US Training Daesh Detainees for Recruitment Into Illegal Militant Groups in Syria, Russia Says
By Henry Batyaev – Sputnik – 11.11.2020
US instructors are training around 30 Daesh detainees from the Al-Hawl camp in Syria with the purpose of recruiting them to illegal armed formations, the head of the Russian-Syrian co-ordination centre for refugees return said on Wednesday.
The prisoners underwent a two-month course of special training under the guidance of US instructors, Mikhail Mizintsev said at the opening of the Damascus International Conference on the Return of Refugees.
“Those who benefit from this situation should understand the wisdom of the proverb: They that sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind”, Mizintsev warned.
Russia has repeatedly called on the United States to disband hundreds of refugee camps on the territories outside Syrian government control, including the biggest ones such as al-Rukban and al-Hawl.
The Al-Hawl camp is located in the north of Syria controlled by the Arab-Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). According to various estimates, the camp is home to 65,000-70,000 refugees, mostly women and children from the families of Daesh militants.
Syria and Russia have repeatedly expressed concerns over the plight of those living in the camp located in the area occupied by US-backed forces.
Australia’s War Crimes and Culture of impunity
By Ramona Wadi | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 8, 2020
There is yet no reckoning for Australia’s SAS war crimes in Afghanistan, although details of horrendous atrocities are coming to light. A 2016 report detailing the extent of torture and extrajudicial killings by the Australian SAS forces in Afghanistan have been described as “fuelled by blood lust”, and compared on a scale to the infamous torture and murder practices at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.
The 2016 report which has recently been seen by two leading Australian news outlets, was compiled by sociologist Dr Samantha Crompvoets. Testimonies of war crimes, accompanied by the normalisation of such action and recurring impunity, have been characterised by a reliability in narration among different participants, pointing towards routine practices that escalated over time.
Notably, the report points towards an adulation of violence. The Australian special forces working alongside British and US counterparts held up the latter as the pinnacle of violence to emulate. However, the torture and killing of Afghan civilians by the Australian SAS is held on a par in terms of desensitisation and normalisation. A report earlier in March this year, which is based upon the witnessing of an execution of an Afghan man, states, “The visual image to me was, the guy had his hands up and then it was almost like target practice for that soldier.”
Human rights organisations in Australia and Afghanistan have called upon the Australian government to release the inquiry report into war crimes committed by the SAS, which commenced in 2016, in a manner which would hold the country accountable to upholding International Humanitarian Law. The open letter makes an important point that resonates even in relation to other countries subject to foreign intervention and impunity for the perpetrators. It states, “The Afghan people have remained trapped in an unbroken cycle of a 40 year long conflict which is profoundly rooted in a culture of impunity, with many actors operating in total disregard of local and international laws and norms in the firm belief that nobody will ever hold them accountable.”
Under the guise of foreign intervention and the democracy narrative which is used to sell war to the public, impunity for human rights violations is being cultivated. The lack of accountability is related to several processes, including policy, leadership failure, and dysfunctional communication between divisions; the latter amounting to secrecy that develops further possibilities for impunity.
One story featured in Australian media in March this year detailed the killing of an Afghan man who posed no threat to soldiers, and whose corpse was chewed upon by an assault dog. In another case captured on camera, another Afghan man, again posing no danger, is shot three times at point blank range – for no other reason than abuse of power, as indicated by the perpetrator.
Democracy and war crimes go hand in hand when it comes to foreign intervention and the bloody trail they leave behind. In an investigation by the Australian Defence Forces (ADF), the soldier who killed the Afghan man in a field was exonerated and is still serving in the Australian special forces; the narrative being that the victim had been seen with a radio, despite evidence to the contrary.
Such coverups are a regular occurrence which serve to perpetrate additional human rights violations. It is possible that the Australian government, as indicated by Defence Minister Linda Reynolds, will agree to publish parts of the report for “transparency” this month. The so-called War on Terror has unleashed a brand of state terror on targeted countries which so far has been met with an ingrained reticence from leaders to investigate accusations of war crimes. Between the bureaucratic delays of the International Criminal Court, and opposition to the institution by world leaders intent on saving the culture of impunity, there is little chance of implementing justice unless the international justice system is pressured to work against the globalisation of war.
