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By Countercurrents

 

Reports in media including KUNA said:

Interventionists are planning to launch attacks using chemical weapons in Jobar area, Damascus, and to accuse the Syrian government of it, Syria’s Permanent Representative to the UN Bashar Al-Jaafari said April 1, 2014.

The information was tracked in a phone call between suspected interventionists monitored by government authorities.

Al-Jaafari has sent two identical letters on March 25, 2014 to UN Secretary General and President of the Security Council about the two vital issues.

Citing the diplomat Syrian news agency (SANA) said:

The Syrian authorities monitored a landline phone call between two terrorists in Jobar area in Damascus suburb, during which one of the terrorists said a third terrorist referred to as Abu Nader is secretly distributing gas masks among his associates to protect them from toxic gas.

These terrorists would then accuse the Syrian government of the attack.

The Syrian diplomat’s letter has been posted on the UN website.

The Syrian security services, Jaafari said, also intercepted another communication between militants one of whom was called Abu Jihad. During that conversation, the latter indicated that toxic gas would be used and “asked those who are working with him to supply protective masks.”

Back in March, Jaafari informed the Security Council that a person named Haytham Salahuddin Qassab “transported chemical substances from Turkey on behalf of the terrorist organization known as Ahrar al-Sham.” He allegedly purchased the chemical agents from Turkey’s Dharwa Import and Export Company.

The substances reportedly included white phosphorous and isopropyl hydroxylamine. It was alleged, Jaafari said, that militants planned to use them to produce white smoke in certain areas and later claim that Syrian planes had bombed them.

“However, the primary reason for requesting those substances was to use them as chemical weapons,” the Syrian diplomat warned.

Syria’s UN Ambassador said: Militants had earlier followed a similar scenario in the chemical attacks in Allepo and in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, when they blamed Assad’s forces for the deadly incidents.

 

150,000 dead

 

At least 150,000 people have been killed in Syria’s three-year-old interventionist war, a third of them civilians, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).

The UK-based SOHR, which monitors violence in Syria through a network of activists and medical or security sources, said the real toll was likely to be significantly higher at about 220,000 deaths.

The last UN figures, released in July 2013, put the death toll at at least 100,000 but it said in January it would stop updating the toll as conditions on the ground made it impossible to make accurate estimates.

The Observatory said it had registered the deaths of 150,344 people since 18 March 2011, when Assad’s security forces first fired on protesters calling for reform.

The SOHR said nearly 38,000 interventionists have been killed, including fighters from the Nusra Front, al-Qaida’s affiliate in Syria, and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis), an al-Qaida splinter group that includes many foreign fighters.

More than 58,000 pro-Assad fighters were killed, including regular security forces and Syrian pro-government militia, as well as 364 fighters from the Lebanese Shia militia Hezbollah and 605 other foreign Shia Muslims.

In addition to the fatalities, the Observatory said 18,000 people were missing after being detained by security forces while another 8,000 people had been kidnapped or detained by the interventionists.

 

Interventionists kill Armenians

 

Russia strongly condemned the brutal acts perpetrated by armed terrorist groups in Syria, affirming the UN Security Council has to discuss the massacre against the Armenians in Kassab, Lattakia countryside and give an initial evaluation to this act.

On a videotape broadcast on You Tube on Kassab events, the Russian Foreign Ministry said “Even though that video tape didn’t show execution of Armenians in Kassab, but the killing of Syrian soldiers at the hands of gunmen, this doesn’t make the crime less brutal.

Meanwhile, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov called for a Security Council urgent meeting to discuss the crimes committed by the armed terrorist groups against the residents of Kassab city in Lattakia countryside, near the border with Turkey.

Armed terrorist groups launched last week an assault against Kassab city in northern Syria under the cover and support of Turkey’s Erdogan government, which has facilitated the entry of the gunmen into Lattakia northern countryside.

 

Arming the terrorists continue

 

Russian defense minister Sergey Shoygu said Western and Gulf countries continue to provide weapons to terrorist groups in Syria, and that the situation in Syria is still tense because of that.

In a statement following a meeting of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Tajikistan on April 1, 2014, Shoygu said that there are fighters, who have fought in Libya, infiltrating Syria and supporting oppositions in Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt, adding that these issues should not be over looked by the SCO.

He warned that any foreign military interference in Syria would lead to catastrophic results on the whole region, citing the negative impacts of the interference in Libya.

He stressed that the SCO should pay attention to the developments in the Middle East and North Africa, adding that if these challenges were not dealt with, then they would affect other neighboring countries.

The Russian defense ministry fully supports the Chinese initiative on forming a counter-terrorism center affiliated to the SCO, Shoygu said.

 

Latakia position recaptured

 

Syrian troops recaptured a key position in coastal Latakia province, a regime bastion as interventionists press a campaign in the region.

“Syrian army units have full control of Observatory 45 in the north of Latakia province and are continuing to pursue terrorist groups,” the state broadcaster said, citing the military.

Observatory 45 is a strategic hilltop that overlooks several areas inhabited by residents from the Alawite community.

Live TV report from near the hilltop and broadcast pictures of dead bodies it said were “terrorists,” many of them non-Syrians.

Last week the rebels seized the hill as part of an offensive launched March 21 in Latakia province, which had been relatively untouched by the widespread violence elsewhere in the country.

The interventionists including jihadists from the Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front have also captured the Armenian town of Kasab and the nearby Kasab border crossing with Turkey, as well as the village of Samra, giving them access to the Mediterranean for the first time.

After a series of interventionists’ losses in Damascus province, they have shifted their focus to Latakia.

 

02 April, 2014

Countercurrents.org

 

 

By Michael T. Klare

 

The Last Stage of Fossil-Fuel Addiction and Its Hazardous Impact on American Foreign Policy

Of all the preposterous, irresponsible headlines that have appeared on the front page of the New York Times in recent years, few have exceeded the inanity of this one from early March: “U.S. Hopes Boom in Natural Gas Can Curb Putin.” The article by normally reliable reporters Coral Davenport and Steven Erlanger suggested that, by sending our surplus natural gas to Europe and Ukraine in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG), the United States could help reduce the region’s heavy reliance on Russian gas and thereby stiffen its resistance to Vladimir Putin’s aggressive behavior.

Forget that the United States currently lacks a capacity to export LNG to Europe, and will not be able to do so on a significant scale until the 2020s. Forget that Ukraine lacks any LNG receiving facilities and is unlikely to acquire any, as its only coastline is on the Black Sea, in areas dominated by Russian speakers with loyalties to Moscow. Forget as well that any future U.S. exports will be funneled into the international marketplace, and so will favor sales to Asia where gas prices are 50% higher than in Europe. Just focus on the article’s central reportorial flaw: it fails to identify a single reason why future American LNG exports (which could wind up anywhere) would have any influence whatsoever on the Russian president’s behavior.

The only way to understand the strangeness of this is to assume that the editors of the Times, like senior politicians in both parties, have become so intoxicated by the idea of an American surge in oil and gas production that they have lost their senses.

As domestic output of oil and gas has increased in recent years — largely through the use of fracking to exploit hitherto impenetrable shale deposits — many policymakers have concluded that the United States is better positioned to throw its weight around in the world. “Increasing U.S. energy supplies,” said then-presidential security adviser Tom Donilon in April 2013, “affords us a stronger hand in pursuing and implementing our international security goals.” Leaders in Congress on both sides of the aisle have voiced similar views.

The impression one gets from all this balderdash is that increased oil and gas output — like an extra dose of testosterone — will somehow bolster the will and confidence of American officials when confronting their foreign counterparts. One former White House official cited by Davenport and Erlanger caught the mood of the moment perfectly: “We’re engaging from a different position [with respect to Russia] because we’re a much larger energy producer.”

It should be obvious to anyone who has followed recent events in the Crimea and Ukraine that increased U.S. oil and gas output have provided White House officials with no particular advantage in their efforts to counter Putin’s aggressive moves — and that the prospect of future U.S. gas exports to Europe is unlikely to alter his strategic calculations. It seems, however, that senior U.S. officials beguiled by the mesmerizing image of a future “Saudi America” have simply lost touch with reality.

For anyone familiar with addictive behavior, this sort of delusional thinking would be a sign of an advanced stage of fossil fuel addiction. As the ability to distinguish fantasy from reality evaporates, the addict persists in the belief that relief for all problems lies just ahead — when, in fact, the very opposite is true.

The analogy is hardly new, of course, especially when it comes to America’s reliance on imported petroleum. “America is addicted to oil,” President George W. Bush typically declared in his 2006 State of the Union address (and he was hardly the first president to do so). Such statements have often been accompanied in the media by cartoons of Uncle Sam as a junkie, desperately injecting his next petroleum “fix.” But few analysts have carried the analogy further, exploring the ways our growing dependence on oil has generated increasingly erratic and self-destructive behavior. Yet it is becoming evident that the world’s addiction to fossil fuels has reached a point at which we should expect the judgment of senior leaders to become impaired, as seems to be happening.

The most persuasive evidence that fossil fuel addiction has reached a critical stage may be found in official U.S. data on carbon dioxide emissions. The world is now emitting one and a half times as much CO2 as it did in 1988, when James Hansen, then director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, warned Congress that the planet was getting warmer as a result of the “greenhouse effect,” and that human activity — largely in the form of carbon emissions from the consumption of fossil fuels — was almost certainly the cause.

