The UK government has suspended a foreign aid project in Syria amid allegations that funds are being pocketed by extremists groups. It is yet another report of British taxpayers’ money reaching the wrong hands.
The project seeks to use aid funds from Britain to help officers of the Free Syria Police (FSP) implement order in the region following the Syrian uprising. However, claims that the funds were being diverted to extremists were made in a BBC Panorama program, Jihadis You Pay For. The program, aired on Monday evening, also claims that UK-backed officers were apparently working with courts imposing torture and executions.
The Adam Smith International think tank, which has been managing the project since October 2014, denies any allegations of wrongdoing. It says it had managed taxpayers’ money “effectively to confront terrorism.”
Allegations were also made concerning extremists from the Syrian Al-Qaeda branch, Jabhat al-Nusra (Al-Nusra Front), directly choosing officers for two stations in the country’s north-western Idlib province.
Kate Osamor, Labour’s shadow secretary of state for international development, said Britons will be “outraged” if the allegations turn out to be substantiated. “We need to understand how the Foreign and Commonwealth Office allowed this to happen, and why their mechanisms for properly managing aid projects failed,” she told The Guardian.
She pointed out that the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund, which financed the project, operates in dozens more countries which are renowned for their “questionable” human-rights records.
“This investigation is likely to be only the tip of the iceberg: the government must now open up its books so the public can understand the true extent of the problem,” added Osamor.
Funds come from Britain’s £13 billion ($17.5 billion) foreign aid budget, which is mainly under the wing of the Department for International Development. Other departments, however, are also responsible for its spending, including the Foreign Office.
Earlier this year, it was revealed how Britons are donating hundreds of thousands of pounds to Islamist extremists – sometimes without knowing so. According to Home Secretary Amber Rudd, such money represents the extremists’ primary form of income.
The Home Office also found that overseas funding was a “significant source of income” for a small number of suspected radical bodies.
Reports in October also claimed that British charity aid convoys are being used to funnel funds to terrorist organizations in Syria. An FCO spokesman said: “We take any allegations of co-operation with terrorist groups and of human-rights abuses extremely seriously and the Foreign Office has suspended this program while we investigate these allegations.
“We believe that such work in Syria is important to protect our national security interest but of course we reach this judgment carefully given that in such a challenging environment no activity is without risk. That is why all our programs are designed carefully and subject to robust monitoring,” he added, according to the BBC.
Populist, pragmatist, authoritarian, cunning tactician – years after he rose to the top of Russian politics Western observers still wonder about Vladimir Putin’s true motivations. In fact, behind the Kremlin’s decision-making is a set of consistently expressed beliefs.
On the United States
“The USA is a great power. Probably the only superpower in existence today. We accept that and we are ready to work together with them.
What we don’t need is for them to get involved in our affairs, tell us how to live our lives, and prevent Europe from building a relationship with us.”
St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, June 2016
On allegations of Russia’s foreign meddling
“There is constant US propaganda, and direct funding of US NGOs… Is that not interference, which continues year in, year out? Take a globe, spin it, and randomly put your finger on any spot – I can guarantee that there are American interests and meddling there.
What do the Americans want? For everyone to just bow their heads in deference? We have our own opinion and we express it openly. It is not some form of undercover sabotage.”
Direct Line with Vladimir Putin, June 2017
On Europe
“Does it benefit European states to simply service Washington’s foreign and even domestic policy aims? I am not sure. Is this the purpose of serious politics, and is this the role countries take on if they desire to call themselves great powers?”
Russia Calling! Investment Forum, October 2016
On Catalonia’s independence crisis
“At one time, the EU welcomed the collapse of a whole range of states in Europe, not bothering to hide their glee. Why did they need to so thoughtlessly – for the sake of short-term interests and to please ‘Big Brother’ in Washington – unconditionally support the secession of Kosovo, provoking similar processes on the continent and beyond?”
Valdai Discussion Club, October 2017
On NATO
“There is no more Soviet Union, no Eastern Bloc. In my view, NATO needs an external enemy to justify its existence, so there is a constant search for one, and provocations to create adversaries where there are none.
…Today it is an instrument of American foreign policy. There are no partners in it, only vassals.”
Oliver Stone interview, June 2017
On the Middle East
“There has been an attempt to reformat the region, to impose an outside model on it, either through regime change, or outright use of force. Instead of fighting extremism, instead of imitating such a fight, some of our peers want chaos to become a permanent state of affairs.”
Valdai Discussion Club, October 2017
On North Korea
“Of course we condemn North Korea’s nuclear tests and comply with all UN Security Council resolutions without exception.
But to solve this problem you must use dialog, not by trying to corner North Korea with military threats, and not resort to name-calling and public exchanges of insults. Whether you like the regime in Pyongyang or hate it, you have to recognize that DPRK is a sovereign state.”
Valdai Discussion Club, October 2017
On the toppling of Viktor Yanukovich in Ukraine
“What happened in Kiev is an armed and unconstitutional seizure of power – a coup. No one is arguing with that.
The question is – why did it need to be done like that? Viktor Yanukovich had already given up his power, and had no chance of re-election. Why plunge the country into chaos? As a demonstration of power? This was a stupid decision and had the reverse effect. I believe it was these actions that destabilized the situation in the east of the country.”
Media briefing in Novo Ogarevo, March 2014
On the government in Kiev
“The interests of the Russian and the Ukrainian peoples are the same. What isn’t the same is the aims of the Ukrainian government and elites.
… They have only one good left to export for international consumption – Russophobia. And the politics of division between the two countries. Some in the West believe that these two states should never be allies, and so Ukraine has been successful exporting that idea.”
Hamburg G20 Summit, June 2017
On Russia’s political system
“Monarchy was a legacy passed down from the Empire to Soviet times, even though the plaque on the building changed. Only at the beginning of the 1990s, events came to pass which laid the foundation for a new stage of Russian development.
Certainly, you cannot imagine that we can instantaneously get the same government model, the same structures, as in the United States, in Germany, in France. Society, just as every living organism, has to develop stage-by-stage, organically. That’s the normal development process.”
Oliver Stone interview, June 2017
On Russia’s role in the world
“Russia is a country with a thousand-year history and has almost always enjoyed the privilege of a sovereign foreign policy.
We are not going to betray this tradition today. At the same time, we are well aware of how the world has changed and we have a realistic understanding of our own opportunities and potential. We would like to interact with responsible and independent partners with whom we could work together in constructing a fair and democratic world order that would ensure security and prosperity not only for a select few, but for all.”
Syrian state television has confirmed that Israel attacked a military base outside of Damascus overnight on Friday, which Israeli media reports involved both surface-to-surface missiles and airstrikes, while Syria says its air defense systems were engaged and intercepted two missiles. Like other recent strikes inside Syria, the Israeli jets reportedly fired from over Lebanese airspace, in order to avoid both Syrian anti-aircraft missile systems and provoking a Russian response. Though the extent of the damage or casualties is not yet known, Syrian media has confirmed material damage to the base, and other reports indicate mass power outages in some of parts of Damascus occurred immediately after the attack, which SANA says happened at 12:30am local time.
