The draft resolution for tougher sanctions against North Korea that the US submitted to the UN with China’s backing will not discourage Pyongyang from developing nuclear and ballistic missiles, North Korean expert Michael Madden told Sputnik.
On Friday, Washington, with Beijing’s backing, submitted a new resolution to the UN Security Council for additional sanctions against North Korea to deter it from progressing further with its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
Michael Madden, a North Korean expert who runs the North Korean Leadership Watch blog, told Radio Sputnik that the sanctions are unlikely to succeed in stopping the programs, even if they do harm to the North Korean economy.
”It’s not a terrific economy but in the last couple of years they’ve had modest growth and they’ve had some progress in terms of domestic economic development so it will remain to be seen if the sanctions affect that,” Madden said.
“One of the things that they’ve done is to allow the technocrats that are within North Korea’s cabinet to start managing programs, these people are very experienced [in dealing with] the fundamental flaws in North Korea’s economy, they know some of the fixes they need to make.”
“There have been some light reform measures that they’ve taken since Kim Jong-un has come to power, there’s a little more flexibility for the technocrats, there’s a little more flexibility in terms of food production, there’s some very basic market principles that they’re applying to their economy and I think that has affected growth rates over the last couple of years.”
North Korean President Kim Jong-un and many of those in his circle are more open-minded because they were educated abroad, and Madden said the president is aware of the gaps in his knowledge and open and amenable to advice, particularly from technocrats and economic planners.
“There is a certain degree – a very specific degree because it’s a totalitarian state – of flexibility that he has allowed officials to have in terms of formulating policies.”
However, that flexibility does not extend to its nuclear program, and sanctions will not make Pyongyang give up its nuclear program, Madden warned.
“North Korea has basically said on a number of occasions that they have no intention of giving up their nuclear weapons program, and no intention of stopping space launches, and we’re going to have to take them at their word.”
“They have numerous reasons for that, they’ll say ‘Iraq and Libya got rid of their WMD programs, look what happened there,’ and to a certain degree they’re justified in their thinking based on what they’ve seen happen to other similar political systems after they negotiated away their WMD programs.”
Madden said that Beijing has supported the US proposal for tougher sanctions against Pyongyang because of legitimate concerns about the potential for nuclear fallout and earthquakes as a result of the weapons tests, which “annoy China to a great extent, especially the nuclear weapons tests.”
While China and North Korea share a close relationship, China’s influence is somewhat exaggerated by a lot of external observers and government policy makers, and Pyongyang is likely to react with open hostility to the proposed sanctions, Madden said.
“Kim Jong-un spent last week inspecting military exercises; we’re probably going to see him inspecting more military exercises, they’re certainly going to tighten social controls.”
“Once the sanctions are passed, we’ll see some very interesting statements coming out of North Korea, they’ll just continue to heighten tensions on the Korean peninsula, and that’s what we’ll be seeing.”
February 28, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | China, North Korea |
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One of the most important tasks in the field of international security is to rid the world of the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction.
Russia has been constantly advocating further limitations and reductions of nuclear weapons stockpiles along with strengthening international regimes of arms control and non-proliferation.
However, further dialogue on nuclear disarmament, held both bilaterally and multilaterally, could only be successful if the core principle of international security is observed, i.e. that the security of one country should not be strengthened at the expense of the security of others.
Unfortunately, what is happening now is a far cry from what the international community has been striving for. Among other things it is about global stability and deterrence; the trust between Russia and the West is diminishing. Some of the critical Russian concerns are left unaddressed.
First of all, as a result of the Russia-US New START Treaty, which entered into force in 2011, the number of nuclear warheads has already been reduced to the level of late 1950s or early 1960s. Thus, it brings up the issue of other nuclear states, including UK, joining the effort.
Secondly, further reductions are impossible while Washington is busy creating a global BMD system and conducting research into conventional weapons with a strategic range.
There is also serious concern over the possible transfer of the arms race to outer space. The Russian initiative to draft a legally binding document to ban the deployment of weapons in outer space is, unfortunately, hindered by the West. Before any concrete steps are made in this area, we’ve got to have guarantees against any imbalances in conventional armaments. The lack of progress in coming into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty is also a major factor.
Where are, after all, political logic and common sense, when the US pushes forward its disarmament proposal, while continuing to undermine Russia’s defense and industrial potential through restrictive measures and sanctions?
Above all, the trust between our sides is well below the “Cold War” level as the West launched an unprecedented media campaign against Russia and its political leadership. We cannot seriously consider proposals that amount to playing a one-sided game or rather, a game with no rules or with rules that are arbitrarily changed in Washington.
If, and when, all of the above circumstances change and our concerns and priorities are taken into account, including equal and indivisible security for all states, then it will be possible to consider discussing further nuclear reduction.
Dr Alexander Yakovenko, Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Deputy foreign minister (2005-2011). Follow him on Twitter @Amb_Yakovenko
February 28, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | Russia, UK, United States |
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When voters elected Bill Clinton president of the United States in 1992, they were also electing his wife. Bill announced the fact himself, but after the failure of her health reform plan, Hillary’s only political success was her excellent performance in the role of a faithful wife who “stands by her man”. Her brave defense of her frivolous husband was widely appreciated, but as a qualification for the highest office in the land, it seems a bit skimpy. Having played a part in wars in the former Yugoslavia might seem more presidential.
