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By Akbar E. Torbat

Because the economic pressures against Iran have not succeeded to completely shut down the entire Iran’s nuclear program, it seems political strategies are now accentuated to confront the regime in Tehran. One such strategy could be the release of details of how the West managed to overthrow the Shah in 1979 and helped the clerics to form the Islamic Republic. The BBC released an interview with the late Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, in which he said that the US government prepared the ground for victory of the Islamic revolution in Iran.

Historically the British and later the United States have used the Islamic clerics’ influence to promote their interests in Iran. To curb the power of the Leftists, nationalists, and secular political groups, the US and its Western allies have supported the Islamic factions in Muslim countries for decades. During the Iranian revolution, the Western intelligence agencies played an important role in promoting the Islamic factions led by the clerics. The key clerics that founded the Islamic republic had close ties with the West.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had been exiled in Najaf. On October 6, 1978, he was expelled from Iraq because of his efforts to radicalize the Iraqi Shias against the Iraq’s government. Subsequently, he resided in Neauphle-le-Chateau near Paris.[1] The Western intelligence services gathered around the residence of Ayatollah Khomeini in Neauphle-le-Chateau to manage the establishment of the Islamic Republic. The Western media, and in particular the Persian radio BBC became a propaganda tool to turn the 1979 revolution away from the secular factions in favor of the Islamic groups hoping that the Islamists would serve the interests of the West. From France, Khomeini made anti-Shah speeches which often were broadcasted by the BBC Persian language radio to Iran. He encouraged the Iranians to rise against the Shah’s government.

Khomeini returned to Iran, on February 1, 1979, with a large entourage aboard a French government jet. Three key persons who had established connections with Khomeini while he was exiled were Ebrahim Yazdi, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, and Abul-Hassan Bani-Sadr(the first President of Iran).[2] They had joined Khomeini in Paris and came aboard the same aircraft that brought Khomeini to Tehran. Professor Richart Cottom , a pro-Khomeini “Iran Expert” had made friendship with Yazdi and Ghotbzadeh years earlier.[3] Yazdi became Khomeini’s translator in France and later his foreign minister. Few days after his arrival, Khomeini ordered the formation of a provisional government to replace the Shah’s government which at that time was headed by Shahpour Bakhtiar, the Shah’s last prime Minster.

BBC Released the Dead Cleric’s Interview

On December 17, 2014, the Persian BBC television program released an edited version of an interview with the late ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri.[4] BBC had interviewed Montazeri about fifteen years ago, but the interview had not been broadcasted until now. Montazeri was a leading cleric who helped to write the 1979 constitution and was once heir-apparent to the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Khomeini. He resigned from that position because of his opposition to mass executions of political prisoners in 1988 by Khomeini’s order. In 1997, Montazeri was placed under house arrest in the holy city of Qom because he had questioned the unaccountable rules exercised by the supreme leader Ali Khamenei. Montazeri passed away on December 19, 2009. He had good relations with the British and his memoirs have been banned in Iran.

At the minute 18 of the tape Montazeri said “Our [Islamic] revolution victory was almost due to the environment that President Jimmy Carter had prepared.” He further mentioned, a constitution for the new government had been drafted in Paris by Dr. Hassan Habibi and he inserted the key word Velayat-e Faghih (Guardianship of the Jurist) in the constitution, making the otherwise secular constitution an Islamic one and giving ayatollah Khomeini the sole authority to rule Iran. A more detailed written version of the BBC’s interview with Montazeri had been previously published in several issues of Nimrooz newspaper in February 2000. In the written version Montazeri had said he favored free market capitalism

The involvement of western powers in the Islamic uprising of 1979 have been explained in many books and articles published previously. For example, one may refer to the books “Answer to History” by Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, or “Hostage to Khomeini” by Robert Dreyfuss, and the “Last Shah of Iran” by Hooshang Nahavandi.

As a matter of fact, the Western powers had intervened in Iranian internal affairs many times before. A very important one is the 1953 coup orchestrated by the US and Britain against the nationalist government of then Prime Minister Mosaddegh. Ayatollah Abul-Qassem Kashani, a powerful cleric at the time, in collaboration with the West, mobilized the mobs, mullahs, and royalists to provide support for a coup which brought Mosaddegh down in 1953. Because of these historical disasters, Iranians are very antagonistic to foreign interventions in their country.

It is now about 35 years since the formation of the Islamic Republic. Under the Freedom of Information Act, the full or partial disclosures of the US government involvement in bringing Khomeini to power may surface to show how the West acted to change the Shah’s government to the present clerical regime in Iran. However, even before such disclosures, the fact that the West orchestrated a “regime change” in Iran in 1979 and brought the clergy to power is already known to the Iranian people inside and outside Iran. Therefore, the Iranian people should stop the clerics’ concessions to the West in return for preventing these historical “revelations” to surface by the BBC and the like.

Akbar E. Torbat teaches economics at California State University, Los Angeles. He received his PhD in political economy from the University of Texas at Dallas.

24 December, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

By Eric Zuesse

Decisive evidence as to how the July 17th shooting-down of the MH17 Malaysian airliner occurred is being hidden by the four-nation team that’s doing the official ‘investigation’ into the plane-downing incident.

This decisive evidence is the coroner’s report on the corpse of the airliner’s pilot. If the pilot was killed by bullets, then the standard ‘explanation’ of the downing (that the plane was downed by a ground-fired missile) isn’t just false, it’s an outright hoax. So: where’s the pilot’s autopsy?

This investigation is important because stringent economic sanctions against Russia were instituted immediately after the downing; these sanctions were based upon never-substantiated charges from the Ukrainian Government, and from its sponsor the U.S. Government, alleging that the plane had been downed by rebels who were supported by Russia. (The “Buk” missile launcher charged by Ukraine as the cause was actually manned by Ukraine’s soldiers.)

The same Government, the U.S., that had lied its way into invading Iraq, might now be orchestrating still-more-dangerous frauds, with the potential even for a nuclear war against Russia.

The four nations doing the official investigation and report into the airliner-downing are: Ukraine, Australia, Belgium, and Netherlands. All four are U.S. allies; and, one of them, Ukraine, is one of the two main suspects in this case, the other being separatists against the Ukrainian Government. (They’re not represented in this ‘investigation.’) The United States and Ukraine say that the airliner was downed by separatists who mistakenly thought that they were shooting down a Ukrainian bomber instead of an airliner. (Even if that had been true, the U.S. would still have been the ultimate cause of the downing. The whole cover-story was designed to be believed only by fools.)

However, the Ukrainian Government, which until now has maintained steadfastly that there is only one possible explanation for the downing — their explanation, that it had been downed by a “Buk” ground-fired missile controlled by the rebels — finally changed their tune on December 21st, and announced that maybe it wasn’t. Apparently, the other three nations on the team are refusing to sign their names onto a joint report from all four (according to the secret agreement signed by them all on August 8th, this report will be unanimous or else it won’t be at all) that commits to Ukraine’s ‘explanation,’ because the real evidence is overwhelmingly against it — as will herein be explained and documented.

According to London’s Daily Mail on December 5th, a video documentary from a Russian journalist “suggested” that, “pieces of 30mm rounds were found in the bodies of the pilots.” 30mm bullets are the same size of bullets that come from the types of fighter-jet planes that are in the Ukrainian Air Force, including the following jets: Su-25, Su-27, and Mig-29. 30mm bullets are very different from missile-shrapnel, which the U.S. and Ukraine allege had brought down this airliner.

A retired Lufthansa pilot, Peter Haisenko, examined a remarkably clear photo of the key piece of evidence on the downing, which is the side-panel of the fuselage right next to the pilot; this panel was riddled with what he said were 30mm bullet holes, shot right into the spot where the pilot’s belly would be. Apparently (if Haisenko is correct), the airliner’s pilot was machine-gunned to death, his belly was ripped into by a hail of bullets, after which the attacking jet or jets fired a missile into the airliner’s body, and the airliner then promptly plummeted to earth. No ground-fired missile was involved. (The ground-fired “Buk” would have been 33,000 feet below, much too far away for precise targeting at the plane’s pilot; and shrapnel-holes are not round; they’re very different from bullet-holes.)