It appears the base is likely the same one featured in a November BBC report which showed satellite images detailing the purported construction and renovation of an “Iranian military base” near El-Kiswah, which lies 14 km (8 miles) south of Damascus. As we’ve noted before, the BBC report was dubiously sourced to “a Western intelligence source” and the story was quickly utilized by Israeli leaders to ratchet up rhetoric in preparing its case before the international community for further attacks on the supposed Iranian targets. Israel has long justified its attacks inside Syria by claiming to be acting against Hezbollah and Iranian facilities and arms depots.
Indeed, BBC itself used ambiguous language in saying the satellite images “seem to show” construction activity at the site referenced by the intelligence source between January and October this year. However, the images don’t actually show much at all related to an Iranian military presence, but merely a series of two dozen large low-rise buildings – likely for housing soldiers and vehicles, which would be expected of any state army or sovereign nation.
Furthermore, the very title of the November piece – “Iran building permanent military base in Syria – claim” – underscores the complete lack of evidence for such a claim, which the BBC notes in the article is “impossible to independently verify.”
Yet in reporting last night’s Israeli strike on Syria, the BBC uncritically referenced its own prior unconfirmed “claim” to paint a picture that Israel is actually taking action against Iran and Hezbollah: “Israel has hit weapons sites before, in a bid to prevent arms being transferred to Syria’s Lebanese ally Hezbollah. Arms convoys in particular have been singled out by the Israeli air force.”
Last month the BBC revealed a claim that Iran was building a permanent military base near the town. A series of satellite images showed construction at the location of the alleged base, which was made known to the BBC by a western intelligence source.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has previously warned that Israel would not allow Iran to establish any military presence in Syria.
So it appears the BBC is playing war propagandist for Israel, instead of including any level of critical inquiry regarding Israel’s unprovoked act of aggression against its neighbor. In short, the BBC spread what it acknowledged to be a mere “claim” based solely on an unnamed “Western intelligence source”. Then Israel used that claim to attack Syria, after which the BBC in circular fashion justified the attack based on its own original dubious “claim”.
Israeli media and politicians are currently using BBC published satellite images as “proof” that Israel attacked an “Iranian base” in Syria last night. Image source: BBC
Meanwhile, just about every major Israeli newspaper in today’s reporting is prominently featuring the prior BBC report as justification for the latest attack on Syria. The Times of Israel provides one such example among many when it says:
The alleged Israeli attack came three weeks after the BBC reported that Iran was building a permanent military base in Syria just south of Damascus. The British broadcaster commissioned a series of satellite pictures that showed widespread construction at the site.
The attack raises several questions. Why wait so long to strike the Iranian base? What did “western intelligence sources” hope to accomplish by publishing information on the Iranian base? Why were the Iranians at the site given time to leave by their base becoming so public? The month’s activity appear to be part of a complex game being waged by Iran to entrench itself in Syria and Israel’s attempts to warn the Iranians off. Whatever was taking place at El-Kiswah had plenty of time to be wrapped up and moved if the Iranians were concerned about it being struck. If the reports about Israel’s threats to target sites between 40-60km from the Golan are accurate then it would indicate that the warnings have been manifested.
And nearly every major Israeli media source is also republishing the BBC satellite images as part of their reporting on the overnight strikes.
As we’ve long pointed out, anytime that Israel carries out acts of aggression against Syria, it can just blame Iran or Hezbollah and escape international criticism or condemnation. International media and Western governments have already demonstrated a penchant for towing the Israeli line whenever Iran can be conceivably blamed as a culprit – evidence or no evidence – this as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it official Israeli policy to oppose Iranian presence in Syria.
Yet what key facts do the BBC and others leave out?
On Tuesday Israel’s own Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that there are no Iranian military forces in Syria, but instead merely stuck to acknowledging “Iranian experts and advisers”. In comments to Israel’s Ynet news, Lieberman admitted, “It is true that there are a number of Iranian experts and advisers, but there is no Iranian military force on Syrian land.”
Clearly, Defense Minister Lieberman’s statement flies in the face of claims made by Netanyahu in his speech before the UN General Assembly this year when Netanyahu said, “We will act to prevent Iran from establishing permanent military bases in Syria for its air, sea and ground forces. We will act to prevent Iran from producing deadly weapons in Syria… And we will act to prevent Iran from opening new terror fronts against Israel along our northern border.”
In other words, Israel’s top military chief very publicly contradicted both Netanyahu’s and the BBC’s claims of Iranian military bases on Syrian soil, yet the BBC neglected to mention such essential information. Thus, it appears that the mainstream media is preparing us for war… but sadly, this is nothing new.
If this document had been published sooner, it could have dramatically changed the course of the war by exposing the true face of the “moderate rebels” — and potentially saved tens of thousands of lives. That didn’t happen, and no reason has been given by the Intercept for its delay.
On Tuesday, the Interceptpublished a hitherto unknown document from the trove of National Security Administration (NSA) documents leaked by Edward Snowden over three years ago. The document was notable as it shed light on the early days of the Syrian conflict and the fact that, for the past six years, so-called “revolutionary” groups aimed at toppling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have largely acted as proxies for foreign governments pushing regime change.
The document explicitly reveals that an attack led by the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which was intended to mark the anniversary of the 2011 “uprising” that sparked the Syrian conflict, was directed by a Saudi prince. The document proves, in essence, that the armed opposition in Syria – from the earlier years of the conflict – was under the direct command of foreign governments pushing for regime change.
An NSA graphic released by The Intercept outlines Saudi involvement in organizing and supplying Syrian opposition forces for attacks on Syria’s civilian infrastructure.
According to the document, Saudi Prince Salman bin Sultan had ordered the FSA to “light up Damascus” and “flatten” the city’s civilian airport. The Saudis had also “sent 120 tons of explosives/weapons to opposition forces” for the operation. The Saudis, as the document notes, were “very pleased” with the outcome, which claimed at least 60 lives.
The implications of the NSA document are significant. It offers the clearest proof, in the form of official U.S. government documents, detailing the direct relationship between the armed Syrian opposition and foreign governments, and exposing the fact that this relationship existed much earlier than the mainstream narrative on the conflict had previously suggested.
However, the Intercept article regarding the document is unusual for several reasons. First, the report inaccurately claims that the attack launched at the Saudis’ behest did not result in any confirmed casualties. Second, it states that the 2011 uprising in Syria was an organic, “peaceful” movement that led the Syrian government to wage “an open war against their own people” — a narrative that has since been debunked.
Yet, the largest oversight of all is the article’s failure to mention the U.S.’ role in funding the Free Syrian Army, as well as the CIA’s well-documented role in training the FSA and pumping tons of weapons into Syria in order to foment and exacerbate the conflict in its early days. In light of the NSA document’s revelation that the U.S. had been given advance notice of the planned FSA attack – on a civilian target, no less – Washington’s decision to let it proceed clearly suggests that the U.S. was involved in and well aware of the Saudi directives to the FSA. However, the Intercept piece chooses not to mention this crucial context.
