Timeless or most popular

Everyone benefits from Israeli tech companies, except the Palestinians

By Alastair Sloan | MEMO | December 17, 2107

In an op-ed for a special annual edition of The Economist, Benjamin Netanyahu calls his country “Innovation Nation”. The Israeli Prime Minister writes that “people everywhere benefit from Israeli innovations in their mobile phones, car navigation systems, life-saving drugs, medical devices – even in the cherry tomatoes in their salads”.

Ever built a website using Wix, chatted with friends abroad using Viber, found your way across town using Waze? If you have asthma you might look to SmartAir, which helps patients with warnings about air quality, preventing potentially deadly asthma attacks. If you suffer from a debilitating stutter, therapy start-up Novotalk could help. Recently bashed yourself on the head? The similarly named BrainTalk can listen to a five minute recording of your voice and see if you have brain damage.

All of these technology companies are Israeli. “We leverage government spending on military intelligence,” Netanyahu boasts, “by encouraging veterans to form thousands of civilian IT and cyber-start-ups.” Indeed, all of these companies were created by veterans of the secretive Unit 8200, Israel’s equivalent to the United States’ NSA or Britain’s GCHQ. The unit dominates Israel’s so-called Silicon Wadi with many job advertisements requiring “a degree in computer science or a graduate of a technological unit” – that unit ideally being Unit 8200.

The argument put forward in Netanyahu’s article was not rare. The British government frequently emphasises the vibrancy of Israel’s startup scene, but has never – to my knowledge – acknowledged that so much of this is owed to an Israeli intelligence outfit which is not a purely defensive or traditional military intelligence organisation.

In September 2014 three active reservists and former commanders within Unit 8200 said they no longer felt the organisation existed to protect Israel from discrete and legitimate threats, like an Iranian nuclear strike or an assault by Hamas or Hezbollah militants.

Instead, Unit 8200 is a tool of occupation. One whistleblower’s father had suffered under the Argentinian junta and his son could see parallels. However excellent the products of Israel’s Silicon Wadi, it does put its products in a different light if the skills they are built with derive from military occupation. According to Forbes, more than 1,000 companies have been founded by Unit 8200 alumni.

Naturally Israel is entitled to its own signals intelligence outfit, as is any nation. Terrorist attacks have been prevented on British soil because of it.

In general, though, when Netanyahu wrote that “people everywhere” benefit from Israeli technologies he was being misleading.

You only have to go a few kilometres into the West Bank or south into Gaza to realise “everyone but the Palestinians” is more accurate. That means that the same people who are being occupied using Unit 8200 technology are not even benefiting from the startups that have spawned from its members once they leave service.

Waze – the alternative to Google Maps founded by Unit 8200 veterans – does not give directions within the West Bank. It is not as if the political challenges are too great – a Belarus start-up, Maps.Me, has managed it. This begs the question as to why Waze won’t oblige.

Most mobile apps are impossible to use in occupied Palestine because under the terms of Israeli oversight, only 2G phone networks – painfully slow by modern standards – have been permitted. In contrast, Israel has the third best 3G and 4G availability of any country in the world.

The arguments put forward against allowing Palestinians access to modern smartphone have largely been based on security, with supporters of the occupation saying that 3G and 4G are harder to hack.

Not only is this technologically disputable and more likely being done to privilege Israeli telecoms operators, as argued in a Mondoweiss article published last week, it would be a major shortcoming of Unit 8200 if they could not hack Iranian or Lebanese telecommunications – where 3G and 4G penetration is rapidly growing.

One suspects serving Unit 8200 officers would be red-faced, rankled and rabidly keen to show off their abilities if challenged on this point.

We are left then with the commercial fruit of a fundamentally rotten occupation being popular around the world, used by Israeli premiers to whitewash their country’s controversial military strategy, praised by international allies, and lapped up by hundreds of millions of customers globally. Even BDS activists can’t seem to escape the reach of Unit 8200 success – in 2013 campaigning group Cornell Students for Justice Palestine were found to have used Wix to design their own anti-Israel web offering. Meanwhile Palestinians are left in the digital stone age.

It sounds unfair because it is.

December 19, 2017 Posted by aletho | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Israel, Novotalk, Palestine, Viber, Waze, Wix, Zionism | Leave a comment

The ‘Last Martyr’: Who Killed My Neighbor, Kamal Al-Assar?

Posters of Kamal Al-Assar following his death in 2008. (Photo: Supplied)

By Ramzy Baroud | Palestine Chronicle | December 9, 2017

When I learned of the death of Kamal Al-Assar a few years ago, I was baffled. He was only in his 40s. I remember him in his prime, a young rebel, leading the neighborhood youth, armed with rocks and slingshots, in a hopeless battle against the Israeli army. Understandably, we lost, but we won something far more valuable than a military victory. We reclaimed our identity.

At every anniversary of the First Palestinian Intifada, a popular uprising that placed the Palestinian people firmly on the map of world consciousness, I think of all the friends and neighbors I have lost, and those I have left behind. The image of Ra’ed Mu’anis, in particular, haunts me. When an Israeli sniper’s bullet plunged into his throat, he ran across the neighborhood to find help before he collapsed at the graffiti-washed walls of my house.

“Freedom. Dignity. Revolution,” was written in large red letters on the wall, a pronouncement signed by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Only later I learned that Kamal was the one who carried Ra’ed out of the firing zone. But it was too late. Ra’ed, a skinny and feeble teenager, with a distinct black mark on his forehead had bled alone at the steps of my home. When he was buried, hundreds of refugees descended on the Martyrs Graveyard. They carried Palestinian flags and chanted for the Intifada and the long-coveted freedom. Ra’ed’s mother was too weakened by her grief to join the procession. His father tried to stay strong, but wept uncontrollably instead.

Kamal was revitalized by the Intifada. When the uprising broke out, he emerged from his own solitude. Life made sense once again.

For him, as for me and many of our generation, the Intifada was not a political event. It was an act of personal – as much as collective – liberation: the ability to articulate who we were at a time when all seemed lost. The Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) languished in Tunisia after being forced to leave Lebanon in 1982. Arab governments seemed to have lost interest in Palestine altogether. Israel emerged triumphant and invincible.

And we – those living under protracted military occupation – felt completely abandoned.

When, on December 8, 1987, thousands took to the streets of Jabaliya Refugee Camp, the Gaza Strip’s largest and poorest camp, the timing and the location of their uprising was most fitting, rational and necessary. Earlier on that day, an Israeli truck had run over a row of cars carrying Palestinian laborers, killing four young men. For Jabaliya, as with the rest of Palestine, it was the last straw.

Responding to the chants and pleas of the Jabaliya mourners, the refugees in my refugee camp – Nuseirat – marched to the Israeli military barracks, known as the “tents”, where hundreds of soldiers had tormented my camp’s residents for years.

In the morning of December 9, thousands of Nuseirat youth took to the streets and vowed to avenge the innocent blood of the Jabaliya victims of the previous day. They swung large flags made of silky fabric that swayed beautifully in Gaza’s salty air and, as the momentum grew and they became intoxicated by their own collective chants, they marched to the “tents” where the soldiers were uneasily perched on the tops of watchtowers, hiding behind their binoculars and automatic machine guns.

Within minutes, a war had started and a third generation of refugee-camp-born fellahin peasants stood fearlessly against a well-equipped army that was visibly gripped by fear and confusion. The soldiers wounded many that day and several children were killed.

Kamal was on the frontlines. He waved the largest flag, chanting the loudest, threw rocks the furthest and incessantly urged young men not to retreat.

Kamal hated school as well as his teachers. To him they seemed so docile, adhering to the rules of the occupier which decreed that Palestinians not teach their own history, so that the fellahin were denied even the right to remember who they were or where they came from. The Intifada was the paradigm shift that offered an alternative – however temporary, however chaotic – to the methodical humiliation of life under occupation.

Within hours, Kamal felt liberated. He was no longer tucked away in a dark room reading the works of Marx and Gramsci. He was in the streets of Nuseirat fashioning his own utopia.

The Intifada was that transformational period that saved a generation from being entirely lost, and Palestine from being forgotten. It offered a new world, that of solidarity, camaraderie and wild youth who needed no one to speak on their behalf.

Within weeks of bloody clashes in which hundreds of youth fell dead or wounded, the nature of the Intifada became clearer. On one hand, it was a popular struggle of civil disobedience, mass protests, commercial and labor strikes, refusal to pay taxes and so on. On the other hand, militant cells of refugee youth were beginning to organize and leave their mark, as well.

The militancy of the intifada did not become apparent until later, when the repression by the Israeli government grew more violent. Under the banner of the “Iron Fist” campaign, a new Israeli stratagem was devised, that of the “broken bones” policy. Once captured, youth had their hands and legs broken by soldiers in a systematic and heartless manner. In my neighborhood, children with casts and crutches seemed to outnumber those without.

Kamal was eventually detained from his home. He attempted to escape but the entire neighborhood was teeming with soldiers, who arrived at night as they always do. They commenced the torturous rite in his living room, as his mother – the resilient, Tamam – shoved her body between him and the ruthless men.

When Kamal regained consciousness, he found himself in a small cell, with thick, unwashed walls that felt cold and foreign. He spent most of his prison time in the torture chamber. His survival was itself nothing less than a miracle.

