in English

The Malevolent Encirclement of Russia

Ivo Rens Généralités, in English, OTAN/NATO, Russie-Ukraine, USA

By F. William Engdahl
Global Research, October 14, 2020

Url of this article:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/rand-encirclement-russia/5726528

Over recent weeks a series of events in the states surrounding the Russian Federation has erupted that certainly are not being greeted with joy in the Kremlin. Each crisis center of itself is not a definitive game-changer for future Russian security. Taken together they suggest something far more ominous is unfolding against Moscow. A recent RAND study prepared for the US Army suggests with remarkable accuracy who might be behind what will undoubtedly become a major threat to Russian security in coming months.
The Turkish-backed attacks by Azerbaijan against Nagorno-Karabakh, igniting a territory after almost three decades of relative stalemate and ceasefire, the ongoing destabilization of Lukashenko in Belarus, the bizarre EU and UK behavior surrounding the alleged poisoning of Russian dissident Navalny and most recently, the mass protests in Kyrgyzstan, a former part of the Soviet Union in Central Asia, bear the fingerprints of the MI6 of Britain, the CIA and an array of regime-change private NGOs.


Nagorno-Karabakh
On September 27 military forces from Azerbaijan broke the 1994 ceasefire with Armenia over the conflict in predominantly ethnic- Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh. The heaviest fighting in years ensued on both sides as confrontation escalated. Turkey’s Erdogan came out openly in support of Baku against Armenia and Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh, leading Nikol Pashinyan, the Prime Minister of Armenia, to accuse Turkey of “continuing a genocidal policy as a pragmatic task.” It was a clear reference to the 1915-23 Armenian charge of genocide of more than a million Armenian Christians by the Ottoman Empire. Turkey to this day refuses to acknowledge responsibility.
While Armenia blames Erdogan for backing Azerbaijan in the present conflict in the Caucasus, Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, sometimes called “Putin’s chef” for his catering empire as well as his close ties to the Russian President, has said in an interview with a Turkish paper that the Armenia-Azeri conflict was provoked by “the Americans,” and that the Pashinyan regime is essentially in the service of the USA. Here it gets interesting.
In 2018 Pashinyan came to power via mass protests called the “Velvet Revolution.” He was openly and heavily supported by the Soros Open Society Foundation-Armenia which since 1997 has been active funding numerous “democracy” NGOs in the country. As Prime Minister, Pashinyan has named recipients of Soros money to most key cabinet positions including state security and defense.
At the same time it is unthinkable that Erdogan’s Turkey, still in NATO, would so openly support Azerbaijan in a conflict that potentially could lead to a Turkish confrontation with Russia, without prior backing in some form Washington. Armenia is a member of the economic and defense association Eurasian Economic Union together with Russia. This makes the comments of Prigozhin especially interesting.
It is also worth noting that the head of the CIA, Gina Haspel, and the recently-named head of Britain’s MI-6, Richard Moore, are both seasoned Turkey hands. Moore was UK Ambassador to Ankara until 2017. Haspel was CIA Station Chief in Azerbaijan at the end of the 1990’s. Before that, in 1990 Haspel was a CIA officer in Turkey, fluent in Turkish. Notably, although it has been scrubbed from her official CIA bio, she was also CIA Station Chief in London just prior to being named Trump Administration CIA head. She was also specialized in operations against Russia when she was in Langley at the CIA Directorate of Operations.
This raises the question whether the dark hands of an Anglo-American intelligence operation are behind the current Azeri-Armenia conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. Adding further gunpowder to the Caucasus unrest, on October 5 NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that NATO’s security interests are synonymous with those of Turkey, despite Turkish purchase of Russian advanced air defense systems. Washington until now has been conspicuously silent on the Caucasus conflict or Turkey’s alleged role.


And Belarus…
The eruption of the simmering Nagorno-Karabakh conflict near Russia’s southern border is not the only state where Washington is actively promoting destabilization of vital Russian neighbors these days. Since August elections, Belarus has been filled with orchestrated protests accusing President Lukashenko of election fraud. The opposition has been active in exile from neighboring NATO Baltic countries.

In 2019, the US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) listed on its website some 34 NED project grants in Belarus. All of them were directed to nurture and train an anti-Lukashenko series of opposition groups and build domestic NGOs. The grants went for such projects as, “NGO Strengthening: To increase local and regional civic engagement… to identify local problems and develop advocacy strategies.” Another was to “expand an online depository of publications not readily accessible in the country, including works on politics, civil society, history, human rights, and independent culture.” Then another NED grant went, “To defend and support independent journalists and media.” And another, “NGO Strengthening: To foster youth civic engagement.” Another large NED grant went to, “training democratic parties and movements in effective advocacy campaigns.” Behind the innocent-sounding NED projects is a pattern of creating a specially-trained opposition on the lines of the CIA’s NED model “Color Revolutions” template.
As if the unrest in the Caucasus and Belarus were not enough to give Moscow migraine headaches, on September 29 in Brussels, Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia met with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. Stoltenberg told him that, “NATO supports Georgia’s territorial integrity and sovereignty within its internationally recognized borders. We call on Russia to end its recognition of [Georgia’s breakaway] regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and to withdraw its forces.” Stoltenberg then told Gakharia, “And I encourage you to continue making full use of all the opportunities for coming closer to NATO. And to prepare for membership.” Of course NATO membership for Russian neighbor Georgia would amount to a strategic challenge for Russia as would that of Ukraine. The NATO comments add to the tensions facing the Kremlin recently.


Kyrgystan’s Third Color Revolution?
Then former Soviet Union Central Asian republic, Kyrgyzstan, has also just erupted in mass protests that have brought down the government for the third time since 2005, over opposition allegations of election fraud. USAID, a known cover often for CIA operations, is active in the country as is the Soros Foundation which has created a university in Biskek and funds the usual array of projects, “to promote justice, democratic governance, and human rights.” It should be noted that Kyrgyzstan is also a member of the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union along with Armenia and Belarus.
Then to increase the heat on Russia we have the bizarre charges by the German Bundeswehr intelligence and now the OPCW that Russian dissident Alexei Navalny was poisoned in Russia using “a Soviet-era nerve agent,” said by the Germans to be Novichok. While Navalny since has evidently emerged quite alive and out of hospital, the German officials as well as British, do not bother to explain such a miraculous recovery from what is reputed to be the most deadly nerve agent ever. Following the OPCW statement that the substance was Novichok, the German Foreign Minister is threatening severe sanctions against Russia. Many are calling for Germany to cancel the Russian NordStream-2 gas pipeline as response, a blow that would hit Russia at a time of severe economic weakness from low oil prices and corona lockdown effects.
Nor does Germany bother to investigate the mysterious Russian companion of Navalny, Maria Pevchikh, who claims to have rescued the “Novichok-poisoned” empty water bottle from Navalny’s hotel room in Tomsk Russia before he was flown to Berlin on the personal invitation of Angela Merkel. After delivering the poisoned bottle to Berlin in person, she apparently swiftly flew to London where she lives, and no German or other authorities apparently tried to interview her as a potential material witness.
Pevchikh has a long association with London where she works with the Navalny foundation and is in reported close contact with Jacob Rothschild’s friend, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the convicted fraudster and Putin foe. Khodorkovsky is also a major funder of the Navalny Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK in Russian). There are credible reports that the mysterious Pevchikh is an asset of MI-6, the same MI-6 that ran another ludicrous Novichok drama in 2018 claiming that Russian defector Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal were poisoned in England by Russian intelligence using the deadly Novichok. Again there, both Skripals miraculously recovered from the deadliest nerve agent and officially were discharged from hospital whereupon they “disappeared.”


