“What has Iran done to receive the opprobrium of the United States other than stand up to it and challenge its imperialist policies?” asks Professor Dennis Etler.
The United States is not seeking rapprochement with Iran based on mutual respect and benefit but is attempting to undermine its sovereignty, says Professor Dennis Etler, an American political analyst who has a decades-long interest in international affairs.
Etler, a professor of Anthropology at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Friday, after the US Department of the Treasury imposed financial sanctions on two more Iranian companies for allegedly supporting Iran’s ballistic missile program.
Washington’s latest legal move against Tehran was announced on Thursday, weeks after the United States imposed similar sanctions on 11 other companies and individuals alleged to be involved in the missile program.
“The US imposition of more sanctions on Iran for its ballistic missile program shows its true colors,” said Professor Etler. “It is not seeking rapprochement based on mutual respect and benefit but is attempting to hem Iran in and make it as difficult as possible to maintain itself as an independent nation with all the rights and privileges of any other sovereign state.”
“What has Iran done to receive the opprobrium of the United States other than stand up to it and challenge its imperialist policies? Has Iran invaded its neighbors in the Middle East as the US and its allies have?” he asked.
“It is well known that the US invaded Iraq on false pretenses and has supported regime change throughout the region resulting in unprecedented calamities, the collapse of one nation after another, the destitution of entire countries and the exodus of millions of refugees fleeing war and destruction and flooding Europe. It is the US which holds the world hostage to its nuclear arsenal and its bristling ICBMs which threaten the world’s peace and security,” he added.
“Iran on the other hand has been the object of invasion by those opposed to its self-determination. It is Iran that is surrounded by hostile forces supported by an aggressive US out to maintain its regional and global hegemony at all costs. It is US allies Israel and Saudi Arabia who have trained, funded and enabled terrorists to wreak havoc throughout the Middle East and beyond. Iran is the country under immediate threat from the US and its neighbors, not vice versa,” the analyst stated.
“Which countries pose the greatest threat to peace and security in the Middle East? Iran which has in modern history never exceeded its borders? Or Israel, subsidized by the US, that occupies Palestinian lands and has imposed Apartheid-like regime on the oppressed Palestinian people?” he asked.
“Has Iran invaded its neighbors like Saudi Arabia, armed to the teeth by the US, which foments terrorism and tries to impose its ideology on other Islamic countries?” the scholar further asked.
“Iran has every right to have a vigorous defensive capacity to protect its vital national interests and thwart attempts to undermine its sovereignty. There is absolutely no reason for the US or any other country to demand that Iran give up its sovereign right to self-defense and deterrence. It is the US, its NATO and other allies who have demonstrated their aggressive and war-like intents who should be sanctioned, not Iran,” Professor Etler concluded.
It is now revealed that not only were at least three bombers involved in the March 22 Brussels attack well-known to Western security agencies, two – brothers Brahim and Khalid El Bakraoui – were both arrested, charged, and imprisoned for violent crimes in 2010 and 2011, the elder brother for shooting at police with an AK-47s automatic rifle during a holdup, and the younger brother for carjacking and possession of several AK-47s, respectively.
It is also now confirmed that the elder brother, Brahim El Bakraoui, was arrested and deported from Turkey last year for suspected terrorist activity, but not before Ankara attempted to notify Brussels in order for El Bakraoui to be detained upon his arrival back in the EU. Brussels, however, failed categorically to act on the alert, allowing El Bakraoui to return home without consequence.
The third suspect, Najim Laachraoui, had traveled to Syria between 2012-2013 and has had an international warrant out for his arrest since 2014 for allegedly aiding in the recruitment of Europeans for the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS).
Two Brussels brothers who were known to police are among the suicide bombers who carried out deadly terrorist attacks on the international airport and subway in the Belgian capital, local media reported Wednesday.
And that:
[Khalid El Bakraoui] had been sentenced in early 2011 to five years in prison for carjackings, after having been arrested in possession of Kalashnikov rifles, according to the Belga news agency.
His brother, 30-year-old Brahim, had been sentenced in 2010 to nine years in prison for having shot at police with a Kalashnikov rifle during a hold-up, Belga said.
The Belgian justice and interior ministers acknowledged that their departments should have acted on a Turkish alert about a convicted Belgian criminal briefly arrested in Turkey last year on suspicion of terrorist activity, who turned out to be one of the suicide bombers. And the Belgian prosecutor’s office said that person’s brother — another suicide bomber — had been wanted since December in connection with the Paris attacks.
Apparently in Belgium, you can possess a small military arsenal, even use it against police, and still get out of jail early enough to travel to Syria to join a known terrorist organization before being deported without consequence, then join a terrorist network back home lined by equally known criminals to Belgium security agencies, before carrying out a deadly high profile terrorist attack.
And unlike most ISIS suicide attacks, featuring suicide belts or vests, the bombers involved in the Brussels attack appear to have been pushing carts that contained bombs. It is more than possible that the brothers were unaware of the “one-way” nature of their attack, as a third bomber – Laachraoui, the suspected “bomb maker” – managed to escape, and several reports indicate at least one of the brothers may have possibly dropped off a device at the airport which was remotely detonated before moving onward to the Brussels metro to carry out a second bombing.
Suspects “Escaped” Police Raid a Week Before the Attacks
In addition to the El Bakraoui brothers’ previous arrests in 2010 and 2011, as well as the eldest brother’s arrest and deportation from Turkey last year for suspected terrorist activity, they were also allegedly involved in a police raid just one week before the Brussels attack. During the raid, at least one suspect was killed while two others escaped, the El Bakraoui brothers.
According to Dernière Heure, the two suspects at large are thought to be Khalid and Ibrahim El Bakraoui, respectively 26 and 30. Known for gangster-related crimes, the name of one has cropped up in anti-terror investigations, according to Le Monde.
After the standoff, police and special forces expanded their search and homed in on a neighbouring street, rue de l’Eau, after finding two gun cartridges and dark clothing in the area. During a raid on a house, they picked up another Kalashnikov.
The Belgium police and the Western media have categorically failed to foster understanding and help form a clear picture of the terrorists they are allegedly attempting to apprehend. At least four suspects were arrested after the raid, but then released without charges. The identity of the suspects and the circumstances of their release have not been reported.
Terrorists Under Security’s Noses, in their Clutches, Yet Still Carrying Out Attacks
Virtually every single terror suspect involved in the Charlie Hebo massacre and Paris attacks last year in France, and the Brussels attack this week, have been long-known to Western security agencies.
Many have even been detained, convicted, and even imprisoned for violent crimes, with at least one Charlie Hebo massacre suspect having had been previously arrested in 2005 specifically for terror-related charges.
Kouachi was arrested in January 2005, accused of planning to join jihadists in Iraq. He was said to have fallen under the sway of Farid Benyettou, a young “self-taught preacher” who advocated violence, but had not actually yet traveled to Iraq or committed any acts of terror. Lawyers at the time said he had not received weapons training and “had begun having second thoughts,” going so far as to express “relief” that he’d been apprehended.
