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By Sara Flounders

There is an elephant in the climate debate that by U.S. demand cannot be discussed or even acknowledged. This agreement to ignore the elephant is now the accepted basis of all international negotiations on climate change.

It is well understood by every possible measurement that the Pentagon, the U.S. military machine, is the world’s biggest institutional consumer of petroleum products and the world’s worst polluter of greenhouse gas emissions and many other toxic pollutants. Yet the Pentagon has a blanket exemption in all international climate agreements.

Ever since the Kyoto Accords or Kyoto Protocol negotiations in 1998, in an effort to gain U.S. compliance, all U.S. military operations worldwide and within the U.S. have been exempt from measurement and from agreements on reduction. The U.S. Congress passed an explicit provision guaranteeing U.S. military exemptions. (Interpress Service, May 20, 1998)

The complete U.S. military exemption from greenhouse gas emissions calculations includes more than 1,000 U.S. bases in more than 130 countries around the world, its 6,000 facilities in the U.S., its aircraft carriers and its jet aircraft. Also excluded are its weapons testing and all multilateral operations such as the giant U.S.-commanded NATO military alliance and Africom, the U.S. military alliance now blanketing Africa. The provision also exempts U.S./U.N.-sanctioned activities of “peacekeeping” and “humanitarian ­relief.”

After gaining this giant concession, the U.S. government still refused to sign the Kyoto Accord, thus sabotaging years of international effort to forge an ­agreement.

The provisions of the Kyoto Protocol nevertheless became the basis of all future proposed international meetings on a climate treaty, including Copenhagen 2009, Cancun 2010, Durban 2011, Doha 2012 and the United Nations upcoming 21st Conference of the Parties on Climate Change meeting in Paris in 2015.

In all past international conferences it was again and again the U.S. government that sabotaged the meetings and refused to be bound by any treaty. The Obama administration on Aug. 27 again confirmed that at the U.N. meeting in New York in September to prepare for the 2015 Paris meeting, only a nonbinding agreement could be put forward.

Role of grassroots activists

Unless the climate activists at the grassroots level challenge this exemption of the U.S. military and begin to focus a laser light on the most dangerous source of global warming and climate change, the movement will become lost in vague generalities, utopian hopes and toothless accords.

The only hope that the mass outpouring in September in New York City will have an impact is if independent voices can begin to consciously challenge the greatest global polluter.

Exposing the horrendous social costs of U.S. militarism must also be part of the challenge. Washington’s military role acts to constantly reinforce at every level the repressive state apparatus.

For decades, and at an accelerated pace since 2001, the military has provided an endless stream of free war equipment to local city and state police, National Guard units and sheriffs’ offices. Youth of oppressed nations within the U.S. become targets of a vastly expanded police state. The fresh images of tanks and armored police in Ferguson, Mo., confirmed for millions the results of this racist policy.

Exposing the devastation of U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya is essential. These U.S. wars have spread hundreds of tons of radioactive waste from depleted uranium missiles. They have contaminated the soil and water of vast regions under U.S. occupation with benzene and trichloroethylene from air base operations and perchlorate, a toxic ingredient in rocket propellant.

More than 1,000 military sites in the U.S. are contaminated with these toxins. Military bases top the Superfund list of contaminated sites. The poorest communities, especially communities of color, are the most severely impacted by this continuing military poisoning.

It is essential to connect the Pentagon exemption from international negotiations to its primary role as the protector and expander of corporate power on a global scale. The most powerful and profitable corporations are the oil and military corporations. These are the other primary polluters.

Pentagon admits climate change

Unlike the right-wing fanatics and climate change deniers in Congress, the Pentagon does not deny the devastating impact that climate change will have on every aspect of life on the planet.

Its own published studies confirm the danger. But the U.S. officer corps is committed to what they call “full spectrum dominance.” So every study of climate change by the military planners is based on evaluating how to take advantage of the future crisis to more firmly entrench U.S. corporate power and protect the irrational capitalist system that has created this crisis that threatens all humanity.

The Pentagon studies are not on plans to deliver emergency aid in the face of climate disasters such as floods, droughts, famines, epidemics, typhoons, tornadoes, hurricanes, ice storms, water shortages and damage to infrastructure. The plans of their war colleges and think tanks are on how to extract political concessions on docking rights and future military access during a besieged country’s hour of greatest emergency need.

For example, the U.S. Department of Defense releases every four years a Quadrennial Defense Review. This is a broad outline of U.S. military strategy. (tinyurl.com/pn4awm8)

The 2014 QDR describes the threat of climate change as “a very serious national security vulnerability.” Similar to the 2010 QDR, it poses the problem of how to maintain global U.S. military hegemony in the face of ever-worsening global climate disruptions.

The military officer caste is focused on maintaining Wall Street rule and capitalist property relations during a crisis. There is concern with preserving the authority of their puppets, allies and collaborators. The report stresses the importance of developing new policies, strategies and plans.

“Climate change poses another significant challenge for the United States and the world at large. As greenhouse gas emissions increase, sea levels are rising, average global temperatures are increasing and severe weather patterns are accelerating.

“The impacts of climate change may increase the frequency, scale and complexity of future missions, including defense support to civil authorities. … The Department’s operational readiness hinges on unimpeded access to land, air and sea training.”

Military and corporate planning is callously focused on how to take advantage of the life-threatening changes.

A most frightening example is the “National Strategy for the Arctic Region.” This White House report opens by praising the Arctic as “an amazing place.” But then quickly defines the need for focusing on strategic priorities to meet the challenges and opportunities ahead.

The essence of the report is that the melting of the polar ice cap and the “new Arctic environment” means “ocean resources are more readily accessible as sea ice diminishes.” This is an opportunity to access the vast untapped oil, gas and mineral resources and increase the flow of fossil fuels. In other words, big profits for Big Oil. (tinyurl.com/cw2dvhk)

The Center for Naval Analyses has also prepared ominous reports of U.S. policy in this period of global climate crisis. Eleven retired generals and admirals came together in 2007 to examine the security implications of climate change.

In 2014, this federally funded research and development center produced a study headed by Michael Chertoff, former secretary of Homeland Security, and Leon Panetta, former secretary of Defense, and titled “National Security and the Accelerating Risks of Climate Change.” This report sees climate change as the source of international instability and the greatest threat to the established capitalist order.

This study, once again, is not on how to use the enormous technological ability of the U.S. military machine to provide solutions or emergency assistance. Everything is posed in terms of national security in the face of alleged potential terror threats.

“In Africa, Asia and the Middle East, we are already seeing how the impacts of extreme weather, such as prolonged drought and flooding — and resulting food shortages, desertification, population dislocation and mass migration, and sea level rise — are posing security challenges to these regions’ governments. We see these trends growing and accelerating.

“Climate change acts as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world. … It poses a serious threat to America’s national security.”

The report calls for “improved U.S. combat power” and “assessment of the impact on U.S. military installations worldwide due to rising sea levels and extreme weather events.” (tinyurl.com/lreswx8)

Based on these reports and on the destructive, self-serving U.S. role in every climate meeting in over 20 years, it is clear that U.S. corporate power and the monstrous military machine it has funded by expropriating more than half the federal budget every year for decades is an enemy of the people of the whole world and a threat to all forms of life on earth. This must become a focus of class-conscious climate activists. This would contribute greatly to an understanding of the source and the real solutions to this global crisis.

Sara Flounders is an American political writer and has been active in ‘progressive’ and anti-war organizing since the 1960s.

4 September 2014

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According to Israeli Intelligence News Source

By Michel Chossudovsky

While NATO leaders in Newport Wales debate the Atlantic Alliance’s role “in containing a mounting militant threat in the Middle East”, it is worth recalling that in 2011 at the outset of the war in Syria, NATO became actively involved in the recruitment of Islamic fighters.

Reminiscent of the enlistment of the Mujahideen to wage the CIA’s jihad (holy war) in the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war, NATO headquarters in Brussels in liaison with the Turkish High command, according to Israeli intelligence sources, was involved in the enlisting of thousands of terrorists:

“Also discussed in Brussels and Ankara, our sources report, is a campaign to enlist thousands of Muslim volunteers in Middle East countries and the Muslim world to fight alongside the Syrian rebels. The Turkish army would house these volunteers, train them and secure their passage into Syria. (Debkafile, August 31, 2011 emphasis added).

Confirmed by Israeli intelligence News, NATO played a key role in the delivery of weapons to Al Qaeda affiliated rebels in the Aleppo region bordering onto Turkey:

NATO and a number of European governments, most significantly the UK, have started airlifting heavy weapons to the Syrian rebels poised in Aleppo to fend off a major Syrian army offensive, according to debkafile’s exclusive military sources. They disclose that the first shipments were landed Monday night, June 17 [2013], and early Tuesday in Turkey and Jordan. They contained anti-air and tank missiles as well as recoilless 120 mm cannons mounted on jeeps. From there, they were transferred to rebel forces in southern Syria and Aleppo in the northwest. (Debkafile, June 18, 2013)

“Terrorists R Us”

Ironically, President Barack Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron (who is hosting the NATO Summit in Wales), have asserted that they “will not be cowed by barbaric killers”:

“We will not waver in our determination to confront the Islamic State … If terrorists think we will weaken in the face of their threats they could not be more wrong.” (Barack Obama and David Cameron, Strengthening the NATO alliance, op ed published in the London Times, September 4, 2014, emphasis added)
But these “Barbaric Killers” were created by the Western military alliance. They are serving the strategic interests of the U.S., Britain, not to mention Israel.

[file photo]

“They are Our Terrorists“. Without the terrorists, the “Global War on Terrorism” would fall flat.

The Obama-Cameron narrative borders on ridicule. It is not only absurd, it is criminal.

