tragic retreat of European civilization. In this telling, the East is often reduced to a passive backdrop, its inhabitants viewed through a lens of mystique or backwardness, mere obstacles to a divine mandate.
But cross the Mediterranean, and the exact same timeline reads like a chronicle of foreign invasion and eventual, hard-won restoration against the barbarous northerners. The dates do not change, but the adjectives do. Here is the history as it is remembered in the Levant… continue
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