Western intelligence officials are scrambling to learn more about possible travel of the two Paris terror attack suspects, brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, with new information suggesting one of the brothers recently spent time in Yemen associating with al Qaeda in that country, U.S. officials briefed on the matter told CNN. Additional information from a French source close to the French security services puts one of the brothers in Syria.
Many of the other suspects have also been on terror watch lists for their travels to Syria where they have fought alongside ISIS before inexplicably being allowed to return to Europe and rejoin society without consequence, including at least one of the suspects involved in the recent Brussels attack.
Considering that the US itself admitted in a 2012 US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report that it and its allies, including “the West, Gulf countries, and Turkey,” sought the creation of a “Salafist” (Islamic) “principality” (State) in eastern Syria precisely where ISIS now resides, it should not be surprising to find what appears to be an intentionally ineffective security policy put in place, allowing known, violent criminals, with obvious ties to terrorist organizations to operate freely both overseas in open combat against the West’s enemies, and at home to carry out a constant procession of attacks that foster fear, hatred, hysteria, and above all obedience to Western special interests at home.
Just as with the Charlie Hebo massacre, where the backstories of the suspects raised questions as to why they were not already long-ago jailed, the multiplying indicators that Western security agencies knew about, but inexplicably failed to stop known terrorists before this week’s attack will likely conjure up familiar excuses of “incompetence” or “overtaxed” security organizations.
And just like the terrorists security agencies have repeatedly failed to stop despite tracking and even capturing and detaining them multiple times, those among Western security agencies and governments responsible for negligence ahead of this most recent attack are very likely never to see the inside of a jail cell.
All that’s left is for the public to reconcile the West’s alleged claims it is fighting ISIS versus its actions which appear to be aiding, abetting, and perpetuating this global menace, at home and abroad.
Few Canadians are familiar with pre-colonial African cities and even fewer know a Canadian military leader helped sack one of West Africa’s great metropolises.
In the fifth installment of its Story of Cities series the Guardian recently focused on Benin City, the lost capital of an important precolonial state. At its height in the ‘Middle Ages’ Benin City and 500 interconnected settlements were the site of the largest earthworks carried out prior to the mechanical era. The walls built in what’s now southern Nigeria were “four times longer than the Great Wall of China” – 16,000 km in all.
Before most other cities Benin City had public lighting. In 1691 Portuguese ship captain Lourenco Pinto wrote that the city was “larger than Lisbon” and “so well governed that theft is unknown.”
Dating to the 11th century, Benin City faced growing pressure from European encroachment and the transatlantic slave trade. Finally, in 1897 a well-armed British force of 1,200 sacked the city, stealing or destroying its wealth. Today one is more likely to find remnants of the Benin City in the British Museum in London than in Nigeria.
And the Canadian connection? A star pupil of the Kingston, Ontario, based Royal Military College played a part in this little-known imperial history. Born in Sherbrooke, Quebec, William Heneker helped London conquer Benin City and surrounding territory. In his 1906 book Bush Warfare the RMC grad writes: “Savage nations have, as a rule, to be cowed, either by having their warriors severely beaten in action and made to suffer heavy losses, as, in the case of the taking of Benin City.”
During the Benin Expedition of 1897 Captain Heneker guarded an imprisoned chief, Oba. Not long thereafter Heneker helped capture Oba’s son. Benin Under British Administration explains, “The exiled Oba’s son, Aiguobasimwin, was also dislodged from Igbanke by troops under Captains Heneker and Sheppard.”
In May 1898 Heneker was part of a small force that conquered the town of Ehor and surrounding villages of the decaying Benin Empire. One account notes how British forces “seized the opportunity to utterly destroy it [Ehor], burning it and knocking down the walls.”
The next year Heneker was an intelligence and survey officer in the Benin Territories Expedition, which was the final destructive blow to Benin resistance. In Correspondence Relating to the Benin Territories Expedition, 1899 consul general Sir R. Moor mentioned Heneker leading a force that destroyed the towns of Udo and Idumere and a company under the RMC graduate’s command “burnt and completely destroyed the large town of Ugiami, including the king’s house.”
The invasions of Benin gave the British access to valuable commodities. Author William Geary remarks, “the results of the operations opened up 3000 or more square miles rich in rubber forests and other African produce.” After the expedition British capitalists intensified efforts to exploit the area’s rubber forests and the Royal Niger Company expanded deeper into Benin.
As he rose through the ranks of the Southern Nigeria Regiment, which was part of the West African Frontier Force, Heneker led ever more soldiers. With a force of more than 200 men, he commanded the Ulia and Ishan Expeditions. In Bush Warfare Heneker described the scorched-earth policy the Ishan Expedition employed: “A fighting column left camp every morning, and one after another each town in the country was attacked and taken. All the juju groves [sacred natural forests] were cut down, and stores of food either destroyed or carried back to camp.”
Heneker and other Canadians’ role in the region steadily grew. “Canadian participation in the pacification of West Africa,” notes Canadian Army Journal editor Andrew Godefroy, “appeared to climax in late 1901 when the British launched a substantial civil-military operation against the Aro group of the Ibo tribe.” At least a dozen Canadians were among the white officer corps who led a force of some 2,000 soldiers and 2,000 porters to open a 193 km wide and 144 km long area of today’s Eastern Nigeria to British directed commerce. Early planning for the Anglo-Aro War was actually initiated by the Royal Niger Company, which wanted a bigger piece of the area’s trade.
Canadian Militia Lieutenant J.L.R. Parry was “Mentioned in Dispatches” for his services during the Aro Expedition. So was Canadian Militia Lieutenant James Wayling. During a major battle at Edimma, wrote overall British commander A. F. Montanaro: “Lieutenant A.E. Rastrick, Canadian Militia … who was in command of the Maxim [gun], used it with great effect, and so good was the fire control and discipline that the enemy was forced to retreat.”
When U.S. President Barack Obama spoke in Argentina on Tuesday, it seemed like an opportune, if not essential, moment to acknowledge the U.S. role in the bloodbath that occurred 40 years ago.
In 1976 the U.S.-backed coup that overthrew Isabel Peron, would be the starting point of years of violence in which 30,000 Argentines were disappeared and countless others murdered and tortured under Operation Condor.
Throughout the communist-cleansing program condoned and funded by the U.S., with Henry Kissinger as Secretary of State, innumerable atrocities were committed by the military, including the practice of giving the children of the deceased and disappeared to more favorable families.
Campaign groups, like the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, still fight for justice and look for their stolen grandchildren.
But on the eve of this sensitive and commemorative day, when Argentines remember their lost ones, Obama did not apologize for the misery dished out by the U.S. in the 1970s and 1980s. Instead, the U.S. president was dismissive during a joint press conference with Argentine President Mauricio Macri.
“I don’t want to go through every action carried out by the U.S. in Latin America over the last 100 years. I suspect everybody here already knows,” President Obama stated in response to a question about the role of U.S. foreign policy during the Argentine dictatorship-era. He referred to the U.S. policy of backing regimes that tortured, murdered and disappeared tens of thousands as “counterproductive.”
