Archives: Articles

By Eric Zuesse

On December 16th, the Russian Senator, Konstantin Kosachev, who heads that body’s foreign-affairs committee, went public accusing the U.S. Government of coercing German corporations to abandon their investments in the key Russia-EU gas-pipeline project, which is now nearing completion. It’s a joint project of Russia and of corporations in some EU countries. He called this U.S. pressure against European corporations an affront to the national sovereignty of both the German and the Russian Governments, and, more broadly, an affront against the sovereignty of the entire EU, which, he pointed out, is not like America’s NATO alliance with Europe is, an instrumentality of war, but is supposed to be, instead, an economic and political union — an instrumentality of peaceful international cooperation, not of any sort of international coercion.

Here is the historical context and background to this:

In recent decades, the U.S. Constitution’s clause that requires a congressional declaration of war before invading any country, has been ignored. Furthermore, ever since 2012 and the passage by Congress of the Magnitsky Act sanctions against Russia, economic sanctions by the U.S. Government have been imposed against any company that fails to comply with a U.S.-imposed economic sanction; a company can even be fined over a billion dollars for violating a U.S. economic sanction. And, so, sanctions are now the way that the U.S. Congress actually does authorize a war — the new way, no longer the way that’s described in the U.S. Constitution. However, in the economic-sanctions phase of a war — this initial phase — the war is being imposed directly against any company that violates a U.S.-ordered economic sanction, against Russia, Iran, or whatever target-country the U.S. Congress has, by means of such sanctions, actually authorized a war by the U.S. to exist — a ‘state of war’ to exist. For the U.S. Congress, the passage of economic sanctions against a country thus effectively serves now as an authorization for the U.S. President to order the U.S. military to invade that country, if and when the President decides to do so. No further congressional authorization is necessary (except under the U.S. Constitution). This initial phase of a war penalizes only those other nations’ violating companies directly — not the target-country. Though the U.S. Government punishes the violating corporation, the actual target is the targeted (sanctioned) country. Sanctions are being used to strangle that target. The fined companies are mere ‘collateral damage’, in this phase of America’s new warfare. In this phase, which is now the standard first phase of the U.S. Government’s going-to-war, the U.S. Government is coercing corporations to join America’s economic war, against the given targeted country — in this case, it’s a war against Russia; Russia is the country that the U.S. Government wants to strangle, in this particular instance.

On Tuesday, 11 December, the U.S. House of Representatives voted unanimously (no member objected), by voice vote — unrecorded so that nobody can subsequently be blamed for anything — that President Donald Trump should impose penalties, which could amount to billions of dollars, against any EU-based corporation that participates with Russia in Russia’s Nord Stream II Pipeline to supply gas to Europe. This “Resolution,” H.Res.1035, is titled “Expressing opposition to the completion of Nord Stream II, and for other purposes,” and it closes by asserting that the U.S. House of Representatives “supports the imposition of sanctions with respect to Nord Stream II under section 232 of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act.” With no member objecting, the U.S. House thereby warns corporations to cease doing business with Russia, because the U.S. Government is determined that any such business will be terminated and will maybe also be fined. The U.S. Government imposes its will as if it were the dictator to the entire world, and without even needing to use its military, but just economic coercion.

The U.S. Senate doesn’t yet have a similar bill, but the unanimous passage of this one in the House constitutes a strong warning to Europe’s corporations, that unless they obey the U.S. sanctions, huge financial penalties will be imposed upon them. There are not many issues on which the U.S. Congress is even nearly 100% united in agreement, but during this phase, the introductory phase, of America’s war against Russia, the war against Russia is certainly among those few instances — entirely bipartisan.

According to Russian Television, on December 12th, headlining “US lawmakers want to put a cork in Russia’s gas pipeline to Europe”: “On Monday, Austria’s OMV energy group CEO Rayner Zele stated that the company is set to continue financing the pipeline next year. OMV has already invested some 531 million euros ($607 million) into the project, Zele told Ria Novosti. In early December, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas also said that Berlin’s abandoning the project would not make sense as Russia will still go on with it. Germany earlier rebuked Trump’s criticism of the project after the US leader accused Berlin of being a ‘captive’ of Moscow citing Germany’s alleged dependency on natural gas from Russia.”

If the U.S. Government fails to strangulate the economies in the countries such as Russia and Iran against which it has imposed sanctions, then the next step, of course, would be some type of armed invasion of the given targeted country. Before the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, America’s economic sanctions killed from 100,000 to 500,000 Iraqi children, but then the U.S. invaded and destroyed the country vastly more than just that.

Economic sanctions are an attempt to coerce a targeted courntry’s — in effect — surrender, but without needing to use a military invasion as the coercive means. Any sanctioned country is therefore in America’s bomb-sights, and will be conquered in one way or another, unless the U.S. Government backs down, at some point.

According to the most extensive study that was ever done of U.S. military bases worldwide, there are over a thousand such bases, and this is a huge multiple of all non-U.S. military bases put together. That study was published in 1995. Many new U.S. military bases have been built and manned since 1995, such as several dozen in just one country, Syria, where the sovereign Government has never invited them in and many times has ordered them to leave, but they refuse to leave. Currently, the U.S. Government spends more than half of all monies that are being spent worldwide on the military.

Regarding the Nord Stream II Pipeline, the beneficiaries if that Pipeline is never completed and placed into service, will be American LNG (Liquified Natural Gas) producers, and also America’s allies such as Saudi Arabia and Israel. World War III could actually start as a result of the U.S. Government’s serving America’s (and its allies’) fossil-fuels producers above all other concerns regarding not only global warming, but even world peace itself. Those are the interests that are, in effect, at war against the entire world. This is not a statement of opinion: it is established and well-demonstrated fact. It is the overwhelmingly documented reality.

Here, translated by me and slightly abbreviated, is the December 16th statement that was made by Russia’s Senator Kosachev, the Chairman of the International Affairs Committee:

A categorical statement by the United States on Nord Stream 2, calling for Germany to abandon it, and for the European Union to rally the ranks “against Russian aggression” is a clear and unceremonious interference into the affairs of sovereign nations, to which the United States has no right to have any official opinion. …

Washington’s attempts to dominate and interfere in the affairs of other states are extremely dangerous for the whole world and destructive for international cooperation. This line directly contradicts the interests of any countries that are not US satellites. And it obviously contradicts the interests of Russia.

And if Russia followed solely its own egoistic interests, we should just as unceremoniously intervene in, say, the trade disputes of Washington and Beijing on the side of our Chinese ally, in the NAFTA crisis, in order to impose upon the US additional problems regarding its relations with both Canada and Mexico, or the fates of the Transatlantic and Trans-Pacific partnerships, where the United States is again working hard. To do that would be proceeding from the American principle, “the worse it is for our competitor, the better it is for us”.

We do not do that. Firstly, because Russia respects the sovereignty of other nations and never interferes in their internal affairs. Secondly, because, in principle, it is not proper for a world power to behave in such a way. …

What especially disappoints me in this situation [is] … Germany’s silence. The United Statyes is actually encroaching on Germany’s rights. That silence is disappointing, as is the EU’s passivity, which doesn’t respond to the intrusion of Americans into their sovereign affairs. The European Union is not NATO. …

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010.

17 December 2018

Source: countercurrents.org

By Jonathan Cook

Nazareth: Two years of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu as a Middle East peacemaking team appear to be having a transformative effect – and in ways that will please neither of them.

The American public is now evenly split between those who want a two-state solution and those who prefer a single state, shared by Israelis and Palestinians, according to a survey published last week by the University of Maryland.

And if a Palestinian state is off the table – as a growing number of analysts of the region conclude, given Israel’s intransigence and the endless postponement of Mr Trump’s peace plan – then support for one state rises steeply, to nearly two-thirds of Americans.

But Mr Netanyahu cannot take comfort from the thought that ordinary Americans share his vision of a single state of Greater Israel. Respondents demand a one-state solution guaranteeing Israelis and Palestinians equal rights.

By contrast, only 17 per cent of Americans expressing a view – presumably Christian evangelicals and hardline Jewish advocates for Israel – prefer the approach of Israel’s governing parties: either to continue the occupation or annex Palestinian areas without offering the inhabitants citizenship.

All of this is occurring even though US politicians and the media express no support for a one-state solution. In fact, quite the reverse.