During the 2008 Democratic Party primaries, Hillary evoked the foreign policy experience she had gained as First Lady by repeatedly regaling audiences with an exciting account of her trip to the Bosnian city of Tuzla in 1996:
“I certainly do remember that trip to Bosnia,” she told audiences. “There was a saying around the White House that if a place was too small, too poor, or too dangerous, the president couldn’t go, so send the First Lady. I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.”
As word got around of what she was telling audiences, Hillary’s story was rapidly denied by numerous eyewitnesses to the event, as well as by television footage showing Ms. Clinton arriving in Tuzla with her daughter Chelsea and being greeted by little children offering flowers.
Cornered by the Philadelphia Daily News editorial board during an interview in late March, 2008, Hillary Clinton was forced to acknowledge that there were no snipers, but eased her way out:
“I think that, a minor blip, you know, if I said something that, you know, I say a lot of things – millions of words a day – so if I misspoke it was just a misstatement.”
She never had to dodge sniper fire, but she does know how to dodge embarrassing questions. The fact that she utters “millions of words per day” is supposed to give her a generous quota of possible “misstatements”, or to put it more simply, lies.
The claim to have run from snipers was historically absurd and morally pretentious, in addition to being blatantly false. Four months before her visit, the hostilities in Bosnia had been decisively brought to a halt by the Dayton peace accords, signed on November 21, 1995. She could not fail to know that. Indeed, far from being sent to a place that was “too dangerous” for the
President, the visit by the First Lady and her daughter was intended precisely to emphasize that the White House had not lost interest in Bosnia even though peace had been restored. Hillary’s spokesman Howard Wolfson had also added to the “misstatements” by claiming that she was “on the front lines” of “a potential combat zone”. Aside from the fact that there could be no “front lines” or “combat zone” when the war was over, Tuzla had never been either one. Tuzla was a largely Muslim- inhabited industrial center which had been selected as a U.S. military base, probably in part because it was a particularly safe environment.
Lying about Bosnia was nothing unusual, but this was a particularly silly, self-aggrandizing lie. Hillary evidently assumed that a brush with gunfire would be considered by the masses as adding to her qualifications to become Commander in Chief. It also showed a persistent tendency to view conflicts as occasions to display personal toughness, instead of as challenges calling for intelligent understanding of political complexities. Hillary’s claim to have braved sniper fire is not so far removed from Sarah Palin’s claim to understand Russia because she could see it from Alaska.
Hillary’s recorded statements concerning the former Yugoslavia revealed the same tendency to play to the galleries in matters of foreign policy that would mark her subsequent term as Secretary of State.
The Holocaust Pretext
In her star-struck biography of the First Lady, Hillary’s Choice, Gail Sheehy reported Hillary’s plea in favor of bombing Yugoslavia in 1999 as a major point in her favor. According to Sheehy’s book, Hillary convinced her reluctant husband to unleash the 78-day NATO bombing campaign against the Serbs with the argument that: “You can’t let this ethnic cleansing go on at the end of the century that has seen the Holocaust.”
This line is theatrical and totally irrelevant to the conflict in the Balkans. As a matter of fact, there was no “ethnic cleansing” going on in Kosovo at that time. It was the NATO bombing that soon led people to flee in all directions – a reaction that NATO leaders interpreted as the very “ethnic cleansing” they claimed to prevent by bombing. But Hillary’s remark illustrates the fact that Yugoslavia marks the start of using reference to the Holocaust as the most emotionally-potent argument in favor of war.
It was not always so. At the end of World War II, both the long- suffering survivors and those who discovered the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps wanted only to draw the conclusion that this was yet another powerful reason never again to go to war. But as time passed, by the strange chemistry of the Zeitgeist, the memory of the Holocaust has now become the strongest rhetorical argument for war. It is a sort of imaginary revisionism of past history that gets in the way of facing the present. Hillary’s sentence is a way of saying, “I would have said no to Hitler at Munich”, or “I would have bombed Auschwitz”. The history of World War II, and even world history itself, has been totally overshadowed in recent decades by the tragedy of the Holocaust to such an extent that even Western heads of State may find themselves acting out the dramas of the past instead of facing the realities of the present. The conflict in Kosovo was so obscure, so unfamiliar to Americans and so distorted by deception and self-deception , that the easiest way to think of it was by analogy with a conflict everyone knew about, or thought they knew about. The moral reward seemed immense, especially in consideration of the low cost, since it entailed bombing a country with inadequate air defenses, with no great risk to our side.
It is worth noting that Hillary urged Bill to bomb the Serbs via telephone, while she was in North Africa, touring Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco. Her guide on that trip was her new assistant, Huma Abedin, the young daughter of Muslim scholars and her trusted expert on the Muslim world. Many secular Arab nationalists in North Africa sympathized with the Serbs, due to past good relations with Yugoslavia during the days of the Non-Aligned Movement. However, Hillary had become an apprentice in learning to appreciate the fundamentalist Muslim outlook, and the Muslims of Bosnia and Kosovo enjoyed widespread, even fanatical support, in the Islamic world at this point. Did Huma assure Hillary that Muslims everywhere would applaud the Clinton administration for bombing Serbs?