When the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, officially ending the Intifada, Kamal’s generation felt betrayed. Nothing good came out of that “peace”, except that a few rich Palestinians grew even richer.

Kamal died a few years ago. I learned that his revolution never ceased. He became a teacher, laboring to reconstruct the history of his people at a local Gaza university. His mother, now an old refugee in Nuseirat is still heartbroken over her son’s death. She told me that Kamal’s wounds and physical ailments from prison never healed.

Kamal was a martyr, she told me. Perhaps the last martyr in an uprising that was not meant to liberate land, but liberate people from the idea that they were meant to exist as perpetual victims; and it did.

December 19, 2017 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Gaza, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism | Leave a comment

Guardian Newspaper Pushing Fake News: ‘Putin Plotting to Cut Off UK Internet’

21WIRE | December 18, 2017

Although not as intense as the US mainstream media, the UK mainstream outlets are producing their share of fabricated narratives intended to stoke fear into the minds of the British public.

This latest fish tale comes from The Guardian newspaper, as “defense correspondent” Ewen MacAskil attempts to revive a two year-old mainstream media conspiracy theory about a secret Russian plot to cut transatlantic undersea internet cables which connect Britain and the United States. MacAskil writes:

“Russia could pose a major threat to the UK and other NATO nations by cutting underwater cables essential for international commerce and the internet, the chief of the British defence staff, Sir Stuart Peach, has warned.

Russian ships have been regularly spotted close to the Atlantic cables that carry communications between the US and Europe and elsewhere around the world.”

It turns out that this latest attempt by The Guardian to stoke fear in the minds of the British public – is a recycled version of a 2015 piece of mainstream fake news, apparently stitched together by the New York Times. It reads like something out of Cold War B movie, with shades of the Hunt for Red October:

“Russian submarines and spy ships are aggressively operating near the vital undersea cables that carry almost all global Internet communications, raising concerns among some American military and intelligence officials that the Russians might be planning to attack those lines in times of tension or conflict.

The issue goes beyond old worries during the Cold War that the Russians would tap into the cables — a task American intelligence agencies also mastered decades ago. The alarm today is deeper: The ultimate Russian hack on the United States could involve severing the fiber-optic cables at some of their hardest-to-access locations to halt the instant communications on which the West’s governments, economies and citizens have grown dependent.”

It seems that in the absence of an actual threat, mainstream media outlets like The Guardian and the New York Times are left with nothing else but to fabricate various Russian subversion narratives – with no actual evidence ever presented – in order to construct a public perception that Russia is somehow undermining all aspects of British and American society.

The Guardian Lies About Syria

McKaskel’s Red October article also has a conspicuous statement where the author attempts to bracket Russia’s legal (unlike the US and Britain’s illegal covert and fly-over ops) intervention in Syria with ‘hybrid warfare’ and ‘destablising NATO’. The propaganda value here is breathtaking:

“As well as conventional military involvement in Syria, Russia has been accused of engaging in hybrid warfare, including cyberwarfare, aimed at destabilising NATO.”

Rather than investigate and publish real news, it seems that the once respected liberal standard bearer The Guardian is firmly in the mainstream media’s fake new camp – promoting the NATO member state and US-UK establishment conspiracy theory that Russia is plotting to do all manner of evil and subterfuge in Europe and the US.

Meanwhile, editors at the Guardian refuse to do an real investigation in the the full scope of the UK government’s covert slush fund in Syria. As 21WIRE reported earlier this month:

“The BBC will be carrying out a controlled journalistic “explosion” on their Panorama programme, airing tonight in the UK. Their report, dramatically titled, “Jihadis You Pay For” is about to expose UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) for the funding of extremist and terrorist groups in Syria via their “Free Syrian Police” project set-up in ‘rebel-held’ areas of Syria since 2014. To referee this virtual clash of the titans, The Guardian has been drafted-in to do the honours.”

“The report, Jihadis You Pay For, will claim that Foreign Office money paid to the FSP reached people with links to the extremist group al-Nusra Front.” ~ The Guardian

In fact, it was The Guardian newspaper who actively campaigned on behalf of the UK and US government-funded pseudo “NGO” known as the White Helmets to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016. This, despite the fact that this western ‘first-responder’ construct has clear links to al Qaeda terrorists affiliates in Syria.

Here is good example of how The Guardian has been spinning blatant fake news about Syria. In their Nobel Prize promotional piece for the White Helmets, they printed a number of false and misleading statements. Here is one of them:

“In Aleppo, 300,000 people are exposed to a relentless barrage of airstrikes. The Syrian government and Russia now seem intent on crushing Aleppo, the opposition’s last stronghold, before a new American president takes office.”

What the Guardian conveniently fail to mention is the fact that the terrorists brigades backed by NATO members and Gulf-states – only occupied East Aleppo with an estimated remaining population of around 160,000. In contrast, there were some 1.4 million Syrians living under government protection in the much larger West Aleppo. These residents were under siege by terrorist Hell Cannons and random mortar fire which claimed at least 11,000 innocent lives during the terrorist occupation of East Aleppo. This was a common mainstream media trick which was more or less standard practice across most mainstream corporate outlets. Unlike the fabricated and totally undocumented and very likely falsified claims by the White Helmets that they “saved 90,000 lives” between late 2013 and 2017, the 11,000+ civilians deaths in West Aleppo at the hands of NATO and Gulf-backed terrorists are all documented by the Aleppo Medical Association.

The Guardian also claim that the White Helmets are “volunteers” – when in fact they are paid a regular salary which is much higher than the national average salary in Syria – a fact conveniently left out in the Guardian’s apparent foreign office propaganda piece:

“This is the backdrop against which the White Helmets operate – a western-funded Syrian search-and-rescue organisation whose members put their lives at great risk to save civilians, receiving only a monthly stipend of $150.”

The Guardian’s “journalists” would never dare mention that the White Helmet’s ‘monthly stipend’ is far in excess of the standard salary for a Syrian Army soldier who makes far below $100 per month.

To call any this journalism would be a gross overstatement.

By this account, The Guardian are guilty of the most egregious form of propaganda throughout its shameful coverage of Syria over the last 7 years.

Read more about the White Helmets here.

VIDEO: Watch this Fake rescue video filmed and released by the White Helmets

December 19, 2017 Posted by aletho | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | Syria, The Guardian, UK | Leave a comment

‘Forces deep within US deep state’ are behind Trump’s national security strategy: Scholar

Press TV – December 19, 2017

US President Donald Trump’s national security strategy has been formulated by “forces deep within the US deep state,” says Dennis Etler, an American political analyst who has a decades-long interest in international affairs. It is “simply the foreign policy of US imperialism in decline.”

Etler, a former professor of Anthropology at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Monday while commenting Trump’s new strategy that envisions a world in which the United States confronts China and Russia.

“Whether we like it or not, we are engaged in a new era of competition,” Trump said during a speech meant to outline the 55-page document, drafted over the course of a year.

“China and Russia challenge American power, influence and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity,” he claimed, but then added, “We will attempt to build a great partnership with those and other countries.”

What is the deep state?

“Don’t be fooled by Trump’s national security strategy. It’s not his, it’s the consensus document of forces deep within the US deep state,” Professor Etler told Press TV.

“What is the deep state? It is none other than the continuing executive apparatus of the corporate capitalist/military industrial-congressional complex, national security state. While riven with factions they unite under one banner, the preservation of US global hegemony and the full-spectrum dominance of US imperialism,” he noted.

“As historic circumstances change so does the US national security strategy. Under the Clinton administration Russia was prostrate and China was still under developed. Neither posed a threat to US interests worldwide and it would have been chimeric to think they could influence US domestic affairs,” he stated.

“The neo-liberal Clintonian foreign policy, also pursued by the Obama/Clinton administration, envisioned a world in which the values of corporate and financial capitalism were deemed universal and the rules and regulations of international commerce were dictated by the US. Any deviation from the imperial system mandated and imposed upon the world by the US after WW2 and the end of the Cold War had to be confronted and destroyed by whatever means possible. This entailed a policy of subversion of sovereign states by infiltration and outright interference in their internal affairs to enlist fifth columnists and install subservient clients in power,” the analyst said.

US plans for Russia, China have failed

“As regards the vanquished Russians, it meant its integration into the capitalist world order under the tutelage of the US as a neutered dependency and supplier of raw materials. To ensure Russia’s acquiescence to its subservient position NATO was expanded to include former Soviet allies in eastern and central Europe, putting the US military alliance on Russia’s doorstep,” Professor Etler said.

“China was seen as ripe for the picking of US corporations who could outsource production and in turn import the goods so produced to their great profit. No thought was given to the possible negative implications of this policy for the health of the US economy or the growth of the Chinese economy,” he stated.

“It was felt that China’s integration into the global capitalist economy dominated by the US would have a corrosive effect on Chinese institutions, undermining them to the extent that a soft coup led by US influenced economists, academics and human rights NGOs would eventually prevail, turning the PRC into another US client state,” the scholar observed.