A RAND Blueprint?
While more research will undoubtedly turn up more evidence, the pattern of NATO or Anglo-American active measures against key Russian periphery countries or against strategic Russian economic interests all within the same timespan suggests some kind of coordinated attack.
And it so happens that the targets of the attacks fit precisely to the outline of a major US military think tank report. In a 2019 research report to the US Army, the RAND corporation published a set of policy recommendations under the title, “Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground.” They note that by extending Russia they mean “nonviolent measures that could stress Russia’s military or economy or the regime’s political standing at home and abroad.” All of the above stress points certainly fill that description. More striking is the specific elaboration of possible stress points to “extend Russia,” that is to over-extend her.
The report specifically discusses what they call “Geopolitical Measures” to over-extend Russia. These include providing lethal aid to Ukraine; promoting regime change in Belarus; exploiting tensions in the South Caucasus; reduce Russian influence in Central Asia. It also includes proposals to weaken the Russian economy by challenging its gas and oil sectors.
Notably, these are the same areas of geopolitical turbulence within Russia’s strategic sphere of influence today. Specifically, on the Caucasus, RAND states, “Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia were part of the Soviet Union, and Russia still maintains significant sway over the region today…” They note that, “Today, Russia recognizes both South Ossetia and Abkhazia as separate countries (one of the few governments to do so) and is committed to their defense…. The United States might also renew efforts to bring Georgia into NATO. Georgia has long sought NATO membership;…” ix Recall the cited remarks of NATO’s Stoltenberg to encourage Georgia joining NATO and demanding Russia give up recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
The RAND report also highlights the tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan:
”Russia also plays a key role with Azerbaijan and Armenia, particularly over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh… the United States could push for a closer NATO relationship with Georgia and Azerbaijan, likely leading Russia to strengthen its military presence in South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Armenia, and southern Russia. Alternatively, the United States could try to induce Armenia to break with Russia.”
In relation to current massive protests in Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia, RAND notes, “Russia is part of two economic ventures related to Central Asia: the EEU and the Belt and Road Initiative.” A pro-NATO regime change could throw a big barrier between Russia and China as well as within its EEU. As to economic pressures, the RAND report cites the possibility of pressuring the EU to abandon the NordStream-2 gas pipeline from Russia direct to Germany. The recent Navalny incident is creating growing pressure within the EU and even Germany to stop NordStream-2 as sanction for the Navalny affair. RAND notes,
“In terms of extending Russia economically, the main benefit of creating supply alternatives to Russian gas is that it would lower Russian export revenues. The federal Russian budget is already stressed, leading to planned cuts in defense spending, and lowering gas revenues would stress the budget further.”
If we examine the growing pressures on Russia from the examples cited here and compare with the language of the 2019 RAND report it is clear that many of Russia’s current strategic problems are being deliberately engineered and orchestrated from the West, specifically from Washington and London. How Russia deals with this as well as certain future escalation of NATO pressures clearly presents a major geopolitical challenge.

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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. 

The US-NATO-Israel Sponsored Al Qaeda Insurgency in Syria. Who Was Behind the 2011 “Protest Movement”?

Ivo Rens in English, OTAN/NATO, Proche et moyen orient, USA

It Started in Daraa on March 17, 2011

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, December 16, 2019

The US-NATO-Israel Sponsored Al Qaeda Insurgency in Syria. Who Was Behind the 2011 “Protest Movement”?

 

Author’s note

Almost nine years since the beginning of the war on Syria in March 2011, so-called progressives have supported the so-called opposition, which is largely made up of Al Qaeda affiliated mercenaries.  A US-NATO led war of aggression is portrayed as a “civil war”.

President Bashar Al Assad is casually described as a dictator who is killing his own people. The millions of deaths resulting from US-NATO led wars are not an object of concern.

The anti-war movement died in the wake of the Iraq war (April 2003). Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and counterterrorism prevail.

The war on Syria started more than nine years ago in Daraa  on the 17th of March 2011.

The following article first published in May 2011 examines the inception of the jihadist terrorist insurgency.

It recounts the events of March 17-18, 2011 in Daraa, a small border town with Jordan. 

Media reports have finally acknowledged that the so-called “protest movement” in Syria was instigated by Washington. This was known and documented from the very inception of the Syrian crisis in March 2011.

It was not a protest movement, it was an armed insurgency integrated by US-Israeli and allied supported “jihadist” death squads? 

From Day One, the Islamist “freedom fighters” were supported, trained and equipped by NATO and Turkey’s High Command. According to Israeli intelligence sources (Debka, August 14, 2011): 

NATO headquarters in Brussels and the Turkish high command are meanwhile drawing up plans for their first military step in Syria, which is to arm the rebels with weapons for combating the tanks and helicopters spearheading the Assad regime’s crackdown on dissent. … NATO strategists are thinking more in terms of pouring large quantities of anti-tank and anti-air rockets, mortars and heavy machine guns into the protest centers for beating back the government armored forces. (DEBKAfile, NATO to give rebels anti-tank weapons, August 14, 2011)

This initiative, which was also supported by Saudi Arabia the UAE and Qatar, involved a process of organized recruitment of thousands of jihadist “freedom fighters”, reminiscent of  the enlistment of  Mujahideen to wage the CIA’s jihad (holy war) in the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war: 

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. (Ibid, emphasis added)

These mercenaries were subsequently integrated into US and allied sponsored terrorist organizations including Al Nusrah and ISIS. 

The Daraa “protest movement” on March 17-18 had all the appearances of a staged event involving covert support to Islamic terrorists by Mossad and/or Western intelligence.

Government sources pointed to the role of radical Salafist groups (supported by Israel).

In chorus, the Western media described the events in Daraa as a protest movement against Bashar Al Assad. 

In a bitter irony, the deaths of policemen were higher than those of “demonstrators”. 

In Daraa, roof top snipers were targeting both police and demonstrators. 

Reading between the lines of Israeli and Lebanese news reports (which acknowledge the police deaths) a clearer picture of what happened in Daraa on March 17-18 had emerged. The Israel National News Report (which can not be accused of being biased in favor of Bashar al Assad) confirmed that: 

“Seven police officers and at least four demonstrators in Syria have been killed in continuing violent clashes that erupted in the southern town of Daraa last Thursday. … and the Baath Party Headquarters and courthouse were torched, in renewed violence on Sunday. (Gavriel Queenann, Syria: Seven Police Killed, Buildings Torched in Protests, Israel National News, Arutz Sheva, March 21, 2011, emphasis added)

The Lebanese news report also acknowledged the killings of seven policemen in Daraa.

[They were killed] “during clashes between the security forces and protesters… They got killed trying to drive away protesters during demonstration in Dara’a”

The Lebanese Ya Libnan report quoting Al Jazeera also acknowledged that protesters had “burned the headquarters of the Baath Party and the court house in Dara’a” (emphasis added)

These news reports of the events in Daraa confirmed that from the very outset this was not a “peaceful protest” as claimed by the Western media.

Moreover, from an assessment of the initial casualty figures (Israel News), there were more policemen than “demonstrators” who were killed.

This is significant because it suggests that the police force may have initially been outnumbered by a well organized armed gang of professional killers.

What was clear from these initial reports is that many of the demonstrators were not demonstrators but terrorists involved in premeditated acts of killing and arson.

The title of the Israeli news report summarized what happened: Syria: Seven Police Killed, Buildings Torched in Protest

The US-NATO-Israel agenda consisted in supporting an Al Qaeda affiliated insurgency integrated by death squads and professional snipers. President Bashar al Assad is then to be blamed for killing his own people. 

Does it Sound familiar? 

The same “false flag” strategy of killing innocent civilians was used during the Ukraine Maidan protest movement.  On February 20th, 2014, professional snipers were shooting at both demonstrators and policemen with a view to accusing president Viktor Yanukovych of “mass murder.”

It was subsequently revealed that these snipers were controlled by the opponents of president Yanukovych, who are now part of the coalition government.  

The “humanitarian mandate” of the US and its allies is sustained by diabolical “false flag” attacks which consist in killing civilians with a view to breaking the legitimacy of governments which refuse to abide by the diktats of Washington and its allies.

Michel Chossudovsky, March 17, 2019, December 14, 2019

 

SYRIA: Who is Behind The Protest Movement? Fabricating a Pretext for a US-NATO “Humanitarian Intervention”

by Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, May 3, 2011

There is evidence of gross media manipulation and falsification from the outset of the protest movement in southern Syria on March 17th [2011]. 

The Western media has presented the events in Syria as part of the broader Arab pro-democracy protest movement, spreading spontaneously from Tunisia, to Egypt, and from Libya to Syria. 

Media coverage has focussed on the Syrian police and armed forces, which are accused of indiscriminately shooting and killing unarmed “pro-democracy” demonstrators. While these police shootings did indeed occur, what the media failed to mention is that among the demonstrators there were armed gunmen as well as snipers who were shooting at both the security forces and the protesters.

The death figures presented in the reports are often unsubstantiated. Many of the reports are “according to witnesses”. The images and video footages aired on Al Jazeera and CNN do not always correspond to the events which are being covered by the news reports.

Alawite-map1-300x231

There is certainly cause for social unrest and mass protest in Syria: unemployment has increased in recent year, social conditions have deteriorated, particularly since the adoption in 2006 of sweeping economic reforms under IMF guidance. The IMF’s “economic medicine” includes austerity measures, a freeze on wages, the deregulation of the financial system, trade reform and privatization.