Intercept’s three-plus year delay in releasing document
Perhaps even more troubling than the article’s failure to mention the CIA’s well-documented role in backing the Free Syrian Army, now exposed as a proxy force following orders from the Saudi royal family, is the fact that the Intercept had access to this document for nearly three-and-a-half years – deciding to publish only now that the Syrian conflict is effectively over and those pushing for regime change have lost. If this document had been published sooner, it could have dramatically changed the course of the war by exposing the true face of the “moderate rebels” — and potentially saved tens of thousands of lives.
That didn’t happen, however, and no reason has been given by the publication for its notable delay. The Intercept has exclusive publishing rights and an exclusive hold on the content of the Snowden leaks, of which this newly released document is a part. Indeed, the Interceptwas founded after the Snowden leaks were made public and its first hires were Glenn Greenwald and Lauren Poitras, the only journalists possessing the full Snowden cache. Those documents now belong to the Intercept’s founder — billionaire eBay founder, — and his for-profit media company, First Look Media.
Examining Omidyar’s connections to the U.S. political establishment offers a plausible reason for the Intercept’s delay in publishing documents so crucial to understanding the situation in Syria. Omidyar was a frequent guest of the Obama White House from 2009 to 2013, garnering more face-to-face visits with Obama during his two terms than did Google’s Eric Schmidt, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, New York Times owner Arthur Sulzberger and even fellow tech billionaire turned major media owner, Jeff Bezos.
Omidyar also directly co-invested with the U.S. State Department, via USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), in opposition groups that played a key role in overthrowing Ukraine’s democratically elected government in 2014 – a U.S.-brokered regime-change operation that shares some notable similarities with the Syrian conflict. His investments with USAID have continued since the Intercept’s founding, helping fund the NGO’s more recent overseas programs aimed at “advancing U.S. national security interests” abroad.
Also worth noting is the fact that PayPal, of which Omidyar is a major owner, has allegedly been implicated in several of the still-withheld NSA documents for its business relationship with the NSA and its role in the agency’s mass spying program. In addition, former Intercept writers have asserted that Omidyar was “shockingly disinterested in the actual journalism” of the paper, suggesting that the Intercept was created explicitly to delay the release of damaging documents from the Snowden cache until deemed acceptable to the U.S. political establishment and others who stood to lose face were the entire cache to have been made public.
Indeed, another interesting coincidence supporting this thesis is the fact that the Intercept published this latest piece only after the U.S. State Department itself began to report more honestly on the nature of these so-called “rebels.” A day before the Intercept’s story on Syrian “rebels” and the Saudis, the U.S. State Department – for the first time – admitted that “moderate” rebels in Syria had previously used chemical weapons, a charge it had categorically denied for years in order to facilitate laying the blame for any and all chemical weapons attacks in Syria on the Syrian government.
In other words, the Intercept released the document, which effectively destroys Washington’s “moderate rebels” narrative with its own internal documents, only after the U.S. government itself began to unravel that very same narrative.
The Intercept did not respond to MintPress News’ request for comment regarding the timing of the document’s release.
Omidyar’s connection to U.S. regime-change efforts abroad may also explain why the Intercept – until now, that is – has consistently given voice to journalists who have echoed the U.S. establishment regarding the Syrian conflict.
For instance, Murtaza Hussain – the author of this latest Intercept piece – has written numerous stories downplaying the terrorist and Wahhabist elements of the Syrian “rebels.” In the last two years, Hussain has written pieces portraying known Al-Qaeda propagandists, such as Bilal Abdul Kareem, and Al-Qaeda-linked organizations, such as the White Helmets, in an overwhelmingly positive light, failing to mention in both cases the significant evidence tying these entities to known terrorist groups. In another piece, published last August, Hussain gave voice to al-Nusra Front leadership in a lengthy interview that largely whitewashed the group’s Wahhabist leanings and links to terrorist acts in Syria.
Last September, on Twitter, Hussain asserted that Saudi Arabia’s funding of armed factions was not necessarily “good” but that “there is little to indicate they contribute to terrorism.” That last statement has been thoroughly debunked for years, but most recently by Hussain’s own piece on the newly released NSA document.
Hussain is by no means the only Intercept writer who has taken such a pro-opposition stance regarding Syria. A recentIntercept piece on Syria, published in September, committed glaring factual errors on basic facts about the war, while also mistranslating a speech given by Assad so as to link him to American white nationalists. In addition, the paper recently hired Maryam Saleh, a journalist who has called Shia Muslims “dogs” and has taken to Twitter in recent months to downplay the role of the U.S. coalition in airstrikes in Syria. She also has ties to the U.S.-financed propaganda group Kafranbel Media Center, which has close relations with the terrorist group Ahrar al-Sham.
For a paper ostensibly dedicated to “fearless, adversarial” journalism, it is strange that the Intercept gives voice to journalists who echo the U.S. position regarding the Syrian war while rarely publishing the work of journalists who have challenged prevailing Western narratives on that war — journalists who, as the Intercept itself recently revealed, have been right all along regarding the myth of the Syrian “moderate rebel.” Yet, given Omidyar’s political connections and the paper’s handling of the Snowden cache, this unfortunate decision is unsurprising.
November 8, 2017: Atef al-Maqousi, 37, died from complications resulting from serious wounds he suffered in 1992, after Israeli soldiers shot him in his spine. Atef was 12 years old.
Atef suffered from quadriplegia as a result of his injury, when the soldiers shot him with live fire in Jabalia refugee camp, in the northern part of the Gaza Strip.
Following the shooting, Atef suffered ongoing infections and repeated serious complications that eventually led to his death, medical source said.
To see a list of all Palestinians and Israelis killed by the other side since 2000, go to Israel-Palestine Timeline.
Saudi Arabia’s pressures on the Lebanese government to disarm the Hezbollah resistance movement are part of a scenario to wage war against the country, a former US government adviser says.
In a Friday interview with Press TV, Paul Larudee expressed concern over the implication of the latest remarks by Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, who accused Hezbollah of “hijacking” Lebanon and called for disarming the resistance movement.
“This is a classic technique of building a case for invasion of any country, and in this case Lebanon. It is set up to make the invader appear like a liberator and to make the defenders of their country appear like the occupiers and the usurpers,” Larudee said.
“It is very worrisome that in fact this is on the table now that they are working up to a war in Lebanon,” he added.
Speaking at an international conference in the Italian capital city of Rome on Friday, Jubeir described the present situation in Lebanon as “tragic” and said, “Lebanon will only survive or prosper if you disarm Hezbollah.”
“As long as you have an armed militia, you will not have peace in Lebanon,” the Saudi foreign minister said.
Hezbollah is Lebanon’s de facto military power, and has been fighting off recurrent acts of Israeli aggression against the homeland. Riyadh, which reportedly maintains clandestine ties with Tel Aviv, however, has made no secret of its opposition to the group, and has been trying for more than a decade to weaken it.