“The neo-con national security strategy, first presented to Clinton, called for a more proactive and aggressive foreign policy. A full court press to impose US hegemony throughout the world and foreclose the possibility of any resistance. Its motto could have been borrowed from Star Trek’s Borg, ‘Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated,’ into the US empire or else,” he pointed out.

‘Project for the New American Century’

“Without any real competitor after the demise of the Soviet Union and the defeat of the specter of Communism, the US had to find a new enemy to rationalize its immense military expenditures and global military occupation. As foretold in the infamous ‘Project for the New American Century’ (PNAC) manifesto that was to become the global ‘War on Terrorism,’ which had to be manufactured and nurtured in order to sustain US imperialist global domination. This entailed the more proactive and preemptive national security strategy under the Bush administration,” Professor Etler said.

“The blowback from Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the financial crisis that ensued sowed the bankruptcy of the neo-con national security strategy. Obama promised an end to foreign wars and entanglements, but his campaign rhetoric was short lived and he continued a two pronged national security strategy which incorporated both neo-liberal and neo-conservative policies, which for all intents and purposes were complementary, being flip sides of the same coin,” he stated.

“Obama’s national security strategy was thus the worst of both worlds. But it is a misnomer to call it Obama’s policy, just as it was a misnomer to call it Bush’s or Clinton’s policy. The national security strategy of their administrations was the consensus policy of US imperialism during their tenures in office,” he emphasized.

US imperialism faces existential threat

“The problem with both the neo-lib and neo-con iterations of US imperialist national security strategy was the changing global balance of power. This was led by the reestablishment and expansion of both Russian and Chinese freedom of action,” the academic said.

“Russia under Putin and China under XI began to push back against US hubris and hegemony. The resurgence of Russian military power as exemplified by its support of Syrian independence and sovereignty against the onslaught of US-Israeli-Saudi backed terrorism and the explosive growth of Chinese economic power and influence exemplified by the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI) has put the US on the defensive,” he noted.

“Hence, the growth of US nationalism epitomized by Trump’s slogan of ‘America First.’ It matters little what Trump thinks and says, he is simply a useful idiot of the Imperialist interests of the deep state as it enters a new historic period in which it is more and more on the defensive and must reassert its prerogatives in order to maintain its dominance,” he said.

The Trump national security strategy is simply the foreign policy of US imperialism in decline in which it finds itself in an existential crisis brought on by the rise of China, Russia and the looming alliance of free and sovereign nations in opposition to the death culture of US imperialism,” the commentator concluded.

December 19, 2017 Posted by aletho | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | United States | Leave a comment

A Good Year for Israel and Its Friends

A bad year for the U.S. Constitution

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • December 19, 2017

The unfortunate Donald Trump Administration decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel serves no visible American interest, in spite of what some of the always-loyal-to-Israel punditry has been suggesting. Israel is already moving to exploit the situation in its usual fashion. Immediately after the announcement was made, Israeli Ambassador in Washington Ron Dermer suggested that the decision on Jerusalem could now be extended to include other disputed areas, most particularly Syria’s Golan Heights that were occupied in 1967. And the decision on Jerusalem itself will quite likely prove elastic as the Israeli government has already prepared legislation to incorporate large chunks of settlements into the city limits, far beyond the historic boundaries.

The currently popular among Zionists argument that recognizing Jerusalem will somehow perversely accelerate a drive for a final peace settlement with Israel as it will demonstrate to the Palestinians just how hopeless their cause is has little merit as desperation is more likely to lead to increased violence than a political solution. A more intriguing reading suggests that Israel, the United States and Saudi Arabia are conniving at squeezing even more Palestinians into a slightly enlarged prison-camp in Gaza, leaving the rest of the West Bank open for absorption by Israel. Again, such an outcome is not very likely as the 2.5 million Palestinians remaining in the region will likely have some say regarding the issue no matter how much pressure is exerted by the Saudis and Jared Kushner for them to submit.

Nothing good will come out of the Trump decision as the situation in the region is already starting to unravel. The Turks are talking about opening an Embassy to Palestine in East Jerusalem and the 56 other Muslim countries in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation might follow suit. Israel, which has physical control of the entire city, would use force to prevent that, creating some interesting new points of conflict in the Middle East. The U.S. would, of course, become involved given its role as Israel’s patron and protector. The evolving situation is likely to develop into Israel and the United States versus the rest of the world, with unfortunate consequences as the conflict will spill over into normally unrelated issues like trade and otherwise innocuous international agreements, while American travelers and businesses will increasingly become targets for terrorism.

If you want to understand the reason why the United States cannot pursue sensible objectives in the Middle East or anywhere else, one has to look no farther than the all too often Israel-centric neocons who have become adept at advising nearly everyone in the government from the White House on down regarding what should be done, particularly in foreign policy. The Trump Administration’s slowness in filling senior positions has meant that there are many vacancies, which has opened the door to eager neoconservative-leaning nominal Republicans to re-enter government. At the State Department Brian Hook of the neocon John Hay Initiative is now chief of policy planning, courtesy of Margaret Peterlin, Tillerson’s chief of staff. They have recently hired David Feith, the son of the infamous Pentagon Office of Special Plans head Doug Feith, to head the Asia desk. And Wes Mitchell, whose policies are largely indistinguishable from his predecessor, has replaced Victoria Nuland as Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs. While Elliot Abrams, Eliot Cohen, the Kagans and other prominent neocons have been blocked, second-tier activists carrying less political baggage have quietly been brought in.

And Congress is to a certain extent the source of all evil, as its numerous committee meetings gorge on advice from experts who are frequently anything but, reflecting the hardline views of many of the legislators themselves with nary a contrary opinion in sight. A recent session of the Senate Armed Services Committee featured a statement by leading neocon Eric Edelman. His presentation is hawkish in the extreme, with particular focus on Iran and Russia. It can be summarized briefly by citing some of the section headings: “Adopt a post-ISIS Strategy for Syria and Iraq,” “Develop Credible Military Leverage Against Iran,” “Recognize Russia as an obstacle, not a partner,” “Increase internal pressure against the Iranian regime,” and “Enforce nuclear restrictions on Iran.”

So it’s garbage-in and garbage-out on how much of the government gets a large percentage of its information. And given the White House track record relating to Iran and Jerusalem over the past several months, one might also reasonably come to the conclusion that Israel will get whatever it wants, including a catastrophic war with Iran, because it’s also garbage-in at the White House by way of son-in-law Jared Kushner’s view of the Middle East.

But there is a second story playing out about Israel right here in the United States which should be even more concerning as what is happening on the ground in Palestine and Syria. You see, the problem that Israel has is that it is indeed an apartheid state based on race and religion. The 320,000 Palestinians attempting to hang on in and around East Jerusalem have no rights whatsoever and are being systematically forced out by being denied building permits and through arbitrary oversight by the Israeli military and police. Christian churches and foundations are also under pressure from the Israeli authorities but you won’t hear much about that from Congress or the White House.

The truth about Israel is quite unpleasant, so it has been necessary to construct a completely untrue but compelling counter-narrative which relies psychologically on cultivation of claims of perpetual victimhood linked repeatedly to the holocaust. The false narrative usually starts with the myth about Israel being the only democracy in the Middle East, that it is a tolerant place where all religions can worship and where everyone enjoys freedom under law. But, alas, poor Israel is treated unfairly by the international community solely because it is Jewish.

The reality of life in Israel is quite different if one bothers to ask any Palestinian Christian or Muslim who has the misfortune to live there. Or if one reads about the essentially racist de-humanization of Arabs by Israelis, which has led to the killing, beating and imprisonment of children as well as an army sniper’s recent shooting dead of a legless Palestinian protester in a wheelchair.

And once you construct the false narrative you have to protect it by making sure that no one can easily pose a challenge to it. Much of the national media is on board this effort, voluntarily limiting or eliminating any coverage that is negative about Israel. And major players in the alternative media community have come around also, with increasing direct censorship and other manipulation of material appearing on sites like Facebook and Google. The ultimate objective of the Israel Lobby is to follow the example in some European countries, where criticism of Israel is equated to anti-Semitism and is therefore categorized as a hate crime, with both civil and criminal penalties attached.

I have previously reported on how 24 states are now requiring statements pledging not to boycott Israel from those citizens and organizations that receive government funding or even seek local government employment. And there is the reported progress in Congress of the Israel Anti-Boycott Act and the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, which constitute two major steps forward in the same direction. Both seek to define as anti-Semitism any criticism of Israel. On December 12^th the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act was approved by the House of Representatives with 402 affirmative votes and only two libertarian-leaning congressmen voting “no.” The Israel Anti-Boycott Act that is also currently making its way through the Congress would far exceed what is happening at the state level and would set a new standard for deference to Israeli interests on the part of the national government. It would criminalize any U.S. citizen “engaged in interstate or foreign commerce” who supports a boycott of Israel or who even goes about “requesting the furnishing of information” regarding it, with penalties enforced through amendments of two existing laws, the Export Administration Act of 1979 and the Export-Import Act of 1945, that include potential fines of between $250,000 and $1 million and up to 20 years in prison. According to the Jewish Telegraph Agency, the Senate bill was drafted with the assistance of AIPAC.