If a reasonable concern over the fate of the planet were stronger than our reliance on fossil fuels, we would expect to see, if not a reduction in carbon emissions, then a decline at least in the rate of increase of emissions over time. Instead, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicts that global emissions will continue to rise at a torrid pace over the next quarter century, reaching 45.5 billion metric tons in 2040 — more than double the amount recorded in 1998 and enough, in the view of most scientists, to turn our planet into a living hell. Though seldom recognized as such, this is the definition of addiction-induced self-destruction, writ large.

For many of us, the addiction to petroleum is embedded in our everyday lives in ways over which we exercise limited control. Because of the systematic dismantling and defunding of public transportation (along with the colossal subsidization of highways), for instance, we have become highly reliant on oil-powered vehicles, and it is very hard for most of us living outside big cities to envision a practical alternative to driving. More and more people are admittedly trying to kick this habit at an individual level by acquiring hybrid or all-electric cars, by using public transit where available, or by bicycling, but that remains a drop in the bucket. It will take a colossal future effort to reconstruct our transportation system along climate-friendly lines.

For what might be thought of as the Big Energy equivalent of the 1%, the addiction to fossils fuels is derived from the thrill of riches and power — something that is far more difficult to resist or deconstruct. Oil is the world’s most lucrative commodity on the planet, and a source of great wealth and influence for ruling groups in the countries that produce it, notably Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Nigeria, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States. The leaders of these “petro-states” may not always benefit personally from the accumulation of oil revenues, but they certainly recognize that their capacity to govern, or even remain in power, rests on their responsiveness to entrenched energy interests and their skill in deploying the nation’s energy resources for political and strategic advantage. This is just as true for Barack Obama, who has championed the energy industry’s drive to increase domestic oil and gas output, as it is for Vladimir Putin, who has sought to boost Russia’s international clout through increased fossil fuel exports.

Top officials in these countries know better than most of us that severe climate change is coming our way, and that only a sharp reduction in carbon emissions can prevent its most destructive effects. But government and corporate officials are so wedded to fossil fuel profits — or to the political advantages that derive from controlling oil’s flow — that they are quite incapable of overcoming their craving for ever greater levels of production. As a result, while President Obama speaks often enough of his desire to increase the nation’s reliance on renewable energy, he has embraced an “all of the above” energy plan that is underwriting a boom in oil and gas output. The same is true for virtually every other major government figure. Obeisance is routinely paid to the need for increased green technology, but a priority continues to be placed on increases in oil, gas, and coal production. Even in 2040, according to EIA predictions, these fuels may still be supplying four-fifths of the world’s total energy supply.

This bias in favor of fossil fuels over other forms of energy — despite all we know about climate change — can only be viewed as a kind of carbon delirium. You can find evidence of this pathology worldwide and in myriad ways, but here are three unmistakable examples of our advanced stage of addiction.

 

1. The Obama administration’s decision to allow BP to resume oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

 

After energy giant BP (formerly British Petroleum) pleaded guilty to criminal negligence in the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, which resulted in the death of 11 people and a colossal oil spill, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) suspended the company’s right to acquire new drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico. The ban was widely viewed as a major setback for the company, which had long sought to dominate production in the Gulf’s deep waters. To regain access to the Gulf, BP sued the EPA and brought other pressures to bear on the Obama administration. Finally, on March 13th, after months of lobbying and negotiations, the agency announced that BP would be allowed to resume bidding for new leases, as long as it adhered to a list of supposedly tight restrictions

BP officials viewed the announcement as an enormous victory, allowing the company to resume a frenetic search for new oil deposits in the Gulf’s deep waters. “Today’s agreement will allow America’s largest investor to compete again for federal contracts and leases,” said BP America Chairman and President John Mingé. Observers in the oil industry predict that the company will now acquire many additional leases in the Gulf, adding to its already substantial presence there. “With this agreement, it’s realistic to expect that the Gulf of Mexico can be a key asset for BP’s operations not only for this decade but potentially for decades to come,” commented Stephen Simko, an oil specialist at Morningstar investment analysts. (Six days after the EPA announced its decision, BP bid $42 million to acquire 24 new leases in the Gulf.)

So BP’s interest is clear enough, but what is the national interest in all this? Yes, President Obama can claim that increased drilling might add a few hundred thousand barrels per day to domestic oil output, plus a few thousand new jobs. But can he really assure our children or grandchildren that, in allowing increased drilling in the Gulf, he is doing all he can to reduce the threat of climate change as he promised to do in his most recent State of the Union address? If he truly sought a simple and straightforward way to renew that pledge, this would have been a good place to start: plenty of people remember the damage inflicted by the Deepwater Horizon disaster and the indifference BP’s top officials displayed toward many of its victims, so choosing to maintain the ban on its access to new drilling leases on environmental and climate grounds would certainly have attracted public support. The fact that Obama chose not to do so suggests instead a further surrender to the power of oil and gas interests — and to the effects of carbon delirium.

2. The Republican drive to promote construction of the Keystone XL pipeline as a response to the Ukrainian crisis

 

If Obama administration dreams about pressuring Putin by exporting LNG to Europe fail to pass the credibility test, a related drive by key Republicans to secure approval for the Keystone XL tar-sands pipeline defies any notion of sanity. Keystone, as you may recall, is intended to carry carbon-dense, highly corrosive diluted bitumen from the Athabasca tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the Gulf Coast. Its construction has been held up by concerns that it will pose a threat to water supplies along its route and help increase global carbon dioxide emissions.

Because Keystone crosses an international boundary, its construction must receive approval not just from the State Department, but from the president himself. The Republicans and their conservative backers have long favored the pipeline as a repudiation of what they view as excessive governmental deference to environmental concerns. Now, in the midst of the Ukraine crisis, they are suddenly depicting pipeline approval as a signal of U.S. determination to resist Putin’s aggressive moves in the Crimea and Ukraine.

“Putin is playing for the long haul, cleverly exploiting every opening he sees. So must we,” wrote former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a recent Washington Post op-ed. “Authorizing the Keystone XL pipeline and championing natural gas exports would signal that we intend to do precisely that.”

Does anyone truly believe that Vladimir Putin will be influenced by a White House announcement that it will allow construction of the Keystone XL pipeline? Putin’s government is already facing significant economic sanctions and other punitive moves, yet none of this has swayed him from pursuing what he appears to believe are Russia’s core interests. Why, then, would the possibility that the U.S. might acquire more of its oil from Canada and less from Mexico, Nigeria, Venezuela, and other foreign suppliers even register on his consciousness?

In addition, to suggest that approving Keystone XL would somehow stiffen Obama’s resolve, inspiring him to adopt tougher measures against Moscow, is to engage in what psychologists call “magical thinking.” Were Keystone to transport any other substance than oil, the claim that its construction would somehow affect presidential decision-making or events on Russia’s borders would be laughable. So great is our reverence for petroleum, however, that we allow ourselves to believe in such miracles. This, too, is carbon delirium.

 

3. The Case of the Missing $20 Billion

 

Finally, consider the missing $20 billion in oil revenues from the Nigerian treasury. In Nigeria, where the average income is less than $2.00 per day and many millions live in extreme poverty, the disappearance of that much money is a cause for extreme concern. If used for the public good, that $20 billion might have provided basic education and health care for millions, helped alleviate the AIDS epidemic, and jump-started development in poor rural areas. But in all likelihood, much of that money has already found its way into the overseas bank accounts of well-connected Nigerian officials.

Its disappearance was first revealed in February when the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Lamido Sanusi, told a parliamentary investigating committee that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) had failed to transfer the proceeds from oil sales to the national treasury as required by law. Nigeria is Africa’s leading oil producer and the proceeds from its petroleum output not claimed by the NNPC’s foreign partners are supposed to wind up in the state’s coffers. With oil prices hovering at around $100 per barrel, Nigeria should theoretically be accumulating tens of billions of dollars per year from export sales. Sanusi was immediately fired by President Goodluck Jonathan for conveying the news that the NNPC has been reporting suspiciously low oil revenues to the central bank, depriving the state of vital income and threatening the stability of the nation’s currency. The only plausible explanation, he suggested, is that the company’s officials are skimming off the difference. “A substantial amount of money has gone,” he told the New York Times. “I wasn’t just talking about numbers. I showed it was a scam.”

While the magnitude of the scam may be eye-catching, its existence is hardly surprising. Ever since Nigeria began producing oil some 60 years ago, a small coterie of business and government oligarchs has controlled the allocation of petroleum revenues, using them to buy political patronage and secure their own private fortunes. The NNPC has been an especially fertile site for corruption, as its operations are largely immune from public inspection and the opportunities for swindles are mammoth. Sanusi is only one of a series of well-intentioned civil servants who have attempted to plumb the depths of the thievery. A 2012 report by former anti-corruption chief Nuhu Ribadu reported the disappearance of a hardly less staggering $29 billion from the NNPC between 2001 and 2011.

Here, then, is another, equally egregious form of carbon delirium: addiction to illicit oil wealth so profound as to place the solvency and well-being of 175 million people at risk. President Jonathan has now promised to investigate Sanusi’s charges, but it is unlikely that any significant portion of the missing $20 billion will ever make it into Nigeria’s treasury.

 

Curing Addiction

 

These examples of carbon delirium indicate just how deeply entrenched it is in global culture. In the U.S., addiction to carbon is present at all levels of society, but the higher one rises in corporate and government circles, the more advanced the process.