What’s in question is whether the approximately two-foot-diameter gash into the fuselage right next to the pilot was the result of hundreds of bullets fired into the pilot’s belly, as Haisenko alleges. If any bullets at all were involved in this downing, then the Ukrainian Government is the guilty party in it, because only they have an Air Force; the separatists do not. The separatists had no way to machine-gun the plane’s pilot to death. The separatists were never that close to the airliner.

Because of the allegation in the Daily Mail, I consulted the source of that allegation, which was a documentary film that had been made by Russian journalist Andrei Karaulov. Because it’s in Russian, I engaged a Russian translator, who found that the source of the Daily Mail’s allegation was at 3:50-5:00 on this video.

It says there:

“Judging by the cockpit fragments photos, the cockpit was shot by 30-mm cannon projectiles. There should be plenty of them in the pilots’ bodies. As announced, the bodies of the passengers were transferred to relatives, but the bodies of both main and support jet crews (currently kept in the Netherlands), were in bad condition due to (1) heavy shelling targeted at the cockpit, and (2) crashing to earth. The projectiles must have been found by now, most certainly. Their type must have been definitely ascertained. Why are these findings not announced? There is but one inference: the high professionals on the international investigation board are severely pressured by some powers, which don’t want certain of the findings to be publicly disclosed.”

“One month ago [from the time of shooting the video] the international commission announced that it found certain ‘objects’ in pilots’ bodies. I believe these were 30mm cannon projectile particles. When we were in Copenhagen, we were told by the international investigation commission that investigation results would be made public on 9 October. To this day it hasn’t been done.”

So: Where’s this crucial autopsy-report? We’ve seen the side-panel with its bullet-holes; were bullets lodged in the corpse?

(Here are photos of the Pilot’s coffin and funeral-procession.)

What we have gotten instead is the Ukrainian Government backing away from the ‘explanation’ that U.S. President Barack Obama, who installed their regime, endorsed, and used as his excuse for the EU to hike sanctions against Russia — an act of war, which now has been followed by the President and Congress virtually declaring war against Russia by taking over Ukraine on Russia’s very border. Based totally on lies.

Evidently, Obama believes that if George W. Bush could fool the American public into invading Iraq, Obama can fool them into invading Russia. Can it be: he’s aiming to out-do even Bush?

PS: a note that my translator wants to append:

I have now read the Daily Mail article for the first time — what a distortion of the facts stated in the documentary!!!

1. They claim that, according to the Russian media, the air traffic controller and the pilot fled together, which was never said (nor even suggested) in the documentary. This was apparently done in order to make the documentary look ridiculous and far-fetched, which it is not.

2. They forget to mention, that authorities of Borispol [the airport] tower, when contacted by A. Karaulov’s team, said they never had anyone by the name of Anna Petrenko [the alleged fighter-jet’s alleged girlfriend] on staff, when the opposite was said by lower rank employees. And when the journalists contacted some unnamed boss, s/he just hung up the phone on them.

3. The article doesn’t give any proof of the girl and the pilot still being alive, which makes it seem even more sinister [i.e.: did the Government kill them, to silence them?].

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

24 December, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

By Patrick Martin

In an action calculated to provoke further conflict with Russia, Ukraine’s parliament voted Tuesday to repeal legislation defining the country as “non-aligned,” and thus barring it from joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The vote came by an overwhelming margin, 303 to 8, one month after President Petro Poroshenko declared his support for the step.

The two major right-wing parties in parliament, headed respectively by Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, spearheaded passage of the measure. Ultra-right and neo-fascist deputies also voted to pave the way for the country’s entry into the US-dominated military alliance.

Ukraine is not expected to formally apply for NATO membership anytime soon, because its armed forces are well below the NATO standard in terms of armaments, training and budget. Given Ukraine’s near-bankruptcy, the military buildup required to reach that goal can only proceed slowly.

But the goal has been set. Addressing parliament before the vote, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said, “This will lead to integration in the European and the Euro-Atlantic space.” A NATO spokesman responded in kind, saying, “Our door is open and Ukraine will become a member of NATO if it so requests and fulfills the standards and adheres to the necessary principles.”

The main significance of the vote was as a political gesture of hostility towards neighboring Russia. Speaking to a group of foreign ambassadors in Kiev on the eve of the vote, Poroshenko said that Ukraine’s “fight for its independence, territorial integrity and sovereignty has turned into a decisive factor in our relations with the world.”

Russian government officials responded angrily. Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev said there would be “negative consequences” for Ukraine’s breaking with non-alignment. “In essence, an application for NATO membership will turn Ukraine into a potential military opponent for Russia,” he said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called Ukraine’s action a “counterproductive” step that would increase political tensions. “It will only escalate the confrontation and creates the illusion that it is possible to resolve Ukraine’s deep internal crisis by passing such laws,” he said.

Actual NATO membership would mean that the United States and its European allies would be legally obligated under Article IV of the NATO treaty to go to war in defense of Ukraine, an obligation that would extend to Ukraine’s claim to Crimea, annexed by Russia earlier this year, and to the eastern territories now controlled by pro-Russian separatists.

Since this would threaten war between nuclear-armed powers, the major European countries, including Germany and France, have discouraged talk of NATO membership for Ukraine. But the Obama administration has had no such reservations.

At Wednesday’s State Department press briefing, spokeswoman Marie Harf merely paraphrased the official NATO statement, saying, “[T]he door is open … countries that are willing to contribute to security in the Euro-Atlantic space are welcome to apply for membership. Each application will be considered on the merits.”

She concluded, “[A]ny decision on potential NATO membership is one for Ukraine and NATO to make.” In other words, Russia has no say on whether NATO tanks and warplanes should be stationed on its doorstep.

Ukraine only formally adopted non-aligned status in 2010, when Russian-backed Viktor Yanukovych was president and his party controlled parliament. But the principle that Ukraine would not join NATO, founded as an anti-Soviet, anti-Russian military bloc, was accepted by both Stalinist and imperialist officials at the time of the breakup of the Soviet Union.

In 1991, when Ukraine became an independent republic rather than a constituent member of the USSR, the country gave up its portion of the Soviet nuclear arsenal, which was dismantled under international supervision, and the NATO powers tacitly agreed that the US-dominated bloc would not expand into the territory of the former Soviet Union. This agreement was broken during the Bush administration, when Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were admitted as NATO members.

The integration of Ukraine into NATO would be another matter entirely, bringing NATO forces nearly as far east as Hitler’s armies reached in the days leading up to the battle of Stalingrad, 72 years ago, the turning point in the fighting on the Eastern front in World War II.

Hitler conquered virtually the entire territory of present-day Ukraine, a feat which German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the US President Barack Obama seek to duplicate, not through open invasion, but by the use of cash, political subversion and neo-Nazi gangs.

Russian officials reiterated their opposition to Ukraine entering NATO in the talks that led to the September 5 ceasefire between Kiev’s forces and pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk provinces of eastern Ukraine.

These talks were set to resume today in Minsk, capital of Belarus, but the Ukraine parliament vote makes that problematic. Already, leaders of the pro-Russian separatists said they might not attend because the Ukrainian government has cut off state pensions and other forms of social benefits for those living in the separatist-controlled territory.

Ukrainian government officials said Monday that they might step up the pressure on the eastern region by cutting off electricity supplies. Deputy Energy Minister Oleksander Svetelyk said that the fighting in the east had disrupted coal production in that area, which supplies coal-burning power plants.

“In order to save the power system we need to impose limits on everyone,” he said. “There are no regions of Ukraine that will not be subject to rolling blackouts.” If the eastern region refused to ration electricity under instructions from his ministry, the supply would be cut off entirely, he said. Ukraine has a daily deficit of 3,500 megawatts, and coal reserves are only one-third of the supply usually needed at the beginning of winter.

The electricity crisis is only part of a more general economic and social collapse in Ukraine. The Yatsenyuk government has adopted a radical program of social austerity, aimed at slashing consumption and public spending in line with demands from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. The Washington Post hailed the program of budget-cutting and privatization in an editorial Wednesday that called the Yatsenyuk cabinet “a technocrat’s dream,” and noted the presence of “Natalia Jaresko, a US citizen and highly respected investment banker who has taken over the finance ministry.”

24 December, 2014
WSWS.org

 

By Shehzad Poonawalla

Petition (filed) to PM, MHA, MHRD, Law Ministry against the proposed installation of statues of Nathuram Godse, terrorist and killer of MK Gandhi using public funds/land and attempts to revisit, legitimise his case by Sangh ideological affiliates/Hindu Mahasabha . Action demanded from PM and Government of India

To,
The Prime Minister of India,
Government of India.
CC:
The Home Minister of India,
Government of India.