Nevertheless, there are strong reasons to doubt that Hillary’s moralistic urging was the sole cause of the NATO bombing of what remained of the former Yugoslavia in 1999. Strategists were concerned with less sentimental geopolitical reasons, briefly alluded to above. But there is much less reason to doubt that Hillary did indeed urge Bill to bomb. And there is no reason at all to doubt that she boasted of this to her awed biographer, as a way of proving her “resolve” to use U.S. military power on a “humanitarian” mission. It fits her chosen image as “tough and caring”.
This article is excerpted from Diana Johnstone’s Queen of Chaos: the Misadventures of Hillary Clinton (CounterPunch Books).
February 27, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Book Review, Deception, Timeless or most popular | Hillary Clinton, NATO, United States |
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A court in Guatemala has sentenced two former military officials to over 100 years in prison each for murder, rape and sexual enslavement of the country’s indigenous women during the civil war in 1980s.
On Friday, state media reported that the court found Francisco Reyes Giron and Heriberto Valdéz Asij guilty of crimes carried out during the early 1980s and sentenced them to 120 and 240 years in prison, respectively.
The men were both accused of carrying out “forced disappearances” and forcing 15 indigenous women into sexual and domestic slavery.
Giron was also found guilty of killing one woman and her two daughters, while Valdez Asij was found to be responsible for the forced disappearance of seven men.
According to the unidentified women from the indigenous Q’eqchis community, Guatemala’s military treated them as sexual and domestic slaves during the time period.
“We the judges firmly believe the testimony of the women who were raped in Sepur Zarco,” said Yassmin Barrios, chief judge of the court, adding, “Rape is an instrument or weapon of war, it is a way to attack the country, killing or raping the victims, the woman was seen as a military objective.”
Armed forces reportedly attacked the village of Sepur Zarco a number of times in 1982, killing or abducting Mayan leaders there who had been seeking to apply for land titles.
Lawyers representing the men said the case was fabricated. Moises Galindo, the defense lawyer for Reyes Giron, even claimed his client had never been to the site of the crimes.
“We are going to appeal. We are going to succeed in having this case thrown out,” Galindo said.
Under Guatemalan law, the amount of time a person may spend in prison is 50 years.
February 27, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Guatemala, Latin America |
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Throwing people off high buildings is one of the ways, along with drowning and shooting, that the American authorities get rid of inconvenient people (the Europeans seem to like poisoning). From an article by Roger Bowen, the biographer of Canadian diplomat E. Herbert Norman:
“A Canadian diplomat and scholar who was serving in Japan at the onset of the Second World War, and was interned there following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Mr. Norman was accused of being a Communist in 1951 by allies of Joseph McCarthy in the U.S. Senate. Interrogated twice in secret by the RCMP at the urging of U.S. intelligence agencies, he was exonerated by Canadian authorities and allowed to resume his duties in the foreign service.
In the fall of 1956, following the Suez crisis, Mr. Norman, then 47, was Canada’s ambassador to Egypt. Mr. Norman worked tirelessly to find a peaceful solution in negotiations with Gamal Abdel Nasser. His eventual success in persuading Egypt’s president to admit United Nations peacekeepers into his country was, for that era, a singular achievement. Mr. Norman’s boss, Lester Pearson, later won the Nobel Peace Prize, in part because of Mr. Norman’s efforts.
In March of 1957, suspicions about Mr. Norman were revived by the U.S. Senate. On April 4, Mr. Norman stepped off the roof of a nine-storey apartment building in the heart of Cairo.”
and:
“. . . it is clear that someone or some agency fabricated the details of Mr. Norman’s death and ‘leaked’ them to the U.S. press in 1957, making it appear that Mr. Norman was guilt-ridden and psychologically unstable, and that he chose to kill himself rather than face additional inquiries over his alleged Communist background.
One of several suicide notes leaked to the press then seemed to imply that Mr. Norman had had a close, perhaps homosexual, relationship with the Swedish ambassador to Egypt, Brynolf Eng. The New York Daily News account in April of 1957 reported Mr. Norman as having written to Mr. Eng on the eve of his death: ‘I wanted to spend some time with you during these last few days of my life and tell you about what has been worrying me but am afraid that even in this letter I cannot bring myself to tell you [the] true reasons that impel me to commit suicide. I have decided to die near your home. I know this may cause you some trouble and I am sorry but you are my best friend. Farewell. Sincerely, Norman.’
This account stood as the ‘truth’ for 30 years, contradicted only by Canadian sources whose comments did not register in the U.S. in 1957. The actual note Mr. Norman wrote to Mr. Eng, in his handwriting and found in the RCMP files, reads: ‘Mr. Eng, I beg forgiveness for using your flat. But it is the only clear jump where I can avoid hitting a passerby. E. H. N.’”
Norman is a fairly important guy, as his negotiations invented the concept of UN peacekeepers. Bowen has made repeated requests to the CIA to release its remaining cache of classified documents on Norman, without success. What are they hiding? It is clear that the Americans fabricated the released ‘suicide note’ to the press in order to create a motive for Norman’s suicide. If they had nothing to do with the death, why did they go to all this trouble? I note that the Canadian Right, represented by David Frum’s father-in-law, the ancient Peter Worthington, maintains the cold war interpretation of the death of Norman.