Slowing the pace of climate change will only be possible once this affliction is identified, addressed, and neutralized. Overcoming individual addiction to narcotic substances is never an easy task; resisting our addiction to carbon will prove no easier. However, the sooner we recast the climate issue as a public health problem, akin to drug addiction, the sooner we will be able to fashion effective strategies for averting its worst effects. This means, for example, providing programs and incentives for those of us who seek to reduce our reliance on petroleum, and imposing penalties on those who resist such a transition or actively promote addiction to fossil fuels.

Divesting from fossil fuel stocks is certainly one way to go cold turkey. It involves sacrificing expectations of future rewards from the possession of such stocks, while depriving the fossil fuel companies of our investment funds and, by extension, our consent for their activities.

But a more far-ranging kind of carbon detoxification must come in time. As with all addictions, the first and most crucial step is to acknowledge that our addiction to fossil fuels has reached such an advanced stage as to pose a direct danger to all humanity. If we are to have any hope of averting the worst effects of climate change, we must fashion a 12-step program for universal carbon renunciation and impose penalties on those who aid and abet our continuing addiction.

 

Michael T. Klare is the Five College Professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts.

By Kourosh Ziabari

The war of words between Russia and the United States is soaring these days over the sovereignty of the Crimean peninsula, and the White House officials are constantly directing accusations and excruciating verbal attacks against Kremlin in what seems to be the most serious dispute between Moscow and the West in the recent years.

The United States has pulled out all the stops to defeat and isolate Russia diplomatically, and has even gone so far as to impose economic sanctions against the Russian individuals and companies, and excluding Russia from the G8 group of the industrialized nations. The 40th G8 summit was slated to be held in Sochi, Russia on June 4-5, but following the suspension of Russia’s membership in the G8, the summit relocated to Brussels, Belgium, and it would be the first time that a G8 leaders’ convention is going to take place in a non-member state country. Some of the Western media outlets have even started to refer to G8 as G7, implying that Russia does not have any position in this influential group of the affluent, developed nations.

But as always, when it comes to flexing the muscles and showing political prowess, the United States and its partners are behaving in an intolerant, duplicitous and hypocritical manner. In a statement, the newly-termed G7 leaders reaffirmed that Russia’s “occupation of the Crimea” was against the principles of the G7 and contravened the United Nations Charter.

It’s interesting that the innumerable violations of the international law, the UN Charter and Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in time of War by the United States in the recent years have never caught the attention of the G8 leaders and never compelled them to at least consider warning the United States to behave more responsibly and respect the internationally recognized conventions and regulations or refraining from destroying and annihilating other nations through its “humanitarian” missions!

If Russia should be punished for sending troops to Crimea, while it’s legally entitled to do so, and if its military intervention in Crimea represents a violation of the UN Charter in the eyes of the Western leaders, then it will be taken for granted that all violations of the international law and the United Nations Charter should be reprimanded and responded appropriately and the wrongdoers should be penalized in a fair manner. If Russia has occupied a sovereign entity – which is of course not the case, and should bear the burden of sanctions and diplomatic isolation, it’s ok, but why shouldn’t the United States be castigated and prosecuted for the same reason? What makes the military intervention of Russia different from the wars the U.S. offhandedly wages across the world?

For those of us who willfully ignore the historical facts, it’s noteworthy that the Partition Treaty on the Status and Conditions of the Black Sea Fleet signed between Russia and Ukraine on May 28, 1997, permits Russia to lawfully maintain up to 25,000 troops, 24 artillery systems, 132 armored vehicles and 22 military planes on the Crimean peninsula. This agreement will be effective until 2017, and so it can be the most convincing logical justification for Russia’s military action in Crimea.

So, what has happened is not an “occupation” as the U.S. leaders claim, but that Russia has exercised its legal right for sending troops to a geographical area where the majority of inhabitants are ethnic Russians and don’t want to remain under the Ukraine autonomy and are overwhelmingly inclined to join Russia.

What every neutral and unbiased observer of the international political developments can easily note is that it’s the United States which is renowned for its hegemonic policies and its imperialistic modus operandi, not Russia. Russia’s intervention in Crimea took place after it felt that its national interests are being seriously endangered on its borders, where 58% of the population is consisted of indigenous Russians who prefer to be reunited with Russia, rather than being seen as an asset and prize for the United States under the leadership of a new government in Ukraine which has neo-fascist backgrounds.

The prominent American syndicated columnist and journalist Ted Rall has recently written on his website that there are traces of neo-fascism and neo-Nazism in the government of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk who has just come to power: “There’s no doubt that a Ukrainian nationalist strain runs deep in the new regime. It has been estimated that roughly 1/3 or more of the supporters of the new government come out of xenophobic, anti-Semitic, neo-fascist movements that draw much of their ideological heritage from the Nazi puppet regime that governed Ukraine under German occupation during World War II.”

So, on March 16, the Crimean parliament and the local government of Sevastopol held a public referendum in Crimea to give the citizens two choices for the future of their territory; either to remain associated with Ukraine or reunite with Russia. With a high turnout of 83.1% of the eligible voters, 96.77% of the participants in the plebiscite voted in favor of joining the Russian Federation. The United States and its allies didn’t hesitate to call the referendum as rigged and invalid, as they usually does with the elections in countries with which they are at odds. Washington even drafted a resolution in the United Nations Security Council to call the referendum null and void, but Russia used its veto power, while China abstained, and the United States simply pushed the General Assembly member states to pass a non-binding resolution, declaring the referendum invalid, which doesn’t seem to have any certain impact on the future of Crimea.

The policy of de-Russanization was long underway in the Crimean peninsula, and many other former Soviet Union republics, as Ted Rall elaborately details. Perhaps the fact that the Ukrainian Parliament Verkhovna Rada voted on February 23 to repeal the 2012 language law that had declared Russian an official language in Ukraine and allowed it to be used in the schools, media and official correspondence, was a driving force for the Crimean people to rise up and call for independence from Ukraine that they believed didn’t respect their cultural and lingual background.

The future of Crimea and the prospects of the marred relations between Russia and the West remain blurred and unknown, but the United States’ accusations that Russia is “occupying” Crimea and exerting military aggression and so should be punished with economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation sound gravely outrageous and entirely hypocritical. The United States has the biggest war machinery in the world, has been directly or indirectly involved in more than 50 wars and military strikes on other countries without the approval of the UN Security Council, and has incontestably perpetrated war crimes and crimes against humanity.

As the prominent American lawyer and legal expert Marjorie Cohn has noted in a recent article, the United States is the largest user of unconventional and forbidden chemical weapons in the illegal wars it has waged across the globe. “The U.S. militarily occupied over 75% of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques for 60 years, during which time the Navy routinely practiced with, and used, Agent Orange, depleted uranium, napalm and other toxic chemicals and metals such as TNT and mercury. This occurred within a couple of miles of a civilian population that included thousands of U.S. citizens,” wrote Prof. Cohn.

“The use of any type of chemical weapon by any party would constitute a war crime. Chemical weapons that kill and maim people are illegal and their use violates the laws of war,” she added.

She also goes on to explain the use of chemical weapons by the United States in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria and also underlines that the majority of wars in which the United States has taken part were not ever approved by the Security Council. Aren’t these crimes a contravention of the UN Charter? Why don’t the G7 leaders and European Council and European Commission officials ever react to these violations? Does the United States have the prerogative to attack other countries and maim their people without any legal or moral justification and then get away with its crimes?

The United States is imparting a clear message by adopting this insincere and hypocritical approach toward Russia, which is also a message to other countries: We can invade your countries, we can kill your citizens, we can rule you tyrannically, we can behave in any way we desire, but if you do something which doesn’t please us, we will impose sanctions on you, we will banish you from international organizations, and we will come down on you like a ton of bricks. This is how the American hypocrisy works…

 

Kourosh Ziabari is an Journalist, writer and media correspondent.

31 March, 2014

Countercurrents.org

 

By Nile Bowie

 

Saudi officials are highly displeased over Washington’s overtures to Iran and reluctance to strike Syria and have threatened to break away from the US sphere, but the monarchy may still see an oil-for-security partnership with the Obama administration as the safest policy.

Following his visit to Brussels where US President Barack Obama underscored the common values and principles shared between the United States and its European allies, the American president jetted off to meet another strategic ally. Saudi Arabia, a state that is the antithesis of those very western values that Obama passionately espouses, has been in the US sphere of influence for decades, and its opulent royal family has traditionally maintained close personal ties to American leaders. Obama’s visit comes in the midst of a policy rift that has emerged between the two allies over Washington’s policies in the Middle East, which threaten to undermine this significant economic and security partnership. The two allies appear to be strange bedfellows at first glance, but when the relationship is examined within the context of a long-standing geopolitical and economic oil-for-security partnership, lofty rhetoric about western values becomes subservient to the harmonious marriage of convenience. The American president did not raise concerns of human rights violations during his dialogue with King Abdullah, despite the kingdom’s notoriously abhorrent human rights record, which includes the severe repression of women’s rights and capital punishment (often by beheading) for engaging in apostasy, adultery, sorcery or homosexuality. The purpose of this brief visit was to reassure the Saudi leadership that their grievances were being heard, and that Washington desires the same immediate endgame: a pliant new regime in Damascus that will be subservient to US-Saudi interests, and a weakened non-nuclear Iran.