What they are proposing is an all encompassing NATO mandate to “Go after Terrorist Entities” which they themselves created as part of an insidious intelligence operation to destabilize and destroy both Syria and Iraq.

British and French Special Forces have been actively training Syria opposition rebels from a base in Turkey.

Israel has provided a safe haven to Al Qaeda affiliated rebels including ISIS and Al Nusrah rebels in the occupied Golan Heights.

Netanyahu has met up with jihadist leaders in the Golan Heights. The IDF top brass acknowledges that there are “global jihad elements inside Syria” supported by Israel.

Image left: Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu Shakes Hand with a wounded Al Qaeda Terrorist in occupied Golan.

Lest we forget, Al Qaeda was at the outset a creation of the CIA. Who is behind the ISIS terrorists? The mainstream media is mum on the subject, despite mountains of evidence that they are creations of the Western military alliance.

NATO’s Criminal Agenda
What we are dealing with is a criminal agenda under NATO auspices. The evidence amply confirms that the US and Britain in liaison with the Atlantic Alliance have relentlessly supported both the creation as well as development of an Islamic Terror Network which now extends from the Middle East and North Africa into sub-Saharan Africa, South and Southeast Asia.

And now Obama and Cameron, whose governments are the architects of the Islamic State, are calling upon the Atlantic Alliance as well all on the governments of the 28 NATO member states to endorse the bombing campaign on Iraq and Syria as part of “counter-terrorism” operation.

The ISIS brigades are “intelligence assets” supported by US-NATO-Israel. They will not be the object of the bombings. Quite the opposite.

What is envisaged as part of the propaganda campaign is to use the “threat of the Islamic State” as a pretext and justification to intervene militarily under a “humanitarian” “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) mandate. The civilian population will not be protected. Under this diabolical military-intelligence operation, The Islamic State (ISIS) brigades with Western Special Forces within their ranks are slated to be “protected”.

The War on Syria

From the outset of the war on Syria in March 2011, member states of the Atlantic Alliance as well as Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have (covertly) supported the terrorists –including al Nusrah and the ISIS– with a view to destabilizing Syria as a nation state. These actions were implemented in liaison with NATO headquarters in Brussels.

The process of recruitment and training of mercenaries had been sub-contracted to private security companies operating out of the Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. Reports point to the creation of training camps in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

In Zayed Military City (UAE), “a secret army is in the making” was operated by Xe Services, formerly Blackwater. The UAE deal to establish a military camp for the training of mercenaries was signed in July 2010, nine months before the onslaught of the wars in Libya and Syria. (See Manlio Dinucci, A Secret Army of Mercenaries for the Middle East and North Africa, Il Manifesto. 18 May 2011)

Moreover, confirmed by CNN, security companies on contract to NATO member states were involved in training Syria “opposition” death squads in the use of chemical weapons:

“The United States and some European allies are using defense contractors to train Syrian rebels on how to secure chemical weapons stockpiles in Syria, a senior U.S. official and several senior diplomats told CNN Sunday. ( CNN Report, December 9, 2012)

NATO Supported the Terrorists in Libya

From the outset of NATO’s 2011 “humanitarian war” on Libya, the Atlantic alliance was working in close liaison with the “pro-Al Qaeda brigades” led by “former” Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) leader Abdul Hakim Belhhadj (Debka, Pro-Al Qaeda brigades control Qaddafi Tripoli strongholds seized by rebels, August 28, 2011 )

Abdul Hakim Belhhadj received his military training in a CIA sponsored guerrilla camp in Afghanistan. He constitutes a CIA “intelligence asset” operating in the Libyan war theater. A 2011 report suggested that he had some 1,000 men under his command. (Libyan rebels at pains to distance themselves from extremists – The Globe and Mail, March 12, 2011)

The US-NATO coalition is arming the Jihadists. Weapons are being channeled to the LIFG from Saudi Arabia, which historically, since the outset of the Soviet-Afghan war, has covertly supported Al Qaeda. The Saudis are now providing the rebels, in liaison with Washington and Brussels, with anti-tank rockets and ground-to-air missiles. (See Michel Chossudovsky “Our Man in Tripoli”: US-NATO Sponsored Islamic Terrorists Integrate Libya’s Pro-Democracy Opposition, Global Research, 3 April 2011)

Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal and Editor of the globalresearch.ca website.

5 September 2014
http://www.globalresearch.ca/

 

By Robert Barsocchini

Syria

The USA started carrying out coups, assassinating leaders, and sponsoring terrorism and extremists in Syria in 1948, continuing to the present moment, as everyone knows, under Obama. Examples, provided by David North:

“The Eisenhower administration was troubled by the popularity of the “progressive front,” which was backed by elements in the Syrian army led by Colonel Adnan Malki. The United States was particularly angry that Malki’s faction opposed Syrian membership in the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact, modeled on NATO, which the Eisenhower administration set up in January 1955. On April 22, 1955, Malki was assassinated while attending a soccer match by a member of the pro-US and right-wing Syrian Social National Party. An official investigation into the assassination found that the US was a major supporter and financier of the SSNP. It was well known that the SSNP had close ties with the CIA.”
“Working closely with its counterparts in British intelligence, the CIA and the British SIS developed Operation Straggle. In what appears today to be an early model of the present US-orchestrated “rebel” insurgency [in Syria]:”
“The original CIA-SIS plan appears to have called for Turkey to stage border incidents, British operatives to stir up the desert tribes, and American agents to mobilize SSNP guerillas, all of which would trigger a pro-Western coup by “indigenous anticommunist elements within Syria” supported, if necessary, by Iraqi troops. What Washington perceived as a deteriorating situation in Damascus made Straggle more and more attractive. [Little, p. 66]“
“The coup planned by the CIA was scheduled to take place on October 25, 1956. The CIA had provided $150,000 to the conspirators.”
Dr. Noam Chomsky notes (and here ): “The US at that time had three major crisis areas, according to the internal discussions, all in Islamic countries, all in oil-producers. One was Indonesia, one was Algeria, one was basically Iraq — the Iraqi region. Those were the three crises. It was made explicit in the internal meetings. In fact, Eisenhower, vociferously, according to the minutes, insisted on this: there was no Russian involvement. The enemy is indigenous nationalism. In fact, that’s true throughout the Cold War, but very explicit then, and Eisenhower did discuss it with his staff…”
The USA’s sponsorship of terrorism in Syria and everywhere in the Mid East and globally was maintained with complete continuity after the fall of the Soviet Union, exhibiting how much that empty pretext was worth. Pretexts will always be updated to pacify an uninformed public into accepting elite marauding and plunder, and even get them to naively cheer it on.
Afghanistan

Starting in the late 1970s, the USA starting supporting Islamic terrorists to carry out atrocities in Afghanistan to induce the Soviet Union to intervene to protect its client government. Obama’s mentor Zbigniew Brzezinski planned to give Russia “its Vietnam”, meaning the US wanted to start another war that would pile up millions of corpses and be costly for Russia (which Obama is trying today in Ukraine). After three official requests from the Afghan government, the Soviet Union answered and invaded, and thus the US succeeded in its goal as some two million corpses were piled up in the brutal war.
The problem in Afghanistan was that US elites wanted to control its resources and strategic space as part of their worldwide bid to direct profits into their pockets, but with the Soviet-backed government in place, they couldn’t.
Here is one of Obama’s mentors, Zbigniew Brzezinski, at the time, egging on some of the Holy Warriors who would then enter Afghanistan, telling them God is on their side, etc.:
The above Brzezinski clip always reminded me of something, and I finally realized what it was (see 2:14 to 2:30):

( Tolkien was a brilliant professor who experienced unspeakable tragedy in war and expressed it in his masterworks.)

The Holy Warriors, of course, were not clueless idiots. Just because Brzezinski seemed to think they were pliant beings that he was molding for his own benefit doesn’t mean they were. They were playing him every bit as much as he was playing them. They have their own volition, and they put it into practice: they accepted the US sponsorship for their terror campaign, then, when they were strong enough, attacked the US for the same reasons they attacked the Soviet Union and the same reasons Latin Americans used to attack US targets: for interfering in their affairs, slaughtering mountains of their people, etc. Yeah; Brzezinski giving the Holy Warriors some sleazy terror sermons, which they probably laughed about when he left, didn’t make them forget all that…
In depth details and sources on the USA’s sponsorship of the Mujahideen, Holy Warriors, here .
Some key details, discussed at the above link, for understanding that the USA does have good intentions in its actions in the world are:
1) Before the US helped turn Afghanistan into an Islamic fundamentalist extremist state, women there, under the Soviet-backed government, actually had rights: they were in schools and universities and wearing whatever they wanted:
The USA put a prompt end to that, resulting in the new dress code required by the US-backed regime:
Not the main intention of the US elites (their intention is to get richer) but openly considered an absolutely unimportant, piddling matter, concerning mere peons, by the supreme beings in Washington.
2) The USA produced violent jihadist literature and distributed it to children in Afghanistan to foster more violent jihad.
“The US, through USAID and the University of Nebraska, spends millions of dollars developing and printing textbooks for Afghan schoolchildren. The textbooks are “filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings…”
Yugoslavia (Bosnia/Kosovo)

In the entire year before the USA’s illegal, international terror-bombing of Yugoslavia , US-backed jihadist extremists, including Al Qaeda members, committed the vast majority of the crimes in the region. Their stated goal was to create a pretext for the US/NATO bombing.
Bill Clinton literally helicoptered Al Qaeda members into Bosnia as part of his international terrorist campaign against Yugoslavia. See here .
At the end of 2013, 49% of Bosnia and Herzegovina considered the USA to be the greatest threat to world peace, with no other country ranking anywhere close ( Win/Gallup ). Russia got 2% of the vote, about 25 times fewer votes than the US.
Books that cover the topic here , here , here , here .