The Ministry of Human Resource Development,
Government of India.
Sir,

As a concerned citizen of India I would like to draw your attention to this extremely disturbing news report that indicates the intention of the Hindu Mahasabha outfit, an ideological affiliate of the Sangh Parivar, to install the statues and busts of Nathuram Godse’s, the murderer of our Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, at public places across India. Moreover, the outfit has also stated on record its intention to write to you to that the Gandhi murder case be revisited. The Mahasabha’s national president, Chandra Prakash Kaushik, reportedly told The Hindu “There needs to be a thorough investigation of the events that led to the assassination, so that vilification of Nathuram Godse ends and the people of this country know that he wasn’t an assassin by choice but was forced to make the decision to kill Gandhi.”

Here are news reports confirming the same.

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/hindu-mahasabha-wants-to-install-godses-bust-at-public-places/article6702846.ece?ref=relatedNews

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Hindu-Mahasabha-wants-Godse-busts-across-India/articleshow/45568302.cms

http://www.financialexpress.com/article/miscellaneous/now-hindu-mahasabha-seeks-space-for-installing-mahatma-gandhi-killer-nathuram-godses-busts-across-india-from-narendra-modi-govt/21104/

Sir I would humbly pray for the following from your office:

Communicate with the Law Ministry

1) Any attempt to revisit and question a decided case I.e. The murder of Mahatma Gandhi in which Nathuram Godse (amongst others) was convicted with a death sentence , by no less than the Punjab and Haryana High court on 21st June 1949 in a 315 page judgment would amount to Contempt of Court. Any attempt by your office or the Government of India to do the same, at their request or otherwise, would amount to legitimisation and glorification of a terrorist convicted by the court and would entail appropriate proceedings under Contempt of Courts Act, 1971.

Communicate with the Home Ministry

2) Mr.Nathuram Godse is a criminal convicted of an heinous offence namely murder by the law of the land. His offence is graver as his victim was the Father of the Nation. To allow the use of any public space or funds for the erection of any statues/busts or to pay any tributes to him at the expense of public exchequer would not just be morally objectionable but a violation of the law by attracting penal provisions for Misuse of Public Funds under Indian Penal Code, 1860. It may even lead to a law and order crisis across India as sentiments may be deeply wounded by the honouring of a terrorist who killed the Father of the Nation Nathuram Godse. In addition if any public land/ funds is spent on honouring a person like Nathuram Godse, a terrorist, it is my intention to move the appropriate court of law through writ petition/PIL to prohibit the Government or any government body from doing so. It is hereby requested that the Ministry of Home Affairs, adheres to the law and morality of the situation and forewarns in writing m at the earliest, all state governments, government bodies, local authorities receiving public funds/support to disallow the use of their space or funds for the erection of a statue dedicated to Nathuram Godse.

Communicate with the HRD Ministry

3) The Hindu Mahasabha is an ideological affiliate of the Rasthriya Swayamsevak Sangh which was banned by Shri Vallabhbhai Patel in the aftermath of the Gandhi murder. Godse himself was a member of the RSS. Many leaders of the RSS were seen and reported to be celebrating on the death of Gandhi ji as per Sardar Patel’s letters. You claim to be a proud proponent of the RSS. As a citizen I would like to know whether you stand with the idea of India as represented by Mahatma Gandhi or as represented by the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha. Recently, Sakshi Maharaj, a member of Parliament from your party namely the BJP too, handed a certificate of patriotism to Nathuram Godse. On the one hand you pay lip service to Mahatma Gandhi when you enter your office and law flowers at his picture. On the other hand you remain silent when your own colleagues celebrate the terrorist act of man and an organisation that cost us the Mahatma’s life. On the one hand you initiate programs like Swach Bharat and claim to be the torchbearer of his vision yet you do nothing as the ideals of secularism, cherished by Mahatma, enshrined in our holy book the Constitution are thwarted every day by your own party colleagues by their communal vile. Be it Yogi Adityanath, Sakshi Maharaj, Giriraj Singh, Praveen Togadia, Sadhvi Jyoti, Vinay Katiyar, etc.

It is incumbent for us to know whether you only have Gandhi on your lips and Godse in your heart? If not, I hope you will act immediately by not only ensuring that no public funds are spent on Godse statues but also that no legitimacy is given by your office to groups like the Hindu Mahasabha. No attempt should be made to revisit the decided case of Mahatma Gandhi. And no endeavour should be made to white wash the role of communal fanatics through post-facto justifications in the discourse of our educational syllabi in state run or subsidised schools. Here should be no linkages of outfits such as Hindu Mahasabha in drafting educational curriculum or content whatsoever. Such standing instructions must be issued to all state governments, government schools and colleges.

I expect you to publicly act and speak, to demonstrate your will and intention on this subject and move the Ministry of Home Affairs, Ministry of Law and Ministry of Human Resource Development to take necessary steps as suggested, as this issue lies at the very heart of India’s plural, secular ethos

In the event you don’t, your silence and your inaction will only be worthy of one judgment by the collective conscience of India

“Hey Ram”

Secularly yours,

Shehzad Poonawalla
Lawyer activist
New Delhi

20 December, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

By Franklin Lamb

With the Syrian army deep inside Aleppo’s old city: This observer has long sought an extended visit to the old city of Aleppo which is also one of this cradle of civilizations cultural and educational centers. Despite being in a continuing war zone, the visit materialized when security authorities granted permission and assistance to this observer to complete research finalizing more than two years of research across Syria on the subject of Syria’s Endangered Heritage: The Story Of A Nations Fight To Preserve Its Cultural Heritage.

Several visits to damaged archeological sites and quality briefings soon turned a few days into more than a week with more than a two dozen detailed evaluations and analyses during meetings with Syrian nationalists among them, M.B. Shabani, Director of the Aleppo National Museum. Another was with Professor of Islamic Science, Bouthania Chalkhi and a group of her faculty colleagues and researchers at Aleppo’s 80,000 plus student university. Aleppo University, like nearly all of Syria’s institutions of higher learning has paid a bitter price for keeping its classrooms open. On January 15 2013 the School of Architecture was shelled and more than 90 students and visitors on campus were killed. By shocking coincidence, Damascus University’s School of Architecture was similarly shelled only five weeks later on March 28, 2013, killing more than 15 students.

Two military commanders, currently with their troops deep inside the old city near the ancient Citadel, seemed more like college philosophy instructors than military men, as they discussed the massive destruction inside the old city including more than 1,600 khans and souks.

This observer and another American, a special young man from Maryland who is studying Arabic in this region, was guided along with two colleagues on a long nighttime tour and briefing among alleys inside the ancient burned out and blasted medina souk. Sometimes as we paused our army guide would comment on how parts of the souk might be salvageable and how he felt anger at what was wantonly inflicted in the area now under his command. Our military escort advised us that our tour of the remains of this UNESCO World Heritage site was the first such visit allowed since its destruction more than 18 months ago. He even joked that nearly a month ago a team with the BBC was offered a more limited tour but that a famous female BBC Middle East correspondent, one of this observers favorites, turned back after penetrating the warrens by less than 50 yards.

Surely not the first or last time that Yankees have followed up Brits to complete a task, our interpreter from Damascus giggled.

For hours we trudged through the widely reported massive destruction observing the burned detritus of what were formerly historic “khans” which for centuries traded and sold specialty items as noted below. The tour left one in numbed disbelief over the extent of the destruction.

Among the most historic souks in Aleppo’s old city, verified by this observer as having been destroyed on 9/29/2012, all within the burned out covered alleyways of Souk al-Madina, include, but are not limited to the following. This partial list is presented as a condolence to Syrian artisans and citizens whose lives have been deeply, negatively, and irreversibly damaged. Wanton destruction of a significant part of the shared global heritage of us all.