 

Fraying ties

Relations between Washington and Riyadh were at their lowest in October 2013, when then Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan vowed to make a “major shift” in relations with the US in protest over the Obama administration’s decision to backpedal on plans to launch airstrikes on Syria. Members of the Saudi royal family openly derided the UN-backed deal to eliminate Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons and ridiculed Obama for failing to act when his ‘red line’ was crossed. Washington’s attempts to thaw relations with Iran have also irritated Saudi leaders, who deeply resented how US-Iranian talks had been kept secret from Riyadh. Aside from feeling double-crossed by a major ally, the Saudis believe that any US-Iran agreement would bolster Tehran and allow Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad to remain in power. Saudi Arabia is fuelling a proxy war as the chief financier of anti-Assad jihadist groups aimed at toppling the Syrian government and rolling back the influence of Hezbollah and Iran in the region, while Saudi officials have complained about US constraints placed on the kind of weapons allowed to be funneled to militia groups, arguing that the Obama administration’s reluctance to provide rebels with anti-aircraft missiles has allowed Syrian government forces to make significant gains on the battlefield.

There are also significant differences between the two allies with respect to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Riyadh is disappointed with Washington’s unwillingness to pressure the Israelis into making tough concessions; Saudi Arabia and other members of the Arab League also reject Washington’s decision to back Israel’s demand to be recognized as a “Jewish state,” because doing so implies that Palestinians renounce their right of return. The House of Saud was deeply upset when the Obama administration turned away from Hosni Mubarak during Egypt’s first leadership transition in 2011, giving rise to the Qatar-backed Muslim Brotherhood. Riyadh enthusiastically supported the ouster of elected Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in favor of a Saudi-aligned military junta. Though Washington hasn’t broke away from the new regime in Cairo, leaders in Saudi Arabia volunteered to provide financial assistance to compensate for the suspension of a portion of US military aid, and the two allies have clear differences on the situation in Egypt. As a protest against perceived American inaction and the inability of the UN to effectively ‘punish’ the Syrian government for allegedly using chemical weapons, the leadership of Saudi Arabia famously rejected a seat on the UN Security Council. Though officials from the kingdom point to Riyadh’s rejection of the UN seat as an example of their preparedness to act independently, this gesture ultimately was a pressure tactic to coax the US into taking a harder line.

 

Going it alone?

Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Britain published a striking column in the New York Times last year decrying western policies on Syria and Iran as a dangerous gamble, warning that the kingdom would not stand idly by. The op-ed essentially calls for military action against Damascus (and by extension, Tehran) and vows that the kingdom will become more assertive in international affairs. Saudi Arabia has expressed a desire to formulate a new assertive foreign policy doctrine to contest a resurgent Iran and its support bloc, hastened by a deteriorating relationship with Washington as imports of Saudi crude are at their lowest point in two decades in the wake of the US shale oil boom. However, there are few indications that Riyadh has channeled its rhetoric and gestures into a fundamental policy shift; in fact, the opposite may be taking place. The recent shuffling of key officials appears to be designed to ease tensions with the US, allowing both allies to more effectively coordinate in their drive to oust the Syrian government. There are also no indications that Saudi Arabia is defying the US by providing advanced weapons systems to rebel militias fighting in Syria. The Saudis have placed more emphasis on pushing against Assad using diplomatic means. Rather than taking a major policy shift away from the US, the sacking of Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan has arguably been an effort to please Washington.

Senior American officials where known to have described Prince Bandar as an erratic and hot-headed character, while US Secretary of State John Kerry complained about his conduct and labeled him as “the problem” when discussing the kingdom’s policy on Syria. Bandar was sacked from his role as the main coordinator of the Syrian dossier and replaced with Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, a personal friend ofJohn Kerry and CIA Director John Brennan who analysts believe is capable of calming relations with Washington. Reports indicate that since the shuffle, the kingdom has pledged to make greater efforts to explore diplomatic avenues to pressure Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. A quieter and less extreme strategy for Syria has been evidenced by a recent decree that bars Saudi citizens from fighting in conflicts outside the kingdom, with a punishment of incarceration for offenders. The decree is sorely disingenuous when considering how Saudi authorities knowingly aided jihadist groups whose members included foreigners and Saudi citizens throughout Syria’s civil war. The policy shift has more to do with clamping down on extremist elements inside the kingdom that may potentially seek to rise up against the monarchy, but it also signals a willingness to appease Washington by flying the flag of so-called ‘moderation’ and taking a more cautious approach.

 

No break with Washington

There appears to be a spilt in the Saudi leadership between one side that calls for an independent posture, a hardline interventionist stance on Syria, and strategic shift away from the US. The other branch is more cautious and realizes that significant changes to the status quo may pose too much vulnerability to the kingdom. For the moment, King Abdullah has taken the cautious path, and Riyadh is also aware that the US security umbrella is the best bet for regime stability and continuity; the existing rift would have to deepen considerably before any major shift away from Washington can be considered. Though the Saudis have vowed to take a quieter approach on Syria, the significant gains of government forces in recent times have pushed Riyadh to call for equipping rebel forces with man-portable air-defense systems.Prince Mohammed, who has a history of leading counterterrorism operations in Yemen, has attempted to assuage American fears that any advanced weapons would not end up in the hands of extremists. The Obama administration is now mulling the decision whether or not to provide them. Even so, there is no indication that Riyadh plans to go ahead with deploying advanced weapons without Washington’s green light, suggesting that the ‘major shift’ promised by some Saudi officials has been sidelined.

Obama’s recent trip to Saudi Arabia came as a response to tactical pressure placed on the administration by the House of Saud, which is not seriously intending to disengage with the US. Oil has always underlined the US-Saudi relationship, and as Gulf exporters turn their attention eastward toward energy hungry developing economies as the US capitalizes on the shale boom, there are slow-motion risk diversification efforts being made that will strengthen Saudi relations with a parallel web of allies. For now, the marriage of convenience looks set to remain in place.

 

Nile Bowie is a Malaysia-based political analyst and a columnist with Russia Today. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com. He is also a Just Member.

 

30 March 2014

 

 

By Colin Todhunter

The Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) between the  US and EU aims  to ‘protect’ investment and remove ‘unnecessary regulatory barriers’. C orporate interests are driving the agenda, the public have been sidelined and unaccountable, pro-free-trade bureaucrats are facilitating the strategy (1) .

There is growing concern that the negotiations could result in the  opening of the floodgates for GMOs and shale gas (fracking) in  Europe , the threatening of digital and labour rights and the empowering of corporations to legally challenge a wide range of regulations which they dislike.

One of the key aspects of the negotiations is that both the EU and US should recognise their respective rules and regulations, which in practice could reduce regulation to the lowest common denominator. The official language talks of ‘mutual recognition’ of standards or so-called reduction of non-tariff barriers. For the EU, that could mean accepting US standards in many areas, including food and agriculture, which are lower than the EU’s.

Even the leaders of the US Senate Finance Committee, in a  letter  to U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, made it clear that any agreement must reduce EU restrictions on genetically modified crops, chlorinated chickens and hormone-treated beef.

Food lobby group Food and Drink Europe, representing the largest food companies (Unilever, Kraft, Nestlé, etc.), has welcomed the negotiations, with one of their key demands being the facilitation of the low level presence of unapproved GM crops.

The TAFTA negotiations are shrouded in secrecy and are closed to proper public scrutiny (2,3,4). They amount to little more than grubby back room deals, while striving to give the appearance of somehow being democratic, and effectively constitute part of the ongoing corporate hijack of democracy and the further restructuring of economies in favour of elite interests (5,6,7).

However, despite claims by the European Commission that there is no secrecy (8), the notes of European Commission meetings with business lobbyists released to Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) under the EU’s freedom of information law were heavily censored. The documents showed that the EC invited industry to submit wish lists for ‘regulatory barriers’ they would like removed during the negotiations. There is no way for the public to know how the EU has incorporated this into its negotiating position as all references have been removed (4). The documents show clearly that removing differences in EU and US regulations is the key issue in the talks: in other words, a race to the bottom in setting the lowest barriers possible.

A leaked EU document (9)  from the winter of 2013 shows the Commission proposing an EU-US Regulatory Cooperation Council, a permanent structure to be created as part of the TAFTA deal. Existing and future EU regulation will then have to go through a series of investigations, dialogues and negotiations in this Council. This would move decisions on regulations into a technocratic sphere, away from democratic scrutiny .  Also, there would be compulsory impact assessments for proposed regulation, which will be checked for their potential impact on trade. This would be ideal for big business lobbies: creating a firm brake on any new progressive regulation in the very first stage of decision-making.

As if all of this isn’t bad enough, there is also the highly contentious trade-investor dispute settlement provision in TAFTA. It would enable US companies investing in Europe to bypass European courts and challenge EU governments at international tribunals whenever they find that laws in the area of public health, environmental or social protection interfere with their profits. EU companies investing abroad would have the same privilege in the US.

This constitutes a charter for the systematic destruction and dismantling of legislation that exists to protect the hard-won rights of workers and ordinary people.

Across the world, big business has already used such investor-state dispute settlement provisions in trade and investment agreements to claim massive sums in compensation.  Tribunals, consisting of ad hoc three-member panels hired from a small club of private lawyers riddled with conflicts of interest, have granted billions of euros to companies, courtesy of taxpayers (10).

EU and US companies have used these lawsuits to destroy any competition or threats to their profits by for example challenging green energy and medicine policies, anti-smoking legislation, bans on harmful chemicals, environmental restrictions on mining, health insurance policies and measures to improve the economic situation of minorities.