Obama continued that he believed the U.S. administration had improved over the years due to engaging in “self-criticism.”
“There is no shortage of self-criticism in the United States. Certainly no shortage of criticism of its President or its government or its foreign policy,” he told reporters.
But, after the comment branded “insufficient” by Argentine Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Obama essentially told Argentina that the U.S. had learned from and washed its hands of its destructive history.
“And we have learned some of the lessons that we may not have fully learned at an earlier time. And I think our experiences with a country like Argentina helped us to develop that more mature and, ultimately, I think, more successful approach to foreign policy,” he said.
Just as the leader of the world’s most powerful country failed to acknowledge or apologize for the suffering caused by the illegal blockade on Cuba on his recent visit, Obama did not ask the Argentine people for forgiveness for the grief his country caused them. As a spokesperson for the U.S., on the eve of Argentina’s most painful day, there was an expectation that he would speak up.
Although the 2016 presidential election is still in the primaries phase, contenders have already brought up America’s failed foreign wars. Hillary Clinton is taking flak over Libya, and Donald Trump has irked the GOP by bringing up Iraq. But what of Kosovo?
The US-led NATO operation that began on March 24, 1999 was launched under the “responsibility to protect” doctrine asserted by President Bill Clinton and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. For 78 days, NATO targeted what was then the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia – which later split into Serbia and Montenegro – over alleged atrocities against ethnic Albanians in the southern province of Kosovo. Yugoslavia was accused of “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” as bombs rained on bridges, trains, hospitals, homes, the power grid and even refugee convoys.
NATO’s actions directly violated the UN Charter (articles 53 and 103), its own charter, the 1975 Helsinki Final Act and the 1980 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. The war was a crime against peace, pure and simple.
Though overwhelmed, Yugoslavia did not surrender; the June 1999 armistice only allowed NATO to occupy Kosovo under UN peacekeeping authority, granted by Resolution 1244 – which the Alliance has been violating ever since.
US Secretary of State at the time, Madeleine Albright, was considered the most outspoken champion of the “Kosovo War.” She is now a vocal supporter of candidate Clinton, condemning women who don’t vote for her to a “special place in Hell.”
Clinton visited the renegade province in October 2012, as the outgoing Secretary of State. She stood with the ‘Kosovan’ government leaders – once considered terrorists, before receiving US backing – and proclaimed unequivocal US support for Kosovo’s independence, proclaimed four years prior.
“For me, my family and my fellow Americans this is more than a foreign policy issue, it is personal,” Clinton said. Given the Kosovo Albanians had renamed a major street in their capital ‘Bill Clinton Avenue’ and erected a massive gilded monument to Hillary’s husband, her comments were hardly a surprise.
She is unlikely to be condemned for those remarks by her rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. While arguing that Congress should have a say in authorizing the intervention, Sanders entirely bought into the mainstream narrative about the conflict, seeing it as a case of the evil Serbian “dictator” Slobodan Milosevic oppressing the unarmed ethnic Albanians. He saw “supporting the NATO airstrikes on Serbia as justified on humanitarian grounds.”
One Sanders aide, Jeremy Brecher, resigned in May 1999 arguing against the intervention as it unfolded, since the “goal of US policy is not to save the Kosovars from ongoing destruction.”
Trouble is there was no “destruction.” Contrary to NATO claims of 100,000 or more Albanians purportedly massacred by the Serbs, postwar investigators found fewer than 5,000 deaths – 1,500 of which happened after NATO occupied the province and the Albanian pogroms began.
Western media, eager to preserve the narrative of noble NATO defeating the evil Serbs, dismissed the terror as “revenge killings.” NATO troops thus looked on as their Albanian protégés terrorized, torched, bombed and pillaged across the province for years, forcing some 250,000 Serbs, Jews, Roma, and other groups into exile.
After George W. Bush was re-elected in 2004, his administration adopted the Clinton-era agenda for the Balkans, including backing an independent Albanian state in Kosovo. None of the Republicans, save 2012 contender Ron Paul, have criticized the Kosovo War since.
Billionaire businessman Donald Trump actually has been critical – though back in 1999, long before he became the Republican front-runner and the bane of the GOP establishment. In October that year, Trump was a guest on Larry King’s CNN show, criticizing the Clintons’ handling of the Kosovo War after a fashion.
“But look at what we’ve done to that land and to those people and the deaths that we’ve caused,” Trump told King. “They bombed the hell out of a country, out of a whole area, everyone is fleeing in every different way, and nobody knows what’s happening, and the deaths are going on by the thousands.”
The problem with Trump, then as now, is that he is maddeningly vague. So, these remarks could be interpreted as referring to the terror going on at that very moment – the persecution of non-Albanians under NATO’s approving eye – or the exodus of Albanians earlier that year, during the NATO bombing. Only Trump would know which, and he hasn’t offered a clarification.
Though he has the most delegates and leads in the national polls for the Republican nomination, the GOP establishment is furious with Trump because he dared call George W. Bush a liar and describe the invasion of Iraq as a “big fat mistake.” According to the British historian Kate Hudson, however, the 2003 invasion was just a continuation of the “pattern of aggression,” following the precedent set with Kosovo.
The meteoric rise of Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner who is giving the Establishment 3D nightmares, is the natural outcome of a political system that has been arrogantly ignoring the will of the American electorate for many years.
What started off as cheap comic fodder for late night television, and later ignored by the elite as an unfortunate yet containable nuisance, has now exploded on the scene as a destructive force of nature capable of blowing away the Establishment’s corporate-owned power structure.
Yes, we are talking about The Donald, a Category-5 political hurricane that is expected to cause major devastation should it touchdown in the Beltway.
So anxious are the Democrats (and Republicans!) to contain the mighty Trump they will even deny his First Amendment right to address his supporters. Yes, while many Americans travel great distances at their own expense to listen to Trump’s white-hot political message, perennial provocateur George Soros must pay his puppets to erect roadblocks and hoist placards to deny free passage to the venues.
Who says ‘freedom-loving,’ liberal activists lack a sense of irony?
Last week, for example, demonstrations in Chicago organized by the Soros-funded MoveOn.org group forced Trump to cancel a speaking engagement. Later, on March 20, members of the same subversive outfit blocked traffic near a Trump event in Arizona, while police in New York City the same day pepper-sprayed demonstrators, some of whom are affiliated with violent anarchist groups.
And then there’s the corporate-owned media, which, instead of impartially and dispassionately reporting on Trump’s rising star, is working on behalf of its owners to knock it out of the sky.
Here is a random CNN smear piece, which opens with the angst-ridden line: “Anti-Trump Republicans desperate to stop the billionaire from being their nominee are discussing creative ways to halt his momentum.” So the story now is not about the millions of Americans who support Trump’s political ideas, nor even discussing what those ideas might be, but rather about how the “racist, misogynist, sexist” outsider must be stopped.