Perhaps more dangerous than current and pending legislation, which is already being challenged in courts as a violation of First Amendment rights, are the bureaucrats being put in place by the Trump Administration to interpret and enforce laws and regulations. As we have discovered from the James Comey experience and the activities of some of his associates, senior bureaucrats have considerable freedom to interpret how they should carry out their responsibilities, making the “rule of law” standard for ethical government somewhat mythical. In that light, the recent naming of Kenneth Marcus as head of the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Education should be raising red flags for those who are concerned about civil liberties.

Marcus is currently head of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which he founded in 2011. The Center has been involved in serial litigation with one objective – stopping protests staged by students at colleges and universities against Israeli policies. Marcus is focused on silencing the non-violent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), which has been gaining in popularity among young Americans, and which the Israeli government sees as a major threat to its legitimacy. The Brandeis Center mission statement is clear: “The leading civil and human rights challenge facing North American Jewry is the resurgent problem of anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism on university campuses.”

For those who respond “So what? Marcus has a right to promote his viewpoints by whatever means,” the response might well be that his appointment is putting someone with a clear agenda in charge of an organization established to make sure there are no agendas relating to the civil rights of students. To be sure, Marcus has never won a case in court, but that is not what he is seeking to do. He is more interested in creating trouble, bad publicity and in driving up the costs due to litigation. As he describes it, “These cases – even when rejected – expose administrators to bad publicity… If a university shows a failure to treat initial complaints seriously, it hurts them with donors, faculty, political leaders and prospective students.”

Marcus will have the power and authority to deny federal funds to colleges and universities that do not meet his standards for action to quell the rising tide of Israel criticism, making him little different than the journalist who writes puff pieces on Israel or the politicians who takes PAC money and stands up twenty-nine times to applaud the monstrous Benjamin Netanyahu. Indeed, at Marcus’ confirmation hearing not one Senator asked him about his full-time advocacy for Israel.

Many universities are dependent on federal dollars and have already taken administrative steps to distance themselves from Israel criticism or to ban it altogether. Marcus will be able to move the bar even lower, putting pressure on colleges to drive the “Israel haters,” as he refers to them, out of the educational system. It is possible to foresee a future in which students will be free to criticize the United States on campus while discussing the foreign state of Israel with any candor will be forbidden.

December 19, 2017 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | AIPAC, Benjamin Netanyahu, Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, Israel, Jerusalem, Kenneth Marcus, Palestine, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

Pentagon weighs regional players in Afghanistan

By M K Bhadrakumar | Indian Punchline | December 18, 2017

The Pentagon’s latest 6-monthly report on the Afghan situation to the US Congress conveys the picture of ‘work in progress’ in regard of President Trump’s new strategy. It exudes an air of optimism. The 100-page report reiterates that the US is determined to bludgeon the Taliban into submission and make them crawl to the negotiating table.

The Pentagon’s assessment of the role of various regional powers, although the unclassified portions, provides food for thought. For a start, the report refrains from any overt criticism of Pakistan’s role. There are references to Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan but no allegation that the insurgents are getting Pakistani support. An indirect reference appears where the report takes note that “certain extremist groups—such as the Taliban and the Haqqani Network—retain freedom of movement in Pakistan.” On the other hand, the report also acknowledges that Pakistani military operations have “disrupted some militant sanctuaries.”

Secondly, the Pentagon underscores that the military-to-military leadership with Pakistan “remains critical to the success of our mutual interests in the region.” But to move forward in regional cooperation, “we must see fundamental changes in the way Pakistan deals with terrorist safe-havens.” The US intends to deploy “a range of tools to expand cooperation with Pakistan in areas where our interests converge and to take unilateral steps in areas of divergence.” Curiously, the latter part regarding “unilateral steps” has been left unexplained.

Interestingly, the report acknowledges that there are sanctuaries on Afghan soil for terrorist groups that create violence in Pakistan and walks a fine line as regards the “mutual security interests” of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It scrupulously refrains from apportioning blame. This is difficult to understand. Does the Pentagon mean that the Afghan government pursues certain policies over which the US has no control? Or, is it that there are rogue elements within the Afghan state structure?

Among regional actors, Pentagon comes down heavily on Russia’s role. Moscow’s intentions have been shown to be hostile, aimed at undermining the US’ influence in the region by “engaging with the Taliban and putting pressure on Central Asian neighbors to deny support to US and NATO efforts to stabilize Afghanistan.” But there is no allegation in the report that Russia is helping the Taliban with arms supplies.

Indeed, the chances are very remote that US and Russia would cooperate in the war effort in Afghanistan. The Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov disclosed last week that the US is forcing Afghan army to get rid of Kalashnikov rifles, which the military is trained to handle, with a view to eliminate Russia as a partner in any significant way. The Pentagon report claims that Afghan-Russian relations are under strain due to Moscow’s “acknowledgment of communication with the Taliban and support of the Taliban’s call” for US and NATO’s withdrawal.

In comparison, when it comes to China, the Pentagon wears kid gloves. Amazingly, the report says, “China’s low, but increasing levels of military, economic and political engagement in Afghanistan are driven by domestic security concerns… and China’s increasing desire to protect its regional economic investments.” China is seen as a benign presence. China’s involvement with the Quadrilateral Consultative Group is singled out and there is a hint at China’s potential to influence Pakistani policies.

Evidently, the US keeps in view that a need might arise for the Northern Distribution Network to be activated via the Central Asian region if push comes to shove in the relations with Pakistan.

The portion on Iran is highly nuanced. The report says in as many words that “Iran and the United States share certain interests” in Afghanistan and although Tehran on the whole seeks to “limit US influence and presence” in Afghanistan, particularly in western Afghanistan, it “could explore ways to leverage Iran’s interests in support of US and Afghan objectives in the areas of counternarcotics, economic development and counterterrorism.” The report shows understanding that “Iran’s ultimate goal is a stable Afghanistan where Shi’a communities are safe, economic interests are protected and the US military presence is reduced.”

This is a surprisingly positive assessment at a juncture when Trump is ratcheting up anti-Iran rhetoric and Nikki Haley is firing away. Clearly, the rhetoric is meant to appease Israel and Saudi Arabia, while the Pentagon, which is steering the actual policies on the ground, just stops short of acknowledging that Iran could be a factor of stability in Afghanistan.

The most interesting thing about India, of course, is that the US appeals to Delhi to provide more assistance to Afghanistan, but limited to “economic, medical and civic support”. No surprises here.

December 18, 2017 Posted by aletho | Economics, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Afghanistan, China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, United States | Leave a comment

Questioning the Russia-gate ‘Motive’

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the third presidential debate in 2016, during which Clinton called Trump Vladimir Putin’s “puppet.”

By Gilbert Doctorow | Consortium News | December 18, 2107

The American public is now experiencing mass paranoia over Russia-gate, hysteria about Russia supposedly corrupting and manipulating the U.S. political system. This panic originated with Obama administration holdovers in the intelligence community who outlined the narrative while providing few if any facts — and it has been carried forward by Democrats, some Republicans hostile to President Trump, and by the U.S. mainstream media.

The Russia-gate frenzy has similarities to the madness that followed the 9/11 attacks when public passions were manipulated to serve the geopolitical agenda of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. In that case, civil liberties that had become accepted norms in the U.S. were suddenly cast aside – and the public was deceptively led into the invasion of Iraq.

In both cases – the Iraq War and Russia-gate – the U.S. intelligence community played central roles by – regarding Iraq – promoting false intelligence that Iraq was hiding WMD and had ties to Al Qaeda and – in the Russian case – assessing (without presenting evidence) that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the hacking of Democratic emails and their publication via WikiLeaks to hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign and to help elect Donald Trump.

While the Iraq deception was driven by the neoconservatives in the Bush-Cheney administration, the Russia paranoia was started by the nominally left-of-center administration of Barack Obama in the closing months of his presidency. It has been fanned ever since by liberals and centrists in the Democratic Party and the never-Trump contingent in the Republican Party as well as the mainstream media – with the goal of either removing Trump from office or politically crippling him and his administration, i.e., to reverse the results of the 2016 election or, as some might say, reverse the “mistake” of the 2016 election.

Because promoters of the Russia-gate hysteria talk about the Kremlin’s “war” on the U.S. political process, the frenzy also carries extreme dangers, even greater than the death and destruction from the Iraq War. Russia is the only country on earth capable of turning the United States into ashes within a day. And even as U.S. journalists and politicians have casually – and sloppily – hyped the Russia-gate affair, the Russians have taken the growls of hostility from the United States very seriously.

Rumbles of War

If Russia is preparing for war, as the latest issue of Newsweek magazine tells us, we have no one but our political leaders and media pundits to blame. They have no concern for Russian national sensitivities and the “red lines” that the Russians have drawn. U.S. senators and congressmen listen only to what U.S. “experts” think the Russian interests should be if they are to fit into a U.S.-run world. That is why the Senate can vote 98-2 in favor of elevating President Obama’s executive sanctions against Russia into federal law as happened this past summer so President Trump can’t reverse them.

There have been a few U.S. journalists and academics who have examined the actual facts of the Russia-gate story and found them lacking in substance if not showing outright signs of fabrication, including Consortiumnews.com, Truthdig.com, and Antiwar.com. But they make up a very small minority.