Under US Commands, SDF Seizes Civilian Houses in Hasakah, Northeastern Syria
Houses in al-Hasakah city, specifically in “al-Barad al-Alee” street inside the security square in the city, taken on October 26, 2017. Photo credit: STJ
By Khaled Iskef | American Herald Tribune | November 2, 2020
SDF members stormed a residential complex in the “Al-Nashwa Al-Sharia” neighborhood of Hasakah city and seized houses there by force after expelling its residents at gunpoint.
Local sources said that “SDF” members, after threatening the residents and demanding they evacuate the houses, stormed the residential complex and seized a number of Syrian governmental buildings which are the General Company for Water Projects and the General Company for Roads and Bridges.
Twenty families of government employees were displaced, who have lived in the neighborhood for decades and found themselves without shelter under the SDF threat to use weapons against their families if they refrain from evacuating. The sources pointed out that the targeted housing complex oversees the government buildings which US forces have captured and taken as their bases since residents of the complex can watch the transfer of weapons and ammunition in addition to US forces’ operations in the region.
“SDF” members also stormed the housing association dwellings of officers, non-commissioned officers, and members of the Syrian Army in the “Al-Omran” neighborhood in Hasakah city, and told the residents to evacuate within 48 hours. The dwellings contain 100 houses that belong to the retired officers and non-commissioned officers and their inheritors who have bought the houses within years, but SDF targeted them as well in the implementation of US orders.
The Return of the Democrats and the Undead Past
By Martin Sieff | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 2, 2020
The partisan swallowing of ridiculous anti-Russia conspiracy theories by Democrats in Congress added to Hunter Biden’s truly sleazy business adventures in Ukraine have created an exceptionally dangerous brew to threaten and demonize Russia if former Vice President Joe Biden wins the U.S. national election on November 3. All the curses and bungles of America’s past 20 years will rise up anew to threaten the nation’s entire future,
If Joe Biden wins the election, we face an unprecedented situation in U.S. and global affairs since the beginning of the Atomic Age in 1945-49:
The problem is far deeper and more dangerous than any personal problem with Biden or his apparently sleazy son (Hunter Biden’s business dealings with both Ukraine and China cry out for serious honest congressional inquiries in the interests of sane and disinterested U.S. future relations with China and Ukraine – as well as with Russia.)
The real problem is that for eight years the Obama administration, in which Joe Biden was the putative Number Two figure engaged on a Helter-Skelter, crazed descent towards mindless confrontation with Russia and also institutionalized a reckless and plain wicked policy of toppling governments around the world in straight defiance of international law.
The true architect of these policies was neither Obama nor Biden but their first secretary of state Hillary Clinton. It was she who ordered the CIA to collect DNA samples of Latin American national leaders, an unprecedented seven of whom contracted cancers, some of them exceptionally rare and virulent, including two democratically elected presidents of Brazil and the late democratically elected president of Brazil Hugo Chavez who died of his.
Clinton also unleashed the dogs of chaos and war across the Middle East by approving the undermining and successful toppling of the government of Libya and the undermining although unsuccessful efforts to topple the government of Syria. This unleashed a ferocious civil war, the greatest catastrophe the Middle East has seen since Iraq’s attack on Iran in 1980, also at the time recklessly supported by an ignorant and incompetent president Jimmy Carter.
Carter, like Obama after him was ludicrously ignorant of international affairs. Both presidents allowed themselves to be led by the nose through the region by Zbigniew Brzezinski who served as Carter’s national security adviser. Brzezinski’s eagerness to embrace and support the very worst Islamist genocidal extremist groups was exceeded only by his lifelong, unwavering hatred of Russia and all Russians.
Clinton was succeeded as secretary of state in Obama’s second term starting in January 2013 by a far more experienced, restrained and responsible figure, Senator John Kerry. Kerry rightly worked hard and well with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to prevent the reckless and destructive policies of the rest of the administration from totally destroying constructive communications between Washington and Moscow.
