In May this year the Carnegie Endowment for Peace assessed that “The security environment in Afghanistan is still precarious… the government remains heavily dependent on foreign aid… the combination of a weakening Afghan regime and an unchecked Taliban resurgence could lead to the catastrophic collapse of the Afghan government and state…”
It is essential that a policy be constructed in order to move the country towards security, peace and prosperity, and this, so far, has involved an increase in US combat troops and expansion of the aerial bombing campaign.
According to the US Air Force, 3,554 bombs and rockets were directed at targets in the first ten months of 2017, including 653 in October, the greatest number since November 2010. Some of the most recent strikes were on 10 supposed drug-production facilities in Helmand Province, and the complexity and expense of the operation were considerable.
The commander of foreign forces in Afghanistan, US General John Nicholson, told the media that the attacks were “a demonstration of our new authorities… And specifically, in striking northern Helmand and the drug enterprises there, we’re hitting the Taliban where it hurts, which is their finances.”
According to Nicholson there are 400-500 opium production facilities in Afghanistan, so there is some way to go before the drug evil is eradicated at the factory stage, and if the effort to destroy them is confined to air power, the cash cost is going to be prodigious.
The bombing included strikes by some Afghan air force Tucano aircraft, but the main assault was by the US Air Force which for the first time in Afghanistan used its F-22 Raptor aircraft, flown from the United Arab Emirates, and B-52 strategic nuclear bombers based in Qatar. F-16s joined in from the Bagram base near Kabul, and the operation also involved KC-10 and KC-135 refuelers, surveillance aircraft and command and control aircraft.
General Nicholson explained that the Raptor aircraft was used “because of its ability to deliver precision munitions, in this case a 250-pound bomb, small-diameter, that causes the minimum amount of collateral damage.”
It has been calculated that the Raptor “costs $68,362 an hour to fly” and thus the expense of its excursion, including tankers, “could have approached $400,000” exclusive of bombs. The Pentagon’s budget for 2015 show that 246 of these bombs cost 219.1 million dollars. This means that the US taxpayer pays $890,000 for each one, which makes the cost of the Raptor strike a remarkably expensive operation. Then General Nicholson said that one of his B-52s dropped “six 500-pound, low-collateral-damage, precision-guided munitions” in order “to keep the collateral damage to an absolute minimum, and we did.”
While it is laudable that General Nicholson wants to minimise collateral damage by using 500 pound bombs, he appeared to veer off course slightly and showed a video of “another B-52 strike on another Taliban narcotics production facility. Now, this particular facility was the largest one we struck last night [November 19], with over 50 barrels of opium cooking at the time of the strike… So this was a B-52 strike, several 2,000-pound bombs, and it completely obliterated the facility.” Presumably the 2000 pound bombs were also precision-guided, in order to avoid collateral damage in accomplishment of complete obliteration.
The general noted that in Afghanistan “We’ve dropped more munitions this year than in any year since 2012. These new authorities give me the ability to go after the enemy in ways that I couldn’t before” and he intends to expand the bombing campaign next year.
The “new authorities” are the orders of President Trump to increase the intensity of the war because “I took over a mess, and we’re going to make it a lot less messy,” and General Nicholson is pleased that “we’re hitting the Taliban where it hurts, which is their finances,” although he did say “we are not going after the farmers that are growing the poppy.”
Of course the US air force should not target Afghan farmers — but bombing opium factories will not result in financial ruin of the Taliban. The heroin industry is extremely lucrative, and in Afghanistan the beneficiaries include very many more people other than Taliban adherents. It is, after all, the eighth most corrupt country in the world.
After the Helmand blitz, Reuters reported a poppy farmer, Mohammad Nabi, as saying that “The Taliban will not be affected by this as much as ordinary people. Farmers are not growing poppies for fun. If factories are closed and businesses are gone, then how will they provide food for their families?” Has General Nicholson got an answer to that?
The Voice of America reported in May 2017 that “Since 2002, the US has spent more than $8.5 billion on counternarcotics in Afghanistan — about $1.5 million a day” while “only 13 of the country’s 34 provinces were reported poppy-free in 2016, and this number has dropped into single digits this year.” The UN Office on Drugs and Crime published its Afghanistan Opium Survey on November 15, and observed that “many elements continue to influence farmers’ decisions regarding opium poppy cultivation. Rule of law-related challenges, such as political instability, lack of government control and security, as well as corruption, have been found to be main drivers of illicit cultivation.”
What a shambles. And Washington’s solution is to bomb it.
Nicholson said that farmers “are largely compelled to grow the poppy and this is kind of a tragic part of the story.” Of course the farmers are “compelled to grow” a crop for sale. And it’s more than “kind of tragic.” It’s a catastrophe, because Afghanistan remains the world’s leading producer of opium.
The farmers would stop producing poppy if there were markets for other crops whose cultivation would provide them a decent living. As long ago as 2004 the US Assistant Secretary for International Narcotics, Robert Charles, told Congress that “To destroy Afghanistan’s opium economy, alternatives to the pernicious cycle of opium credit, cultivation and harvest must be available to rural communities.” So billions of dollars were poured into anti-narcotics campaigns and the result is that after twelve years “the level of opium poppy cultivation is a new record high.”
In March 2012 Donald Trump tweeted that “Afghanistan is a total disaster. We don’t know what we are doing. They are, in addition to everything else, robbing us blind.” Little has changed, except that 45 percent of Afghanistan’s districts are controlled or contested by the Taliban, and General Nicholson acknowledges that “we are still in a stalemate.” But Trump has been persuaded to declare that the US will “fight to win”. So the campaign of airstrikes will continue, and Afghanistan will be bombed towards peace and prosperity.
November 29, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Economics, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Afghanistan, United States |
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By Yassir Al Zaatara | The New Khalij | November 27, 2017
Leaked information about Donald Trump’s “deal of the century” varies in some details, but the one thing that is consistent is that there will be no more on offer than autonomy for parts of the West Bank, without Jerusalem. There will be no Palestinian sovereignty and no return of the refugees, not even compensation for them, although there will be talk about linking autonomous areas with Jordan in a federal arrangement. In the meantime, relations between Israel and Arab states will be formalised.
What will be discussed when marketing the “deal”, of course, is that this solution is not the end product, and that the so-called “final status” issues, especially Jerusalem, will be left for another time after the neighbours are more reassured about each other’s intentions. Meanwhile, everyone knows that the plan is based on making the status quo permanent in due course, because no one in Israel wants to give up Jerusalem, nor allow the return of any Palestinian refugees.
This reminds me of the paradox of former minister Tzipi Livni’s response to Saeb Erekat mentioned in the well-known negotiation leaks, when the Palestinian official told Livni that the then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had agreed to the return of 10,000 refugees in what were called, rather euphemistically, “reunions”. She insisted that this was Olmert’s personal opinion and that the number of people who will return to Israel is nil.
The details of the deal are of no concern, but what is, is that those involved in marketing and supporting such a proposal — and pressing for its acceptance by Palestinians and Arabs — are in more need of advice than the others for two reasons. The first is that such an agreement will be practically impossible to pass, even though it might seem possible to get through some of its early stages; and second, their position will be harmful to them.
In the first context, keep in mind what Netanyahu said a few days ago about it being the Arab people who reject normalisation of relations with Israel, not the regimes; this is true to a large extent. The people generally do not approve of Israel’s existence in principle, even if they accept the Arab Initiative, which proposed giving the Israelis 78 per cent of historic Palestine. Things will get more difficult when discussing a much worse proposal which involves the effective abandonment of Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The people’s position on normalisation means that the new game will not pass. The stance of the Egyptian people after nearly four decades of the Camp David Treaty is the best evidence of this; there is also the position of the Jordanians 25 years after signing the Wadi Araba peace deal with Israel.