Lebanon has repeatedly praised Hezbollah’s key role in the war against terrorism, with Lebanese President Michel Aoun defending the resistance movement’s possession of arms as essential to Lebanon’s security.
The accusations against the resistance movement come amid Lebanon’s ongoing political crisis.
On November 4, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri announced his resignation during a visit to Saudi Arabia, shocking the nation and plunging it into political uncertainty. He accused Iran and Hezbollah of sowing strife in the Arab world, an allegation rejected by both sides.
Shortly afterwards, President Aoun accused Riyadh of kidnapping Hariri. International heavyweights such as the European Union, France, and Germany also called on the kingdom to let him return.
The Lebanese PM then traveled back to Lebanon, and put his resignation on hold at Aoun’s request in favor of national dialog.
Hariri says he will resign from his position if Hezbollah refuses to remain “neutral” in the regional conflicts.
Sources close to Hariri said he had been forced to step down by the kingdom over his failure to “confront” Hezbollah.
The prime minister was also quoted by Lebanese sources as saying that he would keep to himself what happened in Saudi Arabia, implying that he did not feel free to expose what had actually transpired in the Arab kingdom.
From the earliest years of the Zionist project, the leaders of the movement which then morphed into the State of Israel understood that regional coalitions were crucial to its success. But Israel is a settler colonial project and therefor it was and still is very much hated by people in the region. Israel and its leaders invested in creating and promoting corrupt unprincipled despots to leadership in the countries around it, men who would control the Arab world by keeping its people poor, uneducated and without representation and would pose no threat to Israel and its policies of genocide and ethnic cleansing perpetuated against the people of Palestine. Israel has had some degree of success in this, especially with the reactionary monarchies. Countries who had leaders that resisted Israel ended up paying a heavy price. These were states like Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya which are now destroyed and so it can come as no surprise that the new Saudi Crown Prince is keen to take his regime’s relations with Israel to a new level, some say he even intends to establish diplomatic ties with Israel.
It is ironic that some of the greatest perpetrators and supporters of terrorism are those who talk of fighting terrorism. The latest unholy alliance between the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt is a source of unspeakable terror which without fail is inflicted on innocent civilians but guarantees Israeli interests will be safe. The new boss calling the shots from Riyadh, Mohammad Bin Salman is for now at the center of this unholy alliance which in the short term will satisfy his hunger for power and influence but is sure to fail and in the meantime, will surely produce more misery in Yemen, Palestine, Lebanon and God only knows where else. But state terrorism like that perpetuated by Israeli military against Palestinians and the Saudis in Yemen is heralded by the weapons suppliers in the US and the UK as heroic while the people who fight for their rights are inevitably forgotten and left to die.
Two issues that have been brought to the forefront by the unholy alliance are Iran and its fictional threat to world peace and stability and its mythical support for terrorism. Iran which has invaded no one and attacked no one but supports Hezbollah and Hamas in their resistance against Israel is the favorite enemy in Tel-Aviv, Washington, DC and Riyadh. The new Saudi boss wants to consolidate regional power and he thinks he can do so by aligning with Israel and the US in order to weaken Iran. What he may not realize is that Iran is not a threat and cannot be threatened. While the Saudi monarchy gets its legitimacy from oil and money and from Israel and the US who supply it with weapons, Iranian legitimacy stems from its people, its long history and extraordinary culture. As for weakening Iranian influence in the region by weakening Hezbollah and Syria, that has been a colossal failure. Hezbollah is strong and well respected and is seen as the guarantee for stability in Lebanon. Furthermore, having been struck by Hezbollah might twice, Israel will not dare challenge it. And in Syria regardless of what one may think of the regime, it has clearly maintained the upper hand as a result of the support of Iran and Hezbollah.
What Israel wants however is legitimacy. It wants to continue the genocide of the Palestinian people uninterrupted, it wants to demonstrate to the world that it won on all fronts and it wants the US embassy to move to Jerusalem once and for all. And while Israel is being allowed to destroy Palestine and kill its people, the Jerusalem issue is a more complicated one and can only happen if ambitious yet ignorant and careless people are in power. And so it happens that at this moment in time there is precisely such a combination in place. With the new Saudi Crown Prince, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, let the games begin. Interrupting the status quo regarding Jerusalem is so dangerous and has such destructive potential that even King Abdullah of Jordan, who himself owes his power to Israel and the US is warning the US to avoid meddling with it. Jerusalem has been a Muslim city with a minority of other religions who are living there for around fifteen hundred years. It was only the sheer brutality of the Israeli military and the ethnic cleansing campaign Israel has put in place that has somewhat changed the nature of the city. But no recognition was ever given to the Zionist conquest of Jerusalem and hard as they try, it will never be seen as legitimate. Although for seven decades Israel has maintained that Jerusalem is its capital, the rest of the world was not able to swallow this breach of international law and common sense. And even today after seven decades of destruction the city of Jerusalem still maintains its Muslim heritage and is considered to be an icon of Islam peppered with symbols of other religions which reside within it. If Mohamad Bin Salman, Trump and Netanyahu attempt to make change this, it will surely hasten the collapse of the unholy alliance but it is also sure to bring a great deal of misery and violence.
In the meantime, the three musketeers have a plan for the Palestinians. They are to give up their dignity, forgo their rights and swallow an indignation designed especially for them. With their land stolen, rights taken away, water denied and existence ignored at best and mostly destroyed, they should accept a small fraction of Palestine designated as Area A of what used to be the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as a Palestinian state. But what if they do not accept this indignation? The US is threatening to close down the PLO mission in Washington DC. The mission is not an embassy and in many ways its existence is in and of itself an indignation which the Palestinian Authority seems to be willing to swallow. Palestinians will be no worse off if it is closed and as was said by my friend Issa Amro, co-founder and leader of Youth Against Settlements in Hebron, recently, there are enough Palestinians in the US to represent the Palestinian voice proudly and truthfully until such time that a real ambassador of an actual Palestinian government presents credentials to the president of the United States.
Mohammad Bin Salman summoning the Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri and attempting to force him to discredit Hezbollah – a legitimate and stabilizing part of the Lebanese government – and the summoning of Mahmoud Abbas from Ramallah and ordering him to accept the new peace deal, is nothing more than a show of muscle by a new and inexperienced player. Even the praise Thomas Friedman heaped on him in the New York Times, and rather foolishly wrote that, “The most significant reform process underway anywhere in the Middle East today,” only shows that Bin Salman is over reaching and that he is too young and inexperienced to understand the Middle East. Having failed miserably in Yemen, Syria and Iraq, Saudi Arabia lost massive ground to the Iranians and he hopes that Trump and Netanyahu will come to his aid. But he is relying on some very weak allies: The very legitimacy of Netanyahu and the entire Zionist project are now being brought to question and Trump will be fortunate if he is able to see the end of his first term as president without being forced to resign. One hopes that with the inevitable collapse of this alliance a new one will rise, one that will support a free Palestine and a peaceful Middle East.
A comparison of alarmist claims about man-made global warming with widely accepted scientific facts about the past history and current condition of the Earth.