Instead the major U.S. media has taken the Jan. 6 “Intelligence Community Assessment” accusing the Russians of meddling in the 2016 election as unassailable truth despite its stunning lack of evidence. According to President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, that “assessment” came from a “hand-picked” group of analysts from the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency, not the “all 17 intelligence agencies consensus” that the public was repeatedly told.

Perhaps the most significant challenge to the Russia-did-the-hacking “assessment” came from a study of the available forensic evidence by a group of former U.S. intelligence officers with relevant technical expertise from Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

The VIPS’ analysis of the known download speed of one batch of Democratic emails concluded in July that the emails were likely extracted by a local download, not an external hack over the Internet, i.e., an inside job by someone with direct access to the computers. But the VIPS findings were largely ignored by the U.S. mainstream media, which has treated the original “assessment” by those “hand-picked” analysts as unchallengeable if not flat fact.

Besides the conventional wisdom that Russia did “hack” the emails and somehow slipped the emails to WikiLeaks, there is another core assumption of the Jan. 6 report – that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the hack of the Democratic emails and their publication through WikiLeaks because of his contempt for Hillary Clinton and his desire for Trump to win.

Indeed, the Jan. 6 “assessment” treats this supposed motive as the central evidence of Russian guilt, since actual physical or testimonial evidence is lacking. Yet what is also missing from the report is any recognition of other attitudes among the Russian political elite that would go against the report’s thesis, including whether Putin would have taken such a risk in the face of a widespread consensus that Clinton was the near-certain winner – and the strong possibility that any Russian operation would be exposed. An evenhanded intelligence “assessment” would have included these counter-arguments even if in the end they were cast aside. But the Jan. 6 report offered no such context or balance.

A View from Moscow

However, from my perspective – having participated in some of the leading Russian public affairs programs in 2016 – I heard Russian insiders close to President Putin expressing grave doubts about whether a Trump presidency would be good for Russia.

Political talk shows are a very popular component of Russian television programming on all channels, both state-run and commercial channels. They are mostly carried on prime time in the evening but also are showing up in mid-afternoon where they have displaced soap operas and cooking lessons as entertainment for housewives and pensioners.

The shows are broadcast live either to the Moscow time zone or to the Far East time zone. Given the fact that Russia extends over nine time zones, they are also video recorded and reshown locally at prime time. In the case of the highest quality and most watched programs produced by Vesti 24 for the Rossiya One channel, they also are posted in their entirety and in the original Russian on Youtube.

The panelists come from a rather small pool of Russian legislators, including chairmen of the relevant committees of the Duma (lower house) and Federation Council (upper house); leading journalists; think tank professors; and retired military brass. The politicians are drawn from among the most visible and colorful personalities in the Duma parties, but also extend to Liberal parties such as Yabloko, which failed to cross the five-percent threshold in legislative elections and thus received no seats in parliament.

(Since I live in Brussels, I was flown by the various channels who paid airfare and hotel accommodation in Moscow. That is to say, my expenses were covered but there was no honorarium. I make this explicit acknowledgement to rebut in advance any notion that I and other outside panelists were in any way “paid by the Kremlin” or restricted in our freedom of speech on air.)

During the period under review, I appeared on both state channels, Rossiya-1 and Pervy Kanal, as well as on the major commercial television channel, NTV. My debut on the No. 1 talk show in Russia, “Sunday Evening with Vladimir Soloviev,” on Sept. 11, 2016, was particularly useful because I had a chance to speak with the host, Vladimir Soloviev, for five minutes before the program.

I put to him the question that interested me the most: whom did he want to see win the U.S. presidential election. Without hesitation, Soloviev told me that he did not want to see Trump win because the celebrity businessman was volatile, unpredictable — and weak. Soloviev added that he and other politically knowledgeable Russians did not expect improved relations with the U.S. regardless of who won. He rejected the notion that Trump’s tossing the neocons out of government would be a great thing in and of itself.

The Devil You Know

Soloviev’s resistance to the idea that Trump could be a good thing was not just an example of Russians’ prioritizing stability, the principle “better the devil you know,” meaning Hillary Clinton. During a chat with a Russian ambassador, someone also close to power, I heard the firm belief that the United States is like a big steamship which has its own inertia and cannot be turned around, that presidents come and go but American foreign policy remains the same.

This view may be called cynical or realistic, depending on your taste, but it is reflective of the thinking that came out from many of the panelists in the talk shows.

To appreciate what weight the opinions of Vladimir Soloviev carry, you have to consider just who he is – that his talk show is the most professional from among numerous rival shows and attracts the most important politicians and expert guests. But even more to the point, he is as close to Putin as journalists can get and is familiar with the President’s thinking.

In April 2015, Soloviev conducted a two-hour interview with Putin that was aired on Rossiya 1 under the title “The President.” In early January 2016, the television documentary “World Order,” co-written and directed by Soloviev, set out in forceful terms Putin’s views on American and Western attempts to stamp out Russian sovereignty that first were spoken at the Munich Security Conference in February 2007 and have evolved and become ever more frank since.

Soloviev has a Ph.D. in economics from the Institute of World Economics and International Relations of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He was an active entrepreneur in the 1990s and spent some time back then in the U.S., where his activities included teaching economics at the University of Alabama. He is fluent in English and has been an unofficial emissary of the Kremlin to the U.S. at various times.

For all of these reasons, I believe it is safe to say that Vladimir Soloviev represents the thinking of Russian elites close to Putin, if not the views of Putin himself.

I encountered similar skepticism about Trump elsewhere as well. On Sept. 27, 2016, I took part in the “Sixty Minutes” talk show on Rossiya 1that presented a post-mortem of the first Trump-Clinton debate the day before.

Presenter Yevgeny Popov and his wife and co-presenter Olga Skabeyeva made a point that was largely missing in Western news coverage – that the Democrats and Republicans had largely switched positions on the use of military force, with Clinton taking the more hawkish position and Trump the more dovish stance.

Doubting Trump

Yet, Russian politicians and journalists on the panel were split down the middle on whether Trump or Clinton was their preferred next occupant of the Oval Office. The Trump skeptics noted that he was impulsive and could not be trusted to act with prudence if there was some crisis or accidental clash between U.S. and Russian forces in the field, for example.

They took the cynical view that the more dovish positions that Trump took earlier were purely tactical, to differentiate himself from his Republican competitors and then Clinton. Thus, these analysts felt that Trump could turn out to be no friend of Russia on the day after the elections.

One Trump doubter called Trump a “non-systemic” politician – or anti-establishment. But that is not a compliment in the Russian context. It has the odious connotation applied to Alexei Navalny and some members of the U.S.- and E.U.-backed Parnas political movement, suggesting seditious intent.

The Oct. 20 program “Evening with Vladimir Soloviev,” which I watched on television from abroad, was devoted to the third Clinton-Trump debate. My main takeaway from the show was that there was a bemused unanimity on the very diverse panel that the U.S. presidential campaign was awful, with both candidates having serious weaknesses of character and/or careers. Particular attention was devoted to the very one-sided position of the U.S. mass media and the centrist establishments of both parties favoring Hillary Clinton.

Though flamboyant in his language, nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the LDPR Party, touched on a number of core concerns:

“The debates were weak. The two cannot greet one another on stage, cannot say goodbye to one another at the end. They barely can get out the texts that have been prepared for them by their respective staffs. Repeating on stage what one may have said in the locker room. Billions of people around the world conclude with one word: disgrace! This is the worst electoral campaign ever.

“And mostly what we see is the style of the campaign. However much people criticize the USSR – the old fogies who ran it, one and the same, supposedly the conscience of the world. Now we see the same thing in the USA: the exceptional country – the country that has bases everywhere, soldiers everywhere, is bombing everywhere in some city or other. …

“Hillary has some kind of dependency. A passion for power – and that is dangerous for the person who will have her finger on the nuclear button. If she wins, on November 9th the world will be at the brink of a big war.”

Zhirinovsky made no secret of his partiality for Trump, calling him “clean” and “a good man” whereas Clinton has “blood on her hands” for the deaths of hundreds of thousands due to her policies as Secretary of State. But then again, Zhirinovsky has made his political career over more than 30 years precisely by making outrageous statements that run up against what the Russian political establishment says aloud.

Zhirinovsky had been the loudest voice in Russian politics in favor of Turkey and its president Erdogan, a position which he came to regret when the Turks shot down a Russian jet at the Syrian border, causing a rupture in bilateral relations.

The final word on Russia’s electoral preferences during the Oct. 20 show was given by the moderator, Vladimir Soloviev: “There can be no illusions. Both Trump and Clinton have a very bad attitude toward Russia. What Trump said about us and Syria was no compliment at all. The main theme of American political life right now is McCarthyism and anti-Russian hysteria.”

This being Russia, one might assume that the deeply negative views of the ongoing presidential election reflected a general hostility toward the United States as a country. But nothing of the sort came out from the discussion. To be sure, there was the odd outburst from Zhirinovsky. But otherwise the panelists, including Zhirinovsky, displayed informed respect and even admiration for what the U.S. has achieved and represents as a country. But the panelists concluded that the U.S. has a political leadership at the national level that is unworthy and inappropriate to its position in the world.