If governments and parliaments fail to act to protect the public’s interests, powerful corporations will acquire carte blanche to rein in democracy and curb policies devised for the public good.

Despite such major concerns, campaigners from the  Seattle to Brussels Network (11) have criticised the European Commission’s recently implemented consultation on the investor rights in the EU-US trade deal as a mock consultation aimed at selling its pro-industry agenda, rather than an honest attempt to have a much-needed open debate on the issue.

Roos van Os of the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO), a member of the Seattle to Brussels Network, has said:

“Those who reject the undemocratic and dangerous investor-state dispute settlement system will have no opportunity in this consultation to voice their opposition because the Commission’s biased questions provide no option for that. The Commission should make itself available for a real debate, not a cowardly advertising campaign for its corporate agenda.”

In meetings with the Commission, members of its civil society advisory group on the EU-US trade deal had stressed the need for the consultation to be intelligible for non-experts and for there to be balanced questions. But the Commission’s consultation questionnaire only contains questions about its agenda for minor reforms to salvage the controversial investor-state dispute settlement system, in a 40-page legalistic text which will be difficult for members of the public to understand.

Marc Maes of the Belgian development organisation and also a member of the Seattle to Brussels Network:

 

“The Commission’s so-called reform agenda does nothing to address the basic flaws of the investor-state dispute settlement system. Therefore foreign companies will continue to have greater rights than domestic firms and citizens. And international tribunals consisting of three for-profit lawyers will continue to decide over what policies are right or wrong, disregarding domestic laws, courts and democracy.”

Analyses of leaked investment texts from the EU-Canada trade negotiations indicate that the EU’s approach to investment protection does very little to protect the right to regulate (in fact it sometimes does the exact opposite) and it will establish an arbitration system that is far inferior to domestic legal systems in the EU and North America (12).

Pia Eberhardt, trade campaigner with CEO, another member of the Seattle to Brussels Network, said:

“The investor-state arbitration system cannot be tamed. Profit-greedy law firms and their corporate clients will always find a way to attack countries for actions that threaten their profits. The corporate super-rights should be abolished – and people in Europe should not miss this crucial opportunity to tell the Commission to do so.”

To enhance public scrutiny and democratic debate about the controversial investor rights in EU trade agreements, members of the Seattle to Brussels Network have set up a website to publish leaked negotiating texts and critical analyses of these texts:  http://eu-secretdeals.info/

The network is also inviting civil society organisations and members of the public to participate in ongoing online actions against the dangerous corporate rights in EU trade deals.

Be informed and take action:

Seattle to Brussels Network:  http://www.s2bnetwork.org/themes/eus-free-trade-agreements/eu-us-transatlantic-trade-and-investment-partnership-ttip.html

Corporate Europe Observatory:  http://corporateeurope.org/tags/ttip

Stop the Crop:  http://www.stopthecrop.org/

 

Colin Todhunter : Originally from the northwest of England, Colin Todhunter has spent many years in India.

28 March, 2014

Countercurrents.org

 

By RT.com

“I’ll make up a cause of war by ordering a missile attack on Turkey.” This leaked conversation is coming back to haunt the highest echelons of the Turkish government as it plans a provocation in Syria, while scrambling to contain social media internally.

The leaked audiotapes that reveal Turkey’s highest ministers staging an anti-Assad military intervention in Syria, have already caused YouTube to be shut down in the country, as well as leading to fevered accusations of treachery and betrayal of Turkey’s political interests – “a declaration of war,” as Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu put it.

This is of course after intelligence chief Hakan Fidan suggested seizing the opportunity to secure Turkish intervention in the Syrian conflict – a war that has already claimed 140,000 lives, and counting. In the conversation, Davutoğlu is heard saying that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan sees any attack as an “opportunity” to increase troop presence in Syria, where it has staunchly supported the anti-Assad rebels.

 

Below is a transcript of that conversation in full. The video can be found below.

 

Ahmet Davutoğlu: “Prime Minister said that in current conjuncture, this attack (on Suleiman Shah Tomb) must be seen as an opportunity for us.”

Hakan Fidan: “I’ll send 4 men from Syria, if that’s what it takes. I’ll make up a cause of war by ordering a missile attack on Turkey; we can also prepare an attack on Suleiman Shah Tomb if necessary.”

Feridun Sinirlioğlu: “Our national security has become a common, cheap domestic policy outfit.”

Yaşar Güler: “It’s a direct cause of war. I mean, what’re going to do is a direct cause of war.”

 

FIRST SCREEN:

Ahmet Davutoğlu: I couldn’t entirely understand the other thing; what exactly does our foreign ministry supposed to do? No, I’m not talking about the thing. There are other things we’re supposed to do. If we decide on this, we are to notify the United Nations, the Istanbul Consulate of the Syrian regime, right?

Feridun Sinirlioğlu: But if we decide on an operation in there, it should create a shocking effect. I mean, if we are going to do so. I don’t know what we’re going to do, but regardless of what we decide, I don’t think it’d be appropriate to notify anyone beforehand.

Ahmet Davutoğlu: OK, but we’re gonna have to prepare somehow. To avoid any shorts on regarding international law. I just realised when I was talking to the president (Abdullah Gül), if the Turkish tanks go in there, it means we’re in there in any case, right?

Yaşar Güler: It means we’re in, yes.

Ahmet Davutoğlu: Yeah, but there’s a difference between going in with aircraft and going in with tanks…

 

SECOND SCREEN:

Yaşar Güler: Maybe we can tell the Syrian consulate general that, ISIL is currently working alongside the regime, and that place is Turkish land. We should definitely…

Ahmet Davutoğlu: But we have already said that, sent them several diplomatic notes.

Yaşar Güler: To Syria…

Feridun Sinirlioğlu: That’s right.

Ahmet Davutoğlu: Yes, we’ve sent them countless times. Therefore, I’d like to know what our Chief of Staff’s expects from our ministry.

Yaşar Güler: Maybe his intent was to say that, I don’t really know, he met with Mr. Fidan.

Hakan Fidan: Well, he did mention that part but we didn’t go into any further details.

Yaşar Güler: Maybe that was what he meant… A diplomatic note to Syria?

Hakan Fidan: Maybe the Foreign Ministry is assigned with coordination…

 

THIRD SCREEN:

Ahmet Davutoğlu: I mean, I could coordinate the diplomacy but civil war, the military…

Feridun Sinirlioğlu: That’s what I told back there. For one thing, the situation is different. An operation on ISIL has solid ground on international law. We’re going to portray this is Al-Qaeda, there’s no distress there if it’s a matter regarding Al-Qaeda. And if it comes to defending Suleiman Shah Tomb, that’s a matter of protecting our land.

Yaşar Güler: We don’t have any problems with that.

Hakan Fidan: Second after it happens, it’ll cause a great internal commotion (several bombing events is bound to happen within). The border is not under control…

Feridun Sinirlioğlu: I mean, yes, the bombings are of course going to happen. But I remember our talk from 3 years ago…

Yaşar Güler: Mr. Fidan should urgently receive back-up and we need to help him supply guns and ammo to rebels. We need to speak with the minister. Our Interior Minister, our Defense Minister. We need to talk about this and reach a resolution sir.

Ahmet Davutoğlu: How did we get special forces into action when there was a threat in Northern Iraq? We should have done so in there, too. We should have trained those men. We should have sent men. Anyway, we can’t do that, we can only do what diplomacy…

Feridun Sinirlioğlu: I told you back then, for God’s sake, General, you know how we managed to get those tanks in, you were there.

Yaşar Güler: What, you mean our stuff?

Feridun Sinirlioğlu: Yes, how do you think we’ve managed to rally our tanks into Iraq? How? How did we manage to get special forces, the battalions in? I was involved in that. Let me be clear, there was no government decision on that, we have managed that just with a single order.

 

FOURTH SCREEN:

Yaşar Güler: Well, I agree with you. For one thing, we’re not even discussing that. But there are different things that Syria can do right now.

Ahmet Davutoğlu: General, the reason we’re saying no to this operation is because we know about the capacity of those men.

Yaşar Güler: Look, sir, isn’t MKE (Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation) at minister’s bidding? Sir, I mean, Qatar is looking for ammo to buy in cash. Ready cash. So, why don’t they just get it done? It’s at Mr. Minister’s command.

Ahmet Davutoğlu: But there’s the spot we can’t act integratedly, we can’t coordinate.

Yaşar Güler: Then, our Prime Minister can summon both Mr. Defence Minister and Mr. Minister at the same time. Then he can directly talk to them.

Ahmet Davutoğlu: We, Mr. Siniroğlu and I, have literally begged Mr. Prime Minster for a private meeting, we said that things were not looking so bright.

 

FIFTH SCREEN:

Yaşar Güler: Also, it doesn’t have to be a crowded meeting. Yourself, Mr. Defence Minister, Mr. Interior Minister and our Chief of Staff, the four of you are enough. There’s no need for a crowd. Because, sir, the main need there is guns and ammo. Not even guns, mainly ammo. We’ve just talked about this, sir. Let’s say we’re building an army down there, 1000 strong. If we get them into that war without previously storing a minimum of 6-months’ worth of ammo, these men will return to us after two months.

Ahmet Davutoğlu: They’re back already.

Yaşar Güler: They’ll return to us, sir.

Ahmet Davutoğlu: They’ve came back from… What was it? Çobanbey.