Whatever else might be said about the assassination of President Kennedy, one thing is for sure: The cover-up of this particular U.S. regime-change operation was one of the most ingenious and cunning plots ever designed. This shouldn’t surprise anyone, given that practically from its inception in 1947 the CIA was specializing in the arts of assassination, regime change, and cover-up.
As far back as 1953, the CIA published an assassination manual that the CIA succeeded in keeping secret from the American people for more than 40 years. It came to light in 1997 as a result of a Freedom of Information request. That was around the time that the Assassination Records Review Board, which was overseeing the mandatory release of JFK-related assassination records of the CIA and other federal agencies that had been kept secret from the American people since 1963.
Today, Americans can read the CIA’s assassination manual online. Titled “Study of Assassination,” the manual spells out various ways to assassinate people. Here is what the manual states in part regarding the use of firearms:
Firearms are often used in assassination, often very ineffectively…. Public figures or guarded officials may be killed with great reliability and some safety if a firing point can be established prior to an official occasion. The propaganda value of this system may be very high.
The manual also makes it clear that the CIA was studying ways to assassinate people without being detected. Note the following excerpt:
For secret assassination, either simple or chase, the contrived accident is the most effective technique. When successfully executed, it causes little excitement and is only casually investigated.
It would be safe to assume that the CIA continued developing and expanding on the assassination principles enunciated in that early assassination manual. That’s what we would expect from an agency whose specialties included assassination. We can also assume that the CIA continued to refine the ways to avoid detection when assassinating someone.
The CIA published that secret assassination manual as part of its preparations for a U.S. regime-change operation in Guatemala, one that was designed to violently remove the nation’s democratically elected socialist president, Jacobo Arbenz, from office and replace him with an unelected, right-wing, pro-U.S. military general.
As part of the Guatemala regime-change operation, the CIA prepared a list of Guatemalan officials to be assassinated. While the CIA has never revealed the names of the people it targeted for assassination, there is little doubt that Arbenz, the president, was at the top of the list.
There is something important to note: Neither Arbenz nor any other Guatemalan official had ever attacked the United States or even threatened to do so.
So, why were they targeted for assassination? Because Arbenz had reached out to the Russians and Cubans in a spirit of peace and friendship, just as John Kennedy would do ten years later. That’s why the CIA targeted Guatemala for regime change and why it targeted Arbenz and other Guatemalan officials for assassination.
Although Arbenz was able to escape the country, the CIA’s regime-change operation was a total success, with Arbenz being replaced by the pro-U.S. Gen. Carlos Castillo Armas, who proceeded to instigate a reign of terror across Guatemala.
The Guatemalan operation was brilliant and ingenious. The CIA officials were secretly honored for protecting “national security” by removing President Arbenz from office and replacing him with a pro-U.S. military general. Tracy Barnes, one of the CIA officials responsible for the operation, was awarded the Distinguished Intelligence Medal, the CIA’s second-highest medal.
The CIA’s cover-up in the JFK assassination was even more brilliant and ingenious.
The doctors at Parkland Hospital stated that President Kennedy had a big exit-sized wound in the back of his head, which implied a shot having been fired from the front. At a press conference immediately after the president died, two treating physicians stated that the other wound — the one in the front of Kennedy’s neck — was an entry wound, which implied that Kennedy had been hit by another shot fired from the front.
This necessarily meant that Kennedy had been shot from the front, not the rear, where accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was situated.
Keep in mind something important: After he was arrested, Oswald claimed his innocence. But he also went a step further. He said that he was being framed for the crime.
The obvious question arises: Why frame an innocent man who is situated in the rear by killing the president with shots fired from the front? Wouldn’t it be more logical to either have the shots fired from the rear, where Oswald was, or, alternatively, place Oswald in the front, where the shots were fired?
That’s where the brilliance, ingenuity, and cunningness of the cover-up come into play.
If Oswald is in the rear and since shots are fired from the front, that could mean only one thing: that Oswald had confederates firing from the front.
Who would those confederates be? There could be only one answer: communists. Soviet and Cuban communists, to be more specific.
How would we know this? That’s where Oswald’s trip to Mexico City right before the assassination comes into play.
Oswald traveled to Mexico City where he purportedly visited the Soviet and Cuban embassies and where he supposedly met with a premier assassin for the Soviet Union.
Keep in mind that this was the height of the Cold War between the United States and that the Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear war, had taken place the previous year.
So, President Kennedy has been assassinated. Oswald is immediately arrested. He has confederates firing from the front, who almost certainly are Soviet and Cuban communists, especially since Oswald has supposedly just recently visited the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City.
What does all that mean? An assassination of the president by the Soviet Union and Cuba is obviously an act of war. That means nuclear war is about to break out because there is no way that the United States is going to sit idly by when the Reds have just assassinated America’s president.
Except for one thing: The communist part and the nuclear-war part were concocted. That was all part of the plan. That was the ingenious way that the CIA was able to get the investigation into the assassination squelched just as soon as Oswald was murdered.
In the early days of the Warren Commission, commission chairman Earl Warren called a top-secret meeting of the commission. Its purpose was to discuss information that Warren had received that Oswald was actually a U.S. intelligence agent or an informant for the FBI or both.
How did Warren resolve this troubling issue? He simply asked the heads of the CIA and FBI whether it was true. They said no. That was the end of the matter.
The issue was so sensitive that Warren ordered the members of the commission to never reveal the meeting to the American people. He ordered all notes and other written references to be destroyed. He also ordered the court reporter to destroy her notes of the meeting. Unbeknownst to him, the court reporter inadvertently kept a recording of the meeting that ultimately came to light.
This troubling issue arose again yesterday, November 2, in the Washington Post in an article entitled “Tantalizing Mystery of JFK Assassination Files Solved – 23 Years Ago.” In the article, author Ian Shapira points out that among the long-secret CIA records that were recently released was a deposition of former CIA Director Richard Helms taken in 1975 before the President’s Commission on CIA Activities, which stated as follows:
BELIN: Well, now, the final area of my interrogation relates to charges that the CIA was in some way conspiratorially involved with the assassination of President Kennedy. During the time of the Warren Commission, you were Deputy Director of Plans, is that correct?
HELMS: I believe so.
BELIN: Is there any information involved with the assassination of President Kennedy which in any way shows that Lee Harvey Oswald was in some way a CIA agent or an age[nt.…
That’s where the transcript ends according to few secret records of the CIA that were recently released by the National Archives.
Shapira points out, “Several news organizations, including The Washington Post, seized on the truncated file as an example of the government’s continued secrecy about the assassination.” Shapira points out that Helms’ full deposition has been in the public arena since 1994.
(The year 1994 was during the tenure of the Assassination Records Review Board, the agency charged with securing the mandated release of JFK assassination records from the CIA and other federal agencies. The ARRB had been formed after Americans had learned of the official secrecy after watching Oliver Stone’s movie JFK, which posited that the JFK assassination was a U.S. regime-change operation, no different in principle from the one the CIA had carried out in Guatemala nine years before.)