Khan al-Qadi, one of the oldest khans (specialized souk areas) in Aleppo dating back to 1450;
Khan al-Burghul (Bulger), built in 1472 and the location of the British general consulate of Aleppo until the beginning of the 20th century;
Souk al-Saboun (soap khan) built in the beginning of the 16th century was the main center of the soap production in Aleppo;
Souk Khan al-Nahhaseen (coppersmiths), built in 1539. The general consulate of Belgium was at this location during the16th century. Before its destruction it including more than 80 traditional and modern shoe-trading and production shops;
Khan al-Shouneh, built in 1546 was a market for trades and traditional handicrafts of Aleppine art;
Souq Khan al-Jumrok or the customs’ khan, was a textile trading center with more than 50 stores. Built in 1574, Khan Al-Gumrok was considered to be the largest khan in ancient Aleppo;
Souk Khan al-Wazir, built in 1682, was the main souk for cotton products in Aleppo;
Souk al-Farrayin was the fur market, is the main entrance to the souk from the south. The souk is home to 77 stores mainly specialized in furry products;
Souk al-Hiraj, traditionally was historically the main market for firewood and charcoal. Until its destruction it reportedly included 33 stores mainly dealing in rug and carpet weaving and products;
Souk al-Dira’, was perhaps the main center for tailoring and one of the most organized alleys in the souk with more than 60 workshops;
Souk al-Attareen for more than a century was the vast herbal market and in fact was the main spice-selling market of Aleppo. Before its destruction it was a textile-selling center with more than 80 stores, including spice-selling shops;
Souk az-Zirb, was the main entrance to the souq from the east and the place where coins were being struck during the Mamluk (18th century) period. All of its 72 shops featured textiles and the basic needs of the Bedouins;
Souk al-Behramiyeh, located near the Behramiyeh mosque had more than 20 stores trading in foodstuffs;
Souk Marcopoli (derived from Marco Polo), was a center of textile trading with 29 stores.
Souk al-Atiq specialized in raw leather trading with 48 outlets;
Souk as-Siyyagh or the jewelry market was the main center of jewelry shops in Aleppo and Syria with more than 100 outlets located in 2 parallel alleys.
The Venetians’ Khan, was home to the consul of Venice and the Venetian merchants.
Souk an-Niswan or the women’s market, was an area where accessories, clothes and wedding equipment’s of the bride could be found;
Souk Arslan Dada, is one of the main entrances to the walled city from the north. With 33 stores, the souk is a center of leather and textile trading;
Souk al-Haddadin, is one of the northern entrances to the old city. Located outside the main gate it was considered to be the old traditional blacksmiths’ market with more than 40 workshops;
Souk Khan al-Harir (the silk khan) was another entrance to the old city from the north and was buiit in the second half of the 16th century. The silk souk hosted the Iranian consulate until 1919.
Suweiqa (small souk) consisted of 2 long alleys: Sweiqat Ali and Suweiqat Hatem, located in al-Farafira district which contained markets mainly specialized in home and kitchen equipment.
One is left distraught over the seeming futility of even contemplating rebuilding this world heritage site. Would it require half a century to reconstruct, as was required in Dresden Germany following three days of firebombing by British and American planes, which began on February 13, 1945?

There are many questions to be answered whether rebuilding would ever authentically restore Aleppo’s old city to what it had been for centuries.

Would “restoration” render it a sterile or glitzy place with the main focus on the tourist dollar? Which countries would help rebuild it and where would the money come from, and could Syria and her experts influence and oversee the reconstruction? One professor of Archeology at Aleppo University asked, “Could a rebuilt Medina souk ever again be ‘my neighborhood, the cherished neighborhood of my youth and of my family over preceding generations?” Many of the individual souks, maybe 12 feet by 10 feet were valued at close of one million dollars and restoration would cost hundreds of millions.

Locating experts in areas amidst fairly intense government security concerns and measures which are much greater than in Damascus was not always easy. It was compounded by the fact of 2 hour per day electricity and water shortages, yet one still had the opportunity to discuss and learn from a cross section of this community including academic, governmental, business and citizen activists.

Three tentative conclusions arrived at by this observer from fascinating and heart felt discussions include one from Professor Lamis Herbly, Chairperson of the Archeology department of Aleppo University. This warm and elegant lady’s eyes welled with tears, being the mother of two youngsters and who worries daily about the safety of her children while insisting that they stay in school despite the dangers, described her and her communities losses. She also expressed the concerns of her academic colleagues that if and when reconstruction begins in the old city of Aleppo that it must be done with utmost care and under Syrian experts control. She explained what she meant was that reconstruction in Syria not mirror what was done in Beirut to renovate the ‘downtown’ area which separated Muslim and Christian militia along the ‘green line’ during Lebanon’s 15 year (1975-1990).

One professor declared the reconstruction of downtown Beirut and the filling in of Beirut harbor with thousands of years of antiquities as Saudi financed, behemoth Mercedes Benz earth movers shoved much of Lebanon’s history into the sea to make way for upscale fancy tourist attracting shops catering to rich Gulf tourists (of whom there are very few these days). “So they can buy yet more jewelry and Paris fashions?” she asked. Someone else joined in saying what happened in Lebanon was a cultural crime.

“Downtown Beirut is an obscenity,” one PhD candidate, a young lady who formerly lived near the old city insisted. This student is among those who joined efforts that began nearly two decades ago to preserve and protect one of Aleppo’s two remaining synagogues in the Samoua neighborhood. She vowed that citizens of Aleppo must not and will not allow what happened in Beirut to happen here in Aleppo.

Another concern, discussed with citizens in Aleppo is the often expressed worry over whether other countries that unfortunately had, sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly, a hand in the destruction of much of Syria cultural heritage would be willing to help with its preservation and reconstruction. This observer, who has studied the subject over the past two years in Syria shared this concern, but sought to assure Aleppo interlocutors that indeed many governments acknowledge with gratitude the work of the Syrian people in protecting our mutual global heritage, in the custody of country’s people for millennia, share their horror over what has happened and indeed want to help as soon as a lasting ceasefire can be achieved. This subject was one of the most frequently raised by both experts and average citizens in Aleppo.

Archeological and restoration experts in Syria tend to agree with international research findings that estimate that despite the vast heartbreaking destruction, looting, politically motivated desecration of countless mosques and churches as well as thousands of years of pagan artifacts, that approximately 96 percent of our shared cultural heritage in Syria can be repaired, restored, or even replicated when no other option in available. What is urgently needed before more damage is infected is a ceasefire or freeze in place and is being discussed by UN mediators. Objects that have been blow up in a frenzy of ignorance and malevolence are lost and irreplaceable. The tens of thousands of illegally excavated and looted priceless antiquities now scattered to private collections and speculators have been routed through, Lebanon, Turkey, Israel, Iraq and Jordan. They must be returned as part of a massive international antiquities retrieval campaign that should include an expanded role for Interpol, auction houses and governments as well as international institution of the UN. One student at Damascus University told this observer recently that she and fellow students have started an international campaign focusing on auction houses and governments seeking the return of stolen Syrian antiquities. They have named their student led organization: “I’m Syrian and I need to go home. Please help me.”

One of life’s seeming wonderful incongruities is experienced by visitors all across Syria these days. It has to do with the human spirit. Examining and contemplating just the one example of damage to our shared global heritage in Aleppo, as depressing and discouraging as any of the damage done to our shared global culture heritage one might be excused for becoming cynical and even somewhat catatonic as one observes and studies the desecration and destruction here in Aleppo and in so many other areas.

But not the Syrian people. Rather than slump and becoming crestfallen, this observer finds Syrians resolute and even somehow inspiring in their determination to preserve, protect and restore our cultural heritage. Space allows for one example.

This observer, spent an afternoon this week next to the glowing fireplace on a cold rainy day in the warm and cozy office of Mohammad Kujjah, Director of the 1924 founded Archeological Institute of Aleppo. I was joined by some of his staff, all experts on preserving archeological treasures. One taciturn scholar sitting next to me, who I thought appeared to be on the verge of nodding off, saddening perked up and squeezed my arm to get my undivided attention. He then proceeded to further light up the bookcase lined office by presenting a brilliant lecture that, were he asked, this observer would entitle something like:

The Germans rebuilt Dresden and the Syrians will rebuild Aleppo!

He began with fascinating comparisons between what was and what was done to Dresden beginning on February 13, 1945 and what happened to Aleppo’s old city on September 28, 2012. Dresden was carpet bombed by 722 RAF and 527 USAAF bombers that dropped 2431 tons of high explosive bombs, and 1475.9 tons of incendiaries. The high explosive bombs damaged buildings and exposed their ancient wooden structures, while the incendiaries ignited them. The massive wooden structures, like in Aleppo, burned to the ground. The resultant firestorms killed an estimated 50,000 to 200,000 people, although the total number is disputed. Dresden, an historic center held no strategic value. The war in Europe was coming to an end, and the city was packed with refugees fleeing the advancing Red Army. It is widely believed that the bombing was a revenge attack for the German bombing of Coventry as well as a show of force.