(See IMF  Syrian Arab Republic — IMF Article IV Consultation Mission’s Concluding Statement, http://www.imf.org/external/np/ms/2006/051406.htm, 2006)

While Syria is [2011] no “model society” with regard to civil rights and freedom of expression, it nonetheless constitutes the only (remaining) independent secular state in the Arab world. Its populist, anti-Imperialist and secular base is inherited from the dominant Baath party, which integrates Muslims, Christians and Druze.

Moreover, in contrast to Egypt and Tunisia, in Syria there is considerable popular support for President Bashar Al Assad. The large rally in Damascus on March 29, “with tens of thousands of supporters” (Reuters) of President Al Assad is barely mentioned. Yet in an unusual twist, the images and video footage of several pro-government events were used by the Western media to convince international public opinion that the President was being confronted by mass anti-government rallies.

U43P5029T2D366598F24DT20110330184450

Tens of thousands of Syrians gather for a pro-government rally at the central
bank square in Damascus March 29, 2011. (Reuters Photo)

U43P5029T2D366598F28DT20110330184450

Syrians display a giant national flag with a picture of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad during a
pro-government rally at the central bank square in Damascus March 29, 2011. (Reuters Photo)

The “Epicenter” of the Protest Movement. Daraa: A Small Border Town in southern Syria

What is the nature of the protest movement? From what sectors of Syrian society does it emanate? What triggered the violence?

What is the cause of the deaths?

The existence of an organized insurrection composed of armed gangs involved in acts of killing and arson has been dismissed by the Western media, despite evidence to the contrary.

The demonstrations  did not start in Damascus, the nation’s capital. At the outset, the protests were not integrated by a mass movement of citizens in Syria’s capital.

The demonstrations started in Daraa, a small border town of 75,000 inhabitants, on the Syrian Jordanian border, rather than in Damascus or Aleppo, where the mainstay of organized political opposition and social movements are located. (Daraa is a small border town comparable e.g. to Plattsburgh, NY on the US-Canadian border).

The Associated Press report (quoting unnamed “witnesses” and “activists”) describes the early protests in Daraa as follows:

The violence in Daraa, a city of about 300,000 near the border with Jordan, was fast becoming a major challenge for President Bashar Assad, …. Syrian police launched a relentless assault Wednesday on a neighborhood sheltering anti-government protesters [Daraa], fatally shooting at least 15 in an operation that began before dawn, witnesses said.

At least six were killed in the early morning attack on the al-Omari mosque in the southern agricultural city of Daraa, where protesters have taken to the streets in calls for reforms and political freedoms, witnesses said. An activist in contact with people in Daraa said police shot another three people protesting in its Roman-era city center after dusk. Six more bodies were found later in the day, the activist said.

As the casualties mounted, people from the nearby villages of Inkhil, Jasim, Khirbet Ghazaleh and al-Harrah tried to march on Daraa Wednesday night but security forces opened fire as they approached, the activist said. It was not immediately clear if there were more deaths or injuries. (AP, March 23, 2011, emphasis added)

The AP report inflates the numbers: Daraa is presented as a city of 300,000 when in fact its population is 75,000;  “protesters gathered by the thousands”, “casualties mounted”.

The report is silent on the death of policemen which in the West invariably makes the front page of the tabloids.

The deaths of the policemen are important in assessing what actually happened. When there are police casualties, this means that there is an exchange of gunfire between opposing sides, between policemen and “demonstrators”.

Who are these “demonstrators” including roof top snipers who were targeting the police.

Israeli and Lebanese news reports (which acknowledge the police deaths) provide a clearer picture of what happened in Daraa on March 17-18. The Israel National News Report (which cannot be accused of being biased in favor of Damascus) reviews these same events as follows:

Seven police officers and at least four demonstrators in Syria have been killed in continuing violent clashes that erupted in the southern town of Daraa last Thursday.

…. On Friday police opened fire on armed protesters killing four and injuring as many as 100 others. According to one witness, who spoke to the press on condition of anonymity, “They used live ammunition immediately — no tear gas or anything else.”

…. In an uncharacteristic gesture intended to ease tensions the government offered to release the detained students, but seven police officers were killed, and the Baath Party Headquarters and courthouse were torched, in renewed violence on Sunday. (Gavriel Queenann, Syria: Seven Police Killed, Buildings Torched in Protests, Israel National News, Arutz Sheva, March 21, 2011, emphasis added)

The Lebanese news report, quoting various sources, also acknowledges the killings of seven policemen in Daraa: They were killed  “during clashes between the security forces and protesters… They got killed trying to drive away protesters during demonstration in Dara’a”

The Lebanese Ya Libnan report quoting Al Jazeera also acknowledged that protesters had “burned the headquarters of the Baath Party and the court house in Dara’a”  (emphasis added)

These news reports of the events in Daraa confirm the following:

  1. This was not a “peaceful protest” as claimed by the Western media. Several of the “demonstrators” had fire arms and were using them against the police:  “The police opened fire on armed protesters killing four”.
  2. From the initial casualty figures (Israel News), there were more policemen than demonstrators who were killed:  7 policemen killed versus 4 demonstrators. This is significant because it suggests that the police force might have been initially outnumbered by a well organized armed gang. According to Syrian media sources, there were also snipers on rooftops which were shooting at both the police and the protesters.

What is clear from these initial reports is that many of the demonstrators were not demonstrators but terrorists involved in premeditated acts of killing and arson. The title of the Israeli news report summarizes what happened:  Syria: Seven Police Killed, Buildings Torched in Protests.  The title suggests that the “demonstrators” rather than the police had the upper hand.

The Daraa “protest movement” on March 18 had all the appearances of a staged event involving, in all likelihood, covert support to Islamic terrorists by Mossad and/or Western intelligence. Government sources point to the role of radical Salafist groups (supported by Israel)

Other reports have pointed to the role of Saudi Arabia in financing the protest movement.

What has unfolded in Daraa in the weeks following the initial violent clashes on 17-18 March, is the confrontation between the police and the armed forces on the one hand and armed units of terrorists and snipers on the other which had infiltrated the protest movement.

Reports suggest that these terrorists are integrated by Islamists. There is no concrete evidence as to which Islamic organizations are behind the terrorists and the government has not released corroborating information as to who these groups are.

Both the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood (whose leadership is in exile in the UK) and the banned Hizb ut-Tahrir (the Party of Liberation), among others have paid lip service to the protest movement. Hizb ut Tahir (led in the 1980s by Syrian born Omar Bakri Muhammad) tends to “dominate the British Islamist scene” according to Foreign Affairs. Hizb ut Tahir is also considered to be of strategic importance to Britain’s Secret Service MI6. in the pursuit of Anglo-American interests in the Middle East and Central Asia. (Is Hizb-ut-Tahrir another project of British MI6? | State of Pakistan).

Syria is a secular Arab country, a society of religious tolerance, where Muslims and Christians have for several centuries lived in peace. Hizb ut-Tahrir (the Party of Liberation) is a radical political movement committed to the creation of an Islamic caliphate. In Syria, its avowed objective is to destabilize the secular state.

Since the Soviet-Afghan war, Western intelligence agencies as well as Israel’s Mossad have consistently used various Islamic terrorist organizations as “intelligence assets”. Both Washington and its indefectible British ally have provided covert support to “Islamic terrorists” in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo and Libya, etc. as a means to triggering ethnic strife, sectarian violence and political instability.

The staged protest movement in Syria is modelled on Libya. The insurrection in Eastern Libya is integrated by the Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) which is supported by MI6 and the CIA. The ultimate objective of the Syria protest movement, through media lies and fabrications, is to create divisions within Syrian society as well as justify an eventual “humanitarian intervention”.

Armed Insurrection in Syria

An armed insurrection integrated by Islamists and supported covertly by Western intelligence is central to an understanding of what is occurring on the ground.

The existence of an armed insurrection is not mentioned by the Western media. If it were to be acknowledged and analysed, our understanding of unfolding events would be entirely different.

What is mentioned profusely is that the armed forces and the police are involved in the indiscriminate killing of protesters.

The deployment of the armed forces including tanks in Daraa is directed against an organized armed insurrection, which has been active in the border city since March 17-18.

Casualties are being reported which also include the death of policemen and soldiers.

In a bitter irony, the Western media acknowledges the police/soldier deaths while denying the existence of an armed insurrection.

The key question is how does the media explain these deaths of soldiers and police?

Without evidence, the reports suggest authoritatively that the police is shooting at the soldiers and vice versa the soldiers are shooting on the police. In a April 29 Al Jazeera report, Daraa is described as “a city under siege”.

“Tanks and troops control all roads in and out. Inside the city, shops are shuttered and nobody dare walk the once bustling market streets, today transformed into the kill zone of rooftop snipers.