But Kerry could not control even his own State Department. He proved utterly unable to rein in the neo-conservative and neo-liberal super-hawks with whom Clinton had seeded the State Department led by Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland. They joined forces with crazed right wing warmongers like the late Senator John McCain (now sanctified, but whose uncontrollable screaming rages were legendary in his days on Capitol Hill).
Together with ambitious plotters in the European Commission in Brussels they manipulated the toppling of the stable, democratically elected government of Ukraine in the 2014 violent Maidan coup in Kiev. McCain and Nuland actually addressed the violent revolutionaries and openly exhorted them to topple their own democratic and previously peaceful government.
The Kremlin moved – in reality with careful and considered restraint – to safeguard the democratically expressed wishes of the population of Crimea to rejoin Russia, and of the Russian ethnic majorities in the eastern provinces of Ukraine. But the Obama administration joined forces with the openly neo-Nazi movements that had seized undemocratic control in Kiev.
Over the following six years to the present, successive U.S. congresses have voted enormous sums of financial aid and sophisticated weapons systems to be sent to Ukraine with the express purpose of killing Russian soldiers and Russian-supported forces. It is no wonder that false and entirely undocumented reverse accusations have now been lodged against Russia by the very same individuals who have supported the forces of violence, revolution and aggression for so long in Ukraine.
President Donald Trump, to his great credit, ran on for election in 2016 on a policy of reducing tensions with Russia and restoring a state of stable coexistence with the other main thermonuclear power on the planet. At no point did he advocate stripping the United States of its defenses.
On the contrary, Trump doubled up on Obama’s unprecedented more than $1 trillion nuclear weapons modernization program. He expanded spending on both conventional and strategic weapons on the largest scale seen since the Reagan-Caspar Weinberger buildup 40 years before.
Nevertheless, Trump was then subjected to the most unfounded, ridiculous political witch hunt against a sitting national leader in U.S. history – at least since President John Kennedy was openly and repeatedly accused of treason for seeking to reduce the dangers of nuclear confrontation after the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Through all of this, hatred and unreasoning accusations against Russia were accompanied by attempted efforts even to destroy the property and economic security of the Russian people. Congress imposed punitive sanctions (they failed completely) with Democrats taking the lead.
Why revisit all this history? It is because, as the great and wise American novelist William Faulkner understood, “The past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past.”
If the Democrats regain power in Washington, they will return with all the dire and insanely dangerous policies and obsessions they displayed for eight years under Obama and Biden. But those hatreds and prejudices will be superheated by four years of Russiagate fantasies and raving accusations against Russia unsupported by any serious evidence. Indeed, they have been coolly exposed and refuted indeed by many courageous and principled former senior U.S. officials and scholars.
Nevertheless, this Undead Past will rise up, more terrible and destructive than any fantasy of werewolves and zombies, to demolish our Present and horrifically curse our Future.
Green Party, Libertarian presidential candidates on Israel-Palestine
By Alison Weir | If Americans Knew | October 29, 2020
Howie Hawkins and Jo Jorgensen are also on the ballot – and unlike Trump and Biden, they and their running mates appear to be remarkably independent of the Israel lobby…
Libertarian Party
Presidential candidate Dr. Jo Jorgensen
Jorgensen is on the ballot in all 50 states.
In a Q&A on her website she stated:
Q: Should the U.S. continue to support Israel?
A: No, we should not give aid to any foreign nationsQ: Should it be illegal to join a boycott of Israel?
A: NoQ: Should Jerusalem be recognized as the capital of Israel?
A: It’s none of our business
Related statements:
Q: Should the U.S. go to war with Iran?
A: NoQ: Do you support the killing of Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani?
A: NoQ: Should the military be allowed to use enhanced interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding, to gain information from suspected terrorists?
A: NoQ: Should the U.S. provide military aid to Saudi Arabia during its conflict with Yemen?
A: NoQ: Should the government increase or decrease military spending?
A: DecreaseQ: Should the U.S. accept refugees from Syria?