That is not all. The Palestinian people will not be silent about eradicating their cause in such a miserable way, and they will rise again, and the Jordanians will not accept the federalism being spoken of. It all, in any case, assumes that the Palestinian resistance forces will agree to the new proposal, which they won’t, or at least the majority of them won’t. Those in the Arab world who try to market the Trump deal will clash with their people if they go ahead and back a proposal to wipe out the Palestinian cause.
As a backdrop to all of this, it is clear that America and Israel will continue to be keen on keeping the regional conflicts going so that only Israel will remain as a strong and cohesive state, which everyone then seeks to befriend. Will those involved in supporting the Trump plan reconsider their positions? I hope so.
Translation by MEMO
November 29, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Egypt, Human rights, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova (MZ below) believes the “presence of ISIS in Syria is coming to an end” – maybe so but the US-supported terrorist threat in the country remains, not ending as long as Washington wants war, not peace.
MZ stressed that US-led forces “provid(e) cover to the extremists, ISIS in particular.” Surprisingly, the BBC reported their evacuation from Raqqa under US-led “supervision.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry accused Washington of supporting ISIS and other terrorists while claiming to be combating them.
“(N)ot only (did US-led aerial operations refuse) to launch strikes on the terrorists, but also created obstacles for the Russian Aerospace Forces as they tried to attack the targets in the specified area,” MZ explained.
Russian operations are key to Syria’s liberating struggle – Washington’s rage for endless war and regime change the greatest obstacle.
MZ: “I would like to digress and speak from the heart for a moment. I will say it in plain Russian without any professional jargon.”
“It’s about (Washington) providing cover to the terrorist militants. We provide numbers and facts. We talk about trends in fighting terrorism, and we analyze how the militants and terrorists were withdrawn, shielded and emboldened by the US-led coalition.”
This type straight talk is absent in the West, the BBC report a rare exception, nothing from US media on what’s going on – supporting US aggression, blaming victims for its high crimes.
MZ criticized Defense Secretary James Mattis’ Big Lie – claiming US forces in Syria have UN permission to be there. No such permission exists, no Security Council authorization.
Americans and their rogue allies are hostile invaders, aggressors, massacring civilians, destroying vital infrastructure, pretending to be combating terrorists they support.
Washington “intends to hold part of Syrian territory for as long as (it) wish(es). The goal behind this approach is to achieve the desired settlement result by force,” said MZ – aiming to oust Assad and destroy the country’s sovereignty.
Moscow is following events in Lebanon, in the wake of PM Saad Hariri’s forced resignation and detention under house arrest in Riyadh.
On Friday, Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil met with Sergey Lavrov in Moscow.
“Russia’s position on Lebanon remains unchanged. We strongly support the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of this friendly country and we believe that the Lebanese people should resolve all issues on their national agenda on their own, and we are against any outside interference that threatens to upset the existing political and religious balance in Lebanon,” said MZ.
US-led NATO troops are cooperating with ISIS in northern Afghanistan, MZ explained, “transporting” them aboard “unidentified helicopters… providing them with weapons…”
“Once again, this raises questions about the true aims of the foreign military presence in Afghanistan,” MZ stressed.
She commented on increasing opium production in the country. A UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said it nearly doubled since last year.
Pre-9/11, the Taliban eliminated most of it. Production flourishes in areas under US occupation. ISIS fighters sell it to raise revenues.
“The opiate industry in Afghanistan has become a key source for fueling terrorist activities, which further destabilizes that country and beyond,” said MZ.
Russophobia is active in Madrid, regime officials falsely accusing Moscow of involvement in Catalonia’s declaration of independence.
“Remarks by Spanish Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis that Russia allegedly seeks to weaken Spain are particularly dismaying,” said MZ.
She blasted his spurious accusation, “picked up from dubious sources,” she said.
Along with other issues, MZ commented on Russia’s lower house State Duma legislation regarding foreign media in the country – creating a legal framework for responding to Washington forcing RT America to register as a foreign agent.
Russia was “forced to… reply to the openly repressive (US) actions,” MZ explained.
US hostility toward Russia is greater than any previous time in memory, risking conflict between the world’s dominant nuclear powers, a potential doomsday agenda Washington appears to be pursuing.
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Stephen Lendman can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
November 28, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | ISIS, Russia, Syria, United States |
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The Russian Security Council has asked the country’s government to develop an independent internet infrastructure for BRICS nations, which would continue to work in the event of global internet malfunctions.
The initiative was discussed at the October meeting of the Security Council, which is Russia’s top consultative body on national security. President Vladimir Putin personally set a deadline of August 1, 2018 for the completion of the task, the RBC news agency reported.
While discussing the issue, members of the council noted that “the increased capabilities of western nations to conduct offensive operations in the informational space as well as the increased readiness to exercise these capabilities pose a serious threat to Russia’s security.”
They decided that the problem should be addressed by creating a separate backup system of Domain Name Servers (DNS), which would not be subject to control by international organizations. This system would be used by countries of the BRICS bloc – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
The issue of excessive dependency on global DNS has previously been addressed by Russia. In 2014, the Russian Communications Ministry conducted a major exercise in which it simulated the “switching off” of global internet services and used a Russian backup system to successfully support web operations inside the country.
However, when reporters asked Vladimir Putin’s Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov if the country’s authorities had been considering disconnecting from the global internet in 2014, Peskov dismissed these allegations as false.
“Russia’s disconnection from the global internet is of course out of the question,” Peskov told the Interfax news agency. However, the official also emphasized that “recently, a fair share of unpredictability is present in the actions of our partners both in the US and the EU, and we [Russia] must be prepared for any turn of events.”
“We all know who the chief administrator of the global internet is. And due to its volatility, we have to think about how to ensure our national security,” said Peskov. It’s not about disconnecting Russia from the World Wide Web, he added, but about “protecting it from possible external influence.”
November 28, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | European Union, Russia, United States |
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For a number of years now, I have been periodically interviewed as a source or a commentator on news programs and as an occasional panel participant on RT TV, the Russian government-funded English-language television station. For the past year, I’ve been paid a small amount for my work.
Effective Monday, November 13, something changed, though. RT suddenly became a“registered foreign agent.” The Russian government-funded news service, which has its headquarters in Washington, with bureaus in several other US cities, filed the required papers under protest — the only foreign news service operating here that is required to do so — and said it intends to sue. Russia is also retaliating and will be requiring some US news organizations operating in Russia, including Voice of America, to similarly register as foreign agents.
This means that as of two weeks ago, I have been working, at least on a minimal basis of perhaps one short 5-10-minute interview per week, for a “foreign agent.”
The US government, a lot of heavy-breathing members of Congress, and the bulk of the corporate media in the US at this point are suggesting that journalists like me are at best “useful idiots” helping to promote Russian propaganda in the US — propaganda that our government claims is designed to sow discord among the citizenry and to undermine support for American democracy. Why, RT has been accused of such heinous behavior, according to former National Security Director James Clapper “promoting a particular point of view, disparaging our system, our alleged hypocrisy about human rights, etc.”
Scary stuff, huh? He even accused RT of airing debates by third-party presidential candidates during the 2016 campaign — something the corporate media for years has dutifully refused to do in what I guess they consider a patriotic defense of our two-party system.
Pathetic as the case against RT may be, I’ve been the butt of jokes by liberal friends who say that I’m a “Russian agent” because they’ve bought the spurious argument that Russia “hacked” the US election and delivered us a Trump presidency. I wonder though, how many such Americans have ever actually watched RT-TV. I suspect it’s very few. First off, it’s not that easy to see it on your TV, since most cable and fiber-optic television bundlers leave it out of their packages, as they also leave out the Al Jazeera English Channel option, in response to pressure from the government. If they did watch it — which you can and should do at least to check it out at RT-America and at RT.com (the international edition) — they would find shows hosted not by Russians, but by American journalists, many of them well known names like Larry King, Ed Schultz, Jesse Ventura and Chris Hedges. A number of these people are working for RT because they were either sacked by US media outlets, like Schultz at MSNBC or had a planned program cancelled like Ventura, also at MSNBC, or left in disgust like Chris Hedges, a veteran war reporter for the NY Times.