Unable to crush the people who first dared rise up against him – neither with the secret police,  paid thugs or the special forces of his brother’s military division – President Bashar al-Assad has sent thousands of Syrian soldiers and their heavy weaponry into Deraa for an operation the regime wants nobody in the world to see.

Though almost all communication channels with Deraa have been cut, including the Jordanian mobile service that reaches into the city from just across the border, Al Jazeera has gathered firsthand accounts of life inside the city from residents who just left or from eyewitnesses inside who were able to get outside the blackout area.

The picture that emerges is of a dark and deadly security arena, one driven by the actions of the secret police and their rooftop snipers, in which soldiers and protestors alike are being killed or wounded, in which cracks are emerging in the military itself, and in which is created the very chaos which the regime uses to justify its escalating crackdown. (Daraa, a City under Siege, IPS / Al Jazeera, April 29, 2011)

The Al Jazeera report borders on the absurd. Read carefully.

“Tanks and troops control all roads in and out”,  “thousands of Syrian soldiers and their heavy weaponry into Daraa”

This situation has prevailed for several weeks. This means that bona fide protesters who are not already inside Daraa cannot enter Daraa.

People who live in the city are in their homes: “nobody dares walk … the streets”. If nobody dares walk the streets where are the protesters?

Who is in the streets? According to Al Jazeera, the protesters are in the streets together with the soldiers, and both the protesters and the soldiers are being shot at by “plain clothes secret police”, by “paid thugs” and government sponsored snipers.

The impression conveyed in the report is that these casualties are attributed to infighting between the police and the military.

But the report also says that the soldiers (in the “thousands”) control all roads in and out of the city, but they are being shot upon by the plain clothed secret police.

The purpose of this web of media deceit, namely outright fabrications  –where soldiers are being killed by police and  “government snipers”– is to deny the existence of armed terrorist groups. The later are integrated by snipers and “plain clothed terrorists” who are shooting at the police, the Syrian armed forces and local residents.

These are not spontaneous acts of terror; they are carefully planned and coordinated attacks. In recent developments, according to a Xinhua report (April 30, 2011), armed “terrorist groups” “attacked the housing areas for servicemen” in Daraa province, “killing a sergeant and wounding two”.

While the government bears heavy responsibility for its mishandling of the military-police operation, including the deaths of civilians, the reports confirm that the armed terrorist groups had also opened fire on protesters and local residents. The casualties are then blamed on the armed forces and the police and the Bashar Al Assad government is portrayed by “the international community” as having ordered countless atrocities.

The fact of the matter is that foreign journalists are banned from reporting inside Syria, to the extent that much of the information including the number of casualties is obtained from the unverified accounts of “witnesses”.

It is in the interest of the US-NATO alliance to portray the events in Syria as a peaceful protest movement which is being brutally repressed by a “dictatorial regime”.

The Syrian government may be autocratic. It is certainly not a model of democracy but neither is the US administration, which is characterized by rampant corruption, the derogation of civil liberties under the Patriot legislation, the legalisation of torture, not to mention its “bloodless” “humanitarian wars”:

“The U.S. and its NATO allies have, in addition to U.S. Sixth Fleet and NATO Active Endeavor military assets permanently deployed in the Mediterranean, warplanes, warships and submarines engaged in the assault against Libya that can be used against Syria at a moment’s notice.

On April 27 Russia and China evidently prevented the U.S. and its NATO allies from pushing through an equivalent of Resolution 1973 against Syria in the Security Council, with Russian deputy ambassador to the UN Alexander Pankin stating that the current situation in Syria “does not present a threat to international peace and security.” Syria is Russia’s last true partner in the Mediterranean and the Arab world and hosts one of only two Russian overseas naval bases, that at Tartus. (The other being in Ukraine’s Crimea.)” (Rick Rozoff,   Libyan Scenario For Syria: Towards A US-NATO “Humanitarian Intervention” directed against Syria? Global Research, April 30, 2011)

The ultimate purpose is to trigger sectarian violence and political chaos within Syria by covertly supporting Islamic terrorist organizations.

What lies ahead?

The longer term US foreign policy perspective is “regime change” and the destabilization of Syria as an independent nation-state, through a covert process of “democratization” or through military means.

Syria is on the list of “rogue states”, which are targeted for a US military intervention. As confirmed by former NATO commander General Wesley Clark the “[The] Five-year campaign plan [includes]… a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan” (Pentagon official quoted by General Wesley Clark).

The objective is to weaken the structures of the secular State while justifying an eventual  UN sponsored “humanitarian intervention”. The latter, in the first instance, could take the form of a reinforced embargo on the country (including sanctions) as well as the freezing of Syrian bank assets in overseas foreign financial institutions.

While a US-NATO military intervention in the immediate future seems highly unlikely, Syria is nonetheless on the Pentagon’s military roadmap, namely an eventual war on Syria has been contemplated both by Washington and Tel Aviv.

If it were to occur, at some future date, it would lead to escalation. Israel would inevitably be involved. The entire Middle East Central Asian region from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Chinese-Afghan border would flare up.

 

*

Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and Editor of globalresearch.ca. He is the author of The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003) and America’s “War on Terrorism” (2005). He is also a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His writings have been published in more than twenty languages.  He spent a month in Syria in early 2011.

Why Should Iran Be Cherished and Defended?

Ivo Rens in English, Proche et moyen orient

By Andre Vltchek

OpEdNews Op Eds 7/29/2019 at 02:04:41    H2’ed 7/29/19

Source:

https://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-Should-Iran-Be-Cherish-by-Andre-Vltchek-Iran_Iran-Russia-And-China-190729-216.html

First published by NEO – New Eastern Outlook

This piece was reprinted by OpEdNews with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.

As I pen this short essay, Iran is standing against the mightiest nation on earth. It is facing tremendous danger; of annihilation even, if the world does not wake up fast, and rush to its rescue.

Stunning Iranian cities are in danger, but above all, its people: proud and beautiful, creative, formed by one of the oldest and deepest cultures on earth.

This is a reminder to the world: Iran may be bombed, devastated and injured terribly, for absolutely no reason. I repeat: there is zero rational reason for attacking Iran.

Iran has never attacked anyone. It has done nothing bad to the United States, to the United Kingdom, or even to those countries that want to destroy it immediately: Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Its only ‘crime’ is that it helped devastated Syria. And that it seriously stands by Palestine. And that it came to the rescue of many far away nations, like Cuba and Venezuela, when they were in awful need.

I am trying to choose the simplest words. No need for pirouettes and intellectual exercises.

Thousands, millions of Iranians may soon die, simply because a psychopath who is currently occupying the White House wants to humiliate his predecessor, who signed the nuclear deal. This information was leaked by his own staff. This is not about who is a bigger gangster. It is about the horrible fact that antagonizing Iran has absolutely nothing to do with Iran itself.

Which brings the question to my mind: in what world are we really living? Could this be tolerable? Can the world just stand by, idly, and watch how one of the greatest countries on earth gets violated by aggressive, brutal forces, without any justification?

I love Iran! I love its cinema, poetry, food. I love Teheran. And I love the Iranian people with their polite, educated flair. I love their thinkers. I don’t want anything bad to happen to them.

You know, you were of course never told by the Western media, but Iran is a socialist country. It professes a system that could be defined as « socialism with Iranian characteristics ». Like China, Iran is one of the most ancient nations on earth, and it is perfectly capable of creating and developing its own economic and social system.

 

Iran is an extremely successful nation. Despite the embargos and terrible intimidation from the West, it still sits at the threshold of the « Very high human development », defined by UNDP; well above such darlings of the West as Ukraine, Colombia or Thailand.

It clearly has an internationalist spirit: it shows great solidarity with the countries that are being battered by Western

I have no religion. In Iran, most of the people do. They are Shi’a Muslims. So what? I do not insist that everyone thinks like me. And my Iranian friends, comrades, brothers and sisters have never insisted that I feel or think the same way as they do. They are not fanatics, and they do not make people who are not like them, feel excluded. We are different and yet so similar. We fight for a better world. We are internationalists. We respect each other. We respect others.

Iran does not want to conquer anyone. But when its friends are attacked, it offers a helping hand. Like to Syria.

In the past, it was colonized by the West, and its democratic government was overthrown, in 1953, simply because it wanted to use its natural resources for improving the lives of its people. The morbid dictatorship of Shah Pahlavi was installed from abroad. And then, later, again, a terrible war unleashed against Iran by Iraq, with the full and candid support of the West.

I promised to make this essay short. There is no time for long litanies. And in fact, this is not really an essay at all: it is an appeal.