Shapira then proceeds to provide the answer that Helms gave, which, as he points out, has been public:
HELMS: Mr. Belin, this question, and I think you may recall this, was raised at the time and the Agency was never able to find any evidence whatsoever, and we really searched that it had any contact with Lee Harvey Oswald. As far as the FBI was concerned, my recollection is not all that precise. I believe that Mr. Hoover testified that he had not been an agent of theirs either. He was certainly not an agent of the CIA. He was certainly never used by the CIA. Whether any CIA officer ever talked to him any place or not I don’t know but I certainly felt quite comfortable — I believe Mr. [John] McCone [a previous CIA director] was asked to testify before the Commission on this point. I believe he was asked to testify. It was a hot item anyway at the time. And my recollection is that I informed Mr. McCone that we could find no evidence that Oswald had any connection with the CIA.
Shapira ends his article by suggesting that commentators should do more complete research, maybe even use Google, before they jump to conclusions.
But Shapira would be wise to follow his own advice because he himself is guilty of what he accuses others of. That’s because he failed to conclude his article with one great big important point about former CIA Director Richard Helms.
What is that great big important point that Shapira, who, according to his tagline on his article, “enjoys writing about people who have served in the military and intelligence communities,” left out of his article?
Perjury. He left out that former CIA Director Richard Helms was a perjurer. A liar. A CIA official who would tell falsehoods, even under oath, whenever he felt that “national security” required it.
Shapira failed to note that Helms was convicted in a federal district court of lying to Congress under oath about another CIA regime-change operation ten years after the Kennedy assassination in Chile.
Interesting enough, in the Chile regime-change operation, the CIA and the Pentagon were telling their counterparts in the Chilean national-security establishment that they had a moral duty to violate their nation’s constitution and violently remove their nation’s democratically elected president, Salvador Allende, from office. The reason? Allende was reaching out to the Russians and Cubans in a spirit of peace and friendship, just as Arbenz had done and just as Kennedy had done.
Thus, given that Helms was an admitted perjurer and convicted liar, what value does his denial that Oswald was an intelligence agent have? It has no value at all. And Shapira, who “enjoys writing about people who have served in the military and intelligence communities,” had an ethical duty to point out Helms’ proclivity for lying in his article.
The circumstantial evidence overwhelmingly establishes that Oswald was working for U.S. intelligence. How often have you ever heard of a U.S. Marine communist? If Oswald was a genuine communist, why would he have joined the Marines in the 1950s, given that the Marines hated communists and had just helped kill millions of them in the Korean War? Why would a genuine communist want to join an organization in which he could be ordered, on a moment’s notice, to return to Korea or be sent to Vietnam, Laos, China, the Soviet Union, or Europe to kill communists? Don’t forget: this is the height of the Cold War!
After Oswald supposedly tried to “defect” to the Soviet Union and promised to give the Russians all the secrets he learned about in the military, why would U.S. officials agree to let him back in the country, and with a communist wife? Why wouldn’t they indict him or at least haul him before a federal grand jury to testify as to what secrets he gave the Russians? Why wouldn’t they harass, abuse, humiliate, persecute, or prosecute him, like they did to Martin Luther King, Dalton Trumbo, John Walker Lindh, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and other people they have deemed to be communists or traitors? How is it possible that Oswald could learn fluent Russian while serving in the U.S. military without having U.S. military tutors teaching him? How is it possible that a veteran who embarrasses the U.S. Marine Corps by openly proselytizing for communism in New Orleans is able to saunter across the Cold War stage of history, not long after the McCarthy hearings, without nary a care in the world?
The answer: Helms lied. There is no reasonable doubt that Oswald was a U.S. intelligence agent, one who was ordered to travel to Mexico City to set the framework for his frame-up.
But things obviously went dreadfully wrong in Mexico City, which is why the CIA had to shut down that part of the post-assassination investigation. Not surprisingly, the CIA’s Mexico City operations regarding Oswald are among the 98 percent of the records that Trump and the CIA have chosen to continue keeping secret from the American people, on grounds of “national security” of course.
Thus, when Oswald was claiming that he was being framed, there could be only one entity that he could have been thinking about: the CIA, the agency whose officials, as former Washington Post investigative reporter Jefferson Morley has documented, were secretly monitoring his activities in the weeks leading up to the assassination, no doubt to ensure that Oswald had not figured out what was about to happen to him.
We can assume that any frame-up by the CIA is going to be good. The operation is going to be carefully planned and executed.
But no plan is perfect. Things are inevitably going to go wrong. The pieces aren’t going to fit together perfectly. The Mexico City operation is a good example of that. That’s why the CIA has to continue keeping those records secret.
But here’s another example, a small but important one: Recall that Oswald supposedly hid the rifle before he headed down the steps from the sixth floor of the school book depository. Ask yourself: If someone has just assassinated the president of the United States, is he really going to take the time to hide the rifle? What good would that do? Wouldn’t officials conduct a thorough search of the area? Wouldn’t an assassin instead simply leave the rifle there and get out of there as soon as he could?
Then why the hidden rifle? Because it’s consistent with a frame-up. The framers had to hide the rifle in advance in a place where no one would see it during the morning of the assassination, which took place after noon.
No matter how good a frame-up was, the CIA knew that it could be detected with an aggressive investigation. That’s where ingenuity and cunning come into play. They had to figure out a way to shut down the investigation so that the frame-up would remain intact.
That’s why they had shots fired from the front and placed Oswald in the rear. The idea was that since an investigation would lead to Oswald’s supposed communist confederates in the front, which in turn would lead to nuclear war, the investigation had to be shut down immediately, especially since it was the CIA itself that had started the assassination game by repeatedly attempting, in partnership with the Mafia, to assassinate Castro.
It was one of the most brilliant and cunning ruses in history. They get the body out of Parkland by force, in violation of Texas law, and put it in the hands of the military in Maryland, which conducts a secret fraudulent and bogus autopsy. (See my book The Kennedy Autopsy.) Lyndon Johnson telephones Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade on the night of the assassination and orders him to shut down any investigation of a conspiracy because it might lead to nuclear war. As soon as Oswald is assassinated, the FBI orders Wade to turn over all his investigative files to the FBI. At the same time, Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach and FBI Head J. Edgar Hoover both write secret memos and reports saying any further investigation must stop immediately. Lyndon Johnson gets Earl Warren and Sen. Richard Russel to join the Warren Commission by telling them that the assassination could lead to World War III. Johnson appoints former CIA Director Allan Dulles, who Kennedy had fired as a result of the CIA’s regime-change operation at the Bay of Pigs, to the Warren Commission, thereby guaranteeing that there will be no investigation of the CIA.
Then keep all the records secret for decades, when many people won’t care anymore who killed President Kennedy. And employ Operation Mockingbird-like journalistic assets in the private sector to flood the market with alternative “conspiracy theories” to confound and confuse the public. And smear anyone who questions the official narrative as a “communist sympathizer” or a “conspiracy theorist.”