Yaşar Güler: Yes, indeed, sir. This matter can’t be just a burden on Mr. Fidan’s shoulders as it is now. It’s unacceptable. I mean, we can’t understand this. Why?

 

SIXTH SCREEN:

Ahmet Davutoğlu: That evening we’d reached a resolution. And I thought that things were taking a turn for the good. Our…

Feridun Sinirlioğlu: We issued the MGK (National Security Council) resolution the day after. Then we talked with the general…

Ahmet Davutoğlu: And the other forces really do a good follow up on this weakness of ours. You say that you’re going to capture this place, and that men being there constitutes a risk factor. You pull them back. You capture the place. You reinforce it and send in your troops again.

Yaşar Güler: Exactly, sir. You’re absolutely right.

Ahmet Davutoğlu: Right? That’s how I interpret it. But after the evacuation, this is not a military necessity. It’s a whole other thing.

 

SEVENTH SCREEN

Feridun Siniroğlu: There are some serious shifts in global and regional geopolitics. It now can spread to other places. You said it yourself today, and others agreed… We’re headed to a different game now. We should be able to see those. That ISIL and all that jazz, all those organisations are extremely open to manipulation. Having a region made up of organisations of similar nature will constitute a vital security risk for us. And when we first went into Northern Iraq, there was always the risk of PKK blowing up the place. If we thoroughly consider the risks and substantiate… As the general just said…

Yaşar Güler: Sir, when you were inside a moment ago, we were discussing just that. Openly. I mean, armed forces are a “tool” necessary for you in every turn.

Ahmet Davutoğlu: Of course. I always tell the Prime Minister, in your absence, the same thing in academic jargon, you can’t stay in those lands without hard power. Without hard power, there can be no soft power.

 

EIGTH SCREEN

Yaşar Güler: Sir.

Feridun Sinirlioğlu: The national security has been politicised. I don’t remember anything like this in Turkish political history. It has become a matter of domestic policy. All talks we’ve done on defending our lands, our border security, our sovereign lands in there, they’ve all become a common, cheap domestic policy outfit.

Yaşar Güler: Exactly.

Feridun Siniroğlu: That has never happened before. Unfortunately but…

Yaşar Güler: I mean, do even one of the opposition parties support you in such a high point of national security? Sir, is this a justifiable sense of national security?

Feridun Sinirlioğlu: I don’t even remember such a period.

 

NINTH SCREEN:

Yaşar Güler: In what matter can we be unified, if not a matter of national security of such importance? None.

Ahmet Davutoğlu: The year 2012, we didn’t do it 2011. If only we’d took serious action back then, even in the summer of 2012.

Feridun Sinirlioğlu: They were at their lowest back in 2012.

Ahmet Davutoğlu: Internally, they were just like Libya. Who comes in and goes from power is not of any importance to us. But some things…

Yaşar Güler: Sir, to avoid any confusion, our need in 2011 was guns and ammo. In 2012, 2013 and today also. We’re in the exact same point. We absolutely need to find this and secure that place.

Ahmet Davutoğlu: Guns and ammo are not a big need for that place. Because we couldn’t get the human factor in order…

 

30 March 2014

RT.com

By Alan Hart

A thought constantly in my mind, and which was reinforced by the Arab League’s 25th Summit in Kuwait, is that with Arab leaders and governments as “enemies” the Zionist state of Israel does not need friends.

The Arab League was formed in Cairo on 22 March 1945. Its six founding member states were Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan (renamed Jordan in 1949) Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Syria. Today the Arab League has 22 members (though Syria’s membership has been suspended since November 2011).

Question: In terms of significant, positive contributions to regional and international affairs, what has the Arab League got to show for its 69 years of existence?

Apart from its 2002 initiative for ending the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel, the short answer is NOTHING.

That initiative, the Saudi-inspired Arab Peace Plan, was adopted by the Arab League Summit in Beirut on 22 March 2002. It offered Israel a full normalization of relations in exchange for Israel ending its occupation of all Arab territory grabbed in the 1967 war, Israeli recognition of an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem its capital and a “just solution” to the Palestinian refugee problem.

Because Israel’s leaders were fully aware that in negotiations Arab leaders were prepared to accept, as Arafat had, that the Palestinian right of return would have to be restricted to the territory of the Palestinian mini state, and that an option for Jerusalem was for it to be an open, undivided city and the capital of two states, it was a plan for a comprehensive peace which any rational government in Israel would have accepted with relief.

The Israeli government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon swiftly rejected this Arab initiative saying it was a “non-starter”.

At its Riyadh Summit in 2007 the Arab League endorsed its 2002 initiative and then sent the foreign ministers of Jordan and Egypt to Israel to promote it. Netanyahu, then an opposition leader, rejected it outright. Subsequently, as prime minister, he said, “The conflict isn’t over land but Israel’s right to exist.”

That was nonsense of the highest order because the conflict is obviously about land and, also, the Arab peace plan was about accepting and recognizing Israel’s actual existence (right or not) inside its pre-1967 borders and normalizing relations with that entity.

In the light of the above I think it can be said that the Arab League’s only significant contribution to developments has been to prove that Israel’s leaders are not remotely interested in peace on any terms the vast majority of Palestinians and the whole Arab world (and Iran) could accept.

Question: Is there anything the Arab League could have done in the past to limit Zionism’s arrogance of power and secure an acceptable amount of justice for the Palestinians?

The long answer as in my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews is “Yes”. The short version of it is this.

In the weeks following the 1967 war, the Arab League could have sent a representative, authorised to speak for all the member states, on a secret mission to the White House, to deliver a message, one-on-one, to President Johnson. “Mr. President, if you don’t use the leverage you have to get Israel back behind its pre-war borders, we’ll turn off the oil taps.”

If such a message had been delivered to Johnson and if had believed that Arab leaders were united on the matter and serious, he would have replied to this effect: “Give me two or three weeks, perhaps a little longer, and I’ll do what you want.” (Johnson, who had given Israel the green light to attack Egypt and only Egypt, was fully aware that the conflict of June 1967 was a war of Israeli aggression not self-defense).

If the boot had been on the other foot – I mean if Zionism’s decision makers had been in the Arab position – they would have played the oil card.

Question: Why did Arab leaders, through the Arab League, not do so?

Again the long answer is in my book. The short version of it is in two parts.

The first is that when Israel closed the Palestine file with its victory on the battlefield in 1948, the Arab regimes secretly shared the same hope as Zionism and the major powers – that the file would remain closed. The Palestinians were supposed to accept their lot as the sacrificial lamb on the altar of political expediency. (Thereafter, and despite some stupid rhetoric to the contrary which gave apparent substance to Zionism’s propaganda lies, the Arab regimes never, ever, had any intention of fighting Israel to liberate Palestine. It was only in Zionist mythology and brainwashed Jewish minds everywhere that the Arab states were committed to driving Israel’s Jews into the sea).

The second is the nature of the deal the rulers of the oil-producing Arab states struck with America. In effect it boiled down to this. As long as the Arab regimes which mattered most guaranteed the flow of oil at prices America and the West were willing to pay (and spent billions buying American military hardware), America and the West would not challenge their authoritarian and repressive rule.

The conclusion invited is that corrupt and repressive Arab regimes betrayed their own masses as well as the Palestinians. (But why should I be so hard on Arab leaders? Isn’t that the way the world works? Could it not be said that governments almost everywhere, including and especially America, dance to the tune of wealthy elites and powerful vested interests of all kinds and are betraying the best interests of the vast majority of citizens?)

It was with all of the above (and much else) in my mind that I watched and listened live to the opening and closing sessions of the Arab League’s 25th Summit in Kuwait.

With one exception the speeches, poorly delivered, were the opposite of inspirational. Words for their own sake and not for real commitment. When I heard, “We congratulate our brothers in Egypt for what they have achieved”, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. What has been achieved in Egypt? Apart from the killing and arresting to put the Muslim Brotherhood out of business for the time being, the ground has been prepared for the coming to power of another tyrant who might well be more repressive than any of his predecessors. Congratulations for that?

There was much talk of the “phenomenon of terrorism” and the need to combat it. The more I thought about what I heard and the more I reflected on what is happening in the Arab world, the more it seemed to me that the Arab League’s definition of terrorism is any manifestation of people power, even peaceful manifestations, in support of change in the way Arabs are governed.

The exception was Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN peace mediator for Syria. He dared to say, “People are asking for change.” (I imagine that most Gulf Arab leaders present regarded that as a deeply subversive statement).

At the time of writing the divisions within the Arab League seem set to widen.

On 5 March, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain withdrew their ambassadors from Doha because of Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Jazeera’s coverage of events in Egypt. Prince Saud al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s ailing foreign minister, apparently said that severance of ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, the closure of Al-Jazeera (in Egypt only?) and the expulsion of two U.S. think tanks – the Brookings Doha Center and the Rand Qatar Policy Institute – would be enough to prevent Qatar from “being punished”.

Qatar gambled on supporting the Muslim Brotherhood to give substance to its ambition to rival and possibly outbid Saudi Arabia in terms of regional and international influence, and lost.

Saudi Arabia is gambling on supporting former General Abdul Fattah el-Sisi in Egypt (where the next Arab League Summit is to be held) to help keep change away from its own doorstep. Only the future will tell us if Saudi Arabia backed the wrong horse, too.

My thoughts about the Arab League’s apparent willingness to allow the slaughter and destruction in Syria go on and on and on cannot be expressed in printable words.