Throwing people off tall buildings is a perfect method of assassination as it doesn’t leave any forensic evidence of a crime if it is done properly (both drowning and shooting can leave inconvenient forensic evidence). The only tricky part is forging the suicide note, or forcing the victim to write it. Some other prominent examples:
- The recent death of progressive lawyer Paul Sanford. It has been surmised that this was Karl Rove’s revenge for an embarrassing question that Sanford asked then press secretary Scott McClellan about Rove, but my guess would be that it related to what Sanford was working on just before his death. From the Monterey Herald account, we learn that he was pacing the hallway of an upper floor, his car was parked next to the hotel, but he was not checked in as a guest. It appears he was invited to the upper floor, presumably by people who had rented a room. They could very well have tried to convince him not to publish what he was working on, ‘for the good of the country’. His pacing outside the room might reflect his trying to make up his mind. When he told them his conscience wouldn’t allow him to suppress the truth, they threw him out the window.
- The deaths of State Department official John J. Kokal, and long-time American government policy advisor Gus W. Weiss, both opposed to the Iraq attack.
- The amazing story of CIA victim Dr. Frank Olson (excellent coverage here, despite the crappy author, including discussion of CIA use of defenestration as a method of assassination, and the use of LSD as a truth serum regarding Olson’s knowledge of American biological weapons programs). After years of denial, the American government finally admitted that the CIA had given Olson LSD without his knowledge, and that this led to the suicide of Olson. It then turned out that Olson had committed ‘suicide’ by going through a closed window. Since no one would commit suicide by jumping at a closed window, it was apparent that the U. S. government admissions were part of a ‘limited hangout’ to hide the fact that the CIA had thrown Olson through the closed window. I assume CIA training handbooks now include instructions to open the window before throwing the victim out!
- James Forrestal, first United States Secretary of Defense, was almost certainly suicided, probably as a direct result of his principled opposition to American assistance in the stealing of land required to establish the State of Israel.
February 27, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, David Frum, E. Herbert Norman, Israel |
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A soldier is supposed to defend his or her country and people. The honorable duty is even more onerous on a General, one would think. Yet Air Force General Philip Breedlove, as with most of the Pentagon top brass, is leading America inexorably to historic defeat.
Not deliberately mind you. But through incompetence and purveying a futile, crass worldview, which misleads America to grossly mis-spend its national resources.
With a $600 billion a-year allocation, the Pentagon devours over half of the total US national budget. What could be spent on creating jobs, building civil infrastructure and providing top class public services in education and heath care is instead pumped into the dead-end military. Year after year after year.
And for what? Only for this same military to lead America further into defeat as a country mired in debt and non-productive warmongering, which in turn leads to more vital resources being thrown into this bottomless pit. It’s a death knell for the nation.
General Breedlove, who is Supreme Commander of US forces in Europe (EUCOM), as well as the top officer of the NATO military alliance, was giving testimony to Congress this week before the House Armed Services Committee.
His pitch was that the US faces a combination of three global threats. They included: a “resurgent, aggressive” Russia, mass migration of refugees in Europe, and the threat of terrorism from the ISIS or ISIL group.
“This year’s budget request reflects our solemn commitment to the security of our allies and partners and to protecting our homeland forward,” said Breedlove.
Now, you would think that a US General might be basing his “threat assessments”on sound information. After all isn’t that what military leaders are supposed to be about, making sure that the homeland and allies are kept safe in the most effective way. Especially, when the money for the Pentagon amounts to over half of the country’s total annual spend.
Breedlove’s worldview could not be more removed from reality, if not downright riven with falsehood.
On the ISIS terror group, this head-chopping barbaric network of takfirists is without doubt a dangerous outfit. But what Breedlove seems oblivious to, or disingenuous about, is that the ISIS terrorists were fomented and weaponized in the first place by his Pentagon covert warmongers in the CIA. This terror network, as with its Al Qaeda precursors, are the Pentagon’s proxy army for regime change and pretext for waging “war against terror”across the globe.
As for the refugee crisis destabilizing Europe, Breedlove admits that the refugees mainly emanate from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. But what he astoundingly fails to comprehend is that the US has ravaged these same countries with criminal wars for regime change over the past two decades. We can add Libya too. Yet, the General has the gall to accuse Russia and the Syrian government of “weaponizing the refugee crisis”.
He told Congress: “Russia and the Assad regime are deliberately weaponizing migration from Syria in an attempt to overwhelm European structures and break European resolve.”
It takes a certain obtuseness to describe the humanitarian crisis in this way. The five-year war in Syria was instigated by Washington and its NATO partners, Britain and France, and fueled by US client regimes, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, for the purpose of regime change. The terror brigades of ISIS and myriad others, including the so-called “moderate” Free Syrian Army, were infiltrated into Syria to plunge that country into a bloodbath and so topple the government of President Bashar al Assad.
That up to 11 million Syrians have been displaced –nearly half the population –is solely due to the machinations of Washington and its accomplices.