For myself, I have agreed to be a go-to expert source for RT because over the years, after once upon a time being called to be on shows like MSNBC, CBS News and NPR programs, I don’t get those calls anymore. It’s not that I or my journalism have changed, but that the corporate media have grown flaccid and afraid of controversy. If I want to talk on TV about a story like the one I broke — based upon documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act — showing that the Houston FBI office learned or knew of a well-developed plot to conduct “intelligence” on the Houston Occupy movement, identify the leaders, and then “if deemed necessary” to assassinate them using “suppressed” sniper rifle fire, or the story I broke based upon information obtained from a county coroner suggesting that a potential key witness in the case of alleged Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was actually murdered by an FBI agent in Orlando, I have to talk about it on RT. No US corporate news organization will touch such stories. Same thing if I want to make the point that the US has been providing funding, arms and training in Syria to anti-Assad fighters of Al Nusra, an affiliate of the Al Qaeda organization. You simply cannot say such undeniably factually correct things on a US news program, but you can say them on RT.
I’m under no illusion that RT is some sainted news organization that doesn’t have a pro-Russian point of view. Of course it does, just as the government-funded BBC has a pro-British perspective. But I also well know (having worked for years as a staff journalist for major US news organizations), that every corporate news outlet in the US has a pro-US point of view, and that particularly where the story involves both US and Russian interests, as in the case of Ukraine and Syria, the whole truth is not being told by any Russian or US news organization. If I can get a bit of the truth out by talking on RT to counter propaganda and untruths in the US media, so much the better. I would hope that American viewers would have the sense to know that if they watch the news on RT, they are getting a pro-Russian perspective and to take what they see and hear with a grain of salt, just as I would hope they would consider American news reports with the same degree of skepticism (that may be optimistic!).
In any event, the reality is that I am no more an “agent of Russia” for agreeing to be interviewed (for a fee) on Russian TV than I would be an agent of Britain for being interviewed on the BBC or for having an article published in the New York Times or Business Week — both publications I’ve written for, the latter on retainer for five years.
Never once have I had an interview on RT edited to make it appear I’m saying something I didn’t say, and never once have I said something on RT that I didn’t firmly believe to be true based upon my own research.
When the issue of the US government requiring RT America to file as a foreign agent came up, my wife told me she thought by continuing to contribute comments to the station I was probably hoping to get called before some Congressional committee, ala the 1950s House un-American Activities Committee with its hearings on Communist subversion. I told her she was right: I would love nothing better than to get questioned about my work by some Congressional panel, and would be happy to have rabid anti-Russian Congressmembers view any one of my RT clips and point to anywhere that I was pushing Russian propaganda.
Example: Here is a lengthy interview I did on RT International on the issue of “fake news” allegations and concerns expressed by Facebook’s head of security about calls for the company to block alleged fake news its news feeds. I’m betting it’s not a perspective you’ve heard on your evening news, but I certainly stand by the points I’m making, and am not purveying any Russian propaganda, but let the viewer be the judge.
What’s really going on here with this “foreign agent” registration requirement is a kind of paternalistic censorship, much like those North Korean TV sets that didn’t include settings on their channel selection dials for South Korean stations. It should concern every American who believes in the importance of the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of the press, which after all is not just freedom for the US-based press, but also freedom of Americans’ right to read, listen to and view information from any source, and to make their own judgements about its veracity or logic. When the government, as it is doing here in making efforts to block RT from the internet and from cable and fios TV, and in requiring it to register as a foreign agent, thereby implicitly and perhaps eventually actually threatening those journalists like me who continue to contribute to or work for the Russian-funded station, it is deciding what is safe, and what is not safe for Americans to read, listen to or view. That is starting down a very dangerous slope; a slope that inevitably will lead to much broader censorship and self-censorship of media in the US.
Only a year ago, the Washington Post published a shabbily sourced and, frankly, libelous lead story based upon the “research” of a mysterious organization called PropOrNot, whose funding and personnel were left unidentified, that claimed to have uncovered a massive Russian propaganda campaign in the US. This outfit, most likely the work of the Pentagon’s cyber command, claimed that some 200 online news sites in the US, including RT, but also US sites like CounterPunch, antiwar.com, Truthout, Naked Capitalism and the Black Agenda Report, are either active promoters of Russian propaganda or “useful idiots” — a term tossed around wildly during the McCarthy period to demonize people said to perhaps ignorantly back a Communist agenda of subversion.
The thing is, despite claims by rabid members of Congress and in the military industrial complex that Russia has aggressive aims of conquest in Europe, Russia isn’t even a US enemy. In reality, Russia is a major trading partner of Europe’s and is a major supplier of European natural gas, the US and Russia have been fighting on the same side in Syria[?], the Russians are the ones who fly our astronauts to and from the International Space Station, and US corporate investment in Russia, despite several years of increasing sanctions levied over the issue of Ukraine and Crimea, is enormous. In other words, from the point of view of a journalist appearing on an RT program, it is no different from appearing on a BBC or Deutsche Welle, or, for that matter, on a CCTV program in China.
Meanwhile, if we want to really look for foreign agents at work in our country, look no further than the CEOs, presidents and board chairs of some of American’s largest companies. Collectively, the S&P 500 includes companies 48% of whose revenues are earned abroad. Since some, like the big telecom firms, earn almost no revenues abroad, it’s not surprising that some of the biggest corporations on the list are earning the bulk of their revenues and profits overseas (and are booking their profits there too in order to avoid US corporate taxes).
Take seven of the biggest: In the case of Apple, 62.3% of its 2016 revenues of $306 billion was earned abroad. For Qualcom, the figure was a whopping 98.6%$ of its $30.6 billion in 2016 revenues. Intel, meanwhile, “only” earned 82% of its $31.7 billion in 2016 revenues from abroad. ExxonMobil, headed by Rex Tillerson until he was named President Trump’s secretary of state, earned $67.3% of its 2016 revenues from abroad (and has been seeking a deal to license close to $1 trillion in gas an oil reserves off Russia’s Siberian coast in the Arctic Ocean), while Johnson & Johnson earned 5.2% of its 2016 revenues abroad. General Electric meanwhile, doesn’t just earn the bulk of its revenues abroad — about 53% in 2016. As of the end of 2014, 55% of its workforce of 305,000 was located abroad — a number that continues to rise. And yet President Obama, without a hint of irony, named GE’s then CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, to be a “jobs czar” for the administration in 2009 (a year later, GE reportedly paid no US taxes, though it paid $3 billion in taxes to foreign jurisdictions in which it operates).
Although clearly all of these nominally US corporations and their chief executives are American, it is equally clear that their real allegiance — since as we are continuously told, the fiduciary duty of corporate executives is to maximize shareholder value — is not to Uncle Sam. When push comes to shove, if a policy or bill in Congress is going to threaten their international business operations, these executives are going to lobby against it. If there’s a bill that will help them move profits abroad, they’ll push for it. They should, therefore, be required to register as foreign agents, yet never has such a thing even been proposed.
It makes a joke out of this whole campaign attacking RT-TV. Especially as it’s a safe bet — so safe I’m not even going to make the effort to dig up the numbers — that many or most of the Democrats and Republicans in Congress clamoring to have RT banned solicit and happily accept campaign contributions from these so-called American companies every election cycle, which should by rights make them also foreign agents in practice.
November 28, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | United States |
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Most Americans might be forgiven for having no clue what the war in Yemen actually looks like, especially as Western media has spent at least the first two years of the conflict completely ignoring the mass atrocities taking place while white-washing the Saudi coalition’s crimes. Unlike wars in Iraq, Libya, and Syria, which received near daily coverage as they were at their most intense, and in which many Americans could at least visualize the battlefield and the actors involved through endless photographs and video from on the ground, Yemen’s war has largely been a faceless and nameless conflict as far as major media is concerned.