The movement to boycott Israel, known as BDS, is growing on US campuses, but vilified by Washington officials, who claim its goal is to end Israel as a Jewish state by bringing about a single state, in which all inhabitants would be equal. The US Congress is even considering legislation to outlaw boycott activism.

And last month CNN sacked its commentator Marc Lamont Hill for using a speech at the United Nations to advocate a one-state solution – a position endorsed by 35 per cent of the US public.

There is every reason to assume that, over time, these figures will swing even more sharply against Mr Netanyahu’s Greater Israel plans and against Washington’s claims to be an honest broker.

Among younger Americans, support for one state climbs to 42 per cent. That makes it easily the most popular outcome among this age group for a Middle East peace deal.

In another sign of how far removed Washington is from the American public, 40 per cent of respondents want the US to impose sanctions to stop Israel expanding its settlements on Palestinian territory. In short, they support the most severe penalty on the BDS platform.

And who is chiefly to blame for Washington’s unresponsiveness? Some 38 per cent say that Israel has “too much influence” on US politics.

That is a view almost reflexively cited by Israel lobbyists as evidence of anti-semitism. And yet a similar proportion of US Jews share concerns about Israel’s meddling.

In part, the survey’s findings should be understood as a logical reaction to the Oslo peace process. Backed by the US for the past quarter-century, it has failed to produce any benefits for the Palestinians.

But the findings signify more. Oslo’s interminable talks over two states have provided Israel with an alibi to seize more Palestinian land for its illegal settlements.

Under cover of an Oslo “consensus”, Israel has transferred ever-larger numbers of Jews into the occupied territories, thereby making a peaceful resolution of the conflict near impossible. According to the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, that is a war crime.

Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor of the court in The Hague, warned this month that she was close to finishing a preliminary inquiry needed before she can decide whether to investigate Israel for war crimes, including the settlements.

The reality, however, is that the ICC has been dragging out the inquiry to avoid arriving at a decision that would inevitably provoke a backlash from the White House. Nonetheless, the facts are staring the court in the face.

Israel’s logic – and proof that it is in gross violation of international law – were fully on display this week. The Israeli army locked down the Ramallah, the effective and supposedly self-governing capital of occupied Palestine, as “punishment” after two Israeli soldiers were shot dead outside the city.

The Netanyahu government also approved yet another splurge of settlement-building, again supposedly in “retaliation” for a recent upsurge in Palestinian attacks.

But Israel and its western allies know only too well that settlements and Palestinian violence are intrinsically linked. One leads to the other.

Palestinians directly experience the settlements’ land grabs as Israeli state-sanctioned violence. Their communities are ever more tightly ghettoised, their movements more narrowly policed to maintain the settlers’ privileges.

If Palestinians resist such restrictions or their own displacement, if they assert their rights and their dignity, clashes with soldiers or settlers are inescapable. Violence is inbuilt into Israel’s settlement project.

Israel has constructed a perfect, self-rationalising system in the occupied territories. It inflicts war crimes on Palestinians, who then weakly lash out, justifying yet more Israeli war crimes as Israel flaunts its victimhood, all to a soundtrack of western consolation.

The hypocrisy is becoming ever harder to hide, and the cognitive dissonance ever harder for western publics to stomach.

In Israel itself, institutionalised racism against the country’s large minority of Palestinian citizens – a fifth of the population – is being entrenched in full view.

Last week Natalie Portman, an American-Israeli actor, voiced her disgust at what she termed the “racist” Nation-State Basic Law, legislation passed in the summer that formally classifies Israel’s Palestinian population as inferior.

Yair Netanyahu, the prime minister’s grown-up son, voiced a sentiment widely popular in Israel last week when he wrote on Facebook that he wished “All the Muslims [sic] leave the land of Israel”. He was referring to Greater Israel – a territorial area that does not differentiate between Israel and the occupied territories.

In fact, Israel’s Jim Crow-style policies – segregation of the type once inflicted on African-Americans in the US – is becoming ever more overt.

Last month the Jewish city of Afula banned Palestinian citizens from entering its main public park while vowing it wanted to “preserve its Jewish character”. A court case last week showed that a major Israeli construction firm has systematically blocked Palestinian citizens from buying houses near Jews. And the parliament is expanding a law to prevent Palestinian citizens from living on almost all of Israel’s land.

A bill to reverse this trend, committing Israel instead to “equal political rights amongst all its citizens”, was drummed out of the parliament last week by an overwhelming majority of legislators.

Americans, like other westerners, are waking up to this ugly reality. A growing number understand that it is time for a new, single state model, one that ends Israel’s treatment of Jews as separate from and superior to Palestinians, and instead offers freedom and equality for all.

A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism.

17 December 2018

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Vacy Vlazna

Trump’s declaration on recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of the Israeli state and the transfer of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is the natural continuation of 100 years of colonization in Palestine and the 1917 Balfour Declaration. It is part and parcel of the ongoing attempt to liquidate Palestinian rights and to accelerate the ethnic cleansing of our people, especially in Jerusalem.Ahmad Sa’adat

Why the sudden Australian foreign policy shift on the matter of Jerusalem?

Initially PM Scott Morrison’s captain’s call to move the Australian embassy to Jerusalem was a desperate ploy to garner the Jewish vote in the October Wentworth by-election. The Morrison government was then warned against changes to Australia’s status on Jerusalem by its own Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Defence Department and ASIO.

The largest Muslim nation, Indonesia, Australia’s neighbour and largest trading partner, expressed its objection indicating the bilateral defence cooperation commitment may be threatened as well as $16.5 billion free trade (trade with Israel is worth $1.5 billion) agreement under negotiation.

At the East Asia Summit in Singapore, Malaysian PM Dr Mahathir’s reasonable prediction that an Australian embassy move was “adding to the cause for terrorism” was met by virulent condemnations of antisemitism by Australia’s Jewish treasurer, Josh Frydenberg.

On 11 December, PM Morrison announced that Australia intended to formally recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel but, due to a $200 million cost, would delay moving its embassy from Tel Aviv.

On 15 December, at the pro-Israel Sydney Institute, Morrison announced a quasi-compromise; it recognised West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital preempting Jerusalem’s status as a corpus separatum to be resolved solely between Palestine and Israel.

The tone of his speech was like a comedy spoof of Moses carrying aloft divine pronouncements for his daring deliverance of Palestine and Israel – except there was nothing divinely newfangled to be heard. It amounted to a hardshell of the hackneyed ‘conventional wisdom’ replete with ambiguities and hasbara-cliches:

• Repeated slavish adherence to the dead, departed, defunct, belly-up two state solution.
• Israel = victim : Morrison bemoaned that there was “biased and unfair targeting of Israel,” “Israel is bullied” by “anti-Semitic agenda masquerading as defence of human rights” and “ritual denunciations of Israel, ” Israelis “live under existential threat”

 

• but he was stridently silent on Palestinian suffering under Israeli brutal occupation. Morrison, the zionist apologist extinguished“what Rabbi Jonathan Sacks called the “five cardinal sins against human rights: racism, apartheid, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and attempted genocide.”

with

• “Think about it: a nation of immigrants; with a free press; parliamentary democracy; financially prosperous; the source of tremendous innovation in the world; and a refuge from persecution and genocide, is somehow the centre of cruelty in the world.”

Talk about ‘intellectual fraud’!

• The on-cue regurgitation of Israeli official propaganda that Palestine’s resistance movement under Hamas = terror.

 

• He stated, ‘the Australian Government has also resolved to acknowledge the aspirations of the Palestinian people for a future state’ but to date Australia has not joined the 137 nations that have recognised the State of Palestine and under Morrison’s direction Australia abstained on UN Resolutions that condemn Israel.

 

• The ‘rancid stalemate’ of Morrison’s moral retardation is no more evident than in his pious insolence that Australia has an entitlement to be an important voice for Israel; ‘We have turned up; we have played our part; we have done our share and we have paid the price through great sacrifice. That’s what gives us a microphone on this topic’. To back this up he rolls out the Battle of Beersheba but not the British -Anzac Sarafand Massacre as well as Australia’s key role in drawing up the partition of Palestine omitting that there was no legal mandate to do so,“The United Nations had no business offering the nation of one people to the people of many nations. Its General Assembly had neither the legal nor the legislative powers to impose such a resolution or to convey title of a territory; Articles 10, 11 and 14 of the UN Charter bestows the right on the General Assembly merely to recommend resolutions.”