As I write I find myself wondering if future historians – I mean honest historians – will conclude that George Habash was right and Arafat was wrong. About what?

Habash was the founder and leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) until ill health forced him to resign in 2000. Until the Arab defeat and humiliation of June 1967, he was a supporter of Egypt’s President Nasser and looked to him to lead the struggle to liberate Palestine, all of it. After the Six Days War Habash changed his mind. He said to Arafat (in a coffee shop in Damascus) that the key to liberating Palestine was the overthrow of the corrupt and impotent regimes of the then existing Arab Order and that PLO should lead the revolution to make it happen. Habash argued that it could happen because the Palestinian cause was alive and well in the hearts and minds of the Arab masses everywhere and more and more Arabs were becoming aware that their regimes had betrayed the cause.

Arafat said that would be a wrong policy and that under his leadership the PLO would never interfere in the internal affairs of Arab states.

For the record… The Israeli and American version of history which asserts that Arafat sought to overthrow King Hussein and take over Jordan in Black September 1970 is nonsense. As I documented in detail in my book Arafat -Terrorist or Peacemaker?, Arafat was working WITH Hussein to try to prevent Habash’s PFLP and other Palestinian fringe groups provoking a confrontation with the Jordanian army. This was confirmed to me by King Hussein himself.

Israel and America would not have been able to misrepresent what happened if Arafat had used Fatah’s superior forces to disarm the PFLP and crush it if necessary. I asked him why he did not do so. He said that if he had triggered a Palestinian civil war, Israeli and other agents would have used it as a cover to assassinate many Fatah and other Palestinian leaders. That made sense to me.

The whole story about what really happened and why in Jordan in September 1970 (I was there for the BBC’s Panorama programme) includes the fact that King Hussein did not want to move against the PLO. So why did he?

Some years later I got the truth during a remarkably frank, private conversation with him. I said that in September 1970 an excellent source (actually it was the British ambassador) told me that His Majesty only gave his generals the order to move against the PLO after some of them, led by his uncle and in response to an instruction from Henry Kissinger, had called on him at the palace and said, “If you don’t give us the order to go, we’ll lock you in the toilet and get on with it.”

I asked Hussein if that was true. He smiled sadly, very sadly, and said, “It wasn’t the toilet they were going to lock me in.”

 

Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC Panorama foreign correspondent.

 

30 March, 2014

Countercurrents.org

 

By Carol Pagaduan-Araullo

Venezuela marks the first death anniversary of its charismatic, outspoken and hugely popular President, Hugo Chavez, in the midst of relatively small but persistent street protests that have turned violent and even deadly, originating from well-to-do municipalities, and led by Opposition figures that unabashedly want to bring down the government of Nicolas Maduro, Chavez’ successor.

Most international media coverage of the unrest in Caracas, the capital, highlights the death toll of 18 including a former beauty contestant, the purportedly large number of students participating, and the issues being raised centering around criminality, inflation, product shortages and alleged state repression of the protests.  Maduro’s accusation that the demonstrations are US-instigated and led by “fascists” is also invariably mentioned.  This is corroborated by Venezuela’s expulsion of high-ranking US embassy officials that was quickly followed by the US’ expulsion of Venezuelan diplomats.

Nonetheless, there is grudging acknowledgement that while the Maduro government appears “weakened” by the protests, the Opposition is not strong enough to bring about “regime change”, the US government’s buzz word for the overthrow of what it deems to be an “illegitimate” government.  What it really means is the taking down of a government unfriendly or hostile to US interests in a coup d’etat by disgruntled, foreign-backed military officials, sparked by orchestrated anti-government demonstrations and fueled by the creeping demonization even of democratically-elected governments like Chavez’ and now Maduro’s.

For Venezuelans, both supporters of the Maduro government that is continuing the essentially pro-poor, pro-people and anti-neoliberal globalization policies of the 14-year Chavez presidency, and those who oppose it, led by the socio-economic elite that engineered crippling strikes, a coup and several failed attempts to oust Chavez through recall referenda, the scenarios unfolding would be familiar by now given the events of the last fifteen years.  Since 1999, Chavez had counted mainly on active grassroots support and it is this strong backing that the Opposition is now hoping it could break with Chavez gone.

But the struggle of either side to prevail also counts a lot on international public opinion that unfortunately is subject to manipulation and distortion by the global media.  The Maduro government is at a disadvantage in this regard since global media is largely dominated by ideological and political views hostile to the Bolivarian Revolution (as Chavez’ wide-ranging socio-economic and political reforms have been named) given its control by Western corporate interests.

That is why any objective appraisal of the Chavez legacy, and the efforts of the Maduro government to defend and entrench it in the face of unrelenting attacks by its enemies, requires a familiarity and understanding of the phenomenon of Hugo Chavez, the impact of his radical reform movement on Venezuelan society, and what fuels the continuing political conflicts that have managed to grab international media attention in the first quarter of the year.

Hugo Chavez began inauspiciously as the son of primary school teachers who lived in a dirt-floor adobe house in a cattle state in Western Venezuela.  As a young military officer he saw action against the Maoist rebel group called Red Flag and objected to the military’s brutal war against the guerillas even as he saw the validity of their struggle against the inequities of Venezuelan society.

Chavez launched a coup in 1992 together with young military officers he had organized secretly but it failed and Chavez was sent to prison.  Released after two years, he set up a political party, the Fifth Republic Movement, quickly gaining nationwide grassroots support that eventually catapulted him to the presidency in the 1998 elections with 56% of the votes.

Chavez was reelected to office three times, each with majority votes. First,  in 2000, after he introduced a new constitution which increased rights for marginalized groups and major political reforms including the right of the people to recall its elected officials from the highest to the lowest positions through a referendum.  Chavez’ second term would be  hallmarked by democratic initiatives, i.e. a system of Bolivarian Missions, Communal Councils and worker-managed cooperatives, as well as a program of land reform and the nationalization of  various key industries.

In 2006, Chavez won a third term after he survived a 2002 coup that saw him returned to power in 48 hours.   Finally in 2012, he was elected to another six-year term which he was unable to serve because of a worsening cancer that led to his demise on March 5, 2013.

The strong support of the Venezuelan masses to the Chavez government (and which the Maduro government continues to enjoy) is a testament to how the lives of the ordinary people had improved under the Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolutionary Government. Another measure which might be seen as more objective, being independent and more quantifiable, is the UN Human Development Index for Venezuela.

From 2000 to 2012, the GNI (Gross National Income) per capita income increased by 24% from USD 9,446 to 11,745.  Life expectancy at birth increased 3% from 72.4 to 74.6 years.  Expected years of schooling went up by 37% from 10.5 to 14.4years; mean years of schooling by 29% from 5.9 years to 7.6.  All in all, the HDI of Venezuela rose by 13% from 0.662 to 0.748, placing it in the “high human development” category, ranking 71 out of 187 countries and territories.

Venezuela’s HDI values are generally higher than the average for Latin America and the Caribbean.  Just for comparison, the Philippines is in medium human development category, ranking 114 out of 187 countries.  Its HDI is 0.654 where average life expectancy is 69 years; mean years of schooling is 8.9 years; expected years of schooling is 11.7 years; and GNI per capita is USD3,752.)

The Chavez presidency is derided by the Western press as “polarizing” or “divisive” even as they make mention of how Chavez had definitely uplifted the lot of two-thirds of the Venezuelan people who had been mired in poverty and backwardness with redistributive programs funded by the oil wealth of the country hitherto enjoyed only by the economic and political elite of the old order.

In a society with a yawning chasm of income disparity and the social inequalities that accompany it, together with the political exclusion and repression that have been part and parcel of the Venezuelan political landscape, social unrest, turmoil and armed resistance are a fact of life.  Chavez did not bring  about such a state of affairs.  In fact 1989 saw the Caracazo or “the big one in Caracas”, a wave of protests, riots, looting, shootings and massacres by state security forces of hundreds of people protesting the effects of IMF-World Bank neoliberal policy prescriptions on the people’s standard of living.

The qualitative difference is that the Chavez government then, and now the Maduro government, champions the right of the people to what the UN calls the three basic dimensions of human development — a long and healthy life, access to knowledge and a decent standard of living — against the wishes and machinations of the retrogressive US-sponsored elite who are hurting from the Venezuelan government’s democratizing reforms.

In short, the elite (and those among the middle class who, wittingly or unwittingly, have been lured into thinking like the elite) simply want a return to the benighted pre-Chavez era wherein generations of the poor and exploited masses of Venezuelans have no rights, no hope and no future.

In an ironic twist, the same elite, utilizing its high-profile media advantage and, of course, moral, political and funding support from the US, are currently mounting street demonstrations and violent attacks on Chavistas and government officials, in a bid to pass themselves off as anti-authoritarian, peaceful protesters with “legitimate” grievances.  Part 2 of this column will focus on the current destabilization moves by the US and local oppositionists versus the Maduro government.#

March 2014

Business World8

 

 

By Countercurrents

One pro-EU-US leader has suggested grabbing guns to kill Russians while rightists, as a show of anarchy, are robbing train passengers.

A RT report, “Time to grab guns and kill damn Russians – Tymoshenko in leaked tape” ( March 24, 2014, http://on.rt.com/6auysa), said: “Ukrainians must take up arms against Russians so that not even scorched earth will be left where Russia stands; an example of former Ukrainian PM Yulia Tymoshenko’s vitriol in phone call leaked online.