Aside from mainstream media endlessly demonstrating its collective ignorance of Middle East dynamics, it is also no secret that the oil and gas monarchies allied to the West are rarely subject to media scrutiny or criticism, something lately demonstrated on an obscene and frighteningly absurd level with Thomas Friedman’s fawning and hagiographic interview with Saudi crown prince MBS published in the New York Times.
Saudi Arabia’s hired help in Yemen: Sudanese fighters headed to the front lines. Image souce: al-Arabiya
But any level of meticulous review of how the Saudi coalition (which heavily involves US assistance) is executing the war in Yemen would reveal a military and strategic disaster in the making. As Middle East Eye editor-in-chief David Hearst puts it, “All in all, the first military venture to be launched by the 32-year-old Saudi prince as defense minister is a tactical and strategic shambles.”
And if current battlefield trends continue, the likely outcome will be a protracted and humiliating Saudi coalition withdrawal with the spoils divided among Houthi and Saudi allied warlords, as well as others vying for power in Yemen’s tenuous political future. But what unsurprisingly unites most Yemenis at this point is shared hatred for the Saudi coalition bombs which rain down on civilian centers below. For this reason, Hearst concludes further of MBS’ war: “The prince, praised in Western circles as a young reformer who will spearhead the push back against Iran, has succeeded in uniting Yemenis against him, a rare feat in a polarized world. He has indeed shot himself, repeatedly, in the foot.”
So how has this come about, and how is the war going from a military and strategic perspective?
First, to quickly review, Saudi airstrikes on already impoverished Yemen, which have killed and maimed tens of thousands of civilians (thousands among those are children according to the UN) and displaced hundreds of thousands, have been enabled by both US intelligence and military hardware. Cholera has recently exploded amidst the appalling war-time conditions, and civilian infrastructure such as hospitals and schools have been bombed by the Saudis. After Shia Houthi rebels overran Yemen’s north in 2014, embattled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi vowed to “extract Yemen from the claws of Iran” something which he’s repeatedly affirmed, having been given international backing from allies in the West, and a major bombing campaign began on March 2015 under the name “Operation Decisive Storm” (in a cheap mirroring of prior US wars in Iraq, the first of which was “Desert Storm”).
Saudi Arabia and its backers fear what they perceive as growing Iranian influence in the region, something grossly exaggerated, and seek to defend at all costs Yemeni forces loyal to President Hadi. The coalition includes Bahrain, Kuwait, UAE, Egypt, Sudan, and the US and UK, and the Saudi initiated war has also lately received behind the scenes political support from Israel, something recently confirmed by Israeli officials. Concerning the supposed Iran threat in Yemen, an emergency session of the Arab League recently doubled down on its shared commitment to wage war against Iranian interests after it blamed Tehran for a November 4 ballistic missile attack from Shia Houthi rebels against the Saudi capital, which Iran denies playing a role in.
But the Saudi coalition is now in shambles according to a new Middle East Eye investigation. The report highlights some surprising facts long ignored in mainstream media and which give insight into how the Saudi military campaign is likely to end in total failure as “more than two years into a disastrous war, the coalition of ground forces assembled by the Saudis is showing signs of crumbling.”
Below are 5 key takeaways from the full report.
1) Saudi coalition ground forces have a huge contingent of foreign fighters, namely Sudanese troops with UAE officers, suffering the brunt of the battle on the front lines.
Sudanese forces, which constitute the bulk of the 10,000 foreign fighters in the Saudi-led coalition, are suffering high casualty rates. A senior source close to the presidency in Khartoum told Middle East Eye that over 500 of their troops had now been killed in Yemen.
Only two months ago, the commander of the Sudanese Army’s rapid support force, Lieutenant General Mohammed Hamdan Hamidati, quoted a figure of 412 troops killed, including 14 officers to the Sudanese newspaper Al Akhbar. “There is huge pressure to withdraw from this on-going fight,” the Sudanese source told MEE. A force of up to 8,000 Sudanese troops are partly led by Emirati officers. They are deployed in southern Yemen as well as to the south and west of Taiz in al Makha.
2) Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir has been dubbed “president of the mercenaries” for accepting over $2.2 billion from Saudi Arabia and Qatar in order to provide canon fodder for the Saudi ground war in Yemen in the form of thousands of young Sudanese troops, but he’s threatening revolt. To escape his untenable position, he is reportedly seeking help from Putin.
At home, Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir is also having second thoughts. He remembers the lifeline he got when Riyadh deposited $1bn in Sudan’s Central Bank two years ago, followed by Qatar’s $1.22bn. But he hardly enjoys being known as “president of the mercenaries,” and he has other relationships to consider.
On Thursday, Bashir became the latest of a procession of Arab leaders to beat a path to Vladimir Putin’s door. He told the Russian president he needed protection from the US, was against confrontation with Iran, and supported the policy of keeping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in power. This follows an incident at home, which was variously described as espionage and a coup attempt. Taha Osman Ahmed al-Hussein was dismissed as the director of the Office of the Sudanese President after he was discovered carrying a Saudi passport and a residency permit for the UAE. He was caught maintaining secret contact with both.
3) Saudi-backed Yemeni fighters are increasingly mutinying and fear local mass push back from Yemen’s civilian population due to the unpopular bombing campaign.
Mutiny is also stirring in the ranks of Yemenis who two and a half years ago cheered the Saudi pushback against the Houthis who were trying to take over the entire country.
The Saudi relationship with Islah, the largest group of Yemeni fighters in the ground force employed by the coalition, has at best been ambivalent. The Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s closest partner in Yemen, Mohammed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, is openly hostile to the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Yemeni party… They [Islahi leadership] are feeling the political price they are paying for supporting a campaign that turned in Yemeni eyes from liberation to occupation… Enough is enough. The regional Islahi leadership are now talking of starting direct negotiations with the Houthis, a senior Islah source told MEE.
4) Saudi proxy fighters are at war with each other: an Emirati-backed militia fighting under the Saudi coalition is assassinating other members of the Saudi coalition in what’s increasingly an internal coalition civil war.
They are also paying a physical price. A number of Islahi sheikhs and scholars as well as Salafis who rejected Emirati leadership have been killed or targeted by assassination attempts. The list is growing: there have been assassinations of Khaled Ali al-Armani, a leader in the Islah Party, on 7 December 2016; Sheikh Abdullah Bin Amir Bin Ali Bin Abdaat al-Kathri, on 23 November 2017 in Hadhramaut; Abdelmajeed Batees (related to Saleh Batees) a leader in the Islah Party on 5 January 2017 in Hadhramaut; Mohammed Bin Lashgam, Deputy Director of Civil Status, on 17 January 2017; Khaled Ali al-Armani, a leader in the Islah Party, on 7 December 2016…
“The Emiratis do not conceal their hostility to Islah. Islahi sheikhs and scholars are being assassinated, and this is being co-ordinated by the pro-Emirati militia. In addition, the UAE is clearly enforcing the blockade of Taiz, and withholding support for our fighters in the city,” the source said.
5) Oman is entering the fray, which will further fragment the Saudi coalition as rivalries for territorial control develop.
As if the balance of competing outside forces in Yemen is not complicated enough, enter Oman. Oman, too, regards southern Yemen as its backyard. It is particularly worried about the takeover of a series of strategic ports and islands off Yemen by the Emiratis. A Qatari diplomatic source described this as the Emiratis’ “seaborn empire,” but the Omanis are upset by this too.
The Omanis are understood to be quietly contacting local Yemeni tribal leaders in south Yemen, some of them separatist forces, to organize a more “orchestrated response” to the militias paid for and controlled by Abu Dhabi.
Like the proxy war in Syria, it appears that Gulf/US plans have backfired, and we are perhaps in for a long Saudi coalition death spiral fueled by delusion and denial. Sadly, it is primarily Yemeni civilians and common people in the region that will continue to bear the brunt of suffering wrought by such evil and delusional stupidity.