Consider these two competing lines from another CNN article, and how they work to manipulate the mind of the reader regarding the “boastful” Trump and the “proud” Clinton:
“Trump repeatedly boasts about the failure of millions of dollars in attack aids to wound his campaign, and insists he is on pace to reach the 1,237 delegates needed to win the nomination.”
While the very next about Clinton reads:
“Clinton said she was “very proud” to have won Arizona and hit Republican candidates who she said were ‘literally inciting bigotry and violence.’”
But it is not just the Democrats and the liberal media working to sabotage Trump’s campaign.
Incredibly, even the Republican Party is “plotting against their own frontrunner,” as Judge Jeanine Pirro of Fox News explained. But why would the GOP work against Trump if he represents the best chance of beating Hillary Clinton?
Pirro nails it with this answer to herself: “The Republican establishment… are in bed with the Democrats. So if Hillary wins, nothing is lost for them. It’s business as usual. The lobbyists keep their offices on K Street, the pharmaceutical companies keep paying them… and the lawmakers get their re-election bribes – I mean, contributions.”
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, when asked to explain the elite’s refusal to support Trump, perhaps gave away a bit too much information when he said: “Well, because he’s an outsider, he’s not them, he’s not part of the club, he’s uncontrollable, he hasn’t been through the initiation rites, he didn’t belong to the secret society.”
Initiation rites? Secret societies? Secret handshakes? Did Newt just join ranks with the conspiracy theorists?
Although many people are skeptical about the circumstances behind Trump’s phenomenal rise, the tycoon (Trumps says he’s worth $8.7 billion, Forbes puts it at $4.1, a difference that probably means something among the ultra-wealthy), manages to sell himself as a successful businessman who will, at the same time, work on behalf of average American workers.
One of his regular claims – aside from promising to make the Mexican government pay for a wall on the US border – is to stop US factory jobs from going to India, China and Mexico. Annoying pledges like that, which would cut deeply into Corporate America’s bottom line, goes far at explaining why the elite loath him and your average mortal adores him.
Although it is a delicious sight watching America’s movers and shakers tremble at the mere mention of Trump’s name, it nevertheless speaks volumes about the condition of US democracy that Americans had to wait for a rich, charismatic real estate developer to come along and save them from the cold-hearted wretchedness of the dual-party, borderline-fascist system. Imagine what the US would look like without the arrival of these rare, mega-wealthy mavericks who were born with a compassion gene for ordinary folks. The Establishment would continue unmolested with its ‘too-big-to-jail’ banker bailouts, overseas military misadventures and the dangerous consolidation of corporate power.
Trump’s ability to speak freely on the issues without any concern for breaking the bank is exactly how an honest political system should be organized. Indeed, how many US politicians today, as the US information war against Russia resembles something out of Tom Clancy thriller, would admit they’d work with the Kremlin to resolve global problems? No politician should be wary of discussing a controversial subject that is dear to the heart of the electorate for fear of chasing away campaign donors.
Case in point: The immigrant crisis, which the Obama administration arrogantly ignored at great peril. This polarizing issue largely explains Trump’s huge popularity among voters today.
The specter of Mexican immigrants flooding the country – and with the full blessing of Washington, not to mention the Vatican (Trump is certainly the first politician in history to have traded barbs with the Bishop of Rome on the campaign trail) – may go down in the history books as the proverbial straw that finally broke the Establishment’s back. In any case, it will certainly go down as the issue that launched Trump’s political career and, quite possibly, destroyed the Republican Party as we know it.
Americans had to bite their tongues as they got screwed over in the 2008 Financial Crisis, and maintained their pharmaceutically induced composure as Obama proved to be every bit of a warmongering president as his Neocon predecessor. But let’s face it: no American homeowner is going to keep quiet while their neighborhood is invaded by illegal aliens. Indeed, American streets are already respectable crime zones in their own right, we certainly don’t need any help from illegal aliens, thank-you-very-much.
Now before somebody screams ‘Hitler!’ in this political theater of the absurd, let’s put the situation into its proper context: At the very same time US companies are exporting thousands of good-paying factory jobs south of the border, Mexico is exporting not much more to America than its social riff-raff. According to government figures, US corporations employed 1,106,700 Mexicans (on Mexican soil) in 2012 (the latest year tallied), but Mexican companies employed just 68,800 in the United States that year.
So Trump seems to have some leverage when he says Mexico should foot the bill to build a wall on the US-Mexican border.
But the crazy is just beginning. Once north of the Rio Grande, the fence hoppers voluntarily turn themselves over to US Border Patrol agents, who then proceed to give the Mexicans a Coke and a smile before telling them to have a nice day and please don’t forget to show up for your scheduled court appearance.
Next, newly downsized Joe Trailer Park is called upon to fund bus tickets for the uninvited Mexicans to travel to the US city of their choosing. Only the government could script such a narrative. But wait, it gets better! What about the promise the illegals made to appear in court, thus becoming patriotic, flag-saluting, Americans? Sorry, no time for formalities!
Hector Garza, a Border Patrol agent and spokesperson for the National Border Patrol Council toldBreitbart that approximately 95 percent of the illegal immigrants never return as promised for court proceedings.
“The majority of these people crossed the border illegally and were then dropped off here at the bus station, so they could continue to their final destination, and that destination is an American city near you,” said Garza. “This right here is border insecurity at its best. Our border is not patrolled… our federal government is releasing thousands and thousands of illegal aliens into our communities.”
If there was a better way of conjuring up the bygone spirits of nationalistic right-wing parties, I really can’t imagine it.
And since the entire notion of ‘strong national borders’ has somehow morphed into political-correct-speak for ‘racism’, these people are not sent scurrying back to where they came from. No, sending a message to other would-be trespassers would be too logical, and logic took a backseat in the American Trailblazer a long time ago.
Trump’s popularity, however, cannot be only explained by the specter of porous borders with Mexico. After all, America’s great disillusionment with its political system has been steadily intensifying, and all the more once it became painfully obvious that the ‘hope and change’ that Barack Obama had promised was just more smoke and mirrors.
Drew Weston, in a devastating 2011 essay in the New York Times, summed up Obama’s failure to put the country on the right track after being derailed by George W. Bush’s reckless 8-year ‘war on terror.’
“Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it.
“He never explained that decision to the public…”
A bit later, Weston wrote:
“Nor did anyone explain why saving the banks was such a priority, when saving the homes the banks were foreclosing didn’t seem to be. All Americans knew… is that they’re still unemployed, they’re still worried about how they’re going to pay their bills at the end of the month and their kids still can’t get a job.”
Here is my personal reason for supporting Trump. Aside from his inspiring message of securing America’s border, ending US military adventures and reinvigorating the US economy, a Trump presidency will halt America’s slide towards family dynasties ruling the country like hereditary monarchies.
Consider: If Hillary Clinton wins the presidency in 2016, and assuming she is reelected for a second term in 2020, the American people will have been ruled since 1989 by two Bushes and two Clintons (for a total of 28 years out of 36, with a non-consequential 8-year intermission by America’s first black president).