 

It appears that Australian securitypressure has watered down Morrison’s gung ho recognition to only West Jerusalem. On 14 December, the Department of Foreign Affairs warned Australians going to popular Indonesian holiday destinations to “exercise a high degree of caution” recalling PM Mahathir prediction of possible retaliatory terror attacks against Australians. On the bright side, Morrison’s diluted endorsement has unwittingly put his ‘great friend’ in a bind: – of the 610,000 illegal settlers in the West Bank, 215, 000 live in East Jerusalem which was illegally annexed in 1967.

That said, what could be moving Morrison to doggedly rush Australia to the edge of a political precipice?

Someideas are worth considering:

1.A) There is an alarming racist i.e. OK to be whiteJudeo-Christian arrogance underlying the Morrison government that overlooks the religious significance of the Noble Sanctuary in Jerusalem on which stands the third holiest site in Islam where the Prophet Mohammed ascended to heaven for 1.8 billion devoted Muslims, and underestimates their intelligence to see that the Australian ratification of West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is identical to moving its embassy to Jerusalem and is therefore a political and religious threat.

1.B) The right-wing conservative coupin August replaced the quasi-secular PM Malcolm Turnbull who refused to move the Australian embassy in respect for the UN position

“The abiding position of the United Nations on Jerusalem was that the city remained a final status issue to be determined through a comprehensive, just and lasting solution to be negotiated between the two sides concerned on the basis of relevant United Nations resolutions and other agreements”

withtheir man, Scott Morrison, who openly identifies as an evangelical and pentecostal member of the The Australian Christian Churches.

Morrison stressed that “politics is about doing what you believe in”.. of concern is what he and his evangelical brethren believe:

Pentecostalism is a charismatic evangelical faith. Evangelical Christians take the authority of the Bible as absolute and believe in the fulfilment of”the “prophecy” of the conversion of the Jews, the second coming of Jesus, the final judgment, and the end of the world — the events referred to as the biblical apocalypse” when only believers would rise in Rapture with Jesus to heaven.

Unconverted Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists Sikhs, Jews, Athiests, Taoists etc etc will perish in hell.

About 15 million American Christian Zionists, such as US vice-president Pence, together with the Jewish Lobby have a powerful political influence on the White House that advances Israel’s violent expansionism in Palestine,

“evangelicals who backed Donald Trump in the presidential election have since been pressuring him to pursue policies in line with positions embraced by the settler movement. These include moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and enabling new settlement construction in the West Bank.”Haaretz

Millions of evangelical dollars are directed to the illegal settlements and invested in the very settlement businesses that the Palestinian BDS movement targets. The mutually exploitative relations between the evangelicals and Jewish Israelis is like two cannibals greedily feasting on each other,

Persico explains why evangelicals are such avid supporters of Israeli settlers and Jewish claims to the entire West Bank. For these groups, he says, “it is essential that Israel control Jerusalem and the entire Promised Land, in order to set in motion the events of the much anticipated Armageddon. The settlers, of course, do not believe this narrative, but they are happy to take advantage of evangelical beliefs in it.”Haaretz

Ideologically, assuming Jesus died to save all humanity, then the essence of Christianity is Agapic equality. So, logically the flaw within the evangelical fulfilment of biblical prophecy is that it is radically exclusive therefore UnChristian. So following on, disrespecting Jerusalem as a Muslim Holy Site and abandoning the political and human rights of Palestinian families to save your own skin is UnChristian, immoral and repugnant (and fantastical).

1.C) Is Morrison rushing through the controversial recognition of the biblical capital because he may only a small window of opportunity before he is likely defeated in the 2019 May election?

If religious expedience is a factor overriding the serious consequences of the conservatives’ recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state, then Morrison’s zealousrapture for Jerusalem is challenging the separation of church and state in the Australian democracy, challenging Australian political and economic relationships with neighbouring Asian partners, challenging world peace and may well shake up an Australia’s political apocalypse.

Dr. Vacy Vlazna is Coordinator of Justice for Palestine Matters and editor of a volume of Palestinian poetry.

16 December 2018

Source: countercurrents.org

By John Scales Avery

The UN Security Council alone has the power to impose sanctions

According to the Charter of the United Nations, only the UN Security Council has a mandate by the international community to apply sanctions (Article 41) that must be complied with by all UN member states (Article 2,2). Therefore sanctions on Iran, unilatterally imposed by the United States government, are illegal. They are a violation of the United Nations Charter. With amazing hubris and arrogance, the US government has imposed sanctions on various countries, including Iran. In the case of Iran, these sanctions have caused the suffering of millions of innocent people, who are unable to buy medicines for serious illnesses, and whose financial security is threatened by the economic damage produced by US sanctions. Although other nations realize that the US sanctions are a violation of international law, they nevertheless comply because they fear US financial reprisals.

Who is Meng Wanzhou?

Meng Wanzhou is the Chief Financial Officer of Huawei, the world’s largest telecom equipment manufacturer. She is also the daughter of Huawei’s founder. While flying from Hong Kong to Mexico, Ms. Meng was changing planes at the Vancouver International Airport when she was suddenæy detained by the Canadian government on an August US warrent. She faces extadition to a

New York City courtroom, where she could receive up to thirty years in federal prison for having allegedly conspired in 2010 to violate America’s unilateral (and illegal) trade sanctions against Iran.

The US is drifting towards facism

The kidnaping of Ms. Meng is yet another example of the almost insane hubris and arrogance of the present government of the United States. Insane is not not too strong a word, since many psichiatrists consider Donald Trump to be mentally unstable. Furthermore, Trump’s racism and his advocacy of violence are worryingly similar the the facists of the 1930’s, such as Hitler and Mussolini. It is clear from Trump’s actions that the present government of the United States no longer belongs to the American people. It belongs instead to corporate oligarchs, to Wall Street, and to the Israel Lobby. Trump’s advocacy of fossil fuels is an existential threat to the future of human civiluzation and the biosphere. Will he be re-elected in 2020? Worryingly we can remember that Hitler was legally elected, but retained his power through illegal means.

Leader of the Free World?

Just as the United States once declared its independence from Britain, so Europe and the remainder of the world ought to declare independence from the United States. Chearly, insane arrogance, hubris, contempt for international law, racism and many of the aspects of facism, do not deserve to be blindly followed. Whatever moral authority the United States may once have had has evaporated in a seemingly endless series of aggressive foreign wars and drone killings. If we must have leaders (and it is not clear that we must), China might not be a bad choice.

John Scales Avery is a theoretical chemist at the University of Copenhagen.

16 December 2018

Source: countercurrents.org

By Andre Vltchek

Yes, there is rubble, in fact total destruction, in some of the neighborhoods of Homs, Aleppo, in the outskirts of Damascus, and elsewhere.

Yes, there are terrorists and ‘foreign forces’ in Idlib and in several smaller pockets in some parts of the country.

Yes, hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives and millions are either in exile, or internally displaced.

But the country of Syria is standing tall. It did not crumble like Libya or Iraq did. It never surrendered. It never even considered surrender as an option. It went through total agony, through fire and unimaginable pain, but in the end, it won. It almost won. And the victory will, most likely, be final in 2019.

Despite its relatively small size, it did not win like a ‘small nation’, fighting guerilla warfare. It is winning like a big, strong state: it fought proudly, frontally, openly, against all odds. It confronted the invaders with tremendous courage and strength, in the name of justice and freedom.

Syria is winning, because the only alternative would be slavery and subservience, and that is not in the lexicon of the people here. The Syrian people won because they had to win, or face the inevitable demise of their country and collapse of their dream of a Pan-Arab homeland.

Syria is winning, and hopefully, nothing here, in the Middle East, will be the same again. The long decades of humiliation of the Arabs are over. Now everyone ‘in the neighborhood’ is watching. Now everybody knows: The West and its allies can be fought and stopped; they are not invincible. Tremendously brutal and ruthless they are, yes, but not invincible. The most vicious, fundamentalist religious implants can be smashed, too. I said it before, and I repeat it here again: Aleppo has been the Stalingrad of the Middle East. Aleppo and Homs, and other great courageous Syrian cities. Here, fascism was confronted, fought with all might and with great sacrifice, and finally deterred.

*

I sit in the office of a Syrian General, Akhtan Ahmad. We speak Russian. I ask him about the security situation in Damascus, although I already know. For several evenings and nights, I have been walking through the narrow winding roads of the old city; one of the cradles of human race. Women, even young girls, were walking as well. The city is safe.