As this goes to print, many people in Iran are anxious. They do not understand what they have done to deserve this; the sanctions, the US aircraft carriers sailing near their shores, and deadly B-52s deployed only dozens of miles away.

Iranians are brave, proud people. If confronted, if attacked, they will fight. And they will die with dignity, if there is no other alternative.

But why? Why should they fight and why should they die?

Those of you, my readers, living in the West: Study; study quickly. Then ask this question to your government: « What is the reason for this terrible scenario? »

Rent Iranian films; they are everywhere, winning all festivals. Read Iranian poets. Go eat Iranian food. Search for images of both historic and modern Iranian cities. Look at the faces of the people. Do not allow this to happen. Do not permit psychopathic reasoning to ruin millions of lives.

There was no real reason for the wars against Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. The West perpetrated the most terrible imperialist interventions, ruining entire nations.

But Iran it all goes one step further. It’s a total lack of logic and accountability on the part of the West.

Here, I declare my full support to the people of Iran, and to the country that has been giving countless cultural treasures to the world, for millennia.

It is because I have doubts that if Iran is destroyed, the human race could survive.

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Four of his latest books are China and Ecological Civilization with John B. Cobb, Jr., Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism, a revolutionary novel “Aurora” and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter.
 

The Death of Peace and Security in Europe

Ivo Rens Généralités, in English

Martin Sieff

30.10.2018

Source : https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/10/30/death-peace-and-security-in-europe.html

 

I covered the signing of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) in December 1987 at the Washington, DC summit meeting between US President Ronald Reagan and last Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. It was a good time to be alive and a good time to be covering diplomacy between the nuclear superpowers. There was a palpable sense of optimism that both sides were committed to scrapping thousands of thermonuclear weapons (which they did) and to reducing tensions in Europe. Within a few short years, Gorbachev was also to agree to the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. The Soviet Union was peacefully dismantled by its member nations led by Russia shortly afterwards.

The negotiation and signing of the INF Treaty was an essential prerequisite to the end of the Cold War. It ushered in two generations of peace and stability in Europe. Following the statements of President Donald Trump since October 20, 2018, it is now dead on its feet. The president appears to be determined to withdraw from it. He appears to be totally under the influence of his third national security adviser John Bolton whose hatred for the INF as for all arms control agreements, like that of his fellow neocons has always surpassed understanding.

Nor will Democrats in the Senate make any attempt to defend, preserve or restore the INF. John Kerry, l the last senator to take major arms control agreements seriously presided with absolutely no public object over the US and European union supported toppling of a democratically elected and peaceful government in Ukraine by violent revolution in February 2014.

Kerry’s own deputy, then Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, the wife of neocon clan chief Robert Kagan, literally handed out biscuits on the streets of Kiev to reassure violent revolutionaries subverting the democratic process that the Obama administration was with them. Neither Kerry nor his own chief President Barack Obama raised a finger to rein in behavior by a senior deputy that in any other administration in American history would have seen her summarily fired and banished from the serious discussion or conduct of public affairs for life.

Today, every Democratic senator on Capitol Hill is passionate in seeking to demonize Russia for imagined, paranoid fantasy crimes that would have made Joe McCarthy blush.

The current crop of Democratic senators in Congress, led by figures such as Ben Cardin of Maryland, on the contrary appear determined to provoke full-scale thermonuclear war with Russia. They have not only supported but insisted upon a new round of ferocious financial sanctions on Russia which have the clear aim of ruining the economy of the country and setting it up for the kind for revolutionary regime change that successive administrations have taken for granted is their divine right to carry out since Ronald Reagan entered the White House.

These are different days indeed from the Washington that celebrated the signing of the INF Treaty in 1987. In those far off days, US policymakers at least made a pretense of consulting their European “allies” and fellow NATO members they claimed to protect.

In Trump’s statements so far on scrapping the INF treaty, there has been no hint whatsoever that the Europeans were given any say by Washington in this decision that puts their very survival at risk: So much for the idea that NATO is a « partnership.”

The cautious mutual respect that Washington still to foster with Moscow in the 1980s – or at least occasionally claimed to – is now long gone. The idea that scrapping nuclear weapons and increasing trust and dialogue between the nuclear powers were good things is now regarded as risible, as much by neo-liberals as by neo-conservatives. All voices to the contrary are sneered at and mocked by cowards posing as fearless patriots. They do not take in any of those they target with their bully boy tactics. They will be the first to scream in terror when their own fantasies are fulfilled and the nuclear missiles fly. But by then it will be too late.

Russian diplomat expulsions signal crude side of Western intention

Ivo Rens Généralités, in English

Source: Global Times

Published: 2018/3/27 8:00:15

http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1095361.shtmlhttp://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1095361.shtmlhttp://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1095361.shtmlhttp://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1095361.shtml

http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1095361.shtmlhttp://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1095361.shtml178

 

On March 26, the US, Canada, and several European Union countries expelled Russian diplomats from their respective foreign embassies and consulates in retaliation against Russia’s alleged poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter.  As of this writing, 19 countries, including 15 EU member states, have shown their support to Great Britain by enforcing such measures.

On March 4, Skripal and his daughter Yulia were rushed to a hospital after they were found unconscious at a park in Salisbury. It was later reported the father and daughter had come into contact with an obscure nerve agent. UK government officials said the Skripals were attacked by « Novichok, » a powerful Soviet-era chemical nerve agent used by the military.

The British government did not provide evidence that linked Russia to the crime but was confident from the beginning there could be no other « reasonable explanation » for the attempted assassination. Great Britain was so convinced of their Russia theory, they wasted no time taking the lead in levying sanctions against the country by quickly expelling Russian diplomats from London.  Shortly afterwards, UK capital officials reached out to NATO and their European allies who provided immediate support.

The accusations that Western countries have hurled at Russia are based on ulterior motives, similar to how the Chinese use the expression « perhaps it’s true » to seize upon the desired opportunity. From a third-person perspective, the principles and diplomatic logic behind such drastic efforts are flawed, not to mention that expelling Russian diplomats almost simultaneously isa crude form of behavior. Such actions make little impact other than increasing hostility and hatred between Russia and their Western counterparts.

The UK government should have an independent investigation conducted into the Skripal poisoning by representatives from the international community. An effort such as this would provide results strong enough for those following the case to make up their minds on who should or shouldn’t be accused of the crime. Now, the majority of those who support Britain’s one-sided conclusion happen to be members of NATO and the EU, while others stood behind the UK due to long-standing relations.

The fact that major Western powers can gang up and « sentence » a foreign country without following the same procedures other countries abide by and according to the basic tenets of international law is chilling. During the Cold War, not one Western nation would have dared to make such a provocation and yet today it is carried out with unrestrained ease. Such actions are nothing more than a form of Western bullying that threatens global peace and justice.

Over the past few years the international standard has been falsified and manipulated in ways never seen before. The fundamental reason behind reducing global standards is rooted in post-Cold War power disparities. The US, along with their allies, jammed their ambitions into the international standards so their actions, which were supposed to follow a set of standardized procedures and protocol, were really nothing more than profit-seizing opportunities designed only for themselves.  These same Western nations activated in full-force public opinion-shaping platforms and media agencies to defend and justify such privileges.

As of late, more foreign countries have been victimized by Western rhetoric and nonsensical diplomatic measures. In the end, the leaders of these nations are forced to wear a hat featuring slogans and words that read « oppressing their own people, » « authoritarian, » or « ethnic cleansing, » regardless of their innocence.

It is beyond outrageous how the US and Europe have treated Russia. Their actions represent a frivolity and recklessness that has grown to characterize Western hegemony that only knows how to contaminate international relations. Right now is the perfect time for non-Western nations to strengthen unity and collaborative efforts among one another. These nations need to establish a level of independence outside the reach of Western influence while breaking the chains of monopolization declarations, predetermined adjudications, and come to value their own judgement abilities.

It’s already understood that to achieve such international collective efforts is easier said than done as they require foundational support before anything can happen. Until a new line of allies emerges, multi-national associations like BRICS, or even the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, need to provide value to those non-Western nations and actively create alliances with them.

What Russia is experiencing right could serve as a reflection of how other non-Western nations can expect to be treated in the not-to-distant future.  Expelling Russian diplomats simultaneously is hardly enough to deter Russia. Overall, it’s an intimidation tactic that has become emblematic of Western nations, and furthermore, such measures are not supported by international law and therefore unjustified. More importantly, the international community should have the tools and means to counterbalance such actions.

The West is only a small fraction of the world and is nowhere near the global representative it once thought it was.  The silenced minorities within the international community need to realize this and prove just how deep their understanding is of such a realization by proving it to the world through action. With the Skripal case, the general public does not know the truth, and the British government has yet to provide a shred of evidence justifying their allegations against Russia.