“Tymoshenko confirmed the authenticity of the conversation on Twitter while pointing out that a section where she is heard to call for the nuclear slaughter of the eight million Russians who remain on Ukrainian territory was edited.

“She tweeted ‘ The conversation took place, but the ‘8 million Russians in Ukraine ‘ piece is an edit. In fact, I said Russians in Ukraine – are Ukrainians. Hello FSB 🙂 Sorry for the obscene language.’

“The former Ukrainian PM has not clarified who exactly she wants to nuke.

“Shufrych’s press service flatly contradicted Tymoshenko, slamming the tape as fake. The press release reads ‘The conversation didn’t take place,’ as quoted by korrespondent.net.The phone conversation with Nestor Shufrych, former deputy secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, was uploaded on YouTube on Monday by user Sergiy Vechirko.”

The report added:

“The leaked phone call took placed on March 18, hours after the Crimea & Sevastopol accession treaty was signed in the Kremlin.

“While Shufrych was ‘ just shocked,’ Tymoshenko was enraged by the results of the Crimean referendum.

“‘This is really beyond all boundaries. It’s about time we grab our guns and kill go kill those damn Russians together with their leader,’ Tymoshenko said.

“The ex-pm declared if she was in charge ‘there would be no f***ing way that they would get Crimea then.’

“Shufrych made the valid point that Ukraine ‘ didn’t have any force potential’ to keep Crimea .

“But Tymoshenko, who plans to run in Ukraine ‘s presidential election, expressed confidence that she would have found ‘ a way to kill those a*****es.’

“‘I hope I will be able to get all my connections involved. And I will use all of my means to make the entire world raise up, so that there wouldn’t be even a scorched field left in Russia ,’ she promised.

“Despite being incapacitated by spinal disc hernia the ex-PM stressed she’s ready to ‘grab a machine gun and shoot that m*********er in the head.’”

Tymoshenko rose to power as a key figure in the pro-EU “Orange Revolution” in 2004, becoming Ukrainian prime minister 2007-2010. She was imprisoned in 2012, under president Viktor Yanukovich, after being found guilty of exceeding her authority by signing a gas supply and transit deal with Russia . Tymoshenko served part of her seven-year sentence in prison before being relocated to a Kharkov hospital. She was released immediately after the Kiev coup which ousted Yanukovich.

The report also cited other incidents:

“This is not the first telephone leak scandal since the Ukrainian turmoil began last November.

“In February, a tape was revealed, in which US Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, Victoria Nuland, said ‘F**k the EU’ as she was discussing the formation of the future Ukrainian government with the US ambassador to the country, Geoffrey Pyatt.

“At the beginning of March a phone conversation between EU Foreign Affairs ?hief, Catherine Ashton, and Estonian foreign affairs minister, Urmas Paet, was made public.

”Speaking with Ashton, Paet stressed that there was suspicion that the snipers in Kiev , who shot at protesters and police in Kiev might have been hired by Maidan leaders.”

Robbing train passengers

Citing a Russian foreign ministry statement RT in another report (“‘Revival of anarchy’: Ukraine radicals rob Russia-Moldova train passengers”, March 24, 2014, http://on.rt.com/2huz5q) said:

“The recent robbing of passengers, traveling from Russia to Moldova via Ukraine ‘s territory, by a local ultra-nationalist Insurgent Army is a manifestation of ‘anarchy’.

“On March 21, the train, en route from Moscow to the capital of Moldova , Chisinau, made a scheduled stop in the city of Vinnitsa in central Ukraine .

“‘ To the horror of passengers…people dressed in the uniform of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) got into carriages and began a “document check”. People who showed Russian passports were then made to hand over their money and golden jewelry, ‘ the Russian Ministry said on Monday in a statement published on its website.

“The robbery was accompanied with ‘political sensitization’, diplomats said.

“ Moscow also said it was ‘bewildered’ by the refusal of the Ukrainian police to take any action when the victims attempted to file a report.

“‘ That is the kind of “rule of law” that is currently being formed in Ukraine ,’ the ministry said. ‘ It seems that the anarchy of the beginning of the 20th century is reviving .’

Citing an NTV report the RT report mentioned another incident:

“A similar incident occurred with passengers traveling from the Ukrainian city of Krivoy Rog to the Russian capital … However, this time it was either Ukrainian border guards or customs service officers who were involved.

“According to passengers, during the border control procedure, Ukrainian officers grabbed passports from Russian citizens providing them with no explanation.

“Passenger, Angela Piskokha, told NTV that Ukrainian officials then offered her the opportunity to buy back her own passport for 6,000 rubles (US$ 166).

Russia and G-8

Meanwhile, the Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has made comments on decision by the West to keep Russia excluded from the G-8: Russia is not clinging to the G-8 format, as all major world problems can be discussed at other international venues such as G-20. “The G8 is an informal club, no one gives out membership cards and no one can expel members,” Lavrov told a media conference at the Hague . “If our Western partners believe that this format has exhausted itself, let it be. We are not clinging to it.” (RT, “ Russia not clinging to G8 if West does not want it – Russian FM”, March 24, 2014)

He went on to say that many believe that the G-8 has already fulfilled its mission as many issues are now discussed at the G-20 forum.

“Generally speaking, there are also other formats for considering many questions, including the UN Security Council, the Middle East Quartet and the P5+1 on the Iranian nuclear problem,” Lavrov told journalists.

The Minister also commented on earlier reports regarding Australia considering not inviting Russian president Vladimir Putin to the November G-20 meeting, which is going to be held in Brisbane .

“The G-20 was not established by Australia , which voiced the proposal not to invite Russia to the meeting. We created the format all together,” Lavrov said.

G-7 – Canada , France , Germany , Italy , Japan , the UK and the US – leaders are also holding a gathering at The Hague .

Lavrov is in the Netherlands , where representatives of over 50 states and chiefs of the UN, the EU, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the European Police Office have gathered for the Nuclear Security Summit to address the threat of nuclear terrorism.

On the sidelines of the gathering, Lavrov met with US Secretary of State John Kerry and yet again discussed the Ukraine question.

Both Moscow and Washington understand that Ukraine needs constitutional reform, Lavrov said.

“We discussed the necessity to call on the authorities in Kiev to pay serious attention to the constitutional reform, which would take into consideration the interests of all Ukrainian regions,” he said.

However, Lavrov admitted, that it is their evaluation of the situation and they “cannot impose” this idea on the Ukrainian leadership. Still, it would be very difficult to overcome the “ Ukraine ‘s deep internal crisis” without such a reform, the Russian minister believes.

According to Lavrov, Kerry realizes that it is necessary to “push” the Ukrainian authorities into fulfilling the February 21 agreement on the crisis settlement, which was signed by ousted President Viktor Yanukovich, opposition leaders and foreign ministers of Germany , France and Poland .

On Friday, Ukraine ‘s coup-imposed government and the EU signed the core elements of a political association agreement; this is part of the deal with the EU (that was predominantly economic) that Yanukovich put on hold in November, which resulted in mass bloody unrest and his ousting.

In Lavrov’s view, the coup-installed authorities in Kiev should have waited until a legitimate government was formed in the country after elections, and should have only then decided whether to sign an agreement with Brussels.

25 March 2014

Countercurrents.org

By Countercurrents.org

Yugoslavia was bombed for 78 days. About 2,000 Yugoslav citizens died in the bombings. The air invasion started 15 years ago, in 1999. NATO either completely destroyed or damaged 40,000 homes.

Thousands of sorties of air strikes were made. International news organizations including Reuters and AFP sent news and photographs of the bombings, a few of which are above.

The bombings beginning from March 24 were called by Bill Clinton, the then US president, as “important to America’s national interests” and “humanitarian intervention”.

A RT report (“15yo NATO bombings of Yugoslavia in 15 dramatic photos”, March 24, 2014, http://on.rt.com/s3kp7d) said:

Clinton announced the bombing of Serbia.

NATO aircrafts took off from bases in Italy and Germany, the first of 1,000 sorties under operation “Noble Anvil”.

Along with carrying bombings, NATO launched Tomahawk missiles with 1,000-pound warheads from ships in the Mediterranean and Adriatic at military facilities in Pristina, Podgorica, Batajnica and an air base near Belgrade. Serbian night skies were lit by fire from NATO bomb air missile explosions.

At an emergency UNSC meeting only Russia, China and Namibia supported a resolution condemning NATO’s aggression.

NATO insisted it would only bomb military targets in Yugoslavia, regularly issuing photos to support the claim. However, the so-called “humanitarian intervention” killed 2,000 civilians. NATO destroyed homes and schools, libraries and hospitals, dismissing it as ‘collateral damage’. Vehicles burned in front of a Belgrade hospital as it was hit by NATO air strikes.

In one NATO air strike on April 26, six Serbian TV workers died.

Serbs in Belgrade protested against NATO air invasion on March 29.

In April, Belgrade announced a unilateral ceasefire to mark the Orthodox Easter and made an offer to allow refugees to return to Kosovo. The West replied with another night of bombing.

Thousands of people spent nights in bomb shelters.

In late May, NATO plunged Belgrade into darkness, destroying a power plant that supplied much of Serbia.

Refineries and chemical plants all over Serbia were destroyed, polluting the region’s ecology and damaging public health.

15 years after the NATO bombings, Serbia is still haunted by the memories of the aggression which cost it hundreds of lives.

25 March, 2014

Countercurrents.org