Barbara Bush, the wife of an ex-president and mother of another, expressed her lack of enthusiasm for yet another Bush entering the White House (although for the record it must be noted that she was speaking about Jeb, not the shiniest apple on the Bush family tree).
“I think this is a . . . great country and if we can’t find more than two or three families to run for high office, that’s silly,” she told C-Span early last year. “I think that the Kennedys, Clintons, Bushes – there are just more families than that.”
Judging by the escapades of the powerful Democratic and Republican Establishment, which is pulling out all the stops to ‘dump Trump,’ the charismatic, billionaire real estate developer probably stands a worse chance of winning the keys to the White House mansion than Justin Bieber.
There’s simply no way the Washington elite will willingly release their grip on the most powerful office in the world, even if such a thing would mean restoring some of America’s former shine.
Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist based in Moscow, Russia. His articles have been featured in many publications, including Russia in Global Affairs, The Moscow Times, Russia Insider and Rethinking Russia. Bridge is the author of the book on corporate power, “Midnight in the American Empire”, which was released in 2013.
One might expect that only historians would care to revisit the 1948 war that created Israel. And yet the debate about what constitutes truth and myth from that period still provokes raw emotions.
Much rests on how those events are reconstructed, not least because the shock waves have yet to subside. Israelis fear, and Palestinians crave, a clearer picture of the past because it would powerfully illuminate the present. It might also influence the international community’s proposed solutions for the conflict.
That is why the unearthing of an Israeli soldier’s letter from 1948 detailing what was probably the war’s worst massacre – one long buried by Israel – is of more than historical significance.
It comes as Moshe Yaalon, the defence minister, this week accused Breaking the Silence, an Israeli organisation that exposes military abuses, of “treason” for collecting evidence from the army’s current whistle-blowers.
Western understandings of the 1948 war – what Palestinians term their Nakba, or catastrophe – are dominated by an enduring Israeli narrative. Israel’s army, it is said, abided by a strict moral code. Palestinians left not because of Israel’s actions but on the orders of Arab leaders.
In this rendering, the Palestinians’ mass dispossession was the fault of the Arab world – and a solution for the millions of today’s refugees lies with their host countries.
For decades Israel’s chief concession to the truth was an admission that a massacre took place just outside Jerusalem, at Deir Yassin.
Israel claimed the atrocity was the exception that proved the rule: a rogue militia killed more than 100 villagers, violating Israel’s ethical codes in the chaotic weeks before statehood was declared.
Palestinians have always known of dozens of other large massacres of civilians from 1948 carried out by the Israeli army. The barbarity, they say, was intended to terrorise the native population into flight. This account puts responsibility on Israel for taking the refugees back.
But history is written by the victor.
In recent decades a few brave Israeli scholars have chipped away at the official facade. In the late 1990s a Haifa University student collected testimonies from former soldiers confirming that over 200 Palestinians had been massacred at Tantura, south of Haifa. After the findings were made public, he was pilloried and stripped of his degree.
A decade ago, the historian Ilan Pappe wrote a groundbreaking book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, arguing that massacres like the one at Tantura were exploited to drive out Palestinians. He and others noted the suggestive titles of military operations such as “Broom” and soldiers’ orders to “clean” areas.
Pappe now lives in academic exile in the UK.
The biggest obstacle to shifting Israeli and western perceptions of 1948 has been the lack of a clear paper trail connecting the political leadership to the massacres. Israel locked away bundles of documentation precisely not to jeopardise the official narrative.
But things are changing slowly.
Last year a key deception was punctured: that Israel urged many of the war’s 750,000 Palestinian refugees to return. In a letter to Haifa’s leaders shortly after the city’s Palestinians were expelled, David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, demanded that any return be barred.
Now another letter, located by Israeli historian Yair Auron and published last week for the first time in English by the Haaretz newspaper, trashes the idea of an ethical Israel army.
Written by Shabtai Kaplan, a soldier and journalist, the letter confirms long-held suspicions of a massacre – one that dwarfs Deir Yassin – at Dawaymeh, near Hebron. Soldiers executed hundreds of men, women and children who offered no resistance.
The massacre, near the end of the war, was carried out by elite troops under the command of Yitzhak Sadeh. He developed the Israeli army’s famous doctrine of “purity of arms”.
Kaplan argues that the Dawaymeh massacre was part of “a system of expulsion and destruction”, with a clear goal: “The fewer Arabs who remain, the better.”
Kaplan’s letter was consigned to the vaults, as were so many other documents from 1948 that officials considered too damaging.
Nearly seven decades later, in an age of 24-hour news and social media, Israel is still desperately trying to conceal its darkest episodes by bullying the army’s current whistle-blowers.
Last week Benjamin Netanyahu’s government launched an investigation into Breaking the Silence. On Sunday Netanyahu called the collection of soldiers’ testimonies “intolerable”, indicating that he may try to ban the group.
It is hard not to see parallels between the cover-ups of 1948 and those of today. Breaking the Silence’s disclosures, especially those relating to Israel’s series of attacks on Gaza, each of which has left hundreds of civilians dead, similarly give the lie to the army’s continuing claims of ethical behaviour.
In his 1948 letter, Kaplan observed of the failure by the political leadership to hold anyone to account for the massacres: “Inaction is in itself encouragement.”
Israel’s politicians hoped then that the Palestinians could be quickly terrorised from their lands. Decades later, the atrocities continue – and to the same end. But Israel must face facts: the days when such systematic brutality could be kept under wraps are now over.
A crucial problem in news media coverage of the Syrian civil war has been how to characterize the relationship between the so-called “moderate” opposition forces armed by the CIA, on one hand, and the Al Qaeda franchise Al Nusra Front (and its close ally Ahrar al Sham), on the other.
But it is a politically sensitive issue for U.S. policy, which seeks to overthrow Syria’s government without seeming to make common cause with the movement responsible for 9/11, and the system of news production has worked effectively to prevent the news media from reporting it fully and accurately.
The Obama administration has long portrayed the opposition groups it has been arming with anti-tank weapons as independent of Nusra Front. In reality, the administration has been relying on the close cooperation of these “moderate” groups with Nusra Front to put pressure on the Syrian government.
The United States and its allies – especially Saudi Arabia and Turkey – want the civil war to end with the dissolution of the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is backed by U.S. rivals like Russia and Iran.
Reflecting the fact that Nusra Front was created by Al Qaeda and has confirmed its loyalty to it, the administration designated Nusra as a terrorist organization in 2013. But the U.S. has carried out very few airstrikes against it since then, in contrast to the other offspring of Al Qaeda, the Islamic State or ISIS (Daesh), which has been the subject of intense air attacks from the U.S. and its European allies.
The U.S. has remained silent about Nusra Front’s leading role in the military effort against Assad, concealing the fact that Nusra’s success in northwest Syria has been a key element in Secretary of State John Kerry’s diplomatic strategy for Syria.
When Russian intervention in support of the Syrian government began last September, targeting not only ISIS but also the Nusra Front and U.S.-supported groups allied with them against the Assad regime, the Obama administration immediately argued that Russian airstrikes were targeting “moderate” groups rather than ISIS, and insisted that those strikes had to stop.