A: YesQ: Should the U.S. send ground troops into Syria to fight ISIS?
A: NoQ: Should the military fly drones over foreign countries to gain intelligence and kill suspected terrorists?
A: NoQ: Should foreign terrorism suspects be given constitutional rights?
A: Yes, give them a fair trial and shut down Guantanamo BayQ: Should the United States pull all military troops out of Afghanistan?
A: YesQ: Should the U.S. formally declare war on ISIS?
A: NO
Time to Stand Up and Be Counted
By Craig Murray | October 29, 2020
Today, nothing is more important than to say that we will not be silent on the dreadful oppression of the Palestinian people; the daily beatings, killings, humiliations, demolitions, expropriations and destruction of groves that are the concomitant of Israeli illegal occupation.
We will never be browbeaten into silence on the slow genocide of the Palestinian people.
Nobody with any grasp on the location of their right mind believes Jeremy Corbyn to be an anti-Semite. Nobody with any grasp on their right mind believes the Labour Party is now anything but the substitutes’ bench for the Neoconservative team. Under Keir Starmer, the Labour Party has failed to oppose the granting of legal powers to the security services to kill, torture, entrap, forge and fake with impunity. It has failed to oppose the limitation of prosecution of British soldiers for war crimes. The Labour Party now seeks to erase all trace that it might once have been a party that offered an alternative to the right wing security state.
As Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer pressurised Swedish prosecutors who wished to drop the case against Julian Assange, to persist in order that he might be rendered to the USA. He further persuaded them not to interview Julian here, which is standard practice when he was never charged but only wanted for questioning, and which would have reduced Julian’s ordeal by four years.
Starmer received £50,000 in personal donations from lobbyist Sir Trevor Chinn to fund his leadership bid.
It is perfectly plain that Starmer’s aim in suspending Corbyn is to drive the mass membership that Corbyn attracted out of the Labour Party, and make it a reliable arm of the right wing security state. He wants the Labour Party to be financially dependent not on its members, who have annoying principles, but on donors like Chinn.
The media and political elite have attained their aim; there is no longer any point in voting in Westminster elections. A right wing government supporting the neo-con status quo and the ever tightening security state is now firmly guaranteed and cannot be influenced by a Westminster election.
‘Psychos’ fueled by ‘blood lust,’ Australian special forces tortured and executed prisoners in Afghanistan – report
RT | October 28, 2020
A disturbing new report blows the lid on the shameful conduct of Australian special forces soldiers in Afghanistan, accusing them of waging a campaign of torture and murder across the war-torn country, and hiding the evidence.
When Australia’s elite SAS soldiers would raid villages in Afghanistan, they brought terror and death with them, a report seen by Melbourne newspaper The Age alleges. The special forces “would take the men and boys to these guest houses and interrogate them, meaning tie them up and torture them,” the report states.
By the time the SAS units left, “the men and boys would be found dead, shot in the head, sometimes blindfolded and throats slit. These are corroborated accounts,” it continues, comparing the alleged war crimes to the My Lai massacre of the Vietnam War, and to the US’ mistreatment of detainees in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.
The report was commissioned by then-Army chief Angus Campbell in 2016, and an upcoming Inspector-General report into war crimes by senior judge Paul Brereton has confirmed many of its findings, The Age claimed. Compiled by defense consultant Samantha Crompvoets, the report is based on interviews with soldiers and whistleblowers, who told Cormpvoets some grizzly tales of “competition killing and blood lust.”
In one instance, two “14-year-old boys suspected of being Taliban sympathisers had their throats slit … the bodies were bagged and thrown into a nearby river.” In others, unarmed Afghans were shot in the back as they ran away.
According to the report, war crimes allegations made by NGOs and SAS staff were quashed by the special forces leadership in Afghanistan. Soldiers involved in these crimes allegedly covered them up, and expected their comrades to keep quiet. Meanwhile, the perpetrators “gloated about” their killings.
“Soldiers would do bad stuff to fit in. It becomes part of the banter,” one witness recalled. Another stated: “guys just had this blood lust. Psychos. Absolute psychos. And we bred them.”