As he spoke the professor displayed for his guests a large photograph of Dresden taken in early March of 1945. The high explosive bombs damaged buildings and exposed their wooden structures, while the incendiaries ignited them. The massive wooden structures of Aleppo’s old city also burned to the ground.

The archeologist lectured his rapt American audience, seemingly also to the delight of his Aleppine colleagues on how Aleppo reconstruction could be achieved and he spoke of the Syrian peoples will that it shall be done.

All people of good will who accept their personal duty to join the people of Syria in preserving, protecting and restoring our shared global heritage can take solace from what this observer witnessed an exhilarating demonstration of the sublime capacities of our shared human spirit as we help to salvage our cultural heritage.

Franklin Lamb’s most recent book, Syria’s Endangered Heritage, An international Responsibility to Protect and Preserve is in production by Orontes River Publishing, Hama, Syrian Arab Republic.

20 December, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

By Richard Heinberg

Oil prices have fallen by half since late June. This is a significant development for the oil industry and for the global economy, though no one knows exactly how either the industry or the economy will respond in the long run. Since it’s almost the end of the year, perhaps this is a good time to stop and ask: (1) Why is this happening? (2) Who wins and who loses over the short term?, and (3) What will be the impacts on oil production in 2015?

1. Why is this happening?

Euan Mearns does a good job of explaining the oil price crash here. Briefly, demand for oil is softening (notably in China, Japan, and Europe) because economic growth is faltering. Meanwhile, the US is importing less petroleum because domestic supplies are increasing—almost entirely due to the frantic pace of drilling in “tight” oil fields in North Dakota and Texas, using hydrofracturing and horizontal drilling technologies—while demand has leveled off.

Usually when there is a mismatch between supply and demand in the global crude market, it is up to Saudi Arabia—the world’s top exporter—to ramp production up or down in order to stabilize prices. But this time the Saudis have refused to cut back on production and have instead unilaterally cut prices to customers in Asia, evidently because the Arabian royals want prices low. There is speculation that the Saudis wish to punish Russia and Iran for their involvement in Syria and Iraq. Low prices have the added benefit (to Riyadh) of shaking at least some high-cost tight oil, deepwater, and tar sands producers in North America out of the market, thus enhancing Saudi market share.

The media frame this situation as an oil “glut,” but it’s important to recall the bigger picture: world production of conventional oil (excluding natural gas liquids, tar sands, deepwater, and tight oil) stopped growing in 2005, and has actually declined a bit since then. Nearly all supply growth has come from more costly (and more environmentally ruinous) resources such as tight oil and tar sands. Consequently, oil prices have been very high during this period (with the exception of the deepest, darkest months of the Great Recession). Even at their current depressed level of $55 to $60, petroleum prices are still above the International Energy Agency’s high-price scenario for this period contained in forecasts issued a decade ago.

Part of the reason has to do with the fact that costs of exploration and production within the industry have risen dramatically (early this year Steve Kopits of the energy market analytic firm Douglas-Westwood estimated that costs were rising at nearly 11 percent annually).

In short, during this past decade the oil industry has entered a new regime of steeper production costs, slower supply growth, declining resource quality, and higher prices. That all-important context is largely absent from most news stories about the price plunge, but without it recent events are unintelligible. If the current oil market can be characterized as being in a state of “glut,” that simply means that at this moment, and at this price, there are more willing sellers than buyers; it shouldn’t be taken as a fundamental or long-term indication of resource abundance.

2. Who wins and loses, short-term?

Gail Tverberg does a great job of teasing apart the likely consequences of the oil price slump here. For the US, there will be some tangible benefits from falling gasoline prices: motorists now have more money in their pockets to spend on Christmas gifts. However, there are also perils to the price plunge, and the longer prices remain low, the higher the risk. For the past five years, tight oil and shale gas have been significant drivers of growth in the American economy, adding $300 to 400 billion annually to GDP. States with active shale plays have seen a significant increase of jobs while the rest of the nation has merely sputtered along.

The shale boom seems to have resulted from a combination of high petroleum prices and easy financing: with the Fed keeping interest rates near zero, scores of small oil and gas companies were able to take on enormous amounts of debt so as to pay for the purchase of drilling leases, the rental of rigs, and the expensive process of fracking. This was a tenuous business even in good times, with many companies subsisting on re-sale of leases and creative financing, while failing to show a clear profit on sales of product. Now, if prices remain low, most of these companies will cut back on drilling and some will disappear altogether.

The price rout is hitting Russia quicker and harder than perhaps any other nation. That country is (in most months) the world’s biggest producer, and oil and gas provide its main sources of income. As a result of the price crash and US-imposed economic sanctions, the ruble has cratered. Over the short term, Russia’s oil and gas companies are somewhat cushioned from impact: they earn high-value US dollars from sales of their products while paying their expenses in rubles that have lost roughly half their value (compared to the dollar) in the past five months. But for the average Russian and for the national government, these are tough times.

There is at least a possibility that the oil price crash has important geopolitical significance. The US and Russia are engaged in what can only be called low-level warfare over Ukraine: Moscow resents what it sees as efforts to wrest that country from its orbit and to surround Russia with NATO bases; Washington, meanwhile, would like to alienate Europe from Russia, thereby heading off long-term economic integration across Eurasia (which, if it were to transpire, would undermine America’s “sole superpower” status; see discussion here); Washington also sees Russia’s annexation of Crimea as violating international accords. Some argue that the oil price rout resulted from Washington talking Saudi Arabia into flooding the market so as to hammer Russia’s economy, thereby neutralizing Moscow’s resistance to NATO encirclement (albeit at the price of short-term losses for the US tight oil industry). Russia has recently cemented closer energy and economic ties with China, perhaps partly in response; in view of this latter development, the Saudis’ decision to sell oil to China at a discount could be explained as yet another attempt by Washington (via its OPEC proxy) to avert Eurasian economic integration.

Other oil exporting nations with a high-price break-even point—notably Venezuela and Iran, also on Washington’s enemies list—are likewise experiencing the price crash as economic catastrophe. But the pain is widely spread: Nigeria has had to redraw its government budget for next year, and North Sea oil production is nearing a point of collapse.

Events are unfolding very quickly, and economic and geopolitical pressures are building. Historically, circumstances like these have sometimes led to major open conflicts, though all-out war between the US and Russia remains unthinkable due to the nuclear deterrents that both nations possess.

If there are indeed elements of US-led geopolitical intrigue at work here (and admittedly this is largely speculation), they carry a serious risk of economic blowback: the oil price plunge appears to be bursting the bubble in high-yield, energy-related junk bonds that, along with rising oil production, helped fuel the American economic “recovery,” and it could result not just in layoffs throughout the energy industry but a contagion of fear in the banking sector. Thus the ultimate consequences of the price crash could include a global financial panic (John Michael Greer makes that case persuasively and, as always, quite entertainingly), though it is too soon to consider this as anything more than a possibility.

3. What will be the impacts for oil production?

There’s actually some good news for the oil industry in all of this: costs of production will almost certainly decline during the next few months. Companies will cut expenses wherever they can (watch out, middle-level managers!). As drilling rigs are idled, rental costs for rigs will fall. Since the price of oil is an ingredient in the price of just about everything else, cheaper oil will reduce the costs of logistics and oil transport by rail and tanker. Producers will defer investments. Companies will focus only on the most productive, lowest-cost drilling locations, and this will again lower averaged industry costs. In short order, the industry will be advertising itself to investors as newly lean and mean. But the main underlying reason production costs were rising during the past decade—declining resource quality as older conventional oil reservoirs dry up—hasn’t gone away. And those most productive, lowest-cost drilling locations (also known as “sweet spots”) are limited in size and number.

The industry is putting on a brave face, and for good reason. Companies in the shale patch need to look profitable in order to keep the value of their bonds from evaporating. Major oil companies largely stayed clear of involvement in the tight oil boom; nevertheless, low prices will force them to cut back on upstream investment as well. Drilling will not cease; it will merely contract (the number of new US oil and gas well permits issued in Novemberfell by 40 percent from the previous month). Many companies have no choice but to continue pursuing projects to which they are already financially committed, so we won’t see substantial production declines for several months. Production from Canada’s tar sands will probably continue at its current pace, but will not expand since new projects willrequire an oil price at or higher than the current level in order to break even.