November 28, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Middle East, Oman, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Yemen |
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No, renewables are not taking over the world anytime soon.
We have spent the last two centuries getting off renewables because they were mostly weak, costly and unreliable. Half a century ago, in 1966, the world got 15.6% of its energy from renewables. Today (2016) we still get less of our energy at 13.8%.
With our concern for global warming, we are ramping up the use of renewables. The mainstream reporting lets you believe that renewables are just about to power the entire world. But this is flatly wrong.
The new World Energy Outlook report from the International Energy Agency shows how much renewables will increase over the next quarter century, to 2040. In its New Policies Scenario, which rather optimistically expects all nations to live up to their Paris climate promise, it sees the percentage increase less than 6 percentage points from 13.8% to 19.4%. More realistically, the increase will be 2 percentage points to 15.8%.
Most of the renewables are not solar PV and wind. Today, almost 10 percentage points come from the world’s oldest fuel: wood. Hydropower provides another 2.5 percentage points and all other renewables provide just 1.6 percentage points, of which solar PV and wind provide 0.8 percentage points.
Neither will most renewables in 2040 come from solar PV and wind, as breathless reporting tends to make you believe. 10 percentage points will come from wood. Hydropower provides another 3 percentage points and all other renewables provide 6 percentage points, of which solar PV and wind will (very optimistically) provide 3.7 percentage points.
Oh, and to achieve this 3.7 % of energy from solar PV and wind, you and I and the rest of the world will pay – according to the IEA – a total of $3.6 trillion in subsidies from 2017-2040 to support these uncompetitive energy sources. (Of course, if they were competitive, they wouldn’t need subsidies, and then they will be most welcome.)
Most people tend to think about electricity for renewables, but the world uses plenty of energy that is not electricity (heat, transport, manufacture and industrial processes).
Actually, if the world miraculously could make the *entire* global electricity sector 100% green without emitting a single ton of greenhouse gasses, we would have solved just a third of the total global greenhouse gas problem.
As Al Gore’s climate adviser, Jim Hansen, put it bluntly:
“Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and [the] Tooth Fairy.”
We need to get real on renewables. Only if green energy becomes much cheaper – and that requires lots of green R&D – will a renewables transition be possible.
References
Data for graph: “A brief history of energy” by Roger Fouquet, International Handbook of the Economics of Energy 2009; IEA data DOI: 10.1787/enestats-data-en, and World Energy Outlook 2017, unfortunately not free, https://www.iea.org/weo2017/
Hansen quote: http://www.columbia.edu/…/mail…/2011/20110729_BabyLauren.pdf
The world emitted 49Gt CO₂e in 2014, and all electricity/heat came to 15Gt or less than a third, http://cait.wri.org/profile/World.
November 28, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Economics, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular |
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How the United States military has become Zionized
There has been a report that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is looking into foreign lobbying in Washington while another story relates how his team is investigating the alleged contact of a Donald Trump associate with a Hungarian. Both are part of the ongoing investigation into Russiagate. Unless I am wrong, which happens occasionally, Hungary is a member of the European Union and also of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). It has relatively free elections and its government changes as a result.
No one but the Mueller commission has considered contact with a Hungarian citizen to be a potential threat to American democracy. But then again, no one has really made the case in any kind of credible fashion that meeting with a Russian is either ipso facto criminal or treasonous, or that Moscow’s media does anything beyond what other state-owned broadcasters tend to do, but you wouldn’t know that from reading the mainstream press or from watching MSNBC and CNN.
An independent observer might well note that there is more than a whiff of hypocrisy in all of this. Case in point, the latest globalist-interventionist-neocon think tank the Alliance to Secure Democracy is currently being funded by a bundle of foreign governments, presumably doing so without any interference from Mueller or from those who run the Foreign Agents Registration desk at the Department of the Treasury.
And one other thing you can bet on is that Mueller will not be looking at the country that actually does interfere in American politics most, which is our best friend in the whole world and greatest ally Israel, the beneficiary of roughly one billion dollars-worth of lobbying carried out by hundreds of full time staff on its behalf.
Punish Israel for corrupting our politicians and media? On the contrary, now that we are officially into the holiday season, a whole bunch of goodies designed to make Benjamin Netanyahu’s eyes sparkle are pending. The highest priority item is the Trump Administration’s cooperation with the Israeli government in a frantic effort to bury a United Nations report that includes a database of all the companies that operate in Israel’s illegal settlements. Also regarding the U.N., Congress is considering a bill that would block U.S. aid to any country that opposes “the position of the United States.” Lest there be any confusion, Ambassador Nikki Haley has made it clear the American “position” would pretty much consist of never criticizing or voting against Israel.
Congress is meanwhile also making a list and checking it twice, looking into the vexing issue of how to make any and all criticism of Israel equate to anti-Semitism as a step forward to turning such activity into a hate crime with actual criminal penalties. The House Judiciary Committee has been holding meetings to try to decide how exactly one might do that without completely jettisoning the First Amendment, which once upon a time was intended to guarantee free speech. On November 8th, nine experts, seven of whom were Jewish, were summoned to address the issue of “codify[ing] a definition of anti-Semitism that incorporates a controversial component addressing attacks on Israel… [as] a necessary means of stemming anti-Semitism on campuses.”
The proposed amendment to the Civil Rights Act would use language being considered for the still pending Anti-Semitism Awareness Act to considerably expand the currently accepted government acceptance of anti-Semitism as “demonization” of Israel and/or its policies. A broader definition would have real world consequences as it would potentially block federal funding for colleges and universities where students are allowed to organize events critical of Israel. Fortunately, the hearing did not produce the result desired by Israel. To their credit, four of the witnesses, all Jewish, opposed expanding the definition of anti-Semitism and even some congressmen uncharacteristically indicated that to do so might be a bridge to far.
Indeed, one might argue that there is a tendency in Washington to see the world and even domestic policies through Israel’s eyes. One might even suggest that the United States government is being progressively Zionized because of the free hand that Israel and its supporters have, which gives them the ability to seek benefits for Israel that they would be unlikely to pursue for the United States. To cite only one example, an Israel Victory Caucus was launched in the House of Representatives in April advocating Israeli defeat of all its neighbors. The keynote speaker at the event, noted Islamophobe Daniel Pipes, explained “Victory means imposing your will on your enemy so he no longer wants to continue to fight,” before demanding “What I want the U.S. government to do is say, ‘Israel, do what you need to do to win your war.’”
Israel has been uniquely successful at imposing its will over Congress and the White House. Every freshman class in Congress, plus spouses, is automatically whisked off for a deluxe all expenses paid propaganda trip to Israel, which is funded by an affiliate of the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC). That is supplemented frequently throughout the year through taxpayer funded CODELS by established politicians to find out the “facts” on what is going on in the Middle East. During congressional recesses Congressmen are sometimes more likely to be found visiting Israel than dealing with problems in their own districts and they routinely return spouting whatever line is being promoted by the Israeli government.
There is also the training of American police in “Israeli methods,” which is funded both by government and foundations set up for that purpose. Less well known is the inroads Israel has made with the American military establishment. Shoshana Bryen, former executive director of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and currently affiliated with the Jewish Policy Center, who has been involved in hosting the indoctrination of U.S. national security personnel, recently described it this way: “I have taken more than 400 American security professionals – primarily retired American Admirals and Generals – to Israel in more than 30 trips. And at the other end of their careers, I have sent more than 500 cadets and midshipmen of our service academies to Israel before they received their commissions. And I can say that they all understood the fundamental and profound principles that guide both the United States and Israel. They don’t always agree with Israel’s politics – or Israel’s defense choices – or any other single aspect of Israeli political, military and social life, but I never found one that didn’t believe in the relationship between Jews and the land of Israel. The United States military, then, is a Zionist institution.”