The CIA’s cunning cover-up in the JFK assassination worked brilliantly. Thanks to President Trump and the CIA’s decision to continue keeping 98 percent of the CIA’s decades-long secret records secret from the American people, the CIA’s cunning cover-up of the JFK assassination continues to work brilliantly today.
The reports that black Africans are being sold at slave markets in ‘liberated’ Libya for as little as $400 is a terrible indictment of the so-called ‘humanitarian intervention’ carried out by NATO to topple the government of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
In March 2011 virtue-signaling Western ‘liberal’ hipsters teamed up with hardcore neocon warmongers to demand action to ‘save’ the Libyan people from the ‘despotic’ leader who had ruled the country since the late 1960s. “Something has to be done!” they cried in unison.
Something was done. Libya was transformed by NATO from the country with the highest Human Development Index in the whole of Africa in 2009 into a lawless hell-hole, with rival governments, warlords and terror groups fighting for control of the country.
Under Gaddafi, Libyans enjoyed free health care and education. Literacy rates went up from around 25 percent to almost 90 percent. A UN Human Rights Council report on Libya from January 2011, in which member states praised welfare provision, can be read here.
It was clear that while there were still areas of concern the country was continuing to make progress on a number of fronts.
In the Daily Telegraph – hardly a paper which could be accused of being an ideological supporter of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya – Libya was hailed as one of the top six exotic cruise ship destinations in June 2010.
Cruise ships don’t have Libya on their itineraries today. It’s far too dangerous.
The only surprising thing about the return of slave markets (and it’s worth pointing out that before the CNN report, the UN agency, IOM also reported on their existence in Libya earlier this year) is that anyone should be surprised by it. Human rights and social progress usually go back hundreds of years whenever a NATO ‘humanitarian’ intervention takes place. And that’s not accidental. The ‘interventions,’ which purposely involve heavy bombing of the country’s infrastructure and the subsequent dismantling of the state apparatus are designed to reverse decades of social progress. The ‘failure to plan’ is actually the most important part of the plan, as my fellow OpEdger Dan Glazebrook details in his book Divide and Destroy – The West’s Imperial Strategy in an Age of Crisis.
Libya was targeted, like Yugoslavia and Iraq before it, not because of genuine concerns that ‘another Srebrenica’ was about to take place, (note the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee report of September 2016 held that ‘the proposition that Muammar Gaddafi would have ordered the massacre of civilians in Benghazi was not supported by the available evidence’) but because it was a resource-rich country with an independently-minded government which operated a predominantly state-owned socialistic economy in a strategically important part of the world.
Neither Libya, Iraq or Yugoslavia did the bidding of the West’s endless war lobby, which is why they were earmarked for destruction. The chaos which routinely follows a NATO regime change op is a ghastly experience for the locals, who see their living standards plummet and their risk of violent death in a terrorist attack greatly increase, but great for rapacious Western corporations who then move in to the ‘liberated’ country en masse, taking advantage of the lack of a strong central authority.
Of course, this is never mentioned in NATO-friendly media. The role of the Western elites in turning previously functioning welfare states into failed states is missing from most mainstream reports on the countries post ‘liberation.’
In his recent piece for FAIR, journalist Ben Norton noted how reports “overwhelmingly spoke of slavery in Libya as an apolitical and timeless human rights issue, not as a political problem rooted in very recent history.”
The dominant narrative is that slave markets have re-emerged in Libya ‘as if by magic,’just like Mr. Benn’s shopkeeper. The country’s ’instability’ is mentioned, but not the cause of that instability, namely the violent overthrow of the country’s government in 2011 and the Western backing of extremist, and in some cases blatantly racist, death squads. Everyone is blamed for the mess except the powerful, protected people and lobbyists who are ultimately responsible.
The French government played a leading role in the destruction of Libya in 2011, yet today the French president, the ‘progressive’ Emmanuel Macron blames ‘Africans’ for the country’s slavery problem. “Who are the traffickers? Ask yourselves – being the African youth – that question. You are unbelievable. Who are the traffickers? They are Africans, my friends. They are Africans.”
Macron, like other Western leaders, wants us to see the slavery issue in close-up, and not in long-shot. Because if we do, NATO comes into the picture.
There is similar whitewashing over Iraq and the rise of ISIS. Again, we are supposed to regard the group’s emergence as “just one of those things.” But ISIS was not a force when the secular Baathist Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq; it only grew following his ousting and the chaos which followed the occupiers’ dismantling of the entire state apparatus.
Six-and-a-half years on, it’s revealing to look back at the things the cheerleaders for the ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Libya were saying in early 2011 and what actually happened as a result of NATO’s 26,500 sorties.
“The price of inaction is too high” was the title of one piece by David Aaronovitch in The Times, dated March 18, 2011. “If we don’t bomb Gadaffi’s tanks, Europe is likely to face a wave of refugees and a new generation of jihadis,” was the synopsis.
Guess what? The West’s military alliance did bomb Gaddafi’s tanks (and a lot more besides) and we got “a wave of refugees” of Biblical proportions and “a new generation of jihadis,” including the Manchester Arena bomber, Salman Abedi.
But there’s been no mea culpa from Aaronovitch, nor from his Times colleague Oliver Kamm – who attacked me after I had penned an article in the Daily Express calling for NATO to halt its action.
In the Telegraph, Matthew d’Ancona wrote a piece entitled ‘Libya is Cameron’s chance to exorcise the ghost of Iraq.’
In fact, the experience of Iraq should have led all genuine humanitarians to oppose the NATO assault. In many ways, as John Wight argues here,
Libya was an even worse crime than the invasion of Iraq because it came afterward. There was really no excuse for anyone seeing how the ‘regime change’ operation of 2003 had turned out, supporting a similar venture in North Africa.
Unsurprisingly the politicians and pundits who couldn’t stop talking about Libya in 2011 and the West’s ‘responsibility to protect’ civilians seem less keen to talk about the country today.
Libya and its problems have vanished from the comment pages. It’s the same after every Western ‘intervention’: saturation coverage before and during the ‘liberation,’ bellicose calls from the totally unaccountable neocon/liberal punditocracy for military action to ‘save the people’ from the latest ‘New Hitler,’ and then silence afterwards as the country hurtles back in time to the Dark Ages.
The ‘liberators’ of Libya have moved on to other more important things in 2017, with Russophobia the current obsession. Anything, in fact, to distract us from the disastrous consequences of their actions.
Bad news: President Donald Trump may be dismantling the State Department. The good news? No recent president has made much use of those diplomats, so they are unlikely to be missed. And that’s really bad news.
Recent stories try hard to make the case that something new and dark has crept into Foggy Bottom. Writing for the December 2017 Foreign Service Journal, American Foreign Service Association President Barbara Stephenson sounds the alarm on behalf of the organization of American diplomats she heads: “The Foreign Service officer corps at State has lost 60% of its Career Ambassadors since January… The ranks of our two-star Minister Counselors have fallen from 431 right after Labor Day to 369 today.”