As analysis by David Hughes of Post Carbon Institute shows, even without the price crash production in the Bakken and Eagle Ford plays would have been expected to peak and begin a sharp decline within the next two or three years. The price crash can only hasten that inevitable inflection point.

How much and how fast will world oil production fall? Euan Mearns offers three scenarios; in the most likely of these (in his opinion) world production capacity will contract by about two million barrels per day over the next two years as a result of the price collapse.

We may be witnessing one of history’s little ironies: the historic commencement of an inevitable, overall, persistent decline of world liquid fuels production may be ushered in not by skyrocketing oil prices such as we saw in the 1970s or in 2008, but by a price crash that at least some pundits are spinning as the death of “peak oil.” Meanwhile, the economic and geopolitical perils of the unfolding oil price rout make expectations of business-as-usual for 2015 ring rather hollow.

Richard Heinberg is a senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute

20 December, 2014
Post Carbon Institute Blog

 

By Alex Lantier

Despite sharpening divisions within the European Union over the implications of the collapse of the Russian currency, the two-day EU summit in Brussels stepped up Europe’s confrontation with Russia, imposing new EU sanctions to keep businesses from operating in Crimea.

On Thursday, as the EU summit opened, US President Obama signed new legislation that allows Washington to impose a raft of new punitive sanctions on Russia. The impact of the sanctions that have already been enacted, cutting off credit to the Russian economy, has been crippling. The Russian currency has lost roughly half of its value against the US dollar this year, and economists say Russia’s economy could contract by 5 percent next year.

Concerns are mounting in the European bourgeoisie over the implications of a collapse of the Russian state, which would threaten economic collapse in Europe and war. From Austria, the Wiener Zeitung wrote: “Economic turbulence in Russia is giving the EU cause for concern. Leading politicians are asking themselves whether the collapse of the Russian state is not an even greater danger. For some time, certain European countries, such as Italy, have been proposing to loosen the sanctions.”

But despite the potentially catastrophic consequences, the EU summit aligned itself with the US policy of waging economic war for regime-change in Russia unless the Kremlin submits to US-NATO hegemony in Eurasia. The dominant forces at the summit demanded that sanctions be maintained until Moscow abandoned all opposition to the far-right, pro-Western regime in Kiev.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the sanctions, first imposed after last February’s NATO-backed coup in Kiev, had to remain in place. “Sanctions were imposed for specific reasons and they can be lifted only when these reasons cease to apply,” she said.

This echoed her remarks to the Bundestag, the German parliament, the day before. Even though the atrocities committed by pro-Kiev regime fascist militias in eastern Ukraine have been widely documented, Merkel insisted that pro-Kiev forces “be permitted to bring their own relief supplies safely to areas in the east of the country that are controlled by the separatists.” Until Russia cooperated with the EU on this matter, she added, “sanctions remain unavoidable.”

British Prime Minister David Cameron also pressed for a hard line at the summit. He declared that if the Kremlin “takes Russian troops out of Ukraine, and it obeys all the strictures of the Minsk agreement [the ceasefire between Kiev and the eastern Ukraine separatists], these sanctions can go.”

EU President and former Polish Premier Donald Tusk said, “We must go beyond being reactive and defensive. As Europeans, we must regain our self-confidence and realize our own strengths.” He called Russia a “strategic problem” for Europe.

Tusk alluded to the growing divisions within Europe over the NATO powers’ confrontation with Russia, which France and Italy publicly criticized at the summit. “It is obvious,” he declared, “we will not find a long-term perspective for Ukraine without an adequate, consistent and united European strategy towards Russia… Today we are maybe not too optimistic. But we have to be realistic, not optimistic.”

French President François Hollande, who traveled to Moscow for talks on December 6, said that a deal with Russia was possible and called on the EU to calm the situation. “I believe that today, if moves are made by Russia as we expect, there is no reason to impose further sanctions… It will be best instead to examine how we also could begin carrying out a de-escalation,” he said.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said his position was “absolutely no to new sanctions.”

Divisions also emerged within the German government yesterday, as Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier gave an interview to Der Spiegel criticizing a policy of financially strangling Russia. The magazine wrote: “Those thinking of forcing Russia to its knees economically are dangerously mistaken if they think this will lead to more security in Europe. ‘I can only warn you about this,’ Steinmeier said. He also spoke out directly against further sanctions. ‘That is why I am against a further ratcheting up of sanctions,’ the foreign minister declared.”

The EU’s decision nonetheless to tighten the economic noose around Russia testifies to the historic bankruptcy of European capitalism and the desperation and recklessness of its ruling elites. A year ago, facing economic collapse and rising working class opposition to their austerity policies, they embarked on a confrontation with Russia over Ukraine. Now this adventure has placed Europe and the world on the verge of an even greater financial and military conflagration.

The explosive situation in the working class interrupted the EU summit, which broke up early Friday morning so that participants could flee social protests against austerity in Brussels.

Four days after the last one-day general strike in Belgium, farmers and agricultural workers faced off against police, blockading downtown Brussels with tractors. Anger is mounting over the Belgian government’s slashing of social benefits and expressions of sympathy by top officials for Belgium’s World War II-era Nazi-collaborationist regime.

The social and economic crisis is set to intensify further as the impact of the sanctions on Russia spreads throughout the European and world economy.

Speaking to the Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung, Volker Treier of the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce (DIHK) predicted that German exports to Russia would fall 20 percent in 2014 due to the “dramatic drop in the purchasing power” of Russians. Treier noted that the ruble crisis might briefly encourage spending, as Russians tried to buy up goods before the ruble lost even more value, but this would likely have a limited and short-term impact.

The fall in exports will lead to further attacks on German workers. “German auto factories have already been working short shifts [Kurzarbeit] for several weeks or laying off workers,” Treier said.

As Russia’s single largest creditor, with €49 billion in loans to Russia, France is also particularly threatened by the ruble crisis. French oil firm Total and auto maker Renault do much of their business in Russia, and the Société Générale bank has a 99.4 percent stake in Rosbank, the country’s largest private bank.

20 December, 2014
WSWS.org

 

By Eric Zuesse

A Ukrainian soldier who was part of the crew that operated the supposed missile-battery that the Ukrainian Government claims shot down the Malaysian MH17 airliner on July 17th has testified publicly for the first time, saying that the missile-battery was operated by the Ukrainian military, not by the rebels as asserted, and that he and his former crew-mates who operated it laughed when they heard their Government say that this missile-battery was operated by rebels and had shot the airliner down.

An English-translated transcript of the December 15th Russian-language interview with this soldier was posted at UkraineWar.Info on December 17th by Michael Collins, an investigative journalist with UkraineWar.Info who has been following very closely the multiple investigations that are proceeding into the cause of the downing.

This testimony confirms the accumulating prior, already overwhelming and even-more-convincing evidence, which is linked to in my latest article on the topic, here, all of which evidence indicates that either one or else two Ukrainian fighter-jets intentionally shot this airliner down — that it was not an error by rebels who had mis-identified this airliner as being a bomber from the Ukrainian Government, such as the Ukrainian Government and its sponsor the U.S. Government claim.

Regarding the reason why the Ukrainian Government did this, it, too, is clear: U.S. President Obama needed a startling incident in order to obtain from the EU and other U.S.-allied nations their participation in heavily increased economic sanctions to weaken Russia. As soon as this plane was downed, both the Ukrainian Government and the Obama Administration claimed that they possessed convincing proof that it had been downed by pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine’s former southeast. All U.S. allies got on board with that and agreed to hiked sanctions against Russia.

This “false flag” event (as such government fakeries are called in the intelligence communities) succeeded, just as did Hitler’s burning down the Reichstag and blaming it on leftists, which was the event that enabled him to seize total power in Germany.

THIS JUST IN (3:21PM Eastern time in U.S.) from Michael Collins: “George [Eliason, a third member of our team at UkraineWar.Info, and a resident inside the conflict-zone] says that due to the pub from the article, the ukraine govt took down their ‘damning’ pic of BUK 312 today and that the reporter who did the interview is underground and fleeing the country.”