On the third alleged global danger, EUCOM Supreme Commander Breedlove warned that Russia poses an “existential threat”. He said: “Russia wants to rewrite the agreed rules of the international order… EUCOM, working with allies and partners, is deterring Russia now and preparing to fight and win if necessary.”
Earlier this year, the Pentagon announced that it was quadrupling its military spend in Europe to $3.4 billion. This will be used to expand NATO forces in Eastern Europe on Russia’s borders. Despite the hysterics of Breedlove and other Pentagon chiefs, Russia is threatening no-one. This is just a myth that America’s military-industrial complex thrives on and has milked the US economy with for the past 70 years, since the end of the Second World War.
The only people who have invaded Ukraine are the Neo-Nazi junta and militias that the US used to overthrow an elected government there in February 2014.
Let’s move on here. The American people show signs of waking up to the propaganda that has for too long been billowing out of Washington. Democrat presidential contender Bernie Sanders is a sign that people are no longer frightened by such words as “socialism”and hopefully other such bogeyman concepts. What the people need is an economy that serves their democratic needs: jobs, education, health, social development, public ownership.
It is not clear if Sanders really gets the task ahead. He has said some corny things in support of US foreign war-making and apparently buying into Russia scaremongering in particular.
What Sanders needs to realize is what many ordinary citizens are increasingly attuned to. America’s leviathan, blood-sucking, warmongering military needs to be sacked. The crass views of military top brass like General Breedlove show that this outsized excrescence is not only leading America to defeat; it is, ironically, the biggest threat to American and world security.
If Americans do embark on a political revolution, as Bernie Sanders implores, they need to not only sack the big banks. They need to sack the big tanks and all the other elements of the freeloading military gravy train that is destroying the country.
February 27, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | ISIL, ISIS, NATO, Philip Breedlove, United States |
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In his testimony to a U.S. Senate committee regarding the Syria ceasefire agreement brokered by the United States and Russia, Secretary of State John Kerry didn’t express much optimism for the success of the plan. That is not surprising, however, since no informed observer has any real hope for the success of the ceasefire because the agreement seems to lie largely in the hands of the Western-backed terrorists, none of whom are moderates.
Despite the lack of enthusiasm in his presentation, Kerry went through the motions of Congressional testimony when an agreement has already been made and a public show is required for mass consumption. What was telling about his testimony, however, is Kerry’s allusion to a mysterious “Plan B” if the ceasefire agreement does not work.
“There is a significant discussion taking place now about a Plan B in the event that we do not succeed at the [negotiating] table,” Kerry said. But he did not go into specifics as to exactly what that Plan B would look like. That is, except for a slight comment suggesting that the U.S. may have to shift its policy from the total destruction of the Assad government and Syria as a whole to almost total destruction of the country in the form of partitioning and dividing the country into separate principalities.
To this end, Kerry only stated that it could be “too late to keep as a whole Syria if we wait much longer.”
Yet Kerry’s “Plan B” sounds very much like the “Plan A” of a number of other strategists, policy makers, and imperialist organs.
Consider the op-ed published by Reuters and written by Michael O’Hanlon, entitled “Syria’s One Hope May Be As Dim As Bosnia’s Once Was.” The article argues essentially that the only way Russia and the United States will ever be able to peacefully settle the Syrian crisis is if the two agree to a weakened and divided Syria, broken up into separate pieces.
O’Hanlon wrote,
To find common purpose with Russia, Washington should keep in mind the Bosnia model, devised to end the fierce Balkan conflicts in the 1990s. In that 1995 agreement, a weak central government was set up to oversee three largely autonomous zones.
In similar fashion, a future Syria could be a confederation of several sectors: one largely Alawite (Assad’s own sect), spread along the Mediterranean coast; another Kurdish, along the north and northeast corridors near the Turkish border; a third primarily Druse, in the southwest; a fourth largely made up of Sunni Muslims; and then a central zone of intermixed groups in the country’s main population belt from Damascus to Aleppo. The last zone would likely be difficult to stabilize, but the others might not be so tough.
Under such an arrangement, Assad would ultimately have to step down from power in Damascus. As a compromise, however, he could perhaps remain leader of the Alawite sector. A weak central government would replace him. But most of the power, as well as most of the armed forces. would reside within the individual autonomous sectors — and belong to the various regional governments. In this way, ISIL could be targeted collectively by all the sectors.
Once this sort of deal is reached, international peacekeepers would likely be needed to hold it together — as in Bosnia. Russian troops could help with this mission, stationed, for example, along the Alawite region’s borders.
This deal is not, of course, ripe for negotiation. To make it plausible, moderate forces must first be strengthened. The West also needs to greatly expand its training and arming of various opposition forces that do not include ISIL or al-Nusra. Vetting standards might also have to be relaxed in various ways. American and other foreign trainers would need to deploy inside Syria, where the would-be recruits actually live — and must stay, if they are to protect their families.
Meanwhile, regions now accessible to international forces, starting perhaps with the Kurdish and Druse sectors, could begin receiving humanitarian relief on a much expanded scale. Over time, the number of accessible regions would grow, as moderate opposition forces are strengthened.