It is firmly believed that accusations levied by one country to another that are not the end results of a thorough and professional investigation should not be encouraged. Simultaneously expelling diplomats is a form of uncivilized behavior that needs to be abolished immediately.
Posted in: EDITORIAL

 

Why the UK, EU and US Gang-Up on Russia

Ivo Rens Europe, Généralités, in English, Russie-Ukraine, USA

James Petras
March 25, 2018
Source : Russia Insider
https://russia-insider.com/en/why-uk-eu-and-us-gang-russia/ri22869?ct=t(Russia_Insider_Daily_Headlines11_21_2014)&mc_cid=3792ec704c&mc_eid=db7da584e6
Original Source : The Unz Review

« As the entire US unipolar fantasy dissolved it provoked deep resentment, animosity and a systematic counter-attack. The US’s costly and failed war on terror became a dress rehearsal for the economic and ideological war against the Kremlin. »

 

Introduction
For the greater part of a decade the US, the UK and the EU have been carrying out a campaign to undermine and overthrow the Russia government and in particular to oust President Putin. Fundamental issues are at stake including the real possibility of a nuclear war.
The most recent western propaganda campaign and one of the most virulent is the charge launched by the UK regime of Prime Minister Theresa May. The Brits have claimed that Russian secret agents conspired to poison a former Russian double-agent and his daughter in England , threatening the sovereignty and safety of the British people. No evidence has ever been presented. Instead the UK expelled Russian diplomats and demands harsher sanctions, to increase tensions. The UK and its US and EU patrons are moving toward a break in relations and a military build-up.

A number of fundamental questions arise regarding the origins and growing intensity of this anti-Russian animus.

Why do the Western regimes now feel Russia is a greater threat then in the past? Do they believe Russia is more vulnerable to Western threats or attacks? Why do the Western military leaders seek to undermine Russia’s defenses? Do the US economic elites believe it is possible to provoke an economic crisis and the demise of President Putin’s government? What is the strategic goal of Western policymakers? Why has the UK regime taken the lead in the anti-Russian crusade via the fake toxin accusations at this time?
This paper is directed at providing key elements to address these questions.

The Historical Context for Western Aggression
Several fundamental historical factors dating back to the 1990’s account for the current surge in Western hostility to Russia.
First and foremost, during the 1990’s the US degraded Russia, reducing it to a vassal state, and imposing itself as a unipolar state.

Secondly, Western elites pillaged the Russian economy, seizing and laundering hundreds of billions of dollars. Wall Street and City of London banks and overseas tax havens were the main beneficiaries
Thirdly, the US seized and took control of the Russian electoral process, and secured the fraudulent “election” of Yeltsin.
Fourthly, the West degraded Russia’s military and scientific institutions and advanced their armed forces to Russia’s borders.
Fifthly, the West insured that Russia was unable to support its allies and independent governments throughout Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America. Russia was unable to aid its allies in the Ukraine, Cuba, North Korea, Libya etc.

With the collapse of the Yeltsin regime and the election of President Putin, Russia regained its sovereignty, its economy recovered, its armed forces and scientific institutes were rebuilt and strengthened. Poverty was sharply reduced and Western backed gangster capitalists were constrained, jailed or fled mostly to the UK and the US.

Russia’s historic recovery under President Putin and its gradual international influence shattered US pretense to rule over unipolar world. Russia’s recovery and control of its economic resources lessened US dominance, especially of its oil and gas fields.
As Russia consolidated its sovereignty and advanced economically, socially, politically and militarily, the West increased its hostility in an effort to roll-back Russia to the Dark Ages of the 1990’s.
The US launched numerous coups and military interventions and fraudulent elections to surround and isolate Russia . The Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen and Russian allies in Central Asia were targeted. NATO military bases proliferated.
Russia’s economy was targeted: sanctions were directed at its imports and exports. President Putin was subject to a virulent Western media propaganda campaign. US NGO’s funded opposition parties and politicians.

The US-EU rollback campaign failed.

The encirclement campaign failed.
The Ukraine fragmented – Russia allies took control of the East; Crimea voted for unification with Russia. Syria joined with Russia to defeat armed US vassals. Russia turned to China’s multi-lateral trade, transport and financial networks.
As the entire US unipolar fantasy dissolved it provoked deep resentment, animosity and a systematic counter-attack. The US’s costly and failed war on terror became a dress rehearsal for the economic and ideological war against the Kremlin. Russia’s historical recovery and defeat of Western rollback intensified the ideological and economic war.
The UK poison plot was concocted to heighten economic tensions and prepare the western public for heightened military confrontations.

Russia is not a threat to the West: it is recovering its sovereignty in order to further a multi-polar world. President Putin is not an “aggressor” but he refuses to allow Russia to return to vassalage.

President Putin is immensely popular in Russia and is hated by the US precisely because he is the opposite of Yeltsin – he has created a flourishing economy; he resists sanctions and defends Russia’s borders and allies.

Conclusion
In a summary response to the opening questions.

1) The Western regimes recognize that Russia is a threat to their global dominance; they know that Russia is no threat to invade the EU, North America or their vassals.

2) Western regimes believe they can topple Russia via economic warfare including sanctions. In fact Russia has become more self-reliant and has diversified its trading partners, especially China, and even including Saudi Arabia and other Western allies.

The Western propaganda campaign has failed to turn Russian voters against Putin. In the March 19, 2018 Presidential election voter participation increased to 67%. Vladimir Putin secured a record 77% majority. President Putin is politically stronger than ever.
Russia’s display of advanced nuclear and other advanced weaponry has had a major deterrent effect especially among US military leaders, making it clear that Russia is not vulnerable to attack.
The UK has attempted to unify and gain importance with the EU and the US via the launch of its anti-Russia toxic conspiracy. Prime Minister May has failed. Brexit will force the UK to break with the EU.
President Trump will not replace the EU as a substitute trading partner. While the EU and Washington may back the UK crusade against Russia they will pursue their own trade agenda; which do not include the UK.
In a word, the UK, the EU and the US are ganging-up on Russia, for diverse historic and contemporary reasons. The UK exploitation of the anti-Russian conspiracy is a temporary ploy to join the gang but will not change its inevitable global decline and the break-up of the UK.
Russia will remain a global power. It will continue under the leadership of President Putin . The Western powers will divide and bugger their neighbors – and decide it is their better judgment to accept and work within a multi-polar world.

Of A Type Developed By Liars

Ivo Rens Europe, in English, Russie-Ukraine

 

by Craig Murray
16 March, 2018
Source : https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/03/of-a-type-developed-by-liars/

(Craig Murray is a Former British Ambassador, Historian and Human Rights Activist)

I have now received confirmation from a well placed FCO(*) source that Porton Down scientists are not able to identify the nerve gas as being of Russian manufacture, and have been resentful of the pressure being placed on them to do so. Porton Down would only sign up to the formulation “of a type developed by Russia” after a rather difficult meeting where this was agreed as a compromise formulation. The Russians were allegedly researching, in the “Novichok” programme a generation of nerve agents which could be produced from commercially available precursors such as insecticides and fertilisers. This substance is a “novichok” in that sense. It is of that type. Just as I am typing on a laptop of a type developed by the United States, though this one was made in China.
To anybody with a Whitehall background this has been obvious for several days. The government has never said the nerve agent was made in Russia, or that it can only be made in Russia. The exact formulation “of a type developed by Russia” was used by Theresa May in parliament, used by the UK at the UN Security Council, used by Boris Johnson on the BBC yesterday and, most tellingly of all, “of a type developed by Russia” is the precise phrase used in the joint communique issued by the UK, USA, France and Germany yesterday:
This use of a military-grade nerve agent, of a type developed by Russia, constitutes the first offensive use of a nerve agent in Europe since the Second World War.
When the same extremely careful phrasing is never deviated from, you know it is the result of a very delicate Whitehall compromise. My FCO source, like me, remembers the extreme pressure put on FCO staff and other civil servants to sign off the dirty dossier on Iraqi WMD, some of which pressure I recount in my memoir Murder in Samarkand. She volunteered the comparison to what is happening now, particularly at Porton Down, with no prompting from me.
Separately I have written to the media office at OPCW (**) to ask them to confirm that there has never been any physical evidence of the existence of Russian Novichoks, and the programme of inspection and destruction of Russian chemical weapons was completed last year.
Did you know these interesting facts?
OPCW inspectors have had full access to all known Russian chemical weapons facilities for over a decade – including those identified by the “Novichok” alleged whistleblower Mirzayanov – and last year OPCW inspectors completed the destruction of the last of 40,000 tonnes of Russian chemical weapons
By contrast the programme of destruction of US chemical weapons stocks still has five years to run
Israel has extensive stocks of chemical weapons but has always refused to declare any of them to the OPCW. Israel is not a state party to the Chemical Weapons Convention nor a member of the OPCW. Israel signed in 1993 but refused to ratify as this would mean inspection and destruction of its chemical weapons. Israel undoubtedly has as much technical capacity as any state to synthesise “Novichoks”.
Until this week, the near universal belief among chemical weapons experts, and the official position of the OPCW, was that “Novichoks” were at most a theoretical research programme which the Russians had never succeeded in actually synthesising and manufacturing. That is why they are not on the OPCW list of banned chemical weapons.
Porton Down is still not certain it is the Russians who have apparently synthesised a “Novichok”. Hence “Of a type developed by Russia”. Note developed, not made, produced or manufactured.
It is very carefully worded propaganda. Of a type developed by liars.
UPDATE
This post prompted another old colleague to get in touch. On the bright side, the FCO have persuaded Boris he has to let the OPCW investigate a sample. But not just yet. The expectation is the inquiry committee will be chaired by a Chinese delegate. The Boris plan is to get the OPCW also to sign up to the “as developed by Russia” formula, and diplomacy to this end is being undertaken in Beijing right now.
I don’t suppose there is any sign of the BBC doing any actual journalism on this?