Last Monday, Colonel Pat Lang, former special ops officer and head of the Defense Humint Service, considered Bryen’s assertion, writing “It’s an open question but I think the answer is probably yes. The U.S. military now seems to be totally focused on Israeli policy goals in Iran, Syria and Iraq… Israel wants Iran neutered and eliminated as a power rival in the Middle East. The putative Iranian nuclear weapons program is just one target of Israeli policy toward Iran. To reach the goal of Morgenthau-style comfort with regard to Iran, Israel wants to destroy Syria and Hizbullah as allies of Iran… The process of conditioning American officers to make them Zionists has been ongoing for a long time. when I came in the Army in 1962, there was little interest in Israel in the officer corps… [The] 1967 war was a watershed. Israel’s total victory had been unexpected by most. Americans are mentally driven by aggressive sports analogies and Israel was a winner. That made a big difference in spite of the repeated day long attacks by the Israeli air force and navy against U.S.S. Liberty, an American SIGINT collector positioned off the Egyptian coast. LBJ suppressed an armed reaction by a U.S. carrier battle group in the area and a subsequent naval investigation. His policy then became one of relatively complete support of Israel. The indoctrination and conditioning program described by Shoshana Bryen began in earnest after that and has carried through to the present under the umbrella of AIPAC and its galaxy of linked organizations especially JINSA. This program has been wildly, incredibly successful. As a result, there is an unthinking willingness among senior, and not so senior American officers to support Israeli policy in Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and now Saudi Arabia. The handful of M[iddle] E[ast] trained and educated U.S. officers are ignored, treated as technical experts or shoved out the door when they speak up.”
How deeply Israelophilia has been drilled into the American corporate psyche is best illustrated by a recent article that appeared on the National Interest website. The article was written by retired Israeli Colonel Shimon Arad, who apparently has contributed to the site previously, and its thrust is that the United States should only sell military hardware to the Middle East when Israel is satisfied that the sales will not undercut its self-defined military edge. In other words, U.S. defense industries and national security arrangements should be subordinated to Israeli interests and even subject to veto by the Netanyahu government.
Arad’s condescending piece, sub-titled “Israel’s Greatest Fear: An Arms Race Sparked by the F-35,” should be read fully to demonstrate just how arrogant the Israelis have become in dealing with their American puppet. Arad argues that no advanced fighters comparable to what Israel receives for free from the U.S. taxpayer should be sold to any Arab country, no matter how friendly or strategically valuable. Previous pledges that the new F-35 would not be sold to Arabs “played a significant role in [Israel]’s acquiescence to the sale of… advanced… fighters to the Gulf states…” “Acquiescence” is the key word, implying that Israel should by rights have the option to stop such sales by putting pressure on Congress. Arad then goes on to describe how sales to the United Arab Emirates would be a “dangerous precedent,” but he is clearly talking only about Israeli interests as the United States is in no way threatened by such a move. He concludes that “Israel must express its strenuous objection to the release of the F-35 to any and all Gulf and Arab countries.”
In an earlier article, Arad complained about Arab states being sold sophisticated air defenses, presumably because that would make it more difficult for Israel to bomb them. Why an American publication should provide a pulpit to an Israeli who is promoting a narrowly construed Israeli interest that differs significantly from the actual interests of the United States is not completely clear. The site’s readers apparently agreed with that observation in that most of the comments were highly critical both of Arad and of Israel. Someone should remind the colonel that America’s three major military concentrations in the Middle East – five bases in Kuwait, Al-Udeid Airbase in Qatar, and the Fifth-Fleet home base and Naval Central Command in Bahrain – are all in Arab countries that have accommodated Washington in ways that Israel never has. To place them on a list of countries that are somehow always suspect just because Israel perceives nearly all Muslims as enemies, is not in America’s own interest, but this has been the unfortunate pattern in the lopsided relationship prevailing between Washington and Tel Aviv.
The infiltration by little Israel of key sectors of the bureaucracy of a seemingly oblivious giant United States is extraordinary by any measure, but it has been brought about by a highly focused and well-funded powerful domestic lobby that has remarkable access both to the political class and to the media. As Admiral Thomas Moorer, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff once put it, “No American president can stand up to Israel.” He should have added Congress and even the Pentagon to his indictment but what he said is, unfortunately, truer now than it was when he made the comment back in 1997.
November 28, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Israel, JINSA, Robert Mueller, United States, Zionism |
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Insulation added to buildings like the ill-fated Grenfell Tower was a result of climate regulations, as this extract from a Sky News report shows. But the manufacturers themselves helped write those rules, and now some critics who tried to point out potential fire hazards in the materials say they were subjected to intimidation by them.
While legal threats were being made in private, the plastic insulation industry was openly advertising its role in writing the rules that govern the fitting of its products to millions of buildings across the country.
The main lobby group for the plastic insulation trade was, until November 2017, called the British Rigid Urethane Foam Manufacturers’ Association [BRUFMA].
Partly in response to Grenfell Tower – or what it refers to as “events of this year” – BRUFMA changed its name to the Insulation Manufacturers Association.
They advertise that they are “influencing UK and local government, specifying authorities, relevant approval and certification bodies,” and have “high level involvement in the drafting and regular revision of British and European standards [and] the Building Regulations.” Its members are promised the “opportunity to influence Government bodies and NGOs” and “direct input into relevant British Standards committees.”
How that influence works in practice is exposed by examination of government efforts to meet the UK’s climate change commitments. Since the Kyoto agreement in 1997 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, successive governments have created rules about how new and refurbished buildings must be insulated to reduce heat loss.
In 2011 the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) turned to the insulation industry for help, inviting representatives onto a Green Deal committee to come up with ways to push more insulation into homes. We discovered that of the 10 firms and construction industry groups on that committee, four were members of BRUFMA.
One of them was Celotex, the firm whose plastic insulation would be fitted to the outside of Grenfell Tower four years later.
November 27, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | UK |
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Let us start with the fact that the Agreed Framework was not an official form of diplomatic treaty and it would be more appropriate to name it a Framework Arrangement (this is also suggested by the word Framework in it), since the word “agreement” by default would create the false impression that it was not a gentleman’s agreement but a ratified treaty.
Then, although the framework was perceived only as an obligation on the part of the DPRK to freeze its nuclear program, in fact Article 2 of the document stated that “the two sides will move towards full normalization of political and economic relations.” According to Article 3, the US had to “provide the DPRK with formal safeguards against the threat of US use of nuclear weapons.” As can be seen, we do not see any guarantees or promise of diplomatic relations.
As far as freezing is concerned, North Korea froze its nuclear facilities in exchange for fuel oil supplies and the promise to build two light-water reactors which could not serve as a source of weapons-grade plutonium. The commissioning of the first such reactor was scheduled for 2003, and prior to that, the Americans were to supply the DPRK with 500,000 tons of fuel annually for conventional power plants. To fulfill this task, an international (American-Japanese-South Korean) Organization for the Development of North Korean Energy (KEDO) was specifically created in March 1995.
The very idea of the Agreed Framework seemed to be the best option for resolving the nuclear crisis: North Korea retained the right to peaceful nuclear energy and received the political guarantees necessary for it to integrate into the international community. However, the devil was in the details.
First, the Agreed Framework was never ratified by the US Senate, which was dominated by conservatives. If the DPRK considered the Framework to have been ratified, the United States could renege on the performance of its obligations under legal pretexts, since from a formal point of view, the Arrangement was perceived as a protocol of intentions or a gentlemen’s agreement.
Secondly, the wording of the English text of the Framework could be interpreted in two ways. A phrase like “We shall take all possible measures to …”, “We shall move to …”, “We shall provide guarantees.” did not contain any specific commitments, and because from a formal point of view it was reminiscent of the joke: “We shall search, but we don’t promise to find”. So, the construction of reactors would have been done not by the US, but by a consortium, and Washington would not be directly responsible for the success or failure. This in particular allowed representatives of the conservative right to dismiss accusations that the US had committed any violation of the agreement.