Libya:

While supporting Mubarak of Egypt and many other such dictators for decades, US elites also spend decades trying to murder certain leaders, like Nelson Mandela’s ally Muammar Qaddafi. At first, US terrorists only succeeded in murdering Qaddafi’s daughter and lots of other people, but they finally got him by teaming up with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, who, acting as mercenaries for the USA, lynched him, to Hillary Clinton’s uncontrollable delight .
See Destroying Libya and World Order: The Three Decade Campaign to Terminate the Qaddafi Revolution , by Dr. Francis Boyle, JD, magna cum laude, Harvard Law School; PhD, Political Science, Harvard University.
Back to Syria

Bush’s gang continued the barbarian USA’s policy of international terrorism against Syria, as terrorist Wesley Clark noted when he revealed that Bush planned to overthrow seven Mid East countries, including Syria, and as Pulitzer winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh also noted in 2007, here .
Obama and his cadre of terrorist thugs, specifically and predominantly Hillary Clinton , simply continued and intensified Bush’s and the USA’s longstanding policy of international terrorism against Syria.
Obama doesn’t even pretend to be supporting “moderates” any more. Now he just openly aids the Islamic Front in Syria, among other jihadist groups. However, even Obama’s cover group, the FSA, was always a largely jihadist, terrorist group itself, carrying out atrocities such as corpse mutilation and massive bombings of election rallies .
Hersh, in the above 2007 article, also notes how US support for terrorist operations has, as a “by-product”, bolstered other extremist groups in the region.
Obama and regional Mid East allies also directly aid Al Qaeda and linked groups like ISIS in Syria, who, as Seymour Hersh’s US government sources have said , carried out, with US ally Turkey, the Ghoutta chemical attack in Syria. Obama doesn’t talk about that.
But he does request hundreds of million of dollars for these groups while Amnesty International and the UN condemn the USA for cutting off water to poor people in Detroit, which is consistent with the USA’s standing as the only country in the world that rejects nourishment as a human right. There’s money to be made from nourishment!
Why

Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed against him must be battered down. Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process. Colonies must be obtained or planted, in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused.

– Woodrow Wilson , unpublished paper, 1907

All of the above international terrorism carried out by US elites is precisely aligned with their stated profit and investment interests. They, not us, control the weapon that is the state gang (the “armed forces”), and they use it exactly as president Wilson and countless other officials have directly stated: to force open and control global markets to secure profits. That their weapon, the state, is largely made of people , and that these people are constantly killed as a by-product of using the weapon, is meaningless – peons are expendable nothings; Walmart executives call them “peasants” in official documents – unless the rabble starts getting upset that so many of them are dying and thus it becomes too politically costly for the executives. This is why the USA often censors the images of its dead peons.

The word for running such operations is “empire”. Empire is extremely profitable for the elite beneficiaries and extremely costly for us, since we pay for it in cash, labor, and blood.

As Michael Parenti, PhD Political Science, Yale University, documents, “empire feeds off the republic.”

Robert Barsocchini is an American investigative journalist and writer for the film industry.
05 September, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

By John Chuckman

In each case, there appears to be only one explanation consistent with known facts

I wrote previously of a second great mystery surrounding the disappearance over the Indian Ocean of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, and that second great mystery is the United States’ utter silence surrounding its disappearance, despite its being the very nation able to offer the best information from the world’s most sophisticated radars and spy satellites. There can be no question that the United States gathered data on that catastrophe because its military and intelligence surveillance is unblinking. The fact that we did not hear a word from America, and still do not, can only mean its government wants the event, like the airplane itself, to sink, in this case into public forgetfulness.
Now we have a second Malaysian Airliner destroyed (its national origin is presumably sheer coincidence), Flight MH17, this time at a location from which the wreckage was recoverable. The American press immediately jumped to the conclusion that a Russian high-altitude anti-aircraft missile called BUK was responsible, which surely reflected nothing more than suggestive whispers from American intelligence since no evidence was offered. The altitude of the plane before it was destroyed excluded other ground-based missiles.

But Russia had no possible motive for attacking the airliner, and, indeed, the unfortunate event has only served as fodder for a Western press eager to declare Russia a new threat to the world. The Russian-speakers of eastern Ukraine who broke away from that country’s new American-installed government simply do not have this missile in their arsenal, but Ukraine’s government definitely does. These basic facts demonstrate the inappropriateness of the American press’s early suggestions, but we know that in the disinformation business the first one out with even a remotely plausible story repeated loudly enough leaves a lasting impression, as witness the sad fact that polls show a sizeable proportion of Americans yet believe Saddam Hussein hid terrible weapons.

Despite the wreck’s physical accessibility, there were substantial delays getting investigators to it as Ukraine’s new government pressed attacks against its own eastern, Russian-speaking population. We cannot know, but the long delay may well have permitted sanitizing of the crash site. When able to access the site, experts found the flight recorders intact, but, to this writing, nothing from those recorders has been made public. I don’t recall another case of a major crash when at least some information from an intact flight recorder was not made public quickly. After all, the principle behind such data is to discover problems for civilian aviation, enabling others to avoid them. The data, under international civil aviation agreements, is not anyone’s private property, it is to be shared with all in a timely fashion.

But we have heard nothing except a promise that the investigation’s findings will eventually be made public. With such a suspicious delay, the possibility of tampering or destruction of data cannot be ruled out. And here, too, we have silence from the United States which would have the best supplementary data in the form of radar tracks and satellite images on a European event not far from Russia’s border, an area of intense interest to America. Why don’t they produce them? Moreover, despite repeated requests from Russia and others, Ukraine’s new government has released no data of its own, things we know it must have, such as tower-to-pilot recordings. Clearly, information is being deliberately suppressed, and when we hear in our press and from American-influenced governments about Russia’s underhandedness, it is only a loud diversion from that disturbing fundamental fact.

Do you see the television networks and newspapers in the United States calling for the immediate release of information? No, instead you see the suggestion, sometimes far more than a suggestion, that Russia is responsible for destroying the airliner, and this accusation is made with no evidence and without shame.
You might say we have a conspiracy of silence around an event of international importance. But why should that be so? Why is a country whose politicians regularly make speeches praising themselves about openness, democratic values, and fairness, found withholding critical information in two catastrophes of international importance?
In the first case over the Indian Ocean, it is almost certainly because the United States itself shot down the airliner, either mistakenly or deliberately as it may have been regarded as a potential threat to the secret base at Diego Garcia. Neither of these possibilities would be new experiences for America’s military which, over the years, has been involved in destroying at least half a dozen civilian airliners (see my essay with its footnotes, “The Second Mystery Around Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370” found at Chuckman’s Words on WordPress).

In the case of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17, destroyed over Ukraine, I believe the United States is hiding the fact that the Ukrainian armed forces shot it down. Why would the United States do this? We know, there being a great deal of good information in the public record, that the United States has made a huge investment in Ukraine over the past few years trying to destabilize an elected government, one friendly to Russia, and it succeeded when that government fled from a coup. Imagine America’s embarrassment at the world’s seeing its new proxy government, its supposed champion of eastern democracy, first misdirecting a civilian airliner, Flight MH17 having inexplicably been sent off course over a war zone, and then shooting it down with a fighter. Russian data, released to the public, shows a Ukrainian fighter was near the airliner, and an early photo of the wreckage leaked to the world clearly shows a large fuselage panel from the pilot’s cabin riddled with holes as by heavy caliber ammunition from a fighter’s canon.

That embarrassment would come on top of a series of embarrassments America’s meddling in Ukraine’s affairs has produced: over the general revolt of Russian-speaking Ukrainians against a new government openly unfriendly to their interests; over revelations that Nazi-like groups – and Ukraine has a number of them, notably the Right Sector – committed the sniping murders of hundreds of civilians from rooftops in Kiev in support of the original coup; over Ukraine’s pathetic military failures on the ground with its soldiers displaying poor morale and worse leadership; over the world’s seeing Ukraine bombing and rocketing its own citizens; over the failure of various cheap ruses such as using repainted surplus Hungarian T-72 tanks, fit only for scrap, to pass as invading Russian armor (while this ruse failed, it did for a while take in a lot of Western journalists, surely a reflection on the depth of their investigations); and, perhaps, most grating of all for the engineers of the whole murderous and destructive scheme, some deft statesmanship by Vladimir Putin snatched from their grasp important expected fruits of the enterprise.

In a number of instances the Ukrainian armed forces have demonstrated embarrassing incompetence, and reading between the lines of screaming propaganda and demands for this or that, appear actually to be losing the highly unequal fight. They do not fight with motivation for their new American-installed government, with its neo-Nazi auxiliaries, and against fellow citizens. I believe the shooting down of the airliner was one of many blunders, and the recordings from the black boxes, if revealed without doctoring, would unambiguously prove this to be the case. As would Ukraine’s flight controller recordings, still held secret.

The United States, despite embarrassments and setbacks, has worked to make other gains out of its dirty work in Ukraine. It has been able to use almost comical assertions of a new Russian threat to strengthen its hold on NATO, an organization which has been obsolete for years and which serves only to thinly disguise American hegemony in Europe. Even now it pushes members for increased military spending to a minimum of two percent of GDP as the admission price for playing with the big boys in NATO. For America, the great appeal of increased expenditures would be a further subsidizing of its costly presence in Europe. NATO is held together by America’s financial, economic, and diplomatic power, still great despite that country’s having entered its relative decline in world influence. It can still grant rich favors and contracts or it can work away quietly against the interests of a dissenting state. A Europe with the many economic problems we see today is naturally fearful of summoning America’s wrath
Altogether, it’s a vast and shameful enterprise the United States has launched, and while most of its unpleasant consequences have yet to be seen, it has certainly brought war and grief to a previously peaceful region. But the stark truth is that, in recent years, bringing war and grief seems to be a core mission of American foreign affairs.