(*) Foreign & Commonwealth Office.
(**) Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

Tangled Web in the East Goutha; Ghouta has got the Neocon Goat

Ivo Rens in English, Proche et moyen orient

Ziad Fadel
Syrian Perspective
February 28th, 2018
Source : https://www.syrianperspective.com/2018/02/tangled-web-in-the-east-ghouta-ghouta-has-got-the-neocon-goat.html

The Western Media is going berserk over the situation in the Eastern Ghouta.  The propaganda is reaching a shrill crescendo indicating hysterics.  Or, more likely, it is coordinated to prepare public opinion for a more obscene type of Western response to staged propaganda endemic to any area where the so-called “White Helmets” are found.  No Western media reports are coming out of ‘Afreen which is being bombarded daily by America’s allies, the Turks.  No, it’s only the Ghouta where America’s and NATO’s terrorist allies are facing annihilation.  Little or no information is being published decrying the Saudi-inspired carnage in Yemen.
It is obvious that the Tiger Forces will not be unleashed until the terrorist groups, Alqaeda, Hay’at Tahreer Al-Shaam, Jaysh Al-Islam, Faylaq Al-Rahmaan and others who are not included in the cease fire brokered by Moscow, have been pounded into a fugue state.  Maj. Gen. Suhayl Al-Hassan has reportedly been depressed by Dr. Assad’s unwillingness to commit to total victory in Ghouta – some sources claiming he was greeted with much affection by the president but was told to hold back until the “political” atmosphere improved.  Actually, none of that is true.  General Al-Hassan has been given wide latitude in deciding when to make the big push, and, he has evidently opted to continue the softening process in order to conserve his own assets and the lives of his men.  More importantly, General Al-Hassan has to take into account the lives of innocent civilians who are now being put in cages to be used as human shields.  Muhammad ‘Alloosh, a war criminal par excellence, has ordered his apes to build a thousand cages to stop the air assault.
Based on information I have gleaned from my sources, the assault has begun as a probing maneuver to test the defenses of the entrenched rats. Some western sources have estimated the number of rodents inside the Ghouta to be in the thousands with many having gained substantial skill in terrorizing the population.  Other sources put the number of vermin at just below one thousand.  My source cannot give out the number but says it is very “manageable”. Whatever the case, if the defensive lines are as weak as they appear and the arsenal at the disposal of the rodents has been depleted with little opportunity for rearming due to the fact that the Ghouta is now surrounded, then, in that case, the operation should last only a few weeks due to the presence of around 400,000 civilians.
From the responses to many of the MSM articles, it is clear nobody believes the Western-Zionist narrative.  Almost everyone writing comments accuse the MSM of disseminating pure propaganda.  Judging also from the number of comments to articles about Syria and contrasting them to the number of comments on other subjects more germane to American domestic politics, it can be concluded that very few people are following the events in Syria.  What I am getting at is that the MSM has failed miserably in rousting the Western public from its languor. It is apparent Syria does not have the same attraction as the Super Bowl or Florida massacres.
Muhammad ‘Alloosh knows he has no place to go but Hell.  Like, ‘Abdullah Al-Muhaysini, his footsteps are sullied with the blood of thousands of innocent civilians and government soldiers.  Once dead, both will enter the oblivion they richly deserve; and as time goes by, they might get the suspicion that Allah is not on their side – and that, maybe, just maybe, the fiery Hades promised to temporal sinners in the Qur’an could be expanded to accommodate them and their minions.
The T-72 tanks are revving up and preparing to move very soon in what will be a slow, step-by-step, invasion designed to conserve the lives of soldiers and civilians.  The Saraab 2 anti-TOW toppling device is much-improved rendering the American-manufactured anti-armor platform useless against tanks of the Tiger Forces.  Syrian soldiers are battle-hardened and superbly trained by the terrain over which they have bobbed for close to seven years.  This is the time of reckoning when the cannibals infesting the Ghouta must start to write their farewell letters to their noisome relatives in Chechnya, Sinkiang or Albania or any of the other nations that produced them – United States, France,  Britain, Germany or Saudi Arabia, inter alia.
The Zionist Apartheid State, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, France, England and Kuwait, are horrified at the possibility of losing the Ghouta to the government.  Once the Ghouta is freed from the stench of Wahhabist chimpanzees, the Syrian Army, now over a half million strong (if you count in the militias) will be freed up to deal with Idlib and put to death the plans of Bandar bin Sultaan whose is head is literally ripe for the plucking.  The United States is clearly on board and is joining in the clamor and clangor to upset Syria’s plans to extirpate the terrorist menace.  Why?
Because Russia and Iran have won.  For Iran, it is the gas pipeline, the Fatimid Crescent and the unimpeded access to Hizbollah and Palestine.  For Russia, it’s the dream of a port on the Mediterranean and the airbase at Humaymeem.  Despite decades of Syrian loyalty to Moscow, never has there been a Syrian government willing to lease a port and a land base for one hundred years.  America’s failure to blunt the growth of this new alliance:  Russia, Iran, Iraq, China, Syria and Lebanon is hanging around the neo-con heads like an albatross….. or dangling over them like the Sword of Damocles.  Zionists are united in pursuing a policy of complete hopelessness in order to assuage their own hurt feelings.  They simply will not accept their own failures and are determined to bully the CIA into another miserable foreign adventure.
Unable to stir the passions of the American public into supporting another foreign war, they have resolved to use the media as a substitute for the noisy demonstrations of which they fantasized in order to urge military action to stop the inevitable rise of the new alliance.  With failure after failure, we can only assume that the terrorists of Al-Ghouta are numbered.

Ziad Fadel Attorney for 33 years and Supreme Court Certified Interpreter for Arabic/English. Editor in Chief at Syrian Perspective.

__________________________________________
NEWS AND COMMENT:
This is the expose of the White Helmets mythology we have been waiting for.  Vanessa blows them into smithereens with this:
https://www.mintpressnews.com/investigation-white-helmets-committing-acts-terror-across-syria/231597/
Paul Antonopoulos sent me this article about ‘Afreen which sheds light on Kurd intentions:
https://www.fort-russ.com/2018/02/afrin-waiting-for-damascus-kurdish.html
Vanessa Beeley’s indictment of the Guardian is supported by hard facts.  Great read, enjoy:
http://21stcenturywire.com/2018/02/19/syria-guardian-journalists-take-afternoon-tea-isis-survive/

Another Step Toward Armageddon

Ivo Rens Généralités, in English, OTAN/NATO, Russie-Ukraine, USA

Paul Craig Roberts
January 11, 2018
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/01/11/another-step-toward-armageddon/