Despite the gruesome details revealed in the report, the Australian operators were envious of their British and American counterparts, one informant told Crompvoets.
“Whatever we do, though, I can tell you the Brits and the US are far, far worse. I’ve watched our young guys stand by and hero worship what they were doing, salivating at how the US were torturing people,” the informant said.
Crompvoets’ report alleges that the majority of crimes were committed by a small group of patrol commanders. Brereton’s inquiry found the same, The Age reported. The newspaper said that Brereton will make war crimes referrals to the Australian Federal Police for a number of these soldiers, charges that will be contested by the Department of Defence.
Australian troops have been deployed in Afghanistan since 2001, with combat operations ceasing in 2014. Around 150 Australian soldiers and civilian staff remain in the country in support and advisory roles.
Leaked papers: UK ran secret training & PR op for Syrian militants costing millions, despite knowing risks
By Kit Klarenberg | RT | October 27, 2020
A swath of what appear to be secret Foreign & Commonwealth Office documents outline a multimillion-pound British effort to train rebel fighters in Syria via private companies, knowing but brushing off the risk of jihadist hijack.
The documents released by the hacktivist collective Anonymous appear to expose a variety of covert actions undertaken by the UK government against the Syrian state over many years.
The overriding objective behind them all, the papers suggest, was to destabilise the government of Bashar Assad, convince Syrians, Western citizens, foreign governments, and international bodies that the Free Syrian Army (FSA) was a legitimate alternative, and flood media the world over with pro-opposition propaganda.
The dimensions of the assorted information warfare operations implied in the papers, some of which have been detailed by the Grayzone Project, were vast. In a representative example, “social enterprise” firm ARK, founded by veteran Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) operative Alistair Harris, “rebranded” the Syrian Military Council, “softening the Free Syrian Army’s image” in order to “distinguish it from extremist armed opposition groups and establish the image of a functioning, inclusive, disciplined and professional military body.”
Training ‘credible and effective’ militants
At least one cog in this cloak and dagger connivance was overtly militant in nature. From August 2016, a consortium of private contractors ran a programme for the FCO, through which “training, equipment, and other forms of support” was provided to the FSA’s ‘Southern Front’ coalition, to “foster a negotiated political transition, support moderate structures and groups in opposition held areas of Syria, counter violent extremism and prevent the establishment of a terrorist safe-haven.”
Under its clandestine auspices, up to 600 belligerents were trained every year the operation ran, an indeterminate total – the endeavour was dubbed MAO B-FOR (Moderate Armed Opposition Border Force Capability Project), and forecast to cost the FCO £15,767,599.
B-FOR’s ‘statement of requirements’ document sets out in succinct detail Whitehall’s objectives in pursuing the project.
“The aim… is to generate pressure on the Assad regime and on extremists, in the south the country… If MAO border groups are better able to secure and maintain control of specific areas of responsibility across liberated near-border communities along Syria’s southern border with Jordan… the MAO will demonstrate its tangible value to the local and international community as an effective security actor… This will reinforce perceptions that there is a credible and effective moderate opposition able to provide support for an alternative pathway to political transition,” the project tender states.
In practical terms, fighters in “international borders under MAO control” and “areas bordering MAO control under the control of another entity or under no control” – the Jordan-Syria border being the FCO’s “current priority area” – were intended to be “better able to control their AOR [areas of responsibility] through effective use of relevant tactics, operations, equipment, infrastructure, and ability to react to a changing tactical situation.”
To this end, the UK government provided a “dedicated training site” in Jordan “at no cost” to project contractors. The site is situated 45 minutes from the Jordanian capital, Amman, according to an annotated Google Earth snapshot found among the leaked papers. The 600-acre expanse comprised “accommodation, ablution, dining, classrooms, driving track, outside rural environment areas, and open space for equipment storage solutions.” In particular, trainees were to be tutored in the effective use of AK-47s, PK machine guns, and pistols, with 175 fighters able to be accommodated on-site at a time, four weeks the maximum period they could be tutored there continuously.