“It is safe,” smiles General Akhtan Ahmad, proudly. “You know it is safe, don’t you?”

I nod. He is a top Syrian intelligence commander. I should have asked more, much more. Details, details. But I don’t want to know details;not right now. I want to hear again and again that Damascus is safe, from him, from my friends, from the passers-by.

“Situation is now very good. Go out at night…”

I tell him that I have. That I have been doing it since I arrived.

“No one is afraid, anymore”, he continues. “Even in the places where terrorist groups used to operate, life is returning to normal… The Syrian government is now providing water, electricity. People are returning to the liberated areas. East Ghouta was liberated only 5 months ago, and now you can see shops opening there, one after another.”

I get several permits signed. I take the General’s photo. I get photographed with him. He has nothing to hide. He is not afraid.

I tell him that at the end of January of 2019, or in February at the latest, I want to travel to Idlib, or at least to the suburbs of that city. That’s fine; I just have to let them know a few days in advance. Palmyra, fine. Aleppo, no problem.

We shake hands. They trust me. I trust them. That’s the only way forward – this is still a war. A terrible, brutal war. Despite the fact that Damascus is now free and safe.

*

After I leave General’s office, we drive to Jobar, on the outskirts of Damascus. Then to Ein-Tarma.

There, it is total madness.

Jobar used to be a predominantly industrial area, Ein-Tarma a residential neighborhood. Both places had been reduced almost entirely to rubble. In Jobar I am allowed to film inside the tunnels, which used to be used by the terrorists; by the Rahman Brigades and by the other groups with direct connection to Al-Nusrah Front.

The scene is eerie.Formerly these factories offered tens of thousands of jobs to the people of the capital city. Now, nothing moves here. Dead silence,just dust and wreckage.

Lieutenant Ali accompanies me, as I climb over debris. I asked him what took place here. He replies, through my interpreter:

“This place was only liberated in April 2018. It was one of the last places that was taken from the terrorists. For 6 years, one part was controlled by the ‘rebels’, while another by the army. The enemies dug tunnels, and it was very difficult to defeat them.They used every structure they could get their hands on, including schools. From here, most of the civilians managed to escape.”

I asked him about the destruction, although I knew the answer, as my Syrian friends used to live in this area, and told me their detailed stories. Lieutenant Ali confirmed:

“The West was feeding the world with propaganda, saying that this was destruction caused by the army. In fact, the Syrian army was engaging the rebels only when they were attacking Damascus. Eventually, the rebels retreated from here, after the Russian-sponsored talks with the government.”

*

A Few kilometers further east, in Ein-Tarma, things are very different. Before the war, this used to be a residential neighborhood. People used to live here, mostly in the multi-story buildings. Here, the terrorists hit hard at the civilians. For months or even years, families had to live in terrible fear and deprivation.

We stopped at the humble shop selling vegetables. Here, I approached an elderly lady, and after she agreed to it, I began filming.

She spoke, and then she shouted, straight into the camera, waving her hands:

“We lived here like cattle. The terrorists treated us like animals. We were scared, hungry, humiliated. Women: terrorists would take 4-5 wives, forcing young girls and mature women into so-called marriages. We had nothing; nothing left!”

“And now?” I asked.

“Now? Look! We live again. We have a future. Thank you; thank you, Bashir!”

She calls her president by his first name. She points palms at her heart, and after kissing them, she waves her hands again.

There is nothing to ask, really. I just film. She says it all, in two minutes.

As we are leaving, I realize that she is most likely not old; not old at all. But what has happened here broke her in half. Now she is living; she is living and hoping again.

I ask my driver to move slowly, and I begin filming the road, broken and dusty, but full of traffic: people walking, bicycles and cars passing by, negotiating potholes. In the side streets, people are hard at work, rebuilding, cleaning rubble, cutting fallen beams. Electricity is getting restored. Glass panels fitted into the scratched wooden frames. Life. Victory; all this is bittersweet, because so many people died; because so much has been destroyed. But lifeit is, despite everything;life again. And hope; so much hope.

*

I sit with my friends, Yamen and Fida, in a classic, old Damascus café, called Havana. It is a real institution; a place where Ba’ath Party members used to meet, during the old and turbulent days. Photographs of President Bashir al-Assad are displayed, prominently.

Yamen, an educator, recalls how he had to move from one apartment to another, on several occasions during the recent years:

“My family used to live right next to Jobar. Everything around there was getting destroyed. We had to move. Then, at a new location, I was walking with my little son, and a mortar had landed near us. Once I saw building in flames. My son was crying in horror. A woman next to us was howling, trying to throw herself into flames: ‘My son is inside, I need my son, give me my son!’In the past, we couldn’t predict from where the danger would arrive, and when. I lost several relatives; family members. We all did.”

Fida, Yamen’s colleague, is taking care of her ageing mother, every day, when she gets back from work. Life is still tough, but my friends are true patriots, and this helps them to cope with the daily challenges.

Over a cup of strong Arabic coffee, Fida explains:

“You see us laughing and joking, but deep inside, almost all of us are suffering from deep psychological trauma. What took place here was tough; we all saw terrible things, and we lost our loved ones. All this will stay with us, for many years to come. Syria does not have enough professional psychologists and psychiatrists to cope with the situation. So many lives have been damaged. I am still scared. Every day. Many people have been terribly shaken.”

“I feel sorry for my brother’s children. They were born into this crisis. My tiny nephew… Once we were under a mortar attack. He was so scared. Children are really badly affected!Personally,I am not afraid of getting killed. I am frightened of losing my arm, or leg, or not being able to take my mom to the hospital, if she was to be feeling sick. At least my ancestral city, Safita, has always been safe, even during the worst days of the conflict.”

“Not my Salamiyah,” laments Yamen:

“Salamiyah used to be just terrible. Many villages had to be evacuated… Many people died there. To the East of the city were the positions of Al-Nusrah, while the west was held by the ISIS”.

Yes, hundreds of thousands of the Syrian people were killed. Millions forced to leave the country, escaping both the terrorists and the conflict as well as poverty thatrodeon the tail of the fighting. Millions have been internally displaced;the entire nation in motion.

The previous day, after leavingEin-Tarma, we drove near Zamalka and Harasta. Entire huge neighborhoods were either flattened, or at least terribly damaged.

When you see the Eastern suburbs of Damascus, when you see the ghost buildings without walls and windows, with bullet holes dotting the pillars, you think that you have seen it all. The destruction is so huge; it looks like an entire big city was just blown up to pieces. They say this eerie landscape doesn’t change for at least 15 kilometers.The nightmare goes on and on, without any interruption.

So yes, you tend to think that you have seen it all, but actually you haven’t. It is because you have not visited Aleppo, nor visited Homs, yet.

*

For several years, I have been fighting for Syria.I was doing it from the peripheries.

I managed to enter the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and to file reports about the brutality and cynicism of the occupation.

For years, I covered life in the refugee camps, and ‘around them’. Some camps were real, but others were actually used as training fortresses for the terrorist, who were later injected into Syrian territory, by NATO. Once I almost disappeared while filming Apayadin, one of such ‘institutions’, erected not far from the Turkish city of Hattay (Atakya).

I ‘almost’ disappeared, but others actually did die. Covering what the West and its allies have been doing to Syria is as dangerous as covering the war inside Syria itself.

I worked in Jordan, writing about the refugees, but also about the cynicism of the Jordanian collaboration with the West. I worked in Iraq where, in a camp near Erbil, the Syrian people were forced by both the NGO and the UN staff, to denounce President Assad, if they wanted to receive at least some basic services. And of course, I worked in Lebanon, where more than one million Syrian people have been staying; often facing unimaginably terrible conditions as well as discrimination (many are now going back).

And now that I was finally inside,it all felt somehow surreal, but it felt right.

Syria appeared to be as I expected it to be: heroic, brave, determined, and unmistakably socialist.

*

Homs. Before I went there, I thought that nothing could surprise me, anymore. I have worked all over Afghanistan, in Iraq, Sri Lanka, East Timor. But soon I realized that I had seen nothing, before I visited Homs.

The destruction of several parts of the city is so severe that it resembles thesurface of another planet, or a fragment from some apocalyptic horror film.

People climbing through the ruins, an elderly couple visiting what once used to be their apartment, a girl’s shoe that I find in the middle of the road, covered by dust.A chair standing in the middle of an intersection, from which all four roads leadtowards the horrid ruins.

Homs is where the conflict began.