Thirdly, KEDO was organized on the basis of the principle “Too many cooks spoil the broth.” Initially, the main responsibility and expenses were supposed to be rested on the shoulders of the RK, while the US and Japan from the very beginning did not intend to invest particularly in this rather expensive enterprise. However, the subsequent financial crisis of 1997 significantly undermined the possibility of South Korea participating, and this was not compensated for by other parties. At the same time, we note that the text of the Framework did not contain a mechanism for settling disputes, the event of the slow construction of reactors, or if they were not built at all. It was assumed that the DPRK would regularly receive fuel during this entire period.
Fourthly, the difficulties experienced by North Korea, in connection with the death of Kim Il Sung and the beginning of “the difficult journey”, led the United States and the Republic of Korea to have certain illusions regarding the impending collapse of the North Korean regime, which made it appear irrational to invest in a “lost cause”. As a result, a year before the reactors were planned to be brought on line, the foundations on the construction were barely completed.
Nevertheless, the DPRK still remained in the crosshairs of nuclear weapons. In June 1998, at the base in North Carolina, the US troops developed plans for the nuclear bombing of the North, including the dropping of nuclear explosion simulators. In October of the same year, one of the two-star American generals publicly admitted the existence of a plan to attack the North and the establishment of a South Korean regime of occupation. This plan was to be activated not only in response to an attack from the North, but also in the event of the “unconditional signs” of a possible attack. However, when the “White Paper” published by the Pentagon in 1998 indicated that victory over the DPRK would require 640 thousand American armed service men from all branches of the armed forces, the hawkish cries fell silent.
A surge of interest in the North’s nuclear program was associated with an interesting incident. At the end of August 1998, the press was flooded with a wave of “satellite intelligence data” suggesting that North Korea was building an unprecedented underground nuclear complex in the town of Kumchang-ni, protected from the attacks of American precision weapons. For a long time both sides had been stirring up passions, but in the spring of 1999, in exchange for a large batch of humanitarian assistance, the North unexpectedly allowed Americans access to this site, which (as the North had frequently claimed) turned out to be an empty cave. Actually, it was at this time that media owned by opponents of the North began to develop a thesis that the nuclear program, if not a bluff, was basically a way of demanding food aid.
On the back of the Pyongyang summit in 2000, the North Korean-American relations also began to improve. Of particular note was the visit to Washington by the second in command in the DPRK hierarchy, Jo Myong-rok, in October 2000, and soon after, between October 22-25, 2000, the US State Secretary Madeleine Albright first visited North Korea.
Negotiations with Kim Jong Il lasted more than five hours, and the result seemed to satisfy both sides. The Americans considered that they had succeeded in taming the Korean regime to a certain extent by achieving the freezing of its missile program, while Kim Jong Il was able to impress Americans as a man with whom they could conduct normal negotiations. They even talked about a DPRK-American Summit and when offering the idea, Albright emphasized that a visit to Pyongyang by the US President could radically change the situation, just as it did when Nixon visited China. However, the visit by the American president to the DPRK did not take place. It was not due to the president’s unwillingness, but changes to the foreign policy situation that required his presence in the Middle East. In addition, etiquette and respect for traditional American allies would require that after visiting Pyongyang the president would also visit Seoul and Tokyo, thus prolonging the entire programme.
The author would like to dwell on the events of the 2000s, since there is one particular factor which is of importance for an understanding of the current situation. Thus the results of Albright’s visit and the signing of the 1994 Agreed Framework suggest that when the US leadership has the political will and desire to solve problems connected to the Korean peninsula, it can resolve them.
Before the US presidential elections in 2000, the North Koreans even reduced the intensity of anti-American rhetoric, but when the Republicans came to power, the hope for dialogue was lost. The neo-conservatives who had come to power were concerned that the process of settlement between the two Koreas might go too quickly and they would lose control of it. Against this background, the supply of heavy fuel oil from the United States to the DPRK became irregular, and the construction of the reactors was effectively frozen. By this time it had become clear that if the reactors were to be built, it would not be in 2003 as originally planned.
In autumn 2001, in the presence of several Asian leaders, Bush referred to Kim Jong Il as a “pygmy.” A few days later, he publicly declared that “Kim Jong-il made him sick,” and “the sinking of the North Korean regime would be one of the priority areas of his policy.” In his annual address to the Congress on January 29, 2002, George Bush said openly: “… Our … goal is to hinder regimes which support terrorism, threaten America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction. Some of these regimes are much quieter after September 11. However, we know their true face. North Korea is a regime armed with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while its people are starving”.
This political direction also led to a revision of fuel oil supplies. They were made dependent not on the country complying with the decisions of the Agreed Framework, but on improvements in the human rights situation in the DPRK. The response to the North Korean question when translated from diplomatic language meant “our policy has changed, and we are not responsible for any of the decisions taken when the Democrats were in power.
We should note that all this time the Americans did not accuse the DPRK of violating the Agreed Framework; all such invective was to emerge later, in the context of the second phase of the nuclear crisis. Prior to this time, it is sufficient to compare the text of the agreement with the real facts, in order to understand that it was NOT North Korea which failed to comply with the majority of the points of the Agreed Framework.
Konstantin Asmolov, Ph.D. (Hist.) is a leading researcher at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of the Far East of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
November 27, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | North Korea, United States |
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For the 330,000 dead souls of Syria it may be small comfort that the bloody conflict in their homeland is drawing to a close, finally, but it is brilliant news nonetheless.
Although there has been a struggle against terrorism on Syrian soil, the struggle was quintessentially geopolitical. The decades-long US agenda – at least, dating back to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 – was at the core of it. That agenda, which sucked in regional and extra-regional powers, has conclusively failed. Therefore, it is the regional settlement that becomes crucial at this stage.
Peacemaking makes strange bedfellows because protagonists are jockeying for position to secure their interests. The trilateral summit in Sochi between Russia, Iran and Turkey on Wednesday can be regarded as a celebratory event insofar as Russia and Iran have not only ‘won’ the Syrian war but also cemented the ‘defection’ of Turkey to their side. The locus of Middle East politics itself has shifted. This is one thing.
Equally, Russian diplomacy has effectively ‘neutralized’ Saudi Arabia and encouraged that country to ‘sanitize’ the Syrian opposition groups who are under its influence and nudge them toward swallowing the bitter pill and drop their persistent pre-condition that President Bashar al-Assad cannot be part of any solution to the Syrian problem.
With Qatar and Jordan having already moved to a ‘neutral position’ on their own accord in the recent months – each for its own reasons of self-interest – and with Egypt all along being fully behind the Russian leadership, there is no regional state that is any longer in the business of prolonging the fratricidal war by putting up proxy groups.
Except, of course, Israel. But then, Israel is a small country and non-Muslim and lacks the clout to influence the prevailing winds or to create new facts on the ground in Syria. The Russian President Vladimir Putin who spoke to all key regional leaders and (US President Donald Trump) on Tuesday night in a flurry of ‘telephone diplomacy’ pointedly ignored Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu who then had to initiate a request to the Kremlin to solicit a briefing by Putin. (Putin graciously obliged.) But it was a signal of displeasure to ‘Bibi’ from the Kremlin as well as a warning to behave responsibly in the period ahead.
Added to the Saudi back-tracking in Lebanon, Israel has been virtually put out of business. Besides, the fact of the matter is that ISIS has been defeated and the Syrian army controls over 98 percent of territory (according to Russian estimates.) There is already talk of a winding down of the Russian military presence in Syria before the end of the year.
So, how will the post-conflict scenario look in Syria? The Sochi summit provided some signposts. There are five main ‘takeaways’.
- Turkey has a deal with Russia and Iran to accept Assad’s continuance as leader through the transition – and even beyond (more of that below) – and in return, President Erdogan scored a major victory in keeping the Kurds from inclusion in the settlement.