Though it could take many months, or even years, to achieve the outcome Washington wants, setting out the goals and the strategy now is crucial. Doing so could provide a basis for the West’s working together with — or at least not working against — other key outside players in the conflict, including Russia, as well as Turkey, the Gulf states and Iraq.
O’Hanlon is no stranger to the Partition Plan for Syria. After all, he was the author the infamous Brookings Institution report “Deconstructing Syria: A New Strategy For America’s Most Hopeless War,” in June, 2015 where he argued essentially the same thing.
In this article for Brookings, a corporate-financier funded “think tank” that has been instrumental in the promotion of the war against Syria since very early on, O’Hanlon argued for the “relaxation” of vetting processes for “rebels” being funded by the U.S. government, the direct invasion of Syria by NATO military forces, and the complete destruction of the Syrian government. O’Hanlon argued for the creation of “safe zones” as a prelude to these goals.
Yet, notably, O’Hanlon also mentioned the creation of a “confederal” Syria as well. In other words, the breakup of the solidified nation as it currently exists. He wrote,
The end-game for these zones would not have to be determined in advance. The interim goal might be a confederal Syria, with several highly autonomous zones and a modest (eventual) national government. The confederation would likely require support from an international peacekeeping force, if this arrangement could ever be formalized by accord. But in the short term, the ambitions would be lower—to make these zones defensible and governable, to help provide relief for populations within them, and to train and equip more recruits so that the zones could be stabilized and then gradually expanded.
Such a plan is reminiscent of the Zbigniew Brzezinski method of “microstates and ministates.” In other words, the construction of a weak, impotent state based upon ethnicity, religion, and other identity politics but without the ability to resist the will of larger nations, coalitions, and banking/industrial corporations.[1]
Thus, it appears that Kerry’s “Plan B” is, in actuality, “Plan A” for a number of powerful geopolitical strategists from Brzezinski himself to worker bees at the Brookings Institution. While Syria is gaining ground by the day against the Western-backed proxy terrorists who have run rampant across the country since 2011, the West is clearly not giving up on its plan to eliminate a geopolitical obstacle on its way to establishing world hegemony.
Notes:
[1] Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And Its Geostrategic Imperatives. 1st Edition. Basic Books. 1998.
Brandon Turbeville – article archive here – is the author of seven books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 and volume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, and The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President.
February 26, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Syria, United States, Zionism |
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A former director of America’s Central Intelligence Agency has said that the international agreements made after World War Two are starting to fall apart, and may change the borders of some countries in the Middle East.
“What we see here is a fundamental melting down of the international order,” Michael Hayden told CNN. “We are seeing a melting down of the post-WWII Bretton Woods American liberal order. We are certainly seeing a melting down of the borders drawn at the time of Versailles and Sykes-Picot. I am very fond of saying Iraq no longer exists, Syria no longer exists; they aren’t coming back. Lebanon is teetering and Libya is long gone.”
Hayden described the current situation as a “tectonic” moment. “Within that we then have the war against terrorism; it is an incredibly complex time.”
He explained that there are two fronts in the war. “The way I think about it, we Americans with our military backgrounds, call one element the close battle and the other the deep battle. The close battle is the one you and I are able to see everyday, that’s the heat-blasting fragmentation against those people who are already convinced they want to come kill us, and frankly, we are pretty good at that one.”
However, he said that the US is “not good” at the deep battle. “That’s the production rate of people who want to come kill us in 3, 5 or 10 years. Fundamentally the problem there is that that is not our fight.”
February 26, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Michael Hayden, Middle East, Syria, United States, Zionism |
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Thousands of anti-nuclear campaigners will march alongside Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in London on Saturday to protest the renewal of Britain’s nuclear deterrent. The Labour leader’s opposition to Trident has been sharply criticized by trade union bosses.
The national demonstration is organized by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), and has drawn the support of peace activists, academics, students, celebrities and others. Political heavyweights Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Green Party MP Caroline Lucas are also expected to attend.
The Stop Trident anti-nuclear rally has also secured the backing of the National Union of Students (NUS), which passed a motion to support it this week.
NUS Vice President for Further Education Shakira Martin, who will speak at the Trafalgar Square protest, said the billions of pounds used to maintain Trident should be spent on education.
“Today the National Union of Students, which represents 7 million students, voted to support this Saturday’s Stop Trident national demonstration,” she said.
“If Trident was ever used, then hundreds of millions of people would be killed. Instead of spending over £100 billion on weapons of mass destruction, I believe we should be funding free education.”
The high-profile demonstration has also drawn support from celebrities such as fashion designer Katharine Hamnett and comedian Jeremy Hardy.
Commenting on the costly nuclear deterrent, Hardy said he opposes the program because “it’s based on this idea of mutually assured destruction.”
“In order to keep us safe, you’ve got to be insane enough to use a nuclear weapon, and the other person’s got to be insane enough as well,” he said.
“But neither of you have got to be so insane that you actually use it. So you’ve only got to be insane enough to be prepared to use it but not quite insane enough to actually use it.
“And so long as we just keep that balance of insanity absolutely perfect and equal on all sides we’ll be fine. Sounds like a good gamble to me.”
The Stop Trident rally comes as Labour’s shadow defense secretary Emily Thornberry conducts a review into the Trident missile system.