The willingness of the news media to go beyond the official line and report the truth on the ground in Syria was thus put to the test. It had been well-documented that those “moderate” groups had been thoroughly integrated into the military campaigns directed by Nusra Front and Ahrar al Sham in the main battlefront of the war in northwestern Syria’s Idlib and Aleppo provinces.
For example, a dispatch from Aleppo last May in Al Araby Al-Jadeed (The New Arab), a daily newspaper financed by the Qatari royal family, revealed that every one of at least ten “moderate” factions in the province supported by the CIA had joined the Nusra-run province command Fateh Halab (Conquest of Aleppo). Formally the command was run by Ahrar al Sham, and Nusra Front was excluded from it.
But as Al Araby’s reporter explained, that exclusion “means that the operation has a better chance of receiving regional and international support.” That was an indirect way of saying that Nusra’s supposed exclusion was a device aimed at facilitating the Obama administration’s approval of sending more TOW missiles to the “moderates” in the province, because the White House could not support groups working directly with a terrorist organization.
A further implication was that Nusra Front was allowing “moderate” groups to obtain those weapons from the United States and its Saudi and Turkish allies, because those groups were viewed as too weak to operate independently of the Salafist-jihadist forces — and because some of those arms would be shared with Nusra Front and Ahrar.
After Nusra Front was formally identified as a terrorist organization for the purposes of a Syrian ceasefire and negotiations, it virtually went underground in areas close to the Turkish border.
A journalist who lives in northern Aleppo province toldAl Monitor that Nusra Front had stopped flying its own flag and was concealing its troops under those of Ahrar al Sham, which had been accepted by the United States as a participant in the talks. That maneuver was aimed at supporting the argument that “moderate” groups and not Al Qaeda were being targeted by Russian airstrikes.
But a review of the coverage of the targeting of Russian airstrikes and the role of U.S.-supported armed groups in the war during the first few weeks in the three most influential U.S. newspapers with the most resources for reporting accurately on the issue—the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal– reveals a pattern of stories that tilted strongly in the direction desired by the Obama administration, either ignoring the subordination of the “moderate” groups to Nusra Front entirely or giving it only the slightest mention.
In an Oct. 1, 2015 article, Washington Post Beirut correspondent Liz Sly wrote that the Russian airstrikes were being “conducted against one of the few areas in the country where moderate rebels still have a foothold and from which the Islamic State was ejected more than a year and a half ago.”
To her credit, Sly did report, “Some of the towns struck are strongholds of recently formed coalition Jaish al Fateh,” which she said included Nusra Front and “an assortment of Islamist and moderate factions.” What was missing, however, was the fact that Jaish al Fateh was not merely a “coalition” but a military command structure, meaning that a much tighter relationship existed between the U.S.-supported “moderates” and the Al Qaeda franchise.
Sly referred specifically to one strike that hit a training camp in the outskirts of a town in Idlib province belonging to Suquor al-Jabal, which had been armed by the CIA.
But readers could not evaluate that statement without the crucial fact, reported in the regional press, that Suquor al-Jabal was one of the many CIA-supported organizations that had joined the Fateh Halab (“Conquest of Aleppo”), the military command center in Aleppo ostensibly run by Ahrar al Sham, Nusra Front’s closest ally, but in fact under firm Nusra control. The report thus conveyed the false impression that the CIA-supported rebel group was still independent of Nusra Front.
An article by New York Times Beirut correspondent Anne Barnard (co-authored by the Times stringer in Syria Karam Shoumali — Oct. 13, 2015) appeared to veer off in the direction of treating the U.S.-supported opposition groups as part of a new U.S./Russian proxy war, thus drawing attention away from the issue of whether the Obama administration support for “moderate” groups was actually contributing to the political-military power of Al Qaeda in Syria.
Under the headline “US Weaponry Is Turning Syria Into Proxy War With Russia,” it reported that armed opposition groups had just received large shipments of TOW anti-tank missiles that had to be approved by the United States. Quoting the confident statements of rebel commanders about the effectiveness of the missiles and the high morale of rebel troops, the story suggested that arming the “moderates” was a way for the United States to make them the primary force on one side of a war pitting the United States against Russia in Syria.
Near the end of the story, however, Barnard effectively undermined that “proxy war” theme by citing the admission by commanders of U.S.-supported brigades of their “uncomfortable marriage of necessity” with the Al Qaeda franchise, “because they cannot operate without the consent of the larger and stronger Nusra Front.”
Referring to the capture of Idlib the previous spring by the opposition coalition, Barnard recalled that the TOW missiles had “played a major role in the insurgent advances that eventually endangered Mr. Assad’s rule.” But, she added:
“While that would seem like a welcome development for United States policy makers, in practice it presented another quandary, given that the Nusra Front was among the groups benefiting from the enhanced firepower.”
Unfortunately, Barnard’s point that U.S.-supported groups were deeply embedded in an Al Qaeda-controlled military structure was buried at the end of a long piece, and thus easily missed. The headline and lead ensured that, for the vast majority of readers, that point would be lost in the larger thrust of the article.
The Wall Street Journal’s Adam Entous approached the problem from a different angle but with the same result. He wrote a story on Oct. 5 reflecting what he said was anger on the part of U.S. officials that the Russians were deliberately targeting opposition groups that the CIA had supported.
Entous reported that U.S. officials believed the Syrian government wanted those groups targeted because of their possession of TOW missiles, which had been the key factor in the opposition’s capture of Idlib earlier in the year. But nowhere in the article was the role of CIA-supported groups within military command structures dominated by Nusra Front even acknowledged.
Still another angle on the problem was adopted in an Oct. 12 article by JournalBeirut correspondent Raja Abdulrahim, who described the Russian air offensive as having spurred U.S.-backed rebels and the Nusra Front to form a “more united front against the Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian allies.” Adbulrahim thus acknowledged the close military collaboration with Nusra Front, but blamed it all on the Russian offensive.
And the story ignored the fact that those same opposition groups had already joined military command arrangements in Idlib and Aleppo earlier in 2015, in anticipation of victories across northeast Syria.
The image in the media of the U.S.-supported armed opposition as operating independently from Nusra Front, and as victims of Russian attacks, persisted into early 2016. But in February, the first cracks in that image appeared in the Washington Post and New York Times.
Reporting on the negotiations between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on a partial ceasefire that began on Feb. 12, Washington Post associate editor and senior national security correspondent Karen DeYoung wrote on Feb. 19 that an unresolved problem was how to decide which organizations were to be considered “terrorist groups” in the ceasefire agreement.
In that context, DeYoung wrote, “Jabhat al-Nusra, whose forces are intermingled with moderate rebel groups in the northwest near the Turkish border, is particularly problematic.”
It was the first time any major news outlet had reported that U.S.-supported armed opposition and Nusra Front front troops were “intermingled” on the ground. And in the very next sentence DeYoung dropped what should have been a political bombshell: She reported that Kerry had proposed in the Munich negotiations to “leave Jabhat al Nusra off limits to bombing, as part of a ceasefire, at least temporarily, until the groups can be sorted out.”