John Chuckman is former chief economist for a large Canadian oil company. He has many interests and is a lifelong student of history. He writes with a passionate desire for honesty, the rule of reason, and concern for human decency. John regards it as a badge of honor to have left the United States as a poor young man from the South Side of Chicago when the country embarked on the pointless murder of something like 3 million Vietnamese in their own land because they happened to embrace the wrong economic loyalties. He lives in Canada, which he is fond of calling “the peaceable kingdom.” He has been translated into at least ten languages and is regularly translated into Italian and Spanish. Several of his essays have been published in book collections, including two college texts. His first book was published, The Decline of the American Empire and the Rise of China as a Global Power, by Constable and Robinson, Lo

05 September, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

By Ghali Hassan

It is skinning to watch U.S. President Barack Obama calling on Iraq to form an “inclusive” government. Iraq communities lived side by side for centuries and in some cases for millennia. The U.S. planted the seed of division and violence in Iraq. During the Occupation, the U.S. has carried out ethnic and religious cleansing in major Iraqi cities, particularly around the capital Baghdad, to encourage division and animosity among the Iraqi population. It is the U.S. that continues to fuel the violence to this day, financing, training, and arming terrorists and extremist groups. The aim is to use proxy forces to create chaos, control the region, and, at the same time, demonise Muslims and Islam.

Prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion and murderous occupation of Iraq, terrorism and extremism had zero presence in Iraq. The rise of terrorism in the region is the direct result of the U.S. war of aggression and military presence in Iraq. We all know the U.S. criminal legacy in Iraq. The genocidal invasion and preceding sanctions – without any justification – killed three million innocent Iraqis, including more than half a million children, and totally destroyed a relatively advanced developing country whose people were largely prosperous. Close to five million Iraqis were displaced by the invasion out of a population of 31 million, and five million Iraqi children became orphans. Women suffered the greatest losses in education, professions, child care, nutrition, and safety. More than one-fourth of Iraq’s population died, became disabled, or fled the country as refugees. As a result of U.S. terror on Iraq since the early 1990s, Iraqi culture and a generation of Iraqis have been destroyed in a premeditated barbaric violence. In addition, the U.S. brought into Iraq a culture of corruption and decadence unheard of in the long history of Iraq. Despite overwhelming evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity, sadly, not a single individual responsible for the lies and war that destroyed Iraq and killed millions of Iraqis has been held accountable or indicted for mass murder and societal destruction. As someone who has followed events in Iraq very closely for years, I do not buy into Western “moral responsibility” and “humanitarian aid”. It is outright criminal and barbaric what Western governments, led by the U.S., have inflicted on the people of Iraq. It is morally abhorrent to support any Western leader who uses the word “humanitarian” to serve Western imperialist interests.

Iraqi property, including billions of dollars in gold reserves and priceless treasures of Iraq antiquity, were looted and taken out of the country. On Israel’s behalf, the U.S. disbanded the Iraqi army and police, rending Iraq defenceless and ruled by U.S.-created militias. Iraq’s military hardware, including Iraq’s war planes, were shipped to Israel and Jordan during the U.S. occupation. The real aim of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq was the destruction of Iraq on behalf of the fascist state of Israel. After withdrawing its troops from Iraq, the U.S. left the Iraqi army without a single fixed-wing war plane and most of Iraq’s weapons are AK47 rifles and light arms bought from the Ukraine. To counter the invasion and terror attacks by ISIS (“Islamic State” [IS] in Iraq and Syria, ISIS) mercenary forces, Iraq has made an urgent request of Russia for the supply of defensive weapons.

In 2011, the U.S. failed to establish a foothold in Iraq after the Iraqi Parliament rejected the U.S. demand to enter into the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Iraq that will turn Iraq into a permanent colonial dictatorship. The U.S. reluctantly withdrew from Iraq, accusing the government of Nuri al-Maliki of being not sufficiently pro-American because of al-Maliki’s policy of rapprochement between Iraq and Iran. After the withdrawal of U.S. troops, the U.S. resorted to fomenting violence and division among Iraqis. In addition to the political chaos that was created by the U.S. and its allies, the Iraqi army remains weak and unable to defend Iraq. A failed state, engulfed in violence, is the condition that the U.S. has created in order to control Iraq and to serve U.S.-Israel interests. The U.S. capitalised on the chaos it has created by backing and arming terrorist groups, including ISIS terrorists, in order to replace al-Maliki with a more pro-American stooge.

ISIS is not an “Islamic ‘Sunni’” force, as Western politicians and the corporate media falsely portray it. ISIS is not just a by-product of U.S.-Israel terror and Zionist policies in the region; ISIS is a U.S.-Israel product, a proxy terrorist force of foreign mercenaries. In fact, the name “Islamic State” (IS) is the brainchild of the U.S. CIA to blacken and denigrate the name of Islam. Since 2011, the U.S., Israel, France, UK, and Turkey have openly financed, trained, and armed ISIS terrorists against the Syrian people and the Syrian Government. Indeed, the U.S. has been open and has acknowledged its complicity in the ongoing terror in the Middle East. In June 2014, the Obama administration asked Congress to authorize $500 million to provide U.S. military training and arms to “moderate Syrian rebels”, including ISIS, or IS. Across the Atlantic, the British Government of David Cameron drew up plans (drawn by the then most senior UK military officer, General Sir David Richards) to train and equip a 100,000-strong ISIS army in an effort to topple the legitimate Syrian government. It is evident that the U.S. and Britain are directly involved in the terrorist attacks not only on Syria but also on Iraq. In addition, Western governments, led by the U.S., Britain, and France have provided ISIS with unhindered access to social media to spread its violent propaganda.

Furthermore, according to the German weekly Der Spiegel , ISIS “rebels” are trained in secret bases in Jordan and Turkey by U.S. and Israeli Special Forces. They are financed by the U.S., Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar. Moreover, in May 2013 the European Union (EU) decided to lift previously imposed sanctions on the import of Syrian oil, not because the EU was concerned about the plight of the Syrian people, but because the EU intended to allow the flow of oil from areas (North-East Syria) controlled by ISIS terrorists and other anti-government “rebels” (“EU decision to lift Syrian oil sanctions to boost Jihadist groups”, The Guardian , 19/05/2013).

Furthermore, U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R) of Kentucky told NBC News’s ‘Meet the Press ‘ that the U.S. government has been funding ISIS allies and supporting the terrorist group in Syria. “They’re emboldened because we’ve been supporting them … It could be Assad [who could have] wiped these people out months ago … I personally believe that this group would not be in Iraq and would not be as powerful had we not been supplying their allies in the war”, he said. President Vladimir Putin of Russia was a rare exception when he categorically opposed any Western military attack on Syria to topple the Syrian Government.

A document released by Edward Snowden, the former NSA whistle-blower, revealed that ISIS was formed by the U.S., UK, and Israeli intelligence apparatus as part of a strategy known as the “hornet’s nest”, in order to attract fundamentalists from around the world to Syria. By turning against ISIS, the U.S. and its allies aimed at invading Syria, as recently announced by General Martin E. Dempsey, U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. General Dempsey said: “This is an organization that has an apocalyptic end-of-days strategic vision that will eventually have to be defeated.” He made it clear that defeating ISIS terrorist can only be possible by invading Syria. “Can they be defeated without addressing that part of the organization that resides in Syria? The answer is no,” Dempsey said. In other words, to defeat ISIS, the U.S. has to invade Syria, repeating the same U.S. aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq.

The ongoing Western arms deliveries to the Kurds in northern Iraq – with the deliberate intention to bypass the central government in Baghdad and without explicit UN resolution – is designed to encourage division and ultimately secession. The Kurds, the faction led by U.S. stooge , Ma’asoud al-Barzani, are not fighting ISIS; they are in cohort with ISIS, the U.S., and Israel. In fact, ISIS terror allows al-Barzani to enlarge the area he controls, including the northern oil fields.

If President Obama is serious about defeating ISIS, he had an opportunity before they crossed from Syria into Iraq. To the contrary, the U.S. and its allies provided heavy weapons and facilitated the ISIS march into Iraq. The U.S. warned Syria against attacking the terrorists. It was the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq by U.S. proxy terrorists.

It is laughable that ISIS alone, which is waging war on two states (Syria and Iraq), has the military capability to march into Iraq in broad daylight without the training and heavy weapons provided by the U.S. and U.S. allies. The U.S.-Israel strategy is to foment fratricidal violence among Muslims, and at the same time demonise Islam and Muslims in the West by blaming the violence on Muslims themselves. Hence, the violence in Syria and Iraq is U.S.-Israel fomented political violence and is not “sectarian” violence. Sectarianism is a myth created and nurtured by Zionists and U.S. imperialists.

It is the same U.S. strategy that was used in Afghanistan in the 1980s against the former Soviet Union troops there. Of course, terrorist forces transform and change their names. For example, al-Qaeda has been transformed into ISIL, ISIS and now IS. Hence, IS or ISIS is the new al-Qaeda, the pretext to justify aggression abroad and repressive measures at home. In a word, ISIS is the creation of the U.S. and it allies, Israel and Turkey in particular. ISIS main functions are: firstly, to be used as a tool to blackmail and intimidate the Iraqi and Syrian governments – indeed, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was forced to resign; secondly, ISIS criminal nature is used to demonise Islam and dehumanise Muslims in the West and around the world. ISIS is serving U.S.-Israel Zionist interests.