Yet, back in the U.S., the ongoing hysteria over Russia-gate and the perceived threat that Russia poses to U.S. national interests, risks tilting the world into nuclear war.

Gilbert Doctorow is an independent political analyst based in Brussels. His latest book, Does the United States Have a Future?

December 18, 2017 Posted by aletho | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | Hillary Clinton, Obama, Russia, United States | Leave a comment

$200bn to reconstruct war-torn Syria… the US and its partners should pay

Aleppo, Syria © Karam Almasri / Global Look Press

By Finian Cunningham | RT | December 18, 2017

With Syria’s nearly seven-year war now virtually over, the process of rebuilding the devastated country comes to the fore, with the financial cost of that effort put at $200 billion. Who pays for it?

When you view the ruins of Aleppo alone, Syria’s second biggest city, plus the carnage across the entire country, from towns, villages, bridges, roads, public utilities, hospitals, schools, and so on, the real figure for reconstruction could be far higher than $200 billion.

Then there is the inestimable cost of human suffering and families decimated. All told, the reparations could amount to trillions of dollars.

Syria’s war was no ordinary civil war, as Western mainstream media tended to mendaciously depict it.

From the outset, the conflict was one of an externally driven covert war for regime change against the government of President Bashar Assad. The Arab Spring unrest of 2011 provided a convenient cover for the Western plot to subvert Syria.

The United States and its NATO allies, Britain, France, and Turkey, were the main driving forces behind the war in Syria, which resulted in up to 400,000 deaths and millions of citizens displaced from their homes. Other key regional players sponsoring the campaign against the Syrian government were Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Israel.

Most of the militants who fought in Syria to overthrow the state authorities were not Syrian nationals. Self-styled jihadists from dozens of countries around the world made their way to Syria, where they were funded, armed and directed by covert forces from Western and Arab states.

The barbarian-like gravitation to Syria indicates the degree to which the effort to overthrow the Syrian government was orchestrated by foreign powers.

This was a planned, concerted project for regime change. The systematic violence imposed on Syria was very arguably due to an international criminal conspiracy perpetrated by the US and all of the above “partners.” The case can, therefore, be made for criminal responsibility.

That, in turn, means that financial reparations and damages can be sued by the Syrian state against those foreign powers which waged the war, albeit indirectly through proxy militant groups.

The bitter irony though is that the US and its Western allies are reportedly using Syria’s war-torn plight as leverage to pursue their political objective of ousting Assad. What these powers could not achieve on the battlefield with their terrorist mercenaries they now seem to be pursuing through their dominance over international financial institutions.

The Washington DC-based International Monetary Fund estimates the reconstruction of Syria’s devastated infrastructure will cost $200 billion. (As noted above, that’s probably a gross underestimate.)

As Bloomberg News reported last week: “The US and its European and Arab partners have for years insisted that Assad must go and are now using the carrot of funding for rebuilding the shattered nation in a final attempt to pressure the Syrian leader. The International Monetary Fund estimates the cost of reconstruction at $200 billion, and neither of Syria’s main allies, Russia and Iran, can afford to pick up the bill.”

It’s a moot point whether Russia and Iran cannot afford to help rebuild Syria. Who’s to say that those two powers along with China and other Eurasian nations could not club together to create a reconstruction fund for Syria, independent of Western countries and their Arab client regimes?

However, regardless of the source of funding for Syria, what Russia, China, Iran and other key international players should push for at the United Nations and other global forums such as the Non-Aligned Movement is the repudiation of Western efforts to link financial aid to future political change in Syria.

Alexander Lavrentiev, Russia’s envoy steering the peace process in Syria, has reiterated Moscow’s position that the political outcome for Syria must be determined by the Syrian people alone, free from external influence. That is also the position of several UN resolutions.

Lavrentiev says Bashar Assad should be free to run in next year’s presidential election if he chooses to and that it is unacceptable for the US and its allies to try to use financial aid as a bargaining tool.

“It’s a simplistic approach when some Western countries say that they’ll give money only when they see that the opposition comes to power or their interests are fully accommodated,” said the Russian envoy.

It’s not merely unacceptable for such Western conditioning. It’s outrageous. Far from quibbling about financial aid to Syria, the debate should be broadened out to hold governments to account for the destruction and loss of life in Syria.

To establish responsibility is not a mystery. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey are known to have poured money and weapons into dozens of jihadist-styled groups, including Ahrar al-Sham and Jaysh al Islam under the umbrella of the Islamic Front or Army of Conquest. The precise distinction – if any – between these groups and the internationally proscribed terror organizations of Nusra Front (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) and Daesh (Islamic State) is elusive and probably negligible.

American, British and French special forces are known to have trained militants under the faux banner of “moderate rebels” and “Free Syrian Army,” even when there is evidence these same groups were cooperating with Al-Qaeda-type extremist networks. Under President Barack Obama, the US government funneled $500 million into training “rebels” in Syria. Trump earlier this year closed down CIA training operations. This is, in effect, an admission of culpability by Washington of fueling the war.

The Americans and British forces were up to recently training the militant group Maghawir al Thawra at Al Tanf base on the Syrian-Iraqi border. The American government also funded another jihadist group Nour al-Din al Zenki, which came to notoriety in a video showing their members beheading a Palestinian boy.

Weapons caches recovered by the Syria Arab Army after the liberation of ISIS strongholds in Deir ez-Zor also show stockpiles of US-made arms and other NATO munitions, including anti-tank missiles.

The Western governments openly funded the fake emergency responders – the so-called White Helmets – who worked hand-in-hand as a propaganda front for Al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front.

There have been systematic links between Western governments, their regional client regimes and the terror proxies who carried out the dirty war on their behalf in Syria over the past seven years.

It is an insult upon injury for Western governments to impose constraints on financial aid to Syria. Furthermore, the economic costs of reconstruction should not be levied on the Syrian people. Those costs should be paid in full by Washington and its partners who engaged in a criminal war on Syria.

Surely, Syria, Russia, Iran and other allied governments should form an international prosecution case for war crimes.

Not only should Washington, London, Paris and others be made to pay damages. Political and military leaders from these countries should be placed in the dock to answer personally for crimes against the Syrian people. To allow impunity is to let Washington and its rogue cohorts keep repeating the same crimes elsewhere, over and over.

December 18, 2017 Posted by aletho | Economics, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | France, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria, UK, United States | Leave a comment

US Creates New Syrian Army Putting Peace Process in Jeopardy

By Peter KORZUN | Strategic Culture Foundation | 18.12.2017

The US-led coalition is training militants at the Syrian Hasakah refugee camp located 70 kilometers from the border of Turkey and 50 kilometers from the border of Iraq. The New Syria Army is being formed at the location to fight the Syrian government forces in southern Syria. The US Special Operations Forces (SOF) are playing the main role in the process. According to Russia’s Center for Reconciliation of Warring Parties, most of these militants come from Islamic State and Al Nusra Front terrorist groups. Around 750 fighters from Raqqa, Deir-ez-Zor, Abu Kamal and the eastern territories of the Euphrates, including Islamic State terrorists who flew Raqqa in October, are going through the training process.

In November, Russia accused the US of establishing a training camp for militants near Rukban to form a new “moderate” opposition.

The location of the US military base, in Rmeilan district, the Hasakah province, was reported by Anadolu news agency, which unveiled a list of ten US outposts located in areas controlled by Kurdish militias in the provinces of Aleppo, Hasakah and Raqqa. The American forces are strategically placed so as to prevent Syria’s government troops from retaking territory in the northern and southeastern regions.

Washington tried to prevent US media from reprinting the story, after it had already appeared in the Turkish media.

The US deployed SOF to northern Syria this summer. The base in Rmeilan has an airfield through which cargo aircraft deliver weapons to the fighters – one of the two major arms routes into the country, along with a land route from Iraq. No doubt, the military bases in Syria are set up in violation of international law on the territory of a sovereign country that has never taken any offensive action towards the US.

The infrastructure and the formation of the New Syrian Army are signs that Washington views Syria as part of a broader front against the influence of Russia and Iran. The US-allied Syrian Kurds are tough fighters when it comes to defending their territory but it may not be the case when it comes to other areas. The Kurds-dominated Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) group has already reached its geographical limits, and will not risk losing its most valuable lands through overstretching its forces. The US needs other groups to rely on and it’s not too selective while recruiting the fighters to fill the ranks.

Obviously, the new armed force will be used to conduct offensive operations outside the SDF-controlled areas. In late November, the US said it suspended supplying arms to the Syrian Kurds to avoid further aggravation of tensions with Turkey. Arming a new force manned by Sunni Arabs will not create problems to negatively affect the relationship with the Sunni NATO ally.

Another consideration – the Sunni monarchies of the Persian Gulf monarchies will be willing to contribute. The US has just displayed an array of Iranian weapons collected from the Yemen battlefield, including remains of the Iranian-made short-range Qaim ballistic missile fired from Yemen on Nov. 4 at the international airport outside the Saudi capital of Riyadh. The weapons were exhibited on Dec.14 for the first time at a US base outside Washington (the warehouse at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling) as “concrete proof” of Iran’s violation of UN resolutions. All of the recovered weapons were provided to the United States by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Under UN Resolution 2231 endorsing the 2015 nuclear deal, Iran is banned from supplying, selling or transferring weapons outside the country unless approved by the UN Security Council. A separate resolution bans the supply of weapons to Yemen’s Houthis. Members of Congress, the press and representatives of foreign governments could inspect them. The move is clearly designed to make other countries support actions undertaken to confront Iran in the Middle East.

Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, seized the opportunity to call for an international coalition to counter Iran’s influence in the Middle East, while accusing it of “fanning the flames of conflict” in the region. The US is going to “build a coalition to really push back against Iran and what they’re doing“, Haley said, without going into specifics. Saudi Arabia welcomed the ambassador’s comments on Dec.14, saying it condemned “the Iranian regime for its flagrant violations of the international resolutions and norms“. The UAE, which is part of the Saudi-led coalition, said the evidence provided by the US “leaves no doubt about Iran’s flagrant disregard for its UN obligations, and its role in the proliferation and trafficking of weapons in the region“. Symbolically, a new round of UN-brokered Syria peace talks in Geneva ended without results on the very same day – Dec.14.

The events in Iraq also add to the picture – the US is preparing for confrontation with Iran. A confrontation with Iran in Syria would be synonymous with the new phase of war in the region, leaving a far greater impact than a mere upgrade of the Syrian conflict.

The creation of the new army at a time the hopes are high that the Astana and Geneva peace talks will achieve progress is a very worrisome event. Instead of diplomatic initiatives, the US prefers to launch war preparations. Even talking with Russian officials, it’s always about de-escalation, never about peace process. Creating the new army is an attempt to make Syria remain fragmented into multiple, semiautonomous parts, defying central authority. The money spent on the new force cannot go down the drain. The newly created army will move to capture new territories and inevitably escalate violence. While calling for peace in Syria, the US is preparing for war, which may spark pretty soon.

December 18, 2017 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Middle East, Syria, United States | Leave a comment

Five Broken Cameras

Five Broken Cameras from Ahmad Al-Bazz

December 18, 2017 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, Video | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, West Bank, Zionism | Leave a comment

Progress Report on the US-Russian War

The Saker • Unz Review • December 1, 2017

I am often asked if the US and Russia will go to war with each other. I always reply that they are already at war. Not a war like WWII, but a war nonetheless. This war is, at least for the time being, roughly 80% informational, 15% economic and 5% kinetic. But in political terms the outcome for the loser of this war will be no less dramatic than the outcome of WWII was for Germany: the losing country will not survive it, at least not in its present shape: either Russia will become a US colony again or the AngloZionist Empire will collapse.

In my very first column for the Unz Review entitled “A Tale of Two World Orders” I described the kind of multipolar international system regulated by the rule of law that Russia, China and their allies and friends worldwide (whether overt or covert) are trying to build and how dramatically different it was from the single World Hegemony that the AngloZionists have attempted to establish (and almost successfully imposed upon our suffering planet!). In a way, the US imperial leaders are right, Russia does represent an existential threat, not for the United States as a country or for its people, but for the AngloZionist Empire, just as the latter represents an existential threat to Russia. Furthermore, Russia represents a fundamental civilizational challenge to what is normally called the “West” as she openly rejects its post-Christian (and, I would add, also viscerally anti-Islamic) values. This is why both sides are making an immense effort at prevailing in this struggle.

Last week the anti-imperial camp scored a major victory with the meeting between Presidents Putin, Rouhani and Erdogan in Sochi: they declared themselves the guarantors of a peace plan which will end the war against the Syrian people (the so-called “civil war”, which this never was) and they did so without inviting the US to participate in the negotiations. Even worse, their final statement did not even mention the US, not once. The “indispensable nation” was seen as so irrelevant to even be mentioned.

To fully measure how offensive all this is we need to stress a number of points:

First, led by Obama, all the leaders of the West declared urbi et orbi and with immense confidence that Assad had no future, that he had to go, that he was already a political corpse and that he would have no role whatsoever to play in the future of Syria.

Second, the Empire created a “coalition” of 59 (!) countries, which failed to achieve anything, anything at all: a gigantic multi-billion dollar “gang that could not shoot straight” led by CENTCOM and NATO, which only proved its most abject incompetence. In contrast, Russia never had more than 35 combat aircraft in Syria at any time and turned the course of the war (with a lot of Iranian and Hezbollah help on the ground).

Next, the Empire decreed that Russia was “isolated” and her economy “in tatters” – all of which the Ziomedia parroted with total fidelity. Iran was, of course, part of the famous “Axis of Evil,” while Hezbollah was the “A-Team of terrorism”. As for Erdogan, the AngloZionists tried to overthrow and kill him. And now it is Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and Turkey who defeated the terrorists and will call the shots in Syria.

Finally, when the US realized that putting Daesh in power in Damascus was not going to happen, they first tried to break up Syria (Plan B) and then tried to create a Kurdish statelet in Iraq and Syria (Plan C). All these plans failed, Assad is in Russia giving hugs to Putin, while Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp Quds Force Commander General Soleimani is taking a stroll through the last Syrian city to be liberated from Daesh.

Can you imagine how totally humiliated, ridiculed, and beaten the US leaders feel today? Being hated or resisted is one thing, but being totally ignored – now that hurts!

As for a strategy, the best they could come up with was what I would call a “petty harassment of Russia”: making RT sign up as a foreign agent, stealing ancient art from Russia, stripping Russian athletes from medals en masse, trying to ban the Russian flag and anthem from the Olympics in Seoul or banning Russian military aircraft from the next Farnborough airshow. And all these efforts have achieved is making Putin even more popular, the West even more hated, and the Olympics even more boring (ditto for Farnborough – the MAKS and the Dubai Air Shows are so much ‘sexier’ anyway). Oh, I almost forgot, the “new Europeans” will continue their mini-war against old Soviet statues to their liberators. It’s just like the US mini-war on the Russian representations in the US, a clear sign of weakness.

Speaking of weakness.

This is becoming comical. The US media, especially CNN, cannot let a day go by without mentioning the evil Russians, the US Congress is engaged in mass hysteria trying to figure out which of the Republicans and the Democrats have had more contacts with the Russians, NATO commanders are crapping their pants in abject terror (or so they say!) every time the Russian military organizes any exercise, the US Navy and Air Force representatives regularly whine about Russian pilots making “unprofessional intercepts”, the British Navy goes into full combat mode when a single (and rather modest) Russian aircraft carrier transits through the English Channel – but Russia is, supposedly, the “weak” country here.

Does that make sense to you?

The truth is that the Russians are laughing. From the Kremlin, to the media, to the social media – they are even make hilarious sketches about how almighty they are and how they control everything. But mostly the Russians are laughing their heads off wondering what in the world the folks in the West are smoking to be so totally terrified (at least officially) by a non-existing threat.

You know what else they are seeing?

That western political leaders are seeking safety in numbers. Hence the ridiculously bloated “coalitions” and all the resolutions coming out of various European and trans-Atlantic bodies. Western politicians are like schoolyard nerds who, fearing the tough kid, huddle together to look bigger. Every Russian kid knows that seeking safety in numbers is a surefire sign of a scared wimp. In contrast, the Russians also remember how a tiny nation of less than 2 million people had the courage to declare war on Russia and how they fought the Russians hard, really hard. I am talking about the Chechens of course. Yeah, love them or hate them – but there is no denying that Chechens are courageous. Ditto for the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. The Russians were impressed. And even though the Nazis inflicted an unspeakable amount of suffering on the Russian people, the Russians never deny that the German soldiers and officers were skilled and courageous. There is even a Russian saying “I love/respect the courageous man in the Tatar/Mongol” (люблю молодца и в татарине). So Russians have no problem seeing courage in their enemies.

But US/NATO armies? They all act as if Conchita Wurst was their Commander in Chief!

Remember this:

None of these men were kind or “nice” in any way. But they mattered. They were relevant. And they wielded some very real power.

Today, real power looks like this:

And you know what is really offensive to the AngloZionist leaders?

That this photo shows one Orthodox Christian and two Muslims.

Now that’s offensive. And very frightening, of course.

We are very, very far from the “birth of a new Middle East” promised by Condi Rice (it is a new Middle East alright, just not the one Rice and the Neocons had in mind!)

As for the “only democracy in the Middle East” it is now in full panic mode, hence its now overt plan to work with the Saudis against Iran and its clearly staged leaks about bombing all Iranian assets up to 40km from the Israeli border. But that train has already left the station: the Syrians won and no amount of airstrikes will change that. So just to make sure they still look really fierce, the Israelis are now adding that in case of a war between Israel and Hezbollah, Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah would be a target. Wow! Who would have thought?!

Can you hear the giggles coming out of Beirut?

The scary thing is that the folks in DC, Riyadh and Jerusalem hear them loud and clear which means that sooner or later they will have to do something about it and that “something” will be the usual nonsensical bloodbath this “Axis of Kindness” has been made famous for: if you can’t beat their military, make their civilians pay (think Kosovo 1999, Lebanon 2006, Yemen 2015). Either that or beat the shit out of a tiny, defenseless victim (Grenada 1983, Gaza 2008, Bahrain 2011). Nothing like a good massacre of defenseless civilians to make them feel manly, respected and powerful (and, for US Americans – “indispensable”, of course).