Contractors were also asked to ensure the project took into account, among other things, Whitehall’s “policy toward gender” – a reflection, just like the tender’s references to “reinforcing perceptions,” of B-FOR’s strong psychological component.
‘Kill, Burn and Loot’
In response, global advisory firm Adam Smith International (ASI) apparently submitted an extensive proposal to the department, offering to head a consortium of contractors, comprised of Pilgrims Group, Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), Oakas, and GlenGulf.
We have reached out to the companies for comment.
In terms of project roles, ASI – which according to the proposal had been operating in Syria since early 2013, and boasted “well over” 100 field staff in the country – was to provide “strategic stakeholder engagement, project management, project leadership positions, conflict research and analysis and monitoring and evaluation functions.” Pilgrims Group – said to have “supported a large number of media organisations operating in Ukraine” – was tasked with “training delivery, initial military skills assessment, training programme design.”
KBR – which has reaped untold millions from a variety of US conflicts, been embroiled in numerous high-profile scandals, and was reportedly nicknamed “Kill, Burn & Loot” by US marines during the Iraq War – had responsibility for “manning procurement and logistics functions,” including providing the facility’s “quartermaster, storemen and a liaison officer at the key port of entry for imported goods.” Oakas was to offer “bespoke training for MAO command elements (‘battle staffs’) on decision making and planning,” and GlenGulf the “provision of training to officers and commanders on human intelligence gathering and management.”
Excerpt from alleged ASI document
Accompanying project staff CVs reveal many individuals involved in B-FOR were senior UK military veterans, who all received sizeable three-figure per diem fees for their participation. For instance, its ranks included a former senior British military advisor to US Central Command, experience ASI claims granted him “in-depth knowledge” of the Syrian “context.”
US-backed rebel front collapses
Part of that context at the time would’ve been the virtual collapse of Southern Front as a serious fighting force. Formed in February 2014 at the behest of the US Military Operations Command (MOC) in Jordan, the Front was a coalition of 50-60 rebel groups. As ASI’s proposal notes, its constituent factions were “given various types of support from the MOC,” including “small arms, artillery, anti-tank guided missiles, ammunition, vehicles, communications equipment, and uniforms,” the Command also paying fighters’ salaries.
Washington’s largesse was fundamental in the Front scoring a series of victories over government forces throughout 2014 and the first half of the next year. In the process, it became the largest rebel umbrella organization in southern Syria, comprising 25-30,000 fighters, and challenging the political and military dominance of Salafist Al-Nusra, the region’s then-largest jihadist group. The mainstream media widely promoted the Front as Western leaders’ best hope of achieving a “moderate” Syrian “revolution” – despite many of its units frequently cooperating and collaborating with Al-Nusra.
However, an over-ambitious attempt by the Front to wrest the city of Deraa’s northern and eastern districts from government control in June 2015 ended in embarrassing failure. The cataclysm led to almost total cessation of MOC support, which in turn meant the Front lost much of its operational capabilities and many of its fighters, who defected in droves to other rebel groups offering salaries. Saudi Arabia subsequently stepped in to provide weapons and fresh funding to the ailing force – B-FOR represented London’s illicit contribution to keeping it functional, and ASI’s proposal makes clear the consortium well-understood the many risks attached to the project.
Risks known, responsibility offloaded
A lengthy section of ASI’s proposal – ‘oversight and management of threats and risks’ – details some of these myriad hazards, along with their likelihood and impact. It was considered highly probable, for instance, groups such as Al-Nusra and ISIS would interfere in the program, “due to perceptions of an ‘international political agenda’” – as a result, extremists “may seek to prevent trainees from joining or inhibit them from fulfilling their functions once trained via kidnap, assault and theft of equipment.”
The possibility that the consortium’s curated fighters may choose or be forced to join other, non-border force Southern Front operations, in turn “[leading] to a weakening of the border capability and perception of UK support to active military operations,” was rated as “medium.” Border force trainees collaborating with extremist actors and/or committing human rights abuses, in the process compromising “the legal and reputational viability of the programme,” was likewise considered of “medium” likelihood and impact.