My friend Yamen explained to me, as we were driving towards the center:

“Here, the media ignited hatred; mostly the Western mass media. But also, there were the channels from the Gulf: Al-Jazeera, as well as television and radio stations from Saudi Arabia.Sheik Adnan Mohammed al-Aroor was appearing, twice a week, on a television program which was telling people to hit the streets, banging on pots and pans; to fight against the government.”

Homs is where the anti-government rebellion began, in 2011. The anti-Assad propaganda from abroad soon reached a crescendo. The opposition was ideologically supported by the West and by its allies. Rapidly, the support became tangible, and included weapons, ammunition, as well as thousands of jihadi fighters.

A once tolerant and modern city (in a secular country), Homs began changing, getting divided between the religious groups. Division was followed by radicalization.

My good friend, a Syrian who now lives in both Syria and Lebanon, told me his story:

“I was very young when the uprising began. Some of us had certain legitimate grievances, and we began protesting, hoping that things could change for better. But many of us soon realized that our protests were literally kidnapped from abroad. We wanted a set of positive changes, while some leaders outside Syria wanted to overthrow our government. Consequently, I left the movement.”

He then shared with me his most painful secret:

“In the past, Homs was an extremely tolerant city. I am a moderate Muslim, and my fiancé was a moderate Christian. We were very close. But the situation in the city was changing rapidly, after 2011. Radicalism was on the raise. I repeatedly asked her to cover her hair when she was passing through the Muslim neighborhoods. It was out of concern, because I was beginning to clearly see what was happening around us. She refused. One day, she was shot, in the middle of the street. They killed her. Life was never the same again.”

In the West, they often say that the Syrian government was at least partially responsible for destruction of the city. But the logic of such accusations is absolutely perverse. Imagine Stalingrad. Imagine foreign invasion; an invasion supported by several hostile fascist powers. The city fights back, the government tries to stop the advancement of the troops of the enemy. The fight, terrible, an epic fight for the survival of the nation goes on. Who is to blame? The invaders or the government forces who are defending their own fatherland? Can anyone accuse the Soviet troops for fighting in the streets of their own cities that were attacked by the German Nazis?

Perhaps the Western propaganda is capable of such ‘analyses’, but definitely no rational human being.

The same logic as to Stalingrad, should also apply to Homs, to Aleppo, and to several other Syrian cities. Covering literally dozens of conflicts ignited by the West all over the world (and described in detail in my 840-page long book“Exposing Lies Of The Empire”), I have no doubts: the full responsibility for the destruction lies on the shoulders of the invaders.

*

I face Mrs. Hayat Awad in an ancient restaurant called Julia Palace. This used to be the stronghold of the terrorists. They occupied this beautiful place, located in the heart of the old city of Homs. Now, things are slowly coming back to life here, at least in several areas of the city. The old market is functioning, the university is open, and so are several government buildings and hotels. But Mrs. Hayat lives in both past and the future.

Mrs. Hayat lost her son, Mahmood, during the war. His portrait is always with her, engraved into a pentel she is wearing on her chest.

“He was only 21 years old, still a student, when he decided to join the Syrian army. He told me that Syria is like his mother. He loves her, as he loves me. He was fighting against the Al-Nusrah Front, and the battle was very tough. At the end of the day he called me, just to say that the situation was not good. In his last call he just asked me to forgive him. He said: ‘Maybe I am not going to come back. Please forgive me. I love you!’”

Are there many mothers like her, here in Homs, those who lost their sons?

“Yes, I know many women who lost their sons; and not just one, sometimes two or three. I know a lady who lost her two only sons. This war took everything from us. Not only our children. I blame the countries which supported the extreme ideologies injected into Syria; countries like the United States and those in Europe.”

After I am done filming, she thanks Russia for their support. She thanks all the countries that have stood by Syria, during those difficult years.

Not far from Julia Palace, reconstruction work is in full swing. And just a few steps away, a renovated mosque is re-opening. People are dancing, celebrating. It is Prophet Mohammed’s birthday. The Governor of Homs marches towards the festivities, with the members of his government. There is almost no security around them.

If the West does not unleash yet another wave of terror against its people, Homs should be just fine. Not right away, perhaps not soon, but it will be,with the resolute help of the Russians, Chinese, Iranian and other comrades.Syria itself is strong and determined. Its allies are mighty.

I want to believe that the most terrible years are over. I want to believe that Syria has already won.

But I know that there is still Idlib, there are also pockets occupied by Turkish and Western forces. It is not over, yet. The terrorists have not been fully defeated. The West will be shooting its missiles. Israel will be sending its air force to brutalize the country. And the mass media outlets from the West and the Gulf, will continue fighting the media war, agitating and confusing certain segments of the Syrian people.

Still, as I leave Homs, I see shops and even boutiques opening in the midst of the rubble. Some people are dressing up, elegantly again, in order to show their strength; their determination to put the past behind them and to live, once again, their normal lives.

*

Returning to Damascus, the motorway is in perfect condition and the industrial area in Hassia is getting rebuilt and amplified, too. There is a huge power plant, supported by the Iranians, I am told. Despite the war, Syria is still supplying neighboring Lebanon with electricity.

Yamen drives at 120 km/h and we joke that once we get scared of possible speed traps, instead of snipers, we know that the situation in the country is dramatically improving.

A Russian military convoy is parked at a rest area. Soldiers are drinking coffee. There is no fear. Syrians treat them as if they were their own people.

I see the most spectacular sunset, over the desert.

Then, once again, we pass through Harasta. This time at night.

I want to curse. I don’t; cursing is too easy. I need to get to my computer, soon. I have to write; to work. A lot, the best I can.

*

It is easy to feel at home in Syria. Maybe because Russian is my mother-tongue or perhaps because people here know that I have always stood by their country.

Some bureaucratic hindrances got resolved, quickly.

I met the outgoing Minister of Education, Dr. Hazwan Al-Waz, who is a fellow novelist. We spoke about his writing, about his latest book “Love and War.” He confirmed what I always knew, as a revolutionary novelist:

“During the war, everything is political, even love.”

And then something that I will never forget:

“My Ministry of Education has been, in fact, the Ministry of Defense”.

Last night in Damascus I walked all over the old city, till early morning. At one point, I arrived near the spectacular Umayyad Mosque, finding, right behind it, the mausoleum of Sultan Saladin.

I could not enter. At this late-night hour it was locked.But I could easily see it through the metal bars of the gate.

This brave commander and leader fought against the huge armies of the Western invaders – the Crusaders – winning almost every single battle, finding his peace and final resting place here, in Damascus.

I paid tribute to this ancient fellow internationalist, and I wondered, over a strong coffee in a nearby stall, in the middle of the night: “Did Saladin participate in this latest epic battle fought by the Syrian nation against the hordes of the foreign barbarians?”

Perhaps his spirit did. Or, more likely, some battles were fought and won with his name on lips.

‘I will be back,’ I uttered, walking back towards my hotel, few minutes after midnight. Two massivefurry cats accompanide me, following my steps until the first corner. ‘I will be back very soon’.

Syria is standing. That’s what really matters. It never fell on its knees. And it never will. We will not allow it to fall.

And damned be imperialism!

*

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist.