Setting aside the case of the Middle East, I think we can begin to see the outlines of what the US and Russia will be doing in the next couple of years.

Russia: the Russian strategy towards the Empire is simple:

Try to avoid as much as possible and for as long as possible any direct military confrontation with the US because Russia is still the weaker side (mostly in quantitative terms). That, and actively preparing for war under the ancient si vis pacem para bellum strategy.
Try to cope as best can be with all the “petty harassment”: the US still has infinitely more “soft power” than Russia and Russia simply does not have the means to strike back in kind. So she does the minimum to try to deter or weaken the effects of that kind of “petty harassment” but, in truth, there is not much she can do about it besides accepting it as a fact of life.
Rather than trying to disengage from the AngloZionist controlled Empire (economically, financially, politically), Russia will very deliberately contribute to the gradual emergence of an alternative realm. A good example of that is the Chinese-promoted New Silk Road which is being built without any meaningful role for the Empire.

US: the US strategy is equally simple:

Use the Russian “threat” to give a meaning and a purpose to the Empire, especially NATO.
Continue and expand the “petty harassment” against Russia on all levels.
Subvert and weaken as much as possible any country or politician showing any signs of independence or disobedience (including New Silk Road countries)

Both sides are using delaying tactics, but for diametrically opposite reasons: Russia, because time is on her side and the US, because they have run out of options.

It is important to stress here that in this struggle Russia is at a major disadvantage: whereas the Russians want to build something, the Americans only want to destroy it (examples include Syria, of course, but also the Ukraine or, for that matter, a united Europe). Another major disadvantage for Russia is that most governments out there as still afraid of antagonizing the Empire in any way, thus the deafening silence and supine submissiveness of the “concert of nations” when Uncle Sam goes on one of his usual rampages in total violation of international law and the UN Charter. This is probably changing, but very, very slowly. Most world politicians are just like US Congressmen: prostitutes (and cheap ones at that).

The biggest advantage for Russia is that the United States are internally falling apart economically, socially, politically – you name it. With every passing year the once most prosperous US is starting to look more and more like some backwater Third World country. Oh sure, the US economy is still huge (but rapidly shrinking!), but that is meaningless when financial wealth and social wealth are conflated into one completely misleading index of pseudo-prosperity. This is sad, really, a country that ought to be prosperous and happy is being bled to death by the, shall we say, “imperial parasite” feeding on it.

At the end of the day, political regimes can only survive by the consent of those they rule. In the United States this consent is clearly in the process of being withdrawn. In Russia it has never been stronger. This translates into a major fragility of the US and, therefore, the Empire (the US is by far the biggest host of the AngloZionist imperial parasite) and a major source of staying power for Russia.

All of the above applies only to political regimes, of course. The people of Russia and of the US have exactly the same interests: bringing down the Empire with the least amount of violence and suffering as possible. Like all Empires, the US Empire mostly abused others in its formative and peak years, but as any decaying Empire it is now mostly abusing its own people. It is therefore vital to always repeat that an “Empire-free US” would have no reason to see an enemy in Russia and vice-versa. In fact, Russia and the US could be ideal partners, but the “imperial parasites” will not allow that to happen. Thus we are all stuck in an absurd and dangerous situation which could result in a war which would completely destroy most of our planet.

For whatever it’s worth, and in spite of the constant hysterical Russophobia in the US Ziomedia, I detect absolutely no sign whatsoever that this campaign is having any success with the people in the US. At most, some of them naively buy into the “the Russians tried to interfere in our elections” fairy tale, but even in this case this belief is mitigated by “no big deal, we also do that in other countries”. I have yet to meet an American who would seriously believe that Russia is any kind of danger. I don’t even detect superficial reactions of hostility when, for example, I speak Russian with my family in a public place. Typically, we are asked what language we are speaking and when we reply “Russian” the reaction normally is “cool!”. Quite often I even hear “what do you think of Putin? I really like him”. This is in severe contrast with the federal government whom the vast majority of Americans seem to hate with a passion.

To summarize it all, I would say that at this point in time of the US-Russian war, Russia is winning, the Empire is losing and the US is suffering. As for the EU it is “enjoying” a much deserved irrelevance while being mostly busy absorbing wave after wave of society-destroying refugees proving, yet again, the truth of the saying that if your head is in the sand, your ass is in the air.

This war is far from over, I don’t even think that we have reached its peak yet and things are going to get worse before they get better again. But all in all, I am very optimistic that the Axis of Kindness will bite the dust in a relatively not too distant future.

December 17, 2017 Posted by aletho | Militarism, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | Iran, Middle East, NATO, Russia, UK, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

US-EU-Russia tensions spill over to Ukraine

By M K Bhadrakumar | Indian Punchline | December 17, 2017

The decision by the European Union countries at their summit in Brussels on Thursday to extend the sanctions against Russia was not a surprise. But the ease with which the decision was made is notable – with no discussions or arguments. The German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron presented a report on the status of implementation of the Minsk agreement, highlighting the lack of progress in Ukraine and the EU took a unified stance to extend the sanctions. The sanctions will now extend automatically up to July 31 next year.

Moscow has reacted calmly, but the fact remains that relations between Russia and EU countries will remain in limbo. The sanctions comprise different packages such as financial restrictions on Russia’s leading defense and energy companies, on Russian companies’ access to large European banks to raise loans for projects, embargo on Russia’s imports of military and energy technology and high-tech equipment from Europe, blacklisting of Russian individuals and legal entities, and a set of targeted sanctions in relation to Crimea such as ban of any dealings with that region by European businesses.

Strategically, Russia’s dependence on China will only increase. The prospects of Merkel remaining in power in the near term look good with the U-turn by the Social Democratic Party on forming another grand coalition with her Christian Democratic Union. This will not be good for Russia. Equally, whatever hopes might have been there in Moscow for a new beginning with France under Macron have fizzled out. A German-French axis is being forged with renewed vigor to accelerate the EU integration processes and transform the grouping as a heavyweight in Eurasian politics. Russia would have preferred a weakened, dispirited European Union that created space for it to deal with individual European countries on bilateral basis.

On the other hand, the drift in transatlantic relations is also a compelling reality. The European stance on East Jerusalem highlights it. The five-day 3-nation European trip to Brussels, Vienna and Paris by the US state secretary Rex Tillerson could not rollback the rising tensions. The EU Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini noted after talks with Tillerson that the bloc believes that any action that would undermine the peace-making efforts between Palestine and Israel “must absolutely be avoided.” On the Iran nuclear deal, she underscored that the continued implementation of the Iran nuclear deal is a key strategic priority for European, regional and global security.

Then, there is also a divergence on values that cannot be papered over. Europe remains a strong supporter of multilateralism, the UN system, and a rules-based global order. Europe views with distaste and horror Trump’s embrace of ultra-nationalism and his barely concealed Islamophobia. After Tillerson left, Mogherini took her gloves off, saying, Trump’s decision on Jerusalem “has a very worrying potential impact in this very fragile context. Now what the worst possible development could be that a bad situation turns into a worse one and that tensions inflame the region even further.” Suffice to say, Trump is a lump in the European throat – it can’t swallow it or spit it out. Any uplift in transatlantic relations under these circumstances is unlikely.

Russia may take vicarious satisfaction that Brussels is no longer willing to positively commit itself to the US regional and global agendas. However, there is a flip side to it. The US would have greater need today to stoke up Russophobia to rally the European countries under its leadership. Tillerson used strong language to highlight that Russia poses a threat to the West. At the NATO foreign ministerial meeting in Brussels last week Tillerson warned all European nations of Moscow’s “intrusion”. He said, “Russia’s aggression in Ukraine remains the biggest threat to European security.” Tillerson accused “Russia and its proxies” of “harassment, intimidation, and its attacks on the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (in Ukraine.)”

Interestingly, he went out of the way to flag that Trump is really not enamored of Russia as Europeans might think. “Trump does not talk with President Putin as often as with other world leaders, and I think, again, that’s simply a reflection of the strained relationship that exists between the United States and Russia,” Tillerson noted.

“We join our European partners in maintaining sanctions until Russia withdraws its forces from the Donbass and meets its Minsk commitments,” Tillerson added. He said the West should not regularize or renormalize the relationship with Russia “until Russia begins to address those actions which we find not just unacceptable but intolerable.” But Brussels keeps an ambivalent attitude toward Russia. It feels uneasy that Trump may one day wade into a Washington-Moscow rapprochement too soon, even before the Ukraine question is solved. On the other hand, Europe also is nervous about getting caught between a nasty showdown between Washington and Moscow.

Washington may leverage the situation in Ukraine to stoke up tensions there with the aim to keep the US’ European allies in line. Most certainly, US and Canada’s decision last Wednesday to lift the ban on supply of arms to Ukraine looks ominous. Russia repeatedly warned that such moves could have dangerous consequences. On Thursday in Moscow, President Vladimir Putin warned of a massacre in eastern Ukraine “worse than in Srebrenica” (horrific massacre of Serbs in the former Yugoslavia in 1995) if the West strengthened the Ukrainian nationalist forces.

December 17, 2017 Posted by aletho | Economics, Militarism, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | European Union, Russia, Ukraine | Leave a comment

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