The U.S. and its allies had the opportunity to stop ISIS before they moved from Syria to Iraq. In fact, the U.S. facilitated ISIS invasion of Iraq. President Obama has warned and threatened the Syrian government if Syrian forces attacked ISIS. It is not a coincidence that ISIS declared the end of the Sykes-Picot agreement , which divided the region between British and French interests at the end of World War I at the same time Israeli fascist PM Benjamin Netanyahu annexed Palestinian land in the Jordan valley. Furthermore, ISIS mercenary forces march into Iraq was timed with Israel’s terror attacks on the Palestinian people in Gaza and aimed at diverting public attention away from Israel’s war crimes.

Despite concerted efforts by Western politicians and the media to dissociate these terrorist forces from the West, overwhelming evidence shows these terrorist forces that are terrorising the people of Syria and the people of Iraq are Western-sponsored terrorist forces. They are disguised as “Islamic militants”, but have nothing to do with Islam and their criminal actions are anti-Islamic. They are violating all Islamic principles and Islamic laws. It is misleading – as some despicable journalists have alleged – to even hint that Muslims have failed to speak out against ISIS. Muslims around the world have condemned ISIS terrorists in the strongest terms.

ISIS violent acts have been exploited by Western media to spread anti-Muslim propaganda and justify the next all-out war on Muslim nations, like Syria and Iraq. As Tony Cartalucci writes in New Eastern Outlook : “The alleged killing of the journalist James W. Foley has created outrage amongst public opinion. It generated an illusion of confrontation between ISIS and the U.S., and further vilifies ISIS. The media’s narrative is that ISIS stands apart from other terrorist groups in Syria, and with that narrative, the West is simultaneously bolstering ISIS in Syria under the guise of arming and aiding ‘moderates’, while it conducts token airstrikes on ISIS in Iraq”. The U.S. had several opportunities to save the lives of Foley and Steve Sotloff, but it refused because it doesn’t serve U.S. interests. Hence, the U.S. is culpable in their deaths. Foley and Sotloff’s killings (although videos of their executions show they were staged) showed us the criminal nature of Western-sponsored terrorists.

Here in Australia, the hypocrisy of the neo-fascist Liberal government has reached a new level of moral bankruptcy. Prime Minister Tony Abbot is forming a nuclear alliance with Asia’s two most openly fascist leaders, India’s Narendra Modi and Japan’s Shinzo Abe. A militarily stronger and offensive Australia is good for the U.S. The Australian political and military establishments are bragging about joining President Obama’s “humanitarian war” on Iraq and possibly Syria. On 28 August 2014, Tony Abbotts unashamedly told Parliament, “that no one in this Parliament I am sure, no human being anywhere, would wish to stand by and watch the preventable slaughter of innocent people.” We do know that Mr Abbott and his neo-fascist Liberals gang had just stood by and watched the slaughter (genocide) of innocent Palestinian women and children by the Israeli fascist regime. Keeping with Australian Anglo-Saxon traditions, Australia remains the unconditional supporter of the Israeli fascist regime, even when it massacred innocent Palestinian women and children in broad daylight.

Furthermore, since 2011, Australia has been at the forefront, supporting the anti-Syrian government “rebels”, including ISIS, in their terror against the Syrian people. Syrian diplomats in Canberra were expelled and the government of Syria has been accused of committing war crimes despite overwhelming evidence that ISIS continue to commit heinous war crimes.

Just as ISIS forces began attacking Iraq, the Australian neo-fascist Liberal government of Tony Abbott began a campaign of vilifying and demonising Muslim Australians. The racist campaign is designed as a “desperate diversion” to divert the Australian public from serious economic issues and from rampant government corruption and incompetency to govern the country. The government fabricated a “threat to Australia’s security”, allegedly posed by Muslim Australians who travel to the Middle East, to justify new draconian laws targeting the Australian Muslim Community and, in the process, turning Australia into a fascist police state. Muslim and Arab Australians who travel to the Middle East to visit their relatives and friends will be labelled “terrorists” and accused of endangering “Australian security”. They risk prosecution and even jail if they return to Australia.

Indeed, several innocent Muslim Australians have been detained at Australian airports in the past few months and prevented from leaving the country because of their Middle Eastern backgrounds.

Yet the Abbott government and ASIO have nothing to say about hundreds of Australian Jews (“dual citizens”) who join the Israeli army and participate in Israel’s massacres of innocent Palestinian women and children. They return to Australia as heroes, wandering the streets of Melbourne and Sydney with Palestinian blood on their hands. They do not risk arrest for war crimes or being called terrorists. The Australian media and Australia’s despicable journalists and commentators treat these war criminals with deafening silence.

In addition to the 43 laws that are already in place, the new repressive anti-Muslim laws have absolutely nothing to do with national security. Rather, the new laws (like the old ones) are aimed at criminalising Muslim and Arab Australians, restricting the right of all Australians to live in a free country and intensifying police state measures. As George Williams, a professor of law at the University of New South Wales in Sydney observed, that the new anti–terrorism laws “would extend the powers of government at the expense of [Australian] citizens is unexpected and quite shocking.” Professor George added that, “allowing innocent Australians to be detained in secret and subjected to coercive questioning by ASIO [the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation] is more suited to dictatorship regimes” ( SMH , 11 August 2014). Moreover, the Abbott government is introducing legislation to stop welfare payments for Muslim Australians who the government and its security agencies deemed pose a ”serious threat to Australia’s national security”. It is important to remember that, these draconian laws apply to Muslim Australians only – the label of “terrorist” is only applied to Muslim and Arab Australians. White Australians (Christians or Jews) who commit acts of terrorism are labelled as “psychopaths” or “loners”, not terrorists. In other words, only Muslim Australians are singled out.

Echoing the war criminal George W. Bush’s racist and divisive call of “you are either with us or against us”, Tony Abbott is calling on Muslim Australians to join his fascist-Liberal “team Australia” or else. He is telling Muslim Australians, “You are all guilty until proven innocent”. On 21 August 2014, Mr Abbott, echoing another war criminal, Tony Blair, told an audience in Adelaide, “Extremism is the enemy, not Islam”. We all know that “extremism” is a catch-all word for all Muslims. According to Abbott’s sick mind, Muslim Australians who refuse to join Abbott’s “team” will be considered “extremists”. Taking his cue from war criminals like Tony Blair and Dick Cheney, one of Abbott’s advisors, former Australian army chief Peter Leahy – retired warmongers have become a fixture on Australian TV screens – was more frank when he said: “We will fight Islam for 100 years”. It is difficult to discern the reasons behind Australian fascist-Liberal hatred for Muslims and Islam. The Muslim Community is singled out by the neo-fascist Liberals and their supporters because it is a small and divided Community that lacks a power base in Australia or outside Australia. It is also easy to single out the Muslim Community because of years of demonization and vilification by politicians and the Australian racist media. The fears that Muslim Australians of Middle Eastern backgrounds could pose a threat in Australia are absurd and racist. It is a hysteria created by politicians and the media to justify repressive measures.

There has been no act of terrorism committed in Australia by Muslim Australians. People are targeted because of their Islamic/Arabic names and their religious beliefs. Innocent Muslim Australians are framed by ASIO and the police in so-called “Sting Operations”, prosecuted and imprisoned on fabricated charges for their opinions. The Australian Government has co-opted obscure academics, the so-called “counter-terrorism experts” (aka anti-Muslim bigots), to support its racist laws and anti-Muslim propaganda. Furthermore, to get some legitimacy to enact these laws, the Abbott Government undermined Muslim unity by bribing and coercing some of the despicable self-appointed “community leaders” to back the new laws. The laws and the language used by Tony Abbott and his neo-fascist Liberals aimed at spreading the plague of Islamophobia across the country.

ISIS is not an indigenous Islamic resistant movement; it is a U.S.-sponsored proxy terrorist force of foreign mercenaries. By creating and demonising ISIS, the West is demonising Muslims and Islam to justify a war of terror and to advance its imperialist-Zionist agenda, regardless of the loss of innocent human lives and the criminal tragedies it creates.

Only when the U.S. and its allies understand the principles of sovereignty and stop interfering violently in the affairs of other nations will they be able to claim to defend world peace. Only when the U.S. and its allies stop financing, training, and arming terrorists will they be able to claim to have defeated terrorism.

Ghali Hassan is an independent researcher and writer living in Australia.

08 September, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

By Ramzy Baroud

In the rush to analyze the outcome of Israel’s 51-day war in Gaza, dubbed Operation Protective Edge, some may have neglected an important factor: this was not a war by traditional definitions of warfare, thus the conventional analyses of victory and defeat is simply not applicable.

That being the case, how can we explain Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s triumphant statement on 28 August, and the massive celebrations on the streets of Gaza regarding the resistance ‘victory’ over Israel? To be truly fathomed, they must be understood in context.

Soon after the ceasefire declaration on 26 August, ending Israel’s most destructive war on Gaza yet, Netanyahu seemed to have disappeared from the scene. Some Israeli media began predicting the end of his political reign. Although this notion was a bit hasty, one can understand why. Much of the man’s political career was predicated on his ‘anti-terror’ stance and Israeli security agenda.

He served as prime minister from 1996 to 1999, with the decided aim of defeating the Oslo ‘peace process.’ He argued it compromised Israel’s security. Then as a finance minister in Sharon’s government (2003-05), he was troubled by Ariel Sharon’s intentions regarding re-deploying out of Gaza. In fact, it was the Gaza ‘disengagement plan’ that ended the Netanyahu-Sharon alliance.

It took Netanyahu a few years to fight his way back from the seeming oblivion in Israel’s complicated political landscape. He fought a grueling political battle, but managed to redeem only some of the rightwing Likud party’s past glory through fractious alliances. He served as prime minister from 2009-2013, and for a third term (a rarity in Israeli history) from 2013 to the present.