14 December 2018

Source: countercurrents.org

By Ranjan Solomon

Palestinians are compelled to cope with Israel’s bullying tactics day after day. Israel’s arrogant expansion of the occupation comes with an in-your-face approach to the rest of the world. At the UN, Israel unabashedly shows up and pretends it is the victim of Palestinian aggravation. Israel handily overlooks its colossal human rights violations, its settlement enterprises, its brutal killings and maiming of innocent women, children, youth, and elderly. It embezzles land unapologetically, and converts the heritage pieces of land into machines profit under the garb of heritage tourism.On the other hand, every day brings accounts of Palestinian resistance and growing international solidarity. The world remains unacquainted with accounts of courageous resistance and push backs from Palestine only because a pliant corporate media does not report Palestinian successes sufficiently, If we were to adopt the ‘glass is half-full’ narrative, it is possible to see a crisis in the evolution of Israel. It is constantly fending off criticisms and isolation from businesses, cultural icons, academics, and other dimensions of human encounter that can enrich it as a nation. But Israel has mistakenly chosen to make believe that all is well and that its recognition is universal. Sadly, the truth is poles apart.Israel has often to buy people-to-people exchanges at a huge price – a sort of corrupt inducement in order to make it look like a regular country. The burden of up keeping its image as ‘normal’ prompts Israel to indulge in huge investments in projects of normalization such as birthright tours. But even with the highest level of enticements that Israel offers to exchange scholars, academics, musicians, and just ordinary tourists, it is struggling to alter the narrative. Jewish Voice for Peace, a credible and widely supported/respected Jewish Movement of progressive Jews has urged Young Jews to boycott “Birthright Israel” tours arguing that the campaign “is fundamentally unjust that we are given a free trip to Israel while Palestinian refugees are barred from returning to their homes’. In much the same way, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) initiated in 2004 to steer the struggle for Palestinian freedom, justice and equality has made significant advances with many countries adopting its aims and purposes and collaborating to urge artists, academics, sports teams and others to shun Israeli relations which allow it to keep-up-appearances of normalcy. The boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions is geared to punish Israel for deep and persistent complicity in Israel’s denial of Palestinian rights that are stipulated in international law.The UN, academia, and various influential sources of public opinion are working intensively to change public perception and challenge Israel’s false claims to normalcy. Churches, and theological institutions are also re-interpreting versions of theology that allow Israel to pass off the occupation as a basic human right by falsely presenting Biblical Israel and the Modern State of Israel as one and the same thing. Many of these religious structures are reading the Bible from the eyes of the Palestinians and are emerging as catalysts to co-ordinate new and existing church advocacy for peace, aimed at ending the illegal occupation in accordance with UN resolutions.On the battle a nuclearised, and armed-to the teeth may seem to be marching to victory. On the moral front, Israel looks ailing and decrepit, unable to convince the civilized world that it has a claim to the land it has deceitfully plundered and occupied. Worse, it has, over the years, adopted laws and policies that have made it palpably racist and colonial. Is this tenable and sustainable? Sooner or later, internal dissent will set in with normal Israeli’s being discontented over being the constant antagonist and invader. Already, a small but influential cluster of Israelis reject Zionist-Israel’s ‘political normal’ narrative and are resisting with methods that advance alternative paradigm of Jewish Palestinian Arab relations based on equality and justice in every sphere of life. For them, there are no half-measures of compromises to be had. They are in the camp where they believe which believes that justice must occur even if the heavens fall.

Ranjan Solomon is a widely experienced civil society/human rights/GO leader with varied experiences in organizational transformation and creating social change through advocacy, communications, and issues of education.

14 December 2018

Source: palestineupdates.com

By Seyed Hossein Mousavian

The UN Security Council convened Dec. 12 to address the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). US Secretary of State Pompeo said that Iran’s pace of missile activities has not diminished since the JCPOA and that the United States seeks to reimpose ballistic missile restrictions that were outlined in UN Security Council Resolution 1929. European countries, however, distanced themselves from the United States by saying Iran had been in compliance with the Iran nuclear deal, while at the same time saying the missile tests were in noncomformity with UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which endorsed the nuclear deal. Meanwhile, China and Russia said Iran’s missile tests were not a violation of Resolution 2231.

Iranian officials, including Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, have rejected that there have been any violations, reiterating that the UN resolution does not ban Tehran’s missile activities.

One reason President Trump cited to justify his decision to withdraw the United States from the nuclear deal was Iran’s missile program. Pompeo also demanded that Iran dismantle its ballistic missile program. Iran has repeatedly rejected calls for dismantling its arsenal, insisting that its defensive capabilities are non-negotiable. Moreover, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards warned that if threatened, Tehran would increase the range of missiles to above 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles).

The following interconnected factors shape Iran’s missile policies and its defense strategy:

One is the horrific memories of Iraq’s invasion of Iran in 1980; hundreds of thousands of Iranians died in an eight-year war bankrolled by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and supported by major world powers, including France, the Soviet Union and the United States. The conflict left an indelible mark in the Iranian political psyche that the country must fight for its survival at all costs.

Second, Iraq’s systematic use of Scud missiles to bombard defenseless Iranian cities gave Iran the incentive to begin investing in its ballistic missile program. Over the period of eight years, the Iraqi army launched 533 ballistic missiles on Iranian cities, resulting in 2,300 deaths and injuries to 11,600 Iranians. By the end of war in 1988, Tehran had been attacked 118 times, resulting in 1,600 casualties. In a potential future conflict, Iran can use its inventory to deter and retaliate against an adversary.

Third, the traumatic experience of Saddam Hussein’s systematic use of chemical weapons against Iran, and the international community’s indifference to such violations, has convinced Iran that it cannot rely on international institutions to deter and punish such flagrant violations. A CIA declassified assessment reveals that Iraq began using chemical weapons early in 1983, only to escalate in 1984. Iraq’s 11,000-page report to the UN Security Council listed 150 foreign companies — including from the United States, Germany, and France — that played a role in Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction program.

Fourth, the current imbalance of conventional forces in the region play a critical role in Iran’s missile policies. While Iran has been under an arms embargo for decades, its regional rivals, especially Saudi Arabia, have de facto carte blanche to purchase any advanced weapon systems. With defense spending of $69.4 billion in 2017, the kingdom became the largest arms importer in the world. Meanwhile, Israel, with military spending of $19.6 billion, is equipped with the most-advanced military hardware. In comparison, Iran’s defense spending stood at $14.5 billion, a fraction of its neighbors’.

While Iran’s missile arsenal is the most diverse of its kind in the region, it has voluntarily limited the range of its missiles to 2,000 kilometers. However, Saudi Arabia’s Chinese made DF-3 and Df-21 missiles are reported to have an increased range of 2,800 kilometers (1,740 miles), with some claiming a range of up to 4,000 kilometers.

Fifth, Iran is surrounded by US military forces in the region and a number of nuclear-weapon states, such as Israel and Pakistan. Israel, which has the most hostile relations with Iran, has an inventory of 200 nuclear warheads that are deliverable by ballistic missiles, including Jericho II, with a range of 3,500 kilometers (2,175 miles), Jericho III (6,500 kilometers, or 4,000 miles) and air- and sea-launched warheads.

Last but certainly not the least, over the past four decades, the United States has used economic, cyber and political warfare to isolate and weaken Tehran, and has repeatedly called for regime change in the country. Moreover, the Trump administration has firm intentions to create a new political alliance with six Gulf Arab states, Egypt and Jordan aimed at confronting Iran.

The Nuclear Threat Initiative chaired by former US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz found in a study that between 2005 and 2012, when the world powers imposed the most comprehensive sanctions on Iran, the country developed new, liquid-fuel ballistic missiles and tested at least 33 missiles, more than twice the number of missiles tested in the preceding 20 years. From 2012, when Iran-US high-level direct nuclear talks began, until the signing of the deal in July 2015, Iran conducted only one missile test. The study said that in the 2012-2017 period since the negotiations began, Iran decreased the overall number of tests and focused more on solid-fuel short-range missile capabilities rather than intercontinental ballistic missiles. However, the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag reports that Western intelligence services maintain that Tehran, after Trump’s departure from the nuclear deal, this year has doubled the number of last year’s missile tests.

In such a hostile environment, an acceptable framework to alleviate mutual concerns should address the legitimate security concerns of all parties. Such a framework could include a multilateral arrangement for the establishment of a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East and a regional conventional arms arrangement beneficial to all parties. Otherwise, under current circumstances, where the countries of the region are aggressively arming themselves, it is simply folly to expect that Iran will dismantle the backbone of its defense doctrine.

Seyed Hossein Mousavian is a Middle East security and nuclear policy specialist at Princeton University and a former spokesman for Iran’s nuclear negotiators.

12 December 2018

Source: www.al-monitor.com

By Jeffrey D. Sachs

If, as Mark Twain reputedly said, history often rhymes, our era increasingly recalls the period preceding 1914. And as with Europe’s great powers back then, the United States, led by an administration intent on asserting America’s dominance over China, is pushing the world toward disaster.

The context of the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou – a dangerous move by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration in its intensifying conflict with China – matters enormously. The United States requested that Canada arrest Ms. Meng in the Vancouver airport en route to Mexico from Hong Kong, and then extradite her to the United States. Such a move is almost a U.S. declaration of war on China’s business community. Nearly unprecedented, it puts American business people travelling abroad at much greater risk of such actions by other countries.

The United States rarely arrests senior business people, U.S. or foreign, for alleged crimes committed by their companies. Corporate managers are usually arrested for their alleged personal crimes (such as embezzlement, bribery or violence) rather than their company’s alleged malfeasance. Yes, corporate managers should be held to account for their company’s malfeasance, up to and including criminal charges, but to start this practice with a leading Chinese business person – rather than the dozens of culpable U.S. CEOs and CFOs – is a stunning provocation to the Chinese government, business community and public.