At the same time, Kerry was publicly demanding in a speech at the Munich conference that Russia halt its attacks on “legitimate opposition groups” as a condition for a ceasefire. Kerry’s negotiating position reflected the fact that CIA groups were certain to be hit in strikes on areas controlled by Nusra Front, as well as the reality that Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front and Ahrar al Sham were central to the success of the U.S.-backed military effort against Assad.
In the end, however, Lavrov rejected the proposal to protect Nusra Front targets from Russian airstrikes, and Kerry dropped that demand, allowing the joint U.S./Russian announcement of the partial ceasefire on Feb. 22.
Up to that point, maps of the Syrian war in the Post and Times had identified zones of control only for “rebels” without showing where Nusra Front forces were in control. But on the same day as the announcement, the New York Times published an “updated” map, accompanied by text stating that Nusra Front “is embedded in the area of Aleppo and northwest toward the Turkish border.”
At the State Department briefing the next day, reporters grilled spokesman Mark Toner on whether U.S.-supported rebel forces were “commingled” with Nusra Front forces in Aleppo and northward. After a very long exchange on the subject, Toner said, “Yes, I believe there is some commingling of these groups.” And he went on to say, speaking on behalf of the International Syria Support Group, which comprises all the countries involved in the Syrian peace negotiations, including the U.S. and Russia:
“We, the ISSG, have been very clear in saying that Al Nusra and Daesh [ISIS] are not part of any kind of cease-fire or any kind of negotiated cessation of hostilities. So if you hang out with the wrong folks, then you make that decision. … You choose who hang out with, and that sends a signal.”
Although I pointed out the significance of the statement (Truthout, Feb. 24, 2016), no major news outlet saw fit to report that remarkable acknowledgement by the State Department spokesperson. Nevertheless, the State Department had clearly alerted the Washington Post and the New York Timesto the fact that the relationships between the CIA-supported groups and Nusra Front were much closer than it had ever admitted in the past.
Kerry evidently calculated that the pretense that the “moderate” armed groups were independent of Al Nusra front would open him to a political attack from Republicans and the media if they were hit by Russian airstrikes. So it was no longer useful politically to try to obscure that reality from the media.
In fact, the State Department now seemed interested in inducing as many of those armed groups as possible to separate themselves more clearly from the Nusra Front.
The twists and turns in the three major newspapers’ coverage of the issue of relations between U.S.-supported opposition groups and Al Qaeda’s franchise in Syria thus show how major news sources slighted or steered clear of the fact that U.S.-client armed groups were closely intertwined with a branch of Al Qaeda — until they were prompted by signals from U.S. officials to revise their line and provide a more honest portrayal of Syria’s armed opposition.
Gareth Porter, an independent investigative journalist and historian on US national security policy, is the winner of the 2012 Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. His latest book is Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, published in 2014.
Dramatic loss of life in the terror attacks in Brussels: 34 killed and more than 180 wounded according to the latest reports.
Prior to the conduct of a police investigation, in the hours following the attacks, the Western media went into overdrive, intimating without evidence that the Islamic State (ISIS) operating out of Raqqa, Northern Syria was responsible for the attacks.
According to the Independent “Isis supporters have been celebrating the Brussels attacks online [social media] as speculation mounts that the group is behind a wave of deadly attacks in the Belgian capital.”
The report is based on information emanating from social media, which does not constitute a reliable source of information.
An unkown self-proclaimed news agency (Amaq Agency ) allegedly representing the ISIS provided the following report:
This mysterious agency was then immediately quoted by Reuters in an authoritative report.
In turn, alleged supporters of ISIS on twitter were quoted. According to the Jerusalem Post(March 21, 2016):
The “tears of joy” that were shed by ISIS supporters on Twitter are also related to the fact that the terrorists succeeded in paralyzing the activity in the airport attacked. One of ISIS’ main declared goals is to devastate the Western economy and replace the dollar with its own coin as the only international legal tender.
Who Controls the ISIS social media and twitter accounts?
Police and intelligence are often aware of the identity of ISIS social media, IP addresses, geographic location.
Hackers have claimed that a number of Islamic State supporters’ social media accounts are being run from internet addresses linked to the [UK government] Department of Work and Pensions.
A group of four young computer experts who call themselves VandaSec have unearthed evidence indicating that at least three ISIS-supporting accounts can be traced back to the DWP.
Every computer and mobile phone logs onto the internet using an IP address, which is a type of identification number.
The hacking collective showed Mirror Online details of the IP addresses used by a trio of separate digital jihadis to access Twitter accounts, which have been used to spread extremist propaganda.
At first glance, the IP addresses seem to be based in Saudi Arabia, but upon further inspection using specialist tools they appeared to link back to the DWP. ..
[T]he British government sold on a large number of IP addresses to two Saudi Arabian firms.
After the sale completed in October of this year, they were used by extremists to spread their message of hate.
Jamie Turner, an expert from a firm called PCA Predict, discovered a record of the sale of IP addresses, and found a large number were transferred to Saudi Arabia in October of this year.
He told us it was likely the IP addresses could still be traced back to the DWP because records of the addresses had not yet been fully updated.
What the Daily Mirror report suggests (as well as other reports) is that the IP addresses of the ISIS are indirectly linked to the British government, i.e. 1) the identity of the ISIS social media is invariable known to police authorities, and 2) The ISIS social media are sponsored by Saudi Arabia, which is also involved in the recruitment and training of terrorists in liaison with US-NATO.
It is worth noting that the British government has acknowledged its responsibility:
The Cabinet Office has now admitted to selling the IP addresses on to Saudi Telecom and the Saudi-based Mobile Telecommunications Company earlier this year as part of a wider drive to get rid of a large number of the DWP’s IP addresses. (Mirror, op cit cit, emphasis added)
The State Sponsors of Terrorism
The events in Brussels raises the broader question: who is behind the ISIS?
Israel intelligence sources (DEBKA) in a 2011 report confirmed the role of NATO operating out of its Brussels headquarters and Turkey’s high command in the training and recruitment of terrorists:
NATO headquarters in Brussels and the Turkish high command are meanwhile drawing up plans for their first military step in Syria, which is to arm the rebels with weapons for combating the tanks and helicopters spearheading the Assad regime’s crackdown on dissent. … NATO strategists are thinking more in terms of pouring large quantities of anti-tank and anti-air rockets, mortars and heavy machine guns into the protest centers for beating back the government armored forces. (DEBKAfile, NATO to give rebels anti-tank weapons, August 14, 2011)
This initiative, which was also supported by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, involved a process of organized recruitment of thousands of jihadist “freedom fighters”, reminiscent of the enlistment of Mujahideen to wage the CIA’s jihad (holy war) in the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war:
Also discussed in Brussels and Ankara, our sources report, is a campaign to enlist thousands of Muslim volunteers in Middle East countries and the Muslim world to fight alongside the Syrian rebels. The Turkish army would house these volunteers, train them and secure their passage into Syria. (Ibid, emphasis added)
These mercenaries were subsequently integrated into US and allied sponsored terrorist organizations including Al Nusrah and ISIS.