Not only was Netanyahu the king of Israel, but its kingmaker as well. He did keep his friends close and enemies closer, and cleverly balanced out seemingly impossible coalition odds. He succeeded, not simply because he is a shrewd politician, but also because he managed to unite Israel around one goal: security. This he did by fighting “Palestinian terror,” a reference to various Palestinian resistance groups, including Hamas, and building Israeli defenses. He had such command over that political discourse that no one came even close , surly not the newcomer centralist politician Yair Lapid, or even rightwing and far-right hawks Avigdor Liberman and Neftali Bennet.

But then, Gaza happened, a war that could possibly become Netanyahu’s biggest miscalculation , and perhaps the reason for his downfall. Aside from the collapse in his approval ratings , down from 82% on 23 July, to less than 38% shortly after the ceasefire announcement, the man’s own language in his post-ceasefire press conference is telling enough.

He seemed desperate and defensive, arguing that Hamas failed to achieve its war objective, although it was Israel, not Hamas, that instigated the war with a list of objectives – none of which were achieved anyway. Hamas responded by mocking his statement as the group didn’t start the war, nor had any demands then, a group official told Al Jazeera. The demands were made in the subsequent ceasefire talks in Egypt, and some of them were in fact achieved.

Netanyahu is twisting language and stretching the truth in a despondent attempt to score a political victory, or to simply save face. But few are convinced.

Writing in Foreign Policy on 20 July 20 , Ariel Ilan Roth came to an early conclusion about the Gaza war, which has proven to be only partly true. “No matter how and when the conflict between Hamas and Israel ends, two things are certain. The first is that Israel will be able to claim a tactical victory. The second is that it will have suffered a strategic defeat.”

Wrong. Even the tactical victory was denied this time around, unlike previous wars, most notably the so-called Operation Cast Lead (2008-09). The Gaza resistance must have learned from its past mistakes, managing to withstand a 51-day war with a destructive outcome unprecedented in all past Gaza conflicts. When the Egypt-mediated ceasefire was announced, every Israeli soldier was pushed behind Gaza’s borders.

Almost immediately after the agreement, a Hamas official from Gaza read a statement in which he called on Israelis living in the many evacuated border towns to return to their homes, in a statement of defiance also unprecedented. Shortly after, hundreds of fighters representing all factions, Fatah included, stood at the ruins of the Shejaiya, neighbourhood in Gaza city. “There is no room amongst us for that defeated, weak Arab,” the military leader of the Gaza resistance Abu Ubaydah declared, as throngs of people showered the fighters with kisses.

He too declared some kind of victory. But is his “victory” statement any different from that of Netanyahu’s?

“Israel has a history of claiming victory when in fact it has suffered defeat; the October 1973 war is the best example,” wrote Roth in Foreign Policy. The difference back then is that many in Israel accepted false victories. This time around they refuse to do so, as various opinion polls by Haaretz, Channel 2 and others are showing. Furthermore, the chasm in Israel’s political class is wider than it has been in many years.

Irrespective of this, ‘victory’ of the resistance cannot be understood within the same context of Israel’s own definition of victory, or false victory. Surely the resistance “was able to establish deterrence, displaying an incredible level of resilience and strength, even when equipped with primitive weapons,” as argued by Samah Sabawi . The very idea that powerful Israel, and the likes of Netanyahu, can use Palestinians as a testing ground for weapons or to enhance approval ratings seems to be over. The Sharon old wisdom that the Arabs and Palestinians “must be hit hard” and “must be beaten,” as a precondition for calm, or peace, was challenged like never before in the history of Arab-Israeli wars.

Gaza’s ceasefire “celebrations” were not the kind of celebrations that would follow a football match win. To comprehend it as an expression of mere joy is a mistake, and reflects a lack of understanding of Gaza society. It was more of a collective statement by people who lost 2,143 people, mostly civilians, and have over 11,000 wounded and maimed to care for. Let alone the total or partial destruction of 18,000 homes, 75 schools, many hospitals, mosques, and hundreds of factories and shops.

No, it was not a statement of defiance in the symbolic sense either. It was a message to Israel that the resistance has matured and that Israel’s complete dominance over when wars start and how they end is over.

Only the future could prove how accurate such an assessment is and how consequential it will be for the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which are under military occupation. Interestingly, “liberating Jerusalem,” was in fact a dominant theme among jubilant Palestinians in Gaza. Another theme was the insistence of national unity among all Palestinians. After all, this was the real reason why Netanyahu had launched his war on Gaza in the first place.

Resistance discourse, al-Muqawama , is now the most dominant in Palestine, and it goes beyond factional divides, or the tired discussion about useless ‘peace talks’ that garnered nothing for Palestinians but territorial loss, political division and much humiliation. That sentiment is already reverberating in the West Bank. But how it will be translated in the future is yet to be seen, considering the fact that the Palestinian Authority (PA) there is weak in its dealings with Israel, and very intolerant of any political dissent.

Israeli pressure on PA President Mahmoud Abbas will continue. In his first press conference after the ceasefire Netanyahu repeated the same ultimatum. Abbas “needs to choose what side he is on,” he said.

After failing to end the Gaza resistance, Netanyahu is left with nothing other than pressuring Abbas, 79, whose choice, after Gaza’s war, means so little to begin with.

Ramzy Baroud is a PhD scholar in People’s History at the University of Exeter.

04 September, 2014
Countercurrents.org

By Peter Haisenko

Peter Haisenko was a pilot for Lufthansa for 30 years. In the article below he explains his conclusion that the Malaysian airliner downed in Ukraine was hit first by an air-to-air missile from a Ukrainian fighter jet and then by machine gun fire. As Ukrainian air control has refused to release its communications with the airliner and Washington refuses to release its satellite photos, we have to form a judgment based on experience and available evidence. This judgment is superior to unsupported propagandistic claims. The withholding of pertinent information suggests that Washington and/or Kiev are responsible for the downed airliner.

Seven weeks have passed since the downing of MH 017 and we have still not been provided with official investigation results. This is an extraordinary circumstance, but ultimately not surprising. Just a few days after the crash of the airliner a short message was published that in this case the debris of the wreck will not be collected to be put together like a puzzle. However, this would have been the normal procedure if there were serious interest to determine the cause of the accident objectively.

When an airplane crashes, within 24 hours there are usually legions of experts at the scene who register everything in detail and start collecting the debris. First of all experts of the plane manufacturer are sent to the scene — in this case Boeing – followed by the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board), and by specialists and experts from the countries concerned. In addition to the flight recorder, these specialists are responsible for an examination of the debris. Normally, the airplane is reconstructed from the pieces in order to determine the cause of the crash.

Yet in the case of MH 017 normal procedures were not followed. No representatives from Boeing appeared on the site. The airliner was not pieced together in order to determine the cause of its destruction. The information in the black boxes has not been revealed. Therefore, we have to arrive at a conclusion based on experience and the information available.

Investigation is further impeded by the establishment in the media of the Western propaganda line that Russia and the separatists are responsible. This “guilt” has been established by insinuation and repetition of charges unsupported by any evidence. Those who challenge the “official” story that the airliner was destroyed by a missile fired from the ground by separatists are said to be “conspiracy theorists.” In other words, those with experience are discredited before they speak.

The West has control of the investigation and apparently has decided not to investigate. However, we do have two critical pieces of information. One is the report of the Canadian representative of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) that reports bullet holes in the cockpit section of the airliner. Photos are available that clearly show bullet holes in the pattern of machine gun fire on both sides of the airliner’s cockpit. The other piece of information comes from a report in the Malaysian newspaper New Straits Times that intelligence analysts have concluded that one of the airliner’s engines was hit by a heat-seeking air-to-air missile. We know that there were Ukrainian jets armed with such weapons close to the airliner at the time that it crashed. http://www.nst.com.my/node/20925&nbsp

These two pieces of information support my conclusion of what happened based on my experience and my research:

A warplane fired an air-to-air missile which hit the right engine of MH 017. In the cockpit of the MH 017 only a violent shock could be perceived, along with the fire alarm and the failure notice of engine number two. Pilots would be aware of engine failure, not of a missile strike. The missile hit might have caused a strong yawning moment and an immediate drop in speed. The pilots instantly had to initiate emergency procedures for this emergency, and were concentrated on it with full attention.

According to procedural rule, the pilots had to turn the engine off, isolate it, reduce speed and altitude. Afterwards they had to select and head for an emergency landing place and inform the ground control about their emergency situation as soon as possible. A captain in an emergency situation may do everything to save his plane, his own life and the lives of his passengers.

He has the so-called “emergency authority” that allows actions outside of any provision. The nearest major airport for the pilots of MH 017 for an emergency landing was probably Kiev. Rostov in Russia was closer, but in order to go to Rostov the pilots would have had to cope with a change of the control center and a border crossing, which would have meant extra stress.

MH 017 had therefore initiated a curve back towards Kiev in connection with a descent. Now just imagine, that MH 017 would have landed in Kiev. In Kiev it could not have been disguised that the airliner had been hit by an air-to-air missile. The emergency landing procedure had to be prevented – no matter on what airport. This was achieved by machine gun fire.

The fact that an investigation apparently has been stymied is strong circumstantial evidence for the account of the airliner’s demise offered in this article.
© 2014 Peter Haisenko / anderweltonline.com

04 September, 2014
Paulcraigroberts.org

By Chris Marsden

Wednesday began with an announcement of at least the outline of a “permanent ceasefire” between Ukraine and Russia, but ended in rhetoric just as warlike as any sounded in the days leading up to today’s NATO summit in Wales.