Ms. Meng is charged with violating U.S. sanctions on Iran. Yet, consider her arrest in the context of the large number of companies, U.S. and non-U.S., that have violated America’s sanctions against Iran and other countries. In 2011, for example, JP Morgan Chase paid $88.3 million in fines in 2011 for violating U.S. sanctions against Cuba, Iran and Sudan. Yet Jamie Dimon wasn’t grabbed off a plane and whisked into custody.

And JP Morgan Chase was hardly alone in violating U.S. sanctions. Since 2010, the following major financial institutions paid fines for such violations: Banco do Brasil, Bank of America, Bank of Guam, Bank of Moscow, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Clearstream Banking, Commerzbank, Compass, Crédit Agricole, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, ING, Intesa Sanpaolo, National Bank of Abu Dhabi, National Bank of Pakistan, PayPal, RBS (ABN Amro), Société Générale, Toronto-Dominion Bank, Trans Pacific National Bank (now known as Beacon Business Bank), Standard Chartered and Wells Fargo.

None of the CEOs or CFOs of these sanction-busting banks were arrested and taken into custody for these violations. In all of these cases, the corporation – rather than an individual manager – was held accountable. Nor were they held accountable for the pervasive lawbreaking in the lead-up to or aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, for which the banks paid a staggering US$243 billion in fines, according to a recent tally. In light of this record, Ms. Meng’s arrest is a shocking break with practice. Yes, hold CEOs and CFOs accountable – but start at home in order to avoid hypocrisy, self-interest disguised as high principle and the risk of inciting a new global conflict.

Quite transparently, the U.S. action against Ms. Meng really seems to be part of the Trump administration’s broader attempt to undermine China’s economy by imposing tariffs, closing Western markets to Chinese high-technology exports and blocking Chinese purchases of U.S. and European technology companies. One can say, without exaggeration, that this is part of an economic war on China – and a reckless one at that.

Huawei is one of China’s most important technology companies and therefore a prime target in the Trump administration’s effort to slow or stop China’s advance into several high-technology sectors. America’s motivations in this economic war are partly commercial – to protect and favour laggard U.S. companies – and partly geopolitical. They certainly have nothing to do with upholding the international rule of law.

The U.S. appears to be trying to target Huawei especially because of the company’s success in marketing cutting-edge 5G technologies globally. The U.S. claims the company poses a specific security risk through hidden surveillance capabilities in its hardware and software. Yet the U.S. government has provided no evidence for this claim.

A recent diatribe against Huawei in the Financial Times is revealing in this regard. After conceding that “you cannot have concrete proof of interference in ICT, unless you are lucky enough to find the needle in the haystack,” the author simply asserts that “you don’t take the risk of putting your security in the hands of a potential adversary.” In other words: While we can’t really point to misbehavior by Huawei, we should blacklist the company nonetheless.

When global trade rules obstruct Mr. Trump’s gangster tactics, then the rules have to go, according to him. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo admitted as much last week in Brussels: “Our administration,” he said, is “lawfully exiting or renegotiating outdated or harmful treaties, trade agreements, and other international arrangements that don’t serve our sovereign interests, or the interests of our allies.” Yet before it exits these agreements, the administration is trashing them through reckless and unilateral actions.

The unprecedented arrest of Ms. Meng is even more provocative because it is based on U.S. extra-territorial sanctions – that is, the claim by the U.S. that it can order other countries to stop trading with third parties such as Cuba or Iran. The U.S. would certainly not tolerate China or any other country telling American companies with whom they can or cannot trade.

Sanctions regarding non-national parties (such as U.S. sanctions on a Chinese business) should not be enforced by one country alone, but according to agreements reached within the United Nations Security Council. In that regard, UN Security Council Resolution 2231 calls on all countries to drop sanctions on Iran as part of the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement. Yet the United States. – and only the United States – now rejects the Security Council’s role in such matters. The Trump administration, not Huawei or China, is today’s greatest threat to the international rule of law, and therefore to global peace.

Jeffrey D. Sachs is an American economist and the director of Columbia University’s Center for Sustainable Development.

12 December 2018

Source: theglobeandmail.com

By Dr Binoy Kampmark

In the incessant self-praise of the US imperial project, kept safe in a state of permanently enforced amnesia, occasional writings prod and puncture. Mark Twain expressed an ashamed horror at the treatment of the Philippines; Ulysses Grant, despite being a victorious general of the Union forces in the Civil War and US president, could reflect that his country might, someday, face its comeuppance from those whose lands had been pinched.

In the garrison state that emerged during the Cold War, the New Left provided antidotes of varying strength to the illusion of a good, faultless America, even if much of this was confined to university campuses. Mainstream newspaper channels remained sovereign and aloof from such debates, even if the Vietnam War did, eventually, bite.

The late William Blum, former computer programmer in the US State Department and initial enthusiast for US moral crusades, gave us various exemplars of this counter-insurgent scholarship. His compilation of foreign policy ills in Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, was written with the US as sole surveyor of the land, all powerful and dangerously uncontained. To reach that point, it mobilised such familiar instruments of influence as the National Endowment for Democracy and the School of the Americas, a learning ground for the torturers and assassins who would ply their despoiling trade in Latin America. The imperium developed an unrivalled military, infatuated with armaments, to deal with its enemies. Forget the canard, insists Blum, of humanitarian intervention, as it was espoused to justify NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.

His Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since World War II, remains his best and potently dispiriting affair, one in which Washington and its Christian warriors sought to battle the “International Communist Conspiracy” with fanatical, God-fearing enthusiasm. In this quest, foreign and mostly democratically elected governments were given the heave-ho with the blessings of US intervention. Food supplies were poisoned; leaders were subjected to successful and failed assassinations (not so many were as lucky as Cuba’s Fidel Castro); the peasantry of countries sprayed with napalm and insecticide; fascist forces and those of reaction pressed into the service of Freedom’s Land.

The squirreling academic, ever mindful of nuts, has been less willing to embrace Blum. This has, to some extent, been aided by such curious instances as the mention, by one Osama bin Laden, of Rogue State in a recording that emerged in 2006. “If I were president I could stop terrorist attacks against the United States in a few days. Permanently.” Sales surged at this endorsement from the dark inspiration behind September 11, 2001. “This is almost,” observed Blum wryly, “as good as being an Oprah book.”

Killing Hope, praised by various high priests in academe on its initial release in 1986, morphed. Various extensions and additions were not approved. Blum, considering the US in its vicious full bloom of the post-Cold War, saw the wickedness of the market in Eastern European countries, the hand of US power in sabotaging negotiations between the Muslims, Croats and Serbs in Bosnia that led to an ongoing murderous conflict, and ongoing mischief in the Middle East (the Syrian Civil War, sponsored jihadists).

Much of this, admittedly, finds an audience, if only for the fact that it excuses, to some extent, local factors and failings. Students of imperial history tend to forget the manipulations of local elites keen to ingratiate themselves and sort out problems with the aid of a foreign brute. It is worth pointing out that, in the vastness of US power, a certain incompetence in exercising it has also prevailed.

But the groves of the academy have tended to sway away from Blum for many of the usual reasons: tenure, security and treading carefully before the imperium’s minders. “It merits mention,” poses Julia Muravska, very keen to mind her P’s and Q’s before the academic establishment as a doctoral candidate, “that after the release of the last majorly revised edition in 1995, successive versions of Killing Hope have largely passed under the radar of mainstream punditry and academia, but remained stalwartly cherished not only in left-leaning circles, but also amongst conspiracy theorists and fringe commentators.”

Such is the damning strategy here: to be credible, you must wallow in mainstream acceptance and gain acknowledgment from the approving centre; to be at the fringe is to not merely to be unaccepted but unacceptable. Amnesia is a funny old thing. While Blum’s scholarship at points had the failings of overstretch, a counteracting zeal, his overall polemics, and advocacy, were part of a tradition that continues to beat in an assortment of publications that challenge the central premises of US power.

Much of Blum’s takes remain dangerously pertinent. “Fake news” has assumed a born-again relevance, when it should simply be termed measured disinformation, one that the CIA and its associates engaged in, and still do, with varying degrees of success. The Russians hardly deserve their supposed monopoly on the subject, though they are handy scapegoats.