And then in August 2014, Obama launched his counter-terrorism campaign. Yet the evidence confirms that instead of destroying the ISIS, the US and its allies including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel were in fact protecting the ISIS.
Again according to the Daily Mirror in a 2015 report, the counterterrorism campaign was conducive to ISIS doubling the territory under its control, until the launching of the Russian intervention in late September 2015.
Sheer Incompetence of the US Air Force (doubtful) or Washington’s complicity in protecting the terrorists?
Recently the release of the Hillary Clinton email archive as well as leaked Pentagon documents confirm that the US and its allies were supportive of ISIS, which are according to press reports, the alleged architects of the Brussels attacks.
The 7-page Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document dated August of 2012, points to US complicity in supporting the creation of an Islamic State:
The recent and historical record on US nuclear “signaling,” or flying nuclear armed aircraft over opposition nations, shows that it increases the risk of conflict and war.
In an editorial this week, military defense experts Adam Lowther and Chris Winklepleck argue that the strategic aircraft arm of the US nuclear triad provides unique “nuclear signaling” and serves a critical deterrence role in US military strategy.
Recent and historical evidence, however, shows that their claim lacks merit, as brandishing nuclear weapons only serves to exacerbate tensions and heighten the risk of conflict, former nuclear weapons expert at Los Alamos National Lab Jim Doyle writes for Defense News.
South Korea saw nuclear flyovers by the US in 2013 and 2016 using B-2 and B-52 aircraft, but the maneuvers have done nothing to diminish tensions on the Korean peninsula nor have they been a corrective to Pyongyang’s militaristic brinksmanship.
Recent North Korean missile launches and nuclear tests show that nuclear signaling does not achieve its desired effect. Reports out of Pyongyang suggest that US nuclear flyovers have been used instead by the Kim regime to increase domestic support for the dictatorship by confirming that a threat exists.
Specifically, the 2013 “long-range show of presence missions” by the US on the Korean peninsula was followed by North Korea’s restart of its Yongbyon nuclear reactor one month later. Following the second show of presence mission in 2016, DPRK conducted a fourth nuclear test explosion and expedited ballistic missile production and testing.
While military experts may write off aggressive North Korean military response as an anomaly, citing the country’s sometimes incoherent foreign policy, history points to the ineffectiveness of similar missions elsewhere.
On October 27, 1969, Doyle writes, the Nixon administration attempted to “signal” to the Soviet Union and the Viet Cong, in what became known as the “madman nuclear alert,” that Nixon was aggressive enough to launch a nuclear attack against North Vietnam if Moscow did not pressure the Hanoi government to seek peace. In that effort, 18 B-52s approached the USSR from the arctic. The posturing failed, heightening tensions with the Soviet Union, and doing nothing to resolve the Vietnam quagmire.
History shows that nuclear deterrence by means of mutually assured destruction is not an effective way to keep the peace, especially when global economic and political interests seek to end the threat of nuclear weapons. Research illustrates heightened tensions and conflict in the use of nuclear signaling. Nations seeking peace have no need to wield a larger club.
Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump previously indicated that, if elected, his administration would focus on non-interventionist policies. His list of foreign policy advisers, released on Monday, says otherwise.
As a businessman with no governing experience, foreign policy has always been an especially vulnerable aspect of the billionaire’s presidential campaign. As Trump inches closer to the Republican nomination, his campaign has begun to shift gears, as he will likely face-off against former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
To distance himself from the Democratic frontrunner, he appears to have adopted an isolationist viewpoint. During an interview with the Washington Post on Monday, Trump questioned the need for the NATO alliance.
“We certainly can’t afford to do this anymore,” he said. “NATO is costing us a fortune, and yes, we’re protecting Europe with NATO, but we’re spending a lot of money.”
Trump stated a similar position with regards to US involvement on the Korean peninsula.
“South Korea is [a] very rich, great industrial country, and yet we’re not reimbursed fairly for what we do,” he said. “We’re constantly sending our ships, sending our planes, doing our war games – we’re reimbursed a fraction of what this is all costing.”
But while Trump may be voicing support for non-interventionism, his actions suggest otherwise. The billionaire provided the Post with the five-member list of his foreign policy team, and it includes a string of individuals deeply invested in the military industrial complex.
At the top of that list is Keith Kellogg, a retired Army lieutenant. Kellogg is a former employee of CACI International, a “multinational professional services and information technology company” that operates across the world.
In 2004, CACI was sued by 256 Iraqis over its alleged involvement in torture, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, in relation to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
Next on Trump’s list is Joe Schmitz, a former inspector general with the US Defense Department and, perhaps even more problematically for Trump’s isolationism, a former employee of security contractor Academi, when the company was still branded as Blackwater.
While Academi was still known as Blackwater, the contractor was vilified after its employees killed 17 Iraqi civilians in 2007. For his part, Schmitz once publicly argued that lawsuits regarding Blackwater’s actions in Afghanistan should be dismissed. He argued that any charges filed in Afghanistan should be subject to regional Sharia law, which, conveniently, does not hold companies responsible for the actions of its employees.
George Papadopoulos, Trump’s third adviser, is the director of the Center for International Energy and Natural Resources Law & Security at the London Center of International Law. While he doesn’t have as questionably hawkish a past as Schmitz and Kellogg, he was a foreign policy adviser to erstwhile presidential hopeful Ben Carson. Given that the neurosurgeon candidate struggled to differentiate “Hamas” from “hummus,” it doesn’t bode well for Trump.
Dr. Walid Phares, another Trump pick, is a professor at the National Defense University in Washington DC. Phares is a former adviser to a violent Christian militia group responsible for a number of human rights violations during the Lebanese Civil War. According to Adam Sewer, writing for Mother Jones, Phares has been described by his colleagues as “one of the group’s chief ideologists, working closely with the Lebanese Forces’ Fifth Bureau, a unit that specialized in psychological warfare.”
Phares served in 2012 as a top adviser to former presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who ran on a promise to “deter Russian ambitions.”
The last name on Trump’s list is Carter Page, a managing partner at private equity firm Global Energy Capital. A former fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Page worked on US-style “economic development” in the Caspian Sea region and in former Soviet states.
Trump may claim that he seeks to reign in US adventurism, but based on the records of his chosen advisers, a Trump presidency would likely mean business as usual.
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In addition to the El Bakraoui brothers’ previous arrests in 2010 and 2011, as well as the eldest brother’s arrest and deportation from Turkey last year for suspected terrorist activity, they were also allegedly involved in a police raid just one week before the Brussels attack. During the raid, at least one suspect was killed while two others escaped, the El Bakraoui brothers.
In an editorial this week, military defense experts Adam Lowther and Chris Winklepleck argue that the strategic aircraft arm of the US nuclear triad provides unique “nuclear signaling” and serves a critical deterrence role in US military strategy.
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