The US military/security complex has taken another step toward Armageddon. The Pentagon has prepared a nuclear posture review (NPR) that gives the OK to development of smaller “useable” nuclear weapons and permits their use in response to a non-nuclear attack.
As Reagan and Gorbachev understood, but the warmongers who have taken over America do not, there are far too many nuclear weapons already. Some scientists have concluded that even the use of 10 percent of either the US or Russian arsenal would suffice to destroy life on earth.
It is reckless and irresponsible for Washington to make such a decision in the wake of years of aggressive actions taken against Russia. The Clinton criminal regime broke Washington’s promise that NATO would not move one inch to the East. The George W. Bush criminal regime pulled out of the ABM Treaty and changed US war doctrine to elevate the use of nuclear weapons from retaliation to first strike. The Obama criminal regime launched a frontal propaganda attack on Russia with crazed Hillary’s denunciation of President Putin as “the new Hitler.” In an effort to evict Russia from its naval base in Crimea, the criminal Obama regime overthrew the Ukrainian government during the Sochi Olympics and installed a Washington puppet. US missile bases have been established on Russia’s border, and NATO conducts war games against Russia on Russian borders.
This is insanity. These and other gratuitous provocations have convinced the Russian military’s Operation Command that Washington is planning a surprise nuclear attack on Russia. The Russian government has replied to these provocations with the statement that Russia will never again fight a war on its own territory.
Those such as myself and Stephen Cohen, who point out that Washington’s reckless and irresponsible behavior has created an enemy out of a country that very much wanted to be friends, do not get much attention from the presstitute media. The US military/security complex needs an enemy sufficient to justify its vast budget and power, and the Western media has accommodated that selfish and dangerous need.
Russia today is far stronger and better armed than the Soviet Union ever was. Russia also has an alliance with China, an economic and military power. This alliance was created by Washington’s threats against both countries.
Europe and Japan need to understand that they have responsibility for the resurrection of the Cold War in a far more dangerous form than existed in the 20th century. Europe and Japan, whose political leaders are owned by Washington, have taken money from Washington and sold out their peoples along with the rest of humanity.
The entirety of the Western World is devoid of intelligent political leadership. This leaves countries such as Russia, China and Iran with the challenge of preserving life on earth as the Western World pushes humanity toward Armageddon.

The Courage To Decide For Peace

Ivo Rens Généralités, in English

Christopher Black

October 10, 2017

Source : https://journal-neo.org/2017/10/10/the-courage-to-decide-for-peace/

 

Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel “Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

144800-1945-atomic-bombings-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki

“Competitive armament is not a way to prevent war. Every step in this direction brings us nearer to catastrophe. The armament race is the worst method to prevent open conflict. On the contrary, real peace cannot be reached without systematic disarmament on a supranational scale. I repeat, armament is no protection against war, but leads inevitably to war.”

These words of Dr. Einstein, so clear because they state such a simple fact, are words ignored by all the nations of the world and the results are as he and logic predicted.  Today the peoples of the world face the threat of nuclear annihilation not because the disputes between nations are unresolvable through negotiations, because every dispute can be resolved if the will is there, but because the very existence of nuclear weapons creates the political demand that they be used, either directly or through intimidation, to force one nation’s will on another.

Bearing Einstein’s words in mind, I wonder what would happen if tomorrow the leadership of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea stated that they have thought about what Einstein said and have decided to eliminate their nuclear weapons without even asking for any reciprocity in return, just to set an example, to do the right thing, to prepare for peace instead of war. Can you imagine the consternation in the capitals of the nuclear powers; in Washington, London, Moscow, Beijing, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Tel Aviv, Islamabad, Delhi, the raised eyebrows, the puzzled looks, turning-hopefully-to smiles in Moscow and Beijing, but disgust in Washington, London and Tel Aviv?

Would any of them follow suit? Would they lift the economic war against the DPRK? Would any of them feel shamed by the noble act of a small nation that has just stood up to the world with the threat of peace instead of the threat of war? Would any of them rush to sign the new Treaty On The Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and then proceed to follow the DPRK’s example and begin to eliminate their nuclear arsenals?  I think the answer is obvious. They would not. But why not?

There is no rational reason to offer us since the possession and use of these weapons is a war crime. Nuclear weapons are indiscriminate and have catastrophic consequences for all humanity.  Instead the irrational reason offered by all the nuclear powers to justify the unjustifiable is that nuclear weapons guarantee national security, the very same reason that is now offered by the DPRK. But only the DPRK is subject to economic warfare and threats of nuclear Armageddon for having and testing these weapons. Yet, the DPRK is the only one of the nuclear powers that in 2016 voted in support of the UN resolution to begin negotiations on a treaty to ban nuclear weapons. That may surprise the world public to know. Every citizen may well ask their national leaders, “If the DPRK was willing to support the ban on nuclear weapons just a year ago why did you and all the other nuclear powers refuse to support the ban?”

And again they will receive the same circular argument that “they have it so we have to have it”, though this argument is not one allowed to the DPRK.  Of course the beginning of the circle is the United States of America that first developed, tested, and used these weapons. And it must be remembered that the United States did not use them on military targets but on Japanese civilians, an act of world terror that can never be forgotten. It is this American terror to which the USSR reacted in self-defence and built its nuclear weapons, as did China. Britain and France built theirs to carry some weight in Washington, to retain some domination in the world, and to add to the NATO arsenal aimed at the USSR, now Russia.

Their example encouraged India and Pakistan to build them, to what end no one can determine since they cannot be used on the subcontinent without killing everyone.  Israel has them to intimidate the Middle East with the same result. Even European NATO powers have access to nuclear bombs supplied by the US. And on it goes.

If, to carry our thought experiment further, President Trump experienced a miraculous epiphany and tomorrow morning announced that the United States feared no one and was reversing its two centuries old policy of aggression and imperial expansion and therefore was going to destroy all its nuclear weapons, could any of the remaining nuclear powers maintain their arsenals in the face of public opinion that would sweep the globe in support of the American action for peace and disarmament? I think not. The nuclear prison in which we all live can be unlocked but the key to the door of disarmament lies in the pocket of the United States. It only has to act.

But action requires will and desire. , The leadership of the United States, bankrupt of any positive and progressive solutions to the economic and social decline of its society can think of only one solution; plundering the planet. It therefore refuses to give up its ambition of world domination and in consequence the militarists insist on maintaining the nuclear threat as the key factor of their foreign policy.

The threat they maintain is so frightening that even Russia and China, which logic would dictate should be supporting the DPRK against US nuclear threats, prefer to set principle aside and to squeeze the people of the DPRK, in order to avoid a general nuclear war, which is what they fear war in Korea will lead to. But this is a path sown with mines that can blow up at any time because American officials, including Trump, and th econtrolled media, are using the Russian and Chinese support of sanctions against the DPRK as evidence that the US is in the right and justified in its aggression against the DPRK.  And,“so it goes,” as Billy Pilgrim likes to say in Slaughterhouse 5, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s account of the mass slaughter of civilians in the firestorm created by Allied bombs in the city of Dresden in 1945.

For Russia and China the expressed central issue on the Korean peninsular is the threat of general nuclear war. But that is not the issue for the United States. That is its propaganda. The primary issue for the United States is that the DPRK insists on the sovereign right of its people to govern themselves howsoever they choose. It refuses to accept the dominance of the United States over Korea.This independence undermines US domination of Japan, South Korea and East Asia generally.  The Russians and Chineseknow this very well andare trying earnestly to get the United States to a negotiating position and constantly insist on the application of the obligatory requirement in the UN resolutions that the United States seek a peaceful resolution of all issues. But the Americans never refer to this obligation in their propaganda. In fact, just this first week of October, President Trump attacked his own Foreign Secretary, Rex Tillerson, for merely stating he had contact with officials of the DPRK.

The United States has even managed to insert its inflammatory anti-socialist propaganda in the resolutions. Resolution 2375 of 11 September 2017 contains political language that is very troubling. At sections 24 and 25 under the subheading “Political” the big powers state

“their deep concern at the grave hardship that the people of the DPRK are subjected to, condemns the DPRK for pursuing nuclear weapons and ballistic weapons instead of the welfare of its people while people in the DPRK have great unmet needs, and emphasizes the necessity of the DPRK respecting the welfare and inherent dignity of the people in the DPRK.”

This is a clear attack on the DPRK as a socialist state. It is also an attack composed of a series of lies because the DPRK is one of the few countries in the word that actually does concern itself with the welfare of its people, as every neutral observer who has been there has reported time and again.

That the United States could draft such a paragraph when it is the nation that spends more of its peoples taxes on nuclear weapons, missiles and its armed forces than any other and does little for the welfare of its citizens can only be explained by its leaderships’ pathological hypocrisy.How Russia and China can support this language when they too make the same expenditures on useless weapons at the expense of the welfare of their people, only they can answer. But, again, I suggest that can be explained by their deep fear of a nuclear war launched by the United States. And “so it goes.”

I began with Dr. Einstein and so will close with him. In answer to a question on UN Radio on June 16, 1950, “Can we prevent war?” he replied,

“There is a very simple answer. If we have the courage to decide ourselves for peace, we will have peace. …We are not engaged in a play but in a condition of utmost danger to existence. If you are not firmly decided to resolve things in a peaceful way, you will never come to a peaceful solution.”