Leaders of some trade unions, who normally support Labour’s policies, have said the abolition of Trident would cost tens of thousands of jobs.
Lashing out at Corbyn’s anti-nuclear stance, Gary Smith, a leading official with the GMB Union, told the IB Times the debate should focus on the predicament of workers.
“This is not a debate for the wine bars of Islington and Edinburgh – this is real life for the workers and their communities,” Smith said.
“This is not a fight we picked,” he added. “The people who started this argument clearly have no idea of the massive ramifications for not renewing Trident and they don’t understand how the whole shipbuilding industry and defense sector is linked together.”
February 26, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Militarism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Jeremy Corbyn, Nicola Sturgeon, Trident, UK |
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If Western capitals and their international agencies have long decried sectarianism, and all other form of overt xenophobia, may it revolve around ethnicity, social class, gender, politics or faith, those powers have nevertheless leaned on elitism and selectivity to carry both their war propaganda and narrative in the Middle East.
I would personally argue that much of the hatred we have seen rise in the MENA – Middle East and Northern Africa, over the past decades, stem from Western powers’ desire to fragment, divide and segregate to better manipulate nations, and play communities against each other. This grand Balkanization of the Middle East the Yinon Plann laid out in the 1980s was not just another political exercise … it appears evident today that at its heart, such strategy spoke socio-political and sectarian engineering, before any real geographical re-arrangement. Beyond a simple game of border drawing, the Yinon Plan aimed to rise an Empire on the ashes of both a civilization, and a history – to hell with the consequences.
It was Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya in 2011 who best summarized the Yinon Plan, when he wrote: “[The Yinon plan] is an Israeli strategic plan to ensure Israeli regional superiority. It insists and stipulates that Israel must reconfigure its geo-political environment through the balkanization of the surrounding Arab states into smaller and weaker states.”
The strategy, which was later on championed under another name by US Vice President Joe Biden to accelerate the break-up of Iraq into three separate entities: Shia, Kurds and Sunnis, provisions for a division of the Greater Middle East along both ethnic and sectarian lines, to better play into those ideological divisions which regional powers have wielded to assert their power. Amid a fragmented MENA, Israel would rise a Titan, not just militarily, but politically, as it would benefit from the absolute back-up of all Western capitals – if need be through coercion.
“The first step towards establishing this was a war between Iraq and Iran,” wrote Darius Nazemroaya, before he added: “The Atlantic, in 2008, and the US military’s Armed Forces Journal, in 2006, both published widely circulated maps that closely followed the outline of the Yinon Plan. Aside from a divided Iraq, which the Biden Plan also calls for, the Yinon Plan calls for a divided Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria. The partitioning of Iran, Turkey, Somalia, and Pakistan also all fall into line with these views. The Yinon Plan also calls for dissolution in North Africa and forecasts it as starting from Egypt and then spilling over into Sudan, Libya, and the rest of the region.”
Interesting how our modern wars have followed the very pattern enounced once upon a 1982 by Zionist Israel …
But how is the Yinon Plan fitting into Syria’s humanitarian crisis, and Western powers’ propensity to selectively wave outrage before ever so pliable corporate media? Well … for one Syria’s humanitarian crisis’ make-up follows the very same pattern of division and ethno-sectarianism.
Entire regions of Syria have been ignored, neglected, and de facto sold out to the barbarism of Terror’s armies on account its communities follow Shia Islam, or Yezidism. Besieged by Wahhabi radicals, victimized and persecuted, those poor souls were never offered the courtesy of a whisper in the press … why such blindness if not an admission of guilt?
I recall rather clearly how loudly corporate media stumped their feet over Madaya – the lambasting and the delirious outrage against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over allegations he was purposely starving a city to command their submission. How silent media have been since it was proven that Madaya’s tragedy was in fact not President al-Assad’s making; but those militias’ the West has learnt to call “friendly” in its pursuit of regime change.
In a report for The Independent, Robert Fisk paints a reality too many journalists have sought to avoid – whether for financial comfort or ethical apathy.
Mr Fisk writes:
“This is the untold story of the three-and-a-half-year siege of two small Shia Muslim villages [Nubl and Zahra] in northern Syria. Although their recapture by the Syrian army – and by Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Iraqi Shia militias – caught headlines for a few hours three weeks ago, the world paid no heed to the suffering of these people, their 1,000 “martyrs”, at least half of them civilians, and the 100 children who died of shellfire and starvation.”
There are many other villages like Nubl and Zahra today which suffer the same pain, and the same radical evil … yet their stories have never been told – worse still, their courage, and their resistance in the face of absolute infamy have never been celebrated.
Blinded by media lies, the public has forgotten that Syria’s war is in fact NOT a civil war, but a war against Terror – which Terror Western powers, and their regional allies: Saudi Arabia and Turkey in the lead, have been only too zealous to enable.
2011 Revolution was but a cover for a very violent takeover aimed at fragmenting Syria. To manifest such explosion of Syria’s sovereignty, war would need first to exacerbate sectarian and ethnic tensions, to then justify Balkanization.
First came Iraq, then Syria, and Libya … which nation will fall next to the madness of the Yinon Plan? From the looks of it, Egypt stands on shaky ground … the last potent military power in a long list of disappeared apparatus.