- The troika – Russia, Iran and Turkey – will be in the driving seat to shepherd the Syrian parties to the negotiating table in Geneva where the UN will notionally preside over the talks. The three countries will decide the participants for the upcoming Syrian Dialogue to be held in Sochi in early December to discuss a constitution and deliberate on the broad contours of a settlement.
- The troika will also continue to be the ‘guarantor powers’ ensuring the ceasefire and will coordinate the maintenance of security within Syria through the uncertain period ahead. But the so-called ‘de-escalation zones’ as such will be an interim measure, which will be disbanded once the transition is complete. That means, there is no scope for external powers to carve out ‘spheres of influence’ on Syrian territory.
- A US withdrawal from Syria becomes inevitable, no matter what Defence Secretary James Mattis might say or not. In fact, an open-ended US military presence (such as in Afghanistan) will be possible only through the establishment of a puppet government in Syria, which is inconceivable.
- Russia has emerged as the Master of Ceremonies. This is not at all surprising since Russia is the only power on earth which has networking with all protagonists within Syria, in the region and internationally. The Russians displayed a masterly performance in optimally conducting ‘coercive diplomacy’. It is an incredible feat that they entered the Syrian conflict only in September 2015 but turned the tide of the war within a short period of time, went on to crush the ISIS, and consolidated Assad’s position as the unassailable future leader – all within a matter of two years flat – and are now putting together the nuts and bolts of a settlement almost suo moto, while also carrying along the ‘losers’ in the war and altogether eschewing triumphalism.
Trump himself appears to be on board Putin’s settlement formula, which is of a unitary Syrian state and a democratically government that comes out of UN-supervised elections in which all Syrians (including Assad) can contest. (To jog memory, the Trump-Putin statement on Syria after their meeting in Da Nang even made a reference to Assad.)
Indeed, there are grey areas still. The most important one involves the continued presence of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, the militia supported by Iran and Hezbollah who have been the real source of strength on the ground for the Syrian government. But it is unrealistic to expect the Syrian army to handle the security all by itself through the delicate period of transition. There are terrorist groups present on Syrian soil, as the massive attack in Damascus today shows.
The bottom line is that the above becomes a non-issue if Assad remains in power because as the democratically elected leader of a sovereign country, it will be his prerogative to seek help from any quarter to strengthen national security. And the plain truth is that there is no credible opposition figure who can rival Assad in a free and fair election in Syria. If anything, the 7-year bloody civil war strengthens Assad’s appeal to the Syrian people cutting across religion or sects as the only bulwark against instability and chaos. To my mind, all that Assad needs is a level playing field in the nature of an inclusive democratic process.
Russia and Iran insisted throughout that it is for the Syrian people to elect or reject candidates in a democratic election. Turkey has now virtually identified with that principled stance. In a very significant remark, Turkish President Recep Erdogan said after the Sochi summit that he does not rule out resuming contacts with Assad in the coming period. The principle that it is simply not for outsiders to prescribe the political future of Syria is only going to get wider regional and international acceptance. In fact, one can visualize even European countries re-establishing ties with Damascus in a near future.
November 27, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular | Iran, ISIS, Israel, Kurds, Middle East, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkiye |
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The Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya whose most prominent leader was Muammar Gaddafi, even after he relinquished titular status, was a country that moulded itself on the unique Third International Theory. This new ideology combined elements of traditional Arab Nationalism, the socialist model of Yugoslavia, direct democracy and pan-Africanism.
As detailed on his Green Books, Gaddafi’s official ideas helped develop Libya from a state which in its pre-revolutionary days had virtually no modern infrastructure, little modern housing, no real modern irrigation or sewage systems, low levels of literacy and a very low life expectancy, to one which attained the highest living standards in Africa history, where housing was either cheap or free, education and healthcare were free, petrol and car ownership was subsidised by the state, food was cheap and plentiful and where a highly elaborate man made river made the desert bloom.
But above all of these achievements, Gaddafi’s revolutionary leadership helped close the gap between Arabism and the pan-African liberation movement.
Gaddafi’s foreign policy could not be easily pinned-down into any specific geo-political bloc. He was his own man and the foreign policy of the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya reflected this.
Libya was the only Arab state to support Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, apart from Syria and likewise, one of the few states in the wider Muslim world to support the socialist Yugoslav government in its war against terrorism and fascism during the 1990s.
As Gadafi became increasingly ostracised by Arab League governments who loathed his independent streak in foreign policy and moreover, resented Libya’s general independence from the western financial system, Gaddafi turned increasingly little to the prodigal Arab world and more towards Africa.
Gaddafi supported every major African liberation movement on the continent, even those who were rejected by both China and the Soviet Union. South Africa’s Nelson Mandela maintained a lifelong friendship with Gaddafi whom he called ‘Brother Gaddafi’, as did many Africans.
But Gaddafi did more than support liberation movements in Africa. Because the economic boom Gaddafi created required a larger labour force than Libyans could provide, Gaddafi invited many black Africans to work in the Arab state. They were paid incredibly well, not just by African but international standards and they became integrated into Libyan society in spite of their racial backgrounds. While most of the black Africans who came to Libya were Muslims, some Christians also come and they were treated with the same courtesy as Muslims.
This was Libya then. Today, Libya is a failed state with several governments and many terrorist groups and piratical gangs competing for land, resources and influence. Among the first casualties of Libyan society when NATO invaded, was the safety of the black population. From the beginning of the NATO led war, black men and women in Libya were beaten, tortured, physically molested in other unspeakable ways and of course many more were killed. Those who could escape, did so, with many dying of dehydration in the desert, during the process.
Shortly after 2011, captured blacks became literally enslaved by various Takfiri gangs ruling Libya. This trend is nothing new, all that has changed is that the price of a black slave has recently gone up from the low hundreds or a few barrels of oil, to at most, the mid hundreds.
It has only been since the defeat of ISIS in Syria and Iraq that the western mainstream media has paid any attention to the tragic condition of black men and women in Libya. From 2011 until very recently, very little was ever said about this tragic development.
While some welcome this apparent about face from the mainstream media, I would urge caution. It was the mainstream media that lied constantly about Libya in the prelude to NATO’s deadly invasion in 2011.
It was the mainstream media that failed to state that those in 2011 causing agitations in Benghazi were al-Qaeda terrorists, many of whom were trained and transported to Libya by western governments. It was the mainstream media that made up a total lie about Libya, saying that the armed forces gave the drug Viagra to soldiers and told them to go on a raping spree. This outlandish allegation had zero basis in fact.
It was the mainstream media that failed to tell its gullible viewers that Libya was transformed by Gaddafi from a wasteland into a sophisticated society with high living standards and a population with extremely long life expediencies. More to the point, it was the mainstream media which dismissed early reports that black people in Libya, would be among the first victims of the war.
With the western powers on the losing side of the wars in Syria and to a degree, in Iraq also, many of the terrorists who have not been killed will flee to Libya. Many already have reached Libya which is effectively the next stop on the ‘jihad express’.
Because of this, western media outlets are looking for an angle to justify further military intervention in Libya. Moreover, with the secular Libyan House of Representatives making gains against terrorists thanks to the leadership of Khalifa Haftar and the Libyan National Army, many are worried that the western backed puppet government in Tripoli called the Government of National Accord, may lose what very little power it has. Haftar by contrast is openly supported by Egypt and has had many high-level meetings with Russian officials, including Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
If Haftar is able to gain further success in his war against terrorism, it would be another sign that the west has lost control of a country they once successfully destroyed.
If the western mainstream media did not care about the black population of Libya when they cheered on the terrorists who killed and enslaved them, why should they care now? The logical answer is that they do not care any more now than they did when they had a chance to explain why a war on Libya would unleash a plague of racist violence on a stable country. The mainstream media are now, simply looking for a new narrative to justify further war on a country whose only stable, secular factions are those operating independently of the west.
November 27, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | Africa, al-Qaeda, ISIS, Libya |
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