So, the reason why Ukrainians are reluctant to go public about their lying Government is obvious. And, all of the ‘news’ media there are owned by Ukrainian, or, in some cases, by American, oligarchs. (The American ones do it through ‘nonprofit’ foundations they create, which are co-funded by the American Government. The U.S. oligarch then gets tax-write-offs, plus co-funding by U.S. taxpayers, to save him still more money on his scheme.)

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

18 December, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

By Nicola Nasser

Overtly, the Israeli superpower of the Middle East has been keen to posture as having no role whatsoever in the four-year old devastating conflict in Syria, where all major regional and international powers are politically and militarily deeply involved and settling scores by Syrian blood.

In his geopolitical weekly analysis, entitled “The Islamic State Reshapes the Middle East,” on November 25 Stratfor’s George Friedman raised eyebrows when he reviewed the effects which the terrorist group had on all regional powers, but seemed unaware of the existence of the Israeli regional superpower.

It was an instructive omission that says a lot about the no more discreet role Israel is playing to maintain what the Israeli commentator Amos Harel described as the “stable instability” in Syria and the region, from the Israeli perspective of course.

Friedman in fact was reflecting a similar official omission by the US administration. When President Barak Obama appealed for a “broad international coalition” to fight the Islamic State (IS), Israel — the strongest military power in the region and the well – positioned logistically to fight it — was not asked to join. The Obama administration explained later that Israel’s contribution would reflect negatively on the Arab partners in the coalition.

“Highlighting Israel’s contributions could be problematic in terms of complicating efforts to enlist Muslim allies” in the coalition, said Michael Eisenstadt, a senior fellow at AIPAC’s arm, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Covertly however Israel is a key player in prolonging the depleting war on Syria and the major beneficiary of neutralizing the military of the only immediate Arab neighbor that has so far eluded yielding to the terms dictated by the U.S. – backed Israeli regional force majeure for making peace with the Hebrew state.

Several recent developments however have brought the Israeli role into the open.

First the latest bombing of Syrian targets near the Damascus international civilian airport on December 7 was the seventh major unprovoked air strike of its kind since 2011 and the fifth in the past 18 months on Syrian defenses. Syrian Scientific research centers, missile depots, air defense sites, radar and electronic monitoring stations and the Republican Guards were targeted by Israel.

Facilitating the Israeli mission and complementing it, the terrorist organizations operating in the country tried several times to hit the same targets. They succeeded in killing several military pilots and experts whom Israeli intelligence services would have paid dearly to hunt down.

Foreign Policy on last June 14 quoted a report by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki – moon as saying that the “battle – hardened Syrian rebels … once in Israel, they receive medical treatment in a field clinic before being sent back to Syria,” describing the arrangement as a “gentleman’s agreement.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu in February this year visited this “military field hospital” and shook hands with some of the more than 1000 rebels treated in Israeli hospitals, according to Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF).

Foreign Policy quoted also Ehud Yaari, an Israeli fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, as saying that Israel was supplying the rebel – controlled Syrian villages with medicines, heaters, and other humanitarian supplies. The assistance, he said, has benefited civilians and “insurgents.” Yaari ignored the reports about the Israeli intelligence services to those “insurgents.”

Israel facilitates war on UNDOF

Second, the latest quarterly report by the UN Disengagement Force (UNDOF) to the UN Security Council (UNSC) on December 1 confirmed what eight previous similar reports had stated about the “interaction … across the (Syrian – Israeli) ceasefire line” between the IOF and the “armed members of the (Syrian) opposition,” in the words of Ki-moon’s report to the Council on December 4.

Third, Ki-moon in his report confirmed that the UNDOF “was forced to relocate its troops” to the Israeli side of the ceasefire line, leaving the Syrian side a safe haven zone for the al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra Front, which the UNSC had designated a “terrorist group.”

UNDOF’s commander Lieutenant General Iqbal Singh Singha told the UNSC on October 9 that his troops were “under fire, been abducted, hijacked, had weapons snatched and offices vandalized.” Australia was the latest among the troop contributing countries to pull out its forces from UNDOF.

UNDOF and the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) operate in the buffer zone of about 80 km long and between 0.5 to 10 km wide, forming an area of 235 km². The zone borders the Lebanon Blue Line to the north and forms a border of less than 1 km with Jordan to the south. It straddles the Purple Line which separates the Israeli – occupied Golan Heights from Syria. The west Israeli side of this line is known as “Alpha”, and the east Syrian side as “Bravo.”

Speaking at the U.S. military base Fort Dix on Monday, President Obama warned those who “threaten America” that they “will have no safe haven,” but that is exactly what Israel is providing them.

Israeli “interaction” has practically helped the UNDOF “to relocate” from Bravo to Alpha and to hand Bravo as a safe haven over to an al-Nusra Front – led coalition of terrorist groups.

Al-Nusra Front is officially the al – Qaeda affiliate in Syria. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told the Senate Committee on Foreign relations on this December 9 that his administration considers the IS to be a branch of al – Qaeda operating under a different name. Both terrorist groups were one under the name of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and only recently separated. Whoever accommodates either one is in fact courting the other.

“The 1,200-strong UN force is now mostly huddled inside Camp Ziouani, a drab base just inside the Israeli – controlled side of the Golan Heights. Its patrols along the de facto border have all but ceased,” the Associated Press (AP) reported on last September 18.

Israeli air force and artillery intervened several times to protect the al-Nusra Front’s “safe haven” against fire power from Syria, which is still committed to its ceasefire agreement of 1974 with Israel. Last September for example, Israel shot down a Syrian fighter jet that was bombing the Front’s positions, only three weeks after shooting down a Syrian drone over the area.

Israel is not violating the Syrian sovereignty only, but violating also the UN – sponsored ceasefire agreement and the UNSC anti-terror resolutions. More important, Israel is in fact undermining the UNDOF mandate on the Israeli – occupied Syrian Golan Heights.

This situation could only be interpreted as an Israeli premeditated war by proxy on the UN presence on the Golan Heights.

“Israel is the most interested in having (UN) peacekeepers evacuated from the occupied Golan so as to be left without international monitoring,” Syria’s permanent envoy to the UN, Bashar al- Jaafari, told reporters on September 17.

The UNSC seems helpless or uninterested in defending the UNDOF mandate on the Golan against Israeli violations, which risk the collapse of the 1974 ceasefire arrangements.

Syrian Foreign Ministry was on record to condemn these violations as a “declaration of war,” asserting that Syria reserves its right to retaliate “at the right moment and the right place.” Obviously a regional outbreak is at stake here without the UN presence as a buffer.

Upgrading unanimously Israel’s status from a “major non – NATO ally” to a “major strategic partner” of the United States by the U.S. Congress on December 3 could explain the UNSC inaction.

The undeclared understanding between the Syrian government and the U.S. – led coalition against the self – declared “Islamic State” (IS) not to target the latter’s forces seems to have left this mission to Israel who could not join the coalition publicly for subjective as well as objective reasons.

The AP on September 18 did not hesitate to announce that the “collapse of UN peacekeeping mission on Golan Heights marks new era on Israel – Syria front.” Aron Heller, the writer of the AP report, quoted the former Israeli military liaison officer with UNDOF, Stephane Cohen, as saying: “Their mandate is just not relevant anymore.” Heller concluded that this situation “endangers” the “status quo,” which indeed has become a status quo ante.

Israeli strategic gains

The emerging fait accompli seems very convenient to Israel, creating positive strategic benefits for the Hebrew state and arming it with a pretext not to withdraw the IOF from the occupied Syrian Golan Heights and Palestinian territories.

In an analysis paper published by The Saban Center at Brookings in November 2012, Itamar Rabinovich wrote that, “Clearly, the uncertainty in Syria has put the question of the Golan Heights on hold indefinitely. It may be a long time until Israel can readdress the prospect of giving the Golan back to Damascus.”

Moreover, according to Rabinovich, “the Syrian conflict has the potential to bring the damaged Israeli – Turkish relationship closer to normalcy … they can find common ground in seeking to foster a stable post – Assad government in Syria.”

The hostile Turkish insistence on toppling the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad, the concentration of the IS and other rebel forces in the north of the country and in central, eastern and southern Syria are diverting the potential and focus of the Syrian Arab Army northward and inward, away from the western front with the Israeli occupying power on the Golan Heights.