ASI’s proposed method of dealing with these and other dangers was almost invariably to simply “transfer” responsibility for “owning and managing” the problem to the FCO itself, even suggesting the UK government must simply “tolerate” failings such as the loss of equipment “to a reasonable degree.”
It seems the FCO either acquiesced to shouldering the inherent burdens, or was intensely relaxed about such issues, for the consortium was duly awarded the B-FOR contract, judging by other papers found in the leak.
Non-Disclosure Agreements signed June 10, 2016 by the firms involved indicate they were obliged to adhere to the stringent confidentiality requirements of the 1911 and 1989 Official Secrets Acts, forbidding them from “disseminating any information related to the project to any third party.” Meticulous instructions for disposing of ‘secret’, ‘restricted’, and ‘confidential’ FCO communications were also included.
‘Jihadis You Pay For’
It’s uncertain how many years, or perhaps months, B-FOR endured. Its ‘statement of requirements’ forecast the project would “cover a period until 31st March 2019 with a clause for a breakpoint at the end of each financial year.”
However, in February 2017, a report by Parliament’s international development committee found ASI staff had submitted fake testimonials from aid recipients to a House of Commons inquiry into its activities, set up in response to allegations the firm had been seeking improper financial benefit from UK aid spending.
In response, DfID blocked the company from bidding on future government contracts, and the next month, ASI’s three founding executives resigned. Even more damningly, in December that year, a BBC Panorama documentary (Jihadis You Pay For) exposed how FCO cash ASI distributed in Syria had ended up in extremists’ pockets.
The investigation focused on the FCO’s Access to Justice and Community Security (AJACS) program, under which ASI funded and trained the Free Syria Police, an unarmed civilian force set up to re-establish law and order in opposition-controlled areas.
It found ASI had identified links between several FSP stations and sharia courts run by Al-Nusra and not ended its funding of the stations, or compelled them to sever all connections with the courts – FSP officers in theoretical receipt of FCO funds via ASI had also been present when women were stoned to death. Troublingly, ASI’s B-FOR pitch states its “experience and knowledge” of running AJACS will be “leveraged” to ensure optimal delivery of the border project.
Whether B-FOR was quietly shelved or simply handed over to other contractors in response to these damaging exposures is unknown. In any event, in July 2018, the Front was comprehensively crushed by pro-government forces, its surrendering fighters either agreeing to reconciliation deals or fleeing to Idlib.
It’s also unknown how many fighters trained via the program went on to join jihadist groups, and how much equipment was “lost” over the course of its operation, ending up in the hands of extremists and used to slaughter and maim innocent civilians. The companies running the operation, much less the UK government, certainly weren’t keeping count.
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. Follow Kit on Twitter @KitKlarenberg
Saudi-led coalition, mercenaries working with al-Qaeda, Daesh in Yemen: Foreign Ministry
Press TV | October 25, 2020
The Foreign Ministry of Yemen’s National Salvation Government says the Saudi-led coalition engaged in a campaign against the country as well as the allied militiamen loyal to former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur are closely working with al-Qaeda and the Daesh Takfiri terrorists.
The ministry, in two separate identical letters addressed to the United Nations and the UN Security Council on Saturday, elaborated on clean-up operations carried out by Yemeni armed forces and fighters from the Popular Committees against al-Qaeda and Daesh terror cells in the central province of Bayda.
The letters emphasized that there were foreign nationals, mostly Saudi citizens, among the militant commanders and combatants slain in the operations.
Large amounts of weapons, bombs and explosive belts were also seized.
The foreign ministry highlighted that the Saudi-led alliance has been providing al-Qaeda and Daesh with air cover as of ‘March 26, 2015,’ in addition to monetary, military and logistical support, medical care, and facilitation of their free movement.
The letters read that the Yemeni army forces and the Popular Committees fighters had recovered sophisticated weapons and military equipment ‘only in the inventory of countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United States.’
The Yemeni foreign ministry underlined that it has obtained documents that disclose Saudi Arabia’s support for al-Qaeda and Daesh terrorists, including monthly payrolls and military ID cards.