In the morning, Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko wrote on Twitter that a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin had ended in an agreement on a permanent ceasefire in the Donbass and a mutual understanding on steps to promote peace.

Within an hour, Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said there was no agreement on a ceasefire because Russia was not a participant in the conflict in eastern Ukraine between the Kiev regime and pro-Russian separatists. Meanwhile, the wording of Poroshenko’s statement was changed from “permanent ceasefire” to “ceasefire regime.”

Putin later said a ceasefire was possible between Kiev and the opposition groups in the east by Friday, referencing negotiations that began in Belarus Monday. Peace would be achieved by urging insurgents to “stop advancing” in Donetsk and Luhansk and urging Ukraine to withdraw its troops from the east to a “distance that will make artillery and other strikes on populated areas impossible.”

Fighting continued, with at least 87 Ukrainian soldiers killed after being surrounded in the town of Ilovaysk, confirming a recent pattern of rebel advances that have seen Ukraine lose control of Luhansk airport and Novoazovsk on the Sea of Azov coast.

US President Barack Obama could scarcely conceal his hostility to anything that cut across preparations for the NATO summit to adopt a series of anti-Russian measures. “No realistic political settlement can be achieved if effectively Russia says we are going to continue to send tanks and troops and arms and advisors under the guise of separatists, who are not home grown, and the only possible settlement is if Ukraine cedes its territory or its sovereignty,” he said.

Obama was speaking at a press conference during his visit to the Estonian capital, Tallinn. His stated mission was to reassure NATO members Estonia and Latvia and non-NATO states such as Ukraine of the alliance’s support against Russia. Turning reality on its head in order to legitimise NATO aggression against Russia, Obama declared that the vision of a Europe dedicated to peace and freedom was being “threatened by Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.”

“We will defend our NATO allies, and that means every ally,” he said—a formula that could be interpreted as sanctioning military action not restricted to NATO countries, as mandated by Article Five of NATO’s charter pledging mutual defence only to member states.

The same day, it was announced that four NATO warships would be entering the Black Sea before September 7: USS Ross, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer; French Commandant Birot; Canadian HMCS Toronto, a Halifax-class frigate; and Spanish frigate Almirante Juan de Borbon.

The US will also go ahead with the Rapid Trident military exercise set for September 16-26 near Ukraine’s border with Poland. Initially scheduled for July, Rapid Trident is the first significant deployment of US and other personnel to Ukraine since the eruption of civil war in the country’s east. The US is moving tanks and 600 troops to Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for manoeuvres in October.

Bowing to intense pressure from Washington, the government of French President François Hollande announced Wednesday it was suspending delivery of a French Mistral-class warship to Russia in October as previously agreed, and would review the planned sale in November. US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki praised the decision, saying Paris had listened “to pressure from the international community.”

The Wales summit will discuss two related military forces. NATO host Britain has said it expects to sign a letter of intent with six partner nations to form a joint expeditionary force of 10,000 working with the Baltic nations and the Netherlands, Norway and Denmark. It would operate in parallel with a German initiative, with Berlin working with ten East European partner nations to boost their capabilities.

The force would be separate but complementary to an estimated 4,000-strong NATO high readiness force detailed Monday by Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Allies will provide several thousand troops by Christmas, with air, sea and special forces support deployed on a rotating basis and able to move on 48 hours’ notice to any NATO member state. It will not formally be stationed in Eastern Europe, but will have equipment and logistics facilities pre-positioned there.

The force was described as a “spearhead” to the existing NATO rapid force that became operational in 2004. Making clear the target, Rasmussen said, “We must face the reality that Russia does not consider NATO a partner… We will adapt to that situation.”

The caveats placed on the force’s nominal location are designed, at least formally, to avoid breaking the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act. Drafted as NATO was planning to expand its membership eastwards, the agreement reassured Russia that “in the current and foreseeable security environment, the alliance will carry out its collective defense and other missions by ensuring the necessary interoperability, integration, and capability for reinforcement rather than by additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces.”

NATO troop deployment in the east is being referred to as “persistent” rather than “permanent.”

European political figures have been queuing up to declare that action must be taken targeting Russia. The US, in alliance with Britain, mainly in response to widely perceived reluctance on the part of the German government, is demanding military and not simply economic moves.

On Saturday, in a closed session European Union summit debate in Brussels, British Prime Minister David Cameron was reported by Italy’s La Repubblica as citing the danger of repeating the appeasement by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain of Hitler in Munich in 1938. “This time we cannot meet Putin’s demands,” he declared. “It is very important when Russians look at countries like Estonia or Latvia or Poland that they don’t just see Estonian, Latvian and Polish soldiers–they see French, German, British soldiers too.”

In Estonia Obama again insisted that NATO states increase their military spending to 2 percent of their gross domestic product–a figure presently met by only two significant military powers, the US and Britain, the others being Greece and Estonia.

The danger of full-scale war in Europe grows by the day. In telling remarks to Spiegel Online, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier gave a fairly accurate depiction of the course of recent events. While blaming, as could be expected, “Ukraine and especially Russia” for the rising threat, he warned: “What we have seen in recent days in eastern Ukraine is not yet an open, not a declared war. But it is extremely dangerous when, as is the case now, the dynamics of military escalation increasingly determine political action and not vice versa.

“What threatens is slipping into a direct confrontation between Ukrainian and Russian military forces. It’s about people living in eastern Ukraine, it is about the unity of Ukraine, it’s about the peace in Europe, in short, it’s about preventing a new Iron Curtain in Europe.”

Russia’s response to NATO aggression has been to repeatedly seek a negotiated settlement. But yesterday, it announced major exercises this month involving more than 4,000 soldiers in Altai in south-central Russia, involving MiG-31 fighter-interceptors and Su-24MR reconnaissance aircraft on an unprecedented scale.

Mikhail Popov, deputy head of Putin’s Security Council, said that Russia’s own military doctrine would be revised once again, having been first updated in 2010, to identify NATO enlargement as a national threat and reaffirm Russia’s right to use nuclear weapons if its existence is endangered.

The “defining factor in relations with NATO remains the unacceptability for Russia of plans to move the military infrastructure of the alliance towards our borders, including via enlargement of the bloc,” he said.

General Yury Yakubov, a senior Defense Ministry official, implied that the new doctrine would have to clearly identify the US and NATO powers as Moscow’s chief enemy, and spell out the conditions under which Russia would launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike. “First and foremost, the likely enemy of Russia should be clearly identified in this strategic document, something absent from the 2010 military doctrine,” he said.

04 September, 2013
WSWS.org

 

By Nile Bowie

Six months have past since the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in March, which took off from Kuala Lumpur carrying 239 people en route to Beijing. The aircraft veered wildly off course while flying over the South China Sea before turning back over the Malaysian peninsula toward the Indian Ocean, where it is presumed to have crashed.

Despite the largest multinational search and rescue effort ever conducted, not a trace of debris from the aircraft has been found, nor has the cause of the aircraft’s erratic change of trajectory and disappearance been established. The case of MH370 has proven to be the most baffling incident in commercial aviation history and one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries.

Malaysia Airlines has suffered the two worst disasters in modern aviation less than five months apart, following the tragic demise of flight MH17 in July, forcing the company to slash its staff numbers by a third as part of a major restructuring effort. The state has announced plans to take full ownership of the national carrier following the collapse of its share price and its subsequent removal from the stock market.

After a fruitless search in the southern Indian Ocean where the plane is believed to have terminated, investigators established a new search area that has been mapped by Chinese and Australian ships since June. The next stage of the investigation has been given a provisional 12-month duration, and a Dutch contractor, Fugro Survey, will conduct an underwater search beginning this month.

It is hoped that once the wreckage is discovered, the aircraft’s black boxes, cockpit voice recordings and flight data will help investigators explain the incident, as well as giving closure to the families of the victims. There is still little consensus among investigators and experts as to what actually happened onboard the doomed flight.

MH370’s transponders were shut off without a mayday call between Malaysian and Vietnamese airspace, followed by significant changes in altitude after ground control lost contact with the cockpit less than an hour into the flight. The aircraft flew erratically before fixing onto a consistent flight path, presumably on autopilot, prior to terminating once the plane ran out of fuel.

The Malaysian government, as well as aviation experts, claim that the aircraft’s movements were consistent with deliberate action by someone on the plane. The Australian-led search team believes that depressurisation and hypoxia rendered the crew unconscious because of the orderly path the aircraft took prior to ending its flight.

Investigators have cleared all passengers of any suspicious motives, while the flight’s pilot, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, a qualified pilot with over 30 years experience with Malaysia Airlines, has been the main suspect of the investigation by Malaysian authorities. Media reports speculated that Shah was undergoing difficult domestic circumstances, but his family members deny that he exhibited strange behavior.

Malaysia’s chief of police, Khalid Abu Bakar, said he believed that hijackers, saboteurs or someone with a personal vendetta or psychological problem had succeeded in diverting the plane. In the face of this exceedingly bizarre and unexplained incident, the aircraft’s manufacturer, the Boeing Company, has exhibited deafening silence.

What has been established thus far indicates that human intervention contributed to aircraft’s radical change in trajectory. If MH370’s pilots were ultimately not responsible for this, then other possible scenarios need to be explored in explaining the flight’s demise.

Boeing, the world’s largest manufacturer of commercial jetliners and military aircraft, was awarded a patent in 2006 for an ‘uninterruptible autopilot control system’ that could enable aircrafts to be remotely piloted from the ground using radio waves and global satellite positioning systems to counter hijacking attempts. The technology, developed following the 9/11 attacks, removes all control from pilots and redirects the airliner to a predetermined landing location.