The protracted war on the Syrian government is depleting its army in manpower and materially. Rebuilding the Syrian army and the devastated Syrian infrastructure will preoccupy the country for a long time to come and defuse any military threat to Israel for an extended time span.

On the Palestinian front, the rise of the IS has made fighting it the top U.S. priority in the Middle East, which led Aaron David Miller, a former adviser to several U.S. administrations on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, to warn in Foreign Policy early in September that the rise of the IS would pose “a serious setback to Palestinian hopes of statehood.”

The expected fallback internally of the post – war Syria would “hopefully” relieve Israel of the Syrian historical support for the Palestinian anti – Israeli occupation movements, at least temporarily.

Netanyahu on Sunday opened a cabinet meeting by explicitly using the IS as a pretext to evade the prerequisites of making peace. Israel “stands … as a solitary island against the waves of Islamic extremism washing over the entire Middle East,” he said, adding: “To force upon us” a timeframe for a withdrawal from the Israeli – occupied Palestinian territories, as proposed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to the UN Security Council, “will bring the radical Islamic elements to the suburbs of Tel Aviv and to the heart of Jerusalem. We will not allow this.”

Israel is also capitalising on the war on the IS to misleadingly portray it as identical with the Palestinian “Islamic” resistance movements because of their Islamic credentials. “When it comes to their ultimate goals, Hamas is ISIS and ISIS is Hamas,” Netanyahu told the UN General Assembly on September 29.

Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Birzeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories

17 December, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

By Maryam Sakeenah

The Peshawar school attack is a tragedy that sends senses reeling, an enormity that confounds the senses. It does not help however, to dismiss the people who committed this foul atrocity as ‘inhuman’, or to say they were not really Muslims. It is a convenient fiction that implies a most frustrating unwillingness and inability to understand how human beings are dehumanized and desensitized so they commit such dastardly acts under the moral cover of a perverted religiosity. This unwillingness and inability to understand is deeply distressing because it shows how far away we are from even identifying what went wrong, and where- and hence, how far we are from any solution.

The international media has reflected- not surprisingly- a superficial, flat and ludicrously shallow grasp of the issues in Pakistan. The CNN (and other channels) repeatedly portrayed the incident as ‘an attack on children for wanting to get an education. ’ In fact, the UK Prime Minister himself tweeted: “The news from Pakistan is deeply shocking. It’s horrifying that children are being killed simply for going to school.” It actually reeks of how the media’s portrayal and use of Malala’s story has shaped a rather inaccurate narrative on Pakistan.

Years ago shortly after 9/11, former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer had lamented Western politicians’ dim-witted understanding of terrorism and the motives behind it. Scheuer highlighted how dishonestly and dangerously Western leaders portrayed that the terrorists were ‘Against Our Way of Life’; that they were angry over the West’s progress as some deranged barbarians battling a superior civilization out of rank hatred. This rhetoric from Western politicians and the media ideologized terrorism and eclipsed the fact that terror tactics were actually a reaction to rapacious wars in Muslim (and other) lands often waged or sponsored by Western governments. It diverted focus from the heart of the problem and created a misleading and dangerous narrative of ‘Us versus Them’, setting global politics on a terrible ‘Clash of civilizations’ course.

Today, I remembered Scheuer again, browsing through responses to the Peshawar tragedy both on local social media as well as from people in positions of power- most reflected a facile understanding of the motives of terrorism. The Taliban spokesman Umar Khorasani states: “We selected the army’s school for the attack because the government is targeting our families and females. We want them to feel the pain.”

Certainly, this is twisted and unacceptable logic. What is most outrageous is his attempt to give religious justification to it by twisting religious texts.

Certainly, the leadership of the TTP is guilty of a criminal abuse of religious sources to legitimize its vile motives and sell it to their conservative Pashtun following who are on the receiving end of Pakistan’s military offensive in the tribal areas. The TTP leaders have hands drenched in innocent blood. Even the Afghan Taliban have rejected the use and justification of such means by the TTP as unacceptable by any standards in an official statement.

But I wonder at those human beings chanting Arabic religious expressions who blew themselves up for the ‘glorious cause’ of taking revenge from innocent unsuspecting school children. I wonder how they had gone so terribly, terribly wrong in their humanity, their faith. Certainly, they were taken in with the TTP’s malevolent ideological justification for the rank brutality they committed. Certainly, they allowed themselves to be taken in because they perceived their miserable lives had no intrinsic worth except in being given up in order to exact vengeance.

I understood too when I heard a victim student writing in pain, vowing revenge. ‘I will grow up and make their coming generations learn a lesson’, he said. In that line, I understood so much about human psychology and the psychology of victimhood, and the innate need for avenging wrongdoing.

The problem with the public perception of the war in Pakistan is that we see only part of it: we see the heartrending images from Peshawar and elsewhere in the urban centres where terrorists have struck. But there is a war that we do not see, hidden from public view. This is the war in the tribal north. The familiar images we see from the war divide the Pakistani victims of this war into Edward Herman’s ‘worthy’ and ‘unworthy’ victims- both, however, are innocent victims- the ones we see and the ones we do not. But because some victims are unworthier than others, the unworthy victim claims worth to his condemned life in dying, misled into thinking that death by killing others can be a vindication.

But sometimes the ones we are not allowed to see, make themselves visible in horrible, ugly ways; they become deafeningly loud to claim notice. And in the process, they make other victims- our own flesh and blood… And so it is our bloody burden to bear for fighting a war that was not ours, which has come to haunt us as our own.

The work of some independent journalists has highlighted the war we do not see in Waziristan- their work, however, has not made it to mainstream news. Such work has brought to light enormous ‘collateral damage’ figures. Some independent journalists have also focused on the plight of IDPs who feel alienated and forgotten by the Pakistani state and nation. It must be noted, however, that there is no access to the media in the areas where the army’s operation is going on. The news we get from the war zone is solely through the Pakistan Army- there is, hence, absolutely no counternarrative from Waziristan. And hence our one-sided vision eludes a genuine understanding.

This unwillingness and inability to understand reflects in our uninsightful militarist approach to the problem in Waziristan. While the necessity of using military means to combat a real and present danger is understood, the need for it to be precisely targeted, limited in scope and time, and planned to eliminate or at least substantively minimize collateral damage is equally important. The need to efficiently manage the fallout of such an operation and rehabilitate affectees cannot be overemphasized. On all these counts, we need to have done more.

But perhaps the most vital understanding is that military operations are never the enduring solution. They may be needed to achieve specific necessary targets, but only with the aforementioned conditionalities to minimize the fallout. Moreover, the bigger, deeper problems have to be dealt with through a wider, more insightful non-military approach: listening and understanding, dialogue, mutual compromise and reconciliation, rehabilitation and peacebuilding. There are numerous examples in the past- even the recent past- of how war-ravaged communities drenched in the memory of oppression and pain, seething with unrelenting hate, have successfully undertaken peacebuilding. There have been temporary respites in this war in Pakistan whenever the two sides agreed to a ceasefire. That spirit ought to have lasted.

I understand that this sounds unreasonable on the backdrop of the recent atrocity, but there is no other way to give peace a chance. Retributive justice using force will prolong the violence and make more victims.

Since religion is often appealed to in this conflict, its role in peacebuilding has to be explored and made the best of. To break this vicious, insane cycle, there has to be a revival of the spirit of ‘Ihsan’ for a collective healing- that is, not indiscriminate and unrelenting retributive justice but wilful, voluntary forgiveness (other than for the direct, unrepentant and most malafide perpetrators). This must be followed by long-term, systematic peacebuilding in Pakistan’s war-ravaged tribal belt in particular and the entire nation in general. Such peacebuilding will involve religious scholars, educators, journalists, social workers and other professionals. Unreasonable as it may sound, it is perhaps the only enduring strategy to mend and heal and rebuild. The spirit of ‘Ihsan’ has tremendous potential to salvage us, and has to be demonstrated from both sides. But because the state is the grander agency, its initiative in this regard is instrumental as a positive overture to the aggrieved party.

But this understanding seems to have been lost in the frenzy, just when it was needed most pressingly. I shudder to think what consequences a failure to understand this vital point can bring. The Pakistani nation has already paid an enormously heavy price.

Maryam Sakeenah is a Pakistan-based independent researcher and freelance writer on International politics, human rights and Islam.

17 December, 2014
Countercurrents.org