While war might not be in Egypt’s cards, its make-up does not allow for much sectarianism or ethno-centrism after all, there are many ways to break a country: economically, socially, politically etc …
How is Egypt’s economy faring these days?
As we look at Syria, as we observe the stand of a nation against covert imperialism we would do well to remember those strings being pulled in the darkness.
It is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran who often warned against “the real enemies”, those powers which from afar wield Takfirism to manifest the rising of a new socio-political order.
Will we dare see?
February 25, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Egypt, Israel, Libya, Middle East, Sudan, Syria, Yinon Plan, Zionism |
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Nazareth – Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is drafting legislation that ought to resolve in observers’ minds the question of whether Israel is the democracy it proudly claims to be. The bill empowers a three-quarters majority of the parliament to oust a sitting MP.
It breathes new life into the phrase “tyranny of the majority”. But in this case, the majority will be Jewish MPs oppressing their Palestinian colleagues.
Netanyahu has presented the bill as a necessary response to the recent actions of three MPs from the Balad faction of the Joint List, a coalition of parties representing the often-overlooked fifth of Israel’s population who are Palestinian citizens.
He claims the MPs “sided with terror” this month when they visited Palestinian families in occupied East Jerusalem who have been waiting many months for Israel to return relatives’ bodies.
The 11 dead are among those alleged to have carried out what are termed “lone-wolf” attacks, part of a recent wave of Palestinian unrest. Fearful of more protests, Israel has demanded that the families bury the bodies in secret, without autopsies, and in plots outside Jerusalem.
There is an urgent moral and political issue about Israel using bodies as bargaining chips to encourage Palestinian obedience towards its illegal occupation.
But the three Palestinian MPs also believed they were under an obligation to help the families by adding to the pressure on the Netanyahu government to return the bodies.
Israel’s Palestinian minority has a severely degraded form of citizenship, but it enjoys more rights than Palestinians living under occupation.
When a video of their meeting the families was posted online, however, the Israeli right seized on the chance to defame the MPs. A parliamentary “ethics” committee comprising the main Jewish parties suspended the three MPs for several months. Now they face losing their seats.
This is part of a clear trend. Late last year the government outlawed the northern Islamic Movement, a popular extra-parliamentary political, religious and welfare organisation.
Despite Netanyahu’s statements that the movement was linked to “terror”, leaks to the Israeli media showed his intelligence chiefs had advised him weeks before the ban that there was no evidence to support such accusations.
At the time many Palestinians in Israel suspected Netanyahu would soon turn his sights on the Palestinian parties in the parliament. And so he has.
Balad, which decries Israel’s status as a Jewish state and noisily campaigns for democratic reform, was always likely to be top of his list.
In every recent general election, an election committee dominated by the Jewish parties has banned Balad or its leaders from standing, only to see the Israeli courts reverse the decision.
Now Netanyahu is legislating the expulsion of Balad and throwing down a gauntlet to the courts.
It won’t end there. If Balad is unseated, the participation of the other Joint List factions will be untenable. In effect, the Israeli right is seeking to ethnically cleanse the parliament.
For those who doubt such intentions, consider that two years ago the government raised the electoral threshold for entry to the parliament specifically to exclude the Palestinian factions.
The intention was to empty the parliament of its Palestinian representatives. But these factions put aside their historic differences to create the Joint List.
Netanyahu, who had hoped to see the back of the Palestinian parties at last year’s general election, inadvertently transformed them into the third biggest party. That was the context for his now-infamous warning during the campaign that “the Arabs are coming out in droves to vote”.
The current crackdown on Palestinian parties may finally burst the simplistic assumption – widely accepted in the west – that Israel is a democracy – and not least because its Palestinian minority has the vote.
This argument was always deeply misguided. After Israel’s creation in 1948, officials gave citizenship and the vote to the few Palestinians remaining inside the new borders precisely because they were a small and weak minority.
In exiling 80 per cent of Palestinians from their homeland, Israel effectively rigged its national electoral constituency to ensure there would be a huge Jewish majority in perpetuity.
A Palestinian MP, Ahmed Tibi, summed it up neatly. Israel, he said, was a democratic state for Jews, and a Jewish state for its Palestinian citizens.
In truth, the vote of Palestinian citizens was only ever meant as window-dressing. David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, assumed that the rump Palestinian population would be swamped by Jewish immigrants flooding into the new state.
He miscalculated. The Palestinian minority had a far higher birth rate and maintained its 20 per cent proportion of the population.
None of that would matter had the Palestinian representatives quietly accepted their position as shop-window mannequins.
But in recent years, as Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority has grown ever weaker, confined to small enclaves of the West Bank, the Palestinian MPs in Israel have taken up some of the slack.
That was why the Balad MPs met the Jerusalem families. The PA, barred by Israel from East Jerusalem, has been looking on helplessly as the families have been desperately trying to get their loved ones’ bodies back.
This month Mr Netanyahu said he would surround Israel with walls to keep out the neighbourhood’s “wild beasts”. In his view, there are also wild beasts to be found in Israel’s parliament – and he is ready to erect walls to keep them out too.
Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
February 25, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, Israel, Jerusalem, Palestine, Zionism |
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