“After it has been activated, the aircraft will be capable of remote digital control from the ground, enabling operators to fly it like a sophisticated model plane, manoeuvring it vertically and laterally… Once triggered, no one on board will be able to deactivate the system,” claims a report from 2007 published in the London Evening Standard.

The automatic control system technology, filed under patent number US7142971B2, is independently powered by an alternative power source that is inaccessible to anyone on board the aircraft. Boeing officials quoted in the report give the clear impression that this system was developed for the purpose of being installed on Boeing airliners, stating that the uninterruptible autopilot system could be fitted into its planes by 2009.

Honeywell, one of Boeing’s avionics suppliers, filed patent number US7475851B2 in 2003 for a similar uninterrupted autopilot control device.

Boeing and Honeywell have both developed technology for use in unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, with civilian and military applications for decades.

In 2012, Boeing declared its intention to install new security mechanisms aboard several of its 777 series aircraft, including the models used by Malaysia Airlines, over concerns the aircrafts’ inflight entertainment system, which includes USB connections, could allow hackers to access a plane’s computer.

A report issued by the US Federal Register in 2013 raised concerns that Model 777-200, among others, was exposed to security vulnerabilities. “This potential exploitation of security vulnerabilities may result in intentional or unintentional destruction, disruption, degradation, or exploitation of data and systems critical to the safety and maintenance of the airplane,” the document stated.

Though the Federal Register’s statement explicitly mentions Model 777-200, it is also valid for Model 777-200ER – the aircraft used for MH370 – because the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) places both models 777-200 and 777-200ER in the same category and does not make a distinction between the two variants.

This information confirms the existence of technology that would allow for an aircraft like MH370 to be externally controlled, and that Boeing and the FAA were aware of a potential vulnerability loophole that could have conceivably been exploited. Boeing declined to comment on this incident and has made no attempt to explain this technology, even after former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad publically raised concerns over the possibility of such a scenario.

Inmarsat, the British satellite telecommunications company responsible for analyzing satellite data showing that MH370 flew south toward the Indian Ocean from its last known position, has also come under scrutiny from independent satellite experts and engineers that found glaring inconsistencies in their analysis. The Atlantic magazine published a report in May based on the analysis of Michael Exner, founder of the American Mobile Satellite Corporation, Duncan Steel, a physicist and visiting scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, and satellite technology consultant Tim Farrar.

The team of analysts used flight and navigation software to deconstruct Inmarsat’s analysis, and determined that other known evidence contradicted their mathematical conclusions, such as in the instance where the graph data provided by the British company actually shows the plane and satellite moving away from each other at 50 miles per hour while the plane was stationary and had not even taxied to take off.

The analysts concluded the Inmarsat’s data contained irregular frequency shifts, and even when the values were corrected, Inmarsat’s example flight paths failed to match and proved to be erroneous. In another instance, the graph data marking the position of the satellite receiving the signal is shown to be traveling faster in northbound direction when the satellite itself was moving south. Inmarsat’s graph shows the satellite moving at 33 miles per hour when its overall speed was just 0.07 miles per hour at that time.

The authors of the report have attempted to reach Inmarsat and other relevant bodies, but they claim that the company did not reply to requests for comments on basic technical questions about their analysis, leading them to determine that “Inmarsat officials and search authorities seem to want it both ways: They release charts, graphics, and statements that give the appearance of being backed by math and science, while refusing to fully explain their methodologies.”

The investigation into the disappearance of MH370 has not yet produced any physical evidence of the wreckage. It needs to be determined if this can be attributed to a false mathematical analysis by Inmarsat. Boeing must also address concerns over the uninterruptible autopilot system and produce the relevant technical specifics needed to determine the extent of flight MH370’s vulnerability to being externally overridden and controlled.

Nile Bowie is a columnist with Russia Today, and a research affiliate with the International Movement for a Just World (JUST).

By Shamus Cooke

President Obama is breathing fresh life into the term “lame duck.” At home and abroad the president seems frozen, powerless to confront the most demanding political issues. From foreign wars to Ferguson the president’s lack of audacity seems destined to be his legacy. And while working class people in Ferguson are demanding justice at home, the U.S. establishment is insisting on war abroad.

Who will Obama listen to? Based on his past actions Obama will continue to act for to the richest 1 percent, who’ve prospered under his presidency by devouring 95 percent of all new U.S. wealth.

The U.S. super rich are outraged by Obama’s hesitancy to wage war overseas. Republicans and Democrats alike are pouncing on Obama to “act boldly.” The Washington Post explains:

“…key lawmakers from both parties criticized [Obama’s] reaction to international turmoil and suggested the administration should be more assertive in addressing conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine.”

Being “assertive” in this case simply means waging war.

But a different kind of war than the covert type Obama has been waging. Since being elected Obama has fought various covert wars around the world, as documented in Jeremy Scahill’s excellent book and documentary, Dirty Wars.

Covert war was the strategy that Obama campaigned on, which fooled millions of Americans into believing he was the “peace candidate.”

And while he succeeded in getting fewer boots on the ground, the skies overseas are filled with swarms of drones and fighter jets.

As long as Obama could prove to the U.S. establishment that covert warfare would successfully promote their interests abroad — referred to as “U.S. interests” by politicians and the media — he was given hefty corporate campaign donations.

His no-boots-on-the-ground approach had an initial string of “successes” — especially regime change in Libya and successfully hunting the “trophies” of Osama Bin Laden, Muammar Gaddafi, and many others that were assassinated without trial or evidence.

The 2400-plus civilians killed by these drones were dismissed as collateral damage in the U.S., though abroad they bred intense hatred and were successfully used by extremist groups like al-Qaeda to attract recruits.

Obama’s covert strategy then hit a wall. His success in Libya is snowballing into an Iraq-sized disaster, having transformed the African nation with the highest standard of living into a living nightmare and a spawning ground for various regional conflicts.

As Libya was plunging into chaos, Obama and his Gulf state allies sought to replicate this “success” in Syria. And then things got predictably worse. Obama gave the green light for his regional allies — Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Israel, Jordan, etc. — to send weapons, fighters, and bombing raids into Syria, which artificially extended a bloody war that otherwise would have ended long ago.

Not only did Obama fail to oust Assad in Syria, his policy of supporting the Syrian rebels helped create giant militias of Islamic extremists whom Obama happily tolerated — since they were attacking Assad — until they invaded the Kurdish region of Iraq, provoking Obama to react.

And when ISIS suddenly appeared on Obama’s public radar, he recently announced, “We don’t have a strategy” — a comment seized on by the right wing to highlight Obama’s foreign policy paralysis.

Ukraine, too, has been an utter failure by any standard, and especially in the eyes of the U.S. establishment. Obama covertly helped usher in the fascist-led government in Ukraine in an attempt to weaken Russian influence.

But In both Ukraine and Syria Obama’s allies are getting their teeth kicked in, and when these allies scream for U.S. direct military intervention — as happened in Syria and is now happening in Ukraine — Obama has been hesitant to pull the trigger, reversing his decision to bomb Syria last year and wavering over what to do in Ukraine.

This “dithering” is what the U.S. establishment is fed up with. They want military victories abroad, by any means necessary. They’re tired of Obama’s failed covert wars; they’re ready for the real thing. In practice this means the Bush doctrine is coming back into style among U.S. politicians.

The liberal New York Times published an op-ed by John McCain and Lindsey Graham demanding military action in Syria against ISIS:

“…ISIS is a military force, and it must be confronted militarily. Mr. Obama has begun to take military actions against ISIS in Iraq, but they have been tactical and reactive half-measures…One of the hardest things a president must do is change, and history’s judgment is often kind to those who summon the courage to do so…ISIS has already forced [Obama] to begin changing course, albeit grudgingly. He should accept the necessity of further change and adopt a strategy to defeat this threat.”

Even Obama’s own advisers are breathing down his neck to act more “boldly” in Syria and Ukraine, according to a revealing article in The New York Times:

“Despite pressure from within his own government for more assertive action [in Syria and Ukraine], he [Obama] tried to avoid inflaming passions as he sought new approaches.”

This “pressure” from Democrats and Republicans won’t stop, and even if Obama were able to resist it, his successor won’t.

The Democratic front-runner in 2016, Hillary Clinton, has already come out in favor of a “stronger” military strategy. Clinton criticized Obama’s foreign policy weakness in an interview with the Atlantic magazine:

“You know, when you’re down on yourself, and when you are hunkering down and pulling back, you’re not going to make any better decisions than when you were aggressively, belligerently putting yourself forward.”

If she wins in 2016 Hillary will be a war president, as will any potential Republican president. The establishment is united.

The logic behind this madness of the U.S. elite is based on profit. The establishment knows that if U.S.-backed allies in Syria and Ukraine win their regional conflicts, U.S. banks and other corporations will be invited in to make fat profits. And of course the trillions of dollars in oil wealth will not simply be allowed to fall into the lap of the Russians and Chinese. In a world of global economic stagnation, the U.S. 1 percent view foreign profits as a matter of life and death, and will kill with abandon to make sure corporate balance sheets are flush.

Obama already seems to be bowing to this establishment pressure. Recently, U.S.-dominated NATO announced that a “rapid response force” is in the works for Eastern Europe, as a direct result of the conflict in Ukraine. Such a move would again up the war ante against Russia.

The emerging bi-partisan war strategy hasn’t fully manifested yet, but its emergence is inevitable. The American public isn’t prepared for a return to the Bush Jr. war period, since most Americans want nothing to do with the Ukrainian and Syrian conflicts. They are more than “war weary,” they are war sickened, and would rather the U.S. government spend the hundreds of billions of annual war money on job creation, education, health care, and other issues that are rapidly transforming the U.S. into a country of a two-class nation: the rich and everybody else, where everybody else is struggling to survive.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org).

03 September, 2014
Countercurrents.org