Stephenson doesn’t mention a 60% loss of Career Ambassadors, the most senior diplomats, means the actual headcount drops from only five people to two (and of the three that did retire, two are married to one another suggesting personal timing played a role. One retiree worked in the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, another was seconded to a university, important but outside State’s core diplomatic mission that many feel is “at risk.”) Choosing to count noses “right after Labor Day” is deceptive. Most retirements take place officially on September 30 in line with the ending of the federal fiscal year, so numbers will seem lower in November. Stephenson also leaves out the losses are voluntary retirements, not a taking of heads by the Trump administration. None of the retirees have stated they are leaving in protest.
The number of Career Ministers (another senior rank) in the Foreign Service actually increased from 22 to 26 under Trump. Growth had been delayed by Senate confirmation process, not the White House.
Stephenson is equally alarmed at Trump’s government-wide hiring freeze affecting entry level diplomats, though fails to note the freeze won’t touch a good two-thirds of new hires, as they come from exempt fellowship programs.
Also not mentioned is that intake of new Foreign Service officers is now primarily via existing fellowship programs, as regular intake is frozen. These fellowships recruit heavily from historically black colleges and universities, which means diversity at State should actually increase under Trump. And hiring has been below attrition since the Obama years anyway.
So good news, the dismantling is not happening. Overall, the number of senior diplomats (the top four foreign service ranks) is only 19 people less than at this time in 2016. But the bad news: while a shortage of diplomats is not new under President Trump, the weakening of American diplomacy is real.
For example, no other Western country uses private citizens as ambassadors over career diplomats to anywhere near the extent the United States does, handing out about a third of the posts as political patronage in what has been called a “thinly veiled system of corruption.” In 2012, the Government Accountability Office reported 28 percent of all senior State Department Foreign Service positions were unfilled or filled with below-grade employees.
Relevancy? State has roughly the same number of Portuguese speakers as it does Russian.
Or take a longer view: in 1950, State had 7,710 diplomats. The pre-Trump total was just 8,052 as State has failed to grow alongside the modern world. The reasons may differ, but modern presidents simply have not expanded their diplomatic corps.
It is the growth of military influence inside government that has weakened State. Months before Barbara Stephenson’s organization worried about Trump dismantling the State Department, it worried about State becoming increasingly irrelevant inside a militarized foreign policy. That worrisome 2017 article cited an almost identical worrisome article from 2007 written at the height of the Iraq War.
In between were numerous reiterations of the same problem, such as in 2012 when State questioned its relevance vis-vis the Pentagon. In Africa, for example, the military’s combatant commanders are putative epicenters for security, diplomatic, humanitarian, and commercial affairs. One reason is range: unlike ambassadors, whose responsibility, budget, and influence is confined to a single country, combatant commanders’ reach is continental. When America’s primary policy tool is so obviously the military, there is less need, use, or value to diplomats. As a foreign leader, who would you turn to get Washington’s ear, or to pry open its purse?
It wasn’t always this way. A thumbnail history of recent United States-North Korean relations shows what foreign policy with active diplomacy, and without it, looks like.
For example, in 2000 there were American diplomats stationed in North Korea, and the Secretary of State herself visited Pyongyang to lay the groundwork for rebuilding relations. These steps took place under the 1994 Agreed Framework, which ended — diplomatically — an 18-month crisis during which North Korea threatened to withdraw from the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The Framework froze North Korea’s plutonium production and placed it under international safeguard.
President George W. Bush’s post-9/11 inclusion of North Korea in his “axis of evil” scuttled that last real attempt at direct diplomacy with Pyongyang. Bush demanded regime change, which led to the North going nuclear. Unlikely at the advice of his State Department, Bush also found time to refer to North Korea’s then-leader Kim Jong-il as a pygmy. Bush plunged into the Middle East militarily with little further attention paid to a hostile nuclear state.
With one failed exception, President Obama also avoided substantive negotiations with Pyongyang, while warning the United States “will not hesitate to use our military might.” The Obama administration-driven regime change in Libya after that country abandoned its nuclear ambitions sent a decidedly undiplomatic message to Pyongyang about what disarmament negotiations could lead to. Without a globally thought-through strategy behind it, war is simply chaos. Diplomacy has little role when the White House forgets war is actually politics by other means.
It is clear that President Trump thinks little of his State Department. Morale is low, the budget is under attack, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s reorganization plans have many old hands on edge. But the real question of what is wrong with President Trump’s non-relationship with State is answered by asking what value Presidents Bush and Obama derived from a fully-staffed State Department, either by ignoring its advice, or simply ignoring diplomacy itself. As with the numbers that suggest State is not being dismantled, the point is much of the current hysteria in Washington fails to acknowledge that a lot of what seems new and scary is old and scary. It is a hard point, rationality, to make in a media world where one is otherwise allowed to write declarative sentences that the president is mentally ill and will start WWIII soon in a tweet.
Having the right number of senior diplomats around is of little value if their advice is not sought, or heeded, or if they are not directed toward the important issues of the day. Whether Trump does or does not ultimately reduce staff at State, he will only continue in a clumsy way what his predecessors did by neglecting the institution in regions where it might have mattered most.
Judges in Argentina have given life sentences to the former ‘death flights’ pilots after hundreds of people opposing the country’s 1976-83 military junta – including a close friend of Pope Francis – were thrown into the ocean.
A major ruling on Wednesday marked the “first” such Argentinian judgment against pilots involved in the notorious ‘death flights,’ local media reports. During the operations, opponents of Argentina’s military regime that ruled the country from 1976 until 1983 were thrown into the waters of the Atlantic.
According to the verdict, the announcement of which lasted almost four hours, 29 former service members were sentenced to life imprisonment, 19 were sentenced to eight to 25 years, and six were acquitted, local media report.
There are 54 defendants in the major trial. It also involves cases of 789 victims of a secret detention center – known as the Navy Mechanics Higher School (ESMA) – where up to 5,000 people opposing the repressive junta regime are believed to have been vanished.
The five-year trial – called the ‘mega cause’ in Argentina – exposed the chilling practices of systematic torture and the killing of thousands of people, including left-wing opponents of the regime and members of Argentina’s urban guerrilla groups, but also human rights activists and relatives of those forcibly disappeared by junta forces.
In a series of hearings, it emerged that numerous victims were drugged, loaded onto ‘death flight’ aircraft, and thrown into the freezing waters of the southern Atlantic Ocean. Among ESMA victims was Esther Careaga, a close friend of Jorge Bergoglio, who later became Pope Francis. Careaga was thrown to her death from a plane one night in December 1977, along with two French nuns and nine others.
“Careaga was a good friend and a great woman,” Beroglio said when the body was identified in 2003. The future pontiff met Careaga, a biochemist and his boss at the time, when he worked as an apprentice at a pharmaceutical laboratory in Buenos Aires in the early 1950s.
Reknowned economist M. Shahid Alamoffers this excellent critique of Noam Chomsky’s defective analysis of the relative influence of Oil versus the Israel lobby over US foreign policy: … continue
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November 8, 2017: Atef al-Maqousi, 37, died from complications resulting from serious wounds he suffered in 1992, after Israeli soldiers shot him in his spine. Atef was 12 years old.
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