Documents have also been discovered proving a number of al-Qaeda and Daesh operatives were treated in hospitals in Saudi Arabia and the central Yemeni province of Ma’rib.
“Prior to and after the al-Bayda Operation, a number of al-Qaeda and Daesh elements fled to some occupied areas, including those in Ma’rib, and hid within the ranks of Saudi-sponsored Hadi loyalists,” the foreign ministry said.
It added, “The relationship between al-Qaeda and Daesh with the aggressors and traitors has reached a point where the leaders of these two groups hold high positions in Hadi’s ousted government. Some of these elements have been designated by the US Treasury Department as sponsors of terrorism, though.”
The letters said the Aden-based Yemeni administration had called for the release of 96 al-Qaeda and Daesh terrorists during negotiations on the exchange of prisoners being held by the National Salvation Government in Sana’a.
Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched the war on Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing Hadi’s government back to power and crush the popular Houthi Ansarullah movement. Ansarullah, backed by armed forces, has been valorously defending Yemen against the alliance.
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New Book
The Garlic Book — 2026
Lies are Unbekoming | November 5, 2026
What The Garlic Book shows
The book is in four parts.
Part One, The Record, treats the history of garlic as evidence. From the clay garlic bulb placed in an Egyptian grave nearly six thousand years ago, through the Ebers Papyrus, through Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Pliny and Galen, the Arab physicians under Avicenna, the medieval herbals, Culpeper, and the plague years, to the last era in which Western physicians prescribed garlic as a matter of course, which ran from 1850 to 1945. It closes with the living traditions that never stopped using it, and with the folklore of charms, vampires and the evil eye.
Part Two, The Chemistry and the Evidence, sets out what is known about why a clove has no smell until it is cut, and why the order of crush, rest and heat changes the medicine. It then reads the clinical evidence against the historical record — bacteria, blood and vessels, cancer epidemiology, metals and fatigue — and names the trials that went against garlic as directly as the trials that went for it, including the 2007 Stanford trial funded by the US National Institutes of Health which found that raw garlic, garlic powder and aged garlic extract moved LDL cholesterol no more than placebo did. It then turns to onion, garlic’s closest relative, and reads the newer evidence published since 2015, before closing with the whole of the record through the terrain lens.
Part Three, Why Medicine Set It Aside, asks the question directly. One chapter contrasts the pharmaceutical model of isolating a single active compound with the folk model of combining whole plants, and reports what the garlic evidence says about which model works better. One chapter examines the economics of research on a plant that cannot be patented. One chapter — Fire Cider — tells the story of a folk preparation whose name was taken into a United States trademark by a Massachusetts company in 2012, and won back by three herbalists in 2014 who documented forty years of prior use through Rosemary Gladstar and her students into the older tradition.
Part Four, Garlic in Practice, is the working manual — the kitchen pharmacy, traditional uses by body system, a full chapter on safety and interactions, and a complaint-by-complaint practical guide. The book closes with The Trial That Was Never Run — a one-chapter reading of the whole evidential architecture.
At the back: two appendices (a traditional list of uses, and a preparation quick-reference), a full bibliography, and a live index.
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Irish ‘fake news’ expert exposed as fake
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- Revive Iran’s MOU Deal or Face a Forever War /John Mearsheimer
- Kafr Qasim at 70: The massacre Israel still hasn’t owned up to
- Would President Vance really ditch Israel?
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- Britain’s Online Censorship Law Now Comes With a Crisis Plan for Your Posts
- If Americans Knew
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- No Tricks Zone
- Zonal Asymmetry of Temperature Change in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current
- New Study: The Net Fossil Fuel Contribution To Rising Atmospheric CO2 Has Been Zero For 500 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Transition Becoming Increasingly Expensive…Another 6 Trillion Euros!
- Sudden Stratospheric Warming, Powerful El Niño Combination May Lead To Extreme Europe Cold, Energy Crisis!
- Two New Studies Find Thwaites Glacier Melt Cannot Be Driven By Human Activity Or A Warming Ocean
- E-Cars Reduce CO2 Emissions By Only 41% Compared To Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