Blum did well to note an absolute pearler by way of example: the efforts of the CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination and the US Post Office to solicit a letter writing campaign in 1948 to influence the course of Italy’s 1948 elections. American Italians, or so it was thought, were mobilised to swamp the mother country with warnings of atheistic communism and the threat it posed to Catholic authority. Should Italy turn red, US largesse and aid would stop flowing to a country still suffering from the ills of war. Italians known to have voted communist would not be permitted to enter the US.

Some individuals, guided by samples run in newspapers, offered specimens, but it soon became a campaign featuring “mass-produced, pre-written, postage paid form letters, cablegrams, ‘educational circulars’ and posters, needing only an address and signature.” Italian political parties, generally those of centre, could count on the CIA for a helpful contribution.

Empire remains a terrible encumbrance, draining and ruining both the paternal centre and its patronised subjects. It is a salient reminder as to why Montesquieu insisted on the durability of small republics, warning against aggrandizement. Doing so produces the inevitable, vengeful reaction. As Blum surmised, “The thesis in my books and my writing is that anti-American terrorism arises from the behaviour of US foreign policy. It is what the US government does which angers people all over the world.” To that end, his mission, as described to the Washington Post in an interview in 2006, has been one of, if not ending the American empire, then “at least slowing down” or “injuring the beast.”

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

12 December 2018

Source: countercurrents.org

By F. William Engdahl

The ongoing de facto genocide in the Republic of Yemen in a war whose most intense phase began in 2015, has until very recently been all but ignored in the Western mainstream media. What has also been ignored is the fundamental casus belli for the US-backed Saudi war, ostensibly against the Shi’ite Houthi by the Sunni Wahhabite Saudis. As with virtually every war and destabilization since the British first discovered abundant oil in the Persian Gulf over a century ago, the Yemen war is about oil, more precisely about control of oil, lots of oil.

Yemen is a strategically key geopolitical stretch of land at the critical connecting point of the Red Sea which links to the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal and the Indian Ocean. It’s the site of one of the world’s most strategic shipping choke points, the Bab el Mandab, a narrow passage a mere 18 miles distance from Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, making it one of the US Department of Energy’s Oil Transit Chokepoints. According to the US Department of Energy an estimated 4.7 million barrels of oil passesthrough Bab el Mandab in both directions daily, including oil bound for China.

In March 2015 a new civil war raged in Yemen between the group known popularly as Houthis after Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, of the Zaidi sect of Islam. The Zaidi area traditionally moderate group who favors equality of women, something anathema to the Saudi Wahhabites. The Zaidi had ruled Yemen for more than 1,000 years until 1962.

The Houthi movement had forced the ouster of Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh in late 2011 on charges of vast corruption. He was succeeded by Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, Saleh’s Vice President. At that time both Saleh and Hadi were proxy presidents of Saudi influence.

Things began to change when Hadi refused to step down after his mandate expired. His decision to cut subsidies on fuel prices as well as refusing agreed reforms led to his arrest by the Houthi movement forces in early 2015. He managed later to flee to Saudi Arabia on March 25, 2015 and that same day Saudi Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman ordered the start of the ongoing bombing war against Yemen and the Houthis.

By the end of 2015 Prince bin Salman and his coalition in the strangely-named Operation Decisive Storm (remember Desert Storm) had inflicted atrocities on the civilian population of Yemen. Within six months of relentless Saudi-led bombing, the UN declared Yemen a “Level Three” emergency, the highest level. Bombings destroyed critical civilian infrastructure, health facilities and the Saudis blockaded urgently needed food, water and medical aid to an estimated 20 million Yemenis, in violation of international law. Some 2,500,000 Yemeni civilians have been displaced. Famine and cholera are rampant. In short, it is genocide.

Cheney Oil Wars

The roots of the ongoing Yemen war with the Saudi-led coalition of Gulf states can be traced back to the Bush-Cheney Administration in the aftermath of September 11, 2001 and declaration of the so-called War on Terror.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq was about oil. Several US officials admitted so at the time including Paul Wolfowitz.

”You’ve got to go where the oil is. I don’t think about it [political volatility] very much,” Cheney told a meeting of Texas oilmen in 1998 when he was still CEO of Halliburton, the world’s largest oil services company.

As Vice President under Bush Jr, Cheney by all indications architected the US military campaigns of Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld to “take out seven countries in five years,” as General Wesley Clark famously reported it several years later. All those seven are strategic to control of the huge Middle East oil flows to China, to the EU and to the world economy.

In 2004 when the Cheney-Bush “War on Terror” went to Yemen to support then-president Saleh, Saudi domination of Yemen was unquestioned. US and British forces backed Saleh against an uprising by the Houthi minority that began after Saleh tried to arrest Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, the Zaidi religious leader.

By 2015 that US proxy war changed and the Pentagon and Obama Administration quietly backed a full-scale catastrophic Saudi military assault on Yemen.

What is the US or Saudi interest in Yemen? Control of the oil is the short answer, but perhaps not in the usual sense.

In November 2005 the Republic of Yemen expropriated its oil basins — the Marib Al-Jawf Block — from US Hunt Oil Company and ExxonMobil. That was an irritant but not a decisive game-changer. It was in 2014 when the Houthi rebellion against the President, Saudi-backed Hadi, was victorious that the war took a new form. By March 2015 the Houthi-led Supreme Revolutionary Committee declared a general mobilization to overthrow Hadi, after taking over Sana’a and the Yemeni government and proceeding to Aden.

Undiscovered potential

There are two strategic aspects of who is in control of Yemen, especially the areas now in control of the Houthi. One is the mentioned geostrategic control of oil flows passing Bab el Mandab in the Horn of Africa. The second is the control of the largely untapped oil wealth of Yemen itself.

In 2002 a public report by the US Geological Survey (USGS) concluded that, “When undiscovered potential is added to known reserves, the total petroleum endowment for the MadbiAmran / Qishn TPS rises to 9.8 BBOE, which then ranks Yemen 51st for potential of petroleum resources, exclusive of the US.”

Now, 10 billion barrels of crude oil might not seem huge compared with the Saudi claim to hold proven reserves of 266 billion barrels. Here, however, a CIA report from 1988 becomes interesting. The report, South Yemen’s Oil Resources: The Chimera of Wealth, heavily redacted and declassified, has a cryptic note on potential oil reserves in the large disputed border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia. The CIA points to oil and gas reserves along what during the Cold War was the disputed border Neutral Zone between North Yemen and South Yemen.

The Hunt Oil Company of Texas has been sitting in the Alif Field since 1982 and discovered oil there in 1984. The Alif Field lies in the Houthi-controlled north of Yemen near the undefined border between Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The author had the occasion almost two decades ago during an interview with someone associated with the US Government to discuss notions of peak oil and oil geopolitics. At that point the person in discussion volunteered that the undefined desert lands between Saudi Arabia and Yemen, according to non-published US aerial and geophysical surveys, held oil reserve potential that likely exceeded that of Saudi Arabia.

Whether that statement was accurate is not possible to independently confirm. What is clear is that the space surrounded by the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, including Yemen and Somalia is one of the most tectonically active areas on our planet, a prerequisite for hydrocarbon discovery. Presence of huge oil and gas reserves in Yemen would explain much about why the Pentagon has actively backed the Saudi brutal effort to retake control of Yemen from the Houthi.

It has little to do with any Shi’ite versus Wahhabite Sunni conflict. Rather it has to do with strategic control of world energy. So long as Saana was in control of a Saudi proxy, whether Saleh or then Hadi, it was a secondary priority for Washington. The oil was “safe,” even if the Yemen government had expropriated the US company oil properties. Once a determined independent Houthi Zaidi force was in control of Yemen or a major part, the threat became serious enough to give the eager new Saudi Defense Minister Prince Mohammed bin Salman the green light to begin the war. That Houthi-controlled Yemen would be potential client for Russian or Chinese oil companies to open up serious exploration of the potentials. That combined with the fact that the Houthi also had friendly relations with Iran clearly set off red lights in the Obama Administration.

Salman not surprisingly claimed it was a war of Iran-led “imperialists” against the forces of Saudi-led “freedom-loving” Sunnis.China now has its first overseas military base across from Yemen in Djibouti, next door to the US whose Camp Lemonnier is the largest American permanent military base in Africa. Former colonial occupier France is also there. There is far more at stake in Yemen than we are being told.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics.

20 November 2018

Source: globalresearch.ca